How Transparent Does a Freelancer Need to Be?
Transparency is the buzzword that everyone conducting business online seems to be focused on. We’re all supposed to be open and share even the smallest details about how we do business and when we screw up, mostly in hopes of building better business relationships.
But while I believe strongly that we should take responsibility for our work, whether or not we’re freelancing, freelancers may not need to go to the extremes of transparency.
Levels of Sharing
It takes practice to balance how publicly transparent you want to be, but don’t be afraid to limit what you share.
When it comes to being transparent, there’s a difference — or at least there should be — between what you put out on the web (via social networks and your website) and what you tell your clients in private communication.
You don’t have an obligation to tell most of the general public anything. You want to share at least some of what you do, in the interest of marketing, but you don’t need to be too detailed when it comes to your failings, medical procedures or priorities beyond work.
It takes practice to balance how publicly transparent you want to be, but don’t be afraid to limit what you share. If you aren’t comfortable announcing a piece of news to the next person you see on the street, consider what sort of online audience it’s really appropriate for.
The Danger of Oversharing
Complete and utter transparency can be as much a problem as not being transparent at all. If you update your clients on every last detail of your life, you’re going to be telling them more than they want to know. Furthermore, the important details may get lost in the mix of everything else that’s going on. Even if you’re only being transparent about your business and not mixing your personal life into the mess, you’re probably generating a lot of information on a daily basis.
The information you share with your clients needs to be limited to what’s relevant to them. While it’s probably best to err in the direction of offering more if you aren’t sure whether a particular piece of data is relevant to the client, you need to prevent your transparency from turning into a fire hose of information.
Maintaining Expectations and Advantages
Aside from my hope that clients will think I’m one of those cool people with an exciting social life, I also want to maintain a division between the time when I work for my clients and the time when I do other things.
There are details about the way you work that you probably don’t want your clients to have. For me, one of the most important pieces of information that I want to make sure my clients don’t have is that I do check my email constantly — that I will probably be available to deal with something if it comes up at 11 PM. Aside from my hope that clients will think I’m one of those cool people with an exciting social life, I also want to maintain a division between the time when I work for my clients and the time when I do other things.
On occasion, I’ll do work quite late, but unless I’m actually on deadline, I’ll wait until the next day to send that work along to my clients. I think about what the timestamp on my email says about me. Because I want my clients to have the expectation that I’m not always available, I’m not being as transparent as I could be.
You may also have some competitive advantages that you don’t want to share with your clients, lest they learn how to make your secret sauce and strike out on their own. Before you get too paranoid, remember that most clients don’t particularly care how you get results, provided you get them to where they need to be.
But when you have been working in a particular niche for long enough, you may have a few advantages that you might not want known. Being able to get the editor of a certain publication on the phone directly, for instance, isn’t always something you want to share.
Honesty and Professionalism over Transparency
I value professionalism, along with honesty, over and above transparency. I believe my clients generally do as well. For a client, why a project didn’t get done is never an important question — a missed deadline isn’t going to be changed all that much by the reason behind it. You can get a little slack once in awhile, but that should be saved for when you really need it.
I’d much rather invest my time in finding a way to meet all my responsibilities than in keeping clients up to date on the details of what I’m doing beyond their project.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by SVLuma.
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Nice to see an article about this. I’m not really sure what the take-away point was here. Don’t be too transparent? Be honest instead? Sometimes being honest is being transparent and being transparent is being honest. Since I have a habit of working anytime throughout the day and night, I make it clear to my clients that I work when I feel I will be most productive. So that means they can try to reach me but can’t expect that every day I am available at the same time. If that means 4am, then it means 4am. Sometimes 4am means meeting deadlines that theu will thank you for later. It doesn’t matter how you made the deadline or when you worked. Some freelancers may get the client that wants them around 9 – 5, but that’s not their decision, if they want that they can hire an employee or work with someone else. It’s a good idea though, to be available during some of the common hours that your clients are available. Being available for at least 3 hours during a typical 9 – 5 day ensures that at some point in the day, I am reachable. Clients do not need to know every detail obviously, sharing things is always up to me. If it is irrelevant, than could be viewed as simply relationship-building small-talk, but I think it hardly matters. I never get too off-topic and always circle back to why I have mentioned it. Relevancy is important. It let’s the client know that I am not wasting their time. Getting too personal could project the wrong image. Sometimes being transparent let’s the people you are working know that you genuinely care about their success and the success of the project.
@Thursday
You pointed out that: “I want my clients to have the expectation that I’m not always available” I suppose someone could be transparent with a client by simply making it clear that they are not always available and work when they are feeling most productive and creative?
Although I believe a little transparency is ok as many of us still prefer to do business with humans, there is a point where it becomes an overshare. A little healthy griping that is pretty clean, like you were talking to you grandmother, makes you likeable and real in clients eyes.
And just like that old standby during interviews, “tell me about your weaknesses” can get turned into strengths, so can a little transparency reveal another layer of strength that clients may appreciate. Gone are the days of rigid separation between work and play and pretentious acts of perfection for the sake of reputation and credibility. Our credibility in this day and age lie in our proven ability to get the job done, while staying approachably human.
Few things draw me in more than to read something professionally written where the writer’s personality is in there somewhere. If it were a white paper or technical piece I’m reading, that may be different. But I read service information for just that, then I get a feel for the person I may be doing business with via the personality that comes through. And everything counts. Not just the words, but the overall feel of the presentation.
Yesterday, matter-of-factly, I was going over this in my head starting with a Barnes and Noble Store Sign: The color choice, the brand name, décor of the store, all lend a certain feel – a personality. Blogs and websites are no different in this respect.
So talk about your cat if you can find a bit of relevance to the rest of your work. But don’t be afraid to be human. Sure, you aren’t going to please everyone with this approach, but why would you want to? Please your niche of readers that can and will appreciate you – flaws and all – for your ability to get over yourself and get down to business.