Jane Hanson: The Power of Vulnerability and Other Tips for Advisors

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Hello and welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartalus, and my guest today is Jane Hanson, an Emmy Award-winning television journalist, mostly at NBC, and media presentation video coach. Jane has spent over 30 years helping people learn to communicate better. She focuses on 3 key elements: what you say, how you say it, and how your body language keeps it all in sync. And today she will describe 5 ways that advisors can keep existing clients and gain new ones. Jane, welcome.

It's so great to be here with you, and I love talking about this. And isn't it fun to do a podcast? I mean, I do a lot of them, and they're just— there's really a great way of sharing information.

Absolutely. I mean, it's always fun because it's— you're embarking on a mini adventure. You really don't know where it's going to go. So I love the spontaneity of it.

It really works. Yeah, it truly does.

So?

So let's start. What's the first point that advisors really need to know?

Well, I'm gonna tell you a little story about during COVID Of course, my business changed dramatically because I was in business, I mean, I was in person traveling all over the world. And the next thing I know, everything is virtual and people are really struggling to figure out how do I connect through this weird thing called Zoom? And I actually had several CEOs, FAs, wealth managers, private wealth managers call me up and they'd say, "Look, you have to help me learn how to be vulnerable." And I went, "What?" Because to me, vulnerability is at the very core of great communication. Aristotle, who's considered the father of communication, started this 2,400 years ago when he told us then that it's very important that not only do we have a conversation, but to be truly authentic with our real feelings, we have to be vulnerable and open. And that's the thing I think that we need to continue now that we're kind of in this, in this different phase of who and where we are. You want to keep clients, you got to show them you care. You also have to show them that you're open to them, that you're vulnerable to your own feelings and thoughts and that sort of thing. And the ways in which you do that can be just being super honest and being really transparent. And the other key to it is listening. If you don't listen, you can't hear what they really need. I've worked with a ton of FAs. And one of the things I see them have to do sometimes is they will jump to solutions before they really know what the problem is. And that is an issue. And the other thing they need to think about People will talk about sex before they talk about their money. So you're dealing with their money. And that money right now, they want to be sure that it's in good hands and that it's being taken care of. Well, they've always wanted that. And so vulnerability, authenticity equals trust. Trust equals a client loving you and sticking by you.

I think what's fascinating is the, in terms of vulnerability, you're by definition showing that you're not invincible. And yet the tension is that advisors have to in the overall be competent, trustworthy. And yet I could imagine many would fear, there might be that fear, oh, what if I go too far? What if I lose their confidence? Right? Of course. But to your point, it obviously makes them much more likable, human, real, authentic, all of that. Tell me a little about navigating that for these people. A lot of these advisors are incredibly intelligent, high-achieving types, and just like the first and the best in everything. And now it's like that maybe in yesteryear was more of an asset, but now you have to learn to let go and lose a little control. But it'll help you doing that.

Well, yes, because it means that you're relatable now to the client. They feel extremely vulnerable themselves when they're talking to you about their money. And they have certain goals they want to achieve. And obviously, we all want to have enough to be able to live a good life. But if they, they need to, they need to feel that you understand them. And the only way you get to really understand somebody is if you share. And you also, they also want to know about your experience. Have you ever had a client like this before? Not that you can share names, numbers, and any of that, but you can certainly tell stories that will get them to feel comfortable. So when I talk about vulnerability, I mean being open and being— having the freedom to feel like you can be yourself with your client. I find sometimes that's hard, and sometimes it may not work as well as you want. I had an FA recently that I'd been working with him for a long time. And he was going to be taking over the business from his partner, who was an older, an older guy, and he was going to retire, slowing down. And a lot of the longtime clients were like, ooh, I don't know if I want to go with this kid, because there was a considerable age difference, 20, 30 years, something like that. Do I trust him? And so we talked a lot about how am I going to make them trust me and feel good about me. And he became— we worked on him becoming very open and transparent and actually saying, look, I know that you're wondering if I'm up to the job, just putting it right out there, being very transparent and being very open. Let me tell you a little bit about myself and my own experiences. Let me tell you about my goals and what I'm working on. Let me tell you how I feel that I can meet your needs. And by the way, I have the trust of, you know, Guy, his partner. And so he did this with his clients, and he was with the clients and working on it periodically. And he called me one day and he said, I can't tell you how well this is working because of the way I'm approaching this without acting like I have all the answers. Of course, like I can do it. Instead, by that approach, the clients began to trust him in ways they never had before and became very comfortable with this kind of the transfer of where the accounts were now going to.

