The relationship and trust between creatives and their clients are one of the most important parts of the creative process. In this episode, we will look at how to build a solid foundation with your clients, the importance of trust, how you can training bad traits out of difficult clients, avoid problems by including them in the creative process and some basic tips to building rapport.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-38-creative-direction-building-stronger-relationships-with-your-clients-even-the-difficult-ones/
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The relationship and trust between creatives and their clients are one of the most important parts of the creative process. In this episode, we will look at how to build a solid foundation with your clients, the importance of trust, how you can training bad traits out of difficult clients, avoid problems by including them in the creative process and some basic tips to building rapport.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-38-creative-direction-building-stronger-relationships-with-your-clients-even-the-difficult-ones/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Ladies and gentlemen, creatives of all ages, welcome to the 38th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is a show where we talk about creativity, leadership design, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. Now today we're going to talk about as creatives the Yang d'Or, Yang, the peanut butter or jelly, we're going to talk about clients. And now I know that possibly in some of my darker moments, I've joked that our work would probably be quite honestly a hell of a lot easier if we didn't have clients to work with. But we all know that if you want good work to out the door, you've got to figure out how to work with them, and work with them at a minimum and ideally, partner with them. So in this show, I really want to take a look at how do you make that happen? What are some of the tips and tricks that I've learned over the course of my career, to hit it with people that are more partners than clients because it does make a tremendous difference. And so for the show today, we're going to do that by basically looking at five different things. The first is just lower, you should always start and we're going to start by looking at just simply what are the basics we're gonna look Get the role of trust and confidence in the relationship that you have with your client. We're going to look at how do you deal with problem clients? And how do you make them better? How do you train them to be smarter, we're going to look at how creativity can actually create some of those problems, because our work can actually make our clients and the tiny drug addicts and I'll explain exactly what that means. And last but not least, for the best of clients, or for the worst of clients, I want to walk through four different ways or four things that I use, that actually helped to build rapport. So let's start with the basics. And the reality is, is that working with a client wants a relationship. And just like any relationship, it requires investment, it requires trust that it needs to evolve over time, the best clients I've ever worked with have been more partners than bosses. And I think that that's a really foundational, really simple, really key part of this, that I see too many times both sides of this equation, get it wrong, because it sounds simple. But you know, the best place really to start is that as a creative Have one of the things I teach other people or things that I try to make sure that I do is just listen. It sounds very simple. But the reality is, is that no matter what, for the smartest client to the dumbest client, you need to understand their point of view, need to understand where they're coming from. They need to feel like they've been heard. And then once that's happened, then I can decide, what can I add? Where can I educate them? Where can I push things forward? How can I change the dynamic or the process? But from the very beginning, though, I have to understand what I'm dealing with. And we see this problem brainstorms. I see this problem in so many times and working with clients where the problem is, is that these interactions when you watch it between a creative and a client is so often the one person just simply waiting for the other to stop speaking. So then they can make their point and express their point of view. They aren't actually listening. Because the reality is and the thing that I would say is that even if I disagree with what they say I need to understand that They have a point of view and that even if I don't, again, agree with it, I have to respect it, I have to understand what it is, so that I can understand how to start solving the problem. Now, their name may need to be some re education. But at that point, like I said, their point of view still needs to be respected because I see too many creatives who just do that, Oh, well, you know, they're just they're a dumb client, or we're smarter or different. When I was on the agency side that ran rampant, especially whenever it came time for like award seasons, that drove me insane, because instead of actually working with our clients, instead of educating them, instead of trying to get better work out the door, what we did was we would do one version for the client, we would roll our eyes and go, Well, you know what, they don't really know that much about it. And then we would do our version of that particular ad or that particular experience, which if it was a TV ad, then we would run it three in the morning in Topeka so that we could say that it actually aired somewhere and then we could enter it and award shows. That to me was always I always wanted to kill that client version agency version thing. Because the reality is, is that the ability to listen, the ability to understand that other point of view? Well, that's the basis of every good relationship. And I think that as a creative, that's what we owe our clients. But at the same point, they owe us something to. And what they owe us is the respect of letting us go through a creative process to solve their problem. Because I've said this many times before, and I'm sure I'll talk about it again on the show, but they owe us a problem to be solved, not a solution to be vetted. Because this is the respect on both sides, the respect that the creative allows the client to be able to listen to them, and the respect that the client owes us to be able to actually let us do our work to let us be creative. And now the