It is lovely to work with clients. But it is not lovely to sit there, waiting for your client to appear on Zoom, and then not have your client appear. There you are, just sitting there. A minute passes. Another minute passes. You twiddle your thumbs. You check your email or your phone to see if your client has been in touch. You wait. Another minute passes.
This waiting can prove surprisingly wearing and off-putting. And … it is going to happen.
Clients will sometimes cancel, and for all sorts of reasons. They may simply forget. That happens. They may encounter an emergency. They may be sick in bed. They may feel embarrassed at making so little progress since they last saw you and prefer not to report on their disappointing lack of progress. Some tech issue may have arisen, like Zoom suddenly updating itself and throwing your client off. A storm may have knocked out their power. And so on.
How ought you to react to these cancellations? My advice is, be easy. Be really, really easy.
I don’t mean, don’t notice them or don’t take them seriously. A real thing has happened that you are obliged to notice. But you don’t want to create inner turmoil by spinning out some catastrophic narrative, for instance that your client is upset with you or that your coaching is proving valueless. Try not to go spinning off into a tailspin! Likewise, try not to be angry with your client. Pass on the anger and pass on the self-recriminations.
Say that your client doesn’t show but hasn’t alerted you to her absence. There you are, just sitting there. A tactic? I think it is always good to have work to do, so that you aren’t just sitting there twiddling your thumbs and stewing. Are you presenting a workshop in three months? Have that file on your desktop, maybe even open, and turn to it as you wait. Spend a little quiet, unexpected time polishing your workshop. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
This habit of always having work handy and actually turning to that work while waiting isn’t an easy habit to acquire. But it is an excellent one!
My own practice is as follows. I open Zoom about five minutes before the session and, if necessary (it usually isn’t) I take a quick look at my notes to refresh my memory about what this upcoming client and I are working on. Then I do some work—typically, work on the book I’m currently writing—as I wait. Usually, nine times out of ten, my client appears (and usually right on the minute, or at most a minute after). But sometimes she doesn’t.
So, I continue working. At about five minutes after the hour, or sometimes ten minutes after, I will drop my client an email and wonder if we are on for that session. I’ll say something like, “I’ll hang out on Zoom until fifteen minutes after the hour; after that, let’s reschedule.” And then I resume my work. No muss, no fuss, no recriminations, no tragedy.
Of course, there is the matter of a “cancellation policy.” How you want to approach this is a matter of personal preference. You might be “generous” and not charge for the missed session or you might be “professional” and “value your time” and charge for the missed session. There are pros and cons to both approaches and the choice is yours as to which approach you will take.
You might also check in about the cancellations or not check in. A gentle check-in might sound like, “I’ve noticed we’ve had to reschedule or cancel a few times recently. I just want to check in and see how you’re doing and whether anything’s shifted in terms of your goals or capacity for coaching right now?”
The main point is that cancellations will happen, and unless you have a solid strategy for handling waiting for your client to appear, these occurrences can prove really taxing. What will your strategy be?
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