Editor’s note: Chris Holman is a Master Certified Coach, executive coach to financial advisors, and author of the book “Discovery Shift: Why Talking Less and Listening More Wins Business.”
Sit inside almost any discovery meeting and you can feel it.
You are listening to a prospect describe their situation. At the same time, another part of you is tracking your tone, your posture, the pacing of the conversation, and whether you sound competent. A silence stretches a second longer than expected and you feel the urge to step in and explain something.
You are present in the conversation. You are also watching yourself inside it. Most advisors assume this is just part of being professional.
They rarely notice that they are running two conversations at once. One with the client. One with themselves.
The hidden energy tax
That second conversation carries a hidden tax.
Chronic self-monitoring is a built-in feature of advising. It does not mean you lack confidence. It means you work in a profession where you are continuously evaluated under uncertainty. Your brain is wired to track how you are being perceived.
Running those two tracks of attention requires effort. Even when a meeting looks calm on the surface, part of your system is managing appearance and impression. Watching yourself is work. It burns energy quietly and steadily.
This is not unique to financial advising. Surgeons monitor how they are performing while they operate. Teachers track the room while they teach. Trial lawyers manage presence and perception while they argue a case. Any profession built around live human evaluation carries the same split attention.
Advising simply concentrates it in conversation after conversation, all day long.
How pressure shapes behavior
This inner pressure shows up in subtle ways. Advisors often feel a pull to move the meeting forward, to demonstrate value, or to add structure sooner than necessary. Silence starts to feel inefficient. Curiosity collapses into data gathering. Explanations lengthen.
These habits are easy to label as impatience or style. In many cases they are relief strategies. Progress and structure reassure the internal monitor that things are going well.
The urge to advance the conversation often starts inside the advisor, not with the client sitting across the table.
Over time that constant vigilance adds up. Advisors tend to attribute fatigue to workload or long hours. Volume matters.
Another contributor sits underneath it. When part of your nervous system remains in low-grade performance mode, recovery is incomplete. Meetings end and the body does not fully stand down. You carry a background hum of evaluation from one conversation into the next. Years of sustained self-surveillance create a specific kind of tiredness.
It is not dramatic burnout. It is the slow drain of always being a little bit on.
This does not end after discovery
This dynamic does not disappear once a client relationship is established.
Ongoing reviews, portfolio conversations, and moments of market stress still place advisors under quiet evaluation. The same internal monitor stays active. You are tracking expertise, reassurance, and composure while trying to stay present with the person in front of you.
The hidden tax follows the entire client lifecycle. Discovery simply makes it easier to see because the stakes feel concentrated. Once you recognize the pattern in discovery, you start to notice it everywhere else. It becomes visible in routine check-ins, in difficult conversations about losses, and in moments where clients look to you for steadiness more than answers.
Discovery offers a chance to adopt a different stance, and that stance carries forward into ongoing client conversations.
When a meeting allows for pausing, not knowing yet, and letting meaning form at its own pace, the need to perform eases. Presence replaces constant impression management.
You still bring expertise and professionalism. You are less occupied with managing how you look while you are doing it. Slowing the pace reduces internal strain and sharpens listening.
This shift is about efficiency and sustainability. Presence costs less energy than continuous performance. Over time, it changes the texture of your workday. Conversations feel less like acts to execute and more like spaces to inhabit.
Naming the relief
Most advisors recognize the moment when they stop watching themselves and simply track what the other person is saying. The meeting feels lighter. Attention widens. Time stretches.
Naming the hidden tax of self-monitoring makes that contrast visible. It gives you permission to notice when performance mode tightens your posture and when presence softens it.
In discovery and in ongoing client work, the most regulated person in the room quietly sets the tone. When you spend less energy managing your image, you have more available for the work that actually matters.