reality of that though, too, is that both sides have to earn that, that we have to show up with good work that earns us the right to not have people dictate solutions to us. And that we also have to earn the trust with the client by listening to them and getting them what they need to to silence But it's the basics of every creative client relationship. Let's go look a little bit deeper at that, because I hit on that word trust a moment ago. And if you've listened to the show before, you've heard me talk about this before, about the importance of whenever it comes to the relationship in the work that we do for trust. Because the reality is, is that what cuts both ways, but trust and confidence are the foundations of that entire relationship that I was just talking about. But it's something that the creative team also needs to think about. And it's something that they need to build. Because in a lot of cases, we should just say, well, each side should respect each other, each side should trust each other. Well, that sounds simple. But the real product that you are selling your clients isn't a design, it isn't a copy deck, it isn't. Whatever it is that you're creating. If you work with this client over any period of time, if it's not anything more than just a one and done sort of thing. Your real product is then his trust and confidence. That's what you're trying to sell your clients. Because if they trust you, then that's what's going to let them kind of give you the opportunities that you want to take the risks that you need. And to let that good work go out the door. But just like so many other things that we've talked about whether it was your creative process, whether it's building your leadership style, trust doesn't happen all at once. It's like becoming friends with somebody or falling in love or something. There's a lot of little things that lead up to something big. It's something that your whole team needs to understand. And it's something to think about and be aware of. Because one of the things that I always try to do is anytime I have an interaction with one of my clients, I'm thinking to myself, how is this getting them to trust me more or to maintain the trust that they put in me, and I'm not doing it to be evil or manipulative. I'm doing it because it's just it's something that needs to happen over time. our profession of creating is too much of a word. Have you done for me lately, sort of thing where, you know, yesterday's home runs don't win tomorrow's games. And that's really the sort of thing where it's why you have to continue to think about it. Because if you take it for granted, if it starts to slide, if it starts to fall apart, well, then you give up all the hard work that you've done. But so this is why I try to get my teams to think about this. This is why I try to think about it. And it can be something simple. It can be something that maybe you never have really even thought of about the way that your team behaves about the dynamic that they have. That may be making building this trust with your clients harder. Because that's the underlying thing. Like if you pull out all the design, all the problems, all the conference calls, presentations, all that other stuff. Trust is what gets the work done. And I think that there's a lot that we can think about on our teams for how do we build that there's a part of this that we're accountable for, it's not just simply like, Oh, well the clients need to be better or smarter or trust. To us, it's what do we do to this as well? And so let's think about a creative team in a meeting. And how do we build trust and confidence there? And one of the things that I'll often talk to teams about is what is the image that you're presenting? How are the things that you do reinforce that trust or undermine it? One of the simple things that I'll often talk to them about is will the team disagree with each other in front of a client? And so many teams think like, well, that's really not that big of a deal. Why would you know, why would that be something that we should think about? Well, let's put that in a different context. So let's say I'm going to be getting on an airplane. And whenever I go through the door, there's always that you know, door up into where the pilots sit, and we'll just say that maybe the two of them are standing there. And I'm about to get on a five hour flight to Los Angeles, and the two pilots are standing there and they're disagreeing. They're disagreeing about how they want to have the plane takeoff. They're disagreeing about the route they want to go on. They're disagreeing about how they want to land and the entire time they're arguing back and forth. going back and forth about which one is the right thing to do. And if one is going to listen to the other, and all y'all and on and on. Now for the next five hours, I'm going to be sitting in my seat more than a little bit concerned about if I really trust these guys to get me where I need to go safely. And I would argue that I feel like the creative process isn't that different from those two pilots, and that this is why disagreeing in meetings can become so problematic. The reality is, is that if I want a client to trust me, I need to present one point of view, I need to present one way of doing things that they can buy into and they can trust. If the team is disagreeing with each other. If they're arguing if there's that kind of conflicting way about the way we're going to fly the plane. Well, no different than that passenger as a client, because I'm sitting there going look, can I really trust these guys with this work? Should I really feel like they know what it is they're doing when they even aren't on the same page about this? Now, I'm not saying that this means that you never disagree with your team. But what I am saying is to think about if that disagreement In front of the client is worth eroding the trust that they have in the creative team. It's a simple thing. But it's the ability to simply look at this and understand the team dynamic and the team goal ahead of two individual egos. Because that's often what it is, is it's the want to be right to show off for the client that I'm smarter than my teammate that I'm more worthy of praise or more worthy of recognition than my teammate. And it's one of those cases, as we see with so many things where the individual may win, but the team the collective loses. And it's just something to think about about in these moments. Are you thinking about the team? Are you thinking about kind of the bigger point that you're trying to make the bigger