Tag: Flawless Consulting

If You’re not Experiencing Resistance, You May Be a Pair of Hands

Posted on by Charles Fields

We have very little resistance in our culture, Charlie.” came the statement from a participant. “We feel that our open collaborative culture promotes working together and so we just don’t encounter much resistance.”

I’ve heard those words in the Flawless Consulting Skills workshops. They come from a mindset – strategy or approach – that staff or service groups develop toward internal consulting. This mindset believes:

  • The customer (client) is always right.

  • Our client is in management and they know what they want.

  • Our job is to serve…to respond to their requests.

  • We do not question the clients plans.

  • We avoid disagreeing with the client since it could be seen as a challenge to the client’s authority.

  • Our goal is to make things work using our expertise, our special and unique knowledge.

With such an approach, internal consultants often minimize their wants, skip Discovery & Feedback phases, and move quickly to Implementation. In Flawless Consulting, the name for such a mindset is the “Pair of Hands Role” in which the Internal Consultant takes a passive, transactional role deferring to the judgment and wishes of the client.

The upside of such a role is that decisions come quickly, implementation is fast, the Consultant knows what to do, and conflict is avoided. The hope is for a successful outcome based on the client’s plan. It fits into the work smarter and harder pressures of today’s world.

The downside is that the Consultant assumes the client has correctly identified the situation and its solution. Such an assumption may impact the Consultants’ credibility and reputation if the client is wrong. Also, the Consultant may be under-utilized offering little to identifying the situation accurately or generating ideas for an effective solution. Over time, the Pair of Hands approach can lead to the Internal Consultant being seen as low value added.

The most severe consequence comes when we don’t have a real problem or implement the right solution. This costs time and money in rework and damages our credibility.

The Pair of Hands role is a choice based on a mindset wanting to serve and please our clients. It’s not good or bad, right or wrong. Like every choice we make, it has consequences. Knowing those consequences before we make a choice is helpful.

So little or no resistance from the client may be a sign that we’re operating as a Pair of Hands. If we want to change that, we need to change our conversations. The “Contracting” meeting from Flawless Consulting describes that new conversation and helps build the skills needed to move toward a real collaborative role and a real partnership.

I’ll leave you with something to think about.

“What is my approach (mindset) to working with my clients and what are the results we’re getting?”

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

Consulting Complexities: Performance Management… Let Me Do It for You

Posted on by Peter Block

This post on how the lure to set up programs to manage performance improvement ultimately undermines consulting effectiveness continues our series that looks at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks to both internal and external consultants experiencing the tensions between doing what is popular and providing genuine service to a client.

In a culture in which profitability and efficiency are the priority, accountability becomes everyone’s favorite word. We think that there is a relationship between holding ourselves and others more accountable and increasing performance. If we can just tighten our accountability grip, the organization would deliver more. This illusion creates a market for methodologies and consultant services that promise better gripping power.

There are consulting firms that guarantee concrete results in return for a fee. If you don’t see the results, you don’t pay the fee. This is the ultimate in performance consulting. How could a consultant make this kind of guarantee? Simple. Take over that segment of the business that you promise to improve. The consultant becomes a surrogate manager, and the line management clears the way and effectively steps aside. The people in the unit live under the power of the consultant, and generally the consultant delivers on the “performance improvement” by instituting closer controls and having fewer people doing more jobs.

This is not really consulting. It is something we might call “in-sourcing”: bringing into the organization, on a temporary basis, surrogate managers who are willing to take a difficult stand, reduce head count, confront people in a way that the permanent, resident management is unwilling to do.

Even if the job needed to be done, the use of consultants in this way undermines the legitimacy of the consultant role. Consulting is no longer educational, advisory, or capacity building. Line managers cast the consultant in the role of the Serpent in order to protect their own good image with their own people. When we go along with this, it may be good for our business, but hard on the service dimension of the profession.

There are milder forms of performance consulting, the main problems of which have more to do with taking measurements than with taking charge. There is a widespread belief that anything you cannot measure does not exist. And internal staff groups are under more and more pressure to be more business oriented and return-on-investment–minded than in the past. Hard to argue with in theory.

