Client Ambivalence: Your Client Wants the Outcome. They Just Don't Want the Change.

You know this situation. A client describes their problem clearly, agrees to work with you, pays you, and then somewhere along the way something shifts. They miss deadlines, change the subject when you try to surface challenging issues, or question recommendations they already signed off on. Your first instinct is to diagnose what's going on. They're not motivated. They're too busy. This just isn't a good time for them.

Dr. Larry Gard, psychologist and co-author of The Ambivalence Paradox, says that instinct is understandable and usually wrong, and acting on it makes things worse.

Client Hesitancy Is Not the Same Thing as Client Ambivalence

Larry's distinction reframes the entire problem. A hesitant client is tapping the brakes. An ambivalent client is pressing the accelerator and the brake at the same time. The client wants the outcome, but part of them, sometimes unknowingly, is holding back. Both things are true simultaneously, which is why ambivalence is so difficult to read and so costly when you miss it.

If you misread that dynamic as disengagement or lack of motivation, you respond the wrong way. You either push harder or back off entirely, but you almost certainly do not have the conversation that actually needs to happen.

The Two Ways Advisors Get This Wrong

Larry describes two failure modes, and most of us have fallen into both at one point or another. The first is assigning an internal state to the client based on their behavior. They are lazy, unserious, and uncommitted. The problem with that move is that it is a story you are building in your head, not a fact, and it closes off the curiosity you need to actually understand what is happening.

The second failure mode is the opposite: making too many excuses for the client. They are busy, their team is causing them stress, and it's a difficult time of year. Larry refers to such behavior as "colluding with the ambivalence."" You think you're being understanding and accommodating, but you're actually letting a pattern continue that doesn't help your client or your engagement.

I will raise my hand on both of those. Experienced advisors are especially vulnerable to over-relying on pattern recognition, assuming we have seen the situation before and we know what it means. Sometimes we are right. Sometimes we are wrong in ways that cost us the engagement and the client the outcome they sought us for.

The Practical Move: Focus on Behavior, Not the Story Around It

The core of Larry's practical advice is to focus on the behavior itself rather than the interpretation you are building around it. The client is not returning forms completely. They are not getting back to you in a timely way. The conversation keeps shifting. Those are observable facts, and starting there keeps you out of the trap of assigning motives you cannot actually verify.

From there, the goal is to create an opening rather than a confrontation. Larry suggests a useful reframe for missed deadlines: acknowledge that meeting deadlines can be challenging, share your ideas to simplify the process, and collaboratively explore additional strategies to stay on track. This approach does not absolve the client of their responsibility. It invites them into a conversation they probably need to have and have not known how to start.

The Question Most Advisors Would Rather Skip

There is a harder version of this conversation that Larry raises in the book, one that most of us would prefer to avoid entirely. What if the client's ambivalence is not about the project? What if it's about you personally?

It is uncomfortable to sit with, and it is sometimes true. Larry suggests that clients should be allowed to bring it up early in the relationship, before any issues arise. You can say something like, "I have been doing this long enough to know that our professional relationship will not always be perfectly in sync, and if there are things about my style that are getting in the way, I want the chance to address them." That kind of language takes confidence to use. It also tends to build more trust than almost anything else you can do in an advisory relationship.

Before You Take the Engagement

One more practical point from Larry that I had not focused on enough before reading his book: ask about prior advisory relationships that did not work out, and ask early. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. How a prospective client talks about a relationship that went wrong tells you a great deal about their readiness for this one. A client who honestly reflects on their past experiences and their role is a very different prospect than one who merely claims that the last advisor did not understand them.

You don't really know someone until you marry them or go into business with them. After reading Larry's book, I would add a third situation to that list: until you are their advisor. The friction you feel in an engagement is not always a communication problem or a scope issue. Having the language to recognize and address what is actually going on is what separates advisors who absorb that cost quietly from those who can move their clients through it.

Dr. Larry Gard is the co-author of The Ambivalence Paradox and the founder of Done With Work Retirement Coaching and Consulting. Listen to our full conversation on Episode 166 of The Price and Value Journey podcast.

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I’m John Ray, author of The Generosity Mindset. I help expert-service professionals communicate value, attract best-fit clients, and price their work more confidently, without confusing generosity with giving everything away. If you’d like to start a conversation or join the list from my Sunday morning email newsletter, send me a DM.