Yeah, what I really like about that example too is he tackled the elephant in the room. It was, "All right, I know they're concerned about the age gap, maybe lack of experience. Let me own this. Let me take it and put it there." And I think that in and of itself is such a powerful statement. It's like, "Okay, you're intelligent enough, and you're—" I don't know if courageous is the right word, but you're frank enough, and you're honest enough, and you're putting it out there. And like, "Let's talk about it." That's right.

Courage is a good word because it does take courage to do this. Maybe, maybe you might lose a client along the way, but on the other hand, you may gain some too. It's just, I just think that it's a really good place for people to be. Now, in the middle of that, I use the word stories. And that was one of the other points that we wanted to talk about today. The thing about stories is you can give people all the data in the world, but sometimes that's a little overwhelming and sometimes they can't remember it. You need to humanize things. Let's just say you have clients whose goal is they want to retire, buy a giant boat, and sail around the world. Now, you have to figure out how to help them achieve that. If you tell them a story about a similar client that you might have helped achieve their goals, whatever it is, again, with all the confidentiality that we need to have in this business. But you've told them that. And now they say, oh, they've made that work for somebody else. They can make it work for me. But stories, though, you have to be careful about them because, well, think about it logically. They can't be too short. They can't be too long. You have to make sure you make your point. And they have to be, again, very upfront in, in, in how you're achieving your goal. Master storytellers and storytellers is how we have history, because we didn't have a written word for a very, very, very long time. So all of our history has been brought down to us through the use of stories. We don't even know if they're all true, right? So when you think about stories, I want you to have a little formula in your head. You need to think about plot, purpose, place, people. If you've watched Walt Disney movies, right?

Yeah, not much lately, but sure.

But anybody who's got a kid has watched lots of them, and we did growing up. Walt Disney's formula is so simple. It's: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful fairy princess. Every day, she slept until one day, a handsome prince came along. Because of that, he kissed her and she woke up. And as a result, they all lived happily ever after. So it's those kind of 5 points. You're setting the scene, you know, you're pinpointing the problem, and then you're selling the solution. So it's a, it's a formula that really truly works. And it will help you if you know you've got a story to tell, but you don't quite know how to tell it. And you can do that about anything. You can do that about like what's happened in the markets that day. What's the story behind it? You can do it about a particular goal and how you're gonna reach that. You can talk up, you can use it as a means of, you know, consoling people or giving them confidence in you. So there's just a ton of ways in which stories really truly work. So think about that as a way of communicating, 'cause we've been doing it since the beginning of time. And by the way, you know, a lot of your clients, may not be that savvy about the market. They may not be that savvy about certain financial products. But if you can tell them a story about how it works, it brings understanding.

Right, because you have that context, whereas if someone just says, "The Dow fell 17% last year," someone— I mean, most investors know that's not good, but many might be like, "Well, what does that mean?" or "Give me a little more context." But having that narrative arc really helps contextualize everything. Right.

Stories bring context, exactly to your point. So I would tell stories as often as you possibly can. It just— they are remarkable in their simplicity and the ability that they bring to help people understand. And then sometimes they bring you hope or they bring you— they make you think about the future. I mean, it's just, it's wonderful how stories work. Right.

And they can be directional, but then you can also substitute yourself more with filling in the specifics. So sometimes they can help on that level too. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you can ask them stories because one of the other things I see, I kind of mentioned it before, but I see a lot of, a lot of, of FAs and private wealth managers who will rush to a solution before they actually know what the problem is. But if you ask somebody about the story of their life, or the story of why they want to achieve that goal, or what does that goal look like. Some people, there are some people I know who have used this thing of saying, "What gets you up at 2 AM in the morning?" And that can lead you to the story of what their real concerns and fears are about money. Right.

Or you could look at their face and see when do their eyes light up, or when do they make a face, or what's the intonation. Like, that will also help reveal information, not just what they say.

