How Top Advisors Navigate Political Landmines with Clients

Every advisor understands the importance of respecting their clients’ perspectives, especially when it comes to avoiding emotionally charged conversations on religious or political topics. However, there will be times when a client may want to share their political views and inquire about the advisor's thoughts on current political issues.

In their conversation, Ken Haman, Managing Director of the Advisor Institute at AllianceBernstein, and Scott Tatum, Director of the Advisor Institute at AllianceBernstein, explore three client perspectives on political disagreements and discuss how to handle two personality types that struggle with differing opinions. Ken offers practical advice for navigating political discussions to maintain trust and respect while protecting the client-advisor relationship. He also shares strategies for defusing situations where clients insist on knowing the advisor's personal political views.

Here's a transcript of their conversation:

Ken Haman: Hi, I’m Ken Haman. As Managing Director of the Advisor Institute at AllianceBernstein, I meet with financial advisors every day. One thing I hear expressed over and over is their frustration with how much they are juggling. The advisors I talk to are constantly trying to balance competing priorities, from managing client relationships to prospecting for new business, and of course, the tasks of leading their team. This problem of juggling is why we created the AllianceBernstein Digital Coach. This is a proprietary tool that draws on the wisdom of behavioral economics and unique perspectives from the Advisor Institute’s practice-management experts. In less than 10 minutes with the Digital Coach, you will be able to identify and prioritize the top needs of your business. And armed with those insights, you’ll be well on your way to tackling the challenge of limited resources while positioning your business to seize opportunities for growth. Let the Digital Coach guide your journey to success.  Visit abfunds.com/go/digitalcoach.  

Scott Tatum: Welcome to this edition of Secrets of Successful Advisors with Ken Haman.  

Ken, I am so excited for today’s topic. This is an issue that our listeners are going to find fascinating. It’s timely, and it is so useful. Today we get Ken to talk about politics, [but] he’s not going to [give] his opinions on any candidate or issue. We’re going to talk about what happens when clients want to bring politics into this relationship with a financial advisor.

You know, Ken, I think like most of the listeners, I’ve always been told, just avoid issues like politics and religion in professional settings. But I’ve never had a deep understanding of the risk of that dynamic until I’ve had a couple of conversations with you, and you understand the real social dynamic that’s at stake. Please explain that to our listeners. 

Ken: Well, Scott, there is a social dynamic at stake, and that advice that you’ve received—and I think we’ve all received from the time we were young—is, you know, just avoid the two big problematic topics that are so meaningful to most people that people feel so strongly about: religion and politics. Just avoid it. Well, that’s easier said than done when you are a financial advisor. And there’s some reasons for this. And I think understanding that is a starting point for understanding how to navigate these challenging moments when highly activated individuals who you are working with closely want to engage you in a conversation that likely won’t go well. And I think our starting point is to understand first the role of the financial advisor, the way we think of it at the Advisor Institute, and then why that role can galvanize clients to really work hard to enlist you in the conversation.

So let’s start with the role. At the Advisor Institute, we believe that the role of the financial advisor is not a position in which you are working with customers. We don’t think of the role of the financial advisor as primarily a commercial role. We think of it as a consultative role. We think of the advisor as a knowledge worker who builds an intentional relationship with a client as opposed to a customer. In Webster’s dictionary, the word client is defined as “a person under the protection of another.” And so, like the role of the physician or the counselor at law, or the psychotherapist or the clergy person, in each of those roles, the standard of responsibility in the relationship is highly elevated. Each of those roles has an obligation to preserve, for example, confidentiality. Each of those roles has a responsibility to put the interest of the other person ahead of their own. For the physician it’s first and foremost, “Do no harm.” You’re not in the business of experimenting. For the psychotherapist it’s “Do not have a dual relationship.” There is one relationship in the room. You are providing a framework for emotional recovery in return for a fee, and there can be no other relationship.  

