Author: Maya Mehta

Influencing Without Direct Control (I Want Power. I Choose Influence.)

Posted on by Maya Mehta

How powerful am I?  What is power? Are you empowered?  Power over? Power by? Power with? If only I had more power!  Do I really want more power, or do I want more influence? Is there a difference?

As I think about all of the relationships of my life, power seems to have a major role.  As a child, my parents had power over me. As a student, teachers and administrators had power over me.  As a new employee, I gave my boss and my senior colleagues power over me. As a poor citizen in my city, I gave power to the government and institutions.  We have learned that the world works on a class system that relies on the belief that we must have people who have power and people who are subservient to power.  In the subservient role, I seek safety and control, yet I give up freedom and choice.

Is having more power the answer?  Why do I want more power? What will I do if I get more power?  I believe our search for power is the wrong search. What I want is to influence others so that I am heard and my ideas are utilized.

I want to influence in all aspects of my life.  My family, my friends, my colleagues, my boss, and my fellow citizens in my community.

 When I seek to influence, I claim my own power. Not power over others, but power with others and power to contribute.  I can co-create shared endeavors with others by valuing their expertise and laying claim to my own expertise.

As a citizen in a community or an employee in an organization, I can claim my power by not giving it to someone else or attempting to take it from someone.  There will always be someone with more money, more status, and more experience than me. I, however, have expertise and other contributions to offer every relationship.  I am unique, and I claim this uniqueness while honoring your expertise and uniqueness. The brand-new employee, the person living on the fringe of society, both have unique expertise, perspectives, and gifts to offer.

I have come to realize that I give power away and deny my own power too often.  I regularly give power to others, especially if I perceive they have power over me, and sometimes I use it as an excuse not to own my own power.  Influencing without direct control—that is my everyday challenge and goal. I want to influence because I have expertise and other capacities to offer the world.  It’s not only technical expertise, it is relational expertise. Influencing without direct control is the premise behind Peter Block’s groundbreaking work, “Flawless Consulting: Getting your expertise used.”

Register today to learn how to:

  • Accelerate building trust by clearly understanding what people want.
  • Articulating what you want.
  • Deal with challenging partners.
  • Solidify agreements to achieve sustainable results that are good for individuals, teams, organizations, and the community.
  • Learn how to assertively claim your own power by influencing others and seeking to be influenced by others.This will build relationships and will ultimately result in successful, sustainable communities and organizations. I look forward to seeing you there, or on some other workshop in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I wish you well as you grow your capacity to influence without direct control.

Another Look at Resistance

Posted on by Maya Mehta

In any conversation with clients, there are concerns that are rarely discussed. These doubts vary in intensity with their perceived risk and loss of control; they are personal to the individual and the situation—they are not the same for everyone.

Doubts and concerns get expressed through different behaviors. You see them as:

  • direct statements;

  • indirect expressions;

  • wrong questions; or

  • wanting proof, a promise, or power before committing to a course of action.

At the heart of these expressions are emotional harsh realities—the real doubts, concerns, or fears that the client has about the project or whatever you are discussing. These are expressions of refusal without actually saying “No.”

They are nature’s way of telling you something important is going on! They are signs of change and learning. They are not to be overcome, but to be understood and expressed. Don’t take them personally. That will only get in the way of your dealing with them effectively.

These doubts and concerns are not legitimate objections. Objections are generally logical.

The general techniques for addressing objections—making the business case; giving more proof; bartering; talking about features, benefits, and advantages—will not address the concerns . . . they usually make it worse! In these conversations, we are faced with two internal struggles: the client’s and ours.

The Client’s Internal Struggle:

  •  “Often when we’re talking, I will have concerns about what we’re discussing.

  • For me to tell you my doubts, I need to know that it’s safe for me to talk.

  • Deep inside, I worry that if I tell you my doubts, you’ll judge me, condemn me, expose me—and this puts me at risk. 

  • When I am at risk, I feel vulnerable and can get hurt.

