My parents are amazing. Not only have they worked tirelessly to create every opportunity they could for me to grow and develop, they have instilled in me the core principles of decency and respect that guide everything I do. They taught me never to judge on appearance and at least try to look for the good in people and situations. They inspire me endlessly and for that, it is my privelege to honour them every day and any opportunity to reciprocate is an opportunity taken.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could cultivate a relationship with our clients to even a fraction of this depth? If they were actively looking out for opportunities to help us to help them, as well as being receptive to our (often unsolicited) offers of assistance? Honour may be pushing it a bit too far, but fostering mutual respect? Yes, that’s well within reach.
Too many times I’ve seen clients close down when someone has come on the scene purporting to know more than they do about their core business. Have I done it? Absolutely yes. The result – the client absolutely mullered me! Collaboration went out the window and it became a competition, a battle of wits, survival of the fittest – and I lost in spectacular style. Did I return? Well yes, after eating 15 tonnes of humble pie.
The lesson learned? No one person is better than another in every respect, every client you meet knows something you don’t and you never know when you’ll need them.
My most enduring client relationships have been symbiotic – they know I need them for business/organisational context, deep domain knowledge, political landscape – I bring an external point of view, specialist knowledge, structure, a different way of communicating information to foster understanding and problem solving. Where both parties feel valued for what they know, and the value of working together is recognised, it is natural to want to collaborate further – you become ‘nice’ to work with. Clients that want to work with you share information, respect your feedback and help you to help them by highlighting and creating new opportunities for, and with you.
So the first tenet of being a nice consultant is to respect your client – after all, they had the wherewithal to assess their current situation, establish that there was a problem, recognise that they didn’t have the resources to fix it and create a business case to get you in the door. Hmmmm sounds a bit similar to our job huh? Maybe they’re pretty smart after all…
The Nice Consultant 