So, in all of these professions, there is this elevated sense of responsibility, and we believe that applies to the financial advisor. Whether the advisor’s organization is holding them accountable to a fiduciary standard or not, because they’re working with clients, there is at least to some extent this elevated role of responsibility toward them.  

Now, why does that matter psychologically? Well, when the human being who’s your client encounters that organizing framework for the relationship, it’s a very unique experience for them emotionally. It’s an experience of trustworthiness. And that sense of trustworthiness is composed of two critical elements we talk about a lot at the Advisor Institute. And that is the element of goodwill, that is consistent toward the client, and the element of professional competency, that this individual is elevated and therefore worthy of their skills, and therefore worthy of a fee to be paid to them for their knowledge.  

Now, I know many advisors look at all that gobbledygook of psychology …verbiage, and it’s a little daunting to parse all of it. But what it leads to in a simple psychological understanding is [that] the client is going to come to the advisor and see the advisor as a character of elevated significance in their life. And they’re going to transfer a lot of emotional connectivity to that person in the sense that they are a human being who’s larger than typical in terms of their impact, their value, their meaning, the quality of experience [the client is] having, even the dependency—almost activating childhood levels of dependency. Which is why advisors so often see such strong emotional reactions in clients, say, when the market corrects and the advisor hasn’t accurately predicted the correction and saved the client from the pain, [then] the client can get very upset with the advisor.

That’s evidence of what I’m talking about—this heightened level of connectivity. So in that context, in spite of your best efforts to say, “Hey, you know what, let’s just avoid religion and politics. That’s for another place and another time,” the role of the advisor is going to stimulate in the client this desire to talk about the things that are most important to them. And in the modern era, and in fact from the earliest stages of the political theater in the United States, going back hundreds of years, there are things that stimulate intense emotional reactions and perceptions of threat or opportunity that are rooted in the political theater, that are part of the cultural conversation, that the client may have become highly engaged with emotionally, highly activated by. And guess what? That’s going to cause them to want to go talk to the significant people in their life about it.

And they may come with a desire to understand more, or they may come with a need to be confirmed in the way they are thinking about things, the conclusions they’ve come to or the perspective they now hold near and dear. And there are a lot of psychological dynamics that can contribute to this. But understanding as an advisor that you are in this elevated role, you are going to pull some of that interest, at least for some of your clients. There are going to be times when they’re going to want to talk with you about it. They may just start up a conversation simply because they’re activated and because they know you are a compassionate, curious listener. That means you’re going to face some of these issues around the political theater, especially when issues in the political theater have become highly galvanized.

Scott: So there’s a real risk when they bring these issues to you. That’s an understanding of why they bring them to you. What’s the risk, and how can they come to see you if you engage in that conversation?

Ken: Well, Scott, that is an incisive question, and it moves this conversation forward. So, what we know at this point in our conversation is that the advisor is likely to galvanize some of these agendas, and we know that the advisor has this elevated level of responsibility. So I have two responses to your question there. One’s implied in the question. The other has to do with understanding clients and making sense of client behavior. The first and the implicit issue is, the advisor is a human being too. Advisors are political beings. Now, politics may be deeply influential in your daily life as an advisor [or] politics may be more peripheral. Everybody has their own engagement with the political dynamics that are going on in the political conversation. The first and foremost thing I would say to any advisor who wants to navigate this area successfully is, the more you are galvanized emotionally by the political dynamics, the conversation—and I don’t care which side of the aisle you’re on, I am utterly neutral in terms of my advice to advisors, regardless of which direction you tend, right or left, regardless of how extreme you feel relative to rightness or leftness—if you are highly galvanized by the political conversation, it is really important to be aware of that and to be highly cautious of what that galvanized perspective can do to your relationships.

So, if you’re highly galvanized and you have a need to process your emotions and feelings and engage others, one of the human needs is often to be confirmed in your perspective and have other people resonate with you. If you feel that way because you feel threatened or you feel like some great opportunity is unfolding, either way, it’s time to be cautious about how that may affect others. And here’s what I mean by that. An individual who’s on the other side of that political divide, and if you become galvanized and begin driving your agenda at them, well, you’re no longer—they’re no longer under your protection. Now, they’re being—they’re at risk of being—influenced or even insulted by you. And that’s not appropriate in your relationship. So if you are highly galvanized, if your emotions are strong in that area, that’s a good time to become really aware that it’s important to be very cautious.

