The Psychology of Advice: Power Couple

My Next Phase also includes a unique personality assessment to identify spouses’ different styles in seven categories:

1. Stress: Resilients tend to minimize stressful events; Responsives tend to overreact.

2. Planning: Structureds prefer framework and closure; Flexibles prefer open-endedness and lack of structure.

3. Social: Outgoings are energized by social contact and usually have a wide network of friends; Contemplatives get energy from being alone and tend to have few close friends.

4. Activity: Independents like to be on their own; Interdependents prefer to do things with others.

5. Information: Practicals are detail-oriented; Visionaries see the big picture and ignore the details.

6. Outlook: Cautious people are more pessimistic; Optimistics have a rosy perspective.

7. Decision: Analytics are tuned to rational, linear logic; Empathetics are tuned into feelings and seek the harmony of the whole.

Burnham focuses not only on recognizing differences in these areas, but on determining how extreme a type an individual is. In each category, he also recognizes a third called “mixed” that’s a combination of the two.

Once a couple’s divergent styles are identified, their advisor will need to help them hear each other’s feelings and desires and brainstorm what Burnham calls “new house rules.” For instance, if a retiring spouse expresses a desire to chair a volunteer program that will consume great amounts of time and energy, or wants to move to a new location, the couple is encouraged to discuss these possible decisions up front. The other spouse has an opportunity to clearly communicate her feelings, such as: “Don’t start that without me; I want to do it with you” or “It’s fine if you do that,” or “I don’t want you to do that at all.”

One house rule, Burnham says, is “If I’m retiring before you, I shouldn’t start something that will impact you when you retire.” I would modify this by saying that if one spouse wants to originate a new project or interest that will impact the other, they should take time to talk about it before any decision is made.

These decisions will obviously require a process of slow, thoughtful, empathetic communication on both sides. If you are comfortable facilitating such discussions, you can help your clients learn to “walk in each other’s shoes” and foster a climate of respectful listening and good will.

Reintroducing Yourselves

At retirement, Bhaj Townsend says, we’re reintroduced to the person we fell in love with so many years ago. In order to become friends and lovers again, we have to refamiliarize ourselves with this person. To facilitate the task, Townsend, founder and wealth & legacy coach with TRGi in Kirkland, Washington, developed a process called Life Focus that she has been using for 11 years.

Townsend tells clients who are in a relationship that there are actually three of them to consider–each of them individually and both of them as a couple–and all three entities are vying for attention. So, she says, “Let’s invite them all to the party.”

As the first step in Life Focus, each partner identifies his core strengths from an open-ended list of possibilities. In Townsend’s presence, they then tell each other their life stories, organized around these core strengths. Couples typically emerge from this exercise with a deeper friendship and a better understanding of each other’s motivations and yearnings.

In the second part of the process, Townsend helps clients determine their guiding principles. Each spouse is asked to choose the three values they most strongly relate to from a list that includes Happiness, Love, Integrity, Loyalty, and Responsibility. Finally, they pick their number one value and explain what it means to them. When both spouses share their lists, any entries that overlap are defined as “Us” values.

In step three, each partner creates a personal mission statement built on her core strengths and values. They then develop a mission statement for themselves as a couple. Finally they contemplate what Townsend calls “destinations” of one year, five years, 10 years, and 25 to 30 years, identifying their goals and dreams for these timelines first individually, then as a couple.

As with Michael Burnham’s process, transforming the lessons learned into a strategy and carrying it out require many subsequent conversations. Townsend recommends that couples meet once a month to discuss actions taken that are aligned with their goals, listening to each other in a climate of respect, honor, and support with no criticism or negative feedback. She follows up at the end of three months and again at six months, and conducts an annual review with them at year-end. Not only does this become a way of life for her clients, but it allows her financial planning work with them to develop organically from their values, core strengths, and mission statements–the elements that matter most to them.

The Wheel of Life

To help couples entering the retirement transition phase discover what’s working in their lives and what needs attention, Marty Kurtz, CEO of The Planning Center in Moline, Illinois, uses a strikingly visual process.

Kurtz, a fee-only planner with more than 25 years of experience, shows his clients a diagram of the “Wheel of Life,” with nine spokes that are identified as Family, Health, Leisure, Learning, Inner Growth, Home, Community, Work, and Finances. He asks the clients to indicate how satisfied they are in each area by marking a point on the appropriate spoke, with the center of the wheel representing zero and the outer end as 10. Then they connect the points so that each client can see what their uneven circles look like.

This generally leads to a productive conversation about which areas of life need work. The spouses are asked what would have to happen to reach a satisfaction level of 10 in each area. Kurtz also helps them clarify life goals–immediate, short-term, middle term, and long-term–in each of the nine categories. They then discuss how to address these goals in order to achieve “10″ with each one.

I find it especially interesting that he asks detailed questions about his clients’ money memories, so he has a good understanding of the psychological burden they bring into his office. Kurtz has also developed a cash flow management approach for retirees that finds to be transformational. Like many holistically-minded advisors, he recognizes the need to lighten the emotional intensity of the past in order to help couples facing retirement negotiate their future together.

As a therapeutic educator, one of your most important missions is to help client couples prepare for the dramatic life changes of their Third Age. Encourage them to clarify their dreams and goals, understand and accept their differences, and learn to empathize with their spouse’s journey enough to “cross the bridge” into the other’s world.

The good news is that couples who have found a way (through introspection and life experience, counseling, or therapy) to transform and resolve the power struggle can emerge with a foundation of respect and good will for one another. As each partner learns to empathize with the other emotionally and intellectually, the Third Age can become one of their most enjoyable phases of life.

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Olivia Mellan, a speaker, coach, and business consultant, is the author with Sherry Christie of The Client Connection: How Advisors Can Build Bridges That Last, available through the Investment Advisor Bookstore at invest-store.com/investmentadvisor. She also offers money psychology teleclasses for financial advisors and for the general public. E-mail Olivia at [email protected].