Is one of your goals to be the best financial professional you can be by helping your client get the results they most want?
If so, there is a set of skills that look to me as essential.
Over ten years ago when the ‘Client-centred financial adviser‘ book was published I wrote a chapter titled ‘The adviser as a coach’. I outlined some commonplace scenarios every adviser will face and where coaching skills would be an essential element of serving the client?
Today, I am even more certain that without you coaching your clients they are far more likely to come up short.
What is a coaching situation?
If you are delivering financial planning, then you will be helping a client clarify their goals and outcomes as a context for the advice that you are providing.
Following the client buying into this then there is the ongoing implementation of the advice until the goals are realised.
It seems simple yet there will be many obstacles. Some immediate and some ongoing. For instance:
1. Many people will not have clearly defined goals or outcomes. So, helping them clarify what they want they what they want to avoid is a form of coaching.
2. A client may identify what they want yet lack the resources to accomplish it. This is another situation where you could coach a client through the situation because there are many potential outcomes.
3. It is almost certain that your client will come off track along the path to their goals. So, creating accountability, bringing things back into focus, and helping them through challenges are typical elements of coaching.
4. Your client may have bad ideas, habits, or a poor relationship with money. These could easily sabotage their success unless brought out into the open and explored.
What is the difference between advising and coaching?
With advice you are very clearly recommending the action that your client takes to fulfil a pre-determined outcome. The client may have little knowledge in the area of the advice being given.
Coaching, like financial planning, is outcome based. But coaching is not advising, consulting, counselling, or mentoring. Instead, you are helping someone to raise their awareness, create more choice and better utilise their innate ability to accomplish what is important to them.
Where can you begin?
At first, it can seem daunting to have this kind of conversation with a client. In fact, you can guarantee that you will feel some internal resistance because the mind sees any kind of change as a threat.
But rather than allowing your mind to go too far out into the future it is far more useful to just take the next tiny step.
For example, you could read a book, and you can access my top recommendations by clicking here. Another book that you could also add to the list is ‘The coaching habit’ by Michael Bungay Stanier.
The most effective way to make progress is to hire a coach. My experience is that being coached fast tracks you towards realising your goals. Just as importantly, when you are being coached this provides a foundation for coaching others because you are having the direct experience of being the client.
PS. If the idea of coaching skills or being coached resonates with you please drop me an email at john@clientcentredadvisers.com and we can set up a conversation.