And remember your higher calling, which is that this person is under your protection, even if they’re on your side of the political divide. If they’re not as extreme or as engaged around a particular issue as you are, [the] same thing holds true. You can be in a position where they can be alarmed by the fact that, rather than feeling aligned with you, understood by you, in sync with you, you are somehow off in a direction that they can’t embrace. And there’s no need for that in terms of their well-being. For you to be confirmed [in your perspective] is something about you. And by all means . . . don’t hear me saying you shouldn’t go seek confirmation if that’s what you need, but do that with individuals who are not under your care.  

And I think that’s just a starting point for all of us, is that we can all be very activated. We can be activated in general over long periods of time. We can be activated in the moment by a particular event that occurred. The more activated we are, the more we have to be careful about the folks that we are interacting with. Those who are under our protection and care deserve a kind of protection even from our own galvanized sense of emotion. So that’s a starting point. It still doesn’t save you from somebody trying to engage you and get you hooked into their conversation. We’ll get to that in a minute.  

But the other thing that is explicit in your question is, “Okay, how does an advisor understand the clients around them?” So let’s say you’ve taken appropriate care, you’ve boundaried your own emotions, you’re holding those and processing them elsewhere where it’s appropriate. Well, how do we look at clients? Well, there’s some wonderful research and commentary available from some of the luminaries of the previous century in the world of systems theory.  

And I’m thinking of Murray Bowen, who was the psychiatrist in the Washington, DC, marketplace who was understood to be the founder of Bowenian systems theory. And one of his key disciples was Edwin Friedman, who was a rabbi in the Washington, DC, area, but [who] became very involved with organizational dynamics. And he developed a wonderful system for understanding how human beings deal with differences of opinion. And it’s a wonderful theory in the sense that it helps you understand how to navigate a relationship with another person based on some very simple observations of their behavior in the presence of differences.  

So, you know, everyone prides themselves—everyone prides themselves—on being open-minded with no one.

Scott: Right?

Ken: No one has a self-concept of being closed-minded—even individuals who have very limited openness to other people’s opinions. We all think of ourselves as open-minded. But there is a spectrum of open-mindedness that’s really useful to understand when you’re working with numerous people in the public. And understanding these categories is really helpful.  

So what Friedman, using the work of Murray Bowen, kind of discovered and then put [into] words is [that] there’s three types or styles of personality when it comes to differences. One style is highly open-minded, and that style’s basic behavior in the world is, “Hey, I think this way. I hear you think something differently, and I’m interested in what you’re thinking, and to have a conversation to explore each other’s ideas.” So it’s essentially, “Oh, I see you have a difference of opinion. That’s interesting. Tell me more.” Now what Friedman would say about that is that that’s a very high-functioning, highly mentally healthy human being who understands something really important: That none of us have an accurate perception of reality. We all have this little sliver of reality that we’ve created. The world is far more complicated—even the world of politics—is far more complicated than anyone can authentically have a complete understanding of. So that mindset is humble in the face of complexity and open to the fact that other people can have a difference of opinion, and they represent an opportunity to learn something. And that is a very, very unusual kind of human being. That’s a wonderful human being to have as a friend. That’s a wonderful human being to have as a client. We should all aspire to that because it’s such a gentle, open spirit toward other people. And it leads to really interesting conversations.  

Now, that’s about one-third of all people, according to Friedman. The middle third is less what we would call mentally resilient or mentally healthy, and tends to be less open-minded. And their perspective on difference is to say, “Oh, I hear you have a difference of opinion from me, and because you have a difference of opinion from me, I think you’re wrong and I need to correct you.”  

