Charts such as this have been written about for years (Non-Manipulative Selling by Tony Alessandra, Ph.D., 1987 Prentice Hall). Yet, on a day-to-day basis, it is often a neglected aspect of management communications. For example, a driver social style may work in communicating with an amiable, but not necessarily with another driver. Thus, recognizing what social style the listener displays can help a leader adjust his/her style to effect better communication with those who are communicated with.

To be most efficient in your role as a leader, leadership must be shared with those who are led. Delegating tasks is one thing, delegating responsibility is quite another. To be most efficient in accomplishing the goals of your financial practice, eventually you will need to embrace the concept of delegating responsibility. To be consistently successful in this, three steps must be accomplished:

• Matching responsibility to the appropriate person—assessing readiness levels

• Holding that person accountable for the expected results

• Following up and providing feedback
 

Dr. Tony is also the author (with Michael J. O’Connor, Ph.D.) of The Platinum Rule: Discover the Four Basic Business Personalities and How They Can Lead You to Success (recently revised and available on Amazon.com).

Dr. Tony Alessandra has also developed a set of web-based assessment tools to assist in hiring, evaluating performance and determining compensation and benefits (https://www.assessments24x7.com). The site offers two aspects of assessment, The DISC system, which stands for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientious (the how) and the Motivators (the why). Dr. Alessandra mentioned that currently 100 universities are using his assessment tools.

It assimilates the findings in an executive summary with custom benchmarks applicable to the organization and its people. Use of the site is fast and efficient. The site also offers various training tools, user conferences and certifications.

Another choice could be Caliper Corp, which also offers talent assessment and management tools. This tool is geared for much larger firms but is highly regarded.

But another piece of this puzzle involves task assignment and workflow processing. Some client relationship management software (CRM) programs have workflow management features. But, they may vary in sophistication based on the software being used.

As an example, Redtail has a flexible workflow management feature with management reports. The software comes with this feature at no additional expense and Redtail is a remarkably inexpensive CRM solution, priced at $99 per month per database for up to 15 users. However, for more sophisticated features, it may not be enough. Another example, Junxure has a more customizable workflow management solution. Their Junxure Cloud CRM version is priced at $65 per user per month. There is also free-standing workflow management softwares, but the concern with those is whether or not they can share data with the financial advisors’ CRM software. Having to type the same information over-and-over again can lead to higher error rates.