Apprently, they aren’t the same thing.

I’d just had a tough conversation about a client project when a mentor of mine said this to me a few months ago. And I knew immediately what she meant. I’d been so caught up in the fact that I saw what this organization was doing wrong—why their website had become a dumping ground, where they needed to change their processes, what they should be focusing on—that I could have sat down and diagrammed a tidy little flow chart right there. And yet, my client wasn’t happy.

Specifically, my client wasn’t happy with me.

Like getting pushed from behind or dumped on prom night, I hadn’t seen this coming. I had the answers, after all. I was solving the Big Problems, problems that others didn’t have the tools to untangle, problems others had struggled with for years.

Only I hadn’t spent enough time listening to make my client feel heard. I hadn’t made them part of the solution. So there my client was, feeling overwhelmed and left behind, while I was patting myself on the back.

I recommend that you read the full article by Sara Wachter-Boettcher. This specific snippet was extracted from one of her pastries from The Pastry Box Project.