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Why personal qualities matter.

We sat down with money guidance practitioners to talk about how personal qualities impact their work.

Why do you think your personal qualities matter to your customers when delivering money guidance?

 

[Voice: Lena Smith, Money and Support Adviser – University of South Wales]

“They’re coming to tell you something really personal about themselves and for a lot of it, when it comes to money guidance, you may be the first person they’ve spoken to about it because maybe they don’t feel comfortable speaking to a partner or their family.

“So it’s really important that you’ve created this safe environment and you’re approachable.”

 

[Voice: Olena Batista, Money Guidance Officer – Clarion Housing Group]

“Showing and knowing how to use your empathy is really important because when we work with customers who are, let’s say, fleeing domestic violence, who have been homeless, maybe have all sorts of emotions, lots of issues people are facing.

“You’re there to guide them. You’re not there to tell them what to do. You just help them make the right choices.”

 

[Voice: Irene Woods, Debt Coach – Christians Against Poverty]

“You need to be able to get alongside the person and build up a rapport with them and allow them to, be themselves and to be honest and open.”

 

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How can your personal qualities affect your customer’s experience?

 

[Voice: Lena Smith, Money and Support Adviser – University of South Wales]

“The qualities can affect it quite a lot, because if you come across quite negative or you could be biased against something, or they said something and you reacted to it in a different way, it can close that conversation down straight away. 

“And it might be just something little like you go, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have done that’. You know, those words are not helpful, because at the end of the day, this is not about what I would do, this is about how they’re going to manage it going forward.”

 

[Voice: Lucy Charnock, Regional Liaison (East) – The Injured Jockeys Fund]

“So, it’s absolutely essential for them to trust you and being able to have impartiality, diplomacy, self-awareness, and that sort of thing is absolutely essential to build that trust and open the dialogue.”

 

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Which of your personal qualities have you found most useful in your work and why?

 

[Voice: Irene Woods, Debt Coach – Christians Against Poverty]

“I think flexibility’s important because, you know, it could be any time of the day, they have a question, something comes up and I need to be quite available for them.”

 

[Voice: Lucy Charnock, Regional Liaison (East) – The Injured Jockeys Fund]

“The most important thing is being able to listen with patience and without having any opinion yourself, being completely impartial.

“So just listen to what somebody’s problem is, and then communicate effectively how you’re going to help them deal with that problem.”

 

[Voice: Farai Muchineripi – Quality and Compliance Manager – Money and Pensions Service]

“To help a customer make an informed decision, and not feel that, you know, we’ve actually recommended for them to do, a certain, or take a certain action or for them to actually take a product or go for a provider.

“Hence, why being impartial is really, really important in this role because we don’t provide any regulated advice and this is just guidance.”

 

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How have your personal qualities aided your work and helped your customers?

 

[Voice: Lena Smith, Money and Support Adviser – University of South Wales]

“Many advisers may know sometimes you can only have a short period of time to actually speak to a person. An appointment may be half an hour, an hour. And, with this student, it took more than one appointment. We actually ended up doing about six or eight. 

“The feedback that I got after it was that, she said that I was non-judgemental, that, not at any point did she feel that she’d done something wrong, and the fact that she felt that the guidance was always easy, it was in small parts. It was something that based on her wellbeing that she was able to manage and carry out at the time.”

 

[Voice: Olena Batista, Money Guidance Officer – Clarion Housing Group]

“So, being diplomatic is really important when you deliver money guidance. So, in particular, for example, in our field of social housing, often we come across residents that might not have had a great experience with some of our colleagues, so not taking sides is really important.

“And it’s often by working together collaboratively with other colleagues, we manage to solve our residents’ problems.”

 

[Voice: Farai Muchineripi – Quality and Compliance Manager – Money and Pensions Service]

“With coronavirus, you know when customers are coming through to us, it’s not just, you know, I’ve lost my job and it ends there, there’s quite a lot of things that do come with that, and being flexible in terms of how you actually deliver your money guidance, being able to actually look at the money guidance landscape and see how best to support these customers in this ever-changing world, is really important.”