The authenticity of you : know yourself and others

In ground breaking research by George (The Author of: Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value), Sims, McLean and Mayer (2007) what we thought we knew about leadership was challenged. The notion of authenticity was introduced as a key determinant of leader ship success.

Authentic leaders (they wrote in a HBR artcicle in 2007) are ones that demonstrate demonstrate passion, are consistent especially with their values and their interactions and are not afraid to wear their heart on their sleeve.

Importantly they "establish long-term, meaningful relationships and have the self-discipline to get results. They know who they are." (George et al, 2007).

Some of the key points of this 2007 article were:

leadership emerged from the individuals life stories often reframed so they understood who they were at their core. In doing so, they learned that being authentic made them more effective.
What the authors point out is that "critically many leaders reported that their motivation came from a difficult experience in their lives and rather than seeing themselves as victims, though, authentic leaders used these formative experiences to give meaning to their lives. They reframed these events to rise above their challenges and to discover their passion to lead" (George et al, 2007).

But this awareness and discovery can not take place without and individual having the courage and honesty to open up and examine their experiences. As they do so, it is suggested that leaders become more humane and willing to be vulnerable.

It is only by doing this type of self analysis to become self aware that leaders can develop and express the authenticity that is required to truly lead. Connection with people : really connecting with people is key as is understanding how in any given situation another person may be feeling. To that end George et al, write that these authentic leaders are constantly aware of the importance of staying grounded. They spend time with their families and close friends. They participate in physical activity and refesh and replenish their bodies and encourage others to do so. And further they create environments where a culture of acceptance, or flexibility of telling hard truths, of honesty and support are all accepted norms. All of this is essential to their effectiveness as leaders, enabling them to sustain their authenticity.

So what's your story? How self aware are you? How much have you examined your values? Over and above all of this how connected are you to the people that you lead.....do they see you as authentic?

So if you've read this far....thank you. I wanted to share with you part of my story. The story that, as a child, already influenced the construction of my personal identity and in time was to shape who I was and am now as an individual (Macionis & Plummer 2012, p. 215). What happened was a traumatic event in my childhood that involved sexual abuse.

Thirty-five years later, I am: a husband, a father, a driven and competitive individual,motivated by; making a difference in my career and social life, but also by; a fear of failure and a constant drive for being the best I can be. That drive has delivered a comfortable existence, a residence in the leafy east towards the Yarra Valley, and an office, in the financial hub of Melbourne. My career has provided the financial freedom to embark on further education, adding to an university degree and postgraduate qualifications in financial services. As I reflect now, it seems that I have defied, through design, research that points to lower incomes for male survivors of CSA and a career choice of a ‘female’ occupation (Robst & VanGilder, 2011, p. 350) and fought to join Weber’s concept of ‘party’ to effect power over my social outcomes, seeking class and status to reach my goals (Back et al, 2012, p. 51).

Similar to studies of relationships for male CSA survivors, I found myself, as a child, with very few dependable connections with adults (Kia-Keating et al 2010, p. 679). My relationships ran a course where they were with someone who offered emotional availability and care or where they themselves needed my help. I was drawn to women who were available or had experienced trauma.


Herbert Mead argued that people take on identities that we base on our participation in networks of social relationships and related roles (Merolla et al, 2012, p. 149). How we determine our sense of self is based therefore on social experience. The personalities I encountered allow me today to appreciate another persons point of view. Their problems (that I often sought out), from eating disorders, mental health issues, CSA and rape survivors, provided me with a sense of understanding of what real challenges and adversity are. Perspective was a gift that these people gave to me.

It is that appreciation of the experience of others that has allowed me to enjoy my work role as it is today. Fundamentally my career has been built around understanding peoples motivations and drivers and why they make the decisions that they do. My role involves me coaching and mentoring a sales team in financial services and I am called upon to deliver presentations about positive customer experiences and how to create them.

