Essential Critical Thinking Skills for Financial Advisors

FOR ETHICAL PHYSICIAN CLIENT ACQUISITION SUCCESS

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko; MBA MEd CMP

***

***

SPONSOR: http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

Critical thinking allows a Financial Advisor [FA] to analyze information and make an objective judgment. By impartially evaluating the facts related to a matter, Financial Planners [FPs] can draw realistic conclusions that will help make a sound decision. The ability of being able to properly analyze a situation and come up with a logical and reasonable conclusion is highly valued by employers, as well as current and potential clients.

Now, according to Indeed, we present the six main critical thinking and examples that will help you evaluate your own thought process as a FA, FP or Wealth Manager, etc.

What is critical thinking? 

Critical thinking is the ability to objectively analyze information and draw a rational conclusion. It involves gathering information on a subject and determining which pieces of information apply to the subject and which don’t, based on deductive reasoning. The ability to think critically helps people in both their personal and professional lives and is valued by most clients and employers. 

Why do employers value critical thinking?

Critical thinking skills are a valuable asset for an employee, as employers, brokerages and Registered Investment Advisors [RIAs] typically appreciate candidates who can correctly assess a situation and come up with a logical resolution. Time is a valuable resource for most managers, and an employee able to make correct decisions without supervision will save both that manager and the whole company much valuable time.

***

***

Six main types of critical thinking skills

There are six main critical thinking skills you can develop to successfully analyze facts and situations and come up with logical conclusions:

1. Analytical thinking

Being able to properly analyze information is the most important aspect of critical thinking. This implies gathering information and interpreting it, but also skeptically evaluating data. When researching a work topic, analytical thinking helps you separate the information that applies to your situation from that which doesn’t.

2. Good communication

Whether you are gathering information or convincing others that your conclusions are correct, good communication is crucial in the process. Asking people to share their ideas and information with you and showing your critical thinking can help step further towards success. If you’re making a work-related decision, proper communication with your coworkers can help you gather the information you need to make the right choice.

3. Creative thinking

Being able to discover certain patterns of information and make abstract connections between seemingly unrelated data helps improve your critical thinking. When analyzing a work procedure or process, you can creatively come up with ways to make it faster and more efficient. Creativity is a skill that can be strengthened over time and is valuable in every position, experience level and industry.

4. Open-mindedness

Previous education and life experiences leave their mark on a person’s ability to objectively evaluate certain situations. By acknowledging these biases, you can improve your critical thinking and overall decision process. For example, if you plan to conduct a meeting in a certain way and your firm suggests using a different strategy, you should let them speak and adjust your approach based on their input.

5. Ability to solve problems

The ability to correctly analyze a problem and work on implementing a solution is another valuable skill.

6. Asking thoughtful questions:

In both private and professional situations, asking the right questions is a crucial step in formulating correct conclusions. Questions can be categorized in various forms as mentioned below:

***

***

* Open-ended questions

Asking open-ended questions can help the person you’re communicating with provide you with relevant and necessary information. These are questions that don’t allow a simple “yes” or “no” as an answer, requiring the respondent to elaborate on the answer.

* Outcome-based questions

When you feel like another person’s experience and skills could help you work more effectively, consider asking outcome-based questions. Asking someone how they would act in a certain hypothetical situation, such as a stock market correction, can give you an insight into their perspective, helping you see things you hadn’t thought about before.

Reflective questions

You can gain insight by asking a client to reflect and evaluate an experience and explain their thought processes during that time. This can help you develop your critical thinking by providing you real-world examples.

* Structural questions

An easy way to understand something is to ask how something works. Any working system results from a long process of trial and error, and properly understanding the steps that needed to be taken for a positive result could help you be more efficient in your own endeavors.

CONCLUSION

Critical thinking is like a muscle that can be exercised and built over time. It is a skill that can help propel your career to new heights. You’ll be able to solve workplace issues, use trial and error to troubleshoot ideas, and more.

