The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 93 Degrees
I’ve put myself through an enormous amount of emotional turmoil over the years by not properly managing the expectations of my clients.
If you can get in the habit of doing that, things tend to go a lot more smoothly.
Today, however, I’d like to put the focus somewhere else. Not on managing your clients’ expectations but on managing your own.
Working with clients is, by nature, a “messy” business. Not a whole lot is black and white. Most everything is a shade of gray.
You can’t work with humans and expect things to go as smoothly as if you were working with a computer.
If you don’t manage your own expectations about this, you will constantly be “frustrated” about why things aren’t going according to plan.
They’re not going according to your plan because your client isn’t a robot. Your client is a human.
A computer doesn’t have emotions. A computer responds to input.
Computers do what you tell them. Computers don’t get into bad moods, or experience stress.
None of this is true for human beings. So if you go in expecting anything less than unpredictable and ever changing, you’re going to be disappointed.
This might sound like a whole lot of bad news, but it’s actually a good thing.
Because by managing your expectations about what the client business is REALLY like, you won’t find yourself getting frustrated.
You’ll know what to expect going in (anything 🙂 and you’ll just accept it as part of playing the game.