What do you do if your client's career goals don't align with their self-awareness?

If my client's career goals don't align with their self-awareness, I facilitate a reflective dialogue to explore their aspirations and strengths further. I encourage introspection and self-assessment exercises to help them gain clarity on their values, interests, and capabilities. Through probing questions and active listening, I identify potential gaps between their career goals and self-awareness. Next, I provide guidance and support to help them realign their goals with their strengths and passions. By fostering self-discovery and empowerment, I empower clients to make informed decisions that resonate with their authentic selves and lead to greater fulfillment in their careers.

When a client's career goals don't align with their self-awareness, it's essential to engage in honest and open dialogue. Help them explore their strengths, weaknesses, values, and interests more deeply. Encourage reflection and self-assessment exercises. Guide them to understand the reasons behind their chosen goals and how they relate to their true self. Together, reassess and potentially refine their career objectives to better align with their self-awareness. This process may involve exploring alternative paths or adjusting expectations. Ultimately, the goal is to foster a more authentic and fulfilling career trajectory for the client.

Let start off with saying; self-awareness is the indicator to gaging how successful your relationship will be with the client. Self-awareness is also RARE! If we were all self-aware wouldn't we be doing different things in our life, or adapting possibly healthier habits for ourselves ? Even for average employees, low self-awareness has profound effects. In a Fortune 10 company study, Dierdorff and Rubin found that teams with members who were less self-aware made worse decisions, engaged in less coordination, and showed less conflict management. As a trust subject matter expert, we must lead the conversation with awareness and an agenda. We must guide and truly paint that clear picture to the person we want to grasp our message.

Communication is key to building strong relationships so make it clear from the beginning that you will work with your client to develop value statements that align with their business goals and that you will evaluate progress against these agreed-upon value statements as the project progresses. In addition to timely and thorough communication, you can also build a strong client relationship by making your clients feel comfortable being open and honest with you. They should feel that their ideas and concerns will be taken seriously.

In order to build strong and lasting client relationships, they must be able to trust and rely on you as an expert. This goes hand-and-hand with self awareness, because you may need to help the client realize their goals! That’s why it’s crucial to maintain a policy of openness when it comes to your professional opinions and point of view regarding the best interests of the project. It can be tempting to want to appear agreeable and avoid uncomfortable confrontation by telling a client what you think they want to hear or withholding your true opinion about their project.