If I think back to my school years, I can immediately think of examples of teachers who taught in the adult role, and teachers who taught in the parent role. I think the former were more effective, influential teachers as when they actually needed to use their authority to control the class or something, it made you sit up and pay much more notice than a teacher who shouted all the time.

We can take a much, much more subtle form of this idea (and subtle = more difficult to do no doubt) when trying to inform clients about how “it” is going to work. I think a lot of the hard stuff can be avoided by wrapping it up in a sales pitch: explain the benefits to the client of working your way, show them how it will result in a much better outcome for them and most reasonable individuals get right on side with you.

Your comment about cross gender educating is fascinating, as it’s something I had not considered. Perhaps it’s harder for men to educate women (in an informal environment) than it is vice versa without being perceived as condescending? Perhaps I’m impervious to noticing any effect when I’m in an educating role with a man. Nonetheless you’ve given me some serious food for thought, thanks!

I think the general problem is that educating a client is extremely difficult to do whilst standing firmly in the ‘adult’ role, and it often slips into ‘parent’ by its very nature of educating. It gets even more difficult when the matter is cross-gender. My personal belief is that we shouldn’t have to educate our clients at all, they should educate themselves like adults, and these days any that present themselves to me uneducated get shown the door in favour of more agreeable clients.

Luckily I’ve only had one or two ‘nightmare’ clients, the worst of which called me at around midnight on a weekend swearing at me until he was out of breath because his web site hosting was down. I might have even forgiven him had it not been hosted by another company.

I’ve been lucky with clients so far, I’ve not had any overly problematic ones, although I’ve no doubt that I’ll have to deal with them at some point!