So the first group is, “I hear you have a difference of opinion from me. I want to learn more. You can enrich me even if I don’t end up agreeing with you. It’ll be helpful for me to learn this.”

For this group of people—about a third of all people—it’s not “I’m open to this,” it’s “You’re wrong and I need to correct you.” And that group of people is more polarizing. They’re more singular in their perspective. However, they can tolerate the fact that others have a difference of opinion and can be wrong. And they don’t need to necessarily go rushing off and doing anything about it. They can just say, “Oh, he’s stupid, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Or “Oh, he’s one of those.”  

In the modern political theater, something started to happen about 25 years ago. And that is the political commentary really moved from “We have a difference of opinion, and you’re wrong, and we need to correct you,” that Barry Goldwater quote, you know—“Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts”—which I think is a beautiful kind of juxtaposition of those things, right?  

But now it started to be, “If you differ from me, you are destructive and potentially harming the world. You people are going to destroy us.” And that became very galvanizing as a political statement. It’s not correct, but it does simplify everything to Us and Them.  

The third group of people—this is really important to understand—for them, their perspective is, “Oh, you have a difference of opinion from me. And not only are you wrong, but because you’re different, you are bad and dangerous, and I need to do something about you.” Now, in the early stages of reacting to a difference, these people will attempt to educate you to get you on the straight and narrow. But if they discover that you’re not amenable to that, they will feel very angry and very threatened and very much in need to take action.  

Both groups 2 and 3 really can’t work with you terribly easily if you’re the advisor who’s this elevated character of significance who starts engaging in the conversation and clarifying their point of view politically. That becomes an issue where the client becomes threatened in terms of their well-being and will say, “I can’t be exposed to you.” And it can put the working relationship very much at risk.

So at the beginning point, every advisor should look at each person and assess. The more open-minded the individual, the more “We’re different, and I’m curious,” that is a place of less danger. The middle ground is a place of more danger. The other third—that last third—is a place of great danger. And one of the things that I would encourage all advisors to look at is how polarized you’ve become and how much you’ve absorbed this political narrative that says, “You are different from me and therefore you’re bad, you’re destructive, you’re going to destroy the world. We need to take gross and intense and extreme action to purge the world of such evil humans.” It’s obvious that that’s an extreme perspective, but it’s crept into so much of the narrative that it’s easy to go there pretty quickly now. And again, if we are in this role of care for the other human, we have to be cautious about that, and we have to be protective of them in that regard and allow them to preserve their own point of view.

Scott: Well, that’s just such a beautiful and deep way to understand it, because advisors understand risk. And when I look at a situation, and even if I’m coming from that place of open-mindedness, if I realize that two-thirds of the people I might engage with are at some to a high risk of this going sideways, that really cements the reason that I don’t need to bring it up.  

But that’s not the hard part of this conversation, Ken. The hard part of the conversation is, what happens when they want to bring it up? And so we need to start that discovery with how to understand where the client is, and their willingness to embrace conversation and embrace issues. So, as we get into the really tactical “how we’re going to use it” part of it, let’s start there.

Ken: Well, that’s exactly where we should end up. If we understand [that] we have this elevated responsibility—they’re under our protection—and we understand that two-thirds of the people we’re going to meet will have some degree of great discomfort with difference, and we understand [that] the fundamental bond between the advisor and the client is trust, and trust is built on two things: goodwill and professional competency, what we’re risking when we start having a political conversation is the goodwill component of the relationship. What we also risk to some extent is if they need us, if a difference of opinion means that we’re wrong, then we’re potentially compromising their ability to trust our professional judgment, meaning our competency. So to a great extent that original guidance—maybe avoid the conversation—is good guidance. So I would start with a number of tactical ideas here that I think we should explore and equip advisors to work with.

