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Enthusiastic Eve
Welcome to the 11th pen-portrait in our series about different types of internal clients.
The person
Enthusiastic Eve has some very positive qualities – she is able to express herself well and can really help to drive things forward. She is bursting with all sorts of ideas and her enthusiasm can be very infectious, and can help to motivate other members of the team (although others may be intimidated by it). Eve is good at setting projects in motion, and providing briefs at top level.
The problem
Although Eve has bags of energy, she unfortunately has little or no discipline. She may be good at initiating projects, but she then tends to move on faster than you can complete the work. Because she is very reactive and ideas-orientated, she keeps changing tack. It’s difficult to pin her down so that you can get a detailed brief – and you never know if she will have lost interest by the time you finish the work.
This can be very demoralising. In the worst case scenario, she may even deny asking for something, which in turn can cause budget-related issues.
The solution
The best way of handling Eve is to find a way of harnessing her energy and enthusiasm without curbing them too much. Make sure that she has your briefing template and that you agree a full brief in writing for everything she initiates. You may need to do more of the writing than usual – but it’s time well spent if you can get it all down on paper.
Find out her longer term targets or KPIs. Help her to prioritise her ideas. As you gain her confidence, you will be able to start challenging her on whether her latest idea really fits in with her team’s overall objectives.
Encourage her to think ahead more and either to fully commit herself to a project or let it go. Ideally, talk to those people who are most likely to be affected by her ideas to confirm that they want or need this work and will act upon it once it is delivered.
Make sure that Eve signs everything off, so that she’ll pay the bill at the end. This isn’t so easy in these days of emails – but make sure you have saved the appropriate confirmations (or the signed documents if that is your company policy). Send her regular progress reports so that she stays on board. If she knows that you really appreciate her enthusiasm, she is more likely to respond to your attempts to control it!
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