Right, but how they say it. How they say it, yeah. To body language. So this is my favorite subject. I love talking about this. We've had spoken word for about 160,000 years, but we've walked on Earth for millions, you know, 2, 5, 14, whomever you believe. So we communicated totally through our bodies. Now, I want you to think about this. When you walk into a room, Or when you're walking down the street, you see people and you make a judgment about them before they ever open their mouth. Your judgment is, "Ooh, I'd like to meet that person," or, "They're so slumped over in the way they're walking that they don't look good." I have a poster, an old poster that says, "If you stand upright and your posture is great, you're a good person. If you're slumping over, you're evil." Can you imagine giving that connotation to it? So, The thing to think about then with body language is our body has got to really reflect who we are. It also has to be in sync with the words that we use. So body language involves things such as I talked about posture, which means when you walk into a room, you want to walk in with confidence. You want your body to be upright and stay straight. If you're going to shake somebody's hand, you want to hold your hand up. And shake it firmly. It's also about when you're sitting in a chair, you don't want to slump over because that sends a message of being disinterested or that there's something amiss. When you're standing on a stage, for example, and when you're sitting at a panel, anything like that, you want to make sure that your body reflects what you're feeling that day. Now, You also don't want to be rigid. Now we think about our arms, for example. If you cross your arms a lot, that puts a barrier between the person, you and the person you're talking to, which can mean that you're absolutely not interested in them or you're bored. Sometimes it means you're cold, especially for women. There's a lot of interpretations, but try to avoid crossing your arms. When you hold your arms in a kind of a visionary position, which is, it's almost like holding a playground ball in front of you, that means you're a very visionary person. I'm giving you 2 things that great speakers use when they're out there on a stage, or just talking to a group of people. If you open up your hands in a way that it's just in front of you, but they're just very open, that means you're being very inclusive with people. And of course, the most non-threatening thing is when you do what's called a steeple, or you just have your hands folded, and that means you're truly listening to someone. That's kind of a listening mode that you want to adapt. So think about all of those sorts of things with your body or your hands and your gestures. Facial expressions, you mentioned them. Have them reflect what you're thinking about and what you're talking about. I sometimes laugh because in this world of Botox, sometimes people don't have the same kinds of facial expressions because they can't move their face as much. But you want to smile with your eyes. You want your expressions to just reflect again that you're your— what you're saying, because it has to be in sync or else it's just incongruous. And then I want you to think about eye contact. And I love this thing I call pies for the eyes, which is when you're in a room with several people, I want you to split the room into like 3 pieces of pizza. And you look down the middle and talk to that— those people in one phrase, then you move your head in another phrase to another side of the room and on a third phrase to the third side. It can be as simple as having 10 people in a room. And then you want direct eye contact. Eyes are the gateway to the soul. And I know what you're gonna ask me is, how does this all of them translate to hybrid when you've got, or when you're doing something on Zoom? So you've got, because a lot of people are still continuing to use it, it's convenient, it can be a very quick and easy way of communicating, But it's different. So I learned in television over all those many years that the television camera drains you of about 30% of your energy. When you're in front of a camera on a computer, on a laptop, whatever you're using for Zoom or whatever platform you're choosing, Google Meets or any of them, there's so many out there now, you have to amplify. You have to bring your energy up just like you have to do in a podcast. Your energy has to be higher because you get drained of things. And I also want you to think in a certain sense that you are being your own producer and like in a television studio when you're on Zoom. So think about how you can be your best self, what you have, watch, watch what you have behind you. Remember in the first days of COVID and Zoom, we saw people with the weirdest things in their background. Sometimes they have a plant that looked like their head was being cut in two, or they'd have the camera focus so funny you could see right up their nostrils. It's just, and they'd have a mess behind them, and that all sends signals that is not good. I think we've learned how to clean up our act, but we're still doing that. What I call a virtual handshake. And what I mean by that is when you first get on, I always get on a Zoom call early, and I always start to have conversations with the first people on. I say, hey, you know, Joe, how are you today? What's going on? What, you know, what town are you in? What's happening there in the weather? Making some kind of conversation, just like you would if you walked into somebody's office. And so that helps. Now you're breaking kind of, you're breaking the ice with 1 person, 2 person, 3 people, however, get on early and it becomes a fun, it can be a fun conversation. And so that's one way of actually beginning to communicate well in a Zoom. I talked a lot about hands and gestures. I like to use them below my shot because they still are adding the emphasis and they're still giving me an ability to have my voice sound better and my expressions on my face be better. So think about using them down below the screen, that'll really work too. So there's a ton of different things that you can do on a hybrid situation. When you're in a room where you've got some people live and some people that are virtual, you must make sure you're including those virtual people. I've heard so many people complain that they're just ignored. Yeah, yeah.

