Staffing & Culture | 10.02.24
Servant Leadership and Embracing Change: A Conversation With 2024 BISA Circle of Excellence Honoree Rhomes Aur
by: BISA Staff
The Circle of Excellence Award, BISA’s highest honor, recognizes exceptional leaders who have made a lasting impact on the profession and the association. Reserved for senior executives with over 20 years in financial services, recipients are celebrated for their vision, innovation and outstanding career achievements. In this interview, we spoke with Rhomes Aur, former CEO of First Horizon Advisors and one of the 2024 Circle of Excellence honorees.
Reflecting on your time in the financial services industry, are there any pivotal moments or experiences that significantly shaped your professional journey and leadership style?
Many of the pivotal moments during my career came about due to economic, technological and financial conditions which caused our industry to pivot in how we serviced clients, introduced new products and services and integrated technology.
The 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic are examples of events that forced our industry to substantially change in order to meet client needs. Consider products and services that we provide such as comprehensive financial planning, managed money solutions, complex insurance solutions and virtual client meetings that evolved as the industry pivoted due to the aforementioned events. There are many others that could be sited.
The key leadership messages to our industry professionals learned include the ability to be flexible, think and act proactively and always be forward thinking.
The Circle of Excellence Award celebrates long-term commitment to the profession and BISA. What does this recognition mean to you personally?
Exactly that. As a 40 plus year industry veteran and a long time BISA board member, it’s an honor to be recognized by peers that I’ve had the chance to work with over the years. While we are all avid competitors, our industry is also very inclusive in sharing practices and ideas that have shaped our client experiences.
Being recognized by BISA is a career highlight as it is a well known, longstanding and widely respected wealth management organization.
What challenges have you faced in driving innovation, and how did you overcome them to achieve success?
Innovation frequently leads to change, which is difficult for humans to understand, accept and successfully implement. Without innovation, however, our industry would not experience many of the successes achieved today.
There are many different ways and reasons to innovate. Is it best to be on the cutting edge, fast follower or a slow adapter? The answers are not always the same depending on many factors including company culture, leadership capabilities, sales force experience, etc.
As an example at First Horizon, we decided in 1999 to be on the cutting edge providing financial planning services to our clients, and we are glad we did! In the 2008/2009 timeframe we studied managed money solutions and determined “fast follower approach” was the best solution for our firm. Many factors will impact how you innovate and thorough analysis is vital.
Don’t expect to always be successful when innovating. Understand risk tolerances, your culture’s appetite for change and your leadership team’s communications capabilities. Most importantly, when you fail — fail fast! Throwing good-money-after-bad or protecting a pet project can be recipes for disaster.
I highly encourage BISA members to connect with peers when innovating. There were many times over the years when a call to a BISA colleague for advice and counsel proved very beneficial to First Horizon.
Your peers recognize you for your outstanding vision and career achievements. Can you share any advice for newer industry professionals who want to leave a lasting impact on the industry?
The best advice I can provide for new industry professionals is to take a “servant approach” to leadership. Your teams are comprised of many types of industry professionals and their career goals and successes depend on your culture. In my mind, a servant leader does all she can to ensure the successes of her team members. This is done through inclusion, empowerment and transparent communications. Supporting your teams leads to amazing results!
Looking ahead, what emerging trends or developments in the financial services industry are you most excited about?
The most exciting aspect of our business continues to be that people make the most difference, and our future success is still highly people dependent. There is no better time for young professionals to enter the wealth management business and the future is bright in terms of demand, job satisfaction, career growth and industry successes.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Thank you for the opportunity to make the above comments, being a BISA member for a number of years was a key factor in the many successes of First Horizon Advisors.
Rhomes Aur retired in March of 2024 from First Horizon Advisors. He served on the BISA board for a number of years, and lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his wife Tina.