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Hosted by Financial Advisor Coach, Ray Sclafani, "Building The Billion Dollar Business" is the ultimate podcast for financial advisors seeking to elevate their practice. Each episode features deep dives into actionable advice and exclusive interviews with top professionals in the financial services industry. Tune in to unlock your potential and build a successful, enduring financial advisory practice.
Ray Sclafani (00:00.142)
Welcome to Building the Billion Dollar Business, the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies, insights, and stories behind the world's most successful financial advisors and introduce content and actionable ideas to fuel your growth. Together, we'll unlock the methods, tactics, and mindset shifts that set the top 1 % apart from the rest. I'm Ray Sclafani, and I'll be your host. Only about 20 % of employees
strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. This shows up in Gallup's research tied to its broader engagement studies and its work on performance development systems where it consistently found that traditional review processes fail to drive motivation or improvement. Now layer that with another important finding, data frequently cited by Korn Ferry.
shows that highly engaged teams can outperform their peers by more than 20 % in profitability, along with meaningful gains in productivity and retention. And SHRM, the Society for HR Management, has also reported that employees who receive regular feedback are several times more likely to be engaged at work. So now when you connect these dots, the conclusion's pretty straightforward. The quality and consistency of feedback within your organization are directly related to engagement, and engagement
is directly related to performance. Now, before we go any further, I want to make a clear distinction about what we're discussing here. We're not talking about long-term career pathing or multi-year professional development plans. Those are important and they deserve their own focused conversations. What we are talking about here is performance in the role that a team member is currently assigned. It is about clarity of expectations, quality of execution, and contribution to the success of the team.
Ray Sclafani (01:57.654)
In other words, are people doing what they said they would do at the level required in a way that advances the business for the benefit of the client? Because when you look at high performing teams, they win or lose based on how well individuals perform in the roles they're accountable for today. Every team has the opportunity to improve how they approach performance reviews. This should not be a fixed process. In fact, it's a system that can and should evolve
as the team grows and now's a pretty good time to take a look at your current performance review cycle. I was reminded of that recently coming back from the Barron's Teams Conference this year. What stood out to me was how often this topic of feedback and performance reviews kept coming up. Team members were asking for more clarity, more consistency, and a better understanding of how performance is evaluated across teams. It wasn't an isolated question. In fact, it also showed up repeatedly in conversations and in breakout sessions
which tells me this is not a one-off issue. It is a broader signal that people want to perform at a higher level and they are looking for a process that helps them do that. Now, here's how we think about it at ClientWise. We run for our own team, performance reviews on a trimester basis, which means three times a year, and we pair that cadence with quarterly OKRs. Now that structure is not accidental. It creates a rhythm in which every 90 days our organization sets direction and priorities
And then roughly every 120 days, there is more deliberate pause to evaluate performance in everyone's role. What's the cadence in your organization? For us, what this rhythm creates over time is clarity. Clarity around roles and responsibilities, clarity around expectations, clarity around what success really looks like. When that level of clarity is present, people spend far less time trying to interpret what is expected of them and far more time
executing against those expectations. And that's where performance begins to improve in a meaningful way. Now where I see many firms miss the opportunity is in how they frame the purpose of a performance review. Too often it seems it's treated as an evaluation exercise, something done to someone with feedback delivered and received in a fairly static way. High performing teams, however, approach this totally differently.
Ray Sclafani (04:21.41)
They treat performance reviews as a learning process grounded in curiosity. This perspective stems directly from our work on giving feedback and advice collaboratively. In fact, in that framework, feedback's not intended to direct someone to a specific conclusion. Instead, it's offered as input to a conversation. The leader focuses on supporting the team member's success, bases feedback on observable facts rather than assumptions or emotion, and then invites the team member to respond, ask questions,
and even disagree. Equally important, the leader remains open to learning from the conversation as well. And this approach changes everything. This is also where you begin to see the difference in how high performers engage in the process. High performers, they don't wait for feedback to be delivered. They actively seek it out. They ask for perspective. They reflect on what they're hearing and they make adjustments all along the way based upon what they're learning. There was also a useful data point from 15.5 that reinforces this idea.
A significant percentage of employees report that they would put more energy into their work if they felt their efforts were better recognized and guided through consistent feedback. And that tells you something important. People aren't resistant to feedback when it's delivered well, they're often hungry for it. But it takes the right culture and the right commitment to development for the performance review cycle to come together. There's also an important implication here for how teams operate. When you think about
total team leadership, a term we've coined to client-wise where everyone plays a role as leader within the organization and interdependence performance not owned by one person alone. It's really shaping how individuals work together, how they communicate, how they contribute to shared outcomes. Now that means the performance review process itself just cannot be passive. It has to be active. Leaders have the responsibility to facilitate
these thoughtful fact-based conversations and team members, well, they have a responsibility too, to prepare, to engage, and to contribute to the development of others. Peers have a role in offering perspective that broadens understanding for everyone in the organization. Now let's turn this into something really actionable. As you approach your next performance review cycle, I would encourage you to take ownership of your preparation in a more intentional way. Start by writing your own self-review.
Ray Sclafani (06:45.974)
Approach it with objectivity and thoughtfulness. Identify your most meaningful achievements, the ways in which you contributed to team success, and the areas where you believe you can improve. Consider where your efforts are best spent and where you may need to redirect your time and energy. Then, for those you have been asked to review, take the same level of care. Ground your observations and facts and specific examples. Focus on contribution, impact,
and alignment with team goals. Once you've completed that work, do something that is simple but powerful. Set it aside for 48 hours. When you return to it, reread it. Ask yourself if what you've written is fair, if it's constructive, and if it will genuinely help the person improve their performance. Now that pause introduces a level of discipline that most people skip, and it significantly improves the quality of the feedback that's ultimately shared.
Too often I hear leaders and team members lament over having to take time to quote, complete the reviews that are sitting in my inbox. You want to maximize the development opportunity and link it to the outcomes you intend to achieve as a team. Performance reviews when approached thoughtfully, well, they're not about scoring people or checking a box. They're about creating alignment, strengthening accountability, and developing the capabilities and people within the team. Now over time,
This compounds into better performance, stronger teams, and more consistent outcomes for clients. As you think about your next performance review cycle, I'll leave you with four questions to reflect on. First, how could you approach your next performance review cycle in a way that creates greater clarity about your role, your priorities, and your contribution to the team's success? Second, what would change in your performance over the next 90 days if you actively sought out feedback and applied what you learned with intention?
Third, how might cultivating curiosity in both giving and receiving feedback improve the quality of your relationships and the outcomes your team produces? And lastly, fourth, what specific actions will you take before your next review cycle to prepare thoughtfully, contribute meaningfully, and help elevate the performance of those around you? Please share this episode with a team member that you think might benefit most.
Ray Sclafani (09:12.974)
Well, thanks for tuning in and that's a wrap. Until next time, this is Ray Sclafani. Keep building, growing and striving for greatness. Together, we'll redefine what's possible in the world of wealth management. Be sure to check back for our latest episode and article.