EDUCATION: Books

SPEAKING: Dr. Marcinko will be speaking and lecturing, signing and opining, teaching and preaching, storming and performing at many locations throughout the USA this year! His tour of witty and serious pontifications may be scheduled on a planned or ad-hoc basis; for public or private meetings and gatherings; formally, informally, or over lunch or dinner. All medical societies, financial advisory firms or Broker-Dealers are encouraged to submit a RFP for speaking engagements: MarcinkoAdvisors@outlook.com 

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Read, Subscribe, Like and Refer

***

***

AGREE: Consistency and Group-Think Commitment Tendency

“lemming effect” or “group-think”

By Staff Reporters

***

***

According to psychologist and colleague Dan Ariely PhD, human beings have evolved – probably both genetically and socially – to be consistent.  It is easier and safer to deal with others if they honor their commitments and if they behave in a consistent and predictable manner over time. This allows people to work together and build trust that is needed for repeat dealings and to accomplish complex tasks. 

In the jungle, this trust was necessary to for humans to successfully work as a team to catch animals for dinner, or fight common threats.  In business and life it is preferable to work with others who exhibit these tendencies.  Unfortunately, the downside of these traits is that people make errors in judgment because of the strong desire not to change, or be different (“lemming effect” or “group-think”).  So the result is that most people will seek out data that supports a prior stated belief or decision and ignore negative data, by not “thinking outside the box”. 

Additionally, future decisions will be unduly influenced by the desire to appear consistent with prior decisions, thus decreasing the ability to be rational and objective.  The more people state their beliefs or decisions, the less likely they are to change even in the face of strong evidence that they should do so.  This bias results in a strong force in most people causing them to avoid or quickly resolve the cognitive dissonance that occurs when a person who thinks of themselves as being consistent and committed to prior statements and actions encounters evidence that indicates that prior actions may have been a mistake.  It is particularly important therefore for advisors to be aware that their communications with clients and the press clouds the advisor’s ability to seek out and process information that may prove current beliefs incorrect. 

Since this is obviously irrational, one must actively seek out negative information, and be very careful about what is said and written, being aware that the more you shout it out, the more you pound it in.

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Subscribe Today!

***

***

PROSPECT THEORY: Physician-Client Empowerment for Financial Decision Making

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

By Staff Reporters

***

***

Prospect theory is a psychological and behavioral economics theory developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. It explains how people make decisions when faced with alternatives involving risk, probability, and uncertainty. According to this theory, decisions are influenced by perceived losses or gains.

Example:

Amanda, a DO client, was just informed by her financial advisor that she needed to re-launch her 403-b retirement plan. Since she was leery about investing, she quietly wondered why she couldn’t DIY. Little does her FA know that she doesn’t intend to follow his advice, anyway! So, what went wrong?

The answer may be that her advisor didn’t deploy a behavioral economics framework to support her decision-making. One such framework is the “prospect theory” model that boils client decision-making into a “three step heuristic.”
 
Prospect theory makes the unspoken biases that we all have more explicit. By identifying all the background assumptions and preferences that clients [patients] bring to the office, decision-making can be crafted so that everyone [family, doctor and patient] or [FA, client and spouse] is on the same page. Briefly, the three steps are:

1. Simplify choices by focusing on the key differences between investment [treatment] options such as stock, bonds, cash, and index funds. 

2. Understanding that clients [patients] prefer greater certainty when it comes to pursuing financial [health] gains and are willing to accept uncertainty when trying to avoid a loss [illness].

3. Cognitive processes lead clients and patients to overestimate the value of their choices thanks to survivor bias, cognitive dissonance, appeals to authority and hindsight biases.

Assessment

Much like healthcare today, the current mass-customized approaches to the financial services industry falls short of recognizing more personalized advisory approaches like prospect theory and assisted client-centered investment decision-making.

 Jaan E. Sidorov MD [Harrisburg, PA]   

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Read, Refer and Subscribe

***

***

SATISFICING: In Health Economics

A decision-making strategy 

[By staff reporters]

SPONSOR: http://www.MarcinkoAssociates.com

***

What is satisficing? Definition and meaning - Market Business News

***

Satisficing is a business decision-making strategy or cognitive heuristic that entails searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met.

The term economic satisficing, a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice, was introduced by Herbert A. Simon in 1956, although the concept was first posited in his 1947 book Administrative Behavior. Simon used satisficing to explain the behavior of decision makers under circumstances in which an optimal solution cannot be determined. He maintained that many natural problems are characterized by computational intractability or a lack of information, both of which preclude the use of mathematical optimization procedures.

