By: Ryan Dolan
Atul Gawande made a sobering discovery.
Gawande, a highly-respected endocrine surgeon, was the epitome of technical mastery and professional accomplishment. A Rhodes Scholar, educated at Stanford and Harvard, Gawande believed that with the end of formalized schooling, continued improvement throughout one’s career sprang mainly from the individual’s own focus, initiative, and hard work. Education provided the foundation, but the house was built by your own sweat. Largely alone.
And this mindset worked great in the early years of his career. But by his mid-40s, Gawande noticed a change. The almost daily, palpable improvement in performance that he had grown used to had, at first, begun to taper. Then it seemed to cease entirely. Though surgery is considered a late-peaking career, given the value of experience and judgment, Gawande had hit a ceiling. Had he peaked at a relatively young age? If that sobering prospect proved true, the best he could do was hold off the inevitable decline in his capacity.
He had experienced this arc before: the rapid and seemingly never-ending improvement, followed by a sudden and seemingly intractable peak, eventually giving way to a slow, gravitational decline. A competitive tennis player in his youth, Gawande was one of the best players on his high school team. In college, he realized his talent had peaked and it wasn’t good enough. As the years passed he continued to play casually, but discovered his performance was declining along with his physical vitality. By his 40s, his game was a pale shadow of what it had once been. He was in the grip of an irreversible slide.
Then Gawande, on vacation, hired an assistant pro at a local club, a competitive college player, to hit with him. The kid began making observations about Gawande’s game and offering suggestions. He noted a slight error in body positioning was causing a loss of pop in Gawande’s serve. “I was dubious,” he later said, “my serve had always been the best part of my game. But I listened…With a few minutes of tinkering, he’d added at least ten miles to my serve. I was serving harder than I ever had in my life.”
That experience got Gawande thinking about performance and coaching. Why, for example, do elite tennis players and golfers have coaches, yet high performers in other field-like surgery-do not? If a one hour tennis lesson could improve the trajectory of his game, what could it do for something of far more importance- his surgical performance?
Gawande convinced a retired surgeon and mentor, a man he respected and trusted, to observe one of his procedures. On the day of the surgery, Gawande was initially self-conscious at being observed, but was soon lost in concentration and flow. When finished, Gawande left the operating room feeling the procedure had gone flawlessly, with little room for critique. His “coach,” though generally complimentary, proceeded to point out- much like the tennis instructor- a list of small tweaks, from body positioning to lighting. In aggregate, they had a profound impact on him. “That one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years…Since I have taken on a coach, my complication rate has gone down…I know that I’m learning again. I can’t say that every surgeon needs a coach to do his best work, but I’ve discovered that I do.”
If the right coach can accelerate the performance of expert practitioners - pro athletes or surgeons - how transformational can their impact be when coaching a subject that is both crucial, but outside the student’s expertise or experience?
I was recently having a drink with a friend who’s a client. We’ve been working together for a year, and I was asking his opinion of working together so far. After giving it some thought, he flatly said “You know, you’re a demanding person-you have very high standards for clients.” (It bears mentioning that I’ve heard this before - primarily from my wife and kids - it wasn’t meant as a compliment.)
Embarrassed, I started to apologize. “No, it’s just what I needed,” he said. He compared my approach to that of a hard-driving, football coach that had a big impact on him in high school and beyond. He could intuit that I sincerely cared about him and his family, saw unrealized and untapped potential, and was committed to helping him get better-financially and otherwise.
Prior to working together, my friend, a very private person, had never discussed personal financial issues with anyone, including his wife. This common behavior often leads to bad outcomes. As physicist Richard Feynman said “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” We can rationalize all sorts of things when we are the only one judging our actions. Running a solitary road is also extremely stressful-as all the pressure and anxiety of your decisions and actions is on you.
Admittedly, transparency with my friend came haltingly at first. I got the feeling he wasn’t giving me his full unvarnished story, and wasn’t being as candid as I needed him to be. I’ve seen a lot, and it’s hard to bullshit me-I insist on seeing all the financial data and I can piece together what happened. I called him on it. If he couldn’t start getting real, the advisory relationship wasn’t going to work, and we would part as friends.
He’s far more open and communicative today. He’s also far happier and serene than he used to be. As I say, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” Throw open the curtains on your deepest financial issues, fears and insecurities with a committed partner, and watch those issues begin to dissolve. There is power in vulnerability.
When I think of the clients who’ve most benefited from my process, they are, in a word, coachable. They are committed to getting better, to living life with rigor and vigor. They want, as one of my most coachable clients said, “A meaningful life, not an easy one.”
They know they don’t - can’t - have all the answers. They understand the power in more than one perspective. They are naturally collaborative.
Some other attributes of people who most benefit: they invest the time/bandwidth in the process, they are objective, good communicators, open to vulnerability. It’s no coincidence that some of my most coachable clients tend to be younger (30s). They are less stuck in their ways, less convinced they know it all, and tend to be far more open and communicative.
What makes a good financial coach? First, he understands trust is the foundation of the entire process. A client needs to innately trust that the advisor deeply cares about him (not just his money) and is committed to the relationship, and helping the client define his mission and helps build a plan to get there. It helps if the coach is intelligent, both in IQ and EQ. He needs to be patient, emotionally balanced. He believes in the client. And yes, he should have high standards for clients.
This quote sums it up well:
“It’s important to have someone who you totally trust, who is totally committed, who shares your vision, and yet who has a little bit different set of skills and who also acts as something of a check on you. Some of the ideas you run by him, you know he’s going to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, have you thought about this and that?’
The benefit of sparking off somebody who’s got that kind of brilliance is that it not only makes business more fun, but it really leads to a lot of success.”
Bill Gates
Are you financially alone and adrift? Finding the right financial coach for you could be the answer.
