Centre Stage masterclasses

The power of story telling

So why is storytelling important as an adviser? The bottom line is human beings, we connect through story. It's one thing logically informing another human being, but it's a whole ‘nother thing when you evoke emotion and ultimately grab the attention of your clients and then influence them to take action. That is what story does. I'm Sam Cawthorn. Welcome to Centre Stage.

No matter what industry you are in, we are all in the business of emotion. Emotion connects us and creates action. Emotion is inspired by story, and we all have a story. Like the story of how I lost my arm.

An authentic story told in a meaningful way will boost connection and drastically improve your business objectives. Story is about narrative and connects people with people. People buy from people who believe in what they believe and who they like and trust. With the right story, you can also build deeper relationships, better connections, and improve your credibility. From first meeting a client to powerfully influencing them to consider their own goal setting, wanting to understand the technical strategies, and eventually taking action and executing on the advice. And in the end, the client will keep coming back because they trust you, the adviser.

What is your story?  

Consider you have the greatest product and services in the world, but if I don't personally like you, you're not going to win my attention and I'm not going to take out my wallet and buy from you. So then that begs the question; how can you make stories relevant to the listener so people like and trust you? That's why it is super important for you to understand how to communicate your own why. Why did you become an adviser in the first place? Why do you love to help clients get the greatest possible outcome? And why should they listen to you and why not someone else? The more that you can really inspire other people by you communicating your why is going to be the very essence for people to like and trust you. 

A few years ago, I had a major car accident. It was my fault. I veered over the other side of the road and the police said it was a 206 kilometer head-on collision with a semi-trailer truck. My right arm was ripped off in the car accident. I completely shattered my hip and lost my entire right leg. However, the beautiful thing about this story is that it didn't end there. After rehabilitation for over 12 months, there was a number of people that just simply asked me to share my story. And one thing I realised is that people are inspired through story. They wanted to hear my story because it gave them personal hope on their own struggles. 

And I suppose the rest is history. I've now spoken in over 50 countries and shared the stage with the likes of Michelle Obama, through to Simon Sinek, even Michael Jordan and the Dalai Lama, all because I learned how to share my own personal story. But it's not about having an outrageous story about losing an arm. It's about any experience that you've had. And I believe there are lessons in every single experience that we've had, and these lessons are there to help other people go through what you've been through. So share stories, and ultimately you can inspire the world.  

Communicating the ‘why’ 

Consider your own personal story and why you became an adviser in the first place. Sharing your own personal story of why you became an adviser will boost your approachability and credibility long-term. People buy people. So by connecting your why through a story or an experience can drastically influence a client and build a stronger relationship. Relationship building at each stage of a client's journey is pivotal for success. It can get deeply personal, and there are many opinions and dynamics that you must consider throughout the relationship. Getting buy-in with an 80-page compliant document or getting technical with products, numbers, and jargon can be the very thing that undoes this relationship. So your mission must be to continue to take them on a journey towards success, and we do this through the narrative of a story.  

The 3 ‘whys’

Something to consider when crafting a story is answering these questions. Why this? Why me? And why now? Why this product and service? Why should they listen to me and why not someone else? And why did they need it now? Why not down the line or at a later date? These questions will help with crafting a story relevant to the client.   

The hero’s journey 

Every story that is told all throughout history has a hero that is part of that story. So what that means is maybe you're the hero of your story. Consider the setup, where you paint a picture of who, where, and when. The moment where you experience a specific moment of change in your life. And then the resolution, where you learnt something in this experience that another person can learn by your experience. If you choose an ordinary experience that you've had, people then can connect deeply. And ultimately, in the end, your client will keep coming back because they trust you.

Showing empathy

How can you show that you deeply empathise and firstly, listen, then truly connect and influence the client through the narrative of story, and continue winning their attention long-term. With the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the business of emotion is the very thing that every adviser of the future must include in the journey towards success. The first stage is understanding where your clients are coming from by listening to what is, and is not, being said to catch their true struggle and their desired outcomes. We then summarise by sharing a powerful story to show that you empathise with them. Let's say you had a couple come in and they were struggling to buy their very first house. It can be as simple as, “I remember a time when I also was about to buy my first home. I was nervous, I was fearful, and I felt just like you.” Now, a really important aspect here is connect on their emotion by you feeling that story when you share it. The more that you emotionally connect with this couple, ultimately you'll build that deeper relationship with them. Share the story and you'll connect.  

