The Functional Reframe: Serve, Don’t Please
I’m regularly asked how to create happy clients, especially when we’re constantly asking them to do things they don’t want to do, and in the end, we’re not really giving them what they want.
Here’s what I mean…
People may come to you wanting you to “fix” their digestion so that they can finally eat pizza again without gas, bloating, or the fear of exacerbating some other sign or symptom.
Or they may be OK with eliminating sugar, except for the 80% chocolate bar they devour each evening as a reward for checking a number of other ‘good for me’ boxes off their list that day.
Or maybe you have a client who agrees to everything you’ve outlined in one session, then shows up to your next appointment having done nothing on their Action Form, and wants to spend your session recounting (in great detail) the many circumstances that made it impossible for them to follow your recommendations.
How do you create happy clients (who continue to secure your services and refer their friends and family to you) when you’re repeatedly the bearer of restriction and refinement — possibly deemed as ‘bad news’?
How can you be there for your clients, and be their advocate, when they’re asking you for their buy-in on choices that you know don’t serve them or their health goals?
You Have a Choice: Serve, or Please?
When you have a client who wants something you can’t give (like a digestive system that gives them license to eat what they want), and wants you to tell them it’s OK that they’re not following the guidelines you’ve outlined to meet your joint goals, you have a choice:
You can please your client and go along with their story.
Or you can serve your client and call them on their story.
Pleasing looks like this: chasing the quick-fix, or taking it on as your responsibility to come up with a new protocol that’s more enticing and fun, or agreeing with their excuses, or allowing them to engage in endless email conversations with you, the kind that are laden with stories and excuses.
Pleasing looks like presenting clients with the shiny objects (who we are, what we know), being charming, answering all their questions (without reframing them), and getting the client to like us.
When you please your client, you make them happy, but only in the short-term.
They feel relieved in the moment. So do you. And you’re on your way to making a friend.
Distinct from this is serving your clients. It’s what you really want to do. And serving means you may need to have some difficult (and honest) conversations:
- What’s getting in the way of you following through?
- We can’t start addressing your infection until you can get to sleep before midnight and poop more than twice a week — let’s keep our attention there first.
- Sugar is directly related to your pain. We can’t move forward until you eliminate your daily chocolate bar. Let’s come up with some alternatives and uncover what you’re feeling when you want or need that reward.
You might create tension in the room at first.
You might not get invited to your client’s birthday party.
But they’ll love you as a practitioner because you helped them get results.
Serving comes from full demonstration, leadership and taking responsibility for showing how you can improve their life. Serving requires ownership of the communication that establishes unquestionable authority.
These clients and patients are coming to you for guidance, not friendship.
And, ultimately, referrals are better than invitations to tea. (You can turn to your friends and family for the latter.)
Step One to Serve, Don’t Please
Pleasing is part of our culture, especially for women. We feel guilty if we aren’t doing the sweet, nice thing, and we sometimes struggle to be tough and direct if it means we won’t be liked.
Pleasing comes from a mindset of winning approval, being liked and validated, and doing things in a task-oriented way. (The child in each of us wants to please, and our job is to not let that child run the show in our professional work.)
To step out of this cycle, your first move requires awareness.
Look at the following diagram.
Are you in the Victim Loop or the Accountability Loop?
What about your client?
Which loop is she in?
STEP ONE is to gain awareness about which loop you’re both in. Notice where you can shift this so that both of you are in the accountability loop.
(Note: It’s OK to pull out the diagram and illuminate the conversation!)
Once you’ve done this, you’re truly serving both yourself and your clients.
Question:
Which area in the Victim Loop is one where you typically get stuck? Does one ring true for you? Recognizing your own patterns helps you to better serve your clients. Take a moment to illuminate what’s true for you.
What we eat and how we live life alters how our genes function. To become an epigenetic master start here.
—
Functional nutritionist and educator Andrea Nakayama (FNLP, MSN, CNC, CNE, CHHC) is leading patients and practitioners around the world in a revolution to reclaim ownership over our own health. Her passion for food as personalized medicine was born from the loss of her young husband to a brain tumor in 2002. She’s now regularly consulted as the nutrition expert for the toughest clinical cases in the practices of many world-renowned doctors, and trains a thousand practitioners online each year in her methodologies at Functional Nutrition Lab. Learn more about Andrea.
