Your client wants to talk, not therapy: who you can refer them to

How can you tell when a client needs something other than your advice?

Usually by the clock: the tax meeting is set for an hour, and after twenty minutes you are no longer on the figures but on the succession, then on his son, then on his marriage. You bill for tax advice and spend the hour listening. Lawyers know it from the client who stays seated after the estate review, bankers from the portfolio meeting that turns to the son.

Three signs repeat:

1. The same question comes back at every meeting, undecided, because there is nobody else he can say it out loud to.
2. The answer he wants is not a technical one. Hand over to the daughter or sell: either you can set up for him. He does not know what he wants.
3. He asks for your opinion and does not take it. From where he sits, rightly: you hold a mandate, and he knows it.

For figures, structure and deadlines he has you. For the question before that, what he wants and why he hesitates, he needs someone with no stake who is not family; why almost nobody around him qualifies is in Who do you talk to when everyone around you has a stake?.

When is sparring the wrong answer, and where should he go instead?

Sparring assumes that your client is well and in a position to decide. You have seen him for years and often notice changes before his family does. If sleep has been missing for weeks, nothing gives him pleasure any more, or he hints at harming himself, his family doctor or a psychotherapist comes first, not a sparring partner; in acute danger the Dargebotene Hand helpline on 143, in an emergency 144. I do not diagnose; where I draw the line is in When you need a therapist, and when a sparring partner is enough.

Sparring is not mediation either: I work with one side, your client, never with both spouses at the same table. An agreement everyone signs needs a mediator or a lawyer.

How do you suggest it to a proud client without him feeling diagnosed or fobbed off?

Not as help, but as someone to think with: people who have spent their lives making decisions hear “you should talk to someone” as a verdict. What he can accept is the logic by which he engaged you: for a particular question, the right person. Three ways of putting it, in your own words:

• “For the numbers you have me. For what you actually want from the next three years, I know someone with no stake in your decision. One conversation, no subscription; if it is no use, you have lost an hour.”
• “You have talked to me about this for a year, and I am the wrong person: I have a mandate. There is someone whose job is to listen, who comes to your office, works in English and reports nothing to me.”
• “Before you take this to your wife or your board, talk it through once with someone who is neither family nor on your payroll. Then you go in with a position of your own, not three borrowed ones.”

The words “help”, “therapy” and “coach” do not appear. Then give him the address and leave it with him: you book nothing on his behalf, and I do not ask who sent him.

What can your client expect from me, and what is off the table?

A conversation between two adults, 60 minutes, 90 on request, in English or German. I listen, ask which assumption has never been tested, and say what I see, including what he would rather not hear; as an engineer, I am used to putting assumptions on the table before anyone builds on them. Your client deals with me, Winn Chelini; who I am and what I did before is on a page of its own.

I come to his home or office in Zug, Baar, Cham, Zürich, on the Gold Coast, in Wollerau or Pfäffikon SZ; travel is included within 60 minutes’ drive of Wetzikon. The fee is fixed and depends on the format and the length of the conversation, never on who he is; he hears it in the confidential conversation, before the first session. Per session, no subscription, no package; one is often enough.

What he does not get: psychotherapy, legal, tax or investment advice, exit or succession advice, a programme, a product. No team, no hand-off: he always deals with me. The roles in detail are in the comparison with coach, mentor, consultant and therapist, the essentials in What is a sparring partner?.

What keeps me out of your mandate?

Three rules apply to every conversation.

First: no comment on tax, law or investments. If your client asks whether the holding makes sense or what the inheritance contract means, the answer is: that is for your fiduciary (Treuhänder) or tax adviser, your lawyer, your bank. He takes nothing more away than the question for your next meeting.

Second: I recommend no other fiduciary, lawyer or bank, and I do not comment on your work, not even when asked; I do not know your files.

Third: no money moves between us. No commission, no finder’s fee, no referral back; I have no ties to any fiduciary firm, bank or M&A boutique. My fee depends on format and length, never on the person; I earn no more if he sells and no less if he keeps the company (formats and how it works).

You need not agree anything with me beforehand; the three rules apply without your involvement, and they are public here. What your own professional rules require of you when you refer a client is a matter for your association, not for me.

What do you learn afterwards?

Nothing: neither that your client got in touch, nor what we talked about. Confidentiality is agreed with him in writing and applies to you just as it does to his family and his company. Its three limits, named beforehand: a legally binding order of a court or authority, acute danger to life and limb, the welfare of a child. I record nothing; brief notes are destroyed no later than 12 months after the last conversation. I am not bound by professional secrecy under Art. 321 of the Swiss Criminal Code as lawyers and doctors are, and I do not claim to be; what the law says is in Is coaching confidential in Switzerland? What the law says.

The same holds the other way: what he says about you or your mandate stays in the room. That protects both sides: he can be sure his fiduciary learns nothing he does not tell him himself, and you are never told anything you should not know. And should we ever meet, I will not ask you about your other clients.

In short

If a client uses your meetings to talk about family, marriage or what comes next, he usually does not want treatment or another adviser, but someone to talk to who has no stake in his answers. Sparring is that conversation: paid per session, at his home or office, with confidentiality agreed in writing, subject to the three limits above; tax, legal and investment questions stay with you, and no commission changes hands. If he is not well, his doctor comes first.