By Amanda Cole

“Let’s try something different this time around,” we thought. My husband and I packed our two kids up and headed to the airport for my upcoming work trip to lead sales onboarding training for Quest Diagnostics. I usually left on my own, but we thought we’d get a little more time together this way.

About ten minutes from the airport, the trainer in me couldn’t help myself and I said we should go around the van and say what we love about each person. We came to me last, and my 5-year-old daughter says, ‘What I love about mom is that she lifts me up so I can see the stars’. Talk about gut-wrenching right before I’m about to board a plane and leave my family for days! We had recently been intentional about showing the kids the nighttime sky; the moon, the stars, the greater expanse of the world they know so little of in their young lives. I couldn’t remember exactly when I had lifted her up to see those stars better, but to her, it left a lasting impression.  

A few months later, as I entered the Flawless Consulting I workshop, I assumed I would walk away with a few ideas on better communication. And to be honest, I didn’t think I had much to learn. I was a natural talker, a charming person, and I got along with everyone so naturally that meant I was a good consultant, right?

Participating in the Flawless Consulting 1 workshop uncovered a whole new way of operating, both as an internal and external consultant. I didn’t just learn new and valuable frameworks for interacting with customers, I walked away empowered as a valuable asset to my organization. I realized that I was not simply an obedient order taker or helpful assistant to the executives, no, as an internal consultant utilizing these frameworks, I was vital to creating outcomes that actually moved the needle instead of just applying a band-aid.

Like any new way of thinking, it felt foreign at first. I reviewed my participant manual before heading into a meeting with the Sales Director. I came up with impactful questions and reminded myself to allow the Director and project team members to struggle through to the answer of the underlying problem. But after only a few weeks of re-wiring my brain to approach this vital role of mine, I noticed a shift. My confidence grew. I knew that the uncomfortable (sometimes even painful) struggle to solution was part of the process. I realized being useful was a lot better than being helpful.  

When we partner with our clients as trusted advisors, the goal is not to simply accomplish whatever they ask of us, it’s to uncover what’s possible. To unlock a solution they would never have considered, or better yet, to help them realize their ask was aiming too low.

Perhaps as a true flawless consultant, we can lift them up to help them see the stars.

You’ve likely heard the saying, “I’ll take the path of least resistance.” For those who want to avoid conflict, it often appears to be the best way forward. In consulting however, choosing the path of least resistance is often the one that will lead your project to broken promises or failed solutions.

To understand the value of choosing the path of most resistance, it’s important to understand what’s underneath it. Resistance is fear made visible. For consultants working with clients, it often represents the inability or reluctance to express some concern. In Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, it’s explained as such,

“There is no way you can talk clients out of their resistance because resistance is an emotional process. Behind the resistance are certain feelings, and you cannot talk people out of how they are feeling.”

How do we help our clients express their concerns, or feelings, more directly, without disguising? And, why is it so important to do?

Why we walk toward resistance is fairly obvious if you understand what drives it. Resistance is fear or some type of underlying concern. These fears or concerns, if left unexplored, are most certainly the things that will impede your ability to recommend a sustainable and impactful solution to your client. As consultants, it’s important to remind ourselves that the client’s behavior is not a reflection on us. We often have done nothing wrong to create resistance. The “wrong” happens when we fail to confront it.

Choosing the path of most resistance compels us to help the client express their concerns so they can pass. In Flawless Consulting, it’s referred to as “stating the reservations directly and stopping the subterfuge. When the client’s concerns are stated directly, the consultant knows what the real issues are and can respond effectively.”

There are three steps for handling resistance.

1. Identify in your own mind what form the resistance is taking. Pick up the cues and describe to yourself what you see or hear happening.
2. State in a neutral, nonjudgmental way, the form the resistance in taking. This is called “naming the resistance.” The skill is to find the neutral language. Simply state what you see or hear. Be careful to not place judgement on your observation. Describe the behavior … not what you think the behavior means.
3. Be quiet. We keep talking to reduce the tension we feel when we confront the client. Don’t keep talking. Live with the tension. Then, let your client respond to your observation and discuss what’s creating it and how best to move forward.

There is no way you can talk clients out of their resistance because resistance is an emotional process. However, there are specific steps a consultant can take to help a client get past the resistance and get on with solving the problem. As consultants that’s our goal … to help a client solve a problem so that it stays solved. Choosing the path of least resistance won’t get us there. Be flawless and walk head on into challenging conversations. Do so with real compassion for what the client is feeling and be authentic in your desire to help. When we do so, choosing the path of most resistance isn’t nearly as hard.