mountain that you're trying to climb as opposed to just winning the war but losing the battle? And it's like I said, it's not that in that moment, it doesn't mean you can't disagree with your team, but it just means waiting till after the meeting to discuss it. Because I think that in a lot of cases, like I said before, it's like becoming friends with somebody or it's like falling in love, it's a lot of these little things that can make a real difference add up in this relationship that you have with your clients, all these little things that maybe grow or erode the trust that they have in you. Because I think that's, that's the biggest thing that I think most people don't think about whenever it comes to working with clients. That's the biggest reason why I think I've been successful. Whenever I look at the best work that I've done. I've gotten incredible, incredible amounts of trust and latitude, from CEOs from heads of digital from heads of, you know, big companies and things like that, who say, Look, I'm gonna trust you on this. I'm not sure that I see it. I'm not even sure that I understand that I'm not even sure that I'm necessarily even a part of this. But I trust you, I trust that you can bring this in and that you can make this what it needs to be. And that is the foundation for all of this because most of the time, we can sit here and I can nitpick little things that clients do. I can pull all this little stuff apart and I think that's not what this episode is and I made a video very deliberate decision not to do that. Because for me, like I've said before, if you want to affect change, it's affecting thinking, not behavior. And because that's the thing is if a client is just simply behaving badly, well, then that's not really, if I just change that, but they still have the wrong thinking. I'm not really changing anything. But trust and confidence goes to thinking it goes to belief it, it isn't just behavior. And I think that's why it's an incredibly important thing. And I think if you look at and you think about the most problematic clients that you have, if you look at why do we have this relationship that we have, if it's adversarial, if it's whatever it is, most of the time, it's probably going to boil down to this trust and confidence sort of a thing I just talked a minute ago about, you know, how do you train them? How do you get them to think differently? How do I change that thinking? And so let's talk about that for a minute. Because the reality is, is that we've all we do have, I have you have we all have, we have clients who just behave badly. They don't listen, they don't respect you. They give you that solution to be vetted, not that problem to be solved. And it is maddening. It is soul crushing. It is not what creativity is meant to be. Because whenever we have this adversarial relationship, both sides suffer. But the one thing that I have to think about this is whenever I think about how do I change, how do I rehabilitate? How do I improve the thinking, not just the behavior of my clients? I draw an interesting analogy because the one thing that I harken back to the one thing that probably taught me the most about how to control problem clients, interestingly, was training dogs. I know that that has the potential of sounding really bad and let me be clear, so I don't get misquoted or anything like that. I'm not comparing my clients to dogs. What I am saying is that training dogs taught me about behavior shaping, and what behavior shaping is, is Whenever you ended up with a dog or a puppy or anything like that, training them basically means I want to encourage the good behavior. And I want to discourage the bad behavior over time to end up with really the results, the behavior that I want. And oftentimes, it's done by kind of little incremental changes, little shifts in things, and making sure that you use reward and punishment in appropriate measures, again, to shape out the bad behavior that you want and keep the things that you do. And I think that this really comes down to the same way that I think about working with my team, whenever I think about working with clients, is just the base fact of if you extrapolate that back out, I don't want to reward bad behavior, because I don't want it to continue. And I see too many times whenever I talk to creatives, they come and talk to me about this really challenging client that they have and how they have this really bad habit. And I'll ask them, well, what are you doing to correct it? And they said, Well, you know, We're hoping that over time, they kind of catch on to it that we're just going to keep doing what they say. And eventually they're going to catch on. And I kind of look at them. And I'll talk about the dog training analogy. And I'll say, Okay, again, let's change the context. We talked about the two pilots before. Now we're talking about dog training. So what you're saying is that if this client was a dog, and you came home every day and it peed on the carpet, you would give it a treat every day for peeing on the carpet, and hope that over the long term, it's just going to decide to change its behavior. And they would go, No, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you think the dog would change? And it's like, exactly, because that's the thing is if somebody has really bad behavior, and you're caving into it, you're doing it, you're supporting it, you're enabling it. What exactly is the incentive that they have to change and to do anything differently? And yes, it can be difficult. It can be mean that maybe you have to have a tough conversation. Maybe you have to push back maybe there are different things you need to do. But I think that for me, this is all a part of the education process. And because the reality is, is that I know, every single time, I'm never going to hire the perfect person for my team, I'm never going to get the perfect client. So that whenever I look at both of them, and whenever I look at both sides of the equation, I know that there has to be an education process that goes on. Because the reality is, and I'm one of the people that is in the camp that believes of inclusive creativity, I know that there's kind of a war that's going on in the industry right now. And it's centered around design thinking and a bunch of other things about should clients be included in this process? Or is that tearing it down? Or should creatives really remain kind of their own separate Island, their own tower and they do their own thing, and then they come back, and the client is given this kind of magical gift that's