New Article on “Integrity Impugned”
post # 384 — June 7, 2007 — a Careers, Client Relations post
Because of prior poor experiences — or the generally bad caricatures that exist about many professions — clients are often suspicious (at least initially) of the motives of their service providers.
Just think of the many jokes about consultants who act as if they are more concerned about looking for the next follow-on assignment to cross-sell than doing the current one well; lawyers who are suspected of running up the billable hours because they are paid by the hour; and advertising agency people who are more concerned with winning prizes than selling the client’s product or service.
Whatever your profession, you need to be prepared for the fact that, at the beginning of every new relationship, you must avoid confirming other people’s (inevitable) starting suspicions about your motives, and must actively work to demonstrate that you are, in fact, unlike the providers that the client may have experienced before.
These are the opening paragraphs of a new article of mine called Integrity Impugned. The article is based on my seminars and an extensive blog discussion we held here almost a year ago.
Susie Wee said:
Hi David,
I was not yet following your blog when you made the original post, so I am seeing this for the first time- Great topic!
In regard to your “incident” of the seemingly insulting comment by the client’s suspicious CEO, perhaps we could take another perspective. I am a believer that any feedback is good feedback, even if it hurts, so the fact that he openly expressed his deepest concern is actually a huge favor to you. Imagine if the CEO suppressed his deepest concern, and instead tried to kill the company’s relationship with you behind the scenes after the meeting. You would have no chance at addressing the concern or the concerned person and you would have no chance at resurrecting the situation. So, by openly stating his concern, the CEO is actually doing you a favor (regardless of whether he knows it!) by giving you a chance to address it. The worst thing you could do is shut him down. The best thing you can do is encourage him to keep expressing his concerns over the course of your relationship so you can deal with them as they arise.
So, if you did somehow manage to keep your cool (easier said than done!), perhaps you could try to respond in a way that lets the CEO and the others know that you value the feedback and encourage this open style of dialogue. The approaches that you suggest in the article do just that. You could take the approach of genuinely listening and trying to understand the CEO’s real underlying concern. You could let them know that you think it’s critical to understand the concerns of the organization so you can build them into the proposed solution. You could let them know that you will consider all suggestions and comments, e.g., in this case, you could consider “keeping status quo” as one possible outcome of the analysis.
As for managing perception, the other people in the room definitely heard the CEO make the aggressive comment. Since they work with him regularly, they will have a good context for his comment and they will know that he probably does this all the time. So, they will probably respect you for trying to understand the root cause of the comment rather than taking it personally, ignoring it, or going for a counter-attack!
Again, I know this is easier said than done because it really does hurt to have your integrity questioned, especially if you are a principle-type person (which I think you and I are). Well, I guess I’ll have to see if I keep my cool and follow through on this the next time it happens to me!
Thanks for turning your original post and discussion into another great article!
Susie
posted on June 7, 2007