The Enduring Advisory Firm

Chapter 12 A Vision and Leader for the Future

The best leaders in the business of financial advice have these five characteristics:

1. Vision
2. Ability to translate vision into action
3. Ownership and accountability
4. Empathy
5. A core belief that their very best employee is more important than their very best client

Don’t believe the headlines. It’s not just Millennials who are looking for a new kind of leader. Employees everywhere want managers who will listen, consult, coach, and build community over old-style command and control leadership styles.

According to a study commissioned by Pershing, the most popular new leadership quality is someone who inspires innovation through creativity, lifelong learning, and self-renewal. This new style of leadership was preferred over leaders who focus on efficiency by 81 percent of the general public.¹ Leaders who see themselves in service to others were preferred by 62 percent over leaders with traditional qualities of command and control.

Vision: It Begins with Your Guiding Principles

We tend to think of “having a vision” as a tool leaders use to guide their business, to understand where they are going and how they will compete. That is true.

Our work and our personal experience, however, have shown us that before one can truly build a vision for their business, they need to establish a vision for how to live their lives. The behaviors that leaders walk themselves becomes the behaviors expected in the organizations they create. They become ...