a product of all this stuff. I'm in the camp, that it needs to be inclusion, that we need to be inclusive of them. I think, especially if you work on the client side team, I think especially even if you're an agency because I think that the biggest part of this is that people want trust. They want value. And I think that the way that you do that is you make them a part of the process because I also think if you don't, it turns into a very black and white, very difficult problem to sell because either they're completely bought bought in or completely bought out with oftentimes not much in the middle. But I want them to be a part of the process, just like I want anyone on my team to be a part of my process, you have to understand how that process works. So here again, this is where I have to reward good behavior and have to train out bad behavior, I have to take the time to educate them to show them to invest in them the same way I would with a dog and like I said, it's not trying to draw a direct analogy between that but in so many cases, I just simply find that by changing the context of saying okay, well look, if the if you want to accomplish is exactly the same. People for whatever reason can see it much more clearly when you talk about kind of training a dog or training a pet as to interacting with a person even if the problem is almost exactly the same. Talking about reinforcing the good and turning out the bad sound. Interesting, but it's very broad, and it lacks specifics and it lacks example. So let's actually dig into some of those to try to help you understand exactly what I mean. So we've talked about this before that if a client comes to you with a solution, not a problem, I don't want to reward that behavior. I don't want to just simply blindly do that work. Because what I want to do is I want to reshape that behavior by talking to them, and back out that solution that they brought to me to understand what's the real problem, what do we really need to solve, I don't just want to again, blindly accept that it's a moment where I can change thinking, because once I've been able to back that out, once I haven't rewarded that bad behavior, I then come back with a problem to be solved. And I can give that to my team. And then once we have that, we can come back with multiple solutions. We can make it a conversation instead of a presentation with a client. And then once we go through that, then I can follow up with them, to see what they thought about it, to see what they thought about the work and to talk about how that different process worked better. Did they see the value in it did they see why it was so much better for all of us to be able to work on it together, as opposed to this one particular person coming up with more than likely a half baked idea, and then to simply trying to shove that down everybody's throat. So that's what I mean, because I don't I don't want to reinforce I don't want to reward that bad behavior. But I want to reshape it, I want to reshape it into something good, by being the bridge to the right way to be able to do things, but then to go back to educate, to train to spend the time with them. So I'm sure they see the value in that. And I'm going to keep doing that time over time until I shape that bad behavior out of them. Some people that may only be one iteration one conversation, they're gonna go gonna go You know what, I get it, I see why this is better. I've just always worked that way because I thought that was the only way to do it. Other people may be more stubborn. It may take more time or every time we make a little bit of progress. Maybe it's three or four progresses and then we take a step backwards, but it's one of those things where I want to keep going back and I want to keep revisiting it to slowly shape that behind. You're out. And it's going to be up to the individual for how fast this goes. Here, again, not a magic bullet, but you need to go through and you need to spend that time you need to think about this stuff about Okay, and how do I just simply not accept this problem at face value? We talked in the last episode about executive bled or executive interference in creativity. And that's really whenever you see somebody who is an executive who throws out an idea, or they're, you know, leading a process or something like that. And everyone here again, just simply blindly takes whatever that execution is. They run around they do it, they run around like a chicken with their head cut off, never stopping, to talk to understand kind of what was behind that ask and then not to simply blindly follow it. I often will talk about how you know my team or I need to be the ones who will stop these people to say, Okay, look, I know that this very important person said that that's the execution that they want, but that we need to figure out what was actually behind that let's not just be blinded by what they said and run to that. Let's stop and rethink this. Well, that's behavior shaping. The thing there is I'm just doing it on a slightly larger scale I'm doing with a different set of clients. But I want to shape away just that the blindly following part of this, because I want everybody to just stop, I can stop just being quite so accepting, it doesn't mean that everyone has turned out a bunch of assholes and a bunch of rebels. But what it does mean is that I want you to stop to think to think for yourself to say, Is this the right thing for the consumer, for the customer for whatever it is that we're working for? Is this going to make the most sense? And I also said this before that I think that this behavior shaping is something that I often do, and really need to be a successful leader. Because the reality is that leadership, and again, we've talked about this before, is not one big moment. It's a lot of little moments. It's a lot of supporting what's good in the people in your team, and trying to reshape reform, behavior shape, the bad things to get them to see a different perspective. But again, this only comes from actually investing in them leaning in to be able to work with them to be able to say Hey, did you Do you see that went really well? And let's celebrate that, or you know that thing that we talked about? That's a problem. Well, here's another instance of it. And do you see why it came to life that way and next time, let's do something different. So these are these sort of things about how I'm trying to shape the behavior over time. And I think that the other thing that this speaks to, which is a very important part of this that is in all too fleeting