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.
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.
Part 9: Consulting Complexities: Final 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.
During this webinar, Lydia Schimmelpfenig discusses going beyond coaching practices, the recent focus in organizations on coaching skills, and how consulting skills can enhance an organization’s coaching culture to create productive partnerships.
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?
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.
We are good at more than implementing solutions that require our specific technical or business expertise. We also know a lot about helping design optimal solutions, based upon thoughtful analysis of situation-specific problem sets and desired outcomes. We’ve seen plenty of well implemented solutions that work in one place, but not in another. With this experienced insight, we can help folks figure out the best solutions that fit their particular situations. In short, we offer consulting expertise in addition to implementation expertise, and we focus on helping our clients/stakeholders get the results they want—not just getting a solution “done” according to the specifications.
Our consulting is also about supporting folks who are facing their own unique concerns and situational problem sets. They may not be fully ready to avail themselves of all that we have to offer. Likely, they don’t fully recognize what consultative expertise and empathetic support we have to offer, or what benefit it can provide. Likely, too, they have reservations about tapping such expertise and empathy. Trust is always a key factor. Then again, they may simply not know how to work with consultants like us.
To grow our client-valued impact, we can guide interactions with clients to open their eyes to—and their trust in—who we are and what we offer.
In the Flawless Consulting approach, it’s the contracting (and continuous re-contracting) with clients that is the context for such guidance. Our other Flawless Consulting work in the discovery, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation phases further allows us to demonstrate our expertise and trustworthiness. And yet, it is in our contracting discussions with clients that our value, our mutual expectations and concerns, and the ground-rules for our working relationship are established and burnished.
The operating criteria for trust can be contracted, clarifying what trustworthiness we and our clients offer and expect. Imagine knowing how to get and feel clear about:
What trustworthiness we really have to offer:
Technical/business expertise
Consulting expertise
Empathy and respect
Truthfulness
Time and energy
Desire to be helpful
Strength of commitment to be helpful
What trustworthiness they really have to offer:
Business expertise
Leadership of their people
Respectful concern for us as people as well as experts
Openness, including saying when they are withholding select information in some cases
Time and energy
Desire to succeed
Strength of commitment to succeed
While these lists of relevant “wants” can go long, the point remains that we can lead the conversations that lead to shared clarity. In the process, we enable more effective result-getting and more meaningful working relationships. We also stand tall with our clients, sharing and respecting our respective strengths in the cause of making a more significant impact.
When explaining Flawless Consulting to a friend outside of my regular consulting world, I like to highlight building authenticity and awareness in relationships. I want to highlight how Flawless Consulting and it’s structured framework lets work projects be approached differently and allows people to enter into projects more consciously. I appreciate these elements because they lead to a more effective project, with an opportunity for greater impact, by building the relationship along with technical expertise.
Yes, the Flawless Consulting® Workshop offers a consulting model for consultants to be better at what they do. But it is not only for consultants. It is for everyone. Why? Because everyone, regardless of their role, has the option of being more conscious of what work they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it.
Many times in an organizational setting, we are assigned to a project. We may be the leader or an individual contributor. The project kicks off, members of the team share introductions, they briefly clarify roles and outcomes and then they dive in. The work begins and continues without a pause. Sooner or later, some varying degree of issues or group dynamics inevitably rises to the surface. These issues span from the level of leader engagement to the project approach, project tactics, team roles, or external organizational influences. The list could go on. You have been there, right?
Flawless Consulting Phases
The Goal of Flawless Consulting
The purpose of the Flawless Consulting Workshop is to slow down. It asks you at the beginning of a project to define the type of relationship you want. This helps you better navigate the work and discover more about why the work is being requested. Organizations constantly deal with competing priorities and an endless list of projects that urgently need to get done.
The Flawless Consulting Model helps project leaders think through the original ask to ensure that it is the right ask and the right approach.
This is where authentic dialogue and strong relationships come in handy. It is also what the workshop helps you practice. In the end, your client (your boss, manager, or peer) is thankful because they now have more information they need to proceed. This saves organizations time and money, which is never arguable. It also builds trust, one conversation at a time. This ultimately contributes to the type of culture that enables employees to thrive.
Flawless Consulting is for Everyone
On the surface, yes, this training might look and feel like something strictly for consultants. In fact, it really is for everyone! After learning and practicing the concepts, you will leave refreshed and ready to go back to your current organizational challenge with new ideas and ways of being.
When I tell friends about this training, they always seem intrigued. In some sense, I think everyone can relate. They like the idea of forming deeper relationships and doing more meaningful work. I’m grateful to help build this capability inside of organizations. I also look forward to continuing to share these core concepts from Peter Block. If you’d like to know more about how this training could help your particular organization, please reach out to us!
We enter our profession because consulting is the work we want to do. As we succeed, whether as internal or external consultants, the pressure to get ahead pushes our attention from how to deliver quality service to how to build a successful practice. The tension between the two is inevitable. It is a paradox that has no simple answer, but are there Flawless Consulting concepts that can help?
Consulting also carries with it the possibility that customers will project qualities on you that you do not possess. In a sense, the client looks for hope where little exists. Seeking a consultant has an element of seeking a super-someone, be it man or woman. So there is a willingness from the client to demand and expect more than we may be able to offer.
In the face of these complexities, and all those explored earlier, there are some steps, or at least ways of thinking, that will at a minimum raise our consciousness about our contribution to the cynicism and doubt that infect the consulting industry. At best, we may find a way of working where the longing that brought us into the work can be realized.
Here are some Flawless Consulting concepts that can help you.
