Recently, I came across a newspaper interview with Katharine Birbalsingh, the famously strict head teacher. She argued that the modern trend towards giving children greater choice, about what they eat or wear, can damage their chances of becoming successful adults.
Instead of being friends with their children, according to Birbalsingh, parents would do better to embrace being authority figures and not shy from taking charge.
If children are to distinguish right from wrong and achieve their best possible outcomes, a firmer hand is needed.
The outspoken head teacher at Michaela Community School in Wembley cuts a controversial figure and I can’t say I agree with all her views. But her ideas about education, particularly the role of tough love in giving children the best chance of success, provided me with food for thought.
As financial planners, we routinely pepper our debate, and our marketing literature, with the truism that clients are at the centre of everything we do. And they must be. Without clients, we have no business.
If planners really are to do their best by clients, they must be prepared to play bad cop as well as good
But what should the relationship between client and planner look like in practice, if we are to ensure the best possible outcome for them, which in the final analysis must be our primary purpose?
Certainly, friendships do develop with clients over the years, but must always remain secondary to providing the best possible advice.
To do so, responsible planners cannot duck the difficult conversations or hard decisions. Nor should they look to.
If planners really are to do their best by clients, they must be prepared to play bad cop as well as good. Deliver the unpalatable news, but encourage optimism. Stick to the plan, don’t panic.
Why do advisers turn clients away?
A good planner will direct clients, sometimes quite forcefully, against their natural instincts.
In a client’s early life, a planner will discipline them to save more for retirement or face an uncomfortable old age.
Later on, clients will often seek a planner’s endorsement of life decisions – permission to buy a car, or to give money to children, for example.
Planners do become authority figures of sorts to clients, helping them live their best financial lives, preparing them to thrive in an uncertain, unknowable world.
Clients aren’t children, and I’m not suggesting we treat them as such. Relationships must always be built on mutual respect and understanding.
Yet planners must never lose sight of the fact that they are the experts. They will have a better grasp of the strategies and tactics most likely to lead to the optimum outcomes for clients.
I think there’s a lot to be said for planners aspiring to relationships akin to those between lawyers and clients or doctors and patients. Both lawyers and doctors are trusted experts whose advice is seldom seen as debateable.
To elevate financial planning to the status of medicine or the law requires planners themselves to possess comparable expertise, and an unswerving honesty in all dealings with clients.
Tough love may be tough, but it can also be a kindness in the long run
Planners, too, have a duty of care to clients and must always act in their best interests. Like doctors, lawyers or indeed parents, they must be prepared to deliver unpopular messages, if those messages are the right ones.
Should clients threaten to harm their financial future by making the wrong choices now, remind them of their own objectives.
Take Donald Trump’s swingeing tariffs on US imports. They may be causing market volatility, but is a knee-jerk response to switch out of risk-based investments really the right path to follow?
Demonstrating the perils of emotional and irrational decision-making is key. A hard conversation now may well lead to deeper trust between planner and client later on.
Tough love may be tough, but it can also be a kindness in the long run.
Simon Goldthorpe is chief distribution officer at Finli
