Stephanie Gularte: How Advisors Can Foster Loyalty on Their Teams

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Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Craig Bartallis, and my special guest is Stephanie Goulart, Executive Director of the Women's Leadership Alliance and the founder of The Energy Advantage. Today, she's going to discuss how financial advisors can bring about lasting loyalty on their teams through career pathing and company culture. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Well, this is a really exciting topic because In the world of wealth management, teams have just really, really, really blown up. Even from 5 years ago, we've just seen a massive, massive growth there. And having a good team involves so many moving parts, chemistry, culture, competence, obviously. Given your background, love to unpack your thoughts about this, about what are some things leaders can do.

I love the question. I love that that is the case, that we are seeing this evolution to a really teams-focused industry. And I think that's all for the good for a lot of different for different reasons. And I'll start with a little bit about my way-back background. The first half of my career was in the performing arts, in the theater specifically. I was a director. And I think that a lot of what I learned— eventually, I went on to become a nonprofit CEO and then a consultant and leadership and team-building consultant. But a lot of what I learned and what I bring to my workplace well-being practice is kind of rooted in a lot of the collaborative concepts that we practiced in the theater. And it starts with something that sounds so simple, and it's really not simple at all, and that is trust. That is really the one word that beyond anything defines what a healthy team looks like, and it connects to everything else in terms of what it looks like to be successful as a team and as a business. More specifically, I like to think about and talk with businesses about how are you creating cultures where your team at all levels feel like they really belong here and they belong on the team. And it's kind of one of those things, if you think about it, that it's intuitive. We don't want to be someplace where we don't feel we belong. And if we kind of feel like we belong, then we'll kind of be content for a while. But if we really feel like this is a place I really feel at home, I feel like I belong here. When I say at home, I'm talking about in a business setting, you know, feeling like this is a professional environment that really allows me to be my best and be myself at the same time. Those are places where people want to stay. And especially when we're talking about, you know, if I moved from this firm to this firm or from this team to this team, compensation isn't going to be necessarily that much different. We're not really looking at those kinds of differentials. The differential is about feeling like I belong here. Some of the components that go into that, I think of this as a, I know I call it workplace wellbeing. There are a lot of different words we can use for it, but ultimately it's about clarity of purpose and feeling that you have a voice as a member of the team in driving forward the greater purpose of the business and the team itself.

Right, so having that shared mission, having that sense of trust, feeling that sense of belonging, all of that can bring out the best in people and again, not make them leave to get a 5% raise elsewhere and say, "It's not just about the money. I have something good here." That's exactly right.

And I think that the idea that people will leave for money, that is true in instances. Of course, we know that that happens. But typically, if someone feels really that they are connected to the team they're on, the organization they're with, they're going to fight to stay. Stick around and be more likely to work with their manager, the leaders, to make that situation what they need to serve their other needs. What happens when people don't feel that they belong, sometimes they'll kind of start working on their exit without ever even communicating the things that would have made the difference to keep them there.

What are some of the main reasons why people, those who feel they do not belong, what's behind that quite often?

There are a lot of different reasons. And I think it starts with, we think of the term safe space. If someone feels that they are afraid to speak up, either because they don't think that they're, they don't feel confident in their own competence, or because the way that their input is received, or because they're just, they're different, they don't have to bring the same experience, or they're, if there's, a gender component, a diversity component to it, if they're different from everyone else in the environment. There are a lot of different reasons that someone can feel like they don't belong. And I wanna mention too that when we use the word diversity, I really wanna encourage us all to be thinking, you know, more openly and more expansively about diversity, 'cause we're also talking about generational diversity. There are all sorts of different ways that people can, in a space, feel that they don't quite fit in. It's like, you know, when we were in junior high. Like, in a way, we all stay in junior high when it comes to we wanna fit in. So I think that there's an onus on the leadership on a team to really extend, really reach out to those who are newer on the team, to those who might be on the fringes for one reason or another, and to include them in a really proactive way.

