by Ray Sclafani
Study groups are rapidly becoming a best practice for financial advisers who want to grow their practices, network with colleagues and receive and give mutual support. Like any other professional endeavor, it's best to put some thought into the process of forming a study group or joining an existing one. After interviewing hundreds of financial advisers, executive coaching firm ClientWise put together the top 12 study group best practices.
1. Select Group Members Carefully
Select members of the group thoughtfully because the chemistry of the group is a vital ingredient. Specifically, ensure that the vision of the group is aligned on how a financial planning practice is built and functions, and that everyone shares the same values and goals.
2. Connect Individual and Group Goals
Every group has two types of goals: the goals of individual members and the collective goals of the group. A group able to connect those two has a better chance of succeeding than one that can't. Important group goals to secure agreement early on include how often to meet, agenda topics for each meeting and recruitment of new members.
3. Make It Fun
Study groups may sound like they are dull and boring, just like in college. Your group is what you make of it. Keep it fun by including interesting activities, allowing time for collective brainstorming and just letting people talk and connect.
4. Act as a Bridge
To leverage your study group participation and stand out as a study group leader, actively work to connect your study group pals with other people you know. By thinking about your network and acting as a networking facilitator, you'll be seen as someone who brings value to the group while increasing your own networking opportunities.
5. Commit to Stay Connected
If there's anything likely to kill a study group it is lack of commitment. Members must take it seriously, and that means nothing should interfere with active participation. If you find your interest or the interest, attention and attendance of other participants lagging, either rethink the group and its purpose or kick out the offending members.
6. Be a Thoughtful Listener
In any group setting, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to make a contribution by giving your input on every topic. The truth is that groups with someone who can listen thoughtfully and help facilitate agreement and interesting conversations are far more successful than those where everyone is jockeying for the last word. Set an example and be that thoughtful listener, giving more than you receive.
7. Add Variety
After you get on a regular schedule of group meetings, add variety by bringing in an outside speaker, meeting over a meal or going on a field trip. Sometimes the very structures meant to support a study group and keep it functioning can hold the group back, so shaking things up from time to time and doing something different can unleash thoughts and creativity that otherwise wouldn't bubble to the surface.
8. Make It Personal
Productive, long-lived study groups attribute their success to the belief that a study group's purpose includes the personal as well as the professional. The personal underpins the professional, so when you work on your firm's interior planning issues, that work spills over into your job and helps you help your clients and takes your practice to the next level. When you get to know each member on a personal as well as a professional level, sharing information, views and thoughts on your family, values, hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes and life goals, the group will jell more quickly and function more smoothly.
9. Collaboration Is Key
A major benefit of study groups is the opportunity to collaborate with your peers and solve problems, bringing the strengths and talents of an entire group to focus on challenges that affect you personally and financial planning practices as a whole. So don't blow it; use this chance to bounce your ideas, successes and failures off your peers. You can take it to the next level by explicitly working on research and even writing white papers and articles on topics of interest to the entire group and the profession.
10. Stay on Schedule
Another study group killer is the lack of a defined schedule. Whether your group meets in person, by phone, by web or e-mail once a month or once a quarter isn't the issue. The issue is to create a schedule and stick to it. Otherwise the day-to-day priorities and noise of running a business will interfere with and ultimately destroy the group.
11. Build Trust
Just as you seek to build trust with clients, trust is essential between study group members. You can't get the best out of each other if you're holding yourself back. If you see your group members as competitors rather than partners, you might as well quit. It's OK to set some ground rules around confidentiality, but without a baseline of trust the group won't succeed and you'll miss the opportunity to help yourself and your colleagues build better practices.
12. Share Your Own Best Practices
As a planner, it can be frustrating to feel like you have to reinvent the wheel when you're trying something new in your practice or are stuck in a dead end. A major advantage of creating a close, trusted network of colleagues in a study group is the opportunity to leverage the group's collective creativity. Instead of figuring out a process from scratch, ask your group members what's worked for them and apply those lessons to your own practice. Perhaps best of all-your staff can benefit, too.
Ray Sclafani is founder and CEO of ClientWise LLC (www.clientwise.com), an executive coaching firm focusing on process-based coaching and consulting solutions for individual advisers, advisory firms and financial services corporations. For sample study group agendas, tips and more information, visit www.clientwise.com/studygroups.
