difficult client, please help, I have anxiety

[thelonelyones]

I want to begin by saying I have anxiety so please be kind. My manager is on holiday and I am her only direct report so I cant ask her. This client has been quite difficult and keeps trying to get me to do more than agreed.

They've asked me to deliver a 1 hour mental health workshop. All fine. But they are now asking me to do more than agreed - a shorter workshop with lots of questions and answers that I feel wouild be best placed within a longer training session with more budget. They dont want to pay more and are annoyed.

I did speak to my manager's manager who says 'either ask for more time and budget, or agree to do it but just answer the questions briefly, keep the client happy;, but its a lot of extra work and stress for me. The client has a real habit of making me do more work than agreed, and I tend to stay online working into the late evenings.

I don't know what to say or do when I meet the client later on. I need advice. Please be kind. What do I say and do? We're a charity so keeping the client happy is more important than keeping the employee happy. its all about £££

What your manager’s manager said. Answer the questions briefly after the workshop.

I don't particularly understand where the anxiety comes in i'm afraid. But can you not just say "I can do questions for 20 minutes, but that means your training course will now be 40". Is it establishing those boundaries that gives you anxiety?

Or do you have anxiety around doing an open question session?

You have asked your managers, manager and they have told you what to do

Go into the meeting with some options of what they can have for the current price - i.e 1 hour workshop, or 30 minute workshop plus a Q&A

Then some other options - i.e 1 hour workshop and questions is £x

Give them their options and ask them how they would like to proceed. Don't let them push you around

When is your manager back? If it's Monday - use the meeting as a fact find of exactly what the client wants and then tell them you will discuss with your manager early next week and get back to them

You just need to tell them what it is you CAN deliver within the budget.

I can do the one hour workshop as per our original discussion or we can do a shorter version with some Q&A but we'd need to keep those Q&As to the topic at hand.

If the charity takes the view that keeping the client is more important than ensuring you're not overworked and overwhelmed, then the issue is management, not the client. In which case, you need to go back to your manager's manager and say, "the client really wants x, y, z but there's no way for me to deliver that without me spending a great deal of additional time on it. I cannot do this outside of my working hours so if you feel we have to do it, are you happy with me letting ABC project go while I use that time to work on this?"

So you explain if they don't up the budget, they only get you for one hour. That's none negotiable. You are a charity after all.

As for the content, often 'questions and answers' is easier on you than delivering content because they're doing the talking/thinking a lot of the time and it's more interactive. Otherwise you're talking to them and often they're sat there with their cameras off and it's literally like talking to the wall.

If appropriate, can you ask them to pre-prepare questions for you or give them some exercises to do during the session? Set them a task and leave them to it for a few minutes before coming back with their questions/ideas?

Plus does your employer have template 'lesson plans' or scripts to use to reduce the amount of preparation you have to do each time?

my anxiety is a pre existing condition. I am anxious because what they are asking for is not what was originally agreed, requiring more time and planning for me. There's a lot of people coming, a lot of questions apparently, and trying to fit it all into the session will be hard. They want me to cover recruitment, performance management when I thought it was just basic 'what is mental health' for example

I work in a time costs business. I’d go back and say you’re happy to do an hours session at the agreed cost in whatever format they like, but it will be restricted to the hour. You think the format would better suit a longer session at X price, and you’re sure that they can appreciate that as a charity you are resource constrained which is why this needs to be agreed in advance.

And then on the day be strict with the timing and when the time is up tell them you have somewhere else to be and so need to wrap it up.

I think the key to dealing with anxiety in these situations (panic and overwhelm at the change in brief) is to break things down into smaller chunks.

So the first thing is the meeting you have today. Focus on that. A PP gave excellent advice of giving them a couple of options of what you can provide within the time and budget you've originally agreed, then a costing for anything extra.

Do you need to agree something there and then or can you leave it with them to consider or take away a proposal to agree with your manager next week?

You can then also have a frank chat with your manager about any extra work you may need to do and what they can do to support you with that.

You mention they have lots of questions. Could you ask for a summary of the main ones in advance? It may be that your presentation answers many of them anyway or you could tailor the presentation to make sure it does.

Just take one hurdle at a time.

They've moved the goalposts and are asking for a lot more input than agreed.

Explain that it won't be possible to cover what they want in the time, so more time and money will need to be allocated if the brief is to be changed.

Boundaries. Those are a big part of mental health. You set out option A, option B, Option C and let them chose between those and option D - full cancellation. They don't have to like it and you are not responsible for them being happy.

One of my favourite phrases to use with customers who keep pushing their luck is:

"I'd be delighted to provide a quote for that work".

Failing that, just set an agenda that fits in one hour.