Do NOT EVER look to your clients for professional or worse, personal validation. Please notice I didn’t say feedback. We should always be looking for information to improve our performance. But don’t conflate project-based comments from clients with confirmation – or not – of your expertise and professional acumen.
Whether they’re evolved collaborative partners or micromanaging demanding adversaries, many of our clients don’t possess the understanding of what we do or more importantly, what it takes to create impactful marketing and communication deliverables and services. It isn’t their fault, creative isn’t their area of expertise – we sure wouldn’t pretend to understand how to put together a killer spreadsheet (well, some of us leaders might, though not by choice).
The reality is though, that in our need for validation and wanting to please our clients and other stakeholders, we may look to them for professional or personal confirmation that we’re good at our chosen disciplines. Certainly soliciting positive (or any) feedback on the assets we produce or services we provide is a reasonable, necessary, and appropriate behavior. We get into dangerous territory though, when we look to our clients for validation of or put emphasis on their opinion of our individual creative abilities and expertise.
We’ll get a much more accurate assessment of our skills and professional chops from our peers and managers who are themselves creatives who understand the creative process as well as whether our efforts resulted in a deliverable that met the project needs and successfully answered the creative brief.
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