  • If I think I’ll get hurt, I‘ll act to protect myself.

  • I protect myself by trying to control the conversation and limiting your choices and actions.”

The Client’s Hope: to keep the conversation comfortable by not talking about my concerns.

The Consultant’s Internal Struggle:

  • “Often when we’re talking, your behaviors suggest that you may have concerns about what we’re discussing.

  • For me to let you talk about your doubts, I need to know that it’s safe for me to ask.

  • Deep inside, I worry that if I confront your doubts, you’ll become angry with me, yell at me, threaten me—and this puts me at risk. 

  • When I am at risk, I feel vulnerable and can get hurt.

  • If I think I’ll get hurt, I‘ll act to protect myself.

  • I protect myself by offering a more compelling business case, bartering, going along, or withdrawing.”

The Consultant’s Hope: to keep the conversation comfortable by not confronting your behaviors.

This struggle is self-defeating. To break the cycle, the consultant needs to choose to confront what’s going on and create a safe space for the client to talk. To do this, we can:

1. Take the client’s side by listening, being patient, and seeking understanding.

2. Recognize the behaviors and not taking them personally.

3. Suspend our judgment by not interpreting the behaviors.

4. Choose to change the conversation that follows.

5. Ask questions of curiosity about their concerns instead of giving advice.

6. Act with courage.

I’d love to hear about your Resistance stories. Drop me a note. Let me know how it’s going.

Charles L Fields was a highly acclaimed Senior Consultant at Designed Learning and a lover of life. He traveled the world by car, rail, plane, and ship, watched the sunrise on Croagh Patrick, and set on Victoria Peak, weathered a perfect storm in the Pacific, bartered for a darbuka in the Grand Bazaar, prayed at Lord Nelson’s Sarcophagus, ate lunch in the oldest restaurant in the world. His prolific and thought-provoking writing contributed to the design and re-design of many DL products, including Flawless Consulting, Empowerment, and Stewardship. Charlie shared his passion for this body of work in over 25 countries. His impact is a blessing.

Tips And Traps For Internal Consultants

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Are you in a position to influence others, but have no authority to make changes or implement programs? If so, then you meet the definition of a “consultant” as found in Peter Block’s book, Flawless Consulting.

As internal consultants, we want to help solve our clients’ problems. We work to have our expertise used and our recommendations implemented. We strive to build and maintain partnerships with our clients.

Too many times, the results we get fall short of what we want. Too often, we end up with no-win consulting situations. Flawless Consulting outlines the five phases of consulting—Contracting, Diagnosis, Feedback, Implementation, and Evaluation—and offers a process that will minimize those no-win/no-fun situations.

Contracting, Diagnosis, and Feedback are considered the preliminary events. Consulting project failure can usually be traced to failure in one of these phases. What follows is a brief description of the purpose of each phase, with some tips and traps to help you be more successful.

CONTRACTING

The purpose of the Contracting phase is to negotiate roles and responsibilities, and to reach an agreement on how to proceed with the project.

TIP: State YOUR wants for the project. Clients usually spell out what THEY want from a project, but as consultants, we frequently don’t! Answer this question before your next contracting meeting—”What do I want front the client to make this a successful project?” We usually don’t get what we want because we don’t ask!

TRAP: Solving the client’s problem during the contracting meeting! Our tendency is to listen and prescribe immediately. We often think that this is what the client wants—immediate solutions. But a rush to solution trivializes the client’s situation. We need good active listening skills here, not quick solutions.

DIAGNOSIS

During the Diagnosis phase, we attempt to draw our own clear, independent picture of “what’s happening” and identify how the client is contributing to the situation.

TIP: Focus on things that the client CAN control. This helps build commitment. Too often, clients claim helplessness because we identify things that need to be fixed but are beyond the client’s control.

TRAP: Working on the technical side of the problem only! There are two sides to every problem—the technical side and the “how is it being managed?” side. Here’s an example…

Technical: The organization wants to implement a new strategic planning process.

