In both financial advising and peer tutoring, there are differences between any two appointments. The clients advisors work with are never the same, assignments tutors help writers with are never identical, and goals vary from individual to individual. Understanding what these specific circumstances are will help advisors better serve those who come to them, a sentiment articulated by UCWbL Core Practice #8: Adopt and adapt specific strategies for each writer and their particular writing context.
For example, as a financial advisor, even something relatively simple like understanding where a client works can have an effect on the returns the client gets. A recent study in the Journal of Financial Quantitative Analysis showed that it is wise to make someone’s overall stock portfolio lean generally away from the field they work in as a to make the client’s experiences seem diverse. This means their preferences must be taken into account. For a writing tutor, this could be translated into something as simple as not suggesting that a writer change the wording of something in order to align more with the tutor’s preferences. It’s important to remember that tutors are there to help distill writers’ voices, not force their own upon them.
What does your counterpart want?
In both fields, it is still helpful to base solutions on what the person across from you is looking for. Do they want something balanced in the stock market? Set them up with some mutual funds! Are they looking to learn more about MLA formatting? Have Purdue OWL at your disposal! These collaborative situations work best when both parties understand one another. While it can be difficult to build a relationship built on trust and respect and still get anything done in 30 or 60 minutes, taking a moment to develop rapport with a counterpart at the beginning of a meeting can aid in understanding where they’re coming from, what they’re looking to accomplish, and how to help them get there.
This rapport creates a better understanding of their particular context, writing, or otherwise. For example, maybe they have a professor who’s advocating they use a lot of quotations, or maybe they’ve recently had a child and are looking for smart ways to save for college. This information is essential to deciding what the situation calls for and finding an answer that will help everybody get what they’re looking for.
Working together makes it better.
Not every writing tutor will be able to spout unlimited knowledge about the best format for a literature review paper, and not every financial advisor will be able to give an off-the-cuff hot take about privately-held foreign investment opportunities. This doesn’t mean that people should only stick with what’s in their wheelhouse. Chances are the person across from them may know more about this given subject and can broaden the advisor or tutor’s knowledge. Sharing knowledge goes both ways.
A one-size-fits-all approach isn’t productive because “it can also lead to the kind of homogeneity that squelches diversity, that waters down ideas to the lowest common denominator, that erases rather than values difference” (Lunsford 7). Allowing both parties to be heard leads to the best results. With both financial advisory and peer writing tutoring, making decisions about what’s best for the meeting based on what the writer or client is looking for leads to more successful experiences.
Overall, there are parallels between being a financial advisor and being a peer writing tutor. Next time a tutor is in an appointment and seem a little bit stuck on what approach to take, they should try putting themselves in the shoes of a financial advisor and ask, “how can I help this person reach their goals?”
Works cited
Blanding, Michael. “Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing.” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. 7 Dec. 2016, pp. 5-6., https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-millennials-flock-to-fintech-firms-for-personal-investing
Levy, Haim and Marshall Sarnat. “A Note on Portfolio Selection and Investors’ Wealth.” Journal of Finance and Quantitative Analysis, vol. 6 no. 1, Jan. 1971, pp. 639-642. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.depaul.edu/stable/2330132?seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents
Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, Sept. 1991, pp. 3–10
Obizhaeva, Anna A, and Jiang Wang. “Optimal Trading Strategy and Supply/Demand Dynamics.” Journal of Financial Markets, vol. 16, no. 1, Feb. 2013, pp. 1–32., doi:10.1186/isrctn06195297
West, Thomas C. and Stephen A. Starnes. “A Fiduciary Approach for Clients Who Need Long-Term Services and Supports.” Journal of Financial Planning, Nov. 2017. https://www.onefpa.org/journal/Pages/NOV17-A-Fiduciary-Approach-for-Clients-Who-Need-Long-Term-Services-and-Supports.aspx