In praise of disagreeable clients.

Would you rather work with an agreeable or disagreeable client?

I am a fairly disagreeable person. My gut still says it's better to work with an agreeable client. But my gut would be wrong.

Agreeable people are empathetic and likable. They want to help people, work as a team, develop compromise. This all sounds lovely right? But agreeable people also struggle to assert their wants, needs and preferences. They struggle with tough decisions. Agreeableness, while pleasant, often results in bad outcomes. Things left unsaid. It can result in a slow toxic decline. A pleasant marriage becomes a cold war.

Steve Jobs may have been one of the most disagreeable clients of all time. By most accounts he was an asshole. An egotist. A bully. In many ways a total nightmare. When Chiat/Day pitched, "Here's to the crazy ones", the campaign that would help turn Apple around, Jobs swung back and forth, both hating and loving it. After much huffing and puffing he bought it. And once he bought it, he moved mountains to get it out into the world.

Here's another great Jobs story from Adam Grant's 'Originals'. It was 1985, demand for Apple computers was booming. Donna Dubinsky was in charge of sales and distribution when Jobs proposed eliminating Apple's warehouses and moving to a just-in-time production model where computers would be assembled upon order and fed-ex'd overnight (a model made famous years later by Dell). Dubinsky felt that at this stage of Apple's development this would be a massive mistake. She kept fighting. She kept losing. Eventually she offered an ultimatum. Give her 30 days to develop a better proposal or she would resign. Her novel recommendation managed to incorporate some of the benefits of Jobs' proposal while eliminating many of its risks. Jobs accepted it.

Jobs' disagreeable nature made him exactly the kind of person to challenge. He enjoyed the confrontation. He respected those who disagreed with him. If he liked what you said, he'd be happy to change his mind. He wanted to hear it. He didn't hide from disagreement.

Unbeknownst to Jobs, the Macintosh had been granting an annual award to a person who disagreed with Jobs since 1981. Jobs had promoted each winner to run a major division at Apple.

The ability to hear something that challenges what you believe, then adopt it and champion it is rare. NBA-great Rick Barry was another rare breed. He was famously disagreeable. Teammate and friend Mike Dunleavy once told the Chicago Tribune, "You could send him to the U.N., and he’d start World War III.” A coach's son, Barry was encouraged by his father to adopt the underhand 'granny style' free throw throughout high school. He wouldn't. It was how girls shot at the time. He didn't want to look "like a sissy". By the end of high school, Barry no longer sought social approval. He'd matured. He'd become an asshole. An asshole who shot free throws 'granny style'. He went on to become one of the greatest free throw shooters in NBA history.

As a client of his father's coaching (ok it's a stretch but go with me here) his disagreeable nature prevailed and he was able to adopt this non-traditional approach. The 'granny-style' had a social cost. It invited abuse. It took resilience for Barry to shoot this way during a 15 year NBA career. To his credit, Wilt Chamberlain (an abysmal 51% free throw shooter for his career) also adopted the 'granny-style' in his record-breaking 1961-62 season. He made 28-32 granny-style free throws in his famous 100 point game. But Chamberlain was famously agreeable.* He couldn't stand the social cost of the 'granny-style'. He didn't want to challenge the status quo. So he abandoned it and immediately regressed.

* This agreeableness and avoidance of conflict actually led to tension with the other great centre of the time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as Chamberlain avoided speaking out during the Civil Rights movement. Jabbar was another famously disagreeable individual.

These are of course extreme examples of disagreeableness. One of my all-time favourite clients was often disagreeable. But she was also a lovely human being who would thank every single person on a commercial set for their contribution. Grant calls these people, "disagreeable givers". They use sometimes thorny behaviour to drive people, and when they see the work put in, they appreciate it.

Disagreeable people are best when they conduct, "constructive confrontation". This concept, developed by Intel's former CEO, Andy Grove, focuses on challenging ideas and not the people expounding them. It advocates for confrontation now to avoid simmering displeasure at the individual later.

So seek out the disagreeable clients. The crazy ones. The ones not fond of the rules. Don't vilify them. Challenge them. Break the status quo with them. Do great work with them.