It's an easy mistake to make, but you're right, an important one not to make.

Mm-hmm. And they're upset because, "What am I, chopped liver? Am I not part of this conversation?" And they've also complained that they'll hear two people having kind of a side conversation. They want to know what it is. Why are they having that conversation in the room and I'm not party to it? So we need to be really conscious of how we're treating people respectfully. Absolutely.

And two things. One is, first, it takes, what, all of 8 seconds to acknowledge these people, right? I mean, to do it in a genuine way. And already from the get-go, almost on a structural level, the virtual people might feel like they're maybe not as important or like second class in that context. So you just want to make sure like, nope, we're all in this together. You're an equal in this context. Yeah, exactly.

That— it's so important because we can feel disconnected really easily these days. Oh yeah. I mean, you've been through a lot and trying to get back on track. I think we're getting there and I think people are I think people have learned a lot. And I don't know about you, but I feel like they're kinder. I do. I feel like people are kinder and I feel like they're more conscious of the relationships now.

Yeah, I think so. I think there was maybe an element of humbling. That might be the word for everyone who went through COVID and were slowly creeping out. But there's been— it spurred so much introspection and prioritizing of what's important, right? There's a lot of soul searching and things that before were just running on autopilot and inertia, now it's suddenly like the trains came off the tracks and it's like, "Hmm, what do we do now?" Right, exactly.

So you need to think about those things and use it as a great learning experience. But that notion of vulnerability and compassion, I mean, it's everywhere.

Yeah, I mean, the compassion, I would think, makes people better listeners, all things considered equal.

Maybe it does, because— so my mother always used to say to me, God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. And so we should use those ears for listening, because listening is crucial. I will promise anyone listening to this that if you spend more time listening and less time talking, your clients are going to love you much more than they already do. They want to know you hear what they're saying. So do it.

I've heard that also. I think that applies to other facets of life too, where there's someone who's an excellent listener, patient listener, and someone says, "Oh, she's great." And I'm like, "Why? What'd she say?" And they might struggle, like, "I'm not sure, but I just love them." And then part of it is that they had a captive attentive audience, right? And that was part of it. It wasn't even so much what they said as what they didn't say and that they listened.

It's really funny because if you read about some of the world's greatest orators and speakers, they will be known for— people love them. But when people walk away from a conversation with them, the speaker knows so much about the person they had the conversation with. The person walking away many times knows nothing about the speaker. So you have to show people that you care and you're listening. You know that other adage, "I don't care how much you know until I know how much you care." I think that's really something important too for people who are listening to this to think about.

I wanted to go back to touch on— about body language, just to underscore the importance of it. Albert Mehrabian— I may be mispronouncing his name, but I think that's right— he's a researcher of body language, and he broke down the components of face-to-face conversation. And the following numbers are out there. He found that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and only 7% for the actual words that are uttered. And that's pretty powerful. It is.

And it's actually something I use every day in my trainings. So if you put the first two together, the visual, what are you doing with your body, and the vocal, how are you saying it? How are you using your voice? That's 93%. I don't want anybody to walk away from this thinking, oh, it doesn't matter what I say, then content doesn't matter. Because it does. If you don't have anything to say, then it doesn't matter how you say it. A lot of this, a lot of his work was done with a bunch of different studies, and one of the studies that was a part of all of this conversation was done by both UCLA and USC, and they gave 100 people the same speech, and then they went out And they recorded the reaction. How did people respond to these speeches, and what did they like, and what didn't they like? And in every single instance, it had to do with the way people delivered them, because the content was absolutely the same. And so out of that comes this understanding that what we need to do is have a conversation that delivers everything in a way that keeps us engaged. Now, engagement's super important. Do you know why?

I have a few ideas, but sure. You articulate it best. Go ahead.

What do you think the average attention span in the United States is today?

Low and ever lower. I don't know. Let's say 3.7 seconds.

Oh, actually it's 8. Oh, okay.

Well, we're going to get to 3.7 eventually.

