Plan the show
Ransdell and Rubin quickly got to work planning their trip by gathering feedback about the key issues that people were concerned about.
“Knowledge is everything you do before you ever sit down with a client or employee,” Ransdell says. “… I reached out to one of the top financial advisers in the state of Florida, who happens to be a good friend of mine. I knew he would be very critical with me with feedback. I asked him, ‘How are people feeling?’ We put together a whole list of things that were on our financial advisers’ minds, which, in the end, are results of what’s on our clients’ minds.”
It was crucial that the duo had its act together before Ransdell and Rubin started meeting employees. They needed to earn employee respect by showing they were in touch with what was happening.
“When things are very difficult, I think it’s extremely important for leaders to shut down the plant and think,” Ransdell says. “You have to think very strategically and absolutely everything you do must have meaning an
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be thought through to the smallest ripple effect.
“Leadership is about being in front of people. Leadership has nothing to do with e-mails and it has nothing to do with phone calls. Leadership in times like this requires leaders to work harder than they have ever worked. And I will tell you, I’ve never worked harder.”
Ransdell reached out and contacted the leaders of the offices he would be visiting and explained his plan.
“I told them what I wanted to do and got their buy-in and then we just hit every single office,” Ransdell says. “We didn’t want to disrupt the financial adviser by them coming to us. We came to them.”
