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What is it worth as a leader to have a successful and thriving company? Does the value of a firm increase with employees who are motivated and inspired, who enjoy working together and who find coming to work every day rewarding and challenging?

What may sound like an unrealistic ideal is actually an attainable feat if you focus on an element of your business that you may have overlooked – your firm’s culture.

Historically leaders have analyzed how they can better engage employees, focusing primarily on the success of the firm. In today’s landscape, truly meaningful leadership must go a step further, flipping yesteryear’s notions of firm first thinking and instead doing something that should come naturally to all of us: Putting people first.

If that sounds precarious, consider the facts about our industry. The wealth management space is on the cusp of monumental change in its life cycle, with a large number of advisors looking ahead at succession planning and retirement. The next generation of advisors – your firm’s successors – have different values and priorities than their predecessors. Your next clients, the Gen X and Gen Y contingent, also have different (and some would argue higher) expectations of their advisors than their parents do. Technology is abundant and data is accessible in one click. Instant gratification is a foregone conclusion. What does this all mean?

The only thing that truly separates and elevates your firm is your people.

In Advisory Leadership, you’ll learn how seven key steps can help you transform your firm’s culture, including, if necessary, how to reverse the course of your current culture to create a dynamic, energetic environment of happy, engaged employees. These seven steps, based on human virtues we all strive to achieve, are the key to unlocking the power of a people-first culture:

1. Patience. Slowing down the hiring process to help the firm better choose the right candidate for any role, every time.

2. Honesty and Integrity. Leading by example and encouraging open and honest communication.

3. Compassion. Acknowledging people for their individual contributions and getting to know them beyond their roles.

4. Respect. Empowering employees to make decisions and guiding them in their personal goals for professional achievement.

5. Persistence and Consistency. Aligning your management team with your firm’s goals and reiterating your values through various communication channels.

6. Encouragement. Promoting and rewarding team collaboration instead of competition.

7. Courage. Looking inward before taking those crucial first steps toward change.

This book will cover each of these steps in its own dedicated chapter, and provide actionable tips at the end to help you get started on your own path to creating a healthy and thriving company culture. It will also cover how to make lasting, positive changes that encourage your team to help protect and promote your values.

Along the way, you’ll also find interesting real-world examples of heart culture elevating a firm’s success as well as some pitfalls to sidestep, which are based on my own experiences in the advisory business.

For principals, advisors, and team leaders in the wealth management industry, you’ll recognize many of the common challenges we face in our unique environment. And though the title is Advisory Leadership, many of the principles in this book can be applied to anyone who is trying to run a successful business.

If like me you got into this business to help people, you’ll find that many of the messages in this book will seem like common sense.

Listening.

Being honest.

Caring.

Getting to know people.

Encouraging them to succeed.

We are in the service business, after all, and our job is to learn as much as possible about our clients in order to help them achieve their financial and life goals. We’re good at it. These seven steps succeed in using those same innate skills we have as advisors and as people to help us build a stronger, more cohesive team with shared goals and a shared philosophy of how we work, how we deliver financial advice, and what we want to achieve personally as well as professionally.

Ultimately a leader wants to build a thriving, fulfilling business by using the best tools and resources available to become more profitable and to reach more clients. Consider Advisory Leadership one of those resources: A tool to help you unlock your business’s potential and to cultivate your firm’s most valuable resource – your people.