Latest / Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday / Stop Being the Person With All the Answers

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Stop Being the Person With All the Answers · Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday

• 0:20
  Welcome to Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday, the bite sized podcast for accountants and bookkeepers developing their advisory skills.
• 0:29
  In this series, we're going beyond the individual advisor and exploring how to build advisory capability across your team.
• 0:38
  Because a scalable advisory service shouldn't depend on one person.
• 0:42
  Let's get started.
• 0:50
  In the last episode, we talked about giving your team greater visibility in client meetings.
• 0:58
  But there's something else that needs to happen.
• 1:00
  If you genuinely want them to develop as advisors, you need to stop being the person with all the answers.
• 1:10
  And for many experienced practice owners, that isn't easy.
• 1:14
  You've spent years building your knowledge.
• 1:17
  You've dealt with hundreds of client situations.
• 1:21
  You recognise patterns quickly.
• 1:23
  Someone brings you a problem and quite often you already know what you do.
• 1:27
  So when a team member asks you a question, the natural response is to give them the answer.
• 1:33
  It's quicker, it's easier and it feels helpful.
• 1:36
  But there's a downside.
• 1:38
  If you always provide the answer, your team never has to develop the thinking that produced it.
• 1:44
  And over time, you can accidentally train people to bring every decision back to you.
• 1:50
  Something happens, they ask you, a client raises a question, they ask you, the numbers don't look quite right, they ask you.
• 1:57
  And before long, you're back in exactly the position we've been talking about throughout this series, the bottleneck.
• 2:06
  So sometimes, instead of answering, try asking another question.
• 2:11
  What do you think?
• 2:12
  It sounds incredibly simple, but it's one of the most useful questions you can ask.
• 2:17
  And when you're developing advisors, what have you noticed?
• 2:21
  What do you think might be happening?
• 2:23
  What options do you see?
• 2:25
  What would you recommend?
• 2:26
  What would you ask the client next?
• 2:28
  Now, your team member has to think, they have to interpret, they have to form an opinion, and importantly, they have to start trusting their own judgment.
• 2:37
  You may find that they already have a very good answer.
• 2:40
  They were simply looking to you for confirmation.
• 2:44
  And sometimes they.
• 2:45
  They might come up with something you hadn't considered.
• 2:47
  And that's the benefit of having a team.
• 2:50
  You're bringing different experiences, perspectives and ways of thinking into the conversation.
• 2:56
  Of course, there will be situations where you do need to provide an answer.
• 3:00
  This isn't about withholding knowledge or leaving people to struggle.
• 3:04
  It's about recognizing the difference between giving somebody an answer and helping them develop the ability to find one.
• 3:11
  The second takes a little longer, but it's far more valuable in the long term.
• 3:15
  And the same principle applies in client meetings.
• 3:19
  Imagine a client asks a question and you're sitting alongside one of your team members.
• 3:23
  You know the Answer.
• 3:24
  Your instinct is to respond immediately.
• 3:27
  But what happens if you pause?
• 3:29
  What happens if you turn to your colleague and say, what are your thoughts?
• 3:33
  You're doing two things.
• 3:34
  You're giving that person an opportunity to practice their advisory thinking, and you're showing the client that you trust their judgment.
• 3:42
  That's powerful.
• 3:43
  Because if you want your clients to trust your team, they need to see that you trust your team, too.
• 3:50
  There's another important part of this.
• 3:52
  Your team needs to know that it's okay not to have an immediate answer.
• 3:58
  One of the things that can make people nervous about advisory is the belief that advisors are supposed to know everything.
• 4:05
  They're not.
• 4:06
  There will always be questions that need further investigation.
• 4:10
  There will always be situations where more information is required.
• 4:14
  And there is nothing wrong with saying, that's a really good question.
• 4:17
  I'd like to look at that properly before I give you an answer.
• 4:21
  That's not weakness.
• 4:22
  That's professional judgment.
• 4:24
  What we're trying to develop isn't a team of people who confidently answer every question thrown at them.
• 4:31
  We're developing people who know how to think, who know when to ask another question, who know when they need more information, who can explore different possibilities, and who understand when something needs to be escalated.
• 4:48
  That's a very different kind of confidence.
• 4:50
  And as the business owner or advisory leader, your role begins to change, too.
• 4:55
  You move from being the person who solves every problem to the person who helps other people become better problem solvers.
• 5:04
  You move from answering to coaching, from directing to developing, and from being the source of all the expertise to creating an environment where expertise can grow across the team.
• 5:18
  That doesn't make your own knowledge less valuable.
• 5:21
  Quite the opposite.
• 5:22
  You're using your experience in a way that has a much bigger impact.
• 5:26
  Instead of your knowledge supporting one client conversation, it starts developing the capability of the people around you.
• 5:35
  And they can then take that capability into many more client conversations.
• 5:40
  That's how advisory begins to scale.
• 5:43
  So here's the question I'd like you to think about after this episode.
• 5:47
  When your team brings you a problem, how quickly do you give them the answer?
• 5:50
  Next time, before you respond, try asking, what do you think you might be surprised by the answer.
• 5:55
  And more importantly, you may be giving someone the opportunity to start thinking like the advisor you're trying to develop.
• 6:05
  In the next episode, we're going to look at another challenge that often appears when owners start sharing advisory responsibility.
• 6:13
  Because one of the biggest worries is, how do I know they'll deliver advisory consistently if they don't do it exactly the way I do.
• 6:21
  And that's where we need to talk about creating consistency without creating robots.
• 6:29
  Thanks for listening to Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday.
• 6:32
  If you're ready to develop advisory capability across your team, visit apxtraining.co.uk to explore our evergreen elearning and Live implementation cohorts starting in September, February and May.
• 6:49
  You can also join our free Advisory Teams community on facebook@facebook.com groups advisoryteams.
• 6:59
  And if you'd like more podcast content, listen to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday, available on all major podcast platforms.
• 7:08
  I'll see you next time for another Advisory Secret.
• 7:14
  Sam.