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Is this scenario familiar?
You are talking to someone and mention a trip you took or an event you engaged in (like running a half-marathon). In response, they tell you about their travel experience and achievements (like running a full marathon!).
You feel that they were barely listening to you. Instead, they were waiting to talk about themselves.
As financial advisors, you build relationships that foster trust. You understand your clients’ financial goals and help them achieve their dreams. It’s challenging to do this when our brains are hardwired to keep the focus on ourselves.
Our brain encourages self-focus
A study by Shenbing Kuang, “Two Polarities of Attention in Social Contexts: From Attending-to-Others to Attending-to-Self,” sheds light on this phenomenon. Kuang found that our attention naturally defaults to self-focus, making prioritizing others' needs in social interactions challenging.
Kuang’s study explores the concept of social attention – the balance between focusing on ourselves and others during social interactions. The brain continuously toggles between these two polarities.
The direction of our attention can significantly impact how we engage with clients.
Self-focus versus other-focus
The study highlights two critical poles of attention:
Self-focus: This is when we focus on our own needs, thoughts, and emotions. For financial advisors, this might manifest as thinking about how you will respond to a client, how well you present your recommendations, or your concerns about meeting your performance targets.
Other-focus: This is when we focus on the needs, emotions, and thoughts of others.
Other focus involves abandoning your agenda, tuning into your clients' non-verbal cues, understanding their emotional state, and being fully present in the conversation.
Kuang’s study suggests our brains default to self-focus, which explains why we find it difficult to focus on others. While this is natural, it can create barriers to effective communication and connection with clients.
Why our brains default to self-focus
Kuang's research demonstrates that self-related information automatically captures attention more than information about others. Examples of “self-related information” include:
- Personal beliefs and values
- Memories and experiences
- Physical appearance
- Personal goals and aspirations
- Emotions and feelings
- Self-perceptions and self-concept
This explains why we are preoccupied with our thoughts or concerns in social interactions, even when we intend to focus on the other person.
From a neural perspective, this self-focus is linked to activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain region that processes self-related information. Focusing on others activates the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), a brain area associated with understanding others’ intentions and perspectives.
The dominance of self-focus in social attention, Kuang explains, can be explained by several interrelated factors:
Automatic capture of attention: The study found that self-related information automatically captures our attention more effectively than information about others. In social interactions, we are more likely to become preoccupied with our thoughts, feelings, and concerns, leading to a natural inclination toward self-focus.
Neural mechanisms: When we self-reflect or think about our needs and emotions, the mPFC becomes highly active. This heightened activity reinforces self-focus, making it a more dominant state of attention.
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While the TPJ is activated when focusing on others, the competition between these two brain regions can lead to a situation where the mPFC's activation overshadows the TPJ's activation.
For example, if you're in a conversation and someone mentions your name or brings up a topic that you care deeply about, those self-related cues stand out to you. Because they are so attention-grabbing, you might find it harder to pay attention to what the other person is saying or feeling.
Cognitive load and resource allocation: Social interactions require cognitive resources to process self-related and other-related information.
We default to self-focus because processing familiar self-related information requires less effort than understanding others' perspectives and emotions. This tendency creates barriers to effective communication and connection with others.
Evolutionary perspective: From an evolutionary standpoint, self-focus may have developed as a survival mechanism. Awareness of our needs and emotions can be crucial for self-preservation and decision-making.
This inherent bias towards self-focus may have been advantageous in ancestral environments, leading to its dominance in modern social interactions.
Overcome these barriers
Kuang’s findings provide actionable insights that can help you shift your attention away from yourself and toward your clients.
Mindful awareness: The first step in overcoming your brain's default self-focus mode is simply becoming aware of it. Pay attention to moments during client meetings when your thoughts shift inward – perhaps when thinking about how to respond or when you feel stressed about a particular outcome.
A simple technique is to remind yourself to “stay present” during conversations, ensuring your attention remains on understanding your client’s needs and concerns.
Practice empathy: Empathy is a powerful tool for shifting from self-focus to other-focus. You can strengthen your outer-directed focus by consciously working to understand your client's emotional state, worries, and goals.
One effective way to cultivate empathy is through active listening, which involves paying close attention to verbal and nonverbal cues.
Final thoughts
The tendency to self-focus is deeply ingrained in evolutionary factors and hard-wired into our brains. Consequently, we need to consciously shift attention to focusing on others to enhance social interactions and client relationships.
Dan coaches evidence-based financial advisors on how to convert more prospects into clients. His digital marketing firm is a leading provider of SEO, website design, branding, content marketing, and video production services to financial advisors worldwide.
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