Rapid industry change and rising competitive threats are forcing advisors into new ways of thinking and operating. Success in our new industry dynamic can only be achieved by advisors incorporating next-generation skills like digital, behavioral, tech-enabled, and developing a mindset and mental agility to help them compete and thrive in today’s business environment of accelerating change. But the need for a rapid transition from older, established, habitual patterns of operating to this new world of professional agility and deeper client engagement has brought out that there are vital distinctions between “training” and “learning” that needs to be applied to financial services business development efforts.
Training generally refers to the offering of information in a manner that instructs the trainee and teaches them about a specific process or procedure. It is normally job-specific and about achieving a very focused and definable objective. There also tends to be a negative connotation by some established advisors who bristle at the concept of needing “training.”
Learning, on the other hand, is about absorbing information to increase new capabilities, developing the mental agility to apply them in new situations, and it needs to become a constant ongoing thinking process that is directly intertwined with our “new normal” business environment. Accordingly, learning helps the learner deal with a broader range of situations while also assisting them to develop more holistically as entrepreneurs versus business owners.
The recent June 2021 Virtual Mastermind Collegium by Clarity2Prosperity was an excellent example of a different tone and approach to engaging advisors into learning vs. traditional training efforts. As a financial professional development, coaching, and IP development organization led by financial advisors, coaches, mentors, and financial services business leaders, Clarity2Prosperity (C2P) is committed to strategically simplifying financial planning into an understandable, engaging, holistic process and helping advisors to break through to their next level of success.
I asked Jason L. Smith, CEO and founder of C2P about the firm stance of being a “learning company” versus a training organization and what that means in how they execute their business development services for advisor clients:
Smith: “The difference between training and learning is in specializing in how the adult mind works. The use of the word training can be overused and diluted. Other industries do a much better job. In our industry we get a guy on a podium that talks for a few hours to a couple of days and we call it training. It’s drinking out of a firehose. Advisors say they are going to go back and implement, but then they get busy and have to put out fires. The transfer of knowledge never really happened.”
“Some people can listen and learn, but most people learn by doing. We reinforce it through multiple modalities of learning: e-learning, experiential, mentoring, coaching, edutainment, and reviewing real life examples. We teach them how to fish, instead of fishing for them or handing them a rigid, unthinking process. They are learning how to take tools and concepts and how to apply them. We also teach advisors how to help their clients be better learners. They are learning how to help their clients learn.”
To see this mindset in play at the Collegium, advisors were provided with an engaging learning experience by designing the Mastermind Collegium into a virtual, international spy-themed format replete with receiving a personalized attendee box titled “Mission Briefing” with gamification elements of being given a mission of traveling across the globe by completing assignments and gathering clues that were strewn through the different presenter sessions. There was also a Sales Pitch Competition converting sponsor sales idea presentations into a real-time competition where advisors could vote for best ideas for growing their business; a Virtual Roulette Prize Wheel with chances at winning prizes; and a Virtual Happy Hour with a bartender demonstrating how to master the shaken, not stirred, martini.
Another element of engagement was that many sessions provided Peer-to-Peer Coaching where advisors openly discussed the largest obstacles they were facing and offered which strategies and resources were working best in the field with prospects and clients right now. There were plenty of opportunities to share ideas, collaborate, and learn new skills along the way that helped attendees reach a new level of understanding of the benefits of holistic financial planning.
The overall structural design for the Collegium, especially in having advisors stay connected to leverage their collective knowledge and practical expertise with each other and learning from one another, was a key to the success of the event. This level of engagement fosters and instills the creation of a learning network and culture giving advisors the support and resources that they need to develop and expand their perspectives. Advisors are more likely to see “the big picture” when you are in the midst of an orchestrated learning culture.
Many large companies across all industries have already shifted their focus away from training to focusing on learning and nurturing a vibrant ongoing learning culture. The goal with this approach is often to develop individuals in a much more rounded way and to give them skills to deal with a much wider range of situations, including situations that are not predictable or unknown.