A client asked me recently what makes a good client.

It is the sort of question that should have been easy to answer. After all, I have spent much of my career working with organisations on strategy, capability, commercial effectiveness and organisational change. I've worked with clients who have transformed businesses, clients who have fought through extraordinary complexity, and clients who have managed to spend significant sums of money achieving almost nothing at all.

Yet the question caught me slightly flat-footed.

My first instinct was to answer: seniority.

Not because senior people are inherently better clients, but because many of the best clients I have worked with have also been among the most senior. They have seen enough organisations, projects and personalities to instinctually know where they want to end up. They understand where decisions are really made. They know which problems are technical and which are political. They have sufficient authority to clear obstacles and sufficient experience to recognise when something is going off the rails.

The answer reminded me of an observation that often appears in longevity research. If you ask what predicts a long and healthy life, wealth consistently appears near the top of the list. Wealth buys access to healthcare, education, safer environments, healthier food and countless other advantages.

The challenge, of course, is that "be rich" is not particularly useful advice in achieving lifespan and healthspan.

Telling someone to "be senior" suffers from much the same problem.

Fortunately, over the years I have noticed that many of the behaviours associated with experienced and effective clients can be adopted regardless of title. Looking back across some of my favourite engagements, there are a handful of patterns that appear again and again.

The first is a willingness to declare what a client of mine calls The Valley of Death.

The best clients are unusually honest about the current state of affairs. They do not spend the first month of an engagement trying to convince everyone that things are broadly fine. Instead, they are willing to state plainly that the strategy is not landing, the commercial model is under pressure, the capability gap is larger than expected, or the organisation has lost confidence in its own plans.

This kind of honesty is rarely demoralising. Quite the opposite. Most consultants find it energising because it establishes a common understanding of the problem. It is difficult to improve a situation that nobody is prepared to describe accurately. The clients who create momentum are usually those who are willing to acknowledge reality before they start discussing solutions.

A second characteristic is the provision of air cover.

External consultants are often brought into situations where there are competing interests, historical tensions and stakeholders with very different agendas. Good clients understand this. They do not assume that an external adviser can immediately navigate years of organisational history. Nor do they outsource internal politics and then express surprise when someone steps on a landmine.

Instead, they identify pockets of resistance early, manage sensitive conversations proactively and create the conditions for the work to succeed. Looking back, some of the most successful projects I have worked on had sponsors who were doing as much work behind the scenes as the consulting team was doing in workshops and meetings.

Another observation is that good clients understand that the brief is rarely the real work.

I have never been particularly concerned by a rough brief. In fact, some of the most successful projects I have worked on began with a problem statement that was vague, incomplete or partially wrong. What mattered was that the client understood that defining the problem was part of the process.

Less experienced clients often believe they need to arrive with the perfect scope and the perfect set of requirements. More experienced clients tend to understand that the engagement itself is often a process of discovery. They are comfortable refining the brief, revisiting assumptions and adjusting the approach as understanding develops. They are interested in solving the right problem rather than rigidly adhering to the original formulation of it.

The best clients also have an unusual ability to operate simultaneously at 30,000 feet and twelve inches.

They can discuss strategic direction, organisational ambition and long-term outcomes, while also being prepared to challenge a chart, a sentence, a financial assumption or a process detail. This is not micromanagement, it’s engagement and a sign that they are paying attention to and invested in the work they’ve commissioned. They understand that strategy ultimately succeeds or fails through execution and that execution lives in the details.

One of the most common misconceptions about senior leaders is that they operate exclusively at a strategic level. In my experience, many of the strongest leaders move comfortably between abstraction and detail. They know when to zoom out and when to zoom in.

The projects that produce the best outcomes also tend to be attached to something that genuinely matters.

Consultants, like everyone else, respond to significance. A project that exists to solve a real problem, support a difficult decision or improve a meaningful outcome generates a different level of energy than a project that exists simply to satisfy a process requirement. Most consultants can tell the difference remarkably quickly.

The least successful engagements often involve work that has already become performative. The strategy review that nobody intends to act upon. The transformation program that exists largely to reassure stakeholders. The workshop series designed to demonstrate activity rather than create change. Good clients avoid these traps by ensuring there is a real decision, a real consequence or a real outcome attached to the work.

Perhaps the characteristic I admire most, however, is a willingness to invite critique.

The strongest clients are rarely looking for validation. They are looking for insight. They ask questions such as: What am I missing? Why won't this work? Where are the risks? What assumptions am I making? What would you do differently?

This requires a degree of confidence because genuine criticism occasionally produces uncomfortable answers. Yet it is almost always the fastest path to better thinking. The value of an external adviser rarely sits in the deliverable itself. The value lies in the ability to bring different experiences and different perspectives to the problem at hand.

One client I have worked with for many years captures this balance particularly well. He is extremely precise about what he wants delivered. There is no ambiguity about the output, the timeline or the standard expected. At the same time, he consistently creates space for challenge. He wants to know where the logic breaks down, what has been overlooked and where a bigger opportunity might exist. As a result, the engagement is both efficient and intellectually rewarding.

Finally, there is the matter of professional hygiene. 

It sounds mundane compared with strategy and leadership, but it matters. Pay invoices on time. Return emails. Turn up prepared. Treat people with respect. Say thank you.  These behaviours do not make a project successful on their own, but their absence can undermine even the best intentions. Professionalism creates trust, and trust sits underneath every productive consulting relationship.

Reflecting on the original question, I still think seniority remains one of the strongest predictors of being a good client. The encouraging thing is that the behaviours that often accompany seniority are available to anyone. Honesty about the problem, willingness to engage, openness to criticism, protection of the work and a commitment to making the outcome matter are not reserved for executives.

And in my experience, these are the choices that separate clients who simply buy consulting from clients who genuinely extract value from it.