Psychology of influence

Being reluctant about the sales process is a feeling many feel. However, reframing it to come from a place of truly caring that your solution is the answer to their problem will be the very thing that will prove you to be credible and approachable. It is super important for you to understand that the psychology of influence is based on logic first before heart, which then means evidence before story. Having an evidence-based approach to your advice is important. However, sharing the evidence as a case study, not just facts, will not only connect with their logic, but it'll also make sense for them.  

Call to action

Now, they're ready to take action, and that's exactly what call to action is. Call to action here is where you share with them what's next. This is how they can go into the advice, this is what they need to do, and this is how they need to do it. This call to action is ultimately the tipping point to get them across the line and ultimately be a client for life. 

Final things to remember

Remember these three things. Number one is look at your why. Why this, why me, why now? And try to now start thinking what exactly is your why, and how can you articulate that in a story? The second thing is to realise that you are the hero of your own journey. Why? Because people buy from people that they like and trust, and show your authentic story. And then the third thing is that emotion is inspired by a story and we all have a story. A story can be relived, reshared, and reworked to be relevant for every listener. An authentic story told in a meaningful way will boost connection and drastically improve your business objectives.  

So after watching or even listening to this, my encouragement is when you go back to the office, start thinking about specific stories that you can use. The stories won't be perfect, however the stories will be true to you. Start incorporating stories into your client journey. Ultimately, you'll connect deeper with them and you'll build a longer term relationship with them.  

How would it feel to be the coach of a winning team? What does successful coaching look like in your business? In coaching, no one is perfect, but how do you deem success? Success is not only just winning the end goal, it's about improving every person to be better at what they do. Using my coaching philosophy and techniques is a great way to improve people and their behaviour. I'm Graham Arnold. Welcome to Centre Stage.  

My career started coaching in 1997-98. I finished playing. I had the passion and the love for the game of football, and I went into coaching and I was assistant coach for the national team. We achieved some unbelievable goals under Guus Hiddink in 2006, and 2010, and I became a head coach from what I  learned from those two experiences. So, my career has been going now for 22 years. It's still ongoing and there's still plenty more achievements ahead.  

Oh, coaching is hugely important. They're walking out in front of thousands of fans, they're representing the country or the club, and they're representing the organisation. So, in anyone's business, the rules are the same. I might be a head coach, but I'm no different to a CEO, who runs the organisation and makes sure that the organisation has good decision making, good planning, and that all the staff are passionate to achieve what the organisation needs to achieve. As a coach, you always need to be persistent and caring. Players will always try, work hard, but what's important is your messaging stays the same, your belief stays the same. Think of the long-term goal, long-term clients, long-term relationships, long-term advice.  

Some of the personal attributes that make a great coach is communication and listening, but also understanding the person. Be honest to the players, be honest to your staff, and you'll get that respect back. Over the years, I've really had to change myself as a person first and foremost, and when I first started coaching, I was more of a dictator. It was my way or the highway, where as time has developed and generations have changed, I've had to become more of a father figure of communicating, caring. Listening is probably the most important thing these days because players, everyone has two lives. One is personal, one is professional, and it's so important that you understand the individual. You care for the person, you care for the player, but also again, helping those players fulfil their dreams and build belief. My philosophy in coaching is understanding the players' strengths and weaknesses.  

Their strengths are always going to be there, but the improvement of their weaknesses will make them an even better staff member or player, and making sure that you're there to support that. You always improve your skills as a coach by learning from mistakes. Don't be afraid if you make a mistake to change things, to fix things, and move forward with another game plan to make it work. Look, I think over the years, coaching has changed enormously. When I first started out as a coach, I was probably good at the technical side of the game and the tactical side of the game and just the pillar of football. But as coaching has developed over the years, I don't think that you can just do one thing anymore. 

During COVID, I came up with a Coaching Wheel of my experiences of coaching over the last 20 years. These days coaching is not just about one thing, it's about managing and coaching eight different things that you need to be good at.  

At the centre of the wheel is passion. You have to have passion for all eight parts of that wheel to be successful, that passion and love for the game and for the job, that inspires the people around you to be successful. To use this wheel, give yourself a rating out of 10 for each aspect of this wheel. Don't avoid things that you're not good at. The strength of a coach is fixing those problems and be open to listen, to be open for advice, and to be adaptable to change. This is relevant on the field and off the field and especially in your business. The four key areas we'll look at on The Coaching Wheel today is planning and preparation, staff delegation, people management, and crisis management.  

Planning and preparation is the key to any success. There is a huge amount of detail that goes into coaching, a daily plan, a weekly plan, a game plan, a yearly plan. And unless you get that detail right, then everything will fall apart.

