Worth Thinking About: Three Components to Success

In this new feature, Knowledge Bureau President, Evelyn Jacks, brings perspective to Real Wealth Management.

In his book, The Right Mountain, author Jim Hayhurst, Sr., noted that there are three things required to build any team: technical skills, a real interest in the challenge at hand and a common set of values. That’s as true of a tax accounting team ploughing through the sleepless month of April, as it is for a family struggling with lifecycle events.

To strive to be a powerful family takes guts. There is nothing easy about functioning as a team with common values across several generations. This challenge is complicated by changes in careers, health, marital status and financial highs and lows throughout one’s lifetime. If the goal in family life is an enduring legacy, one could say that a highly functioning family team is a powerful legacy on its own.

Advisors to such a family have a special assignment: to understand what motivates each of us in the family stakeholder group and then, what motivates us together as a family. “No matter how lofty your role or your goal,” says Jim Hayhurst, “take the time to encourage and answer the questions of others.”

This is a critical first step that the rush of tax seasons and investment deadlines often cause us to miss. In fact, in the absence of active and empathetic listening, we miss learning about those health or marital changes that will thwart our ability to do the right things, professionally speaking. We will miss the disability credits or the legal fees spent to fight a catastrophic job termination. And we’ll miss working with our financial advisory counterparts to minimize the tax impact on a client being garnisheed by CRA, when hard times temporarily befall our most precious families.

Most of all, we’ll miss giving to our clients who need us that soul-enriching wisdom we might give to our own families. As Jim says in his book: “You have to stretch and grow, but not break. . .the job is important and there are things you have to get done. But few, if any, of us can go full tilt all the time. . .without paying a terrible price in health, in family, in personal relationships.”

For these reasons, establishing financial priorities for families who are struggling to define and create an appropriate personal legacy, is one of the most important jobs of professional financial advisors. Your role can free the logjam of family strife or the burden of business responsibilities. One of the great ways to do that is with a tax strategy;  as such, there is a tremendous opportunity to discuss strategic philanthropy with the right families this tax season. It’s worth mentioning to the family this tax season as we look ahead to the end of 2017, when the First-Time Super Donor’s Tax Credit disappears.

That’s really important, because according to recent information released by Stats Canada, proportionally fewer Canadians were donors in 2013 compared with earlier years, especially in the younger age categories, but they donated more. Read more - Brush Up on New Calculations for Charitable Donations.

Sometimes giving something back—of ourselves or our resources—can help others get onto the “right mountain” . . . worth thinking about!

Additional Educational Resources:  Recently updated, Knowledge Bureau’s Investment Strategies in Charitable Giving course will give you more knowledge and planning tools to advise your clients about their charitable giving.

Books:  You might also want to pick up a copy of The Right Mountain: Lessons from Everest on the Real Meaning of Success. I loved this book. It describes Core Values as the “Vital Signposts of Life.” Jim had to make a tough decision while he was up there on Everest. He made it because he knew his core values and used them to make tough decisions, without regrets or second thoughts.

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