An Early Mistake I Still Think About
When I moved from retail banking into commercial banking, I brought a habit with me that did not fit the new job. I thought a good relationship manager was someone who had an answer ready for every question a client asked. If a business owner called with a concern, I wanted to respond fast and sound confident. I treated hesitation like a weakness.
It took me a few years to see that this habit was working against me.
Why Fast Answers Were The Wrong Goal
A client’s business is not a simple problem with one correct solution. It has history, personality, and pressure points that a spreadsheet does not show. When I rushed to answer, I was usually answering the version of the question I expected to hear, not the one the client actually had in mind.
I remember sitting across from a business owner early in my career, laying out a financing option I thought was obviously right. I had done the math. I was proud of the recommendation. The client listened politely, then asked a question that told me he was not thinking about financing at all. He was thinking about succession, about who would run the business in ten years. My answer, however correct on paper, was irrelevant to what he actually needed from that conversation.
What Changed My Approach
That meeting stuck with me because nothing went wrong in any dramatic way. He was courteous. I left the room believing the meeting had gone fine. It was only later, reviewing my notes, that I noticed how little of what he actually said had made it into my plan. I had been so ready with my own answer that I had barely listened to his.
After that, I started doing something simple: I let the first ten minutes of any client meeting belong entirely to questions, with no recommendation attached. Not questions that lead somewhere I already want to go, but open ones. What is taking up your attention right now. What worries you about the next twelve months. What would you change about how we work together if you could.
What This Looks Like In Practice
The shift is small on paper but changes the shape of a conversation. Instead of opening with a plan, I open with a question and let the answer decide what the meeting is actually about. Sometimes that means the agenda I prepared does not get used at all, and that is fine. A meeting that surfaces the real issue is more useful than one that stays on schedule.
I also stopped treating silence as something to fill. If a client pauses before answering, I used to jump in with a suggestion to keep the conversation moving. Now I wait. Most of the time, what comes after the pause is more honest than what came before it.
The Part I Had To Unlearn
None of this came naturally. Preparation had always been something I took pride in, and for a while I mistook preparation for having the answer ready in advance. What I had to unlearn was the idea that showing up prepared meant showing up with conclusions. Real preparation now looks more like knowing enough about a client’s industry and history to ask a sharper question, not to deliver a faster one.
I still do the analysis. I still show up with options and numbers. But I hold them until I understand what the client is actually weighing, not just what they are asking on the surface.
What I Would Tell Someone Earlier In This Career
If I were talking to someone new to relationship management, I would tell them that being quick is not the same as being useful. Clients can tell the difference between someone solving their problem and someone solving the version of the problem that is easiest to solve. The second kind of help feels good in the room and rarely holds up six months later.
The businesses I work with change year over year, sometimes month over month. The plan that made sense in January can be the wrong plan by fall. A relationship built on listening first can adjust to that. A relationship built on always having the fast answer usually cannot, because it was never really about the client’s problem to begin with.