Hello everyone, and welcome to The Upstream Leader. My name’s Jeremy Clopton. Glad to be with you here today. In today’s episode, we are going to be talking about people development in your role and doing so as a leader. This is going to be another one of our solo episodes where I’m going to be sharing some of my thoughts and perspective and what I’ve learned from retreats. We are deep into retreat season. There are several that have taken place over the last few months, still a few more to go.
I’ve talked a little bit in previous episodes—I say a little bit, I’ve talked quite a bit—about the importance of knowing where the firm wants to go, what the firm wants to become, and your role in leading the firm forward in that way. Much more strategically focused, much more vision focused. One of the more tactical things that I’ve seen coming up in every retreat is the importance of people and people development over the next several years in our profession. And for those of you that know me, you know that I very strongly believe in the power of people, the importance of people in our profession, and I will go on the record as stating that I do not believe technology is going to be the differentiator or necessarily even the competitive advantage long-term in our profession. I do think that technology is something that will ultimately become more democratized, easy to access, more and more firms will have it. That’s not to say it’s going to all occur at the same rate. But people will continue to be what sets firms apart, the most successful firms apart from others.
The reason that I believe that is if we are competing on technology alone, we are in a race to become a commodities industry where everything is all about cheaper and faster, don’t get me wrong, effective maybe in there as well. But if it is a technology play, it is going to become more commoditized, it is not going to be as value driven. As a result, if that’s the case, I don’t believe we’re going to have as many firms, I don’t believe that we’re going to have as many wonderful advisors in this profession if that’s what we want to turn the profession into. Frankly, I talk to enough firms, I don’t see that as the direction that the profession is going. Most firms that I talk to have a very strong desire to continue to be their advisors, and they recognize the importance of people development in doing that. And the fact that we are going to have to change how learning and development takes place, we are going to have to change development, we are going to have to evolve so many things as it relates to the upskilling and the acceleration of people’s ability to serve clients and be advisors. We’ve talked about that some on this podcast in the past. I’m not going to rehash that.
What I want to share today, and this may be a shorter episode than normal, is the fact that in order to do that, in order to continue to develop people, to accelerate their development, yes, we’re going to have to redesign systems, yes, we’re going to have to redesign programming, we’re going to have to figure out, how do we use case studies and technology and all the various things to redesign L&D. Absolutely. But even if we do all that, unless leaders can change their mindset that the next generation of professionals is able to level up, is able to upskill, is able to elevate, none of it’s going to be successful. And I know that may sound a little bit like I’m putting all of the responsibility on the current generation of leadership; that’s not it at all, because the next generation—whatever their age, by the way, that is not a named generation comment, that just means the folks that are coming up in the profession, early career professionals, mid-career professionals right now—we have to believe that they have the ability to get to where we need them to get. Because if we approach it through the lens of they don’t have it, it will become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because we won’t provide them the opportunities, the autonomy, the trust, everything necessary for them to find the success that we need them to find and that they want to find.
There’s a Henry Ford quote that a lot of people want to utilize, “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right,” and we talk about that through the lens of our own individual growth mindset development and all of that. But the same is true for your people. Whether you believe they can or they can’t, you’re going to be right. Because a lot of professionals, we hire them because we know they have the capability to be great employees. Now, does everybody work out in the profession or within a given firm? Absolutely not. I’m not saying that everyone will always be perfect. That’s not it at all. But if we operate under the lens that we’re hiring the right people, we’re hiring people with the right traits, characteristics, skillsets, the capability to develop the other skills and knowledge and experiential applications that we need them to have, then it’s up to us as leaders to believe that they’re going to be able to step up to the occasion.