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/082610254

He observed in his Nobel Prize in Economics speech that “decision makers can satisfice either by finding optimum solutions for a simplified world, or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world. Neither approach, in general, dominates the other, and both have continued to co-exist in the world of management science”.

******

Assessment

“Satisficing” – a made-up word created by combining satisfactory and sufficient – indicates something good, but not great. Like the Canadian single-payer health system, like Medicare-for-All.

KEN ARROW PhD: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2010/08/17/on-professor-kenneth-arrow-phd/

MORE: https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/09/18/canadas-single-payer-health-system-satisfices-13272

Conclusion: Your thoughts are appreciated.

***

***

“FREE STUFF”: Powerfully Irrational

BEWARE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HOLIDAY SHOPPING!

[Online -OR- Onground]

By Staff Reporters

***

***

Power of Free

Who doesn’t love free stuff? The word “free” is like a magic spell that makes our rational minds go on vacation.

According to colleague Dan Ariely PhD, the power of free compels us to grab things we don’t need and make questionable choices. Why buy one and get one free when you can get two for the price of one? It’s the same deal, but free feels better.

IOW: Like other heuristics, the Power of Free is a mental shortcut that allows us to bypass rational thought and save effort to make quick decisions. Studies of the Power of Free have shown it to be closely linked to the Affect Heuristic. Specifically, it is linked to emotional and social thinking rather than transactional thinking. People become influenced by emotion and obligated to socially acceptable behaviors.

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/0826102549

For example, say, a yoga studio charges extra to use their mats. This leads more people to pay the fee and use their mats for convenience. Then, say, the same yoga studio removed the extra fee more people would bring their mats from home instead of feeling guilty about borrowing one for class.

Removing a dollar value increases its inherent value and makes it more desirable. The type of product matters too. People are more likely to opt for a free product that is fun rather than functional. This is because emotion is more powerful than rational thinking under the influence of the Power of Free.

In another example, people are more likely to say “yes” to a free piece of cake or sample size of perfume than furniture polish or a bag of white flour.

So, next time you find yourself going to a free financial planning or retirement seminar with free dinner, or a free medical screening test, or free stock market portfolio review, just blame it on the irresistible and irrational power of free.

SPONSOR [not free]: http://www.MarcinkoAssociates.com

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Refer – Like – Subscribe!

***

***

CONTRAST EFFECT: Cognitive Bias

FOR FINANCIAL ADVISORS

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP

SPONSOR: http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

***

***

Sensation, emotion and cognition work by Contrast Effect [cognitive bias]. 

Now, such perception is not only on an absolute scale, it also functions relative to prior stimuli.  This is why room temperature water feels hot when experienced after being exposed to the cold.  It is also why the cessation of negative emotions “feels” so good. 

Cognitive bias functioning also works on this principle.  So one’s ability to analyze information and draw conclusions is very much related to the context with in which the analysis takes place, and to what information was originally available.  This is why it is so important to manage one’s own expectations as well as those of a financial advisor’s or stock broker’s clients. 

For example, a client is much more likely to be satisfied with a 10% portfolio return if they were expecting 7% than if they were hoping for 15%.

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Subscribe, Like and Refer Today!

***

***

20 Cognitive Biases That Affect Decision Making

Screwed-Up Decision Making

[By Staff reporters]

***

***

On Basic Decision-Making Science?

DECISION-MAKING AND THE “ANALYSIS OF PARALYSIS”

Courtesy: www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

Analysis paralysis or paralysis by analysis is an anti-pattern, the state of over-analyzing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, in effect paralyzing the outcome. A decision can be treated as over-complicated, with too many detailed options, so that a choice is not made.

LINK: https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Health-Economics-Finance-Marcinko/dp/0826102549/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254413315&sr=1-6

ESSAY: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2019/09/18/the-buridans-ass-paradox/

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PhnHQQYprA

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

BUSINESS, FINANCE AND INSURANCE TEXTS FOR DOCTORS:

1 – https://lnkd.in/ebWtzGg

2 – https://lnkd.in/ezkQMfR

3 – https://lnkd.in/ewJPTJs

THANK YOU

***