But let’s just start with the first one: There’s no reason, there’s no positive good reason, to ever initiate a conversation with a client about the political activities of the day. It’s always best practice to engage human beings around the agenda of the work you’re doing, and engage them at their point of need. Which is to say, if they bring it up, by all means navigate effectively and carefully—and we’ll give you some guidance on how do that. But there’s no reason for you to bring it up, even if the client is a friend [or] an acquaintance. It is incumbent upon the advisor to maintain their awareness of their professional obligation to this person at all times. And that is, like a doctor, do no harm. That is, like a therapist, put that individual’s interest ahead of your own, the fiduciary standard. And this goes to the emotional piece as well.

So, no reason in the world ever to bring it up. No reason in the world to see a client ever as a confidant. Even if you have a high degree of assured agreement, there’s no reason to initiate. Now, if they initiate and you know that you and they have a high degree of agreement, then there is little risk of this thing going off the rails, except if they are more extreme or you are more extreme, that risk now becomes apparent, that “Are we exactly the same in our perspective in this, or is there some risk that we might— that I might—feel differently than you? And would you, when you discover it…” That’s when you pay attention to that—those three types of personalities, the individual who thinks you might be wrong, or wrong and therefore bad, because you’re not exactly in alignment with them. That’s part of the reason that caution is very important here.  

OK, so let’s say the client feels comfortable to bring it up, feels that—they are assuming we have a high degree of agreement, and that we’re looking at the world exactly the same. And if the advisor’s prudent, they understand “Well, there’s nothing productive that’s likely to come out of this, but we do have to maintain our sense of goodwill toward this person.” What are the questions associated with goodwill? The client is saying, “Well, do I matter to you, and do you get me?” Now, that doesn’t have to be that you agree with everything they say, but what we want to do is protect them from some sense that you disagree or judge them for where they’re at. And that’s a different thing. You can profoundly disagree with someone without needing to correct them — remember those three styles. You can be open to the fact that they have a difference of opinion, and you can be enriched by it. So allowing someone to speak and being curious about it and saying, “Yeah, I know a lot of people who feel the way you do. It’s really easy for those feelings to get stirred up.”  

Look, you can always confirm the client’s feelings. The feelings are real. Now, they may be misinterpreting the world as far as you’re concerned, and that’s fair for you to disagree in that regard, but you don’t have to correct them. There’s no value in doing so because they have built a sense of the world on the basis of these perceptions, and they’re using that sense of the world to navigate, and doing the best they can with it. What you can do is validate their feelings, and you can validate the reality of them and feed back to them what you’re hearing.  

And so the safe place to go—and every therapist who’s ever done the work will work with clients that they may have profound disagreement with, and maybe even be concerned about how they’re organizing themselves in the world, but there’s no purpose in disagreeing at a point in time when the individual’s unable to hear that. So you simply listen actively and say, “I totally see where you’re coming from. I totally see how you can feel that way.” And one of the ways you can confirm it and help them feel that these feelings are normalized is to say, “You know what? I have a lot of clients right now that feel exactly the way you do. In fact, they would even use the exact same words you do. This is an experience that’s very distressing for a lot of people.” And what the client will do with that typically is hear a confirmation that they’re not crazy, and that may be satisfying, for what they’re looking for is that this big, smart, interesting person isn’t telling them they’re wrong; they’re resonating with them and they’re with them: “I get you, you matter to me, how you feel matters to me.” And that is typically a safe place to be.  

And by the way, that’s true in families. I mean, if you know the other person feels so strongly and cannot entertain alternative perspectives, you can say to that person—and heck, I’ve done this hundreds and hundreds of times with people I love that I’m close to that I may have a very different point of view about—I can say, “Boy, I tell you, I can absolutely understand where you’re coming from.”  

Another strategy you can use and another tactic you can use to maintain your sense of well-being, Scott, is this idea of understanding at least the intention of what is being done out in the world, right? So you may disagree with the results of a decision [that] has been made, and in the current political environment there’s a lot of people who are opining on the different results and “What will happen? What will not happen? What’s next?” That’s all opinion. The future’s not here yet. We don’t know what’s in fact going to happen. We all have our own perspectives on it, but we can put words [to] it and confirm the intention of the decision that was made. And that’s another way of saying, “This is what I understood, this was behind this. And I can see how that intention is well-intended, is trying to do something good.” Maybe it’s trying to do something good [in] a longer-term process and [in] the short term there’s consequences and that’s painful. But you can observe these things with a kind of neutral emotional demeanor, keeping your opinion out of it, and then allow this opinion to unfold.  

