1. Warrick John Pleash 15 February, 2008
Zen and the Art of Financial Planning (Part 1)
I remember it was back in early 1986 before the sharemarket crash and I had just joined a
stock broking company as a financial planner having come from a successful career as a
chartered accountant with a large international firm. I suppose it wasn’t until then that I
began to think about the process of selling….you know getting someone to buy something
that they basically don’t want or need…or that was how I saw it at the time.
In those days my first interview was with the head of the local teacher’s college as he had a
substantial rollover sum to invest. The interview commenced something like this with
instructions from my more wise superiors “see that guy in the office over there he has
enormous superannuation payout… now go and get it ! “
As the interview progressed I suddenly found myself in the midst of a dense jungle of
technical superannuation terms (used to impress the client of course, I thought) and him
asking me a series of detailed questions ranging from the future of the sharemarket to the
taxation of various income streams. Now being new to the commission industry I had never
felt the pressure of having to get someone to buy something in my life…in my previous career
I was a chartered accountant for a big 8 firm for god’s sake and have a client dare to question
my advice ?... never, come on now…we’re Ernst and Young.
Many times in the interview I could feel the fear arising that I was going to be discovered for
the fraud I really was and the client would suddenly wakeup and realise that I wasn’t an
adviser at all…. instead I was just a salesman flogging financial products….oh no !
This new experience had thrown me head first into conscious incompetence in relation to my
communication skills and even deeper into the depths of my own identity as a financial
planner. I could see that if I was going to be any good at this business I had better start to
examine just how I was going to handle this thing called “selling..” yuk, even the word itself
sent shivers down my back. It’s weird isn’t it ?.. how a simple word can have so much impact
on the central nervous system.
I got a piece of paper and wrote the word selling at the top, I then proceeded to write down all
the words and concepts that came into my mind when I concentrated on this word. To my
amazement there wasn’t one positive connection or concept on my list…over the years of my
life the word selling and the connections to it had managed to run deep into my psyche and
for whatever reason the resultant blob in my subconscious was all negative. If you like give
this a try and see what comes up for you ?
Well what do they say “when you’re on a good thing stick to it and if its bad get rid of it…”
so it was obvious that the word selling had to go from my vocabulary and my mind’s
connection to the process of financial planning. Searching around for an alternative to fill the
space was not easy as the process I was going through involved a complete reframing of not
only the word selling (yuk) but I also found that words like commission, product and advice
all had a similar negative affect on me, although not quite as deep.
The question was however that I just had to get rid of this selling thing in my mind or I was
going to fail big time, and I’ve got to tell you “failure…” was not a concept that my ego was,
in any way, familiar with in it’s life experience up to this point in time. I searched and I
searched while trying to cover up the effect that selling financial products was having on my
self esteem, interviewing skills and success rate, now remember this was not today it was
1986 and the industry was still in the embryo stages of life, we were still yet to discover
strategy based advice
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2. Warrick John Pleash 15 February, 2008
After much soul searching and investigation I finally found my holy grail on the cover of an
American management book, I would replace the word selling and its negative effect on my
central nervous system with the words “Influencing With Integrity!”…Yes…influencing with
integrity…now doesn’t that have a soothing effect on the soul and of course not to mention
the clients….the guys back at Ernst and Young were going to love this….problem solved.
Please feel free to use these words where ever necessary…if you wish.
Later in my career I was asked to facilitate a coaching session with the financial planning staff
of a major international bank the problem being to solve the negative affect that the word
“Para Planner” was having on the Para Planning staff, they just did not like the terminology
label. One guy stood up and said he didn’t like the word “para” because, in his view, it meant
almost something like paramedic etc. Now when this was happening I must admit I
personally had no negative connections to the words so I thought the room was full of crazy
people but being true to the brief the bank had given me I continued with the facilitation. The
session ran for 4 hours while we threw around all kinds of alternatives, now democracy is a
great thing, and at the end the votes were cast and the result…Para Planner would be replaced
with….wait for it ….Associate Planner…there easy, yeah sure. Amazing, the power of
words, you should have seen the positive body language of the people leaving the room after
the session.
Lesson 1
So the first lesson is to start becoming conscious of the energetic or if you like emotional
effect that certain words have on you and your client.
In the beginning it is sufficient to just notice, become aware, of certain words, especially ones
that you use regularly in your language with clients. Notice also any affect that the words
used by clients may have on you.
This is a very big insight into effective communication when you start to think of it in this
way, all of a sudden the source of the communication is the most important piece of the
puzzle. If the words leave the source in a positive energetic way they will be received in a
positive energetic way and when you consider the impact that just one word can have it is no
wonder that we need to be conscious of this in our daily communication with not only clients
but other human beings as well.
Notice the emotional/energetic impact of the following list of words….if there is no impact or
raised awareness in you at all then that is a clue that you may wish to look a bit deeper into
your being….
Strong / Positive Energetic Weak / Negative Energetic
Balanced Extreme
Being Having
Brokerage Commission
Brilliant Clever
Carefree Frivolous
Confident Arrogant
Conscious Unaware
Confronting Harassing
Determined Stubborn
Excellent Adequate
Flexible Rigid
Holistic Analytic
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3. Warrick John Pleash 15 February, 2008
Honest Legal
Joyful Pleasurable
Kind Cruel
Leading Coercing
Powerful Forceful
Purposeful Desirous
Serene Dull
Sharing Hoarding
Spiritual Materialistic
Spontaneous Impulsive
There are obviously many other words that can be examined and you may wish to look closer
at the common words you use in every day language. The facts are that high energy words
are favoured in this universe and merely becoming aware of the differences between the
positive and negative begins to increase your inner communication power.
A minor warning there is no need to become engrossed in every word uttered from ones
mouth as this will place you in conscious incompetence around your language patterns and
believe me it will drive you crazy over time. The trick is to use this knowledge to increase
awareness gradually, Rome wasn’t built in a day you know.
Next time we will start to examine the deeper levels of the communication process and self
awareness from the Zen perspective.
Warrick John Pleash is a Mentor, Coach and Financial Education specialist to the financial
services industry. He can be contacted by calling 0412400121 or emailing
warrick@pleash.com.
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