Stretch-Stretch Relationships with clients

When people hire me for facilitation or consulting, it tends to be because they've seen me at some edge that they want to move towards themselves. I'm more comfortable at the edge than most people, though there are people way edgier than me, and I'm not comfortable all the time. I've been riding the innovation wave for a long time, I've seen new things come and go and I can see patterns emerging because of that. So I'm a useful person to have, if I can be talked into coming back from the edge enough to hold someone's hand while they walk there. If you're reading this and you're writing on Steemit, you probably have some of the same characteristics, you'll know what I mean.

So I've settled into a mode with prospective clients, of expecting them to be conservative and scared even if they are willing to get edgier, and have asked me to help them in that direction. In doing that, I blunt my own cutting edge, I don't push them too hard, I expect them to not want to go too far, so I anticipate that and stretch them only as far as I think they're going to be comfortable with. This usually means that I have to pull myself back to more formal ways of working than I would prefer and settle for work that is not as exciting for me, but is as full-on as they can cope with.

And then. Then someone comes along and we're having the sort of initial sniffing-around conversation and I see disappointment on their faces. I'm going to far to meet them, they want to be stretched right to the very edge, they want to come up right where we are and peer over into the abyss. In this situation (I'm just in one and it's exhilirating) we both get stretched, them and me, because I get to do the stuff I really want to, supported by a bunch of people and a budget to do it. It might be tiny and it might crash and burn, but we're not going to settle for mediocrity. I'm up for it and so are they.

And I just wanted to capture that little tipping point, where I realise that they're up for it. When I get that although this is serious and it's business and I'm going to get paid for it, they don't want a boring buttoned-down project manager, they want what they've seen when I didn't know they were looking.