Chapter 3: The Fake


Overview

One of my most interesting, and unsettling, consulting projects took place over a decade ago. It started with a phone call from the president of a small stockbrokerage. He said he had a team of thirty-five brokers , and he thought morale was bad. He wanted me to come in, figure out what was wrong, and make a recommendation.

I told him I wanted to interview half of his brokers in order to get a good feeling for the situation, following which I would write an informal report. I told him the fee and he agreed instantly. Frankly, I was surprised he agreed so quickly. We set an appointment for the first round of interviews.

When I arrived a week later at his downtown office, I met with my principal briefly , who then took me on a tour of the facility. It seemed like a normal work environment for what was essentially a telemarketing organization. Small offices lined the outside walls of the one-floor complex. Each office was staffed by a broker. I thought it was interesting that everyone I could see was actually on the phone at the time of my glance ”quite a coincidence .

A boardroom had been reserved for my interviews, so I got a cup of coffee and settled in for my first meeting of the day.

The first interviewee seemed kind of slick. Well, he was slick. His hair was slicked back, he wore heavy gold jewelry , and he spoke quickly. He was very focused. He said he had been in the business for several years and that his own morale was fine. He operated a snowplow in the winter and held this job in the summer. That seemed strange to me, but, well, I had never done work in the brokerage industry. I asked him about the morale of the other brokers in the firm.

˜ ˜Some of them are young and can t take it, he said. Then he shrugged and added, ˜ ˜For me, if somebody wants to buy what I have to sell, that s their problem.

The next person was one of the troubled ones. He seemed depressed. He couldn t look me in the eye. He was quick to say he disliked his job. I asked him why he stayed in the job and he responded with a simple question: ˜ ˜Where else can you work five hours a day and make $350,000 a year? That caught my attention. ˜ ˜What exactly do you do? I asked. He explained that he was a ˜ ˜loader. Other guys built new client relationships, but when any of those clients expressed interest in larger investments, he would step in. ˜ ˜Why do they call it a loader? I asked. ˜ ˜Well, we load them up. We step in to get the client to really open his pocketbook.

After a few more interviews it all became clear. These guys were crooks! They spent their days calling people ”usually not-so- financially -smart people ”and selling them penny stocks, the price of which the brokers knew would rise a bit and then plummet to about nothing. When the stock would go up, the broker would call the victim client and say, ˜ ˜See? I told you I would take care of you. Let me know when you re ready to make some serious money. When the client was excited, it was time for the loaders.

People would mortgage their houses for these guys. People who couldn t afford any kind of investment would risk everything. Eventually they would lose everything, because the firm had complete control over the price of the stock, and virtually every stock price would plummet. The brokers were making 20 percent of every transaction. It was, as they say, highway robbery.

By late morning, I went to my principal, explained my understanding, and told him that morale was poor at his firm because some of his people couldn t cope with what they were doing to their ˜ ˜clients.

˜ ˜My advice is that you close your doors, I said. ˜ ˜And I m sorry, but I can t participate in this.

I went home early. I had never knowingly been in the company of con artists . I felt dirty.

Some of those brokers were addicted to the income and felt absolutely bound by their addiction . And they were quintessential fakes . They were engaged in an activity that was counter to what they knew in their hearts was right.

You might be thinking, ˜ ˜If that s what a fake is, it obviously doesn t apply to me. I am not doing anything illegal or immoral. But hold on. As a matter of fact, wrestling with a dissonance between what we do on the outside and how we feel on the inside is one of the most common topics of conversation in my coaching practice.




Face It. Recognizing and Conquering The Hidden Fear That Drives All Conflict At Work
Face It. Recognizing and Conquering The Hidden Fear That Drives All Conflict At Work
ISBN: 814408354
EAN: N/A
Year: 2002
Pages: 134

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