By Peter Block

The ways we get things done, the ways in which we organize effort, even towards the commons, are increasingly disturbing. Whether in our governance structures, the private sector indexes, the style of philanthropy, or wherever you spend your days, all are subject to patterns of control and commodification.

All of this calls us to seek an alternative. The first step in creating an alternative future is departure. Moving in small ways today, and large ways tomorrow. Away from empire towards restoring our humanity and authentic care for what matters most to us.

Much like ancient Egypt, our first step is to focus on departure as a political and spiritual act. Departure from habit, helplessness, resentment, from waiting for someone new to be in charge.

The moment we become clear about the dehumanizing side effects of a market, scale, and efficiency driven culture, the more we want to create an alternative. The first instinct is to move somewhere else. When we ask people about what crossroads they are at in this stage of their life, the most common response has to do with deciding whether to stay where they are or to go someplace else.

The problem is, where is there to go? So much of the organized efforts we inhabit––schools, higher education, government, social services, and health care––are run from the business perspective. When we call these organizations “not for profit,” we mean it. No different from the private sector, just no profit.

Before we change places and become mobile, there are ways to depart the existing culture wherever we are. In this moment. We call this departing in place. Departing in place is a very common term used in human resources to identify disengaged employees. Here we mean something different. We are not talking about departure as a form of resignation, but as a form of commitment.

The archetype of departing is Exodus. Crossing the Red Sea into the wilderness. Even with this dramatic mobility, it was way too likely, over time and generations, to re-create the patriarchy we left and consider people as objects to be maximized and production scale to be achieved. Soloman re-performed Pharoah, and he was one of us. He took pride in his number of concubines, soldiers, and chariots, and the compartmentalized and credentialing design of his temple.

One way we can depart the empire is to shift the way we meet. If you want a shorthand version of our daily version of the empire, consider “Robert’s Rules of Order,” written by a Civil War era Army officer, General Henry M. Robert. After the war, he was frustrated by noisy and chaotic public meetings. In the title of his solution is to put into practice the declaration of “Rules” and “Order” as its primary purpose and selling point.

In seeking an alternative way to depart in place we begin by looking at our everyday practices of meeting. Especially in those moments when we are not the host or in charge. Here “departure in place” is a gentler version from more traditional paths to transformation like protest, revolution, voting for people we believe in, holding dialogues of opposite opinions and faiths, visioning, and change-management programs.  All useful. We can also find smaller ways.

The idea of departure in place as an everyday practice came alive for me when I was talking to my friend Amy about the importance of connecting people as central to living together differently.

Amy is a very special organizational leader and organizer who commented that when she attends most meetings about things she cares about––like supporting candidates for public office or sustaining efforts for the social good––they are typically designed for persuasion and predictability, often using the practice of a version of General Robert, likely a PowerPoint presentation.

Sitting while participating in the absence of building relationships and connecting with those in the room, Amy said she is drawn to leaving early, and not coming back. Now she is thinking maybe she could stay and come back with the intention of shifting the tone and way of connecting among committed people, even as a participant.  This instinct of hers has a social meaning that is worth taking seriously.

This idea of departing the dominant narrative in small ways, simply by staying in the room and considering minor actions to take, is worth exploring. Here are three compelling voices about impacting the larger context through smaller actions possible in daily life.

Mike Chitty writes poetically about departing the empire, in this case encouraging us to focus on the personal choices we have in what he calls “relational disobedience.” This is from an August 2025 Substack offering:

There are times when obedience is deadly, when following the rules, sticking to the plan or hiding behind the institution means ignoring the subtleties of life as it unfolds in front of us.

Relational disobedience is the choice to refuse that deadening obedience. It is the courage to respond as a living sensing creative human being. It means listening more deeply than the policy allows. Caring when the system tells you to move on. Staying open to complexity when the institution demands a simple tick box. Choosing presence over prediction, relationship over regulation, creativity over compliance.

Adam Kahane, who has hosted and written about large-scale reconciliations in South Africa, Latin America, and more, now speaks to the small scale in his book “Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems.”  Here he quotes Naomi Klein:

We should stop treating a great many human-made systems––like monarchies and supreme courts and borders and billionaires––as immutable and unchangeable. Because everything some humans created can be changed by other humans (p. 13).

He then writes of how our actions in this moment, regardless of why we came together, become the seeds of the longer-term intentions:

These transformations don’t just require long-term strategies of daring initiatives. They require a particular way of being, thinking, relating and acting, day in and day out––a set of habits to disrupt ourselves and the systems we are a part of. Attending to changing small things that we can control enables us to contribute to changing larger things that we cannot control (p. xi).

