Being Compassionately Collaborative

I don’t know if this is universally true, but my experience with doctors and the public is that the average person goes to the doctor with some problem, and the doctor tells them what to do. Sometimes the patient does what the “doctor orders,” and sometimes the patient does not.

At other times, patients may completely distrust the doctor (for whatever reason) and ask for an opinion, but then proceed with their original plan anyway. Maybe what the patient was going to do was find some alternative medicine, or some other solution that fits their purview and/or beliefs.

The funny thing for me in real estate is that when I have had physician clients, they want me to tell them what to do. However, I don’t tell people what to do because that’s not my role as a trusted advisor, and they have often been mad at me because I don’t take responsibility for their decisions.

Our role as advisors is to collaborate with our clients and work together to find a solution that works for them. Being compassionately collaborative adds another layer.

Dr. James Doty was a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University and founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. His view of compassion was to recognize or acknowledge another person’s suffering, combined with a motivational desire to alleviate that suffering. He believed that compassion is more than empathy because compassion requires an intention, and often an action, to help relieve that suffering. Empathy, on the other hand, is simply the awareness of another’s situation or world as they see it - with no intention to do anything about it.

In the context of the business world, I would like to substitute ‘challenge’ for ‘suffering’ (even though people are probably suffering!). People - and our clients - are dealing with stuff! They have problems...or challenges. If we are engaging with them, they are coming to us to help solve those challenges. Sometimes they are significant and incredibly impactful, other times not so much.

Being compassionately collaborative begins with collaboration. If clients are expecting us to do all the work and take all the responsibility - that is not going to go well. Like the example with the doctor/patient, patients who don’t advocate for themselves typically don’t have great outcomes. 

When we have clients who think they know everything, or on the other end of the spectrum, feign that they know nothing, neither of those works. Either they disregard or challenge what we say, or they simply defer to us without any input or feedback. Neither of those is in the spirit of collaboration. Collaboration requires both parties to be actively engaged, with an intention of moving things forward, and being responsible in that regard.

I once had a set of clients that represented both ends of this spectrum. Sam and Mary were elderly, and on one hand, they knew everything, and on the other hand, they pretended they knew nothing. They would pretend they knew nothing about the market or the property we were viewing, and then they would send me an email the next day, telling me all the things that were wrong or all the things that I didn’t mention. Most of those emails were in ALL CAPS.

When I first met them, they were not moving, but we built a relationship over time. After a few years, they decided they wanted to investigate moving. By the time we had gotten to the ALL CAPS emails, I had invested a fair amount of time. Naturally, I wanted to get paid for all the time I had invested.

Ultimately, I fired them. They were not collaborative. There were also a lot of other things. At the core, they were not nice; they were not willing to take any responsibility for anything, not their communication, not for wasting my time, nothing.

They finally did sell their property and buy something else. Probably at least $30,000 or more in commissions for whoever helped them. Great, good for them. I didn’t have to deal with it anymore. When they sold their home, they sold it for about what I told them, which is not what they wanted to hear. It was $100k less than they wanted and where they began the listing, because they didn’t do any of the things to get the price they wanted. 

They were not collaborative - they were combative.

After a while, I was not compassionate towards them - I was irritated. Frustrated. Upset. Now, that’s not necessarily their fault - I am not blaming them for how I feel. I am responsible for that, and yet my experience was that they were not collaborative, not compassionate, and they accepted no responsibility. I found the experience exhausting and totally unsatisfying, regardless of the amount of money. So I fired them.

It wasn’t that I wish them ill will, or that I don’t care. I do wish them well, and I do care - but I don’t care enough that I want to take action.

Here’s the other side of the coin - the ideal client to be compassionately collaborative with.

A couple of years after I fired Sam and Mary, I was working with clients on a repeat basis. I had helped them buy their first home, and now they were buying a bigger house and selling their first home. It was late summer to early fall during the sale, and the market was not only turning due to the season, but it had also softened from its peak. Colin and Rory had two young children and were undertaking a major renovation on the new house while selling their original one.

Colin was a little anxious about it all. We priced the home right within the market range. It didn’t sell the first weekend, nor the second. I had prepared Colin that this was likely the case. However, after the second weekend, we get on the phone to touch base. He is freaking out, saying, “We need to drop the price!” I listen and calmly respond that while we could, I don’t think it’s necessary. Based on the feedback I was getting, I felt like we could easily give it another week or two and get an offer above where he wanted to drop the price. He agreed, and lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. 

The point of the second example: I cared. I could have easily let Colin drop the price by 25k - that certainly would have made my job easier. However, that’s not compassionate—or responsible. We collaborated the entire time, from beginning to end. We worked together to come to a solution that worked for them and their family. I wasn’t absent emotionally. I had empathy for what Colin was dealing with, but I was intentional in my commitment to help them - not simply “do whatever” the client says. And, because we had a longstanding working relationship where he was clear I was on his side, he trusted the guidance I gave.

We speak with our clients - not at them. We demonstrate our caring not only with our listening, but also with our actions.

"When I look at another, I see myself. I see my weaknesses, my failings, and my fragility. I see the power of the human spirit, and the power of the universe. I know in my deepest being that it is love that is the glue that binds each of us." - James R. Doty