by David F. Smith, Ph.D., CFP® Providing great service to clients is critical for CFP® practitioner firms to succeed. Perhaps it goes without saying that having team members get better at what they do leads to excellence, but there is much more to "improvement" than job excellence. Jul-2018-Improvement-JFP1 80 kb Download Files Download PDF Fi...

by David F. Smith, Ph.D., CFP® Are They Thinking of Quitting? Yes. Leadership studies find that each employed person has a degree of what is called voluntary termination intention (VTI) and CFP® firms are not immune to this employee characteristic. VTI came up during table-talk at an FPA® Chapter meeting: "Millennials just up and leave," compl...

Think "Inclusion" to Build Teamwork by David F. Smith, Ph.D., CFP® GETTING THE RIGHT work done the right way is crucial to every financial planning practice—and it requires teamwork. A practice leader, office manager, or lead planner who builds a high-quality social exchange relationship with each team member individually will benefit from hav...

Understand the Behaviors of Leaders and Team Members to Improve Your Organization by David F. Smith, Ph.D., CFP®  RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE leadership shows that applying five specific leadership behaviors when working with each team member will improve your organization  Research also shows that team members can behave in three ways at ...

Five key leader behaviors that keep your best staff on your team by David F. Smith, Ph.D., CFP® Every person in medical practice, including the physician-owner, medical director, office manager, lab technicians—everyone—has some thought of quitting their work. The thoughts may be pervasive or momentary, and action may be imminent or a "Me? – Never!...

Changing behavior as a leader requires targeted effort. The important leadership behaviors need to be habits, so change is creating new habits. The first step is to observe how the leadership behaviors of inclusion, respecting, rewarding, improvement, and modeling are used at the start of the change process. The second step is to create goals ...

AT AN INDUSTRY conference recently, I was reminded how powerful reverse mentoring is for leadership development. Reverse mentoring is a management tactic that pairs senior members and junior members of the firm. This sounds like mentoring, but in this pairing, the junior member is in charge.I will be pre...

IT IS ESTIMATED that fully 50 percent of the working population in the U.S. is somewhat to highly introverted. This means that it is possible that half of the valuable employees at a financial planning firm prefer to not be on committees, prefer to not go to conferences, prefer to work alone, prefer to think&...

Inclusion behavior is a leader behavior that can improve team effectiveness and process efficiency. Leadership research has determined that the one-on-one relationship between a team leader and each team member is critical to team success. Successful outcomes are associated with specific leadership behaviors. Leaders can exhibit five specific behav...

During a recent leadership discussion with several financial planners, I was reminded that the internal leadership qualities used within their firm also applied to planner-client dynamics. Leadership in action can take a range of forms from "Emergency, get out of the house! It's on fire" to "Hey! Your house is in a wildfire-prone area, so we should...

Employee motivation is key to a successful medical practice. Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are ways to positively affect motivation, but leaders need to be aware of the four main demotivators a) task orientation, b) personal emotions, c) self-confidence, and d) values. Utilizing the leader qualities of inclusion and respecting aid leaders in disc...

Now in the download store: Lessons learned about leadership and the millennial generation. Millennials as leaders, leading millennials, and millennials leading boomers.  All backed by the science of leadership behaviors and their effect on great teamwork.  Here is the table of contents and introduction. Download PDF File Here To unsubscri...

David Smith, our Director of Research, recently presented a Webinar to a large group of professionals who support charities. David provided three actionable strategies to help their boards function better. These strategies are aimed at board members who are introverts. These board members can present leadership challenges but by using the science o...

Effective teamwork is paramount in medical practice. The foundation for great teamwork according to research is the mutual trust and understanding of work tasks between the team leader and each team member. These qualities can be developed especially through the thoughtful application of five leader behaviors: Inclusion, Modeling, Improvement, Rewa...

Scouting Your Way to the Best Colleges: When "Eagling-out" leads to "Eagling-in" fellow Eagle David F. Smith, Phd is a guidebook to assist Eagle (and other) Scouts use their great Scouting experiences to better present themselves to the admissions committees of the best colleges. David applied to and was accepted by Harvard - he made extensive...

Promoting Improvement: A Key to Teamwork Excellence by David F. Smith, Ph.D., CFP® in the Journal of Financial Planning - July 2018 Providing great service to clients is critical for CFP® practitioner firms to succeed. Perhaps it goes without saying that having team members get better at what they do leads to excellence, but there is much more to "...

This program for leaders is a workshop series comprised of an initial day, an advanced day, and a maintenance day. The initial day establishes the baseline, goals, and growth plans for the participant. The advanced day comes a few months later to review progress, set new goals, and make new plans. The maintenance day is a session for coaching on sp...

If you are not yet a team leader, there is a workshop designed for those interested in learning about leadership and allows participants to develop capabilities for working with their supervisor/manager/team-leader. "It takes two to Tango" and both leader and follower benefit from our research as applied in our workshop. This is a one day workshop ...

If you are an experienced leader and want to sharpen your leader-behavior skills, then this is a great workshop. The Five Behaviors that research has shown that affect the leader-member exchange quality the most are practiced so you can include them in your every day work. This is a one day workshop that provides participants tools to better work w...

If you are an experienced leader and are concerned with possible or actual staff turnover, then this workshop can help. The Five Behaviors that research has shown that affect the leader-member exchange quality the most are practiced so you can include them in your every day work to reduce Voluntary Termination Intention. This is a 70-90 minute work...