Misunderstood work makes workers unhappy
Freelancers, web developers, and startup-starters are used to being ill-understood by their workforce peers. But there are more “mainstream” professionals who are equally misunderstood, and performance and pay suffer when clients don’t understand what professionals do. New research looks at architects, nurse practitioners, litigation attorneys, and certified public accountants (CPAs).
“Architects are being told, ‘All you do is draw lines, sketches, and pictures all day. What do you actually do?,'” says Michael Pratt, Professor of Management and Organization at Boston College and co-author of the study. “‘You don’t build anything. Why should I pay you all this money? If I am redesigning my house, why should I get an architect at all? Why don’t I go to a general contractor and have him or her just build it? Tell him or her what I want and have them just build it for me.’
“Nurse practitioners can actually examine patients and prescribe medication but you’ll get a patient in there saying, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, I want to talk to a doctor.’ They won’t tell the nurse practitioner their problems; they won’t let themselves be examined.
“We found with accountants, people don’t give them the information they need to do their job. People don’t understand what they do. Clients don’t want to give them information because they think the purpose of that accountant being there is to find something wrong.”
“And with lawyers, their clients will expect them to be dishonest and they expect to immediately be going to court and win. Several lawyers had clients who are mad at them, wondering ‘Why aren’t we going to court? Why aren’t we getting a deal offered to us?’ It’s because they watch too many lawyer shows.”
And this is where it breaks down: this misunderstanding has a sobering effect not only on a client’s desire to pay these professionals, but also on their level of satisfaction.
“If people don’t understand what you do, they tend to devalue what you do,” says Pratt. Having a job brings satisfaction, pride, a roof over your head, a way of life—but because jobs give us all that, it hurts more when people don’t understand our work. The depth to which this affects job performance is not simply annoyance.
“In addition to the emotional costs, architects, for example, talk about fee erosion,” says Pratt. “Some professionals are being bypassed entirely. Nurse practitioners are being bypassed by people who want a doctor so they’re not being used.”
How to remedy these issues? Many pros utilizie a three-pronged approach: educating a client on what and how work is done; demonstrating the skill; and relationship building.
Of course, the above tactics would be prudent for ANY professional to use.