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Want to Motivate a Team? Maybe The Most Motivating Speech Ever Has Been Largely Overlooked By Jim Manouse Motivating a team is becoming an increasingly more importrant part of the life and livlihood of the owner of an independent RIA, Investment Advisory, Financial Planning, Life Agency or Benefits Firm. Today you have junior partners, para-planners, office assistants (perhaps including both an executive assistant and/or an office manager), maybe even an IT and marketing person. That's a pretty big team you've got on your hands and if you can't trust them to do their jobs, and keep them motivated, you certainly can't do yours, and without your superior rain-making capabilities, you all might as well go on home. My friend Mark Tibergien of Moss Adams used to like to say one of the most important phrases ever uttered in terms of financial services practice management: "Concentrate on the activities that make you $500 per hour. Hire someone else to do the work that pays $5 an hour" (or words to that effect). And that's it, in a nut shell. If you're not doing something during your workday that can make you money, real money, you're, as Gordon Gekko would say, just wasting time. And you need to become successful enough, and rich enough, not to do that. But what does that mean? You need to have enough money so that you can pay everyone you need around you enough money so that you can only do the things that make you money and stop doing the things that wind up costing you money and therefore, wasting your time. But money is only part of it. It won't keep them motivated and it certainly won't create a team. There's only so much time in the day. You've spent a lot of time landing your best clients and if you're not talking to them, someone else is. You need to be either taking care of their needs, or in a position to close new ones. Period, that's it. Therefore, you need a team around you that you can trust. But first, you need to know what a team really is. You must be able to deifne it so that they understand. You can't just say "we're a team" - lots of people say that (everyone, in fact) and most have high tun-over and many fail entirely. So, with a little help from an unlikely source comes, perhaps, the finest definition of what a team is all about, that I have ever heard. One time, on the day before our annual conference at my last Broker/Dealer, where I was head of marketing, the CEO was attending a meeting of the Board off-site. It fell me to try to motivate the internal staff and set the stage, not only for the up-coming conference but, for the push to win our unprecendented 5th straight Broker/Dealer of the Year Award (the fate of which would largely be determined by the feelings our reps had once the conference was over and they were returning home). Basically, I gave the troups fine points of this speech that you are about to watch, some of it verbatim. I even started it off with the words "I don't know what to say, really" - just like in the film. Needless to say, it was a great conference, and we won #5, and we went on to win a 6th, as well. OK, so maybe it's not the speech that did it, but hey, it didn't hurt. I will say that I got several emails from the staff afterwards telling me it was the best speech they had ever been given, and for those of us called upon to speak before the internal staff, we know how rare that is - so it must have gotten through to at least some of them, and hey, it kept their attention. Anyway, it is the definition of a team that matters here, and that's what this is all about. I am sure that you will be able to take some of the points made here and relay them to your own staff, in your own way and in your own words. No doubt it will have a positive affect on them. In fact, I challenge you - I guarantee that after watching this you will feel some emotion and that this speech will speak to you on some level. If not, I want to hear from you. But, I think you'll agree that there is something in this speech that you will be able to take with you - and that's the whole point about any sort of advice or coaching, if you will - if there's no take-away, what good is it? So, without any further ado, here it is, Al Pacino's motivational masterpiece from the film "Any Given Sunday", written by Oliver Stone:
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