Financial services, however, in my experience, remains a male dominated industry and presents a boys club environment where the way to get ahead (sometimes) is by managing upwards. But rather than become part of this culture I have steadfastly resisted, seeking out the few female leaders in the industry and working with them. When I found myself in a male dominated organisation I refused to play the political games that were required for career enhancement instead striving for the recognition of personal endeavour. That rebellion against the social stability of those workplaces was in reality a protest against authority figures, particularly male ones. Weber’s assessment of authority and power is incredibly relevant.


In the workplace I do not automatically accept the traditional authority of a hierarchy of managers. Weber’s rational-legal authority and the political life of the society of a workplace (Macionis &Plummer 2010, p. 538) may be the backbone of organisations, but for me they represented the potential for the abuse of power. My association with experiencing CSA from a patriarchal figure saw me in later life avoid engaging in the politics of workplaces. Rather I was drawn to leaders who exhibited outstanding qualities that Weber described as charismatic authority,less attributed to social organisation and more associated with an individuals personality (Macionis & Plummer 2010, p. 538). Throughout my working life I have found those qualities more often in women and tried to lead others in that manner, setting an example of work ethic and relying less on the authority of a position and more on the genuineness of my actions.

For years I struggled with the emotional journey of healing. In Chris Gardner’s book, ‘Start Where You Are’, Chris, a victim himself of childhood abuse, passes the reader some advice:

“…to anyone in real crisis …find a place of calmness and stillness …where you can gain some perspective. Only with a reasoned outlook can you find the solutions and empowerment that are already there” (Gardner 2010, p. 58).

When I reflect on the experiences that make me who I am, I think of Foucault who argued that we are the product of discourses without which there is prior no essential self (Back et al, 2012, p. 95). The social experiences of my life, have developed the characteristics of what makes me, me (Macionis & Plummer 2012, p. 208). I am grateful for where I am in life, for the people I have met and the experiences I have had. It seems incredulous that I could ever look at my CSA experience that way. But finally I can say “Peace! Be Still” (Gardner 2010, p. 61)and understand in that moment the rich perspective my life experience has given me.

The story of your life makes you who you are. If you aspire to lead with authenticity, explore your story, decide what you can share, articulate your values and learn about others. Only then can you lead.

References

Back, Les; Bennett, Andy; Edles, Laura Desfor; Gibson, Margaret; Inglis, David; Jacobs, Ron; Woodward, Ian 2012, Cultural Sociology : An Introduction, e-book, accessed 15 November 2013, .


Gardner, Chris 2010, Start Where You Are ; Life Lessons in Getting from Where You Are to WhereYou Want to Be, Amistad, New York.

George, Bill, Sims, Peter, McLean, Andrew N and Mayer, D 2007, Discovering Your Authentic Leadership, HBR, Feb 2007 Edition,


Kia-Keating, Maryam, Sorsoli, Lynn and Grossman, Frances, K. 2010, ‘Relational Challenges and Recovery Processes in Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 666-683.


Macionis, John, J. and Plummer, Ken 2012, Sociology: A Global Introduction, 5th ed., Pearson, Prentice Hall, New York.

Merolla, David, M., Serpe, Richard, T., Stryker, Sheldon and Schultz, P. Wesley 2012, ‘Structural Precursors to Identity Processes: The Role of Proximate Social Structures’, Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 149-172.


Robst, John and VanGilder, Jennifer 2011, ‘The role of childhood sexual victimisation in the occupational choice of adults’, Applied Economics, vol. 43, pp. 341-354.

How strong is your brand : managing customer psychology

In the current climate with such a focus on the industry, now more than ever before, making clients happy is key: [1]happiness makes us want to share and this is within not only our social circle in a physical sense but now with a site like “Adviser Ratings” - in a virtual forum.

Happiness is achieved by bonding and in the financial planners office when a client is most likely feeling emotions of fear and anxiety, people look to cope with those emotions by bonding with the adviser and the advice process. As researcher Lea Dunn advises us “in the absence of friends, consumers will create heightened emotional attachment with a brand that happens to be on hand.” That begs the question : how strong is your financial planning brand remembering that you and your staff indeed epitomise your brand and it is what clients are looking to bond with?

