Flawless Consulting - A guide to getting your expertise used by Peter Block
A consultant is a person in a position to have some influence over an individual, a group, or an organization but has no direct power to make changes or implement programs. A manager is someone who has direct responsibility over the action. The moment you take direct responsibility, you are acting as a manager.
Each consulting project goes through five phases. The steps in each phase are sequential;
Phase 1: Entry and Contracting
Phase 2: Discovery and Dialogue
Phase 3: Analysis and the Decision to Act
Phase 4: Engagement and Implementation
Phase 5: Extension, Recycle, or Termination
Interpersonal Skills
To function with people, we need to have some interpersonal skills, that is, some ability to put ideas into words, to listen, to give support, to disagree reasonably, to basically maintain a relationship.
• Assertiveness
• Supportiveness
• Confrontation
• Listening
• Management style
• Group process
Requirements of Each Consulting Phase
• Negotiating wants
• Coping with mixed motivation
• Dealing with concerns about exposure and the loss of control
• Doing triangular and rectangular contracting
Discovery
• Surfacing layers of analysis
• Dealing with the political climate
• Resisting the urge for complete data
• Seeing the interview as an intervention
Feedback
• Funneling data
• Identifying and working with different forms of resistance
• Presenting personal and organizational data
Decision
• Running group meetings
• Focusing on here-and-now choices
• Not taking it personally
A unique and beguiling aspect of doing consulting is that your own self is involved in the process to a much greater extent than if you were applying your expertise in some other way. Your reactions to a client, your feelings during discussions, your ability to solicit feedback from the client—all are important dimensions to consultation.
In acting as a consultant, you always operate at two levels. One level is the content—the cognitive part of a discussion between yourself and the client. The content level is the analytical, rational, or explicit part of the discussion, where you are working on what can be called the technical or business situation. At the same time and at another level, both you and the client are generating and sensing your feelings about each other—whether you feel acceptance or resistance, whether you feel high or low tension, whether you feel support or confrontation. So your relationship to the client during each phase is a second level of data that needs attention just as the content does.
There are four elements to the affective side of consultant-client interaction that are always operating: responsibility, feelings, trust, and your own needs
Responsibility: To have a good contract with the client, responsibility for what is planned and takes place has to be balanced—50/50.
Feelings: The second element that’s always an issue is to what extent clients are able to own their own feelings. In a way, this is working on balancing responsibility. If the consultant is feeling that the client is defensive or very controlling, or doesn’t listen or doesn’t take responsibility, this is important to know.
Trust: The third element is trust. When most people work with a consultant as a client, they bring with them not only the prevailing image of the consultant as the expert but also someone to watch out for. You can ask them what doubts they have working with you. In this way, you’re working to build trust.
Your Own Needs: The fourth element on the affective side of the consultant-client relationship is that consultants have a right to their own needs from the relationship. You have needs for acceptance and inclusion by the client, and you
require some validation that what you have is valuable and worth offering.
Problem Solving Requires Valid Data
Valid data encompass two things: (1) objective data about ideas, events, or situations that everyone accepts as facts and (2) personal data. Personal data are also “facts,” but they concern how individuals feel about what is happening to them and around them.
Effective Decision Making Requires Free and Open Choice
Effective Implementation Requires Internal Commitment
THE CONSULTANT’S GOALS
Goal 1: Establish a Collaborative Relationship
There are two reasons for consultants to strive for collaborative relationships with their clients. One is that a collaborative relationship promises maximum use of people’s resources—both the consultant’s and the client’s. The second reason is consultants are always functioning as models of how to solve problems
Goal 2: Solve Problems So They Stay Solved
Goal 3: Ensure Attention Is Given to Both the Technical/Business Problem and the Relationships.
Consultants, however, are in a unique position to address the people or process issues productively. Client commitment is the key to consultant leverage and impact.
Ed Schein has identified three ways consultants work with line managers: in an expert role, a pair-of-hands role, or a collaborative role. (his book - Process Consulting Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship)
Pair-of-Hands Role
The consultant takes a passive role.
The manager/client makes the decisions on how to proceed
The manager selects the methods for discovery and analysis
Control rests with the manager
Collaboration is not really necessary
Two-way communication is limited.
The manager specifies change procedures for the consultant to implement.
