Boundaries and conduct in a client relationship
A freelance's availability, communication habits and conduct shape what clients expect. Explicit limits on hours, calls, proposals and provisional bookings work alongside professional behaviour, preparation for interactions and attention to cultural expectations.
Availability and deadlines
Freelances should negotiate business hours, charges and availability at the start of a project, considering both parties' locations and the flexibility they are comfortable offering.
When a deadline is unrealistic or changes, stating an achievable delivery date can open a positive negotiation rather than beginning with a refusal.
Clients can act as though they are a freelance's only client; respecting one's own time helps establish that others should respect it too.
Sending or answering evening and weekend emails can create an expectation of availability at those times; a message can be drafted without being sent immediately.
Office hours in an email signature and an out-of-office message during absences can give clients a clear expectation of when replies will arrive.
Fixed hours are one approach; a freelance who preferred working when she felt like it instead told clients before holidays that she would not respond while away.
Other suggested boundaries include an out-of-office message when away from the desk and keeping work email off the phone.
Freelances need not be on call, drop other work for a client's emergency, work weekends or holidays, or be available before 8 or 9 am or after 5 or 6 pm in their own time zone.
For demanding clients, communicating needs and setting boundaries can lead to adjustments: one freelance reported that this happened nine times out of ten, while another panellist advised saying no or raising rates.
A pharmaceutical-company manager acknowledged that changing project windows could be unavoidable, though she thought this unlikely to happen twice within a company; an audience suggestion was to state availability after the expected deadline upfront.
Clear boundaries with clients and others can support self-care, mental health and a sustainable, enjoyable practice.
Calls and working practices
A short working-practices sheet accompanying the contract can explain acceptable hours and how telephone enquiries are handled.
One freelance routinely let unscheduled calls go to voicemail and agreed a mutually convenient time to speak, explaining that this protected concentration on the current document and allowed full attention to the caller later.
She booked arranged calls in her calendar with time to prepare and take the call.
Another freelance considered most recurring calls unnecessary and one of the most time-consuming avoidable demands; depending on the project, she proposed weekly or monthly calls, or none after kickoff.
Direct communication with those responsible for the project is preferable to an agreement limiting contact to an intermediary coordinator; a prepared sheet of questions can support the initial discussion with a client or freelance.
Unpaid proposals and provisional bookings
Proposal work can become unpaid business development for a client rather than a route to assignments.
One freelance compared the detailed proposals requested with the small proportion resulting in work and discovered that the client was asking for proposals before winning the underlying projects.
She negotiated four proposals per year, including the contract and scope of services, only for secured work assigned to her, and charged for proposals beyond that agreed allowance.
When asked to reserve time for work a client has not yet won, a freelance can confirm current availability while specifying when a decision is needed, taking other commitments into account.
Communication should remain open: the client should be told if delays require taking other work, while a later confirmation can still be accepted if the freelance remains available.
If the client does not win the project, time held aside may also have cost other business declined while waiting.
Personal commitments and professional conduct
In a conference scenario, a freelance had a romantic weekend planned with her husband when a client offered a large payment for a last-minute project due Monday morning; cancelling would disappoint her husband.
The audience choices were as follows.
| Response | Share |
|---|---|
| Take the job and cancel the trip | 11% |
| Make it a working vacation | 30% |
| Outsource to a colleague | 0% |
| Make the husband the priority | 59% |
The freelance panellist said she had only recently gained the courage to refuse such work and now believed that saying no to a client was sometimes important.
An audience member described personal absences simply as prior commitments, finding that clients seemed more willing to interrupt family activities than work commitments.
A client-side panellist cautioned that cancelling personal plans for projects could establish a precedent: clients were more likely to bring rush work to freelances known to cancel plans.
Professional conduct includes joining conference calls a few minutes early, avoiding opening emails with “Hey”, delivering work and invoices on time, and notifying clients of delays as soon as possible.
When unavailable during normal hours, a freelance can say there is an appointment or conference call without describing personal activities; both sides should treat each other professionally and respectfully.
A client-domain email address should not misrepresent the writer's freelance status, and messages can be forwarded automatically to the regular address.
Managing several addresses can cause accidental messages from the wrong account, difficult-to-correct reply-all chains and missed messages when accounts are not checked regularly.
Another freelance accepted client addresses, particularly for faculty correspondence, recognising possible advantages such as memorable addresses and consistency within a team; her email software gathered the accounts into one inbox and allowed replies from the appropriate address.
Conduct on video calls
Practitioners differ on camera use: one considered video helpful for rapport at initial or kickoff meetings and for reducing isolation, but held that nobody should feel obliged to appear on camera.
Her reasons for staying off camera included very early meetings, illness and upsetting news, with travel, driving and webcam failure also given as reasons to stay off camera; she had also completed projects successfully through teleconferences for 20 years before the pandemic.
She recommended cameras off while eating, using exercise equipment or responding to another message, and clothing suited to the occasion, with something smarter for a new client and more casual for familiar clients or internal teams.
