Two Minutes with Peter Block
Some Jobs Aren’t Meant to Be
So you’ve made the personal acknowledgments, expressed wants and given support, but you can’t help but think, “this isn’t working.” Some jobs just aren’t meant to be, and anyone who promises you a particular outcome is trying to sell you something.
Patriarchal World
The typical business culture is one of high control, working toward dehumanizing their processes. But in order to be impactful, you must go against this tendency and work to restore the human element.
Hard Times
When your client is worried about the suggestions you’re offering them, selling them on it won’t work. But how do you navigate their resistance?
Feedback
Consulting is a helping profession: an act of service, love and care. When we fail to be authentic when offering feedback, we fail as consultants and business partners.
Blueprints
Consulting is a helping profession: an act of service, love and care. When we fail to be authentic when offering feedback, we fail as consultants and business partners.
Risky Business
Great things rarely happen without risk.
Your Boss’ Boss
In order to create lasting solutions, you and your client must understand the political systems that you’re operating in.
Presenting Problems
When a problem is first presented, it often goes much deeper than is initially realized. It’s your job to dig deeper in order to find the root of it all.
Gift Mindedness
By regularly discussing what is useful throughout the consulting process, you’re communicating an expectation for how clients can work with you—what you expect and appreciate.
Freedom and Choices
Peter Block encourages people to realize they have the power to make choices and the right choice is not necessarily the one that is commonly practiced.
Urgency of Answers
Clients want an easy fix, a solution that will enable the client to get back on track in a hurry. However, you know that the right answer does not come right away.
Gifts
As a consultant, you are often asked to provide feedback to clients. It is easy to provide evaluations of other people, but the hardest consulting jobs are actually when you have to be your own consultant. When you look in the mirror in the morning who do you see? Are you confident in your own abilities or are you overly critical about the person you see in the mirror?
Fear in the Workplace
So often, we attempt to drive out all fear. But when you do, you miss out on a vital source of connectivity. When you or your client acknowledge your fears, the vulnerability you express creates a trusted connection.
Mysteries
As consultants, there are mysteries—unknowables—within the consulting process.
Let’s Get Real
Authenticity feels risky, but that’s also what makes it interesting.
Restoring Faith
Our faith in each other is the future.
Touchy Feely Crap
The problem with focusing on an end result is that you miss the point of what your organization is trying to accomplish. If you are unable to connect with your team and come to a mutual understanding of your mission, nothing will ever get accomplished.
Change Agents
You can’t change anyone. That’s their responsibility—what is your responsibility, is to change the narrative.
Am I Too Pushy?
Confronting your own resistance is an important process in and of itself. Not something to be used as a tool of manipulation, but as a way to take responsibility for your own life.
I’m Here to Fix You
Rather than focusing on “fixing” your client, step back and ask, “What it is that I need to understand more fully about my client?”
I’m Fine!
Peter explains why he always asks a person three times how they are doing. Peter believes that by the third time you ask someone how they feel about something, they finally open up and give their honest opinion.
Are You the Problem?
How honest are you with yourself when you might be part of the problem? It can be difficult to own a personal failure. How are you supposed to learn from your mistakes if you refuse to acknowledge them? Here’s the good news: you have the power to create the world you want to live in.
Aliveness
In the name of efficiency, it’s easy to dismiss the humanity of the consulting process. As consultants, it is your job to bring a sense of humanity to the people you are working with. If you put our attention there, things are going to work.
Project Managers
When you move from an individual to a communal purpose, you’ll tap into a wealth of resource so that you can move forward successfully and make a greater impact in the world.
The Book is Just a Book
Shift the Narrative
Your job is to shift the narrative from one of a high control system focused on results to one of relatedness with the purpose of impacting the world.
Demands on the World
Don’t believe that because you’re in a service role, you can’t express your own wants in a client relationship. The best partnerships are built when both sides express their wants.
Small Groups
Peter Block explains that when diversity of thinking and dissent are given space in a small group, commitments are made without barter and the gifts of each person and our community are acknowledged and valued.
It’s All Implementation
The steps to the consulting process often aren’t linear, but that’s ok. It all eventually leads to the implementation that you and are client are looking for.
Let’s Take it Slow
Despite the pressure from our clients, you know that change requires time and it’s your job to hold space for it.