Having a plan is so important because then everyone can understand their role. If you don't have a plan that's off the cuff, then people won't understand exactly what their job is. It's not like we can play with 11 goalkeepers. We have one goalkeeper, one right fullback, and it goes right through and everyone has a certain role to play in the team to be successful.  

The most important thing is you get that right with recruitment. Recruitment is a big detail that is so important to a team. Where your weaknesses are in your team, you need to strengthen.

Sometimes people aren't made out for those roles. Then you need to recruit the right people that will make your team perform better. When I first started at Sydney FC as a coach, probably our goalkeeping department was not that great. What I needed to do was get a very good goalkeeper coach in as well as a good goalkeeper, and we ended up with the best defence in the competition. It won us the competition. 

Staff delegation is crucial. Everyone has an important role to play in a different way. Trust is the key. You interview them, you employ them, you give them their roles. Once you explain their roles to them, trust them to do the job for you. A great example of staff delegation is not interfering.  

The essence of people management is getting the best out of every individual and every person. It's about caring, it's about communicating, it's about understanding and listening, and this is why it's important, so they perform. They have energy, they have trust. For example, I trust my team. The players fly in from Europe. We don't even get to train twice in that week, but soon as they cross that white line, I have to trust the players to do their job. Sometimes people, staff, players, they look for excuses. Example, boys fly in from Europe, they fly for 24 hours. They arrive the day, two days before the game. I ban the staff from saying, "jet lag", don't accept it. They've got to get out there with a clear brain, get on the field and perform. If you let them talk about jet lag, it goes into the brain, they will think about it and you give them an excuse. 

Crisis management is probably what I love most about coaching. You always have ordeals, whether it's a boardroom crisis, dressing room crisis, player crisis, staff crisis, media crisis, you have to deal with it the first time, the first minute you find out about that crisis and fix it straight away. Whether it's a boardroom crisis, go to the board, talk to the board, explain to them what's going on. If it's a player crisis, get all the players together and talk to them about what it is that they're not happy about. The benefits of fixing a crisis straight away is it won't fester. If the players, the staff, see that the pressure is affecting the coach, it could really unravel the culture of the team overall. So, what's important is that the coach stays relaxed, stays calm, also for yourself because you can sleep good at night knowing the crisis is gone. 

We've just covered four aspects of The Coaching Wheel. What's important with The Coaching Wheel is that the eight parts of The Coaching Wheel are the same size. Work on your deficiencies and keep your strengths going. 

Everyone is great leaders when you're winning, the most important time for leaders to step up is when you're losing. Here are four key lessons to get started on straight away. Number one, communication and listening. Communication is the key, and listening is foundational. Number two, adaptability. Not every way works for everyone. Number three is passion. Passion for your team, passion for the clients, passion for the organisation, and passion for the job. And last but not least, number four is enjoy what you do.

Creating a high performance culture 

What would exceptional performance mean to you and your business? How would it feel to get your team doing more work, in less time, with less effort? How would it feel for everyone in your business to be absolutely attracting great clients? How would it feel to have your business absolutely humming so that everything was getting delivered effortlessly to your clients, on time, every time? That is what we mean by exceptional performance. I'm Vanessa Bennett. Welcome to Centre Stage.  

I've worked with financial advisers for many years. My background is actually in financial services and I used to work for a funds management company heading up a sales team. Ten years ago, I decided to make the leap and go into performance coaching. I'm a firm believer in you can have wellbeing without high-performance, but you can't have high-performance without wellbeing. Now, it's not all the physical side of things only. We use a lot of neuroscience to really focus on how do we optimise our brain function. That's where the magic happens.  So what do we even mean by high-performance? High-performance is making sure that we can get through everything that we want to get through in the time that we have available and not feeling exhausted at the end of that process. In this episode, we are going to talk about all things high- performance and why it's so important to have a high-performance culture in your business in order to increase profitability. 

The benefits of high-performance

Well, let's face it, many advisers happen to be accidental leaders. So chances are, you've been a really great adviser so far, and you've got all of a sudden this team around you to support you, but that's not your full time job. And leading them is really important, but it's not something that you want to do all the time. So the more that we can set up a high-performance culture, the less time you'll spend leading. In addition to that, your team will become fully energised. They will be able to get through more work, in less time, with less effort. And that makes everyone happier.Now, obviously that makes your job easier, but the flow on effects to your clients are massive. So when your team is operating at its best, you'll get a better client experience, better client outcomes. This means you're more likely to get referrals because you have happier clients. It also makes it easier to attract great staff. It makes it much easier to retain great staff and be able to coach them to really do their best work. So for those of you who might still be wondering whether or not a high- performance culture is really something that you want to dedicate your energy to, it will make a massive difference to your profitability. And that is definitely a reason to do it. 