Obviously, you have people who feel they belong and some who don't. But I'd imagine it's almost maybe the sense of belonging could be like a spectrum, if you will. There might be people who are 100% in, some people who might be a little in the middle, some— can you talk about anything else that team leaders and advisors can do to really facilitate that spirit and make sure people enjoy working where they are and are happy to come in and see their coworkers almost as an extended family, if you will?

And you're right. Everyone is kind of what that relationship with work looks like. Everyone has their own kind of sensibility about that and we can't prescribe the same level of this has got to be your, you know, your everything. But you do want when people are there for the environment to feel like it is enhancing their life and that helps them to be as productive as possible as opposed to being a barrier to their overall well-being. So what I recommend is having a team meeting. Initially, this takes a little bit of time investment, but then once The foundation has been laid, the upkeep is much simpler. And one, ensure that the kind of values of the business are really clear to everyone, and what success looks like is really clear to everyone. And then invite a team conversation. And I actually provide a list of 10 kind of characteristics of what a healthy team looks like. Invite a conversation among the team of how are we doing? On these 10 characteristics. And whether you will use this list of 10 or not, the idea is to have the team collectively come up with what the team values are. There's a couple different exercises and ways to go about that. But so we know what the company's values are, but what are our team values for the way that we work together? And kind of find the heat map of those values. So everyone's gonna bring their own ideas to the table, and where is there a lot of crossover?

Where are we in agreement exactly?

Yeah, where are we in agreement? And how can we then, okay, let's focus in then these 3 values Maybe it's collaboration, maybe it's communication, maybe it's support, or maybe it's professional development, whatever those things are. Then have a way of, okay, well, how do we know? And this is, again, it's a team conversation, and make sure that everybody on the team participates and provides their thoughts. What do we know? What does success look like if we are fulfilling these values. And now we have a map, right? Now we have a map that's— the values are the keywords that kind of can trigger what we all want and what we all are in agreement with. And then the measurements give us something to come back to on a regular basis. And that's where it gets easy. Because once you have those agreements in place, then you can come back quarterly and have the conversation with the how are we doing on these metrics.

OK. Now, a lot of— a common lament in the industry is that that there aren't enough younger people in it. And all too often, they leave the profession within a few years. You hear this quite often. I want to hear a little about career pathing, because I think what a lot of them crave is a sense of certainty, at least, of like, if I do this or this, or what does the future look like? It seems like often some of them join, and there's that sense of like, not really being sure. So, We have values. That's important. You define success. You mention all these things. But can you speak a little about career pathing, what the future might look like?

Well, start with the idea that growth is an essential need that we have as human beings. And it's something that I encourage anyone running a business to be thinking about. We're always either growing or we're receding in some way. And growth does not— can mean a lot of different things. Growth can mean from a business standpoint, it can mean literally growing and getting bigger and a bigger team and more revenue. But it can also be growing through by going deeper, deepening the talent on your team, for example, deepening your efficiency. And so when you look at an individual and think, put that same concept in place, someone who is on the team who is, maybe they're going to be in their position for another year or 2 years, and then there's a plan for them ahead down the road. Having clarity and having a conversation and a plan and really mapping out what does what does that growth look like, even if the role isn't necessarily going to change, some kind of growth plan.

Right, of how they can utilize their skills and develop as— yeah.

Yeah, everyone wants to grow, and I think that even when we're challenged by other dynamics in the job, if we're not actually feeling like we're getting better at something and improving and being challenged just a little bit, then there's a stasis that happens, and that can definitely create disengagement. So I think that's, again, where getting to know your team members and knowing what kind of growth is important to them and then being clear clear with them on how you see them fitting in in the long term, and then finding that common kind of crossover, setting those incremental goals.

