Category: Articles
The No-Judgment Zone
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.
“What do you mean by Flawless?”
It’s a question I hear early in my Flawless Consulting Skills workshops. Flawless can sound arrogant and impossible. But let me offer a short explanation of Flawless. There are four basic principles to being Flawless that are simple and practical…
- Being authentic with others
- Acting with compassion
- Completing the business of each phase
- Modeling it—living it out
Flawless does not mean that you’ll always get your way or never have a difficult client. Flawless builds trusting relationships, working together as partners for the organization.
Flawless is not a destination; it’s a journey of learning.
Having used these principles and skills for over 30 years, I am still learning what it means to be Flawless.
Here is a simple description I use when asked, “How do you explain to your client what you do?”
I start by discussing how we each Feel about working together. Then, I Listen to understand what the client is up against or trying to do. I Acknowledge what I’ve heard and ask questions for clarity and understanding. We agree on what we Want from each other to make our work successful. Next, I ask others for their views of the situation and Listen to discover the underlying issues. After that, I organize my thoughts and Explain to the client, without judgment, what I see happening and its impact, allowing us to make progress towards a decision. Throughout the process, I raise tough issues and Support the client’s doubts and concerns while telling them personally about the Strengths and contributions they have made in our work together.
I keep the words simple and descriptive, No jargon. This simplicity is how I emulate authenticity with my clients.
In Flawless Consulting workshops, you’ll learn the skills to begin your own personal journey toward being Flawless. I wish you fair winds and following seas. Please feel free to contact me at cfields@designedlearning.com with questions or comments.
CONSULTING COMPLEXITIES: Our Love of Leadership
This post on how our love for leadership ultimately undermines consulting effectiveness continues our series looking at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks to the industry as a whole, though both internal and external consultants will recognize the tensions between doing what is popular and providing genuine service to a client.
- Part 1: Consulting Complexities – Introduction
- Part 2: Consulting Complexities – The Commercialization of Service
- Part 3: Consulting Complexities – How Growth Undermines Service
- Part 4: Consulting Complexities – How Intention Gets Undermined in Change Management
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We have been in search of leaders since the late seventies. Before that, we were in search of managers. We now have a leadership development industry fueled more by training and presentation than by consulting. The industry is led by authors and ex-chief executive officers who, in many cases, have found more meaning teaching leadership than providing it. The headliners come not only from private industry, but also from politics, sports, and the government.
The high end of the leadership industry is really a seminar and workshop business. At the top, the pay is good, the hours are reasonable, and the expectations are pretty low. No one asks about the financial return to the organization as the result of a celebrity presentation. They just wish the celebrity could have stayed around longer.
The number of leadership sessions offered within companies and as public conferences keeps growing. I have even been the beneficiary of this trend.
One large company required a week of training for the top two thousand executives. Forty sessions ran for fifty executives at a time. Monday was globalization, Tuesday was finance, Thursday was product innovation, and Friday was a talk with the top. Wednesday was a day on empowerment, and I had written a book on the subject. So I showed up as the centerfold of the week and talked about creating an empowered workforce, a subject of greatest interest only to myself and those sitting in the back of the room who sponsored the program. The empowerment interest has now been converted to agility, innovation, and thinness.
Though some of the participants seemed somewhat engaged in what they were learning, most were going through the motions—there only to get their ticket punched. When I finally withdrew from the program, I received from the support staff a special goodbye present: a t-shirt with a slightly cynical message on it about the true impact of the effort.
The consulting complexities built into working with clients on leadership development is that the effort holds on to the belief that organizations are the creation of those who run them. Training the organization’s leaders becomes the centerpiece strategy for improving it. In fact, there is little evidence that training leaders has any impact on organizational change, and there is little accountability for the investment made in leader training.
This is in sharp contrast to the way training at lower levels is scrutinized. Train supervisors for two hours a week for six weeks and we are asked to defend the investment. Send the top management team to a university for four weeks, and the question of value received is limited to asking the participating managers whether they liked the program. Four weeks in Cambridge, Charlottesville, Evanston, Palo Alto—what’s not to like?
The ethical challenge for internal and external consultants alike is how best to serve the client without colluding in what is essentially a form of elitism, perpetuating the notion that organizations will forever live in the shadow of its leaders.
Why We Say Yes When We May Want to Say No
The phone rings on a Friday afternoon. It’s a key internal client and he’s got a problem. The urgency in his voice rings as someone who wants help, wants it now and wants it from you as a trusted and respected consultant in the organization. Recognizing the need to move fast, you set up a meeting for first-thing Monday morning.
