Episode 674 - The Generations

After time spent with family over the Thanksgiving holiday, Phil reflects and celebrates the joy of the holiday season and how it brings families together. He goes on to share the importance of choosing the right financial advisor for your family. Tune in to discover effective strategies for family-focused financial advising.

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Transcript

Top performers in every field surround themselves with those who inspire them, who seek to build them up, and who push them to reach beyond their current limits. I'm Phil Buchanan, Executive Chairman of Cannon Financial Institute. I designed Monday Morning Mojo to provide you with a weekly spark, a push, and motivational insight to live your best life.

Thanks for joining. Greetings, Cannon Nation. It is Phil here with episode 674 of Monday Morning Mojo. So I want to welcome you to the great month of December. It's the final countdown of 2024. I trust that you all had a good Thanksgiving and are honed in on the final weeks. You know, over the coming weeks, many of you will be hosting family meetings for certain client families.

This is the single best format by which to truly engage all generations of the family and to highlight the value of a coordinated family wealth plan. Yet, one mistake I see even long tenured advisors make in such meetings is speaking in a manner directed exclusively to the senior generation. Now, I understand why this occurs.

The senior generation is the group with which you engage the most, and they likely currently control the legal aspects over day to day decisions. Yet, by taking this direct senior generation approach, you are very likely communicating to the other generations that you are clearly the senior generation's advisor.

And focus predominantly on them. This is not what you wish to accomplish. Effective communication with multiple generations requires the advisory team to flex, to use stories, examples, metaphors that are relevant to the various family generations represented in the meeting. Now, a recent example of not having read the room and not having done research on the family overall had an advisor.

be actually hurt and dismissive to a question about a certain wealth strategy that was posed by one of the junior family members. After the response by the advisor, the entire room fell silent, but the advisor simply marched on. It turns out the granddaughter posing the question was a tax attorney who worked for a firm specializing in the exact strategy you.

Now, whether that strategy was appropriate for the family or not, well, that isn't the point. It's how the advisor handled, or shall we say, mishandled, the question. Excellent advisors are not abrupt, they aren't curt, they're not dismissive. The best bring a very subtle approach to chairing meetings, to making presentations.

And in fielding questions, Mr. Webster uses words like delicate, expert, ingenious, and artful to help define the word subtle. I recently observed a master class level family meeting. The wealth advisory team had certainly done their homework. They'd even prepared a notebook in which each family member who was to attend the meeting had been profiled.

Thus, they were in a position to direct their presentations to the different generations of the family in conversations in a language each generation could relate to. For me, the highlight moment came when a generation two daughter asked why it would make sense for her individual family unit to bring their business to the wealth firm.

A junior member of the wealth team quickly asked the daughter of the mother posing the original question. about her decision to play Division I soccer at a particular school. She said to the young lady, you had multiple offers, right? Yes, said the daughter. So at the end of the day, the advisor asked, what set your chosen school apart from the others?

The young lady thought for a moment and said, well, really it was the coaches. They really took the time to get to know me, my parents, my brothers. I just knew they had my best interests at heart. Without missing a beat, the junior team member looked directly at the mother and said, That, that's the feeling we seek to provide for all of our clients.

And when it involves multiple generations, you will not find a better team to deliver on that promise. I literally was smiling from ear to ear at that response. Because the advisor used the words of the generation three daughter to sell her parents on the value of consolidating the relationship. It was subtlety at its best and it was a success.

Before your next multi generation gathering, think about your communication techniques. Think about the stories. The examples that are appropriate for the different tiers of the family. Remember, it's not what you know that matters most. It's what you can communicate. That wins the day. Monday Morning Mojo is a production of Cannon Financial Institute.

Executive producer of Monday Morning Mojo is Sarah Jones. Editing and mixing is done by Danny Brunner. Production manager is McCall Chamberlain. Until next time, I'm Phil Buchanan reminding you to be a force for good, have a great week, and thanks for being part of the Mojo community.