The Delicate Balance of Managing Your Client’s Confidence

You’ll often find that your client’s confidence falls on a scale of too much or too little. Too little leads to the mentality of “we can’t do any of this without you.” Too much confidence, on the other hand leads to the thought “we can do all of this without you.” But through working with your clients, you can help them into the goldilocks zone of confidence.

Too Little Confidence

A client with little confidence may sound like a good business opportunity for you, but it’s not going to be easy work. If a client has low to no confidence in their own creative abilities, communication will be difficult as you work to figure out what they actually want and like.

A lack of creative confidence leads to strained communication from your client. Meaning that you’ll be confronted with a lack of ideas, direction, and feedback. In turn this will make your job nearly impossible to do. Just because someone “isn’t a creative” doesn’t mean that they don’t have input. It’s up to you to show them that they are capable of creativity which in turn will make your job easier.

Too Much Confidence

On the other hand, too much confidence isn’t good for business either — yours or theirs. Having an overly confident client often leads to undermining and overriding your creative input.

Left unmanaged, the project will quickly fall off the rails. Leaving your client with something that doesn’t serve the purpose of their project.

In order to combat this you need to rely on explaining your choices through the principles and concepts that you’ve learned. This will move the argument away from the ego and into the factual realm.

Just The Right Amount of Confidence

It’s amazing what the right amount of confidence does for a working relationship. You want your clients to have the confidence to explore, ideate, and brainstorm ideas with you while still respecting you as a creative professional and allowing you space to give them the solution that they need.

This creates a wonderfully collaborative environment where ideas can come from anywhere but the professional boundaries still stand. Meaning that, at the end of the day, your clients trust you to do your job and you trust them to do theirs. That’s when magic happens.