We’re in a liminal state—a transition point. We need a fresh perspective on what it means to be an elite professional in the retirement industry.
To begin, we need to reassert that “fiduciary” is a transformational process that takes place over a lifetime of selfless service.
In contrast, it’s not a transaction that can be brokered by self-serving faux-fiduciaries. A prospect or client may not understand the many facets of a fiduciary standard, but they have the ability to spot an authentic fiduciary from those who lip-synch.
As a retirement professional, you now need to have the capacity to help plan sponsors prudently manage and allocate scarce resources across all benefits—not just qualified plans.
“Solely in the best interests of participants” is taking on a more expansive view that includes the financial well-being of all employees, not just plan participants.
An employee that is stressed about rising health care costs and increased personal debt has a low probability of ever becoming “retirement ready.”
Or, the company that has an elderly workforce that is not retirement ready is going to be faced with significantly higher health care costs.
You need to expand your field of vision to take in the whole of the company, not just the activities of the plan sponsor. This requires that you demonstrate your capacity for behavioral governance.
The impact your leadership, stewardship, and governance has on the world is called behavioral governance.
This new field of study is based on the ground-breaking academic research in neuro-leadership that suggests that exemplary leaders demonstrate a greater neurological capacity for certain behaviors that we associate with effective leadership and stewardship.
We believe the research in neuro-leadership will help you gain a better perspective into your evolving role as an elite professional. As you move through the liminal fiduciary state, you’ll need to demonstrate a greater capacity for:
- Procedural justice: This is the matching bookend to procedural prudence. ERISA requires that you demonstrate your procedural prudence; the details of your decision-making process. Procedural justice requires that you demonstrate the details of your moral and ethical decision-making process. That you have the ability to enact a fair, just and transparent process to resolve moral conflicts or to allocate limited resources.
- Vision and Inspiration: That you have the capacity to connect with others and provide shared visions and strategies that engage, gain commitment and alignment, and inspire higher levels of performance.
- Self-complexity: That you understand your own self within changing roles and requirements, and that you have the ability to adjust and adapt thoughts and behaviors to enact more appropriate responses to ill-defined, changing, and evolving situations.
- Executive control: You have the capacity to regulate thoughts and emotions and to resolve conflicts between impulsive desires and adherence to the achievement of longer-term goals.
- Situational awareness: That you have the capacity to: (a) perceive changes in your environment, (b) interpret changes to determine whether and how they may impact goals and objectives, and (c) to predict how changes may impact future events.
- Social astuteness: That you’re sincere and have the capacity for (a) social intelligence, (b) interpersonal influence, and (c) networking.
A final point; behavioral governance is universal. The framework has been intentionally designed so that it is as applicable to you, as it is to those you serve. You can teach your clients this framework so that they can use it every day – to run a team, department, division, a board, the company and, of course, the investment committee. It’s applicable to any industry sector and domain.
Rather than being the dreaded 401k advisor that disrupts a company’s key decision-makers once a quarter, you become an invaluable behavioral governance coach who is a source for inspiration and engagement.
Old school—you demonstrated your capacity to be able to exchange red funds for green. New school – you demonstrate how you impact the world through your leadership, stewardship, and governance.
If you would like to assess your behavioral governance, a new on-line instrument has been developed. The assessment takes an average of 12 minutes to complete. Upon completion, you’ll receive a comprehensive personalized 30-page report showing your IMPACT scores for leadership, stewardship, and governance. This offer will only be available to the first 100 participants. To take the assessment, click here.
Don Trone, L5 is the CEO and Co-founder of 3ethos, which conducts studies in the new field of behavioral governance. He was the founding-CEO of fi360 and the AIF and was the founder and President of the Foundation for Fiduciary Studies.
The academic research underpinning Behavioral Governance is based on the works of Dr. Sean Hannah, Dr. Pierre Balthazard, Dr. David Waldman, Dr. Peter Jennings, and Dr. Robert Thatcher. The Behavioral Governance framework is drawn from the works of Dr. John Sumanth, Mary Lou Wattman, L5; Steve Branham, L5; and Don Trone, L5.