Editor’s Note: This article is based on Steve Sanduski’s podcast interview with Elliot Berkman, associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. To access more than 100 interviews with industry leaders, subscribe for free to Steve’s podcast, Between Now and Success by clicking here.

Asking better questions, instead of immediately jumping to problem solving, is more important than ever in our industry.

As technology continues to evolve, it is automating some of the work that advisors have historically been paid for. And the leading advisors are asking themselves what they can offer to clients that will not be made obsolete by technology. Empathy, creativity and imagination are certainly near the top of that list. But there’s one thing that every advisor can engage in right now that clients will immediately value.

Advisors can ask better questions to uncover their client’s values and motivations that drive their desired behavior.

With this info, you can put a plan together that not only meets the client's financial needs, but their emotional ones too.

To explore the science behind behaviors, motivations and goal-setting, I talked Dr. Elliot Berkman on my podcast. He is a tenured associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, where he directs the Social and Effective Neuroscience Laboratory and conducts field-leading, federally funded research on goals, motivation and behavior change. He's also the associate director of the Center for Translational Neuroscience, and an author who writes about psychology and neuroscience for lay audiences, including in Psychology Today.

We discussed how new technology is allowing researchers to learn more about how we make decisions and what drives our behavior. And with this understanding, we can ask better questions that lead to insights and ultimately to the desired behavior.

What Is “Value” To You?

Berkman and other researchers have used the latest technology to observe how the brain reacts to different stimuli, and even pinpoint which parts of the brain control certain activities and behaviors. For example, imagine being able to “see” where depression resides in the brain and curing it with neurostimulation, or a pill that cures procrastination.

Ah, if we could only prescribe a pill for our clients that would ensure they engage in “good” financial behavior!

Short of neurostimulation, Berkman’s research suggests less extreme, and less invasive approaches to influencing behaviors that could apply to financial advisory work.

Berkman said, “When you think about utility, when you're processing whether to invest in option A versus option B or considering gains versus losses, you see activity in this region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. For a long time, people in our field have thought about this region as the value region. It turns out that this exact same region is also involved when you think about yourself.

“To us, that's kind of interesting because it's saying, maybe value is more related to this idea of subjective value. It's about self. It's value to me. When you're thinking about your own traits, you're evaluating yourself in the same way that you might evaluate purchasing options and biasing those options in a predictable, human way.”

Whoa, what did he just say?

This touches on what behavior science calls the “endowment effect.” It means that we tend to overvalue things we own, regardless of their objective value. Consider what we spend our money on. The ways we spend our money reflect our core values. These things we buy with our money become a part of us and trigger neurological—and emotional—reactions.

Here’s a practical takeaway for you—armed with this kind of knowledge, you wouldn’t need to prescribe futuristic pills to help your client set a budget or stick to retirement goals. Instead, you could use this connection between sense of self and sense of value to shape discovery questions, steer clients towards good financial decisions, and even reaffirm your own value to your client. 

In one of my earlier podcasts with Sean Young of the UCLA School of Medicine, he made a similar point. Namely, that to get your clients to change their behavior, one key is to help direct them toward behaviors that are important to them. If the desired behavior is important, and you can ask questions to help the client further understand its importance, then you’ll increase their likelihood of moving toward the new behavior.

Closing The Knowing-Doing Gap

Berkman also thinks that this new map of the human brain could also help us close the classic “knowing-doing gap.” It’s the gap between knowing what to do, but just not doing it. This is a key area of interest for the professor, and he believes that closing the gap starts with deemphasizing cognition (i.e., knowledge) and focusing on motivation.

More often than not, people understand what they want to do, and have the cognitive and physical ability to do it. For example, every smoker knows that smoking isn’t healthy and they have the ability to stop smoking. So why don’t they stop?

It’s the motivational component that keeps the smoker from closing the knowing-doing gap and quitting. Berkman believes that the secret to enhancing this motivation is to tie it back in with the endowment effect—with feelings of value to the self.

So, the key to closing the knowing-doing gap is not more education. Rather, it’s to amp up the motivation to get you to want to do the doing. It’s to tie the motivation to something that is meaningful to that person.

Asking Why And How

Drilling down to the key motivators that can amp up this motivation requires what Berkman calls a “goal hierarchy.” And it involves asking questions.

[As an aside, if you haven’t noticed, being an insightful “question asker” is a mandatory skill for financial advisors to remain competitive in a techno-obsessed world.]

Asking “why” moves you up the goal hierarchy towards root motivators. Asking “how” moves you down to concrete, practical steps that help you work towards your goals.

For example, imagine that you and your client are looking over the family’s monthly budget. A line item jumps out at you: buying groceries at the farmer’s market. Your client might not think all that much about those weekly shopping trips. But if you lead them up the goal hierarchy with a question—“Why do you shop at the farmer’s market?”—you’ll spark a conversation that will make both you and the client think about key motivators that are more than just apples and oranges. The client might appreciate the family time. The client might feel like spending money in this way supports the community. The client might be very health-conscious.

Family. Community. Health. One simple question reveals three motivators, three values, that the advisor will be mindful of throughout the life of the client relationship. Bingo, you’re now working with your client at a level no computer will ever reach.

“It's interesting to put it all together,” Berkman said. “Starting to think about our goals in that big picture, I think, will help people motivate those low-level behaviors, which feel like a hassle, they feel annoying, they feel effortful. If you have a really good, clear understanding for yourself of why you're doing those things, what's the motivating factor behind them, it becomes a lot easier.”

Science And Technology Are NOT The Keys

The more that science and technology teach us about the human brain, the more obvious it is that science and technology are not the keys to changing the way the world plans. Apps and algorithms have their place in your practice, especially when it comes to automating tasks that free you to have more meaningful face time with your clients. But it’s the questions we can ask in those meetings, and the way we apply those answers to a financial plan, that will enhance your client’s life and make you indispensable.

People already know that they should save and invest for retirement. What they need help with is discovering and rediscovering their financial motivations and values. They need someone to walk them up and down the hierarchies of their financial goals to find those hows and whys.

They need you.

Steve Sanduski, CFP, is the founder of Belay Advisor, the CEO of ROL Advisor, a discovery process technology system, a New York Times bestselling author, host of the Between Now and Success podcast, international speaker and blogger.