I had a great meeting with Kay. She understood everything so well. She asked all the validating questions and agreed with almost everything I recommended her to do with her Health Insurance policy.

When I showed her the weighted risk over her occupation and the benefit of the Critical Illness Insurance she should obtain, she was delighted. And, with all the information on the table, I left the meeting like a lawyer who just aced the case of the decade.

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My routine follow-up took place a week after, even though she asked me to call her by the end of the month, which was 3 weeks away. However, during the call, after our informal pleasantries, she mentioned that Sam, her husband, had some concerns, and her father too had the same concerns. And to add to it, her brother, who was also an insurance advisor, had a lot more concerns.

Which made me have my list of concerns over their concerns.

By the time she said, “Give me some time, Ashane”, I realised that I had lost three meetings of momentum to a thirty-minute conversation that I was not a part of.

But let me tell you how I changed the conversation with my next client, Tarique, when the same “concern” came up.

Kay and Tarique are both what you might call “Delegators”. A Delegator holds a deeply stable belief saying that decisions of financial significance belong to someone more qualified than themselves to evaluate.

This belief is not always conscious. It may be rooted in how they were brought up. Narratives such as “consult the elders” or even an older sibling who might know better. And these are absolutely fair presumptions, for most families. Especially if there is a central figure that manages the wellbeing of the family.

The risk is not that they distrust you. They may trust you completely. The risk is structural. They cannot give you a final answer because final answers, in their internal architecture, belong to someone who was not in the room.

Inclusion of the trusted party is factual, not the bypassing of them. The Delegator’s amiability is not something to overcome. It is something to accommodate and honour, and the advisor who accommodates it gracefully earns the trust that a more aggressive approach would permanently destroy.

What the Delegator needs to feel is that their instinct to consult is being respected, not managed or, in the worst-case scenario, manipulated. The moment they feel you are genuinely inviting it, you become the advisor who understands how they make decisions.

That single request does four things.

When they name the trusted party, follow the conversation to arrive at the decision of “Would it make sense for the three of us to have one conversation together?”

And that is not a closing tactic. It is the correct next step for this archetype.

Next issue, we look at the client whose problem is not motivation, not commitment, not understanding, but something quieter and more structural. The Chaotic Juggler..