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My financial advisor clients want to be held accountable for the activities they need to execute to grow their clientele. Coaching without accountability is like a parent lecturing their kids on not crossing a busy street, then ignoring it when they do. I hold every one of my clients accountable for doing what they say they're going to do – that's how they get the results they're after.
This can best be accomplished through a "Socratic inquiry" with the following questions:
1. "What would you like to achieve, by when?"Let's use an example of coaching a financial advisor. When the coach asks this question, the advisor might say that he'd like an additional $30,000 of net income by the end of the year. This is a good start – having the FA define what he wants by a specific date.
2. "What would it mean to you if you could do that?" This is where the coach elicits the underlying "why" of the advisor's monetary goal. The responses will uncover the FA's true motivation: Maybe it's for putting his kids in a private school, perhaps he and his spouse want to travel to Tuscany for their 20th anniversary, an ailing parent might need additional financial support, etc. This is how the coach and the FA deepen their relationship.
