Freelancing: How Pragmatic Empathy Can Add Value for You, Your Clients and Their Customers

Since most work is acquired and executed remotely, it's easy to overlook the human factor. It is essential to keep the customer's needs in the centre of all decision making and pragmatic empathy is a mutually rewarding method of attaining this goal.

Face-to-face Discussion

Physically going to meet with clients is first prize, though often impossible in this global marketplace. A skype conference is a good alternative and allows for in-depth informal discussion, which is often sacrificed in the name of productivity in these fast-paced deadline orientated times. However, taking the time to unpack the client's needs and most importantly, their desires, will save you both time in the long run. Once you have received the written brief and ironed out any initial clarifications you may need, it is valuable to have a more informal chat. This introduces the warmth required to truly collaborate.

Ask the Right Questions

Make it easy for your client by thoroughly doing your research before you meet so that you know which questions to pose around how to further their customer's satisfaction. Avoid making more work for your client by being upfront about any concerns you may have and don't be afraid to be frank about your limitations or concerns. Transparency is certainly the more ethical approach for a productive collaboration.

Co-create Solutions

In dialogue with your clients you can come up with creative solutions that are viable and desirable for their customers. Creativity is largely dependent on a playful sensibility, which is easily lost when under pressure. It's helpful to get clients to relax, a sense of humour is a real boon in this arena and, once the ice has been broken, the human inclination is to be of help to the other. The old adage "two heads are better than one" is particularly true when strategizing creative business solutions. If you really want to wow your clients and concomitantly their customers, then co-creation is the key to more exciting outcomes.

Cross-cultural Collaboration

Fostering an empathetic attitude may well seem easier within homogenous cultural teams, however working across the EU and indeed the globe, is not reliant on sharing language, politics or socio-economic common ground, rather on the desire to connect. When client and freelancer can breach their individual inclinations and reservations to reach their common goal, a transformation takes place that not only leads to healthy teamwork but to greater social and economic benefit.

It's important to weigh up the pros and cons of intra-Europe vs intercontinental working relationships. Local knowledge is invaluable and often the promise of easier communications within linguistic and cultural paradigms takes centre stage. The fresh perspective offered by cross-cultural collaboration on the other hand can be just the boost that your team or product needs to appeal to a global market. Even niche markets are increasingly international in their proclivities so it is a great soft marketing strategy to incorporate team members from diverse backgrounds.

Feedback

Once the job is done it's standard practice for the freelancer to race to the next deadline without taking the time to reflect on lessons learned. As important as that initial idea incubation discussion is, a debrief on what worked and what didn't is just as crucial. Garnering feedback from clients and their customers is the ultimate test of the efficacy of your efforts and will lead to greater satisfaction for all involved. Feedback should become a routine part of your process. Your desire to know the outcome proves that you are invested in best practices.

Emotional vulnerability

While the work place has traditionally not been considered a safe space for emotional vulnerability, empathy does call for a more human response to business solutions. In allowing for candour any working experience can be transformed into a far more holistic and productive endeavor. Encouraging a more open communication process can only lead to happier clients, customers and freelancers, while stimulating more creative and rewarding outcomes for all.

It's essential to remember that people are at the heart of all our dealings as freelancers. In showing that we are invested in our client's satisfaction it allows them to reframe their customer's desires and provide more value overall. This is a win-win situation.

• Informal discussion to parse out actual needs and desires on both sides
• Pose pertinent questions for clarity and ease of process
• Allow for co-creation and the magic of creativity
• Collaborate across cultures for fresh perspectives
• Make feedback routine
• Be honest