How to run a Values session [How-Tos]
The Your Values module helps you understand what is truly important to your clients. Armed with this knowledge, you can define a strategy to use their resources to live their best life.
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Activity 2: Picking and Ranking Your Values
Adviser: Leads into the Values module
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- No judgement - You're about to learn a lot about each other and I want you to know this is a safe space to share what's really most important to you.
- No Peeking - Don't feel the need to copy your partner. Your individual thoughts and feelings are most important.
- No interrupting - We want each person to be able to share their opinions. Try to sit and listen to your spouse without interruption.
- Have fun with it - Most of all, it's here for us to have a bit of fun with and learn how we can help you live your best life aligned with your values
Adviser: Addressing the Non-Financial spouse first.
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Captures the non-CFO's top 5 value cards.
Ranking Values Cards
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This is where you, as the adviser, will start to question and try to understand what this means to the client. You will be prompted to ask the client client 2 questions:
- What… the card means to you
- Why… did you choose that particular card
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An example of this could be if the client chose ‘spend without guilt'. You can ask ‘how do you feel about the way you normally spend your money?’ or ‘what would your life ideally look like if you could spend without guilt?’.
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You want to take notes in each section and you can also use our Voice text to record the client's responses.
Adviser: Starting with the non-financial spouse, the adviser asks them to share what each card represents. Advisers can use the questions listed in the next section to guide the conversation. It's often the third question that uncovers the deep, true answer.
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Adviser: Draw their attention to one card at a time, from most important to least. For each card, go through the below process to understand what the card means to them and why that’s important for them. The way we do this is by asking why up to 5 times (in different ways, such as “What does that mean?” or “Could you explain that a bit more?”). The ‘5 Whys’ is a root-cause analysis method that generally gets to the real heart of the question.
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The aligning of the cards is where we move from combining the top 10 cards across the household down to the top 5 values for the household.
Adviser: After each client has gone through and shared why the values are important to them, encourage a discussion between the partners to come to a shared set of 5 core values.
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So before diving into the goal setting. As an adviser, you need to ask the client to rate their current progress in relation to their top values.
This marks how they feel they are aligning with their values in daily life. The scale ranges from 1-10, and will ideally rise over time.
The important aspect of the scoring is understanding what things your client is wanting to do to live their values. Understanding where clients feel they sit in terms of their progress will help you to direct the conversation further.
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Prompting the client for details so that the goal is SMART will help you in defining the goals post the values session. You might even ask the client how confident they are in achieving the goal or how important it is to them.
For further guidance on how to run a Values session review our Webinar: Discover your client's values with Lumiant.