Well, we're on our way. In fact, there's another new study that's out that says the attention span of people who we pay to listen to us, like therapists and coaches and stuff like that, is at 11 seconds, which is really scary. But so this is based on a Microsoft study, and they said that this 8 seconds is a second less than the time it takes a goldfish to feed. And so now how you measure a goldfish feeding, I don't know. But anyway, I'm going with it. So what does that mean? That means that now you have to find really, really great ways of keeping your audience engaged, which is another part of the whole body language thing because you use your body to keep people engaged. So what I always suggest are things like we talked about gestures. Gestures help. So do— if you're making a presentation at a bunch of people, so does strategic movement. Maybe you walk from one side of the room to another. Sometimes you stand up and you sit down. You just, you move, you use your eye contact, you use again your facial expressions, all of that, and your voice. Your voice, the way that you speak sets up expectations. First of all, the tone. If you're talking like this and you're going really fast, people are going to go, uh-oh, this is going to be— what's this going to be? But if you're very somber, then they're thinking, uh-oh, I'm not sure I want to hear this. But if you walk in using a voice that is confident and it's warm and it's genuine, people are going to respond to that. So think about how you're using your voice. We have so many possibilities for our voice and so few of us use it wisely.

You know, I mean, what's so interesting is that there are a lot of advisors who are incredibly accomplished, educated, etc. And they might think a lot of this is like, oh, soft stuff and doesn't matter. But in reality, you have to look at how you are perceived. That is the reality. And the credentials are almost table stakes. That's almost a given. You need to have that connection and adapt to the way the world is and understand human nature and how we perceive things. And to this point, I think it was Neil Postman, he was a communications researcher, he taught at NYU, he wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death that was first published in the late '80s, and he made the point, which is really interesting, is that you were being looked at differently than in decades past. Now there's a higher expectation for when you present. I think he used the example of pretend you're a guest on the David Letterman Show from back then, that's almost how we see people. Like, you don't have the luxury of droning on for 20 minutes about a story. You have to acknowledge time. You can't just mumble stuff. You have to be audible, right? So you have to have a higher level of awareness simply of how people perceive, and that will only help yourself even if you feel it's like, ugh, kind of resent it, but it is what it is.

It's absolutely true. Perception is everything. And you said soft skills? There's some new data out there that is showing communication and how, how you do it is almost becoming a hard skill. And it's so important. Why is it more important? I think because we can, we communicate in so many different ways today. Also because it's so instantaneous. Getting back to this attention span, That means that engagement requires us to be far more— we've got to be far more cognizant of it. People are not willing to sit and listen to something that does not engage them. We also have to be totally interactive. Everything I do these days is interactive as it can be because that, you know, it shows a respect for people, but it also— in that I want to know what they're thinking. And it also means you need to consider that your audience is— that's who you're having the conversation with. It's just a conversation. But perception, you know, that thing about first impressions, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So think about that. That means that depends on your posture, how you look, what kind of a smile you have on your face. Your confidence level. It's everything. You have to be able to understand that perception in many people's eyes becomes reality.

Well, that's great advice. We're just about out of time, but I wanted to ask you if there's anything we didn't talk about, any other points.

Well, the other thing about— I want— that goes hand in hand with stories, another great way of Another way of talking about something is using analogies. That helps put things into context as well. And by analogies, it's like lemons and oranges, or, you know, using a like something to explain a concept. And that can really work well, again, when you're dealing with numbers. Because numbers are— you give people too much data, the human brain can't take it all in. You gotta be a little careful about that. So stories and analogies will really help with that. But I also want to encourage people that this is stuff that you spend a little bit of time on it and you will be shocked at the results. And you can do it, you know, in my work I have people start small. They do something, a little something different every day, and then they just build it in and it becomes a habit. And the one other thing that drives me crazy are words that we should not be using, such as, "Well, honestly," which means to me, "Oh, you haven't been honest before?" Or, "I think," which leads me a little dubious about, "Well, is that a good idea or a bad idea?" Instead, I would say, "I believe," or, "The best information shows us," or etc. Crutch words. Frankly, well, okay, now you haven't been frank with me before. So there's a whole bunch of words we say all the time. And these crutch words become a big deal because we use like, you know, so, maybe. Somebody last night was telling me about right. And so you want to just think about how to make yourself a little better at all of this. Excellent.

Well, that was incredibly useful information. Thank you so much for joining.

You're very welcome.

It was fun. I totally agree. Thanks so much. My guest has been Jane Hanson. For more advisor-specific podcasts, please check out barons.com/podcast. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartolison.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.