The manager’s role is to judge and evaluate from a close distance.
The consultant’s goal is to make the system more effective by the application of specialized knowledge.
Collaborative Role
The consultant and the manager work to become interdependent.
Decision making is bilateral.
Data collection and analysis are joint efforts.
Control issues become matters for discussion and negotiation.
Collaboration is considered essential.
Communication is two-way.
Implementation responsibilities are determined by discussion and agreement
The goal is to solve problems so they stay solved
STAGING THE CLIENT’S INVOLVEMENT, STEP BY STEP
Step 1: Define the Initial Problem
Step 2: Decide Whether to Proceed with the Project
Step 3: Select the Dimensions to Be Studied
Step 4: Decide Who Will Be Involved in the Project
Step 5: Select the Method
Step 6: Do Discovery
Steps 7 Through 9:Funneling the Data and Making Sense of It
Step 10: Provide the Results
Step 11: Make Recommendations
Step 12: Decide on Actions
Be Authentic
Authentic behavior with a client means you put into words what you are experiencing with the client as you work. This is the most powerful thing you can do to have the leverage you are looking for and to build client commitment.
Here is a brief description of the requirements of each phase.
Contracting
1. Negotiate wants
2. Cope with mixed motivation
3. Surface concerns about exposure and loss of control.
4. Understand triangular and rectangular contracts.
Discovery and Inquiry
1. Layers of inquiry.
2. Political climate.
3. Resistance to sharing information
4. The interview as a joint learning event
Feedback and the Decision to Act
1. Funneling data.
2. Presenting personal and organizational data.
3. Managing the meeting for action.
4. Focusing on the here and now.
5. Don’t take it personally.
Engagement and Implementation
1. Bet on engagement over mandate and persuasion.
2. Design more participation than presentation.
3. Encourage difficult public exchanges.
4. Put real choice on the table.
5. Change the conversation to change the culture
6. Pay attention to place.
Accountability is the deepest frustration of doing consulting.
Contracting checkpoint.
The sequence of steps covers the business of the contracting meeting. There are three major sections to the meeting:
(1) understanding the problem and exchanging wants,
(2) closing the meeting by checking on client concerns and commitment, and
(3) getting unstuck when an agreement is difficult.
Each step is essential and should never be skipped. If you cover the steps and still don’t get the contract you wanted, you have done all you can and consulted flawlessly. Use checklist 3 to help you prepare for a contracting meeting.
Questions that the virtual world can handle are the more cognitive and nonpersonal ones—for example:
• What is the presenting problem?
• What is the history of this situation?
• Who are the players involved?
• What is the business case for our proceeding?
• How much time will this take?
• Who should be on the design team?
• What goals and outcomes are you looking for?
The questions that are more relational and personal and not handled well by the virtual world are:
• How do you feel about working with me?
• What is your contribution to creating the problem we are concerned with?
• How well does this group work together?
• How do you feel about the amount of control and vulnerability you have over this project?
• What doubts and reservations do you have that anything will change here?
• What have you learned about yourself in this process?
THREE STEPS FOR HANDLING RESISTANCE
There are three steps for handling resistance:
1. Identify in your own mind what form the resistance is taking. The skill is to pick up the cues from the manager and then describe to yourself what you see happening.
2. State, in a neutral, unpunishing way, the form the resistance is taking. This is called “naming the resistance.” The skill is to find the neutral language.
3. Be quiet. Let the line manager respond to your statement about the resistance.
Trust What You See More Than What You Hear
Pay attention to the nonverbal messages from the client. Is the client
• Constantly moving away from you?
• Tied up in knots like a pretzel?
• Pointing a finger and clenching the other fist?
• Shaking his head each time you speak?
• Bent over toward you as if they are royalty?
We need to concentrate on four things beyond the technical considerations:
1. Keep simplifying and narrowing the inquiry so it focuses more and more on the next steps the client can take and what is under their control.
2. Use everyday language. The words you use should help the transfer of information, not hinder it.
3. Give a great deal of attention to your relationship with the client. Include the client at every opportunity in deciding how to proceed. Deal with resistance as it arises, even if it doesn’t have an impact on your results.
4. Treat data on how the client organization is functioning as valid and relevant information. Also, assess how the group you are working with is being managed.
No comments:
Post a Comment