You arrive at the meeting ready to explore how your client sees the problem and understand more about his expectations of you. What you learn is concerning. The client is ready to jump to a solution and wants to jump fast. Why? He’s already figured out how to fix the problem and wants you to do it for him …now.
At Designed Learning, we know this story is the real deal and a real issue. It’s especially true for internal consultants who feel challenged with telling a client “no” when you know they want to hear “yes.” In working with our consultants around the globe, we’ve asked them, “Why do you say ‘yes’ to your client, when maybe you should say ‘no?’”
Here’s what we’ve heard:
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I need the project in order to survive or get ahead, I have quota to fill.
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My boss has high expectations of me.
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I feel an obligation to my internal clients to help and do what they want.
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It’s a great opportunity to get my foot in the door and establish my reputation.
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It’s the way consulting has always been done.
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It’s my job.
Saying “yes” when we should say “no” creates the opportunity for hurried contracting and a shotgun diagnosis of your client’s problem at hand.
Should you make it to the implementation of your solution, it’s the breeding ground for even more problems and less than desirable results. While saying “no” is never easy, it may be the only way to solve the client’s problem so that it stays solved and enables them to solve similar problems in the future.
So, how do you say “no” when you know your client wants you to say “yes?”
At the heart of Flawless Consulting is the mindset of authenticity and compassion. When we are authentic as consultants, we are direct and put into words what we are experiencing, and we do so compassionately by considering the client’s point of view. We strive to be a model for the way we want the organization to be and, as such, we commit to not rushing to get it done. Instead, we challenge ourselves and our clients to complete the various phases of consulting and deal with resistance as it comes along.
At the foundation of Flawless Consulting is the preliminary phase of Entry and Contracting. It is here where the consulting relationship is established and consultants have the best leverage for establishing a collaborative partnership with the client so that a “no” does not have to become a “yes” if it’s not in the best interest of the client, the consultant, or the organization. As part of their initial contracting meeting with clients, Flawless Consultants explore how their clients see the problem, whether they are the right person to work on the issues, how the client’s expectations are aligned with their own, and discuss how best to get started.
If expectations are not aligned, we may experience the harsh reality of a client fearing the loss of control, making a commitment, or being vulnerable to something new that does not represent their initial ideas. Instead of taking it personally or caving in with a “yes,” Flawless Consultants want resistance disclosed, exposed, understood and supported. If our clients are direct about their concerns and take responsibility for the difficulties they are having, our belief is that we, the consultants, can more easily support them in their struggle and help them find ways to improve their situation.
Unfortunately, even the best efforts can and will be derailed from time to time. For internal consultants, the boss may have expectations of you that you cannot fill. You may feel like you never can say no or that it’s your job to convert very difficult clients. If this is you, try having a contracting meeting with your boss. Consider what you think your boss wants from you and detail what you want from your boss. Then, schedule some time to discuss your stated or unstated wants, assumptions and expectations. The clarity of understanding and agreement with your boss will directly affect your ability to be flawless with your clients.
“Working in organizations means we are constantly bombarded by pressure to be clever and indirect and to ignore what we are feeling in the moment,” explains Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting. “Flawless consulting offers the possibility of letting our behavior be consistent with our beliefs and feelings and also to be successful in working with our clients.”
Signs That You May Be an Internal Consultant
You’re a what? A consultant! The word conjures many thoughts – most of them negative. I’ve heard the jokes, seen the cartoons, and watched the movies.
I never thought of myself as a consultant. I was a director of training for engineering, not a consultant. The people who worked for me were technicians and engineers not consultants. The people I worked with were engineering managers, not clients.
Over the years, as I trained people in Flawless Consulting skills, I heard that comment over and over, “I never thought of myself as a consultant.”
To help people discover their role, I offer the following nine signs that you may be in an internal consulting role. (When you read “others,” I am referring to people outside your area.)
1. You have a professional area of expertise.
2. You work in an area that provides support to other departments or divisions, i.e. Administrative services, business process improvement, communications, engineering, finance, human resources, it, law, learning and development, OD, project management, purchasing, recruiting, or training.
3. You have words like advisor, analyst, business partner, HR, improvement, IT, performance, process, productivity, relationship, research, safety, specialist, strategist, or training in your job title.