What is required then is process that embodies your authenticity and most importantly has an understanding of the psychology of the client before, during and after the advice process and how you can use technology to enhance that engagement. Welcome then to “Technoclientology”: the psychology of engaging clients in a modern world, where we combine what we have learnt from neuroscience, modernity and behavioural psychology and when combined with a social world, we can enable clients to make better decisions.

Psychology

Just how do we make decisions and what occurs in peoples minds to help them evaluate situations. What do we need to know about how peoples minds work?

“Cognitive control and value-based decision-making tasks appear to depend on different brain regions within the prefrontal cortex,” says Jan Glascher, lead author of the study and a visiting associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, referring to the seat of higher-level reasoning in the brain.[2]

In normal brain functioning people : a valuation network in the brain auto computes what's good and what's bad, before the person concerned has a chance to consciously understand the decision making process has occured. It is quick. It is intuitive and it is automatic.

This highlights the complexities in dealing with customers where you need them to make a considered rationale choice. The choice has less to do with the rationalities of your proposal and more to do with how they feel about you and your brand. In short they have a gut feel about what is good and what is bad for them : and if you have not connected with them then that good choice (rationally) seems the uncomfortable one.

Most people believe that the choices they make result from a rational analysis of available alternatives. In reality, however, emotions greatly influence and, in many cases, even determine our decisions

In a book, Descartes Error, Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, puts forth that emotions are necessary ingredients to almost all decisions. What occurs is that emotions from previous experiences attribute value and impact how we consider the options in front of us. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision. Damasio’s view is based on his studies of people whose connections between the “thinking” and “emotional” areas of the brain had been damaged. They were capable of rationally processing information about alternative choices; but were unable to make decisions because they lacked any sense of how they felt about the options. (ref Dr Peter Noel Murray).

So if you are not using some method of assessing past experiences and values and hierachies in a clients decision making you actually leave so much of your process to chance. When it comes to money : we have values associated with our experiences and these values have been passed to us from our parents. If you are not questioning clients about these experiences your process is like waiting for a magic eye picture to appear.

This all means that what you need to embed in your process is :

- a means of uncovering a clients values

- questioning on past experiences

- determining a clients hierarchy of choice assessment

- looking at their goals and the why of their goals so you elevate a simple statement of a goal or objective to a highly functional progression and pathway that you indeed can influence

- a show casing of you as an individual and your brand

Dr Peter Noel Murray reminds us that The influential role of emotion in consumer behavior is well documented:
•Advertising research reveals that emotional response to an ad has far greater influence on a consumer’s reported intent to buy a product than does the ad’s content – by a factor of 3-to-1 for television commercials and 2-to-1 for print ads.
•Research conducted by the Advertising Research Foundation concluded that the emotion of “likeability” is the measure most predictive of whether an advertisement will increase a brand’s sales.
•Studies show that positive emotions toward a brand have far greater influence on consumer loyalty than trust and other judgments which are based on a brand’s attributes.

We pay more for brand names. These brands have emotionally connected with us. The richer the emotional content of a brand’s mental representation, the more likely the consumer will be a loyal user.[4]



[1] The Science of Emotion in Marketing: How Our Brains Decide What to Share and Whom to Trust : Courtney Seiter

[2] Making Choices: How Your Brain Decides

Two distinct brain networks guide our reasoning and the behaviors we ultimately undertake based on those judgments

By Maia Szalavitz @maiaszSept. 04, 2012



[3] Making Choices: How Your Brain Decides

Two distinct brain networks guide our reasoning and the behaviors we ultimately undertake based on those judgments

By Maia Szalavitz @maiaszSept. 04, 2012



[4] How Emotions Influence What We Buy

The emotional core of consumer decision-making

Published on February 26, 2013 by Peter Noel Murray, Ph.D. in Inside the Consumer Mind

A new way to connect with customers : Technoclientology defined

(This is the preamble and background to a recently published article in my IFA blog. I've set the scene here and then included the link to the IFA article for the "implementation steps")



There's something about plane travel and hotel rooms that gets my mind whirring in a good way. It's not the jet lag that sets it off, or the preservatives in the airplane food, or the lack of sleep from missing my contoured latex pillow. Quite the contrary, for me I find everything about the experience a wonderful array of petri dishes where at worst I get to observe human beings engage in what sadly is becoming a lost art: human interaction, and at certain high points as those petri dishes bubble over with colonies of live clashes of culture, I find the collision of sales, marketing, social interaction, technology and human behaviour truly fascinating.

