Cheryl Holland discusses the foundation of her firm, Abacus Financial Planning - developing career paths and growing leadership skills in herself and her team members. She explores how new planners can define and follow a career path within their current firm to encourage growth.

 

Cheryl Holland is the founder of Abacus Planning Group, and she is a rock-star supporter of new and young financial planners. Abacus Planning Group focuses on developing leadership skills in their team members, and Cheryl has gone above and beyond to create a system of career paths for all of her partners to feel successful and fulfilled.

The career paths program at Abacus acts as a leadership pipeline for the firm. It includes what skills need to be developed, as well as the behaviors and resources that need to be mastered in order to move forward in a career anywhere from 5 to 10+ years down the line. This is a phenomenal resource for new planners that they can download on our website, and gives them a concrete way to measure their learning progress.

Cheryl firmly believes that understanding the career paths that are available to you as a new or young planner is critical to your own development. She incorporated this program into Abacus because she knew from the firm’s beginning that she wanted to take this wonderfully unique approach.

One of the core values at Abacus is listening well. Cheryl shares how to listen well and provides resources and examples on how new planners can improve their listening skills and immediate improve as a financial planner.

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • What different career paths require from you as a new planner.
  • How to develop skills to move you down a career path and into a leadership role.
  • How to maintain a unique vision for your practice, your individual career path, and how you want to fit into the financial planning industry.
  • What to do if your firm doesn’t have a career paths program (or opportunities for growth).
  • How to embrace change.
  • How to hold on to hope and be patient as you experience growth.
  • How to listen well.
  • What it takes to continually invest in yourself.
  • How to incorporate laughter into your day-to-day to maintain a positive outlook.

Shared with us from Abacus:

 

Kathleen Bollerud

The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company

Outliers: The Story of Success

Laughter Yoga University

G2: Building the Next Generation

National Association of Personal Financial Advisors

Tracy Beckes

Practicing Positive Leadership: Tools and Techniques That Create Extraordinary Results

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't

Family Firm Institute, Inc