You Call Your Clients, “Sir”

Does it make you wary to be called, “Sir,” by another businessperson?  When a client recently called me, “Sir,” I told him straight out that it wasn’t necessary, “Simon is just fine, thanks.”

Advisors who address their clients as, “Sir” are reaching out for the acceptance and respect they did not receive in their childhood.

In my client’s case, he went through years of university to follow the traditional career path of his family, and gain their acceptance and respect.  At the end of it all, he graduated, and there was no pot of gold like the one his negative ego mind had him chasing after.  No automatic approval from his family.  And so, he chose a different career path entirely.

Though he finished his degree, he’s still dealing with the unfinished business of his Unmet Needs of acceptance and respect.

If your negative ego is subconsciously trying to meet the Unmet Needs of acceptance and respect, it’s generating the negative beliefs that, “people don’t accept me,” and “people don’t respect me.”

Worse yet, the harder you try to get it, the more people you attract who don’t fulfill their end of the bargain.  We attract what we believe.

Even I had a role in this play.  By pointing out some of the actions that my client committed to but didn’t follow through on, in essence, my client’s negative ego mind heard that I didn’t accept or respect him.  That further triggered his Unmet Needs, negative emotions and beliefs.  Even though I was trying to help my client, all his negative ego mind heard was a reminder of the many times in the past when he didn’t feel accepted and respected.

Calling someone, “Sir” is an expression of a patriarchal dynamic and usually a subconscious attempt to replay a childhood scene, but with a better outcome; finally being told you’re good enough, to repair the damage of all of those times being told you weren’t.

This brings me back to one of the few times my father spent with me outside of his own busy work schedule.  I was seven-years-old, and was taking swimming lessons at a local pool.  My father took me to the lake one Sunday to give me more practice.  I can still remember his words, “Look at how well those kids can swim!”

At the time, I didn’t know my father never got the approval he needed from his own parents.  He was just acting out what he knew, but I called out in self-defense and hurt, “But Dad, those boys are twelve-years-old; they are twice as old as me.”

How many times in the next 10–20 years will my client run into people and situations that continue to remind him of not being accepted and respected?  What will it cost him to not address this issue?  I hope that he lets me help him to turn these 10–20 years of unnecessary struggle to years of success.

This article was originally published in Curing The Unmet Needs Disease © Simon Reilly 2008