How it is managed: The people involved in planning feel that this is another “flavor of the month”… here we go again… another change to the process.

You can go through the motions of teaching them how to use the new process, but unless you get to the level of dealing with their commitment, nothing will actually change.

FEEDBACK

The Feedback phase usually causes the most anxiety, but it is where we earn our money! In many instances, the client’s perception of the problem is different from the REAL problem. So, we have to tell the client what we’ve learned, deal with their reserva­tions, AND get a decision to act.

TIP: Use language that clearly and simply describes the situation, identifies the client’s contribution, and includes the impact on business. Such language will help focus on the real issues and prevent drifting into non-productive discussions.

TRAP: “Dumping all your data” and expecting the client to sift through it for the relevant elements. We tend to love what we’ve learned and present ALL of it to the client. We also tend to lace it with the jargon of the day. Remember, our task is to present a clear, simple picture.

A final thought…

In Flawless Consulting, Block likens our role as consultants to that of a courtroom. We could act as the judge, jury, defendant, prosecutor, etc. So, a final TIP: Act as a Witness to the situation, reflecting only what you see going on. TRAP: Acting as Judge and Jury (and sometimes executioner!) destroys trust and credibility.

Think about it… read the book… practice consulting “flawlessly”!

A Short Version of My Misunderstanding of Gestalt

Posted on by Maya Mehta

In October 2019, Designed Learning marked the 40th anniversary of its founding with a webinar where Peter shared some thoughts on the origins of the company. It all began with a workshop, he said, that was grounded in a simple belief: relationships are decisive. What hasn’t changed over the years is this basic belief that relationships are decisive, not convenient, not rewarded, not comforting. And so it turns out that your ability to engage in honest, authentic relationships has everything to do with business performance.

In this blog post, Peter reflects farther back, into the origins of that simple belief that gave Designed Learning its footing.

My affection for Gestalt began sixty years ago. It took me to a weekend workshop in a barn in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It took me to Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California. Of all the different therapies I explored, it was the most efficient. Brutal, to the point, and absent of analyzing the world, one of my continuing resistances to living.

So it began as a long and personal journey to make sense of my life.

Then it became the foundation of my consulting work in organization development. Whenever I was lost and had no idea what was happening, I would go around the room and ask, “How do you feel? What do you want?” I did it often enough that I wrote a book on consulting that was mostly organized around these questions.

I once told a friend that I felt guilty making a living off of two questions. He said, “What else is there?”

The value of the questions is their power to value experience over intellect. The argument between science and religion is incomplete. What completes the conversation is experience. The existence of God, the empiricism of Science: interesting but inconclusive. What is interesting and conclusive is that if you aspire to act on what you know, this can be found in your own body. This is the ultimate challenge of any therapy, intervention, strategic planning: will you act on what you know? Gestalt is unrelenting on this question.

This is the essence of freedom, of relationship, of a fully lived life. These are central to changing organizational culture. The dominant narrative of system living is that predictability, consistency, and control produce high performance. A childish myth. Mostly they produce fear, isolation, and compliance.

Asking how you feel and what you want, collectively, in a context of support, is the essence of transformation. We learn and shift our thinking and our relationships with others at the citadel of our own experience, put into words in the presence of others.

If you care about transformation, or learning, or creating an organization that delivers on its promise, put best practices aside. Pay no attention to learning from history. Pay no attention to learning from your elders. Or what your precious children taught you. Pay no attention to what gives you bliss, or joy, or letting the ocean remind you of what a small and lucky being you are. These are fine comforts. So are a pillow and socks that fit.

This is not cynicism. It is the expression of faith. Existential faith.

Gestalt for me is an unsentimental version of a life. It demands we accept our own human landscape. That freedom occurs when you understand that no one is watching. That understanding and judgment are the booby prizes. It ends the need for violence in its more subtle forms of self-improvement and trying hard.

