3 Ways to Improve Your Empathetic Listening as a Financial Advisor

Emotions tend to drive people’s financial decisions, so if financial advisors can tap into their clients’ emotions about money, they could use that to guide them to wise decisions. Empathy allows us to connect with another human’s emotions and empathetic active listening is a primary way of making that connection. Financial planning offers three steps to achieve that level of listening to create a good connection with your clients.

1. Clear Your Internal Space: Take time to listen to your own feelings, needs, and preconceptions before meeting with your client. This helps keep your head clear to truly hear the client’s concerns. Financial Planning recommends the “NOTE” method of inner listening – name, observe, trace, express. Name the emotions or needs you have, observe your feelings without trying to ignore or change them, trace the source of your emotion or need, and finally, express your emotion or need by writing them down.

2. Reflect Back and Summarize: First, reflect back circumstantial details of what your client is telling you, then synthesize circumstantial details and context into an empathy statement about circumstances affecting the speaker. At the end of a conversation with your client, you should summarize everything she told you and then express a summary of any empathy statements you made throughout the meeting.

3. Reassume Your Role: The goal of this kind of listening is to understand someone else’s experience. Once you understand a client’s needs and concerns, then you have to begin to meet their expectations with a plan. Use the information that you have gained with your empathetic listening to provide a fitting solution to a client’s situation.

See J. Jeffrey Spahn & Jed Purses, 3 Steps to Empathetic Active Listening, Financial Planning, Mar./Apr. 2012.

Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (Professional Legal Marketing (PLM, Inc.)) for bringing this article to my attention.