Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Alden Cass, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and performance coach for competitive executives, athletes, and musicians. He is Presidentand Chief Consultant of Catalyst Strategies Group, a team of psychologists specializing incoaching financial services executives andindividuals performing under stressful jobconditions. Dr. Cass conducted the nation'sfirst clinical investigation in twenty-five yearson the mental health of stockbrokers. He also writes a Web column for Trader Monthly magazine and TheStreet.com, and is a bimonthly columnist for On Wall Street magazine.

Dr. Brian F. Shaw, PhD, is a professor of psychiatry and public health science, a clinical psychologist, and one of the originators of applied cognitive-behavioral therapy. He is the coauthor of Addiction and Recovery For Dummies (Wiley) and Cognitive Therapy of Depression, and the principal of BFS Consulting, a sports and entertainment consulting firm based in Toronto, Canada.

Sydney LeBlanc is a thirty-year financial services industry veteran, journalist, publisher, and author, as well as a codirector of The Fisher LeBlanc Group.

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Praise for The Bullish Thinking Guide for Managers

"Many of us in the financial services industry have, regrettably, known an advisor or executive who we should have helped but through our ignorance or inaction needlessly suffered. Our industry needs guidance on how to identify those in trouble, and in The Bullish Thinking Guide for Managers, we now have it. Please use this book to help those in need with whom we work every day."
―Christopher L. Davis, President, The Money Management Institute

"Bullish Thinking is a tool that all branch managers must have in their arsenal. It doesn't sugar-coat the problems and challenges these heroes face every day. The real case studies provide substantive food for thought and solutions that are easy to implement. It helps the manager on a personal level and shows him or her how to help their advisors who may be in crisis."
―Keith Gregg, President and co-CEO, First Allied Securities

"Dr. Cass's Bullish Thinking coaching, seminars, and private sessions have helped countless managers deal with personal challenges on the job, and the challenges their advisors face. The Bullish Thinking Guide for Managers is an excellent resource. The teamwork of Dr. Cass and Dr. Shaw is unmatched in the financial services industry."
―Leo Pusateri, President, Pusateri Consulting and Training, LLC, Buffalo; author, Mirror Mirror on the Wall Am I the Most Valued of Them All?

"Dr. Cass's and Dr. Shaw's observations are powerful and cut right to the underlying issues in our industry. Our only assets are people. They enter and leave the building every day. The health of our industry and the success of our clients are directly linked to the emotional well being of the professionals that serve."
―Timothy J. Pagliara, Managing Partner, Capital Trust Wealth Management

"With the minute-by-minute demands on financial advisors and their managers, it is hard not to believe that many, if not most, of these dedicated professionals experience some form of anxiety, depression, or burnout at a point in their careers―at least once! These professionals can embrace the Bullish Thinking strategies contained in this book to help them understand the emotional roller coaster their advisors and brokers are riding, how to deal with these stressful emotions, and discover the healthy and positive solutions to keep productive advisors on top of their game. An intelligent and unique read, an immense help for managers, and a positive solution for all in our industry!"
―J. William "Bill" Cooley, President and founder, Success Continuing Education

Aus dem Klappentext

Today's financial professionals―from stockbrokers and commodities traders to wealth managers and investment advisors―are working under the peril of "producing at all costs." The pressure produced by these situations hasincreased the levels of stress and anxiety within this field and enhanced the amount of burnout and depression experienced by its participants.

As a manager in the high-risk/high-reward worldof finance, you need to identify, address, and eliminate these destructive forces if you intend on maintaining your employees' mental well-being and, ultimately, improving their performance. But in order to do so, you must first develop a specific set of skills that will allow you to deal with the volatility and unpredictability of this environment.

In The Bullish Thinking Guide for Managers, Dr. Alden Cass and Dr. Brian Shaw―with the help of Sydney LeBlanc―explore the obstacles advisors must overcome on a daily basis, explain how these challenges can lead to emotional breakdowns, and discuss positive ways of coping with them. Step by step, you'll learn how to use Cass and Shaw's strategies, which are rooted in cognitive-behavioral therapy, to recognize the warning signs of serious "Bearish Thoughts" in both yourself and your advisors, manage office conflicts, and implement appropriate solutions.

Along the way, you'll become familiar with proven approaches that will allow you and your advisors to operate effectively in this dynamic and demanding industry. Some of the methods covered include:

• The "Bullish Thinking" crisis management technique
• The O.C.E.A.N. system (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) of understanding leadership styles
• The descriptive process of discovering an advisor's mindset
• And much more

While The Bullish Thinking Guide for Managers serves asan educational tool for proactively dealing with emotional distress that may affect your advisors, it can also be used as a personal resource to help avoid and alleviate your own job stressors. Filled with in-depth insights, informative case studies, and engaging real-world examples, this book will help you run a healthy and profitable office as you lead your advisors through periods of emotional distress and put them back on a more positive path to productivity. Used in conjunction with the companion volume for your advisors and brokers, Bullish Thinking: The Advisor's Guide to Surviving and Thriving on Wall Street, this book can help keep your team healthy and performing.

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The Bullish Thinking Guide for Managers

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

ARE YOU TURNING A BLIND EYE TO PROBLEMS IN YOUR OFFICE?

