James Woodfall is a highly experienced former financial planner who, as founder of Raise Your EI, now works with financial services and firms consulting on how they can use emotional intelligence to improve individual and company performance. His book The Heart of Finance is a practical toolkit enabling finance professionals to develop emotional intelligence skills needed to build effective and profitable client relationships.
1. What inspired you to shift from financial planning to focusing on emotional intelligence (EI) in the finance sector?
Early in my career as a financial planner, I saw firsthand that some of the best-performing advisers were not those who were the most technically brilliant, they were those who could create an emotional connection with their clients. They were highly effective at building trust and communicating effectively. I’ve witnessed throughout my career that advisers at similar qualification levels show huge differences in performance and earnings, and wondered what the reason for that gap was. Following the sale of my own financial planning business, I decided to focus on the skills and training that lead to exceptional performance, and how to train advisers. The performance gap is fundamentally about communication, and EI at its core is about being an effective communicator.
2. How did your research on EI and job performance shape the development of your Raise Your EI methodology?
Through the research, it became clear that traditional training for financial planners focuses on the technical skills to do the job, but not the ‘soft skills’ needed to deal with the human element of the role. Emotion drives decision making and client behaviour, and being an effective adviser requires a high level of ability to understand and influence that behaviour. This is the focus of the training methodology at Raise Your EI: to equip advisers with the skills to read, understand, interpret, and influence client behaviours in order to achieve better financial planning outcomes. In addition, there is good research that EI is linked to personal wellbeing and the ability to manage stressful job demands, of which financial planning has many.
3. In practice, how does higher emotional intelligence translate into better client relationships and increased sales for financial professionals?
Trust is key in adviser/client relationships, and when we are careful with and pay attention to the emotions of others, trust grows; when we ignore/neglect/minimise others’ emotions, it damages trust. A simple example being, a client raises a concern about a financial product they have, which has been causing them anxiety for days leading up to a conversation with their adviser. Instead of acknowledging and empathising with the client, the adviser dismisses them, “Don’t be so silly, there’s no need to be worried”. The client feels even worse, leading them to question the value of working with an adviser. These experiences happen far more than you realise, and you don’t need to look far to find examples of clients who will tell you similar stories. How moments like these are handled lead to client loyalty, new client conversion rates, referrals, additional business, trust, etc. Financial planning is high stakes for the client, which means emotions will usually be involved.
4. What are the most common emotional blind spots you see in finance teams, and how can they address them?
Overconfidence in logic is the top one. Financial planning is a technical field, and that means lots of opportunities to justify with logic. The problem is that’s not how clients think. Clients are humans, and humans are complex creatures, to say the least. They act on how they feel, which may defy any logical arguments. So sometimes a logical argument works, but other times, advice needs to be framed in terms of emotional outcomes to get clients onboard.
Avoidance of discomfort is second. As I mentioned, understanding clients is only part of the puzzle; the other is the relationship advisers have with their own emotions. Often, avoiding discomfort leads to sidestepping difficult conversations, or tolerating non-acceptables. Aiming to be a people pleaser is not a good long-term strategy; firstly, it erodes trust with clients. It’s frustrating dealing with someone you know is saying what you want to hear instead of being honest with you, which gives the feeling that the person is being deceptive, which they are. As a result, trust is eroded – if clients get a sense they are being misled, hard-earned trust disappears. Trust is everything in financial advice. It’s always better to deal with hard truths and difficult conversations than to avoid them because you find them uncomfortable. Secondly, people pleasing can lead to resentment and adviser stress. If you tolerate non-acceptables long enough without dealing with them, they accumulate. The solution here is to become comfortable with discomfort and avoid being a people pleaser.
5. How does EI leadership differ from traditional leadership models in driving team motivation and productivity?
Instead of focusing purely on goals and KPIs, EI starts from the inside out, with self-awareness of how leaders’ own emotional state impacts how they communicate with their teams. Then it moves into reading others accurately, responding with empathy, and adapting communication where appropriate. Traditional models assume KPIs or incentives drive performance, whereas EI acknowledges that people perform best in psychologically safe environments.
6. Which core EI skills should every finance professional prioritise, and what exercises help develop them?
The four quadrants of EI are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social influence. To develop these, become more aware of your own emotions, what triggers them, what sensations they create internally. Often, we don’t know why we experience emotion, but if you start tracking experiences, you can start to see the patterns emerge. When I say sensations, as an example, you might notice your heartbeat increasing before you speak in team meetings. That’s usually a sign your nervous system is switching to fight/flight mode, and simply by noticing you can pause, take a breath, and regulate the emotion. Self-awareness is the starting point for developing EI. Then, when you can do this yourself, you begin to notice emotional cues in others. Other exercises that help regulate emotions are rehearsing or role-playing difficult conversations before you have them, and having a pre-meeting routine where you reset your mindset.
7. How do you measure the ROI of EI training programs within financial services firms?
During training, we measure pre- and post-training EI scores to demonstrate the impact training has on EI. As EI is linked with performance, if we can show an increase in EI over the course of a training program, we can deduce that performance will follow as long as the individuals and firms continue to adopt and support learning post workshop. We offer 1:1 and group coaching to follow up so that new habits are formed, which lead to the changes linked with increased performance. At the moment, we don’t track the financial performance of firms, but collecting data and case studies around the financial impact of training is definitely on the agenda for the future.
8. In your view, why can’t the finance industry afford to ignore emotional intelligence in today’s market?
Like all professions, the finance industry is going to change in ways we can’t even begin to understand. I’ve already heard anecdotes from advisers coming to meetings with their ChatGPT transcripts and challenging the advice they are getting or deciding to let an AI manage their investments. However, where financial planning gets complicated, or involves multiple options, clients want to talk to a human, as the risk of getting something wrong is high. There are also clients who have zero interest in doing their own research, even if it is quick and easy with the use of AI. They prefer to deal with a human who understands them and can implement for them. Whichever it is, EI is about communicating effectively, and the human connection is irreplaceable; there will be a market for advisers who are at the top of their game when it comes to building trust and dealing with client behaviours. Those who aren’t may struggle.
9. What’s the next evolution for EI in finance? How do you see this field growing over the next five years?
I’ve recently taken up an advisory role with an AI company looking to build a back office system for financial planners, integrating EI insights. The aim is to build a client management system that delivers the technical research and advice for the adviser, plus also analyses client data and communication for emotional cues. The AI works with the adviser to suggest how they should communicate effectively with the client. I think over the next 5 years, this is how financial services may develop: AI assisting human advisers to deliver an outstanding and efficient client experience. But, given the pace of development recently, I could be totally wrong.
