Month: August 2019

Consulting Complexities: Performance Management… Let Me Do It for You

Posted on by Maya Mehta

This post on how the lure to set up programs to manage performance improvement ultimately undermines consulting effectiveness continues our series that looks at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks to both internal and external consultants experiencing the tensions between doing what is popular and providing genuine service to a client.

In a culture in which profitability and efficiency are the priority, accountability becomes everyone’s favorite word. We think that there is a relationship between holding ourselves and others more accountable and increasing performance. If we can just tighten our accountability grip, the organization would deliver more. This illusion creates a market for methodologies and consultant services that promise better gripping power.

There are consulting firms that guarantee concrete results in return for a fee. If you don’t see the results, you don’t pay the fee. This is the ultimate in performance consulting. How could a consultant make this kind of guarantee? Simple. Take over that segment of the business that you promise to improve. The consultant becomes a surrogate manager, and the line management clears the way and effectively steps aside. The people in the unit live under the power of the consultant, and generally the consultant delivers on the “performance improvement” by instituting closer controls and having fewer people doing more jobs.

This is not really consulting. It is something we might call “in-sourcing”: bringing into the organization, on a temporary basis, surrogate managers who are willing to take a difficult stand, reduce head count, confront people in a way that the permanent, resident management is unwilling to do.

Even if the job needed to be done, the use of consultants in this way undermines the legitimacy of the consultant role. Consulting is no longer educational, advisory, or capacity building. Line managers cast the consultant in the role of the Serpent in order to protect their own good image with their own people. When we go along with this, it may be good for our business, but hard on the service dimension of the profession.

There are milder forms of performance consulting, the main problems of which have more to do with taking measurements than with taking charge. There is a widespread belief that anything you cannot measure does not exist. And internal staff groups are under more and more pressure to be more business oriented and return-on-investment–minded than in the past. Hard to argue with in theory.

The risk is that staff groups will no longer be in the business of cultural change or confronting the culture with its own blindness. Performance consulting will drive staff groups to be more like the culture that surrounds them. This will reinforce services that treat only symptoms and seek acceptance at the cost of some greater impact than the consultant or staff group has the potential to make.

There is great pressure for this, especially in the human resource area. The HR function comes under siege because much of its value is hard to quantify. In periods when people concerns are in remission, the push to “rationalize” HR almost leads to its elimination. There has to be a way for qualitative services to demonstrate their value without sacrificing the power of their unique perspective.

Flawlessly Feeding Your Soul

Posted on by Maya Mehta

As a millennial in the midst of her career, I find myself exposed to a range of diverse colleagues and clients with regard to age, gender, skill set, title, role, background and overall life experience. Some are leading in their industry or just getting started with their working professional career, groomed with the latest best practices. Others have spent decades in different corporate roles, taking on new projects and challenges, rising up the ranks. Regardless of their generation and different experiences, they all face one thing in common, human dynamics.

It is the intangible skill set of connecting, relating, understanding, influencing, and aligning that seems to affect everyone in their organizational system, from individual contributor to senior leader. Technical acumen is needed to thrive in today’s technologically advancing society, but your business cannot thrive on technical acumen alone. Ignoring the more difficult aspects of human dynamics in the workplace can drag down the culture due to a reluctance to address the “here and now.” This is emotionally draining and contributes to workplace stress. Heeding behavior allows you to not only deliver a great end product, but work with others on the team Flawlessly. This is the main focus of Peter Block’s workshop’s and book, Flawless Consulting.

What does it mean to act Flawlessly? Does it mean to complete the work on time and on budget? Perhaps those things may be important and critical to the project’s success, but what about behavior?

Pure awareness, intentional reflection, grounded integrity, and operating with conscious choice is Flawless.

I invite my diverse colleagues, who may be experiencing challenges, to explore further with me. I ask you to dive deeper into the presenting problem to understand the influencing factors   I ask you to deepen your own awareness into your own contribution to the problem. I invite you to that space in-between both subjective realities where insight is flickering in the dark. Confronting discomfort, letting go, and listening for the new path forward. This is where the magic happens and a newfound opportunity to mitigate resistance and co-create a healthy and effective solution.

When I see friends and colleagues struggling with interpersonal or group dynamics, I remember how universal this challenge is. It transcends industries, levels of hierarchy, and global culture. This work is ongoing and is the work for us all in the midst of our dynamic and diverse lives. To evolve and sharpen technologically is an imperative for change, so is the need to cultivate conscious awareness in service of your personal and organizational mission. It’s emotional, it’s uncomfortable, and it feeds your soul.