supply, I think whenever it comes to people's careers, whenever it comes to the way that they deal with their work, is patience. Because patience takes time. It's something that very interestingly, I definitely kind of got a laugh out of, was I sat down with some people and they said, Oh, well look, you know, you go in and you try to change these internal organizations, you try to be able to bring in design or do some of these other things. You know, I really, that's really interesting. I'm gonna do that too. How long do you think that takes, without missing a beat? I said, really well, with great support takes a year, with very kind of middling to bad support. year and a half, two years. I think their eyes about rolled into the back of their head because trying to wrap their head around the fact that somebody would take that long was just simply beyond them. careers are the same way clients are the same way that this is not something that you're just going to snap your fingers, they're just going to go, Oh, I see what this is. Let me just simply change everything that I think it's going to take time, it's going to take a little bit of patience. And this is one of those cases again, where you know, your patience, your willingness to follow through on this has got to be stronger than than theirs or you're not going to find a way forward. So we talked about it in the intro about how the other problem that you can have is that whenever you talk about doing inclusive creativity with your clients, it can do this interesting thing where it sort of turns them into tiny drug addicts. What does that mean? Sounds very interesting. Sounds slightly shocking. What the hell does that mean? But the thing that for me is that I think most people concentrate on their clients just whenever it comes to how do they get the idea started? How do they get it sold and then pass that they don't kind of thinking much about the client interaction. The other key moment where I see a lot of people really struggle is that this really is, when you talk about we've gone through this process, we've come up with ideas that we've gotten the work done, we've got it kind of designed and things like that. And there comes this moment when the creation stops. Because at a certain point, we need to build this thing, we need to get the website developed, the app developed, we need to build the building, we need to like there's some point when the creativity comes to an end. And the interesting thing is that with a lot of clients, I see them kind of turn into tiny drug addicts, because they get very addictive, they very much enjoy the creative process. Because think about it for most people, whether you're in technology, whether you're you know, and executive leadership, whatever it is, that's not really a moment that you're used to, you're used to kind of going from A to B and it's a very kind of linear existence. There's suddenly a freedom to this. There's suddenly something very different to this. And they really like that and they get addicted to that fun of creative And some of them honestly kind of get withdrawals when you take it away from them. Like I said before, I think this is understandable, they're not used to being a part of this process. This can lead to some very bad and very difficult results with some clients. Because what it can lead to is the fact that in those withdrawals, they want another hit. This is why I refer to them as drug addicts, because it was fun, and they want more of it. And so what they're going to do is suddenly, they're not going to respect the deadline of when something needs to be done. They're going to want to keep making changes, they're going to want to keep trying to get involved, they're going to want to keep saying well, what about what about what about and how bad this is varies from person to person, I guess just like any actual addiction, but the thing that you need to do more than anything is to give them a roadmap so they understand the process. And it's something that you need to be able to refer back to often and I think this is where mockups can bridge the gap. This is where you see prototypes can help keep them calm, like there are there are things that they can play with so that as they're waiting for it to be built, they can then Kind of, you know, keep going and keep involved in this. I think it also is much, much worse in waterfall processes. Because in a waterfall, you go from that kind of ideation phase into the design phase into the build phase. I think you see this much, much less if you work in agile methodologies, because in Agile, it's much more of a rolling design and delivery so that there's always something for them to be addicted to, I guess, I don't know a better way to be able to say that. If you're still stuck in a waterfall, if you still have clients that are doing this, you need to figure out a couple different ways of handling this, I think one is to know when are we just simply drawing the line, when is it going to go into version 2.0, or that the backlog depending on how it is that you work, but if you have clients that are really bad, and I've had a few of these, the other thing that I'm going to do is that I'm going to know my client again, I'm going to spend the time getting to know them to get them to trust me. But if I know that they have this tendency, I may actually manufacture problems or I may actually create moments of creativity for problems that we've already solved because what I want to do is I want to save them from themselves. Again, I'm not doing it to be malicious, I'm not doing it to be mean. But it's the fact that if they get involved, they don't necessarily understand that they're going to hurt the end product, or they're going to hurt the delivery date or that things are gonna slip, or it's going to put a lot of people under a lot of stress, if we're constantly giving them this moving target. So I don't want things to be derailed. But so I'm actually going to invent these sort of moments or these little times where we can still have that interaction, I can still give them that little hit. Because it's going to keep them calm, it's going to keep them engaged, it's going to keep them from getting in and sort of just messing around with what it is that we're doing. But I think that those are just sort of like the big set piece things. Those are the big sort of things where I think if a lot of cases, like I said, if you go back and you think about the problems that you have with your clients, the places where they're stressed the places where there's disagreement, I