The simple act of boarding a plane provides an opportunity to assess people and the choices they've made on how to board (using an app, a text message, a frequent flyer card, a good ole fashioned boarding pass - from a kiosk or printed from home or work). How do those choices correlate to their other behaviours and decisions? From luggage (trying to sneak a third bag past the disapproving attendant, or nonchalantly with the utmost confidence), to other items they carry : kindle, iPad, hardcover book, style of headphones, facial expressions, volume and tone of voice : all of this creates a story from which assumptions and rather accurate conclusions can be made about how an individual and consequently how we collectively are dealing with the modernity of society and translating it into our daily interpersonal interactions and decisions.

Now perhaps clearly I have too much time on my hands and am somewhat voyeuristic ("what's that guy in 3C staring at?") but, for me this type of people watching in situations like this is incredibly important. They are a guide to the psychology of how people engage in a world that is changing at a dramatic pace. They give us insights into how we act and utilise technology for ourselves and with others and how we like to be engaged in a service environment.

Apple, do this brilliantly and are a great example to choose as what they are selling is more than the latest and coolest gadget. What Apple sells by means of its Apple Genius employees is empathy and leadership which allows customers to make the right decisions for them. Dr Sebastian Bailey wrote in Forbes magazine how detailed and deliberate Apple have become at grasping and using the psychology of selling. Apple, he points out, use the “feel, felt, found” approach to not only demonstrate empathy but to also enact evidence of social proof to lead a customer to solutions that others like them have made[1]. This embodies what we now refer to as Emotional Intelligence, defined as the ability to monitor your own and others feelings and emotions. Sebastian continues that what Apple do having set the stage thus, is the “Geniuses are not passive” they use “mantras like ‘we guide every interaction’, ‘we recommend solutions’ and ‘we help them discover’. Through the handy mnemonic ‘APPLE’ (Approach, Probe, Present, Listen, End), employees lead customers to a decision that they believe is all their own.”[2] Now this is where the neuroscience of Technoclientology kicks in because when it comes to choice, three is the magic number. As Sebastian reminds us, Researchers at the University of Minnesota used brain scans to show that it’s easier to make a choice between three products than it is to choose between two.

Going deeper here choice architecture is the process of encouraging people to make good choices through grouping and ordering the decisions in a way that maximizes successful choices and minimizes the number of people who become so overwhelmed by complexity that they abandon the attempt to choose. Generally, success is improved by presenting the smaller or simpler choices first, and by choosing and promoting sensible default options.[3]


Can we assess these choices using technology and in particular via social networks? Long have we heard that the future involves us arriving home, activating our giant touch screen wall, being notified that one friend has recorded Entourage for you and 3 others are watching it right now and that your groceries you ordered via an app are 5 minutes away from being delivered and a map indicates where the driver is right at that very minute, etc, etc, etc. The future may be coming fast but interaction with only a touch screen wall is maybe a pipe dream. In a study by the Australian Psychological Society, respondents were asked about their preference for online communication when compared to face-to-face interactions. The majority of respondents reported that they preferred to communicate with people in person rather than using online social networking sites (54%, with 25% neutral on this matter) suggesting that people are not necessarily moving away from face-to-face interactions but perhaps use online social networking to enhance their in person communications.[4] However disturbingly but perhaps not surprisingly if you’ve caught an elevator lately (a place where temporary hypnosis always takes effect) and seen every person staring into their phone, concerns about reduced face-to-face interactions and the loss of social skills have emerged.