On Monday morning, manager Jim Smith's branch office was humming with activity. Jim hired the million-dollar producer sent over by his industry recruiter, and the firm's bottom line-as well as Jim's own compensation-would quickly begin to grow by a robust margin. Jim was happy, relieved, and satisfied that his regional manager would now cool down for a while and allow him to manage his advisors.

Manage? No, according to Jim, that was impossible. You can't manage million-dollar producers. Instead, you support them. You encourage them. And you thank them. Jim truly believed he was, in essence, the Advisor Dad.

But, there was a flaw in his thinking and in his methods. Because if this was the case, why didn't Mr. Advisor Dad-the intuitive, kind, billion-dollar supportive manager-spot at least one or two of the looming warning signs and symptoms of emotional distress that were quietly eating away at some of his top producers? Was he afraid of how they would react if he confronted them? Was he too caught up in red tape to be aware? Did his advisors feel that he was unapproachable? Did he choose to ignore them or did he not have the skill to recognize and identify the signals? Or was it simply that he did not have the tools with which to rescue them?

Shouldering the largest office in the firm's network, with more than 30 advisors each producing in excess of $2 million in gross commissions annually, Jim boasted he had seen it all in his 35-year career of managing successful brokerage offices. But was he turning a blind eye to some of the most damaging elements affecting (or potentially affecting) his branch office, his producers, the firm, and, ultimately, himself?

For Jim to really see if emotional distress was either preventing his advisors from moving to a higher production (or asset) level, or causing his advisors to act out aggressively toward colleagues, clients, and others, he needed to stop and reflect on the external, as well as the internal, influences on these individuals. He needed to step back, release himself from the stresses of being sandwiched between advisors and management. He needed to stop running from unsolved problem to unsolved problem.

He needed to stop the dance.

Unsung Heroes: Kicking or Kissing Butt?

You know who you are. You are the juggler, the watchdog, the psychologist, the businessman, the recruiter, the meatloaf in the middle of the sandwich. You're being eaten alive by your advisors and upper management. So, stopping the dance is easier said than done.

Simply put, you're under significant stress. Stress, in plain English, is the wear and tear our minds and bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment. And there is much to be stressed about in this industry, which seems to change daily. Stress is an unavoidable part of life. On the positive side, challenges caused by stress can help us develop new skills and behavior patterns. The problems occur, however, when stress becomes excessive. It can become destructive and can turn into distress. Too much stress on your mind and body can make you feel miserable, sad, angry, anxious, and depressed.

As we mentioned, the heavy demands and responsibilities you have can be internal as well as external. Internal, meaning self-generated demands such as personal standards or expectations of control; and external, meaning such things as your firm's culture, corporate and economic shifts, needy clients and advisors, market volatility, and so forth. But they are terribly hard to handle. Every day, managers like you face more information than they can effectively process; it's all part of the information overload crisis. Typically, with information overload you experience a crisis management mindset. Dealing with paperwork and administrative excess is the easy part-it's a cake-walk compared to the overwhelming emotional ups and downs that managers deal with today. You are constantly in a battle to get time just to be able to think and process important issues like compliance, making sure that the regulations are being met, and that all of your advisors are in line. So, the tendency then is to get irritable if your advisors aren't doing what they should be doing. That's called the tyranny of the shoulds.

The tyranny of the shoulds happens when you actually get into a mindset of thinking: "If my advisors would only think about what they should be doing, and then do it, then I wouldn't have to be dancing so much." The tendency is to get out there and kick butt just to get people to do what they should be doing and that makes you appear to be authoritative, demanding, and hard to deal with. Some of the more experienced advisors shrug it off, but when a lot of the younger, less experienced advisors are looking for support, coaching, and skill-building, that type of attitude has the potential to make or break a rookie advisor.

Finding Your Inner Coach

It can be very difficult for a manager to find the middle ground, without crossing the lines: To get out and kick butt, and thereby develop the reputation of being a control freak, or to balance that with being the type of manager who has an open door policy and is ready to talk to his advisors about the problems they are facing.

Managers usually have their own style of managing, coaching, and running the office. (We discuss the four styles of management and five styles of advisor personalities in depth in Chapters 3, 4, and 5.) But, let's use a football example for our purposes now: Tony Dungy, who won the Super Bowl with Indianapolis, is a guy who never raises his voice and never swears. If we compare coaches like Vince Lombardi, Bill Belichick, Lovie Smith, and other well-known coaches to one another, we all get images of what a leader should be like. So, Dungy is really surprising because when he first pulls his team together, he doesn't raise his voice. Instead, he says, "Gentlemen, I'm going to tell you about this coming year and this is the loudest I am going to speak to you all year." He is like Superdad. Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are similar types of leaders. Whereas many NFL coaches instill fear into their teams with their demeanor, both Smith and Dungy use a different route to command respect.

That's what the great coaches do, and that's what great managers do: Command respect. But we ask ourselves: How can a manager persuade grown men (and women) to sacrifice themselves to a common goal? The cynic would say advisors and brokers have infinite reasons to want to win. But the crucial difference is that true leaders, including all of the coaches named above as well as successful branch managers, have high, but reasonable, expectations for each individual and hold them accountable to those standards. The end result, no matter what the leadership style in football and in business, is that the leaders learn to listen and to command respect. That being said, the manager must also hold himself to the same standards. Those standards, however, are sometimes difficult to uphold if that individual is also in an emotional crisis, not to mention if the advisors are also in emotional crisis.

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