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Is the Doctor In?
By Keith Weber
May 4, 2011
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“Sometimes my clients expect me to be psychologist, career counselor, therapist AND financial advisor!” one of my advisor coaching clients recently lamented. It’s a sentiment to which many of us can relate. When that happens, the key is to remember that asking the right questions is as important, takes as much skill and provides as much benefit as providing the right answers.
As financial advisors, a large part of the value proposition we bring to our clients is our knowledge and expertise. But we’ve all been in situations where a client lays at our feet an issue to which there is no financial solution. In fact, there are many issues that our clients – indeed all of us – face every day to which there are no external answers. No one can tell you if leaving your spouse, quitting your job or moving to Paris to follow your dream is the right thing to do. Each of us has to find those answers within ourselves. There’s nothing in Financial Advisor 101 that prepares us to help clients with these issues. And yet, as trusted and respected advisors, clients often look to us for guidance. Successfully handling those situations requires us to recognize two things: First, our role changes, and second, a different skill set is required to preserve and strengthen the client relationship.
Because of our expertise, most of us are very comfortable in the role of expert solution provider. It’s very easy (some would say particularly for men…) to slip into the role of overall problem solver. As long as the problems remain within the financial arena, we’re good to go. But when the problem involves personal or emotional struggles, we suddenly find ourselves way outside of our comfort zone. We assume the client still expects an answer because that’s how we view our role. What we need to recognize is that in those situations, our role changes. Rather than being the trusted financial advisor who has all the answers, your role now becomes that of the compassionate, empathetic and trusted personal advisor who asks all the right questions. We need to resist the impulse to offer solutions, and instead ask insightful, thought-provoking questions that allow the client to view the problem from a different angle and find the answers for themselves.
But as Robert Half once said, “Asking the right questions takes as much skill as providing the right answers.” How can we learn to ask the right questions? One of the best places may be the life coaching industry. Now I’m not suggesting that we all run out and become life coaches, but when it comes to asking thoughtful questions that spark insight and build relationships (without stepping into the world of therapy or counseling) they have a few techniques from which we might be able to learn.
Marcia Bench, founder of the Career Coach Institute, teaches her students to utilize three distinct “levels” of questions that illicit three different levels of responses. Level one - the level at which most financial advisors interview – are the most basic ‘what-oriented’ questions that focus primarily on identifying specific problems. These include questions like ‘When do you want to retire?’ or “How much income will you need?’ Level two questions are the ‘why-oriented’ questions that delve into the underlying beliefs and motivators that drive behavior. These include questions such as ‘What’s important to you about retiring at that age?’ or ‘What do you value most about x?’ (being retired, your job, your free time, your spouse, etc.)
Level three questions are those that cause the client to examine or begin to change his or her deepest – and sometimes most limiting - beliefs about themselves. These include questions like ‘If you did x, what would that say about you? If you did not do x, what would that say about you? Do you really believe either of those to be true?’
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Keith J. Weber, CFP®, CPRC, is a speaker, author and founder of Weber Consulting Group, LLC, a financial advisor training, coaching and practice management consulting firm focused on helping advisors build stronger client relationships through holistic life planning. Weber is also the publisher of Retirement2020.com, a life planning website used by advisors and clients to examine the non-financial aspects of retirement planning. Weber has been in the financial services industry for over 20 years as a nationally recognized financial advisor as well as in financial institution investment program management and broker-dealer executive management.
ûDuring his planning career, Weber watched hundreds of clients struggle with daily disillusionment with their jobs while in pursuit of the retirement dream, only to see them continue to struggle with the lifestyle transition shortly after retiring. After being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005, Weber drew upon his own experiences and those of his clients to author the book Rethinking Retirement - How to Create the Life You Want Without Waiting to Retire. Weber now speaks frequently on the emotional and psychological factors that create quality of life at any age.
ûWeber maintains the CFP® designation and is also a Certified Professional Retirement Coach. He is a frequent contributor to Bank Investment Consultant magazine, OnWallStreet.com and Financial-Planning.com. He is author of the Retirement20/20® blog on Financial-Planning.com.
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Keith J. Weber, CFP®, CPRC, is a speaker, author and founder of Weber Consulting Group, LLC, a financial advisor training, coaching and practice management consulting firm focused on helping advisors build stronger client relationships through holistic life planning. Weber is also the publisher of Retirement2020.com, a life planning website used by advisors and clients to examine the non-financial aspects of retirement planning. Weber has been in the financial services industry for over 20 years as a nationally recognized financial advisor as well as in financial institution investment program management and broker-dealer executive management.
ûDuring his planning career, Weber watched hundreds of clients struggle with daily disillusionment with their jobs while in pursuit of the retirement dream, only to see them continue to struggle with the lifestyle transition shortly after retiring. After being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005, Weber drew upon his own experiences and those of his clients to author the book Rethinking Retirement - How to Create the Life You Want Without Waiting to Retire. Weber now speaks frequently on the emotional and psychological factors that create quality of life at any age.
ûWeber maintains the CFP® designation and is also a Certified Professional Retirement Coach. He is a frequent contributor to Bank Investment Consultant magazine, OnWallStreet.com and Financial-Planning.com. He is author of the Retirement20/20® blog on Financial-Planning.com.
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