The other thing I would suggest [to] advisors—there’s two more pieces I would propose here as tactics.

Another piece would be that the advisor can, having heard this person and resonated back and said, “I hear ya, I hear what you’re feeling. A lot of people feel that way.” If you’ve asked for them to unpack it more, say more about that: “It sounds like this has really ‘gotten stuck in your craw today,’” as my grandpa used to say. But give them an indication that you’re curious and interested and accepting of it. Not—acceptance does not mean agreement. It simply means, “You have strong feelings, and I accept those, and I don’t think you’re crazy,” which is important, that “you may be different, but not crazy.” Then as you listen to this, and they feel heard and received and respected—not necessarily agreed with—you can then change the subject to something that’s more immediate and say, “As you bring that up, I’m also aware that as we were coming to this meeting, there [were] a couple of things that I was concerned about that I thought we ought to talk about,” and then get back to the work that you do with the client—that there is this agreement frame, that we are on the same page, that we’re trying to accomplish this—and if you’ve heard them, and they’ve processed those emotions, then you can move that conversation back into the work.  

Now, the last tactic I would suggest that the advisor does need to remember [is] that part of their job is to educate the client about the economic realities and the mechanisms that are in play that the work of the advisor and the client—the financial plan and the portfolio that’s an expression of the plan—is going to be engaging. And so if that—when and if the client starts speaking to issues that have to do with the practical economics that will express themselves in the investment process, and they say to the advisor, “Look, given what I know is going to happen here, I think we should do thus and so”—if that’s an expression of misunderstanding, of bad information that the person is using (that they picked up from somewhere; it doesn’t matter) the advisor can serve as an educator at that point, as they do [at] so many other times and places, to say, “Well, I hear where you’re coming from, and I know those feelings can run deep right now, but let me offer you an alternative opinion.” And then what I would suggest the advisor does to maintain that sense of protecting the relationship, is [that] the advisor appeals to an external authority that the advisor feels confident in and uses in general to help them navigate the decision-making in the portfolio, and says, “You know, our economist or our chief investment officer, or this consultant that we use regularly here, has this opinion about that mechanism. And I think it might be helpful for us to look at this together with that in mind.” Now that’s a very respectful approach, and it allows the individual to receive information. And if you keep it very specific, to the point, the individual in all likelihood doesn’t have so much rootedness in the mechanism of it (it’s more the feelings around it) that they can allow a mechanistic conversation that’s rooted in someone else’s authority to alter their perspective. And this is very much what you [can] do.  

For example, when the markets are correcting and the client is feeling loss aversion and feels a strong need to react against that, and says, “Oh, the future’s bleak and we need to sell everything,” the advisor’s job of course is to say, “You know what—a lot of people feel that way. It is very easy to go there, but there’s some other perspectives that may be helpful for us to pay attention to right now.” And to kind of gently and rationally, very calmly articulate these other ideas, but to let them be coming out of the mouth of someone else, so that if the client really, really needs to put their foot down and can’t emotionally embrace it for whatever reason, the advisor can save the relationship and say, “Well, you know, I understand where you’re coming from. It sounds like you feel too strongly to allow that information to inform you. So let’s discuss the strategy we might want to use here.”  

The bottom line in all of this, Scott, is that tactically what the advisor wants to do is always demonstrate respect, empathy, understanding…not at all meaning agreement, but understanding—and then artfully and gently move the client back into the conversation that is the actual subject of the relationship, which is their financial plan, their future outcomes and the decisions that need to be made in that financial plan in the current moment. If we can maintain that perspective, I think the advisor will navigate successfully.

