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Are Elite Retirement Advisors Born or Made?

Researchers have concluded that the answer to that either/or question is “yes.” Elite advisors are both born and made.

It's true that elite retirement advisors are likely to possess a common gene and have similar brain wave patterns. However, what nearly all elite advisors have in common is that they have perfected their skills over a period of not less than 10,000 hours.

Researchers at the University College of London have isolated the gene “rs4950” in a number of people who are currently serving in leadership positions. Researchers at Wake Forest have been studying the EEEG scans of officers at West Point and have discovered that leaders are “wired” differently; their brain waves show that they are more decisive and better at prioritizing tasks.

What elite retirement advisors share most in common is that they are comfortable being in a leadership role — whether it’s leading their team, coordinating the activities of a diverse group of service providers or working with the members of an investment committee. Having a biological predisposition to serving in a leadership role may be a contributing factor to the advisor’s success, but it’s not the most important factor. It still takes hard work and practice.

The importance of putting in your time is best been expressed in the book, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell has calculated that a person must devote more than 10,000 hours of practice before they can excel at anything — be it sports, music or business. Why did Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get a jump on everyone else in the computer world? Simple: They were programming when they were young teenagers. Both men already had logged 10,000 hours by the time they founded their companies.

There is one other factor that contributes to a leader’s success: having a defined system, framework or process for simulating and managing moral, ethical and prudent decision-making. I’ll make this the topic of my next post.

This post is based on the Forbes article, “Are Leaders Born or Made? (And How To Be One)” by David Amerland.

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