How To Handle Tricky or Awkward Communication Situations with a Client
For many professionals, getting the opportunity to communicate directly with clients is an important career transition. This transition can be stressful if you don’t know what to do in some tricky speaking situations. Here’s advice on communicating with clients from Spoken with Authority team member David Henderson, Esq., who brings two decades of experience working with clients as an attorney.
What do you do when a client asks you something and you don’t know the answer? How do you say “I don’t know” without undermining your credibility?
David: Lean into it. I know that’s uncomfortable, but the more awkward you make the situation the more awkward the client's going to feel. Not all of us choose to become trial lawyers like I did, but we all talked about trial law in law school, and the rule is, if it's going to hurt you on cross-examination, you bring it up on direct examination first so that you can take the bite out of what the other side is going to do to you. Here you're treating yourself the same way. Just say “I don't know.”
Now, it's always good to emphasize how much you want to help the client. You might say, “Sitting here right now, I don't have a clear answer for you. I'd like to give this some more thought and follow up with you.” Then, give a specific time and format (email, phone, etc.) for follow up.
Or, if you have a good sense of the answer but aren’t 100 percent sure, you could say, “Sitting here right now my knee-jerk reaction is (blank), but it's a unique situation and I'd like to give it some more thought before you bet the bank on this information, so I'm going to follow up with you.” You follow the same steps: (1) tell them exactly when you plan to follow up and (2) how. If you were wrong initially, you can circle back with correct information.
Lastly, junior professionals always tell me, “Well, so and so is good at pretending that they know the answer to questions that they don't. They'll pivot and they sound so confident.” Think about what you're telling me: you have observed someone speak confidently when they don't know what they're talking about. Do you think other people in the room aren't noticing the same thing? Of course, they are! Is the person you want to put your faith in the person who speaks confidently when they don't know or the one who says I don't know but I'm going to find out and I'm going to follow up with you?
What do we do when a client has a bad idea, and we need to pivot away from it without being rude?
David: This starts with maintaining the right point of view towards who you're talking about. Keep in mind that we suffer from the curse of knowledge when we're giving legal answers – or answers in any area of expertise. We studied it. We've thought about it. We've talked to our peers about it, so now we have it down pat.
Your clients are hiring you because they don't have the benefit of that same expertise and experience. Remind yourself of that. Then, it's normally good to start off by acknowledging their contribution because you want them to keep sharing their bad ideas before acting on them. You might say, “That's an interesting idea. Here's something you've got to keep in mind though about the issue that you're ultimately asking me about.” By reframing the issue or addressing a problematic assumption, you’re giving yourself a good base to launch off from with your response. So, be polite; clean up the idea, assumption, or question; and, give yourself a useful base to build on in providing the rest of your advice.
How do you read the room and get a sense for whether a client likes to engage in small talk or not?
David: I've tried almost 80 cases at this point in my career. I've been around “experts” who tell me you can read people's body language, or you can tell what they're thinking. Unfortunately, you cannot. You will be wrong all the time. So, I don't like to guess.
As I get to know clients and what their style is, I'll adjust. When I don't know, I just ask. To the extent that you can learn from your relationships from repeated contact or from experiences your colleagues have had with that client, do. But when you don't know, just ask. Most people appreciate it.
How do you use plain language, without jargon?
David: The easiest way to do this is to pretend like you're providing your explanation to somebody who's not part of your world. Think of someone without specific knowledge about the area of expertise you're talking about. I also like to pick a no-nonsense person. For me, there are two people who fit that bill in my life: my wife and my mom. They don't want to hear all this legalese if I'm giving an explanation to them, so I practice how I would deliver it to them, and when it's possible to use one of them as a sounding board, that's what I do.
What should you do if you are in a meeting and a colleague (especially someone with more experience) says something to a client that isn’t accurate?
David: This comes down to the curse of knowledge again. It's the through line between the question you asked about using too much jargon and here where we're trying to make sure that we're nice when we're correcting a colleague. It’s easy to forget what it was like when you didn't know the information. What smart people do once they’ve had to repeat something 10 or 15 times is you start to get a little annoyed that you're having to go through this yet again. You don't realize it, but your tone is changing in ways that you didn't anticipate. So, the number one thing you can do is smile and be polite when giving your perspective on the issue.
Are you making the transition to higher profile speaking roles in your career? Our one-on-one coaching engagements and group training programs can help! Book a time with us to discuss your communication goals and options that would be a good fit for achieving them.