Being “social” and using the technology platforms of social media means effective engagement to enhance interaction not to detract from it. Gossieaux and Moran, identify that in a web 2.0 world we are as human 1.0 beings engaging like we always have in that we are engaging in tribes, it’s just that now we can engage with tribes that span the globe and belong to multiple tribes at the same time, but what hasn’t changed is that these tribes have formed as they always have : there is a common connection and there is a transference of beliefs, knowledge and value that affects the way in which we make decisions and ultimately in how we live.[5]

In creating the term Technoclientology, my intent was to guide those in the business of professional services and all service industries for that matter to an umbrella discipline for engaging customers. Technoclientology then is the psychology of engaging clients in a modern world and encompasses the skills, techniques and concepts of sales, modernity, social (read Human) 1.0 and the insights from the field of neuroscience, that when combined allow us to observe, collate data, analyse and draw conclusions about how people will react and make decisions in a given situation faced with competing choices. A Technoclientologist uses these insights to enable people to become empowered and make decisions that are in their best interests. What is achieved here is the working towards a greater good.

So where to from here? Read the rest of this article and the steps you need to really connect with clients at:

http://www.ifa.com.au/blogs/13875-why-you-need-to-be-a-technoclientologist?utm_source=IFA&utm_campaign=IFA_Bulletin06_11_2014&utm_medium=email



[1] Bailey, Sebastian, 2012, The Psychological Tricks Behind Apple’s Service Secrets, Forbes, 2012

[2] Bailey, Sebastian, 2012, The Psychological Tricks Behind Apple’s Service Secrets, Forbes, 2012

[3] Iyengar, Sheena, 2010, The Art of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday - What They Say About Us and How We Can Improve Them. Hachette UK

[4] The Australian Psychological Society, 2010, The Social and Psychological Impact of Online Social Networking

[5] Gossieaux and Moran, 2010, The Hyper-Social Organisation

Connecting with a Clients Values

We love this one inspired by an award winning financial adviser in Melbourne, Australia.

This is about connecting the strategy solutions to what is really important to a client.

If you can do this and demonstrate it in the SOA not only do you maximise the possibility of the prospect becoming a client, but you have also built a framework for choices the client makes that you can always revisit especially at review time to ensure that financial decisions are always in line with the identified values of the client.

Why is this important?

This is because money habits form very early on in our lives. It’s actually between the ages of 6-8 : s we have learnt most of our lessons from our parents and this shapes how we feel and act when it comes to financial affairs.
If you don’t question a client about these feelings you really can not truly know how a client will react to certain strategies, economic events, future financial decisions.

Some simple techniques are:

- Asking a client the three key words that come to mind when you mention a financial topic : superannuation, shares, investing
- Using lifestyle questionnaires that have a list of areas for the client to consider : they can be superannuation, investing but also : main residence, holidays, kids schooling, career, etc and asking them to rank how they feel about it now 1-5 and what they would like in the future
- The use of values cards

Irrespective of the technique : you need then to include a section in the SOA about what you’ve uncovered and connect your advice to these idenitified feelings and values.

Now values cards are used by recruitment agencies, training agencies eg: the “Training WA Career Centre) and it’s all about making better decisions on the premise that life and work decisions are always most satisfying when they fit with the values most important to you.

Mostly we act in accordance with our values to maintain a sense of well-being. But often our values are compromised by circumstances or events and we do things that don’t feel right. When we do things that are at odds with our values, we feel uncomfortable. Living in a situation where it is a constant struggle to act according to our values can cause stress, anxiety and depression.

Being able to align our lives with our values helps us make important decisions and feel grounded and focused. It inevitably leads to more happiness, achievement and contentment. At a team or organisational level, shared values keep the members focused on achieving their outcomes

The Values Cards can assist individuals, couples, teams and organisations to explore what is truly important in life, their relationships or work.

So what happens with this adviser is that you as a client (or each member of a couple) is given a deck of 250 values cards. The kind of words on them are things like : compassion, connection, creativity, achievement, adventure, challenge, health, family.

The client has to select 5.

This then leads to a discussion that is wide ranging and starts to encompass how the financial decisions the client needs to make fit with these values.