Two years ago, at the end of a workshop that I ran which went well, I declared to a participant that this experience was so different, more powerful, than other groups I had led in the company. I said that I wondered why. He said, “Peter, can’t you just enjoy this experience, and stop trying to analyze everything?”

Evidently not.

 

Excerpt by Peter Block from Gestalt Practice: Living and Working in Pursuit of wHolism,” Mary Ann Rainey and Brenda B. Jones, eds. (Faringdon, UK: Libri Publishing, 2019).

Peter Block is an author, consultant and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. His work is about empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability and the reconciliation of community.

What’s Thanksgiving Without Pizza?

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Thanksgiving: a time for family, friends, football, and food… turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie, and of course pizza. What’s the matter? Don’t you have pizza on your Thanksgiving table?

Our Thanksgiving pizza tradition started years ago when I invited Bob, Diane, and their family to our house for Thanksgiving. They had recently moved to Connecticut and would be alone for the holiday. When I asked Bob’s children what they wanted for thanksgiving dinner his teenaged son yelled, “Pizza”! This drew a rebuke from Bob. He apologized to me and informed his son that pizza was not a traditional food for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day came and I set a large pizza on the table, near the turkey. Bob and Diane were stunned. My in-laws were shocked. All the kids were ecstatic. It was a first. Some one commented that pizza wasn’t traditional… and invoked the Lord’s forgiveness for what I’d done. “Be careful. You are tampering with sacred Thanksgiving traditions!”

Many things we take for granted were not at the original Thanksgiving. Sorry, there was no pumpkin pie, stuffing, or sweet potatoes. And no football games or forks! Forks? There were no forks at the first Thanksgiving. They were not in use at the time!

We all create traditions. For example, when our family learned that many international students at the nearby university stayed on campus for the holiday, we started inviting a few to join us for Thanksgiving.

They came from countries like China, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and Taiwan We would include a dish from their countries at the meal as a way to honor them. Our pizza grew into many other dishes. Sharing their stories about life and foods in their country became part of the tradition. Great memories!

You’ve seen traditions in your work life—these are the “policies, procedures, rules and regulations” that once organized us later taking on a life of their own. Some of them are sacred. For example, I tried consolidating engineering reports into a single format. One report that took 4 hours weekly to complete went to 5 people who filed it away without reading it! I asked to eliminate it and was told, “We can’t, that’s SVP X’s report.” Seemed strange since he had retired nearly a year ago!

So, what do traditions have to do with Flawless Consulting? In Flawless Consulting Skills workshops, we confront “organizational traditions”—the choices people make about the roles they assume and the conversations they have.

Some traditions may hinder growth—individual and corporate. The workshop helps people see the alternatives to their “traditional roles.”

Ask yourself a few questions like these to confront your own traditions:

  • What is the original purpose of our tradition?

  • What makes it important us?

  • How does this tradition strengthen us and add value to our lives and work?

  • What appeals to us or concerns us about this tradition?

Now if you find yourself still thinking, “This is silly. We would never have pizza at Thanksgiving,” it may be time to ask yourself, “Why not? Maybe you could make the pizza with turkey and cranberries! Remember it’s not about the food… it’s about sharing the food with others, giving thanks, and experiencing fellowship.

So, this year at your Thanksgiving dinner, add something new, something unusual, give thanks to God, and bless your family. That day I’ll send you my greetings from our home, where we’ll be eating a seafood pizza as part of our celebration. Who knows? Maybe you’ll add that to your traditional Thanksgiving!

I’d love to hear about your traditions. Drop me a note. Let me know how you celebrate.

Charles L Fields was a highly acclaimed Senior Consultant at Designed Learning and a lover of life. He traveled the world by car, rail, plane, and ship, watched the sunrise on Croagh Patrick, and set on Victoria Peak, weathered a perfect storm in the Pacific, bartered for a darbuka in the Grand Bazaar, prayed at Lord Nelson’s Sarcophagus, ate lunch in the oldest restaurant in the world. His prolific and thought-provoking writing contributed to the design and re-design of many DL products, including Flawless Consulting, Empowerment, and Stewardship. Charlie shared his passion for this body of work in over 25 countries. His impact is a blessing.