Scott: Ken, that discussion of goodwill is so valuable, because it lets us know that either extreme doesn’t work, right? I can’t just say “I don’t talk about politics,” ‘cause it doesn’t allow the person to be heard, nor do we want to take the risk of saying, “Well, yeah, I agree with you”—also a high risk there.

But there’s one last direct question I need your input on. Occasionally, the client just needs to hear what the advisor’s opinion is. So in those rare occasions when the client says, “Ken, what do you believe about this political opinion I’ve got?” What guidance do you give in that circumstance?

Ken: Well, I’m going to give you an answer that’s very artful, and I’ll try to pull it apart, and that may be a good place for us to end. Because that’s a wonderful prediction you’re making, that somebody may say, “Look, you are important to me, and this issue’s important to me, and I really wanna know where you stand.” So the way I would respond to that, if somebody put me on the hook that way, put me on the point—and that’s happened to me—is I would start by saying, “Well, you know, I do have some opinions about this, but I’m suspecting as I think about answering your question, that I may disappoint you in the way I think about this.” And what that does is it preframes the potential for their disappointment, and it diminishes the possibility that they will react strongly to your perspective.

And then the way I would respond to it is going to that first healthy group of humans that I described whose perspective is, “Oh, we think differently about something—that’s an opportunity to learn something.” And so the way I approach that [is] when somebody asks my opinion, I say, “Well, I think it’s complicated. And I think too often today, individuals are looking for overly simplistic answers to really complicated questions.” And then I would offer a sense of, “I hear this side, and I totally see their point, right? And I also understand this part over here, and I hold these things in a kind of dynamic tension, and I’m really trying to find a ground to stand on where the complexity isn’t lost in the solution.”  

I’ll give you an example. There’s a concept called solution anxiety. And it’s a very common thing that’s being expressed today. It’s often expressed in the area of climate change. The information that is available about climate change—even for most of us who are just walking around in the world and experiencing “weather”—there’s something going on in terms of climate change. I’m not here to defend it, or I’m not trying to make a case about it. I’m just saying there’s a lot of evidence that something is happening.  

What happens to human beings, though, is if the implication of climate change is [that] the way we’re going to solve it is onerous and threatening—and an example would be “All fossil fuels must be ceased to be used immediately”— then the issue of climate change becomes an issue of solution aversion: “Well, that’s an unacceptable solution.” And obviously it’s complicated. You can’t just stop using the primary energy source on the planet, right? So it’s overly simplistic to say one thing—“It’s over”—but to say, “I don’t like the solution, therefore the problem doesn’t exist,” is equally overly simplistic, right?

So, and I know I’ve stepped right close to an issue that some folks might get pretty agitated about. And what I would say back is, it’s complicated. I see the issue [on] both sides, and I don’t think there’s an easy solution. And I think that is something we could explore—what we think the solutions are. Maybe there’s a lot more tolerance for heat, or maybe there’s a lot of other creative ways we can…there’s lots of places to go that don’t have to come down to this polarizing idea.  

So the response would be, “You know, as I think about answering your question, I think you deserve an answer—since you’ve made it so focused on me—and I appreciate your curiosity. I think I’m likely to disappoint you.” And the reason you say that is, folks who are typically looking for your opinion want a galvanized, singular, more extreme perspective. And then to say, “So I’m really able to hold both of these dynamics in my hand,” you’re actually modeling a higher degree of interpersonal comfort and health, right? You’re expanding the opportunities, you’re not appealing to an overly simplistic process, and you’re preserving the relationship, because you haven’t taken a stand on one side or the other.  

So, of all the strategies I would suggest, I wouldn’t do that unless you are put in that position. But to your point, Scott, you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it—it’s likely to happen. That’s how I’d respond.

Scott: What a great discussion. That understanding of the dynamic of what happens when we can get into that area of politics was wonderful. But then taking that and giving tactics about how to preserve goodwill without threatening the relationship is something that advisors are going to use all the time.  

Everyone, thank you for your time and attention. This concludes this edition of Secrets of Successful Advisors with Ken Haman.