Have you ever tried to reverse engineer something? By that I mean take something apart that’s already built and see how it was created?

Maybe it was soup or a BBQ sauce you liked at a restaurant and you want to figure out how to make it. Maybe you took apart a picnic table or a part for an old motorcycle that’s no longer being produced. Whatever it was, you had to work backward and break down, pull apart or dismantle a process, a device or a system to see how it works.

People have been reverse engineering things since they started making wheels and carriages. Consider the Romans. In 264 B.C., they had succeeded on land but were behind in naval warfare, historians suggest. But during the First Punic War, they were able to take apart and study a Carthaginian quinquereme. Using the design, they were able to design a fleet of powerful ships.

It’s a helpful exercise to take things apart this way, not just because it’s fun but because it teaches you how to find the risks and vulnerabilities in old or outdated products. Eventually, people who reverse engineer can accelerate a product’s innovation by identifying new ways to improve its performance, upgrade its features or cut its production costs. And if you can pinpoint critical components of a product or process before it fails, the replacement parts can be built and ready by the time a problem arises and forces you to retire the product or power it down for a while.

So you might ask: What has this got to do with retirement?

I had a new prospect reach out to me recently who was thinking of retiring. In our first meeting, we spoke about the typical subjects and she had a typical attitude: She was turning 64, had run some initial numbers and felt like she had enough to retire comfortably. She was the right age and had the right amount of assets.

Yet other people keep working when they have enough money and have reached a key age like 62, 65 or 70. Why? Are they workaholics, disconnected from their families? Are they bad at golf and shuffleboard? Or is it something else?

When we work backward and try to understand how we came to decisions like these, we confront the psychology of the workplace. There are three basic emotional needs people must have to love their jobs: autonomy, connectivity and a feeling of competence.

When employees feel these things, it creates a successful culture at a company and adds to its strong bottom line. People struggling with unmet psychological needs, on the other hand, can’t work at their best. And if they aren’t getting those psychological needs met at work, then after they reach a certain age and asset level they will think about finally leaving work.

It's important to understand client psychology here—to reverse engineer it. These are big decisions, and advisors often gloss over all the factors that go into them. We all tend to fall back on the perception that retirement is just a great mental space where things easily come together. That’s not really the case.

When advisors can instead provide some context and help clients understand why they are feeling the way they do, explain why retirement suddenly looks better than it did before, then those advisors will be providing clarity for people and helping them make better decisions, using something better than just the math of age and assets.

Let’s look closer at the three emotional needs: When people have autonomy, they can make choices freely and take ownership of their own behavior. When employers give employees some independence, it fosters a level of trust that allows teams to engage in activities on their own terms. That gives them a sense of enthusiasm and aligns their individual interests and values with a bigger cause.

“Connectivity” refers to people’s desire to forge close, fulfilling relationships among fellow employees. The level of connection an employee feels at work can obviously affect their motivation and desire to do their job well, and it helps a company retain that person. People with friends at work get a support network, develop compassion, and can better cope with the ups and downs of everyday life.

People’s last emotional stake in their work, their feelings of competence, means the feelings of mastery and effectiveness they have when engaging in tasks. Humans want to learn and grow both personally and professionally; they want to perform tasks confidently and develop new skills to foster mastery. But when the systems at a company keep changing or when it puts inefficient or ineffective procedures in place, that challenges their employees’ feelings that they are growing and making themselves better. 

When I applied this kind of thinking to the client I discussed earlier, several things about her workplace psychology became very clear. First, her role and say in her workplace had recently changed. A new management team wanted to micromanage her department and second-guess her every move.

Also, many of her longtime co-workers were beginning to retire. So both her circle of friends and social network were changing. Their replacements were nice, friendly and skilled, but the same level of camaraderie was no longer there. She wasn’t going out after work with co-workers anymore or celebrating life’s little moments with them.

Also, the people she worked for put new systems and procedures in place, which everyone on her floor agreed were inefficient and ineffective, and they challenged her feelings of competency. The knowledge and experience she had developed over a 35-year career meant very little. Less autonomy meant less trust and creativity. Less social connection meant less meaning and shared purpose. And less competency meant fewer feelings of mastery or workplace self-esteem. 

So she felt as if she were just doing time. Thinking about retirement made a lot of sense.  

When I put all this in context, it helped her connect the dots and realize her workplace psychological needs were not being met. That removed some of her doubt, fear and uncertainty. 

Retirement is one of the most important decisions people will make in their lives and they don’t want to get it wrong. The worry about retiring at the wrong time can cause them painful hesitation and deliberation, which is why it's so important for advisors to understand there is much more involved than just the dollars and cents.

Ultimately, this is all about what clients want! They want to make a full-circle decision that makes sense on many levels. They want to be confident about why they are leaving work and find ways to replace those workplace emotional needs in their personal lives.

It’s not enough for advisors to provide a framework and context for a retirement decision. Financial firms are uniquely positioned to help clients also begin to plan and develop their feelings of autonomy, social belonging and competency outside of the workplace. That means helping clients find a new sense of purpose and direction, building their social network to engage with others, and finding new ways to either use their existing mastery or find new things to master.

If you can’t take this on yourself, there are also retirement coaches now—people whose sole job is to take people through the retirement process by helping them develop a written, non-financial plan for everyday life. Like accountants and estate planning attorneys, retirement coaches will not only help your clients but also provide reciprocal business. It’s an emerging industry with an innovative approach that has come directly from reverse engineering the traditional retirement planning process.

People have been reverse engineering things since they started making wheels and carriages. Consider the Romans. In 264 B.C., they had succeeded on land but were behind in naval warfare, historians suggest. But during the First Punic War, they were able to take apart and study a Carthaginian quinquereme. Using the design, they were able to design a fleet of powerful ships.

Like the Romans, we have the power to reverse engineer things, including retirement planning. In short order, we can build a fleet of happy, healthy, and connected clients in retirement. It starts by stepping away from age and assets and looking deeper into their psychological needs. 

Robert Laura is a best-selling author, nationally syndicated columnist, and president of Wealth & Wellness Group. He is a seasoned conference speaker, corporate trainer, and founder of The Certified Professional Retirement Coach Designation, which focuses on the non-financial aspects of life after work. He can be reached at [email protected].