Ask great questions
Employee feedback is one of the most important ingredients in successful growth. In order to get a reading on the pulse of the markets
you serve, you need to solicit and process input from the front-line
people who deal directly with your customers.
As Kreutzer conducts meetings and travels across Michigan, it provides him with not just an opportunity to educate, but for Merrill
Lynch’s eyes and ears in the field to provide him with insight.
“The feedback I get from the people I work with shapes and forms
the direction I go and the message I bring,” he says. “You have to do it
every day. An issue for me is to be accessible and active in participating in the financial advisers’ practices. Many times, it’s sitting down
with our teams, many times, it’s sitting down with financial advisers
and their clients, to help them understand what is going on and help
and prepare our region for the opportunities that are approaching.”
Kreutzer says dialogue with employees boils down to one directive:
Ask great questions.
“I think one of our greatest roles in leadership is to ask great questions,” he says. “Leadership isn’t about having all the answers; it’s
about asking great questions and discovering the possibilities with
your team, not exclusive of the team. That builds an awful lot of confidence and desire to be great when you see people in leadership
working alongside you passionately.”
The definition of a great question to
Kreutzer is one that gets employees to think
in new ways and come up with new, potential
solutions for clients.
“Many times with clients, they’ve been
doing things the same way for a number of
years, and with the types of innovations that
come about in our industry, they just haven’t
had the opportunity for someone to ask the
question, ‘Why do you do it that way?’” he
says. “The same can be said for financial
advisers. Asking great questions gives financial advisers a chance to analyze what
they’re doing and have more conviction
about the solutions they are implementing.
“Part of our job is to introduce various ways
to accomplish different goals, to challenge
our thinking and analyze what we’re doing so
we have more conviction about that being
the right solution.”