A third set of powerfully expressed ideas comes from Atul Gawande and his book “Better.” He is a surgeon, a man of science. Evidence. Sacred practices, methodology, and what seems from a distance like magic. Yet the book offers a path to healing and well-being that––after immersing us in all of the challenging moral, legal, and institutional dimensions of the health care world––ultimately hinges on what is personal, human, and affirming to us as players in our own drama and vulnerability. Much of his writing is about small moments, an intimate relationship about life and death. Here is a taste of his wisdom:

Betterment is a perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized, and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality. To complicate matters, we in medicine are also only humans ourselves. We are distractible, weak, and given to our own concerns. Yet, still, to live as a doctor is to live so that one’s life is bound up in others’ and in science and in the messy, complicated connection between the two (pp. 8-9).

So, these short examples speak to whatever role we have in the world. What we do in the small everyday particulars may be more important than how we will later describe the importance and frustration of our work to friends and neighbors.

These examples lead us to consider ways of using small moves that turn this moment a step closer to moving from consumer to agent. From empire to the common good.

Before returning to Amy, and what she might have done differently fifteen minutes into a meeting, let’s hear two more voices that opened up my ways of thinking of the small moments of meaning.

Walter Breuggemann devoted a good portion of his biblical scholarship to the questions of departure. Here is a glimpse of his thinking from a series of conversations we had with John McKnight. Here is Walter:

I think that the master narrative of the Bible, or the metanarrative, of the Exodus doesn’t answer a lot of the questions that we might want to put to it, but I would think that what triggered the movement that led to departure and emancipation was a coming to consciousness. Pharaoh, with his ideology of endless productivity, worked very hard to keep the Hebrew slaves from coming to consciousness about their own place, and role, and agency in history.

It seems to me that if we want to leave the consumer culture, in a sense, that means that the world of consumption would have to be replaced, have an alternative. What is that alternative? At least one way of thinking about it is to say that we are moving from a culture of consumption to a culture of contribution. We, together, are the creators of our lives, rather than we are the objects of large systems that teach us life can be outsourced or purchased.

The really important question may be, how do we take the steps into the alternative by beginning to create a culture of contribution?

Here is how John McKnight offered his version of departure:

The work we have done is particularly focused on the idea that everybody has gifts … skills, abilities, capacities. That’s what we have to call on if we’re going to replace the proposition that our lives are bought rather than created.

I think you start on your own block and if you looked at all those households and said, “I’m going to actually take the first step to be a neighbor, maybe even a friend,” which you would do to begin intentionally, to meet your neighbor and to listen to them in terms of those things they value.

Now, I think that way of moving to the alternative can happen in 10,000 places. You know what a movement is? It is making visible the fact that in 10,000 or 100,000 places there were small groups of people who were creating a new kind of culture.

What John and Walter suggest is that where we are at the moment is to find small actions that honor the contribution and capacities of each person in this room, this moment. This becomes one of John’s ten thousand.

Let’s return to Amy, sitting in a meeting that is not working for her. Thinking that she will not come to the next event of this kind. PowerPoint is in front, the purpose and outcome are made clear, and next steps are on their way. The whisper for a change comes when one member of the group interrupts and says, “It would be nice to know better who else is in this meeting.” The leader says, “We don’t have time for that, we need to stay on task.”

My friend Amy let this go the last time they met. She is now thinking it was a moment to shift their way of meeting, even though she was just a participant. Might she have asked to stop for a minute? To state that our connection to each other will make a difference? Might Amy have said, “Could we stop, sit with two other participants for ten minutes, and discuss why it is important to each of us to be here, in this moment? This will determine, at least for me, how accountable I decide to be in following up on our purpose.”

Pause. Perhaps she stands and starts to move. (Radical disobedience. Everyday habit. A life attending to others. Seeking contribution. Space for the gifts of each.)

Will it work? Yes or no? Not the point. Is it enough? No. Is it important? Yes.

The point is to engage in a seemingly small way to depart from the efficiency and control of our habitual way of being together. An everyday habit in Adam Kahane terms. Complicated connection in Gawande terms. Radical disobedience in Chitty language. A step towards consciousness for Brueggemann. The beginning of a gifts movement for McKnight. A small pause for General Robert and his rules of order––he needs the rest.

There is a moment in which each of us, Amy this time, chooses to depart and move towards connection and agency. Which underlines the idea that departing in place is simply to take the ordinary and make it significant.