The Client Letter
August 16, 2013
The Desert of Arizona
Cloudy 64 Degrees
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When you’re working with clients, it’s very easy to accept your client’s problems as your own.
Maybe it’s getting asked by your client to do something that’s way outside the scope of the project.
Or maybe it’s getting asked to deliver some work quickly because the client is in a pinch.
Or perhaps it’s getting asked to attend a meeting on short notice that you know has absolutely little to no bearing on your work.
It could be a lot of things.
The point is, in the client business, we often feel pressure on our boundaries. Pressure on what we will do and what we won’t do.
In fact, I bet you don’t have to think too hard to remember a time where you didn’t “fortify your boundaries” and ended up doing or promising or participating in something with a client you didn’t really want to do.
There are only two basic reasons that you’d ignore your boundaries like this…
- You make a conscious decision to do it, and therefore do not consider it a problem.
- You are scared not to.
This is why it seems like some clients are “so controlling and annoying and are never satisfied…”
It’s because you allow that behavior by not having clear boundaries in your relationship.
It might come as no surprise that I have lots of experience with doing this. 🙂
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But there’s something very wrong, on a human level, with not being clear with clients about where your boundaries are.
What is wrong is that to allow your boundaries to be over run requires you to disregard your responsibility to and for yourself.
And that’s a big barrier to something great, according to Nietzsche…
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
-Nietzsche
That’s where it starts. You start with being responsible to and for yourself. That’s freedom. And when you approach your client work from THAT space instead of a space of weakness, you are better prepared to truly serve.
In an airplane, they tell you to put your own mask on before you help someone else. Because if you’re not taken care of, your ability to help another goes DOWN.
We’re no longer in the classroom when we work with clients. They’re not the teacher, and we are not the pint-sized student.
We are all human beings.
Your client has a problem, you are there to provide a solution.
Figure out where your boundaries are and be proud of them. They’re part of what makes you who you are.