The best financial plan emerges from the client’s best thinking, from their stories, and from the quality of their relationship with you. Transformative listening is a central part of this success.

Transformative Listening

To be interrupted is not good.
To get lucky and not be interrupted is better.
But to know you will not be interrupted allows you truly to think for yourself.

Transformative listening is nearly a work of art. It comes from genuine interest in where your client will go in their thinking, and from your courage to trust their intelligence.

In order to generate the best thinking from your clients, adopt this attitude and general behavior as you listen:

• Settle back.
• Let your client know that you will not interrupt them. Then don’t.
• Trust that not uttering a word is one of the most effective things you can do.
  
• Ask them if there is anything more they think or want to say.
• Keep your eyes on their eyes as they speak.
• Cultivate interest in what your client will say next.
• Know that your job is to help your clients think for themselves, not to think for them.
• Remember that the expression of feelings is often part of the thinking process.
• Be aware that much of what they say will be the result of your effect on them.

In the quiet presence of your attention, respect, and ease important things can happen for the client. Fresh ideas can emerge; confusion can dissipate; painful feelings can subside; creativity can explode. It does not matter if you already know what your client is about to say before they have said it -- do not interrupt them or stop them. What matters is what happens for them because they say it.

Enjoy the expertise of Transformational Listening. It is subtle, but powerful. And it can generate the finest thinking from your clients and a relationship with them for life.

We need to be more drivingly interested in what is real and true for our clients
than we are frightened of being proved wrong.