think it's going to map back to a lot of those problems. And I think it's why, for me, like I get a lot of emails about this, I get a lot of people who come and talk to me about this stuff. And it's why for me, I tried to again, deal with the business bigger issues the thinking, not the behavior because the behavior yes is simply symptomatic. Yes, it is something that is a problem. But it's the underlying problem that we really need to get to, it's the underlying problem that we really need to look at. And look at it from both sides. This is not just an us versus them sort of thing. I've never bought into that. But you know, one side is free of accountability from this. But you have to look at both sides of this to be able to understand kind of what's really going on underneath the surface, not just in the one place here where it's sort of flaring up. But I also recognize the fact that when we talk about these big issues, that it's hard to be able to sometimes draw that down into great Steve, what the hell do I do tomorrow? These are big things. These are big issues, we can start to work on shaping behavior, we can start to work on these things. But what can I do? What are some of the things that I can do differently? And so I spent a little bit time and I thought about Okay, well what are just some of the basic things that I try to work on whenever I try to build rapport with clients because again, if you If it's about trust, if it's about confidence, what are some of the things that you can do? What are the things that you as an individual can do to try to work on this? And so there are four things that I came up with. And so the first one really is, and this may sound condescending to this, this may sound like well, why the hell would you want to be able to do something like this. But the first thing that I would say is to speak slowly. And let's let's pull that apart to understand what I mean by that. Because anytime you're working with a client, I want to make sure that I speak slowly that I speak smoothly, that I do it in a tone that conveys authority. Now, I have a natural gift of a voice that is deep, that is loud, that is resonant that doesn't let me whisper in a hurricane. So the authority part is not something that I tend to struggle with, but there are a lot of other people I work with who do but it's one of those things where you just take the time to think about that, because it may sound like a little thing. Here again, let's change the content. text if you meet somebody new, and if you think that there's somebody who is nervous or jumpy, or mumbles, you never perceive that person as being confident you never perceive them as being in charge. And that's a real problem. Because here again, there may be small things, subconscious things, that are a part of this process that maybe you weren't necessarily thinking about, but maybe having a real impact on the way that your clients perceive you. Because if go and watch any TED Talk, or any great speaker that you can think of, you'll see that they speak slowly. They speak with self assurance, and it gives what they're talking about credibility, it gives it authority. And so the thing that I would encourage you to do, partially is to practice to think about how do I do this? How do I do it well, but also in an upcoming meeting, take your phone, iPhone, Android, whatever. They both have recording devices, whether it's for audio notes, whether it's for other things like that, just put it on record before the meeting. starts and sit down on the table in front of you. And then go through and do the presentation. And then go back afterwards and listen to it. We talked about this in the, in the episodes on presentation skills, because one of the things that you're going to find is that one, you maybe have audio tics like saying, you know, or, or kinda or right or different things like that you weren't even aware of. But it may also be that you aren't quite as clear as you think that you are. Maybe you're not speaking as slowly and as clearly as you think you are. Because most of the time I can tell you with me, whenever I feel like I'm going slow, I'm enunciating I'm like good lord. I feel like, you know, people are almost going to get offended by the way that I'm talking to them. Whenever I record it, I go back to listen to it. It's never never as bad as I think it is in my head. The other thing that you'll see is that also, you aren't necessarily really paying attention to what it is that you say. And it's a basic natural phenomenon. Because what happens is whenever you're speaking, your brain is loading up then next sentence and it gets it ready. It ships it down to your mouth, your mouth starts to say it, your brain moves on to the next thing. So you're never truly in the moment. Because you're trying to be more structured you're trying to present you're trying to be more thoughtful about what it is that you say. So the flow is different. You're trying to be more studied about what that is. Well, you can hear that whenever you play it back. You can hear how good or how bad is that? But this is why to me, and I've told this story before. It's like hearing your voice on a voicemail. Whenever I do it. Whenever I listen to this podcast, I think to myself, I have heard my voice in my head for 365 days a year for every single year that I've been alive. I cannot sound like that much of a tool. I can't have those audio hiccups. I can't have that weird enunciation on what that word is. But I absolutely do. And this is the same thing for you. Because if you listen to it, you can think about Okay, how am I actually speaking to my clients? Am I maybe putting an inflection or a tone? Because there are some people who unknowingly sound condescending in the way that they actually will say things are struggling Things that they don't mean to be. But here again, it just simply comes across that way. It is a worthwhile exercise no matter what seniority you are, no matter what kind of clients you work with just every once in a while, do this, and then go back and listen to it. The slightly more difficult part. And the second thing I would say, is to learn to suspend your ego. Because I think part of being a great leader, but also part of being a great half of this client creative relationship is that you have to be able to connect with people. And that's just really the ability to listen to what somebody has to say without correcting without interrupting, without waiting to tell a story of your own. I mentioned this earlier in the episode, but it's worth saying again, because