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Happy Wednesday everybody. First of all, thank you so much to everybody who filled out our Wednesday Wisdom survey. You’re awesome and we really appreciate it. Secondly, I am gonna be talking about a topic today that is self-explanatory if you read the title of this vlog the feedback that doesn’t translate to employees. I’ll be a little bit more specific. I have noticed a trend in the work that I do with advisors and their teams leaders or leadership will be sharing either a piece of feedback or will make some declarative statements or will share a goal with the team and I will see the team, if we’re on a video call or in person nodding or saying, yeah, I get that or that makes sense and I know either the team has no idea what the advisor is talking about or that comment has gone in one ear and out the other, meaning it didn’t translate into language and activity that’s relevant to the team member and it doesn’t give them any information about what their powerful next step should be. And so I’m gonna give you today my list of four things that I hear leaders say that doesn’t translate and doesn’t give context around what the next step for the team members should be give you some best practices for how to shift your comments and ultimately bridge the communication gap that exists between leaders and team members. There’s many reasons why this gap exists. One of the reasons as many of you know I love DISC assessments and I am big on DISC theory. I think DISC is incredibly accurate in terms of explaining our communication styles, how we act under pressure, the way in which we wanna perceive and understand information and what I’ve noticed, most leaders, I won’t say most, but many leaders tend to be extremely goal-oriented, high drivers. You’ll also often see people with High-D profile in a leadership position meaning they wanna hit the goal, they’re incredibly focused on results not always incredibly focused on how to get there and right, that’s why we say advisors are destination not journey-focused and so for them, they’ll figure out a way to make it happen. We set a goal, we’ll make it happen or we don’t even need to set a goal we’re still gonna make it happen. Most team members, however, I’ve noticed and this is reflective of the makeup of the world, right? Most people score as a high S, High S meaning they are incredibly stable and secure members of the team. They are steady-eddie’s people we can rely on, people who don’t like to disrupt the status quo, they’re not confrontational. And so they tend to say, yeah, I agree or that makes sense sense even though for them it doesn’t really help them or translate for them, but they’re not likely to say, hey boss, when you say we should be more proactive versus reactive, what does that actually mean? They’re not likely to say that but they’re likely to need that direction. I also give you one other anecdote. I noticed when advisors bring on talent in an associate advisor role or lead advisor junior advisor role or when they have an advisor that should be responsible for generating revenue, they tend to bring that talent into the team, have high expectations for that person and say to them, look, I built a book of business, feel free to leverage my book and capitalize off of the opportunity that exists there and then that’s all the information they give and they’re really disappointed when that associate advisor doesn’t end up hitting his or her goals. It’s because the associate advisor doesn’t really understand how this great opportunity that exists within the business translates into a meaningful and intentional activity for them and how they can actually go about attacking this opportunity. And so, for anybody who’s hiring somebody or has chellenge where there seems to be this disconnect between expectations and what’s happening, I want you to think about whether you’ve helped that person translate what you’ve said into how to actually chronologically sequentially rather get through solving the problem. Okay, here are my four things. So first thing and the first and second one are sort of connected but advisers tend to say that, I need you to own this. Think about how many times you hear them thought that or said that to a team member. I need you to take total ownership of this role or this task or this responsibility, that’s the first one. The second one is, I want us to be proactive instead of reactive or we need to jump off the hamster wheel because it just feels like we’re spinning our wheels every day. For us as leaders, that makes total sense. We want somebody to not have to actually ask us for help on how to do something, but we also want them to do it in exactly the way we want it done and not the creative way they may solve it. So we’re almost being contradictory even with the statement. What I want you to do, if you tend to find yourself giving this feedback, I need you to own this, we need to be proactive I want you to actually follow that up with. For example, I want to translate what that actually means for your role or let’s talk through together what proactivity means for the service advisors on our team. And you’re doing two things, number one you’re actually articulating for yourself what you want ’cause sometimes we see these things and we don’t even know what outcome we hope to achieve. So you’re clarifying it for yourself. The second thing you’re doing is that you’re coaching the team member. You’re putting them in a position to have to strategically think and work through this challenge with you. Now, the answers to that if you’re saying to somebody, I need you to own this or I need you to be proactive, defining what proactivity looks like really important. So when I say proactive what I actually mean for you and your role is that all of our clients, especially during this pandemic in this crazy time, get a touch point on a weekly basis and so every Friday you should make sure that all of the touch points were completed and that you’re prepped and ready to go for Monday with your next list of touch points. Proactivity means that we ensure that at the end of the every month, we have less than 1% of our clients reaching out to us for an issue that we weren’t expecting. So actually setting the service standards and standards of the organization and translating that into what it means incredibly helpful for team members and incredibly helpful for yourself. Okay, third thing, third thing I hear a lot of, I want you to have a sense of urgency. Woo, I hear this from leaders all the time! First of all, let me just say this nobody’s gonna have the same sense of urgency and buy-in to the business that you do. Even people who are partners in the business by the way at some point may not feel the same sense of urgency. Part of it is because of just profile and the way in which we think about business and work and what we wanna achieve, part of it is because if you were a solo preneur, meaning you built the business yourself, of course you’re gonna have the greatest amount of urgency. It’s your business, it’s your baby. What I want you to do when I talk about this a lot is focus on the objectives. If you and the team are incredibly clear on what you aim to achieve on an ongoing basis, then you will find yourselves caring less about what level of urgency each person has because the objectives are being met. So on an ongoing basis, you have to ensure that you’re achieving greater brand awareness. Meaning, each quarter, everybody on the team knows that you have a gauge of whether you’re achieving brand awareness based on whether you’re getting a non-solicited referrals coming in the door or whether you’re getting opportunities to speak on a podcast, et cetera. At the end of every quarter, you’re looking at those objectives and you’re saying, hey, did we achieve these results or not? When you’re clear on OKRs for the company, you care less and it becomes less relevant how urgent somebody is. In addition to company objectives by the way, each individual person should have the objectives that they focus on. Okay, final thing. Our goal is 1 billion in assets. I asked advisors a couple of things. Number one, make sure that when you’re stating a goal, there’s a reason behind it. There were some things sort of driving you to that meaning you were in compete have completely reconciled and are completely comfortable with what role you will be in at that billion-dollar business. The second thing that I urge you to do is translate what the billion dollar business means for the client rather for the for the team member. What is the development pathway for them? At the billion dollar business, what will they be doing? Do they wanna be doing that? How will they be compensated? Et cetera. Okay, trying to keep these under 10 minutes, so I’m gonna pause there. I hope that was helpful to you. If you have other things that you tend to say that you feel gets lost in translation, email them to me and I’ll help you out. Otherwise I’ll see you next week, same place, same time. Take care.