Think about a situation where you tried to help another person and answer the following questions.
A few years ago one of my real estate clients told me that he lend money to a business associate and that business associate refused to pay him back. My client had just opened a restaurant and he needed that money to run it. My client’s English is not that great so it was difficult for him to seek legal help.
I asked him if he wanted me to intervene on his behalf and help talk to his associate. He said yes it would be helpful for me to talk to the associate on his behalf.
He gave me the associates contact number. I contacted the associate; initially the associate did not want to talk to me until I told him that I was helping my client take legal action against him.
He contacted my client and they talked, when I followed up with my client he seemed mad that I had told the associate that he was going to take legal action against him.
I reminded my client that he had asked me to help him. My client felt that the associate was not to cooperate because of my intervention.
I then told him, I would let him take it from there.
1. My motive to helping my client was I felt bad that he was being taken advantage of and secondly that he is my client and my relationship with my clients does not end once we have completed a transaction. It is a relationship for life. I want to be there for them when they need me.
2. Yes, I feel I benefited from the relationship because my client and I still have a business relationship and he also referred other clients to me. Even to this day I still help him when he reaches out to me.
3. I was my client’s advocate in the situation. I helped him because it helped prompt the associate to reach out and set out a payment plan with my client mentioning legal action helped.
Looking back I should have let my client decide what course of action to take.
4. He said why did you tell my associate was going to take legal action he may not want to pay me now. I did not agree with him I reminded him that the person became more willing to set up an agreement. I was irritated and felt unappreciated by my client.
My take away is that most of the time people tell us their problems, they are not asking for us to solve them they just want to be heard. Indeed my intervention could have had the opposite effect and possibly ruined my relationship with my client