4. You refer to the others you serve as business partners, line managers, customers, and clients.
5. You work to help others solve their problems with sustainable solutions.
6. You find that others often come to you for assistance “at the last moment.”
7. You find that others’ expectations are often not clear and hard to understand.
8. You feel that others sometimes don’t see your value or credibility.
9. You find it hard to “sell” your recommendations to others.
Now if you answered “Yes” to at least four of these questions, you are probably an internal consultant.
Don’t fret, consulting can be a great life if you change your thinking. That’s what happened to me when I attended a Flawless Consulting skills workshop years ago. During that first workshop, my thinking began to change. I realized that much of what I did was internal consulting and that I needed to develop some new skills to be successful.
For example, I started listening more than I talked, I asked questions instead of making statements, and I slowed down to understand my client’s emotional reactions instead of getting frustrated or angry. In a short time, I built trust and credibility in my relationships that I had not had before.
After a few months of practicing Flawless Consulting skills, relationships at work changed for the better. I became a partner to my clients, not just someone to arrange training events. After a year, Engineering became more open, more cooperative, more productive. Within two years I enjoyed working with all departments of the company and several of their external customers. I developed an internal consulting practice and became a trusted advisor to a few key leaders. I thrived not just survived.
– This article was written by Charles L. Fields, a proponent and practitioner of Designed Learning, for many years. He was a gifted facilitator, mentor, and coach to participants and fellow affiliate consultants of Designed Learning. We lost Charlie several years ago to cancer, but his spirit and inspiration live on in our lives and in his writing.
Getting Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors
In Flawless Consulting, author Peter Block writes, “Most consulting projects get started because managers feel pain. When the organization feels the pain, managers start to describe for themselves why the pain exists.” It should be no surprise then that projects defined from an initial place of pain may be a lot of “smoke and mirrors” designed to unintentionally draw attention away from what is really happening inside an organization.
In magical illusions, smoke and mirrors are a classic technique designed to obscure or embellish the truth of a situation. And while managers may not intentionally be obscuring or embellishing the truth of a situation, those experienced in the Flawless Consulting model know what is stated initially is rarely what is at the heart of a problem.
To get at the heart of the problem, you need to first discover the underlying dimensions of the situation by analyzing what you’ve heard initially against what still is to be learned. To do so, look first at the top layer which is usually described as the presenting problem – what the manager or client believes is at core of the issue. It may or may not be all smoke and mirrors at this point, but flawless consultants dig deeper by looking at the middle and core layers of the problem to understand how others in the organization are contributing to the problem and how the client may be contributing as well. The process of doing so is called Discovery.
In the Flawless Consulting process, gaining a clear picture of the problem begins only after the initial meeting with the client and contracting around how to best move forward. Once an agreement is reached, the consultant works to discover the underlying dimensions of the situation. They do so by asking the client and others in the organization to restate the problem as they see it and then go further by being direct and asking:
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How are others’ in the organization contributing to the problem?
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How are you contributing to the problem?
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What’s the future you want to see?
The objective of Discovery is to understand the dimensions of the problem and describe it in a way that is enlightening and actionable – something someone can do something about.
This initial inquiry will help direct where you look next to discover how the problem is being managed … or not.
In medicine, it’s easy to understand the difference between treating the symptoms or curing a condition. A broken leg hurts and pain killers may temporarily ease the pain, but you need a completely different treatment plan to heal the leg. In organizations, it’s easy to want to treat the symptoms of a problem for even a momentary respite from the technical or interpersonal issues causing the pain. Experience tells us however; the pain will return.
Flawless consulting provides a roadmap to get a picture of what is really happening inside an organization and then make recommendations on how to address it. By shedding light on all the layers underneath, the mystery is revealed and a clear picture emerges on how to solve the problem so it stays solved.
Consulting Complexities: How Intention Gets Undermined in Change Management
This post on the complexities in change management work is the fourth in our series that looks at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks to the industry as a whole, though both internal and external consultants will recognize the tensions between doing what top management asks for and providing genuine service to a client. Future posts will get into other complexities that undermine our best efforts. Winding up the series will be some thoughts on what to do.
- Part 1: Consulting Complexities – Introduction
- Part 2: Consulting Complexities – The Commercialization of Service
- Part 3: Consulting Complexities – How Growth Undermines Service
- Part 4: Consulting Complexities: How Intention Gets Undermined in Change Management
Some time ago, when pressures for better quality and sharper customer focus added to the traditional pressures for cost reduction and accountability, organizations decided that what was needed was a change in culture. We needed workplaces in which people acted as owners, employees felt empowered and involved, change was welcomed, and patriarchal management practices were driven out.