Teams can obviously vary in size. Some are very small, some are enormous, but it's also very intimate, and you really are just working as one. In an ideal situation, you have a shared sense of mission, everyone's got each other's back, there's that trust, that safety, a sense of belonging. What do you recommend in the following scenario? You have this great team. However, there is one employee who's, let's just say, kind of a bad apple, who just kind of rubs everyone the wrong way. You know, they might enter the room, everyone's laughing, there's some lightness, and suddenly, you know, it's like everyone tenses up. Here comes, you know, whatever. How do you deal with that? And I acknowledge everything is contextual and it all depends, but what, you know, What do you recommend?

I'm gonna be really direct on this one. You've gotta be brave and put the team ahead of the one individual. One person can completely destroy a culture in an organization. So of course there are steps to take. Can this person be developed? Have you gone through the steps of really ensuring that they're aware of the impact that they're having? If they have other talents and competencies that really are valued, then what kind of, coaching or emotional intelligence or whatever those other tools are. So if that's someone you want to make that investment in, then do it. Don't wait. Make that investment to develop them. But as soon as you see that this person is not going to be a fit, it's that fire fast, you know, hire slow, fire fast rule. And I've made the mistake myself a couple of times in situations where I look back and I know how much better off the whole team would have been, and therefore the business, if I had made that decision sooner.

Right, it's just difficult in the short term, of course.

It's difficult in the short term. And when you care about your team, which is what we want, we want to be caring about each other. But again, you have to be thinking about what the impact is on the whole.

Sure. Now, flipping it to lean into the positive, paint me a little bit of a picture, if you can, of a really, really high-functioning team where It's almost like if you want to reverse engineer it, like here's Exhibit A of an awesome team where it's happy and optimized on every level. Can you give specific answers? I don't know, like people taking calls off hours, not worrying about answering. I mean, whatever that might look like, I'm curious.

Well, I think that we always have to start with, is the business succeeding? Because if the team's happy but the business isn't succeeding, then we have a bigger problem here. So are we hitting our, you know, our business goals? Is, you know, clearly we have to kind of make sure that that's in place. If that's in place, the closer look then is, are people really kind of humming? Are they in the flow? Do they feel a part? Are they planning on being here for the next 3 to 5 years? Okay, so those are the more in the kind of abstract. What does it specifically look like? It looks like there's communication, really good communication that is, goes in multiple directions. People feel open bringing their ideas. It is easy to hold one another accountable because there's positive accountability where we're in agreement that these are the things that we want to be held accountable for and this is what accountability will look like. And we aren't afraid to change, to make some changes. So I think of it as being, you know, there's a difference between having no structure and being rigid, that kind of in-between place of we are, we have certainty, we have a framework that we can count on, and we know that this is what our framework is, but we are open to ideas.

Okay. And speaking about being open to ideas, what are your thoughts about coaching? Any coach, you know, bringing in a coach to help your team?

I think you've got to know what you want out of it. You know, it's kind of the case— coaching is one of those things that can be so, so valuable if you're going into it with specific intentions. And because, you know, a good coach will is there to help you achieve the goals and intentions that you're coming in with. And then have some real kind of conversations about what team coaching— I think there's individual coaching can be really valuable, but I think team coaching is a new, an important direction for what we're talking about here. And one of the things that it can be so effective at is creating trust on a team, which kind of come back to that again. Always comes back to that. And that creates an environment, especially you bring someone someone from the outside who knows how to establish trust in that kind of a setting. You're asking people to switch on to a different part of their brain, and that can just open up so many other kind of pathways to team collaboration and success.

Now, I want to pivot the discussion a little bit. You are the executive director of the Women's Leadership Alliance. I want to talk about women in wealth management, what's happening right now, how have things progressed, where do you see things going? Let's just kind of unpack that a little bit.

I think it's an exciting time to see that there is some real great energy and focus being put to how do we go about addressing the fact that for the last two decades there's been very little change in the representation of women, specifically in the financial advising role, which is where the Women's Leadership Alliance focuses. And it's a head-scratcher when you first start to kind of really dig in because you can really recognize that some pretty smart people have been trying to make improvements and make make headway here. Our organization specifically works in a firm-agnostic way as a not-for-profit, and the idea is to bring this unsiloed kind of effort to the challenge of attracting more women into the profession, retaining them, and advancing them through the ranks of leadership in wealth management. And our kind of a perspective, and I believe this firmly, is you, you know, it kind of connects to the idea of a team. You build a community, you get organized, and you get organized, and then you make sure that you're allowing the best ideas to come to the table and to have really honest conversations about why, why is there, you know, what are the barriers here, and then, you know, really try and exert as much influence as possible in ensuring that the ideas, the best ideas, are landing where decision makers are.

