Balanced exchange: the heart of good client service

The most important dynamic in good client service is the dynamic of balanced exchange: is what I am giving and what I am getting in return in harmony?  This lies at the heart of any client relationship founded on the service of helping. It’s a key systemic principle whose observance is essential in all healthy relationships.

Here’s a guide to what it is, how it works, and how you can attend to it so that your work and personal relationships stay healthy.

The balance of exchange

We all sense the fundamental role of exchange in relationships. It is all pervasive, active in both the mundane drudgery  and the divine ecstasy of every day life. Whether it’s doing the washing up, the school run or initiating moments of intimacy, no one wants to be the one always doing the work.

In personal relationships, we keep the bond of love in flow by maintaining a balance of what we give, and what we receive.  Professional life is no different, except money and service takes the place of love. 

And so that we give of ourselves, our time, the bulk of our lives, in return for fair payment (this is why most of us don’t charge our families for professional favours).  When this is balance is out of step, relationships break down - people become disenchanted, go on strike or leave. Just as they do in personal relationships.

Yet the swapping of love for money is only part of the picture.  Below the surface in any professional relationship, there are other exchanges going on, other emotional needs that we hope to meet through the means of a professional engagement. Some are quite apparent - friendship, comradery, reputational growth, fulfillment of purpose.  Others remain secret - bolstering of self-worth,  external approval, relieving a sense of guilt, debt or revenge, furtherance of moral values.

When in spring 2023 a group of some 120 lawyers calling themselves “Lawyers Are Responsible” decided that they would not act against Stop Oil protestors, we saw these deeper dynamics coming to the surface.  In the language of exchange, each of them was essentially saying, “I won’t act: there’s not enough of what I demand in it for me.”  The ambiguity in their self-styled name was doubtless intentional. Yet not everyone enjoys the privileged of being able to say no to work that doesn’t suit their personal tastes.

An honest look within

Lawyers Are Responsible is a rare and extreme example because the hidden motives behind the professional lives of these lawyers was surfaced when normally it remained hidden, and the refusal to act was absolute.  But if we acknowledge this as one end of a spectrum, we must face the truth of what it tells us. 

We all have our unspoken, hidden expectations of what we want, need or demand from our work relationships, outside of anything that is the legitimate concern of our instructions, client contract or fee charging regime. 

Lurking in the deep pools of our relationship patterns, these expectations primarily serve our own personal needs, and not directly the needs of our client.  For this reason it is essential that we become aware of them and learn ways of attending to them.

Let’s take a simple example: an advisor who suffers from imposter syndrome and for whom professional work serves a need for external validation and approval.  In many ways the professional’s own needs and those of the client will align: the imposter drives the advisor to over-perform to prove their worth, and the client receives exceptional service as a result.  Many a glittering career is fuelled by this dynamic.

But what if the interests of the client are best served by giving negative advice, advice that the client does not want to hear? This risks the advisor receiving criticism or disproval; to act appropriately requires the advisor to put their client first, and themselves second. 

Now we see the risk that client service is compromised, because the personal needs of the advisor are misaligned with the best interests of the client. 

So we need to beware the deep pools of our own relationship dynamics so that we can guard against unwittingly putting ourselves before our clients.

We must attend to our needs appropriately

There are two simple, on-going practices that can support us to keep a healthy balance of exchange in our professional and indeed personal relationships.

First, we raise our awareness of what we are expecting from the work relationship that could get in the way of putting the client first.  

We can find where to look by asking ourselves what it is that we tend to take personally in our professional lives.   These are the things that provoke disproportionately intense or lasting feelings.

For example:

• Are we overly sensitive to making mistakes?

• Do we feel deflated if we don’t receive client praise?

• Do we take losses personally?

• Do we hold back from action because of how it could reflect on us?

Much of this will involve patient personal inquiry. The answers to these questions may reveal something more in play that simply our professional role and responsibilities. 

Secondly,  we acknowledge these deeper needs and attend to them outside of the relationship where they risk creating an imbalance. 

A good professional cannot impose on their clients the burden of satisfying their need for approval, just as a man cannot impose upon his partner the need for a mother or father - at least, not if they want their relationships to thrive and last.  It is only when we put ourselves in order that healthy, balanced exchange comes about, and relationships flow.

By attending to ourselves and our needs in this way, we can keep our selves and our clients in their right place: sufficiently close that we can serve them well, sufficiently far that we ask and take no more from the relationship than it can healthily provide.  In this way, we find the heart of good client service.