So imagine one of the cards is “family” (invariably that one does get selected).

Insurance has to become a key plank of a discussion or at least estate planning and hence then trust structures, business succession, continuity etc etc.

So it becomes the client that actually instigates the direction that the strategy conversation takes rather than the adviser initiating the discussion without being able to tie it into something the client has highlighted is important.

What needs to happen though is this conversation is reinforced and highlighted in the SOA and that each strategy recommendation is connected to a value or values.

Social, Big Data, Technology: run and hide or embrace?

Smart technology (wearable : clothes, watches, eye glasses) that records data on your life and has the ability to tell you what to do.

Voice personality profiling so that call centres can assign the right consultant to you but also provides them with information relating to your basic personality traits.

Companies using that data, big data, to generate value such as a retailer using big data to the full to increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. Or ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore much more precisely tailored products or services.

The emergence of two social classes: the technologically connected and fabulously wealthy 15% and the rest of us relegated to a vast underclass.

"Vast troves of data on all of us and then using that data to provide us with a constant stream of advice on how to live our lives and make better decisions."

It is a policy makers dream. A corporations nirvana.

Will it really make our lives better?

Will this become our Gattaca? : The film of a future society driven by eugenics where potential children are conceived through genetic manipulation to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes.

Will it become our Divergent?: a society that defines its citizens by their social and personality-related affiliation with five different factions.

Will we become the humans of Wall-e? : obese, infantile consumers who spend their days immobile in hovering lounge chairs, staring at ads on computers screens (or Google glass)

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Professor, Oxford Internet Institute, speaks of the power of big data as a tool that has the "potential to shape every part of our society from health care and education to urban planning and protecting the environment." He also notes that But "like every powerful tool, it has a dark side too: It threatens privacy protection and human volition."

As Mayer-Schonberger points out the potential and current positives are plentiful. Data correlations help Amazon and Netflix recommend products to us.

He writes of the medical benefits such as the monitoring of "vital signs from premature born babies discovered that whenever the vitals seem to stabilize, there is a high probability that a baby will suffer from a dangerous infection just a few hours later. Stable vitals are red flags, and recognizing them enables doctors to treat an infant before the full onset of the infection. They know what, not why—but that itself saves lives."

And what of how we catergorise people based on what an algorithm determines. Data can be used to make assessments on people, on communities and characterise them in ways that predicts their life expectancy, their suitability for certain occupations, their voting intentions, their criminality and their purchasing habits. Data could highlight threats to society. But a threat determined by whom? Big data?

All manner of crimes have been inflicted on peoples from a call to arms of national pride, soveriegn borders, or the protection of an ideology. This could be our "Captain America's Winters Soldier", futuristic perhaps, but this is already happening. As Mayer-Schonberger highlights certain city neighborhoods are policed more aggressively because Big Data predicts a high-level of criminal activity.

What of choice, free-will, societal liberty and moreover to what extent will we become slaves to the data itself? Will we give up choice? And to what extent is a choice that is made from options presented to us by an alogorithm?

For me I'm still pondering the benefits which are immense and the social consequences that if not considered may lead us to a dark place from which only the data will determine our fate.

Perhaps I will become Amish. They're allowed Netflix and Wi-Fi yeah?


References:

Manyika et al, 2011, Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, McKinsey Global Institute.

Reed, B, 2013, Prominent economist predicts smartphones will soon tell us how to run every aspect of our lives, BGR Media.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, 2013, Big Data’s Bright and Dark Sides, Skoll World Forum.

Social media and financial advice : empire state of mind

Alicia Keys song about New York includes the lyrics

"Concrete jungle where dreams are made of

There's nothing you can't do

Now you're in New York!

These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you".


The state of mind she sings about : belief, dreams, battling through the sameness to differentiate and make it big : is to me very close to what's going on in the quest to capture the social media space and engage with clients.

There is a sameness that is appearing in the manner in which people are implementing. We are all looking at the same big names in advice who have tapped into social media to engage with clients. Are we inspired? Is anyone really doing it well? If you build it ...will they come?