A second freelance generally used video only for a group's first meeting and an icon or photograph thereafter, with exceptions.
Her etiquette priorities were attentive listening, avoiding eating, reading other material, unnecessary departures or side conversations, muting when not speaking, and preventing distracting background activity; water, coffee or tea were acceptable.
A third freelance recommended the following practices for virtual meetings.
- Wear business-casual attire, including shoes, in case standing makes the legs or feet visible.
- Keep drinking water nearby to avoid leaving the meeting.
- Blur the background to draw attention to the face rather than the surroundings.
- Keep household members and other non-participants out of view; background blurring is especially important without a dedicated space for privacy and confidentiality.
- Keep the camera on and look at the speaker; in a small meeting, match clients who have their cameras off after showing the face initially.
- Turn the camera off temporarily when moving away, such as to close a door or take a break.
- Add a business-casual profile photograph for when the camera is off; this is optional but can keep a human presence.
- Use the complete business name as the label, perhaps with pronouns in parentheses.
- Stay muted except when speaking.
Intention and attention in client interactions
A practical preparation question is what the worst possible outcome could be and what could prevent it.
Running a freelance business requires self-leadership, including setting the tone of interactions and standards of behaviour; clients judge the business by its impact on them.
Before a meeting, call or email, a coaching approach asks what outcome is wanted, how the freelance wants to behave and how they want to feel; keeping these questions beside the computer can make them easier to use consistently.
A related executive-coaching framework combines intention and attention: a clear intention focuses effort, and actions need to match it, since people can notice a mismatch between words and intentions.
Its preparation questions are as follows.
- What is the current relationship with the client?
- What history exists between the freelance and the client or department?
- How should the relationship develop?
Once these are considered, the desired meeting outcome can be identified.
Possible intentions include the following.
- Connect and build rapport, particularly at the start of a relationship.
- Achieve a particular result from the interaction.
- Learn something.
- Understand or learn more about a topic under discussion.
- Identify what about that topic needs to be learned or understood.
- Share an idea to obtain feedback.
In one coaching case, an experienced, newly appointed operations director had aligned her team with her vision but had not sufficiently engaged customers and stakeholders in the changes she wanted to implement.
She was using appropriate words without sounding as though she meant them, approaching customers out of duty rather than to build relationships; focusing on her intentions and desired relationships led to strong relationships and trusted allies within a few months.
Attention means listening to understand rather than waiting to speak, and being fully present; other people can notice distraction.
In another coaching case, feedback and practice helped a client slow down, make eye contact and listen at the other person's pace; applying this at work was followed by greater team engagement, stronger customer connections and better results.
The framework recommends the following practices before and during client interactions.
- Set an intention for every interaction or meeting.
- Consider the desired impression and align voice and posture with it; the coach describes relaxation as deepening vocal tone and giving a more confident appearance.
- Give the other person full attention during a conversation and listen carefully.
- In a meeting, give each speaker the same attention.
Personal impact, in this framework, is what others feel in the freelance's presence and is reflected in the quality of relationships.
For difficult conversations, a practitioner coaching exercise suggests noticing the support of the ground or chair, sitting upright with feet grounded, slowing abdominal breathing, scanning for tension in the shoulders and jaw, and lowering the tongue from the roof of the mouth.
The practitioner describes this as a way to enter a conversation calmer and more prepared, speak more slowly, allow time to think and negotiate mutually workable boundaries.
Local expectations in international relationships
Language fluency alone may not be enough for a business meeting or contract negotiation; knowing the local rules of conduct can be equally important.
In one conference lunch, European colleagues enjoyed discussing food and cooking, while an English colleague's lack of enthusiasm prompted doubt about whether the topic suited multicultural small talk.
Two subjective resource recommendations in 2014 focused on English and US cultures.
Kate Fox's Watching the English covers introductions, leave-taking, pub talk, humour, dress codes and conduct at work.
It describes blunt disagreement about the weather or open criticism of English weather as breaches of etiquette, reluctance to give names at first introduction, and less priority given to food than in some other cultures.
Jane Walmsley's Brit-Think, Ameri-Think contrasts British and American attitudes to choice, money, consensus, heat and cold, business attire, success and failure, goods and services, and humour; it was recommended for recognising and avoiding transatlantic cultural blunders in business relationships.
A Polish freelance's 2019 account of working in South Korea described giving and receiving business cards with both hands, greeting with a bow whose depth reflected social hierarchy, and avoiding back-slapping.
He noted that a handshake could be appropriate with people experienced in Western business, but an offered hand otherwise sometimes caused confusion, including being held throughout a conversation or repeatedly shaken.
In his account, Korean clients did not normally send receipt acknowledgements or thank-you messages after receiving documents, instead returning when they had substantive feedback, potentially three months later.
He nevertheless advised immediate replies to client questions, describing a clear distinction between service providers and recipients rather than a horizontal partnership.