To achieve these goals, managers brought in consultants and charged internal change agents to end command-and-control and bring in more participation. Bosses were to become coaches, employees would now be called associates. All were to work in teams, even across functions. It reached the point where employees were to evaluate their bosses, just as college students had been evaluating their teachers.
All of this was a large undertaking, which created a logical need for consultation. The ethical question arose from the disparity between the claims and the reality. That consulting complexity still exists today.
The promise of culture change was essentially that a shift in power would take place: Teams close to the work would more control over how the work was done and how money was spent. Much of the consulting work done to this end, however, was done in a way that undermined a true resurgence of worker power and choice. Change management became and becomes a colonial venture.
To begin with, the profession approached the work from the belief that the workers were incapable of exercising more choice without intensive training. They had to be given certain tools. They had to be taught to work in teams. They had to be persuaded that they should act in ways that served the well-being of the business. And it was the consulting companies and training departments that owned these tools and methods of persuasion, which they sold through a series of training programs to the employees.
The change management tools were not limited to training products. There were major projects to define the new competencies that would be required in the new culture. There were new assessment and measurement products that would help gauge the progress of the change effort. There were major communications programs to publicize and explain this new world both to employees and to the outside world.
The consulting complexities I want to point out about these efforts are not really about their effectiveness. The issues are about the story about them. The reports are mixed on how much any given culture actually changed, depending on who you talk to. If you talk to the top management who sponsored the effort or the internal and external consultants who implemented it, you would hear that the effort was very successful and the culture had indeed shifted.
But if you talk to employees in most companies that made the investment, you generally would find that there was not much change in their daily work lives: They might work in teams, but individualism is still the dominant mode of operation; and while they may have more budget and spending authority than before, top management is still very much in control and patriarchy is alive and well.
Besides the story, what is more disturbing is the way that consultants and managers approach the task of making organizational changes. Whenever the change effort becomes a top-down, cascading program, it serves to build the business of the service provider, and serves to simply reinforce the existing organizational culture and belief systems about control and power, then the work is open to question.
The first order of business for consultants––internal and external––entering into any change management effort is to challenge the assumptions that the top is an appropriate driver, that experts know best what is needed, and that employees lack tools and capacities.
Consulting Complexities: How Growth Undermines Service
This post on how growth undermines service is the third in our series that looks at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks to the industry as a whole, though both internal and external consultants will recognize the tensions between doing what is popular out of the words of top management and providing genuine service to a client. Future posts will get into other complexities that undermine our best efforts. Winding up the series will be some thoughts on what to do.
- Part 1: Consulting Complexities – Introduction
- Part 2: Consulting Complexities – The Commercialization of Service
- Part 3: Consulting Complexities – How Growth Undermines Service
The growing marketplace for consulting services intensifies the complexities around the commercialization of our profession. For example, in the large accounting firms, consulting services used to be a second cousin—something done because the client demanded it or the consultants themselves got restless doing the more routine financial work they had been doing too long. The large consulting companies were primarily experts in a particular aspect of business, such as marketing, regulatory requirements, or technical innovation. Services aimed at and changing organization culture were not really on their radar screen.
Much of the growth of consulting has been riding the wave of the technology explosion combined with the trend toward downsizing. Most large organizations have found it more profitable to shrink and merge and outsource jobs. This creates the challenge of having fewer people doing more work, and the consulting industry has been the beneficiary of this movement.
The demand for consulting services has also grown because of the interest in quality improvement, better customer service, and changing cultures toward more engaged workplaces. All of these goals are worthy, but what I want to explore is how the commercialization of our services ended up subverting their intent.
Reengineering is a good example of an area of practice that had power and relevance. Its intent was inarguable but something shifted when the idea became commercialized and popular. Reengineering became the rage and consulting firms began to make promises that were unsustainable. After a good run, the work fell of its own weight.
The reengineering craze reached a point where whatever change we had in mind was called reengineering. Every department thought it was reengineering itself. The energy was more about becoming modern than becoming better. Reengineering became synonymous with restructuring and was sold by the large accounting and consulting firms with promises of a 30 to 50 percent return on the investment.
