What are your strengths when you are meeting and speaking to your clients?
These are two of the questions that I ask when interviewing people to help shape content for training and development programmes. Many people struggle to answer these clearly, even when I ask them to be “honest and not modest”. Some even struggle to identify one thing they do well!
If I asked you the same question, could you answer this clearly and definitively?
It’s a tough one and one that is worth exploring. You might get asked this type of question directly by clients, you might get asked by those in your network who want to refer clients to you. Most importantly you need to be able to answer this question to yourself honestly. So, what stops you? It appears that your inner critic can have a strong and clear voice. Highlighting your deficits, your gaps in knowledge or the mistakes you have previously made. Your inner champions voice by comparison is either very quiet or appears to be on a permanent holiday.
Tackling this quiet voice can help you grow and really develop what you do and how well you work with your clients (along with colleagues, suppliers, friends and family).
Where can you start? Ask yourself this question – in that last client meeting or on that last client call, what did I do well? It may take a little time to identify some of the big and small things you have done, so be patient. When you do, make a note of them and review and reread these notes. When you have a single point or a few notes, ask yourself, how do I keep doing this? It is very easy to miss these things and you run the risk of not doing these things on a regular basis. So many people can benefit from doing the basic and doing them extraordinarily well.
This simple process can help you grow and find your real strengths. It can give a bigger voice to your inner champion and give you a more balanced view of your current skills and abilities. What do you do if you can’t find answers yourself?
Ask your clients. Simply interview those clients who are onboard and working with you and ask them what you do really well for them. The answers they give might well surprise you. I did this with a range of our clients, and it really surprised me. One of the common themes they told me was when we trained their teams, they loved the fact we used very little or no PowerPoint. Instead, we actively encouraged discussions, exploring topics, ideas, and new ways of working. I assumed (my mistake) that this would be normal in the training and development world, and it turns out its not. I now use this knowledge to position what we do with new clients. I wonder what your clients would tell you that will help you grow and create a consistently improving service to each of your clients.
I like to reflect and look for these learning opportunities after each meeting, each day and each week. Noticing these positive things can help me grow by asking that “How do I repeat this?” question. Now naturally I don’t just look for the positives, and I am sure you would expect me to flip this question over. Asking yourself something like “What could I improve when I work with clients?” can also be extremely insightful. It will help your development and highlight ways you can positively improve your client engagement and interaction.
If you have identified these things you do well and the things you could improve, that’s a really positive position to be in. You are already ahead of most people in developing and growing. If you haven’t yet identified these areas, it’s time to sit down with a cup of tea and ask yourself, ensuring you are being honest and not modest, simply focussing first on what you do well. It’s a great part of self reflection and growth