Over the past year, I’ve been fired by clients … twice.

Yes, it stings. On the other hand, this doesn’t happen often. In a typical year, I work with 40 to 50 organizations, so losing two isn’t a threat to my business.

In both cases, I learned (or re-learned) important lessons, which I humbly share with you.

Lesson 1: Don’t get ahead of your client

I was approached by a local organization to help with fundraising and strategic planning. This group had begun as a privately-owned business and later converted to a nonprofit – a more common path than many people realize.

The group was heavily dependent on the executive director (and former business owner) who was nearing retirement. Indeed, this organization – in a deep financial hole – operated from the ED’s home.

Early in our work together, I proposed three potential scenarios:

• Major restructuring, including a leadership succession plan
• Exploring a merger with potential partners
• Shutting down once the executive director retired

This infuriated the board chair, who accused me of “hijacking the process.” After a few difficult conversations, I offered to step away without charging for my time. The chair agreed. End of job.

My mistake: Rather than help board and staff work through the options and reach their own conclusions, I jumped too quickly into “advice mode.” Any of these three scenarios could have created a sense of loss, failure, or grief. I didn’t prepare the group, and that’s on me.

About six months later I ran into the executive director who volunteered, with a smile, that I had been right all along. Cold comfort.

Lesson 2: Clarify the work before you begin 

In advance of a big conference, I was hired to prepare and deliver a webinar for the presenters, with the goal of helping them become more effective. I was referred by one of the presenters, who knew and admired my approach to training.

I created an awesome webinar (or so I thought!) about how to engage adult learners: setting clear goals, creating activities and exercises, encouraging peer learning, managing groups effectively, and so on.

When I shared the slide deck in advance, the conference organizer was appalled. “People come to learn from experts, not from each other,” I was told. “We want the experts to be better presenters, not facilitators.”

“So you want me to teach them how to speak to audiences?” I asked, perplexed. “Like a TED talk?”

“Something like that.”

“But people learn more by doing stuff, rather than listening to someone tell them what to do.”

“That’s not the kind of conference experience we offer.”

In the end, it was a stalemate. We cancelled the webinar and the client paid for my prep time, which seemed like a fair compromise. And now I have a solid train-the-trainer deck I can use in other circumstances.

My mistake: In preparing for this job, I needed to ask deeper, more probing questions.

Yes, we both wanted the presenters be more effective. From the client’s perspective, what did “more effective” actually mean? What would success look like or feel like? What aspects of the conference did the organizer appreciate and want to preserve?

By asking these types of questions, I could have surfaced our different assumptions much earlier – and then referred the client to a public speaking coach, rather than an engage-all-the-participants guy like me.

Sorry, you can’t make everyone happy

In an earlier post, In Fundraising – and in Training – You Can’t Make Everyone Happy, we discussed the ways in which we experience criticism as failure. As I wrote then, “Even when you do your very best work, you won’t make everyone happy.”

The same hold true with clients. Sooner or later, someone will be dissatisfied with your approach. That’s OK – it comes with the territory.

While it’s important to learn from your missteps, as I’m attempting to do here, it’s also important to celebrate your successes – which are many.

Want to learn more about working with clients? 

In October, we begin the next round of the Training, Facilitation, and Consulting Certificate Program offered through Marlboro College. To date, we’ve graduated 36 people from ten states and Canada. Several are launching or building their businesses as consultants, facilitators, and trainers – with solid success.

Will you be next? Please consider joining us this fall.

And if you have any fired-by-clients lessons you’d like to share, use the comments section below.