You'll feel the atmosphere change in a room when you say, “I don’t know as much about your business as you do, so I want to learn with you.”
Openly admitting this to clients is refreshing and diffuses nervousness and tension for both parties. Confidence is freely admitting that there’s no way to be an expert in everything. The remedy to ego, arrogance, and a lack of confidence is openly and freely admitting that, while you do have expertise in what you do, you don’t know everything.īuying into the idea that you have to know everything may feel like confidence on the surface, but it’s actually just the opposite. If you let those feelings go unchecked, you may end up needing to put other people down to feel better about yourself. You end up feeling like an imposter in your career, and maybe in your life, just waiting for someone to find you out. And if you’re not all of those things (aka: just like everyone else), it will try to convince you that you don’t belong. Your ego says you have to be smart, wealthy, and all-knowing. If you let that voice win, one of two things might happen: you never have the confidence to get yourself off the ground, or you end up overcompensating and sounding arrogant.Įgo can easily get in the way and keep you from admitting that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Most of us have that little voice inside of us that says it’s not okay not to know something. What happens when you inevitably slip up? If you emphatically say something that your client knows is wrong, you’ve immediately lost all credibility. Let’s say you walk in wanting to prove to the client that you have an answer for their every question. Why? Because they don’t want to be wrong, either.Īnd let’s take that thought one step further. If you walk in trying to convince them that you know everything, you’ll make the client even more nervous. And in most cases they’re just as eager to make a good impression. In most cases they’re just as nervous as you are. You feel like the only way to make it through the meeting is to convince the client that you know everything.īut it’s not so different from the client’s perspective. You feel like there’s a gigantic spotlight on you. So you walk into a room to give a presentation to a client. So how do you react? Do you try to convince the client that you know the answer to every problem they’ve ever had, or do you admit up front that you don’t know everything?Īs counterintuitive as it might seem, it’s the second option that truly leads to confidence. If you’re like a good 90% of designers, the idea makes you a least a little uncomfortable.
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