people who constantly correct or interrupt others, they're perceived as insecure. They're perceived as needing to be right. They're perceiving as needing to one up everyone else. And I see this run rampant with creatives, where because what they want to do is they just want to make this point that like no the person, you don't really understand me, you don't understand my point. And so I'm just going to keep saying the same thing. I'm going to keep interrupting him and keep talking over you until you get in what my point is, as opposed to stopping to listening to say, maybe you guys are actually saying the same thing. Maybe you're not saying the same thing at all. But it's one of these cases where it's the delivery of the message that makes a massive, massive difference. Because the thing that I've learned far too often seen far too often, is it the right message with the wrong delivery is still wrong. So think about that. Make sure that you aren't correcting or interrupting here again, this will become very, very apparent if you record this. If you hear your client speaking the entire time you're trying to go Yeah, but well, but, but just wait. But wait, if you're doing that the entire time. It's annoying as hell. But it's also the fact that you can tell and you know that you're not listening what that person says because all you're trying to do is just wait for your moment to jump in. But that's the problem is that most people aren't able to suspend their ego long enough to put someone else's wants someone else's needs someone else's perceptions ahead of their own. And as great as we suffer from this far too often, but this is what I said is that you know, the next time you're sitting with your client, practice that ego suspension, practice just listening when they speak. And again, even if you disagree with them, if you're going to say the exact same thing, let them talk, listen to what they have to say. And then ask them to elaborate on their point, ask them to explain what that is maybe instead of immediately trying to make a counterpoint stain and trying to go back and correct them. Because most creatives are in such a hurry in such a rush to be right, that they don't take the time to understand how that makes their clients feel. They don't to really look at what does that do to the interpersonal dynamic between the two of them? How does it again, erode that trust, because the people who are able to suspend their ego, the ones who are able to keep that focus on someone besides themselves, those are the people that are thought of as leaders, those are the people that are thought of as being the most creative. Those are the people that are thought of as being, you know, easy to approach or conversationalist or different things like that, all of which are attributes that you want, or you should want if you want to be able to have a successful relationship with your clients. And now the next one here, again is a little bit of a kind of a counterpoint to that a little bit of a companion will say, but part of it is also to think about how do you control your body language, because that's another thing that speaks volumes whenever you're actually interacting with people. Because body language can really have negative connotations. You know, mine, again, is probably a little bit different, because for me, I'm six foot four, I am not a small guy. But I have to make sure that I'm not standing too close to somebody, I have to make sure that, you know, I'm really thinking about the physical juxtaposition between me and somebody else, because it can be intimidating. But it's something a bit more than that, too, because I think you can also use body language, really to try to do something as simple as reinforcing, you know, positive energy to be able to think about that I'm really engaged with something if you're slumped over, and you're reading your iPhone, if you're, you know, slid way back in your chair and you're staring at the ceiling if you're sitting there with your arms crossed. Those all communicate things. Those are convey a certain type of energy that convey a certain type of openness without you even saying a word. And so here again, is I'm sitting there with my client. I want them to feel like they can say whatever it is that they need to say to me. I feel like I want them to feel like they're honest. Because what I don't want is I don't want this dynamic where we sit in a meeting, I realize, Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it's good. It's good. Yeah, no, we like it. And you go away, and then an hour or two later, you get that email where it's like, Okay, well, you know, what I've been thinking about, I didn't really want to say this in the meeting, but here's how I really feel that's an indication of a symptom of the fact that they don't feel like they can trust me or they can be open with me. And so it's one of the things I just simply tried to think about is body language, his physicality between other people how do I use that, you know, again, as a positive or how can it be viewed as a negative. There's a simple thing. It may sound really goofy, but just like even walking around the floor. Next time you pass your client in the hallway and I see you pass a team member in the hallway, give them a high five may sound goofy takes a little bit of, you know, daring or something to be able to do it. You would be amazed to see how easily people will smile or it'll cheer somebody up or creates a connection with somebody that you barely know. Just simply through the physicality of that through the body language to that simple connection. It's an inconvenient, incredibly powerful thing. And it may sound Goofy, but it's something to think about. And the last part of this and the fourth thing I would say, to build rapport goes back to once again, ego suspension. Because I think the other thing is that too many creatives suffer from is the fact that we always feel like we have to be right. We have to have the answer. We have to we're looked at as being these people that can solve problems. And so we have to be flawless in the execution of that. But one of the biggest things that I've found one of the the things that I found that builds rapport with clients, probably the most and rapport that is some of the strongest is being honest and asking for help when I need it. It may be a small trick, but I found that for some people, there's nothing that is better building rapport than asking them for their help. I do it because we're all biologically conditioned to feel you're connected to people who need