By Claudio Pannunzio

An old Zen proverb goes like this, “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.” In other words, be mindful and give your whole attention to the task you’re carrying out.

Every client interaction provides us with the perfect opportunity to test our ability to be fully engaged and listen mindfully. Listening is a vital skill for successful financial advisors. One of the core and most a misunderstood characteristic about listening is that it is not a passive but, rather, a very active effort.

Mindful listening requires intention and focus, as is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. This practice should not be employed only in situations of high distress or uncertainty in the financial markets, but should become the foundation of a client-advisor relationship. Clients depend on their advisors for guidance, reassurance and comfort that they will realize the goals and dreams of their one and only life. When that does not happen they experience pain. Mindful listening is what allows any gooddoctor to attain an intimate understanding of a patient’s problem and recommend the best therapy.That’s why your mindful listening will help relieve your clients’ suffering and bring about healing.

Because of the meaningful impact that your decisions exert on the lives of your clients, the same type of listening employed by a physician must be applied to your client interaction. Mindful listening is not only the foundation of good communication, but also an activity that nourishes both the speaker and the listener.

A Magnetic and Creative Force

 Listening is one of the hardest things for a human being to master. Many of us experience unconscious barriers to good listening that prevent us from clearly recognizing when we are not listening. Listening is a magnetic and creative force. When people listen to what we say, we experience a satisfying expansion, become highly creative and volunteer information. It is this creative force that actually enables ideas to spring within us and come to life.

One of the most valuable rewards of listening is the ability to learn something we might not know. More important, conscientiously listening to your clients conveys the unequivocal notion that you care about them and their lives. It enables you to focus on them and ask the right question at the end of a conversation to gather good intelligence on what they worry and care about, what motivates them and, ultimately, become conscious of their core emotions and how these affect and drive their decisional process.

Failing to listen in a mindful manner will make you not mindful of your clients’ emotions. Consequently, your advice will be perceived as a mere enunciation of your own ideas, rather than a genuine response to the other person. Your genuine and undivided attention will induce your clients to confide in you, open their hearts and offer precious personal information. This will enable you to create a more effectiveplanning strategy that will fully reflect and take into account their emotions, desires and aspirations.

 Changing Your Clients’ Lives

 Henry David Thoreau stated, “The greatest compliment that was ever paid to me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” Mindful listening is the action of listening with a single purpose—without interruptions, allowing your clients to fully express their fears, dreams and objectives. It keeps your attention in the moment enabling you to capture your clients’ most subtle emotions, which are of utmost importance because clients’ decisions are fundamentally emotion-driven, not reason-driven. This knowledge will empower you to make recommendations and offer advice that is reason and emotion-based, inspire your clients, and have a meaningful impact on their lives.

As an empathetic listener you will also be able to learn the language and wording your clients employ when they talk about their issues. So, when the time comes for you to offer your advice, your ability to articulate it in their own language—referring to their examples, using their similes, etc.—will help you build a much stronger intellectual and emotional bond with them. Mindful listening refers to making a conscious effort to listen with an active mind, void of any preconceived notions and ideas. It particularly entails not to just listen with your ears, but also with your eyes, to monitor your client’s body language and the emotions associated with it, while looking for congruency among words, posture, gestures and tone of voice.

It is worth underscoring that the ultimate goal of mindful listening is simply to listen—nothing more and nothing less. It emphasizes focusing attention and activity on what we are doing in the immediate moment, wholeheartedly without getting side-tracked by premature ideas and projections of personal gain, which incidentally are notpertinent to the present moment and may or may not happen in the future. When you are completely “present” in that way, each activity becomes the most important activity you can perform.

Almost half a century ago, author James Nathan Miller made an interesting observation, “Conversation in the U.S. is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared the listener.” Don’t let this quote be the accurate description of your approach to client communication. But, most important, master the art of mindful listening to enhance your professional image and make a difference in your life and those of your clients.