Oh man, that was awesome! Thank you for sharing. My clients generally fall into the "month-end" problem. They just don't want to or are maybe too busy to invest the time to do their part of the work. Or they want me to do it all and don't want to be part of a team. But I typically vet them before I become a consultant for them, so it's typically not a real problem. Just an irritation with client interviews. Yes, I interview people before I take them on.

As for me, yes, many of those qualities apply. I can be afraid to disagree, even when I know my disagreement will get us better results. I also was guilty of overbooking myself slightly. But that was strategic and now I'm past the crunch time and can better schedule. And I ended up with huge contract that is making my year. I also have trouble accepting when my clients make poor decisions. Worse, I don't like being blamed for those decisions that they made.

Very informative though. Always good to look at patterns in our behavior and see how we can improve. Kind of being aware of this helps me to stop the problem behavior.

I think things will be okay with my problem child client. We just went through some growing pains. It happens.

I'm a little between a rock and a hard place in looking at new clients. I want quality clients, not just people who want to hire me to do a fast and dirty job that won't get results. That reflects poorly on me. I know a lot of consultants don't have the luxury of turning away a client, but honestly, those clients cost the consultant more in the end than they bring in to the client. I want a reference from every single client I complete a project with. Even if they have feedback for how I can improve, I want them to also feel like working with me was a good experience.

Seesaw