Dear Sean,

I have a client who keeps trying to send me to-do lists and reroute my tried-and-true process. While I’m frustrated by their behavior, it’s also very clear that I’ve failed to sufficiently set boundaries or manage her expectations—a mistake I don’t want to make with my future jobs!

Is there anything I can do to reset my relationship with my current client? And what should I do with incoming clients to make sure that I’m clearly the one driving the proverbial bus?

Out of Control

Dear Out of Control,

You are responsible for the delivery of information and its connotations to your clients. Think of your relationship less as a collaboration or a dialogue than as a one-way flow of information that you and your firm dictate.

I know, I know—it is the client’s project, and you have to listen to who they are and what they are seeking and respond accordingly. Except you are the one who shapes the flow of how all that takes place. Many see boundaries as interpersonal guardrails to make sure you are safe. I do not. Instead, I see boundaries as creating the natural flow of, say, a river driven by the release from a dam. Control the dam and the rest will go your way.

My suspicion is that you are so focused on dos and don’ts that you have missed the fact that client (and staff) behavior is inextricably linked to company culture, which should create the conditions for your business to be your champion—a process that celebrates forward motion and is utterly intolerant of inertia.

It all begins and ends with a simple notion: You teach your clients what to care about, along with when, why and how. If they react poorly to your attempt to do so, then you are lacking the three key ingredients required to instill confidence in your approach: clarity, brevity and intention.

To ground things, take hourly billing as an example (my favorite). Say you are super busy, but not the most organized, and you only submit your hourly bills every few months on an inconsistent schedule. You write a detailed description of your work to justify the time spent, and edit the hours accordingly. In this scenario, you are trying to build trust by showing the effort spent to describe that work and your willingness to write off hours “unworthy” of billing, such as leisure time, socializing or daydreaming that will never be considered “work” yet are core factors that shape your taste, your ideas and your vision. In other words, you are teaching your client to value the way you spend your time rather than your unique identity as a designer. Thanks for playing—you lost.

If you insist on billing hourly, the only thing a client should see is the staff’s hourly rate, their time spent during the month and the total for each employee. Nowhere in your agreement should you offer to describe your hours, let alone how you calculate them. And you must deliver the bill at the exact same time monthly or biweekly—longer intervals, or inconsistent ones, breed distrust. If you are able to fund the cost of your overhead attributable to a client for 60 days, why would they believe in your billing? Because you wrote a detailed summary? Engaging in the practice I have described (which oh so many designers do) literally creates the very distrust you seek to avoid. Clarity, brevity and intention win the day, not a soapbox. And do not get me started on line-item pricing …

We have all been to a terrible movie. An hour in, your popcorn is gone, the movie is not getting any better, and you really want to leave. But you stick it out, madder than ever that you are still there. The same is true here, in this situation with your pushy client. If you want to reset your relationship, provide clarity, brevity and intention as to how the relationship will continue from here to the finish line. What if I told you that you were being inconsiderate, condescending and untrustworthy if you did not? Suffering in silence will only erode the very foundation of your relationship. Your promise is only to be better tomorrow. No better time to work on that promise than today.

For more from Sean Low on setting boundaries and establishing processes that successfully drive your projects forward, sign up for Wednesday’s course on client management—part of Launch, BOH’s weekly series of virtual business workshops.

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Sean Low is the go-to business coach for interior designers. His clients have included Nate Berkus, Sawyer Berson, Vicente Wolf, Barry Dixon, Kevin Isbell and McGrath II. Low earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and as founder-president of The Business of Being Creative, he has long consulted for design businesses. In his Business Advice column for BOH, he answers designers’ most pressing questions. Have a dilemma? Send us an email—and don’t worry, we can keep your details anonymous.