And what I have seen in so many firms is a conversation around, we don’t know that the next generation is ready, we don’t know that the next generation has what it takes to be successful. As a result, opportunities are withheld, people are not pushed, they’re not challenged, they’re not presented with experiences that would allow them to try to step up in their skillset. Instead, they’re kept doing whatever it is that they’re already good at doing, and a little bit stifled in their growth. And you see that. If you look at your firm and you think, man, it takes people a lot longer to get to partner today than it did 10, 15, 20 years ago, or maybe even five years ago, I would argue that’s probably not because people take that much longer to develop, but perhaps because we have not provided them the same opportunities to develop that we were provided 10, 15, 20 plus years ago. What’s interesting is we did not have the focus on efficiency as much because we weren’t in this technological age, so to speak, where everything was faster, faster, faster, and how can I get more done, more efficiently? But instead, when I think back early in my career, partners saw it as a responsibility to develop the next generation. I’m not saying that partners don’t see that as a responsibility today, but I would say that a lot of partners, and I’ve fallen into this trap as well, we’ll sometimes err on the side of “I just need to get things done rather than pushing somebody else outside their comfort zone because they may not be successful, it may not get done as quickly, it may not go the way that we want it to.”
What I am encouraging you in this episode is simply this—and initially when I was thinking about this conversation, I was going to say in a world where everybody is anti things, let’s be pro something—I think the same is true: in a time where it’s so easy to be, I’m not going to say anti-next generation necessarily, but in a time where it’s really easy to be critical of, judgmental of, and have less faith in the next generation, and as a result, actually undermine any efforts that you’re putting forth to try to advance them quicker, I would encourage you as a leader, be pro-the next generation. Be for them. Have as much belief in them as you want them to have in themselves. Yes, they are still going to have to do the work. I am a very strong believer that I can’t care more about your career than you do, if I am working to help develop you. They’ve got to have the drive and the desire. But I can tell you from experience and what I’ve seen at so many firms in our profession, that they can have all the drive and the desire in the world, but if you don’t have the belief in them, they’ll never have the opportunity to actually execute on that, and they’ll never have the opportunity to take advantage of that drive and desire and initiative.
And you may sit there and think, “Oh, but I wish they would tell me that they want to do more.” I would ask you to do is reflect and think about how many times they’ve told you that in the past, and maybe you’ve said “You’re not ready,” or that you’ve given the impression that they shouldn’t be asking for more because you don’t believe that they are capable of more. I will always say that someone needs to care more about their own career than anybody else does, but what I would encourage you as a leader is I want you to have more belief in them than perhaps they do. That means that you can simultaneously believe they’re not ready, but you can believe in their ability to get ready through the experience. Not being ready typically means they’ve not been in an opportunity to apply a skill or work through an experience that requires a bit of judgment. If you believe that they’ve got the capability, the skillsets, the characteristics, that confidence in them will allow them to be successful in that situation because they’ll know that you’ve got their back. And if we’re a little bit wrong, and maybe they weren’t quite ready, they still developed more than if we said, “You know what, I just don’t believe in them, and as a result, I’m not even going to give them the opportunity.” There will be no growth, no development, with no opportunities.
If you give them the opportunities, you believe, maybe they don’t get it a hundred percent right the first time. We probably didn’t either. Most people probably don’t get it right a hundred percent the first time, but as a leader, when you make the decision that you are going to believe that they have the ability to do it, so therefore you’re going to put them in that opportunity, there’s so much more upside. Yes, there is still downside. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still risk, that’s still out there. But there is no upside to no belief, it’s only downside. At least when you believe in them, you can start to get some benefits.
So that’s my encouragement to where you want to take the firm. All of the things that we’ve been talking about in this podcast for the last several months. But when it comes to developing the next generation of professionals, you can do all the programs, all the systems, all the things that are out there to try to advance them, accelerate them, all of that. What I want to tell you as a leader is simply this: You have to believe that they will be successful, and as a result, you have to provide them the opportunities to demonstrate that success for any of that to ever work. And what a great way to live life. Instead of doubting everybody’s ability, we just go in with belief. That doesn’t mean that it’s blind, toxic positivity. We’re going to make sure that they’re set up to be successful, but then we’re going to be there and we’re going to believe in them, and we’re going to help them get to where we want them to be and where they want to be as well.
I hope that’s helpful to you. Not a long episode today, but it’s one that it’s been on my mind a lot lately that if we are truly going to get the next generation developing at the rate that we know that we need them to, as our profession evolves, no matter what we do system-wise, it all starts with a leader’s belief. So I encourage you to believe in your people. With that, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks for listening to The Upstream Leader Podcast, and I hope to talk to you again soon.
