3 Essential Conversations That Can Transform Client Interactions

On this episode of The Long View, Charles Duhigg, the author of Supercommunicators, discusses how to make conversations more productive and shares practical strategies for better communication.

Here are a few excerpts from Duhigg’s conversation with Morningstar’s Christine Benz and Amy Arnott.

The Power of 3 Essential Conversation Types for Financial Advisors

Benz: In the book, you talk about three conversation types: the conversation about what’s this really about, how do we feel, and who are we. How do you think financial advisors could use the three conversation types to develop better relationships with their clients?

Duhigg: I think there’s a huge number of opportunities to use this. There are a couple of stories in the book. There’s a story about the CIA officer who is trying to recruit an overseas agent, and he is just terrible. He is really bad at recruiting. This is his first job, and he can’t figure it out. And there is this story about a doctor, a surgeon who kept on telling his patients, I don’t think you need surgery. And his patients would just insist on the surgery. And I think that’s similar to what financial consultants and financial advisors face, which is oftentimes you have a client who comes in and you give them great advice. And it’s just as if they cannot hear your advice. Or it seems like they’re distracted or you’re not having the conversation with them that it seems like they want.

And I think what often happens in those situations is that we go in assuming that they want a practical conversation. They came to me for advice. I’m going to give them advice on whether to get the surgery or not. I’m going to give them advice on what to do for retirement, how to structure their portfolio. And they’re actually saying I want advice, but actually if we ask a couple of questions, what we discover pretty quickly is they need to have an emotional conversation first. Because before they can have that practical conversation, before they can hear that advice, they need us to acknowledge their feelings and they need to voice their feelings: “I’m feeling anxious because retirement is coming up, and I’m not certain that I’ve saved enough, and I don’t know what my life is going to be like, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to provide for my kids as they get older and help them buy a house.” Or, “I’m feeling chagrined because it’s embarrassing—we’re supposed to know about money, and the fact that I don’t know some basic stuff and I’m coming to you and asking you for advice. I want to prove to you first that I know what I’m talking about. I’m smart. And we’ve got to get that off the table before I can hear your advice.”

The more that we have the ability to try and figure out what kind of conversation this person wants to have, the better we can serve them and the better we can get to the stuff that’s really important. The surgeon that I mentioned, what he found is that rather than giving people advice as soon as they came into his office, if he started the conversation by saying—he is a cancer surgeon, he works on prostate cancers—if he started the conversation by saying his first question was, tell me what this cancer diagnosis means to you? Oftentimes people would open up, and they would start talking about things like watching their parents get sick, or being concerned about the financial impacts of getting sick, or just concerned about the state of the world. What kind of world are we leaving for our children with climate change and everything? They would talk for 10 minutes without mentioning their cancer or medical questions or concerns about pain or questions about treatments because they wanted to first have this emotional conversation. And when he matched them, when he would talk about his own father getting sick and what that meant for him and his family, then he was able to say, can we talk about some treatments that I might suggest? And the other person was ready to listen to them.

For financial advisors, I think one of the best things we can do is start that conversation by inviting folks to answer the broadest question possible, which is when you came in today, what does this meeting mean to you? What are you hoping to walk away with? What is it that’s keeping you up at night that I can help you with? Because oftentimes the answers are going to surprise us.

Using Quiet Negotiation to Uncover Clients’ Priorities

Arnott: You also talk about the idea of adding new items to the table as a way of testing out how the other person might like the conversation to unfold. Can you give us an example of how that might work?

Duhigg: What often happens, particularly at the beginning of a conversation, is something that’s known as a quiet negotiation. And a quiet negotiation is interesting because the goal of a quiet negotiation is not to win the negotiation. The goal of a quiet negotiation is to figure out what the other person wants. And sometimes they don’t know what they want, or they don’t know how to elucidate what they want. And the way that we get to that is by running little experiments.

So, take the financial advisor meeting. You come in and you say, “I’m here to talk about my retirement. But it just doesn’t seem like the conversation just isn’t moving forward. I bring something up, and you don’t seem to really click with it.” I might want to add something to the table and say, “Look, in addition to retirement, can I just ask you what kind of legacy you want to leave for your kids, when you think about how you want to help them as they get older and maybe inheritance?” OK, I’m going to add that to the table. I’m going to see if that resonates with you because it might set off something where suddenly I see the big issue here is that you’re worried that your retirement is going to drain the accounts and you won’t have anything to leave for your kids and leaving something for your kids is really important. Or I might ask you, “How do you think about philanthropy? Is it important to you? Is it something that you’ve benefited from? Is it an important part of how you see your place in the world?” And again, what I’m doing is I’m adding items to the table and I’m seeing if they spark anything within you.

Someone might very well say, “I give plenty of money to philanthropy. I don’t really care about it that much. It’s not something I need to think about.” OK, now I know. Now I know that is not part of the set of issues that you’re thinking about. But when I add items to the table in a way that is open-ended, that says tell me what your thoughts are about X. Tell me what this diagnosis means to you. Tell me about how you think of yourself as a financial creature. What I’m really doing is saying, tell me what you want from this conversation. And that’s really powerful.

Building Trust by Making Clients Feel Understood

Arnott: It seems like it might be hard for people to do that, especially if it’s someone like a doctor or a financial advisor who is an expert and probably has ideas in mind for what that person needs in their particular situation. But it sounds like you need to take a step back before presenting a solution based on your knowledge, just making sure you understand what the other person is really looking for from the conversation.

Duhigg: That’s exactly right. And I think that’s what the best advisors do. The best advisors aren’t the best advisors because their advice is so good. Their advice is good. But advice is something you can get from anyone. The best advisors are so successful because the people that they’re talking to feel listened to. They believe that their advisor understands them. In part, they feel like the advisor is customizing their answers to their unique problems, as opposed to just trying to give them the same advice that they give to everyone. Even if it ends up being the same advice you give to everyone, it feels personalized because I feel like you’ve listened to me.