Consulting Complexities: Final Thoughts on What to Do

Posted on by Maya Mehta

The promise of consulting is a commitment to care and to serve. We promise to act in the interest of another, the client. This series of blog posts explored some of the complexities consultants face that interfere with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. With this post, we wind the series up with a few more thoughts on what to do.

Show How Everybody Counts

The whole system is your client. All parts of it need to be supported to learn and to be fully informed. Ensure that the client manager making the decision to hire you is as vulnerable to the effects of the change effort as those at other levels of the organization. If a project begins as a way to control or change others, it will be very difficult to leave this intention behind, regardless of how inclusive and participative the process. Real change has to be chosen; it is a voluntary act. If we are in the business of joining with the top to change others, we have become an agent of top management—and a part of the problem. We have become a stealth operation that will eventually undermine trust and make it harder the next time around.
Ask whether you would be willing for all members of the client organization to be witnesses to the selling and planning conversations you have with the client—a fresh-air test to the promises we make and the plans we develop. Meeting this test would change many conversations. Plus, it would be harder to blame people not in the room and harder to plan for the transformation of others.

Leave It All Behind

Commit yourself to the concept of building capacity. Clients have the capacity to learn and create for themselves the future they thought they needed a consultant to provide. Your job is fundamentally to be an educator, not a problem solver.

You may have to solve problems in the short run, but over time you need to develop ways for people to learn about your expertise. Be a support system for your clients’ self-sufficiency.

And Finally, Forgive

In thinking about these conflicts and paradoxes, forgiveness is required. No one can fully live according to his or her beliefs. That is why we are called humans. In fact that is why, in the first consulting act, God suggested to the serpent that he chat with Eve. By eating the apple, she and Adam lost their paradise and gained their humanity and all the freedom and flaws that go with it.

What we can do with our freedom is tell the truth, at least to ourselves, about the choices we make. If we take business because we need the money, so be it. If we over-promise because that is the only way things will move forward, if we seek too much approval from the top, if we are swept along with a fad and find ourselves mimicking the language of others—all of these are forgivable.

What is hard to forgive is self-delusion and positioning ourselves as a cut above our clients and others who do our work. This is pride and hubris, and it seems to come with our working papers. It is our own awareness and courage to see who we are that enables us to offer the service and care that is the best of the profession.

Be the Consultant Your Clients Want to Mirror

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Over the last several years buzz words like authenticity, compassion, courage, empathy, and kindness have all made their way into thought leadership blogs and articles. The premise is that leaders who demonstrate these characteristics are more likely to be successful and have better team and organizational outcomes. At the foundation of these ideas is the fact that none of us want to work for or with people who do not demonstrate these and other basic characteristics for effective human interaction. There is something that draws us to others who engage with us in the same way that we would want to ideally engage with others. This is one of the underlying components of Flawless Consulting. As an internal or external consultant, we have to engage with our clients in an authentic, courageous, wholehearted way. This, in turn, creates the environment for our clients to engage with us in that same way.

I love neuroscience, and when I saw that there was actually a scientific term for this, I was intrigued. It is called mirror neuron activation. Mirror neurons are cells in our brains that react to external stimuli that promote mirroring behavior or emotions. A familiar example of mirror neuron activation is when we smile at others, who in turn smile back at us.

Our behaviors and emotions are contagious.

