The Business Metric Destined to Make You Insane
Why making your boss or client happy is a goal that sets you up for failure - and what to focus on instead
I was raised professionally in PR agencies, trained to enter any meeting prepared to steer. To have an official agenda and, if needed, my own unofficial agenda. To know who each person is, to understand (or learn quickly) their objectives - what do they care about, what are their goals and how do they align (or not) with my own or that of my client. To make sure that the action items are taken and distributed, even if it’s not by me. To use what I hear to inform strategy. I was trained by powerful, unstoppable (mostly) women who knew how to control a room.
Then I became a therapist. I learned right away that control has no place in a therapy session.
I approach therapy client work with curiosity, connection, compassion. Work being done in session is led by my client, centered around their needs, goals, readiness to go deeper. Control would be completely antithetical to the work.
Shifting from control to connection was revelatory, freeing. It changed my relationship to work completely.
When you work at a PR agency, there’s a common metric: “is the client happy?” Do they feel good about the work you’re doing? Do they like you? Part of the focus on control is about controlling your own (and your agency’s, and your client’s) image. Looking back, I’d argue that’s a business metric designed to make you insane.
Doing good work can make a client happy, yes. But it doesn’t guarantee it. Sometimes, a client is just unhappy. It may have absolutely nothing to do with you. Maybe you remind them of someone who bullied them as a child. Maybe they’re insecure, and they’re poised to throw you under the bus as soon as they’re questioned. Maybe they’re a CEO whose expectations have nothing to do with reality and managing expectations means a lot of emotional labor to avoid puncturing an ego.
As a therapist, my job is to build rapport and trust, to develop a relationship. My goal isn’t to make my client happy. It’s to make them feel safe. Trying to make someone feel happy when they don’t, twisting yourself up in order to make someone happy — those things make people feel unsafe. A goal of controlling a perception is counter entirely to a goal of being trusted. You can’t trust someone who only tells you what you want to hear.
Managing how you’re perceived is a cog quality. It’s what a system rewards. It was never a measure of whether the work was good. And it has a way of eating away at your confidence and efficacy.
When you’re oriented around managing people’s view of you, that’s a lot of mental space spent chasing a moving target that is frankly impossible to hit because it turns out we don’t and cannot control how other people feel. When you’re focused on making someone perceive you in a certain way at work, you’re not focusing on the work.
Making this shift, for many of us, will result in more satisfying careers, better lives — and likely will result in better relationships at work.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be concerned about what anyone thinks. After all, success is tied to people wanting to work with you. I’m saying, let go of the idea that you can control what other people think of you. Let people tell you what they need from you instead of trying to anticipate and change course based on unspoken cues. If you want a good relationship with someone, curiosity and connection trump control every time.
A lot of the work I do with coaching clients is about a journey of moving the focus from the external to the internal. If you’re guided by your own values, if you’re confident enough to ask questions, if you understand that boundaries around work will improve your efficacy: this is the work of seizing agency.
Recently, I was working with a client on this exact shift. She’s been interviewing for a position at a tech company that requires endless rounds of meetings. She’s focused on being conscious of the process as not something that requires her to prove herself, to viewing it as an information-gathering process instead: How do I feel when I talk to these people? How do they see the problem to be solved? Does the work culture jibe with my strengths? She was describing a recent interview that she felt great about, and said, “If my job is to make that guy happy, I’m in.” Then she immediately caught herself, and offered a reframe: I liked collaboration with this person, I appreciated their POV.
It’s work shifting this mindset.
But the result, becoming someone who can look for internal vs. external cues for success, can make you unstoppable.
If you want a clearer read on what you’re actually working from instead of who you’re trying to please, the Values Sort takes about ten minutes.
If this named something you’ve felt at work, send it to someone who’d recognize it too.