A performance culture beyond KPIs

Of course, I get asked a lot, "What is one of the easiest ways to set and implement a high-performance culture?" Firstly, it's not just about your KPIs. Your KPIs are your key performance indicators. And this is where I see a lot of people use this as part of the job description to hire people.

And these can be things that you talk about in the performance appraisals that you run with your staffs well. Which is great and KPIs definitely need to be in there, however, they're only the first piece in the puzzle. Whenever I run questionnaires with advisers or I run workshops with advisers and I get them to literally put out everything on a whiteboard that drives them a little bit crazy about managingtheir teams, the KPIs don't cut it. Many things could be fixed if we had what we call key BAM indicators. BAM stands for Behaviours, Activities, and Mindset indicators. Think about those little things where someone has just done the job, but maybe they haven't done it with a smile or maybe they'vebeen a bit negative. It can just be these little things, which on their own, not that big a deal, but when you continuously let those slide, that is going to detract from the performance in your business. All of these things can be avoided if we're very upfront with what's expected, not just in terms of getting the job done, but the Behaviours, Activities, and Mindset indicators, the key BAMs in order for them to do their job successfully in a way that is really going to energise them and everyone around them.

An example of a behaviour would be, for example, that when clients enter your offices, they're made to feel very welcome. Not something in the job description, but a behaviour that you want to see throughout your business. An activity might be something like being really clear on deadlines and when things are due. Quite often, the KPIs are just about what needs to be done, but meeting a deadline could be an activity that is clearly stated to help your workflow. The mindset side of things, the mindset is a way of thinking. It could be something like a no excuses approach to getting things done.

Things aren't always going to go according to plan in the workplace. We get that. But it's how do we think about what is a helpful way to go about solving that problem? There needs to be something in this high-performance culture that clearly articulates what is the mindset that you want your team to come to work with?

Implementing high-performance in your business 

At this point in time, you might be thinking, "So how do we actually set up these key BAM indicators?" One of the things I often tell advisers is to work backwards. Anytime that you feel frustrated, there's something, either a behaviour, an activity, or mindset that you haven't clearly articulated that you want the opposite of. So I hate it when people make excuses, so therefore I like a no excuses approach to mindset. So the first step in that process is defining your BAMs.

The second part of it is what do we do with them? And I cannot stress enough, it is absolutely crucial to incorporate these as part of your job description. So many people get as far as the tasks, the KPIs, but so many of the frustrations in managing staff lie around the things that you didn't ask for in the job description. And then we also want to make sure that we are coaching around the BAMs. Coaching not just when things go wrong or when people haven't exhibited some of the Behaviours, Activities, or Mindset indicators that you've set up, but where you see examples of people living and breathing the BAMs, reward that. Absolutely reward that every single time you see it and that culture will start to perpetuate. And when it comes to your performance appraisal discussions, it's no longer just, "Did you do the job?"

There are two things that I would really encourage you to focus on. The first thing is what we call psychological safety. And that is where people feel safe to ask questions, come up with new ideas, think about things differently, because this gets rid of the whole, "we've always done it this way," mentality. We need to make sure that we're providing an environment where people can ask those questions. And please make sure that you role model that yourself. All right, so make sure that you are approachable in some way, shape or form. Do you have certain times of the day when people can come and ask you anything? Do you have an open door policy? However you implement that, make sure that you are role modeling these great BAMs around psychological safety.

So accountability is not just getting the work done, but it's getting the work done by the time that person said they were going to get it done by. Now, this might seem really obvious and it might seem like you shouldn't have to ask for it, but you do. It's really important to set up what you mean by accountability, including timeframes. So accountability comes down to the what, the why, the when, the how, the who. With good psychological safety, you'll be in a situation where people feel free to stick up their hand and say, "Actually, I can get that done by a certain time, but I can't do this that I've already agreed to do. Which one would you like me to focus on?" But when that's clearly articulated, then you now know that you've got a discussion that can be had to make sure that this gets delivered. And if it doesn't, it becomes a coaching moment. We talked about this. How might we avoid this happening next time? And then when people meet that deadline, it's really important to celebrate that.

The first thing is, is to realise is that your high-performance culture will never happen just by osmosis. It needs to be clearly articulated. Ensure that this is something that's included in your job descriptions from here on in. And also included in your performance appraisal discussions. This is something that we need to use to hire the right people and also retain the right people. And just start. It's not something that has to be absolutely done to 100% perfection. So when you incorporate these as part of your business, your culture will lift, your performance will lift within your team, your client will absolutely have a great experience, and overall, profitability in your business will absolutely increase.