Say No As Often As You Say Yes
Consultants should make their own decisions on which projects to accept. We should say no to projects as often as we say yes. There are many reasons to back away from business. Clients often want us to treat a symptom. They think training or restructuring will solve their problem, when it will only postpone resolution. Say no when the chemistry between you and the client is not good. Be careful when the client has expectations of you that you cannot fulfill. Say no to a five-dollar solution for a fifty-dollar problem.
Stay True to Your Worth
One of the most important Flawless Consulting concepts, or ways of thinking is this. Stop measuring the success of your internal staff consulting work by the size of your staff, the volume of work you can generate, or the approval rating of top management. If you are an external consultant, don’t judge your practice by the sales volume of your business, return on equity, or margins. Setting high growth targets for your business will force you and others to take marginal business. It will push new services into the marketplace before they are fully developed. Your ambition will also be sensed by the client, and although they might say yes today, they will feel used over time.
Start measuring your work by the optimism and self-sufficiency you leave behind.
Consulting is fundamentally an educational and capacity-building function. You need to be economically self-sufficient, true, but that is not the point. You are successful when the clients feel more accountable for their own system, more able to learn by themselves in the future, more confident and powerful in creating an organization they believe in. These are qualitative measures, but they are knowable if we pay attention.
Accept the fact that the work you have chosen will most likely and appropriately remain a boutique business. Professional practice is the point, not the size of the practice. For external consultants, decide how much money you need to live on and how many days you are willing to work, peg your rates to that equation, and avoid conversations with other consultants in which they will ask how busy and successful you are.
If there is more demand for your services than you can handle, give the business away. Build a network of people who do what you do and whom you respect, and send the business to them. Don’t take a finder’s fee, or talk about mergers and partnerships that are driven by economic opportunity. If this seems bizarre and counter-cultural to you, it means you are on the right track.
Many years ago, I was introduced to what is now one of my favorite books, Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute. I was intrigued by the title and mostly curious about the term self-deception. What is it—and do I have it?
In simplest terms, self-deception means that we do not see ourselves and the people around us as they really are. The authors of the book explain: “It blinds us to the true cause of problems, and once blind, all the ‘solutions’ we can think of will actually make matters worse.” As a Flawless consultant, it’s a truth I’ve seen played out all too often.
Critical to the success of our consulting relationships is the ability to “tell it like it is,” and that often means sharing with a client how they have contributed to the problem they’ve hired us to solve. Often, we are asking them to take responsibility for something they have been unwilling or unable to confront.
So, how do we as Flawless consultants challenge our clients to see themselves, the people around them, and the problem as it really is?
It’s called feedback—and through our experiences, we’ve learned there are specific criteria which must be followed if you want the feedback to be heard, accepted, actionable, and most of all . . . matter.
Flawless consultants use specific, descriptive, clear, and simple language. They are non-judgmental but deliver the feedback assertively. We actively encourage reactions to the feedback to surface doubts and reservations so that we can support and address any concerns the client may have with moving forward. We also identify the client’s contribution to the problem that is within their control, and inspire the will to act by showing the impact on the business, others, and the client themselves.
Often, the anxiety we feel in giving difficult feedback is our own, not the client’s. Saying it can be much harder than listening to it. However, our goal as Flawless consultants is always to get the client to act on the underlying issues. Doing so will require us at times to indeed “tell it like is” so that our clients can see a clear picture, free of self-deception, so that the problem can ultimately be solved.
How often have I been asked, “We can’t take 3 days away from work for a workshop, so can you cut it to two days?”
There’s a lot of pressure to “cut the time AND cover all the material AND include practical exercises to build their skills”. If it’s a three-day workshop, people want it in two. If you reduce it to two days, they want it in one!
Here are my favorite reasons as to “WHY we can’t do a three-day workshop…”
5. “Our people can’t take 3 days away from work for training; they’re too busy.”
4. “Three days costs too much. We’re trying to contain expenses”
3 “Other people only take 2 days.”
2. “We know there is slack time in any workshop. The first day is usually slow.”
And my # 1 favorite reason, “Why we can’t do a three-day workshop”, is…
1. “Our people are intelligent, experienced, fast-paced, multi-taskers who get bored easily.”
Let’s face it. We’re all addicted to speed… we’re all too busy!
While there is some truth to all the reasons listed above, we can’t condense the time and still do everything. The question is, “Do we want to teach content (short lectures with some Q & A) or equip learners (practice the skills)?
If we shorten times, something gets sacrificed. Let’s think about what we lose and what it costs. I see three things that we sacrifice when we shorten workshops.
The first and most impactful is practice. Flawless Consulting workshops emphasize practice, individual and team, in a safe environment. Practice lets people know quickly how they’re doing. You have someone to coach you and offer suggestions. You get to try various approaches to see how they work. Without practice you are less likely to use the skills you’ve learned. And practice usually gets cut when we want to shorten a workshop.
Next, we limit relationships. Flawless Consulting workshops have people working in pairs, trios, and small teams We want people to work together, to build teams and networks yet we give them few opportunities to actually meet and talk. In a one-day workshop, we just begin to recognize people and then it’s already time to go.
And last is contemplation time. Flawless Consulting workshops build in “time to think, ” individually and collectively. As we think, questions emerge and possibilities occur. We begin to learn. Without contemplation, we tend to stay in our old mode of thinking and very little changes.
So, what’s the cost of reducing the time? The training may end up being superficial, lacking depth with little change occurring. Without practice, people usually lack the patience and confidence to try something new. The result? The experience is seen as a feel-good or entertaining time with limited value. The money and time spent are wasted.
I’d love to hear your stories. Drop me a note. Let me know how it’s going.
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