Be Kind by MAGIC -Attuning to Your Clients

Being Kind is your business super-power.

How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:

Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting

It applies to:

Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects 

Attuning to your clients is all about understanding them, and then modifying how you serve them as a result.

There are three steps to attuning:

Look and Listen

First, you have to look and listen. Observe your client, ask them questions, find out about them and their situation. Spend some time on this; ask the follow-up questions. Note both what they answer and how they answer. Do any questions make them excited, any make them uncomfortable?

Understand

Next, you need to understand what you have found out.

  • Who are they? Get a take on your client’s personality. Maybe a tool such as DiSC , MBTI  or the Enneagram would be helpful here? You won’t be able to do a full analysis, but you should get some interesting pointers and insights. This will help you to work out how much to affirm and encourage, balanced against how much you can challenge them without frightening them.
  • Where are they? You have to understand their situation. What are their problems? Could you help them solve them? Can you see the issue from another angle and reframe it? Or maybe you can see that their perceived problem is not the real problem in the first place? Perhaps the answer they think they want is not actually the answer that they need?
  • What makes them tick? This is probably the most essential aspect in understanding your client. What are their core values, what is important to them? They may well be different to yours, but you need to understand them so that you do not slip up and offend them, or appear to be driving them in a direction which seems wrong to them.

Modify

Finally, once you have understood your client, you can work out how best to serve them. You can decide how you will modify both the style of your presentation and the content of what you provide. In other words, what you say and how you say it.

  • What?
    Think about the most appropriate content for the person or audience in question.
  • How?
    What is the best way to present it? Will they respond best to didactic teaching or participation, to words or pictures, to visual or audio? Or maybe a mixture? And what tone and language will work best? Formal or informal? Lively and bouncy or more restrained? 

Tricks and Schtick

When I’m performing magic, the way I perform the tricks will vary depending on my audience. Often I may use the same tricks but presented very differently. For example, I have a rope trick that I perform at both children’s parties and corporate drinks receptions: same mechanics, very different presentations. And, of course, there are also some tricks which only work in kids’ parties and some that only work in corporate settings.

It is the same when applying my MAGIC formula to help teams and individuals to improve their working relationships. I present it in a slightly different way to a nonprofit manager’s audience than I will, to the leadership of a bank. It’s the same fundamental material, but with a slightly different approach.

How can you modify your offering to those you serve to make it a better fit for each one?

Think about how you can attune to your clients.

Remember:

Observe, Understand, and then Modify.

—Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:

  • Adapt to new ways of working
  • Harness the power of habits
  • Optimise the use of space in your home
  • Use clothes to boost productivity
  • Focus on what matters
  • Plan for the future amidst uncertainty

Be Kind by MAGIC – Moving Your Clients

Being Kind is your business super-power.

How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:

Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting

It applies to:

Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects 

Moving Your Clients

If you work with clients, you can significantly enhance your offering to them by thinking about how you move them.

How do you move them educationally, moving them from not knowing something to knowing?

How do you help them to see things from a new perspective, moving them from one viewpoint to another viewpoint?

And how do you engage their feelings, moving them emotionally, providing them with an impetus to take action?

Be a Favourite Teacher

You can serve your clients by moving them from one state of knowledge to another. In other words, you can tell them something they didn’t know that will be useful to them.

Maybe it is something about the law? Perhaps a new software tool, services they may be able to access, or some other resources that may be useful to them.

Nifty Shifty

Magicians always have to be careful about angles. If you watch a trick from the wrong place, sometimes you can see things that you weren’t meant to! Seeing things from the best angle is very important for the magic to work.

Working with clients, helping them to see something from another perspective can be very useful. Can you help them to shift to see things from another point of view? To re-frame things, see them from a distance, take an outsider’s view?

Maybe they have intellectual or emotional doubts that are stopping them progressing?  Sometimes those doubts are based on real barriers, but very often, the obstacles are just imagined or perceived. The doubts are like little gremlins sitting on the shoulders that need punching in the nose. Can you help them to shift their viewpoint, so they can sort out the real from the imagined?

Imagine How You Will Feel When…

What emotions can you engage in your clients?

Can you excite them about potential, about what they can imagine happening, but also about what they can’t yet imagine happening? The excitement can motivate them to begin exploring new territory.

Can you help them to flip nervousness about the future, into excitement about adventure?

Can you get them to reflect on the changes they have seen and the progress they have made so that they feel satisfaction and pride?

Maybe there’s even space for inducing a little fear about the consequences of inaction?

Even if you are a lawyer, accountant or in some other seemingly unemotional occupation, there is still scope to engage the emotions of your clients. Paint an imaginative picture of how someone’s life will be better as a result of your involvement. Let them see the potential for change and feel the related emotions.

Moving is a fundamental characteristic of living things. Make sure that you and your clients are moving.

How can you move your clients today?

Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:

  • Adapt to new ways of working
  • Harness the power of habits
  • Optimise the use of space in your home
  • Use clothes to boost productivity
  • Focus on what matters
  • Plan for the future amidst uncertainty