FAQ’s from Flawless Consulting Workshops

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Over the years I have trained thousands of people in Flawless Consulting Workshops. Most of them did not see themselves as consultants yet had questions about how to relate to the people they served inside the organization.

Now, if you’re not sure you are an internal consultant? Follow this link to a previous article.

Here are the seven most frequently asked questions that I am asked in Flawless Consulting Workshops about becoming an internal consultant with impact and influence.

1. How do I move from a transactional (doing everything) role and into a partnership (strategic) role?

2. What are the right questions to ask clients to get results?

3. How do I get clients to be clear about their expectations?

4. How do I deal with difficult clients, handle push-back and resistance?

5. How do I get my recommendations accepted and used by my clients?

6. How do I show my value, credibility, expertise to my client?

7. How do I get my clients to take accountability?

After you think about these questions, I have two questions for you…

1. What is your top question about being an internal consultant?

2. What are you doing to build your internal consulting skills?

I’d love to hear your questions. Drop me a note. Let me know how it’s going. Looking forward to hearing from you. Over the next few blogs, I’ll work to answer some of these or other questions I get from you.

The No-Judgment Zone

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher, speaker, and writer said, “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” It’s an ability we talk about often in Flawless Consulting when learning how to deal with resistance in our client relationships.

Observation is the action or process of observing something or someone carefully in order to gain information. It is a statement based on something one has seen, heard, or noticed. Evaluation is altogether different. It is the making of a judgment about the amount, number, or value of something—an assessment. The time between observation and evaluation is seconds but the impact can be monumental.

At any point in our consulting process with a client, resistance is likely to happen. Dealing with such resistance may not be easy, but we’ve learned it can be simple. The key is leveraging the difference between observation and evaluation.

First, let’s talk about what resistance may look like in a client.

Some examples may include silence, interrupting, changing the topic, asking excessive questions, checking the time, stone-walling, arriving late, leaving early or even proclaiming, “We’ve always done it this way.” When hit with these various forms of resistance, it can be very easy to jump immediately into our own evaluation of what we believe their resistance must really mean. Flawless Consultants learn to come to a full-stop of our innate jump to judgment.

We do this by understanding what is behind the resistance and seek to get to the heart of what’s really going on.

Resistance in clients is often a sneak peek into their own harsh realities of the challenge they are trying to overcome.

There may be a real fear of being vulnerable to the consulting process, making a commitment, or even the fear of losing control. Resistance then is an open door to discovering critical aspects of what could be an underlying problem that should be addressed sooner rather than later. There may be a real fear of being vulnerable to the consulting process, making a commitment, or even the fear of losing control. Resistance then is an open door to discovering critical aspects of what could be an underlying problem that should be addressed sooner rather than later.

We use five skills to help navigate these murky waters.

1. Give two good-faith responses. In other words, give a “resisting” behavior a pass for the first two times. If you see your client take a quick look at their watch, don’t automatically read too much into it. If the behavior doesn’t continue, it wasn’t signaling resistance.

2. If the behavior does continue after at least two good-faith responses, name the behavior simply and directly. Here is where the difference between observation and evaluation becomes critical. Simply state the observed behavior and come to a full stop before moving to evaluation.

For instance, a client continues to look at their watch. A Flawless Consultant would say, “You keep looking at the clock.” If you say, “You look distracted,” you’ve moved pass observation, into evaluation and well into judgment which can quickly derail a conversation and make navigating the resistance even more difficult.

3. Once you’ve named the behavior, be quiet. Let the tension rise and allow the client to explain what the behavior means.

4. Give support to the underlying concerns by listening curiously, asking questions and seeking to understand.

5. Return to the business of the meeting or something new, depending on the underlying concerns. Let it go and move on.

Ultimately, resistance gets in the way of dealing with issues that affect the work. If we, as consultants, don’t manage the resistance, we may never really get to the deeper issues. We can help clients be more direct by showing them what they are doing by being clear and direct about our observations. It’s with this “look in the mirror” that we hope clients will say “why” they are doing it. No evaluation. No judgment. After all, it’s their “why” to tell.

Beverly Crowell is an experienced facilitator, speaker, thought leader, and author specializing in the areas of business operations, organization, employee and human resources development.