The coronavirus crisis upended everything advisors understood about their daily lives and businesses. You had to quickly react to ease rising client concerns, follow orders to shut down physical operations, and accommodate a suddenly remote workforce. There was no time for planning or adjusting. No playbook to follow. But after a few uncertain months, positive lessons learned from the pandemic have started to emerge—and they are likely to affect how you operate, develop teams, and work going forward.

Given the escalating public health crisis, we're all feeling a great deal of stress as we try to handle new challenges in our personal and professional lives. This is certainly true for advisors, many of whom are undoubtedly overwhelmed with the need to manage clients’ rising concerns—even panic—about the current financial turmoil and drop in their investments. The markets have been fluctuating wildly, and media headlines are stoking fears of a recession. No one can say for sure how the economy will be affected in the coming months, but right now the uncertainty and fears are real.

When you take care of others as part of your job, you frequently hear about ongoing suffering, which can take its toll in the form of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. For advisors, burnout may result from your external environment, including a fast-paced schedule, long hours, and not enough time in the day to spend with every client. This burnout may then lead to secondary traumatic stress, which is internal and occurs when you reach the point where you just can’t take it anymore. Sound familiar? If so, you may be suffering from compassion fatigue.

As advisors often experience, introducing change to clients can be a struggle, especially when money—an emotionally charged topic—is involved. Financial decision-making is not always, or even typically, rational and reasonable. Although most of us think we’re capable of making rational choices, only part of the mind has the capability to analyze a problem and come up with a rational solution, and this process can be slow and inefficient.

Think about how you work with your staff from day to day. Do you focus on employees’ technical excellence and how well they provide client service? If so, you’re not alone. Many advisors manage their staff this way. But while this approach supports ongoing operations and will yield success, learning how to effectively coach your employees could do a lot more to motivate your staff and maximize their—and your business’s—potential.