There are many ways to think about clients. Sometimes they feel like the enemy, ignoring your brilliant ideas and insisting on something you know is a bad plan. Other times they can feel like a pain, trying to kill you with a thousand tiny needles of last minute changes. Often they’re a headache, if they’d just let you get on with your job, everything would be for the best. I think Matthew Inman’s TheOatmeal comic nailed it: How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell.

But what they really need to be is a partner.

I got some advice once, which I’ve found eminently useful. You need to think of clients as people who need your help. Of course everyone at the end of the day wants the project to be successful, if the project is “theirs”, you are there to give them as much help as you can. You’ll get a lot further with gentle but firm guidance than you will by declaring their idea won’t work, and it’s better your way. That helps no one, you’ve bruised their ego, you’ve made yourself look like a jerk, and it’ll be harder to work together towards a goal. And that final goal of a finished project everyone is proud of is the point.

Of course there are times when you have to sit back and listen when someone is bullishly pursuing something severely misguided. If you can’t dissuade them, fine, just help them make that project as good as it can possibly be and let it go. Not everything you do is going to be a work of supreme art, and save up your pride for a project you have more say over. This is not easy. No one wants to work on something they aren’t ultimately very proud of, sometimes you just have to get over it. Too much pride can be a big hindrance in working together.

Whether it’s an internal or external client, if you want to, or are going to have to, work together again in the future, you need respect on both sides of the table. You can’t get that by being a doormat, or by being a bully. It’s tough to find a good balance, but if you are going to be judged by the end result of the project, it’s in everyone’s best interest for you to stand up for the best idea, no matter where it comes from. Persuasion is a useful tool, and a skill that needs to be developed like any other.

There are definitely lovely clients who are prepared to contribute what they can to the ultimate success, value them. These people make it all worth it.

When you get the client whose project idea came to them in a vision after falling asleep watching cat videos, what do you do? You know what they want is impossible, how do you help them make their dream a reality? Or do you find a way to extricate yourself from the whole project because you don’t want to get blamed for its failure? Have you found a good method of managing expectations? Or budget, when you see the requirement growing, changing, and “pivoting” so that the end project is nothing like originally planned?

So many questions…let me know what you think.