The dark side of reengineering, which threatened the whole profession, is that the promises made to sell the work either were never fulfilled or could finally be achieved only by eliminating jobs on a wide scale. The goal of restructuring the work process for the sake of the customer was more often than not unrealized. In fact, many of the users of reengineering began to reverse their efforts because they found the concept unworkable.
Reengineering, like the more current desire to be lean and agile, is a good example of two larger consulting complexities: how consultants take advantage of what is in vogue and how we pursue covert purposes.
When an idea is fashionable it becomes, almost by definition, a cosmetic solution. When we offer a service primarily because clients want it, we have chosen commerce over care. If we were strictly a business you might say, What’s the problem? The customer is always right. We only gave them what they asked for. Being also a service function, though, means that something more is due to the client.
When we offer a service primarily because clients want it, we have chosen commerce over care.
The other consulting complexity exemplified by reengineering is a form of double-dealing––for example when force reductions are packaged as organization improvement. Who could argue with restructuring for the sake of the customer? Organizations went through a long process of interviews, redesign teams, and extensive selling and training for the new system when the real net result of the effort was the elimination of jobs with little real change in function or culture.
Clients have a right to expect us to decide whether what the client is willing to buy will deliver what the client really needs. If the client asks for a service that will not help, or may even be harmful, then when do we say no and turn away the work? It is a tough thing to do, especially for internal consultants. Clients also have a right to expect us to speak and act authentically. If our work is packaged and sold as something it is not, we betray trust and set the client on a path to harmful results.
Consulting Complexities: The Commercialization of Service
This post on the tension between doing our work and managing our businesses is the second in our series that looks at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks mostly to external consultants though internal consultants experience similar tensions between service to a client unit and the pressure to implement the wishes of top management. Future posts will get into other complexities that undermine service. Winding up the series will be some thoughts on what to do.
- Part 1: Consulting Complexities – Introduction
- Part 2: Consulting Complexities – The Commercialization of Service
- Part 3: Consulting Complexities – How Growth Undermines Service
When we offer a service primarily because clients want it, we have chosen commerce over care.
One factor making consulting work complex is the tension between delivering service and attending to the business of the consulting unit. When consulting becomes a business first and a service second, something fundamental about the work is changed. Most of us began our consulting work because we were attracted to a set of ideas and trained in a set of skills. We also wanted to make a living. It wasn’t until we became successful that we got caught between commerce and care.
There is an inherent strain between the economic demands of a consulting practice and the care we wish to offer to the client. Care comes when we can customize our service for each client, when something new is created with each client. The consultant’s promise is most accurately fulfilled when the person selling the work is the person doing the work. This way the client knows exactly who will be doing the work after making the decision to proceed. Care is delivered when we foster the client’s capacity to design their own changes and when the client is not dependent on us. In a practice based on care, each client becomes important, and the marketing strategy is basically to do good work.
Consulting becomes commercialized when the service gets standardized and becomes a product to be marketed. The economics of a service business drive you in the direction of standardized or packaged service. Salaries are the major cost item, and one way to reduce labor costs is to make the service uniform and predictable. It takes a very experienced, and therefore high-cost, consultant or staff person to be able to create a strategy and service for each particular client. It takes a lot of experience for one person to be able to conceptualize the project, sell the project, manage the project, and do the work. One way to solve this dilemma is to, in effect, package the service so lower-cost, less experienced people can do the work and manage the project. Then you only need highly experienced people in the front end of the project, doing the selling.
Many consulting firms and internal staff groups divide themselves into those who sell the work, those who manage the work, and those who do the work. As the overhead costs of the consulting unit come under increasing pressure, the drive to build sales and make repeat sales within each client organization becomes intense. At some point, the success of the practice gets measured by standard business criteria—annual growth, margin, earnings, return on capital. At this point, commerce has become dominant over care.
The shift from care to commerce can occur in any size firm or staff unit. It often just happens, rather than being something we anticipated. It happens when what we do works, and it happens in many professions. Physicians, architects, and lawyers, for example, often find themselves driven more by the economics than the professional objectives of their practice.
The inherent pressure is to make a business out of a profession. We worry about how to create growth opportunities so we can keep good people. We believe we need a large group to offer a full range of services and to take on really big change efforts, and it takes money to support more services. Plus the culture places a high premium on economic success.
But the commercialization of our profession is more a mind-set than a requirement of growth. It is a question of purpose and focus, and that is why it becomes an ethical obligation to settle the tension between commerce and care in favor of the best interests of the client.