Where are you seeing success in terms of your outreach and efforts in terms of bringing more women into the industry?

Well, we're in the process of creating regional circles right now that are, you know, we're doing basically, you know, when you think of kind of coming into an organization, we have a membership community. And typically when someone comes and joins a membership community, they do so because they get certain association benefits, right? What we have done, and this is key to our effort, is we have, we call our members ambassadors. So we really are asking them not just to become members so that they can reap the benefits and get some of the perks of being a member, but because we're asking them to join a movement. You know, it's kind of asking them to be a part of a cause, and that's why they're ambassadors. And so our members, based on their own time availability and interests, both kind of reap the benefits of career development, professional development, mentorship, And/or they give back and go into colleges and speak to women about the path of financial advising, or they give webinars to, or they act as mentors. And so it's really kind of an ecosystem that we're creating. And we're finding that to be something that really appeals to within the industry and to a lot of women. They want both sides of that. They want the support, but they also want to be part of something that's advancing the move.

What have been the dynamics since COVID Has that changed at all, the trajectory? Because I know for many aspects of business in general, wealth management, there have been different shifts. Has that brought in more people or not?

Our organization was just a mentorship program, and I actually joined the organization after COVID to kind of expand it into this national effort. And I think that COVID did, as it did in so many other spaces, it had the things that really set things back, and then it also had things that helped to accelerate. Tolerate. And I think that we're just now coming out of the setback period as it relates to bringing more women, kind of engaging more women in the profession and in the industry. We're seeing this gap. There is a succession issue of women who are reaching retirement and would like to have another woman take over their practice or their book. And there's a gap in the availability of women to do so. But we are seeing, and I I don't know, there aren't strong numbers yet, but I think just from what we're seeing that more young women open to and interested in coming into the field.

To the extent you can speak about the following, what are you hearing collectively from younger women in college or graduating vis-à-vis wealth management? Is there any, you know, loud refrain like we want certainty, a career path, more pay, more fun? I mean, I'm just curious what, or is there a messaging issue where a lot of people may not even be aware this is a great career path? 'Cause a lot of people think of traditional vocations like law and medicine and business and what have you. And yet, and a lot of people have a misconception. They think, oh, to be a wealth manager, you have to be a math geek or something. It's like, no, no, no. There are a ton of different skills that can be useful in a wealth manager. So I think that's a, speak to all that.

I love this question and I love the way you phrased it too, because inside of the way you asked the question is part of the challenge. Women are not a monolith. There isn't a singular solution to this. And perhaps that's part of what has held back real progress is that trying to come up with what is the thing. And so it's all of the things that you said. I think it's definitely— there's a branding issue on the career in general that must be overcome. And then there are some practical, you know, considerations as well. And women are still primary caregivers, and there are factors that influence the kind of, you know, the kinds of careers that they go into and stay in. But when it comes down to those kinds of things, we have to look the fact that other historically male-dominated professions, medicine, science, engineering, law, have seen significant increases in the representation of women, unlike what we have seen in wealth management. So we know that there are things that are specific to the kind of reputation of what the work is, as well as some cultural and policy issues.

Excellent. Well, I think this is a great way to wrap things up. So thank you so much. Thank you. It was an absolute pleasure.

I enjoyed it very much too. Thank you.

You're most welcome. My guest was Stephanie Goulart. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com/advisor. You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon, and be sure to check out The Way Forward: Next Generation, a new Barron's Advisor podcast that shines the spotlight on the emerging leaders who are shaping the future of financial advice. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartolis.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.