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Naomi Osaka, the tennis champion, shocked the sports world when she announced she would not attend any press briefings during the French Open tournament in Paris. In her statement explaining her decision, she explained the toll those briefings took on her mental health and how vulnerable she feels when participating in them.
I found this quote particularly moving: “Anyone that knows me knows I’m introverted, and anyone that has seen me at the tournaments will notice that I’m often wearing headphones as that helps dull my social anxiety. Though the tennis press has always been kind to me, I am not a natural public speaker and get huge waves of anxiety before I speak to the world’s media.”
The reaction was swift and tone deaf.
She was fined $15,000 and threatened with a ban from future tournaments if she didn’t change her position.
Her response was to withdraw from the tournament.
A better approach
By not recognizing Osaka’s mental health status, the tennis bigwigs made a fundamental error. They assumed every tennis professional was fully capable of complying with its rules about attending press conferences.
If they were trained in The Solin Process℠, here’s how they would have handled this delicate situation.
They would have contacted Osaka and her representatives and asked them a series of questions like:
Can you tell us more about Naomi’s mental health issues?
Is she under the care of medical professionals?
Is doing press conferences harmful to her mental health according to those professionals?
What can we do to help her?
They would have listened carefully to the response to those questions and asked follow-up questions, until they fully understood the issues.
During these initial meetings, they would have uttered no statements that ended in a period.
Their goal would have been to elicit information and not convey it.
At the end of the initial meeting, they would have affirmed their concern by stating: “Thank you for providing this information. Would it be okay with you if we took some time to evaluate it and then got back to you? In the interim, she is relieved of her obligation to do press conferences. We regard her mental health issues as paramount.”
Reaching a compromise
In the second meeting, they would start out with exploratory efforts to reach a compromise by asking questions like these:
Given her vulnerability, is there any interaction with the press after her matches that would be acceptable to Naomi and her mental health professionals?
What about limiting her interaction to one Zoom call, with one member of the press designated as a pool reporter?
What about submitting questions to her in writing and asking her to respond in writing?
If this process had been followed, it’s likely one of the greatest tennis players of our time would not have felt compelled to withdraw from a Grand Slam tournament.
Lessons for advisors
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Let’s assume you have two prospects. One is Naomi Osaka and other is Serena Williams.
Serena describes herself as a “real extrovert.” Naomi is an extreme introvert.
Obviously, your meetings with these two personality types should be very different. Yet, many advisors conduct meetings the same way regardless of the personality type of the prospect. For example, often advisors have an elaborate “process” that they feature on their website.
Few advisors appreciate that their process (like the rules of the Tennis Federation) may not work well with all prospects and clients.
This misunderstanding occurs because advisors make these fundamental errors when meeting with prospects:
They don’t show an interest in the prospect.
They don’t demonstrate curiosity about the prospect.
And most importantly, they don’t ask questions.
The result of these failings is often similar to what happened in the Naomi Osaka debacle.
Everyone lost.
Dan trains executives and employees in the lessons based on the research of his latest book, Ask: How to Relate to Anyone. His online video course, Ask: Increase Your Sales. Deepen Your Relationships, is in production.
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
