Imagine you’ve had a setback—a loss or a problem or an illness—and you’re just trying to cope. A friend suggests you join a support group. You’ll be with people like you who understand your problems. You’ll find kindred spirits. You are really feeling the stress, so you shake off your doubts and walk in the door, hopeful you will find some relief.
Wow. There are seven and a half billion people sitting in the room! Your turn to talk is estimated to be 139 years from now. This is the situation in the time of pandemic.
Covid-19 claims a spectrum of victims every day: the patients who lose their battles. The families who lose their loved ones. The medical heroes and other first responders who sacrifice their personal lives and their safety. The business owners who give up their dreams. The parents who leave their jobs to care for their children and worry about their futures. The people who lose their jobs because their employers are losing theirs. The college-bound students fearful their plans will be upended. The kids who long for their friends and their fun and just … normalcy. The children who lose ground academically. The teachers.
And, of course, many families are suffering from several of these issues all at once and feel even more pressure. They know other people are struggling as well, but somehow that doesn’t help. We are all in this together, but experiencing challenges individually. We’re together, but alone.
Now imagine you’re 64 and facing retirement. You’re not sure you have enough money if you live a long time or if you get sick. You wonder if it’s OK to stay in the same house or if you should downsize. You know your spouse is in good health now, but will you both age well at the same time? Can you afford your future health care? Will your doctor(s) be the same? How will you get to the grocery store? Do your kids live nearby? What if the power goes out?
Pre-retirees and their already retired cohorts had plenty of reasons to be anxious long before the pandemic. Covid-19 has piled on with physical risks and created increased complexity in travel, communications and even simple chores like grocery shopping. Isolation is especially hard on older people, if they live alone like my 86-year-old mom, for instance. Parents and grandparents need to connect, just like the kids, but their options are fewer—and more hazardous. Adding to their stress level, people at home can be sucked into the bad news vortex of a presidential election year with its own anxiety-creating actors.
Clients need help reducing their stress. People already under pressure from their real world don’t need the further pressure of an uncertain financial future. Earlier this year, advice industry leaders kicked off an initiative called “Next Chapter” to embrace the changes taking place in the retirement industry. (The initiative is jointly sponsored by Financial Advisor magazine; the Money Management Institute; and my firm, the Execution Project.) In our work with Next Chapter, we are talking a lot about empathy and emotional intelligence in the service of clients. We have one team looking at financial wellness and yet another at financial literacy. Better educated, better informed and better-connected clients will be grateful for your time and concern. Get them talking, keep them talking.
Real connections take work. Clients who are not used to sharing their apprehensions and fears may resist. Geriatric psychiatrist Tony Weiner of Massachusetts General Hospital emphasizes a strategy of engaging with the client or prospect, not for the short term but with a much longer-term view. Advisors should set out to build a relationship, not just to connect, and start with active listening, using open-ended questions and then reacting to “feeling” words like “worried” or “concerned.” You should ask clients about those feelings. “Why are you worried?” “What is it that makes you concerned?” The process is iterative, says Weiner, and you know you are building trust one interactive brick at a time.
An authentic approach assures the client your sole objective is to help them get comfortable. Once you create genuine trust, you have a new relationship that will endure.
One key thing is to help the client navigate from an “acute” situation to the more lasting “chronic” condition. Retirement, for example, is first an “acute” condition when the client actually leaves work. But then it settles into its longer-term reality—a “chronic” condition. The worries and anxieties the clients feel will be initially intense but find their equilibrium. It’s important for you to have empathy during this transition; perhaps the highest value a good advisor can add is to help clients move to normalcy and live with their reality. The client’s peace of mind is your true north.
I don’t know many people who will miss 2020, but we for sure have our “generational moment”—that common experience affecting our fellow humans around the globe and drawing us together with the potential to make a difference for the better. Perhaps there is a thread we can spin into more positive action in the face of other challenges we face together. Yes, we are on our own, but we are still all in this together.
Steve Gresham is CEO of Whealthcare Solutions Inc. and managing principal of the Execution Project LLC and Next Chapter. He is also senior education advisor to the Alliance for Lifetime Income and the author of The New Advisor for Life (Wiley).