As internal and external consultants, we set the tone for the interaction. It is our willingness to be authentic, speak to the truth, and hold ourselves and others accountable for executing promises that set the tone for what is expected in the consulting relationship. We cannot ask for what we ourselves are not willing to give. As consultants, we have to be mindful of what we bring to the consulting table for our clients to mirror. Are we bringing authenticity, courage, and trust—and thus mirroring these behaviors in our interactions with our clients? Or are we bringing our hidden agendas, self-interest, and airs of cleverness to the conversation?  As internal and external consultants, we set the tone for the interaction. It is our willingness to be authentic, speak to the truth, and hold ourselves and others accountable for executing promises that set the tone for what is expected in the consulting relationship. We cannot ask for what we ourselves are not willing to give. As consultants, we have to be mindful of what we bring to the consulting table for our clients to mirror. Are we bringing authenticity, courage, and trust—and thus mirroring these behaviors in our interactions with our clients? Or are we bringing our hidden agendas, self-interest, and airs of cleverness to the conversation?

Before your next engagement with a client, take a movement to check your mirror. Ask yourself the following questions to see what you might be mirroring:

  • How am I feeling about this meeting, this client, and this interaction?

  • What is my purpose for engaging with this client? Is it to be helpful, or to push my agenda?

  • What underlying thoughts or emotions might get in the way of us having a successful meeting?

  • What do I need to do in order to help me to build trust with my client and show up authentically?

  • What do I need to put aside or acknowledge mentally or emotionally in order to be fully present for this meeting?

Ruminations on Influence

Posted on by Maya Mehta

The heart of consulting, as Peter Block has so succinctly put it, is “influencing without direct authority.” That holds for those of us who work as external consultants as well as anyone in a staff role working internally. Therefore, it seems worth thinking about the source and process of influence.

Since I hold a master’s degree in “science” (yes, the standard deviations in our science are large), let me try a simple formulation:

Influence ƒ Expertise x Relationships

What I like about this formulation is that, if either value is low, our influence is low. And if either is “zero”—our influence is nil as well.

Let’s take a brief look at both. Generally, we get hired for our expertise either as internal or external consultants. There seem to be two corollaries around expertise:

  • I have to continually work to continue to develop my expertise. Just think about how emerging technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence will impact the field of OD.

  • I have to be able to explain how my expertise benefits the client I am working with. Those of us in OD love our models and theories. The client wants to know how our theories, applied to her organization, will help her run a better organization. In my view, “help” represents lower cost, more revenue, or improved customer service. We’ll have more impact when we talk in those terms.

  • Our expertise is one thing if measured by the standards of our training and discipline. It’s something else when the client perceives it as a business building asset.

Relationships most frequently represent the greatest opportunity for us to improve our influence. Consider some of the following aspects of self-management that affect the quality of relationships.

  • Can I talk to the client in terms of what’s important to her? Or have I fallen in love with my theories and models?

  • What is my attitude toward authority? Am I working out unresolved issues from the past? (As a confession, there was a point in my career where I made the boss “wrong” simply because he was the boss. Obviously, that got in my way.)

  • Can I accept the fact that, no matter how damaging the client’s behavior might be, he’s doing the best job he knows how? Or do I sit in judgment?

  • Am I willing to be open and direct with the client? Or do I get “strategic” and cautious with what I say?

A tool I learned several years ago that helps me in regard to the questions above is Chris Argyris’ notion of the “left-hand column.”[1] When a conversation doesn’t go well, the tool can be used to diagnose why. Here’s how it works. If you’re reflecting on a meeting or conversation that did not go as you wanted, take a sheet of paper and divide it into two columns. In the right hand column, write down what was said, trying to keep all the quotes verbatim without judgment or interpretation. In the left-hand column, write down what you were thinking but did not say. More often than not, those unsaid thoughts transfer into the actual conversation.

For me, the most difficult issues in managing a relationship has been at times managing myself, and moving from judgment to compassion and from wanting to look smart to wanting to serve. These are still tendencies. I’m still a work in process.

 

 

I learned this concept while working in a training and development capacity at ATT from a consulting partner, Innovation Associates. Their work focused on Peter Senge’s writing in The Fifth Discipline, which in turn was strongly influenced by Argyris, who was then teaching at Harvard Business School.