help, because they're in a vulnerable position. And here again, I'm not necessarily doing it because I want to be manipulative, I'm not doing it because I'm, you know, trying to make a false connection here that ultimately isn't going to work. And so if that's the only reason why you think you're gonna do this, and you're not being genuine about it, save your time and trying to do this, in the end, it's not actually gonna work. If anything, it may actually backfire. But I want to go to them. And I just want to start this ability to be honest with each other. And I know that so often, I'm gonna have to be the one that starts this because it's a dynamic that they might be maybe they aren't necessarily used to. So I keep the request small. And it's something that can be easily done. In the end, the outcome really is pretty simple. But what it does is it lets me go in there and it lets these small things, you know, really go through and start to help build because it puts me in a vulnerable position, it means that I have to go and ask them for help. But out of that there's an honesty to that there is a vulnerability to that. That can be incredibly powerful. And it also shows them that if I'm willing to do it, they should be willing to do it too. And then I'll be happy to reciprocate. Because it just is this idea of the fact that the vulnerability, the honesty, is something that I think for a lot of people they don't want to do. It's like, you know, a dog girls over and shows you his belly or something like he's giving up. And that's not the case. But what it is, is, is just simply recognizing the fact that sometimes in this, we have to be the bigger person, sometimes we have to show the way, and that it's not just simply sitting around with our arms crossed going well, they should know, they should know how to work with us, they should know how to interact with us. That's not the case. That's not the way this works. Again, like I said before, this is a relationship. And I feel like that's the biggest thing that I hope that you take away from this is the fact that if you are honest, if you encourage the good if you discourage the bad if you go in with a solution for this thing that over time I've seen even the most difficult clients will change that the people who were the most difficult, the loudest critics can become some of your biggest Have supporters, because you went to them, you're honest, you're vulnerable, you encourage the good, you discourage the bad. Again, these are the sorts of things and these may sound small, they may sound simple, but trust me, I've seen this over a lot of years that it works. So I encourage you to use them, but use them as a starting point because everybody's different. And every client is going to be different, that you need to look at this. And like I said, I need to go back and look at how can I change the way that these people think not just behave? How am I building trust? How am I building confidence? What is my role in this to be able to do that? How am I paying into this relationship to make sure that it works? Because I think if you're doing that, that's the place we're gonna end up with a partner. Because when you talk about these things of trust, and honesty and openness and collaboration, that's not just a creative client relationship. That's any relationship that's any successful marriage. It's any successful company. It's any successful any relationship defined by these things. And so like I said, maybe it takes you thinking about it in different terms, maybe it takes you stepping up and being uncomfortable with that. But trust me, it will pay off. I've seen some of the most hardened skeptics on the creative side, I've seen some of the toughest clients, both be able to find a way to be able to work together and come together to make this stuff work, may still be frustrating may not be immediately easy, may not be immediately magical. But if you work at it, it will get there. And because ultimately, the reason why this is so worth it, the reason why this investment in this time is something that you need to do is because it's going to show up in the work. Because that trust in the confidence is going to pay out, your team is going to be happier, your work is going to be better. All of this is going to get to a much, much better place. Because whenever I think about all of the big projects that I worked on the best stuff in my career, like I said before, it's because somebody had an incredible amount of trust in me and in my team to let us do what we needed to do. That we respected that we were absolutely not going to disappoint them to be able to pay that off. But that that was the real foundation. It wasn't the creative brief. It wasn't the you know, the hours that we worked to the conference calls or any of that stuff. It was the trust that gave us the opportunity to be able to do that. So hopefully, that was helpful. Hopefully, it's a foundation for things like that. As I said before, if there's more stuff that you want to find out about, if there are questions, if there's a problem client that you're really working with that you feel like this isn't going to cover it, go to the Facebook page, go to Facebook, search for The Crazy One podcast, give that page like, feel free to go in there and ask me a question. Because there are also going to be any updates, I post interesting articles, weekly inspirations, all kinds of other stuff. So head over there and be able to like that and we can keep the conversation going. If there's a specific thing that you really want to talk about. If you like the show, I always ask every time just take a couple seconds, go to iTunes your favorite podcast platform leave review makes a huge difference brings people to the show, and it really is great. If you want to get the notes for the show, you want to find out more or listen to other episodes, anything like that head over to head over to podcast dot Stephen Gates, calm Stephen, as always as STP h n done a lot of work on the show notes keeping that up there. So you that's an easy reference to be able to go back to all this stuff. As always the boys don't only want me to remind you that all the views here are my own. They do not represent any of my current or former employers. These are just my own personal views. And finally, I say it every time because I mean at every time but thank you for your time. I know the time is truly the only real lecture that we have. And I'm always incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of it with me. So until next time, and as always, stay crazy