managing your practice
RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
Develop Emotional Intelligence
Understanding your own feelings and those of others will help you
build a better business.
Emotional intelligence is essential to building and maintaining a suc- cessful financial-advisory business
because the financial-services industry is
a people business. If you cannot connect
with people, you will not be able to set
appointments, open new accounts, gather
assets and build a thriving practice.
In Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes
emotional intelligence as the capacity for
recognizing our own feelings and those
of others, for motivating ourselves and for
managing emotions well in ourselves and
in our relationships.
Goleman describes two distinct types
of intelligence—intellectual and emotional—each of which activates two distinct
areas of the brain. Intellectual intelligence
is commonly known as “book smart,”
which is measured in terms of IQ, while
emotional intelligence is usually known as
“people smart” and has been measured in
terms of EQ.
IQ, which is based on measuring
a series of linguistic and math skills, is
thought of as a predictor of success.
However, how many highly intelligent
people have you known who have been
unable to relate to or connect with a wide
range of people on an emotional level?
EQ in financial services
So what does this have to do with being a
successful financial advisor?
Many people think that having a
successful business is about assets under
management. However, “relationships
under management” is a better guide for
creating the foundation of a successful
business, because without the relationships, you would never gather the assets
in the first place. And without maintaining a good relationship with your clients,
you would not keep the assets you have
gathered. Surprisingly enough, it is not
just about the relationships that you have
with other people; it is also about the
relationship you have with yourself.
To truly understand how to build
long-lasting relationships with clients and
ourselves, we must first fully understand
the five most important competencies for
developing relationships and increasing
emotional intelligence.
1. Emotional self-awareness. We should
know which emotions we are feeling at
any given moment—and be aware of
how our emotions, feelings and personality affect ourselves, clients and prospects.
We should also be aware of our emotional strengths and weaknesses in order
to have a realistic view of what we are
capable of.
The emotionally self-aware financial
advisor can tune into changes in feelings from moment to moment, and he
understands when feelings change and
why. He has a greater advantage over his
colleagues because he is more certain of
how they are feeling and why. This is the
foundation of all of the other competencies for building relationships. Managing your level of self-awareness in an
emotionally uncertain work environment
is the key to controlling your own mental
state, your business and your life.
2. Emotional management. This means
knowing how to regulate emotions that
have a negative impact on you, the task
58 ADVISOR TODAY | November 2009
| By Daniel C. Finley
Without a good
relationship with your
clients, you will not
keep the assets you
have gathered.
at hand and/or your business. Emotional management is about being able to
restrain from having emotions that could
jeopardize your relationships with yourself
and others, as well as being able to bounce
back from any and all emotional setbacks.
Advisors with high levels of emotional
management can regulate anxiety, fear
and irritability. Typically, they do not take
rejection personally, but see it as a necessary part of sifting through nonqualified
prospects to find a qualified group of
people who will form a great client base.
Advisors with low levels of emotional
management tend to let a host of negative
emotions dictate their day; as a result, they
usually wash out of business.
When you work in the financial-services industry, you are working with
one of the most emotional subjects that
people have—money. Whatever values
your clients place on money, you can be
sure of one thing: Money elicits good and
bad emotions. To become successful in
this business, you must be able to regulate
your own emotions to avoid getting
caught up in theirs.
