I once wrote a blog about how my introversion serves me well as a private investigator and solo practitioner. Two other characteristics keep popping up in my work. I’ve decided they are probably the two most important for my line of work. They are patience and persistence.
It’s ironic that I’m writing about patience when I just lost every ounce of mine with my first grader over a homework battle. I suspect it’s similar for others, but every time I focus on displaying more patience, I seem to have less.
So why does a private investigator need patience? I am working two separate adoption cases currently in which I’ve completed all the work in identifying and locating them. I have mailed letters off to them both. And now, alongside my clients, I wait.
More often than a letter, I attempt a phone call. Many times, I catch a birth parent completely off guard. Some are in shock for awhile. I can’t push any of them. I can’t will them into responding. I can’t force them to make an immediate decision on how to respond to my client’s request for health, social, or family history. I can’t expect them to welcome the child they placed for adoption into open arms within mere seconds after I’ve placed a bomb in their lap. And so, with my anxiety-ridden client, I wait too.
Sometimes, I wait hours. Sometimes, it’s days. My patience even has to carry me through weeks or even months of radio silence. Adoption searches are extremely unpredictable in so many ways. My longest case took place over the course of 15 months. God bless that client.
But alongside patience sits persistence. The two compliment each other beautifully even though they very nearly seem to contradict each other initially.
I don’t just mail off a letter in hopes that it reaches the intended target, then simply hope for the best with fingers crossed. I don’t try a phone number a couple of times, then throw in the towel when I’m not having any success. In order to get answers for my clients, I must be persistent. If one method of contact isn’t working, I must find another. I have to exhaust all possibilities. That’s my job.
It’s the balance between patience and persistence that achieves results for my clients.
What characteristics are most important in your investigative niches?