The risk is that staff groups will no longer be in the business of cultural change or confronting the culture with its own blindness. Performance consulting will drive staff groups to be more like the culture that surrounds them. This will reinforce services that treat only symptoms and seek acceptance at the cost of some greater impact than the consultant or staff group has the potential to make.

There is great pressure for this, especially in the human resource area. The HR function comes under siege because much of its value is hard to quantify. In periods when people concerns are in remission, the push to “rationalize” HR almost leads to its elimination. There has to be a way for qualitative services to demonstrate their value without sacrificing the power of their unique perspective.

Flawlessly Feeding Your Soul

Posted on by Arielle Sullivan

As a millennial in the midst of her career, I find myself exposed to a range of diverse colleagues and clients with regard to age, gender, skill set, title, role, background and overall life experience. Some are leading in their industry or just getting started with their working professional career, groomed with the latest best practices. Others have spent decades in different corporate roles, taking on new projects and challenges, rising up the ranks. Regardless of their generation and different experiences, they all face one thing in common, human dynamics.

It is the intangible skill set of connecting, relating, understanding, influencing, and aligning that seems to affect everyone in their organizational system, from individual contributor to senior leader. Technical acumen is needed to thrive in today’s technologically advancing society, but your business cannot thrive on technical acumen alone. Ignoring the more difficult aspects of human dynamics in the workplace can drag down the culture due to a reluctance to address the “here and now.” This is emotionally draining and contributes to workplace stress. Heeding behavior allows you to not only deliver a great end product, but work with others on the team Flawlessly. This is the main focus of Peter Block’s workshop’s and book, Flawless Consulting.

What does it mean to act Flawlessly? Does it mean to complete the work on time and on budget? Perhaps those things may be important and critical to the project’s success, but what about behavior?

Pure awareness, intentional reflection, grounded integrity, and operating with conscious choice is Flawless.

I invite my diverse colleagues, who may be experiencing challenges, to explore further with me. I ask you to dive deeper into the presenting problem to understand the influencing factors   I ask you to deepen your own awareness into your own contribution to the problem. I invite you to that space in-between both subjective realities where insight is flickering in the dark. Confronting discomfort, letting go, and listening for the new path forward. This is where the magic happens and a newfound opportunity to mitigate resistance and co-create a healthy and effective solution.

When I see friends and colleagues struggling with interpersonal or group dynamics, I remember how universal this challenge is. It transcends industries, levels of hierarchy, and global culture. This work is ongoing and is the work for us all in the midst of our dynamic and diverse lives. To evolve and sharpen technologically is an imperative for change, so is the need to cultivate conscious awareness in service of your personal and organizational mission. It’s emotional, it’s uncomfortable, and it feeds your soul.

FAQ’s from Flawless Consulting Workshops

Posted on by Charles Fields

Over the years I have trained thousands of people in Flawless Consulting Workshops. Most of them did not see themselves as consultants yet had questions about how to relate to the people they served inside the organization.

Now, if you’re not sure you are an internal consultant? Follow this link to a previous article.

Here are the seven most frequently asked questions that I am asked in Flawless Consulting Workshops about becoming an internal consultant with impact and influence.

1. How do I move from a transactional (doing everything) role and into a partnership (strategic) role?

2. What are the right questions to ask clients to get results?

3. How do I get clients to be clear about their expectations?

4. How do I deal with difficult clients, handle push-back and resistance?

5. How do I get my recommendations accepted and used by my clients?

6. How do I show my value, credibility, expertise to my client?

7. How do I get my clients to take accountability?

After you think about these questions, I have two questions for you…

1. What is your top question about being an internal consultant?

2. What are you doing to build your internal consulting skills?

I’d love to hear your questions. Drop me a note. Let me know how it’s going. Looking forward to hearing from you. Over the next few blogs, I’ll work to answer some of these or other questions I get from you.

“What do you mean by Flawless?”

Posted on by Charles Fields

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.