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Every human being living on this planet is looking for something unique to themselves. Self-interested by nature, humans are always trying to fulfill their best interest first. Empathy, the ability to put yourself in one’s shoes, allows us to understand on a deeper level why someone would want to be a certain way. By doing so, it enables us to understand what these people need and want in order to help them achieve their goals.
Being good to someone is little more than that: having the ability to understand their emotional, physical, financial, spiritual and mental needs and being able to cater to those. The opposite would be to not acknowledge this and act regardless of someone else’s needs. We’ve all been in situations where we faced someone completely disregarding our wants, fears and needs. Remember how that made you feel, likely not good at all. Short of being a sociopath, most of us are not looking to be purposely be that way.
In a professional context, most people are situated somewhere on the following pyramid of needs, ranging from basic fears to higher level aspirations, described as follows:
“I want to keep my job”
“I want to avoid criticism”
“I want to avoid headaches”
“I want to feel pride in the results I produce”
“I want to leave a legacy”
In understanding this, it enables us to adjust the way we deal with people by understanding their need to grow professionally and being able to assess where they stand on the scale. You’re not going to convince a client to get involved in a risky, yet potentially very rewarding project if they fear for their job and need to play it safe. Conversely, a client who is working in a healthy and profitable business may not be interested in playing it safe and will be willing to take on bigger risks in order to fulfill the dream of leaving a legacy.
Because everybody is different and has different needs, dreams and aspirations, empathy is a great tool to help us understand people on a personal level and cater to their aspirations. Since everybody has different needs and aspirations, offering clients a one-size fits all service is likely not going to serve anyone well. For you, the service provider, it means attempting to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole, struggling to keep clients on board with a solution that at best only partially fulfills their aspirations. For clients, it guarantees an endless suite of frustrated moments where they shake their heads and silently cringe at your inability to understand their needs.
I often get asked “What can you do for me?” before I have a chance to do a proper diagnostic of the prospect’s needs and I have had to train myself to not take the bait and start reciting a list of ready-made solutions to previously-encountered problems. Instead, I firmly but politely explain that I cannot prescribe solution until a proper diagnosis is done, even though I may already have gleaned sufficient information to have a pretty good idea of what it is that they need. Should they continue to press for a specific answer, that’s a telltale sign of them not being a good fit for the kind of work I do and therefore I gracefully bow out by saying “I don’t think I am in a position to help you at this time”.
As a designer, would you start designing solution for your clients without first spending time understanding, defining and re-framing the problems at hand? Clients hire us because they have a problem they don’t know how to solve and if we don’t try and solve this problem the best we can by jumping to conclusions, then we dilute the value of our thinking and undermine the quality of our work and reputations in the process.
As creative service professionals, one challenge we all face is that people who don’t share this mode of creative, non-linear thinking often confuse creativity and innovation with magical powers, where miraculously creative people pull new and innovative ideas out of a hat. As discussed previously, we are all inherently creative, the most creative of us being merely better at harnessing their creative abilities than others.
As a result, it is our duty to do whatever is in our power to “walk a mile in our clients shoes” in order to understand the problems they face from their perspective and being able to start formulating the best solutions to these problems. If that’s something you’ve been struggling with in your client relationships, what’s the first step you can take today to start taking corrective action?
Arnaud Marthouret is the founder of rvltr and leads their strategy, visual communications and media efforts. He has helped numerous architects and interior designers promote themselves in their best light - pun intended - in order to help them run more effective practices and grow in a meaningful way.
If you have questions about this article or rvltr, or want to chat about your strategy and communications, you can leave a comment, share with a friend, or reach him at arnaud{at}rvltr.studio.