Broadly the answer sadly is no. Because there is something missing. If you do not have a state of mind that is social at its core then a social strategy is not one for you. If your client base does not suit a social strategy then maybe there are other ways to successful engage clients and monetize the engagement.

For me social, is the embodiment of that very word. It is the across the dinner table dialogue with a client where you get to share hopes and dreams (note there is reciprocation implied here). It is heavily reliant on you knowing your client base, your pitch or unique proposition to an ideal client, having the capabilities to deliver on that proposition and the right service model to truly enact that promise.

No amount of communication with a client be it via a social platform or not can be the solution to engagement if you don't have these components to start with.

Following that whether or not a social platform is the right way to communicate with clients depends on whether this is appropriate for the demographic and whether it suits your business model.

Don't get me wrong : I love social media and think it is a necessary mechanism to communicate with clients to truly tap into the psychology of what is core and innate in all of us : that is we are social beings. We are humans and we have always forged ahead by communication, sharing and bonding. We now have platforms which we can do this on in large scale.

As a student of psychology, the manner in which we as humans, as clients look bond with eachother, the way we look for reassurance and social proof before we act lends itself to a process of engaging with clients that taps into these hard wired drives. This client psychology and management of it embodies everything you do as advisers be it insurance advice, business insurance, Intergenerational advice or aged care. Building processes around the psychological processes that a client experiences in dealing with you and the satisfaction with life and well being outcomes they achieve as a result is critical in any communication with a client : including social media.

Getting referrals from accountants

What's the recipe for success in the quest to get consistent, quality referrals from an accountant?

This challenge arises for even advice businesses that own or are owned by accountancy businesses. Even in these environments the manner in which the client experience is delivered for each businesses means that to align is like forcing two magnets of similar polarity together : they push apart often with repulsive force.

The classic solution : has often been the lunch time education/information session, where we talk to the accountants about TPD and expect them to spread this amazing news to clients. Of course I make light of the value and depth that many education sessions hold, but the expectation we have of the impact and the results of these sessions are often unrealistic. That is not to say they don't work, they can do over time, but often despite their regularity and range of topics the conversations we expect or hope the accountants to have just don't follow.

Also problematic is if the accountant does commence a conversation with a client and the conversation goes for more than 6 minutes ....do they charge them? And what if it goes for 20 minutes? What if they are asked a question they can't answer?

After years of observing, experimenting and some just plain dumb luck these are the techniques we've seen work and why:

1) Lunch works : it's about the one time in the day the 6 minute clock is not ticking and the accountants down tools. Rather than an education session, how about just having lunch with them, in the lunch room over a sandwich and not talking about anything to do with financial planning. It's a lot easier to get a referral from someone who likes you.

2) Training can help and is a must : but needs to be tailored so that life risks are not the forefront but rather risk to the accountancy base is. Highlighting that business expenses cover can protect the accountants fees (they are a valid business expense) is one way of the accountant feeling the need for a valid discussion with a client.

3) Getting exemption from the 6 minutes hence the conversation is "authorised" and the client and accountant are not held to the 6 minute charging regime.

4) Creating a process. A questionnaire that acts as a rating scale ie: scores points for having certain structures and strategies in place: provides a great rationale for a referral to an adviser. As the accountant works on the clients tax issues, the client is given the opportunity to fill in a short one page tick a box questionnaire. Each box attributes a score. The lower the score the more urgent the need to see an adviser. Areas covered include SMSF, Estate Planning, Insurances, Buy Sells. The only thing the accountant has to do is add up the score and say based on the score there are some issues that needs clarification : hence the referral to the planner.

5) Taking a portfolio approach with the client base. Looking at the best accountancy clients it is determined whether or not financial planning revenue is being received (works best with in house financial planning and accountancy services). If not it is an automatic referral where the accountant calls the client and explains that as one of their best clients they have not yet taken advantage (as all their other best clients do) of all the services and it's a concern as when assessing their clients financial health (as per the questionnaire in 4) they have found gaps in their clients affairs.