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Early in my career, the management team of a large professional firm
asked my opinion about how they were conducting their affairs. I
responded with a very honest, direct and candid answer-"Here are the
things you are messing up, and this is what you should have been
doing!" To my surprise, I was fired for being a disruptive influence.
This was hard to understand, since I knew (and I knew that they knew)
that I was correct in my diagnosis and prescriptions.
Eventually,
I learned the obvious lesson. It is not enough for a consultant to be
right: An advisor's job is to be helpful. I had to "earn" the right to
be critical. Critiquing one's clients is, by definition, a part of
every consultant's job, since suggestions on how to improve things
always imply that all is not being done well at the moment. We must not
only be smart, we must be diplomatic, sensitive and gentle-and behave
in such a way that we are trusted!
Many consultants approach
the task of giving advice as if it were an objective, rational exercise
based on their technical knowledge and expertise. However, consulting
is almost never an exclusively logical process. Rather, it is almost
always an emotional "duet" played between the consultant and the
client. If you can't learn to recognize, deal with and respond to
client emotions (and client politics), you will never be an effective
consultant.
To see how the success of your career depends on
these things, consider your own purchases of professional services.
Whether you are hiring someone to look after your legal affairs, your
taxes, your child or your car, the act of retaining a professional
requires you to put your affairs in someone else's hands. You are
forced into an act of faith, and you can only hope that the person you
choose will deal with you appropriately. When the final decision on
whom to hire comes, you must ultimately decide to trust someone with
your "baby," which is never a comfortable thing to do.
Here are some other common emotions you and your clients might feel when selecting and working with an outside advisor:
- I'm feeling insecure.
I'm not sure I know how to tell which of the finalists is the genius
and which is just good. I've exhausted my abilities to make technical
distinctions.
- I'm feeling threatened. This is my
area of responsibility, and even though intellectually I know I need
outside expertise, emotionally it's not comfortable to put my affairs
in the hands of others.
- I'm taking a personal risk. By putting my affairs in the hands of someone else, I risk losing control.
- I'm impatient. I didn't call in someone at the first sign of symptoms (or opportunity). I've been thinking about this for a while.
- I'm worried.
By the very fact that they are suggesting improvements or changes,
these people going to be implying that I haven't been doing it right up
till now. Are these people going to be on my side?
- I'm exposed. Whoever I hire, I'm going to have to reveal some proprietary secrets, not all of which are flattering.
- I'm feeling ignorant,
and don't like the feeling. I don't know if I've got a simple problem
or a complex one. I'm not sure I can trust them to be honest about
that: it's in their interest to convince me that it's complex.
- I'm skeptical. I've been burned before by these kinds of people. You get a lot of promises. How do I know whose promise I should buy?
- I'm concerned
that they either can't or won't take the time to understand what makes
my situation special. They'll try to sell me what they've got rather
than what I need.
- I'm suspicious. Will they be those
typical consultants who are hard to get hold of, who are patronizing,
who leave you out of the loop, who befuddle you with jargon, who don't
explain what they're doing or why, who..., who...., who...? In short, will
these people deal with me in the way I want to be dealt with?
What
all this shows is that when retaining and working with a consultant,
what you (and your clients) want is someone who understands your
interests, and will not put their interests ahead of yours while
working for you. You want someone you can trust to do the right thing.
You want someone who will care.
Have you ever had
a trusted advisor? Someone you turned to in order to help you solve
your problems? What made them so helpful to you? Here is a listing of
traits that great trusted advisors have in common. They
- Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
- Are consistent: we can depend on them
- Always help us see things from fresh perspectives
- Don't try to force things on us
- Help us think things through (but make sure that it's our decision)
- Don't substitute their judgment for ours
- Don't panic or get overemotional; they stay calm
- Help us think and separate our logic from our emotions
- Criticize and correct us gently and lovingly
- Don't pull their punches: we can rely on them to tell us the truth
- Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
- Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions
- Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendation and let us choose
- Challenge our assumptions and help us uncover the false assumptions we've been working under
- Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (but take the issues seriously)
- Act like a person, not someone in a role
- Are reliably on our side, and always seem to have our interests at heart
- Remember everything we ever said (without notes)
- Are always honorable: they don't gossip about others, so we can trust their values
- Help
us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors,
stories and anecdotes (few problems are completely unique)
- Have a sense of humor to diffuse (our) tension in tough situations
- Are smart (sometimes in ways we're not)
What
is significant about this list is that it is only in small part about
intellectual skills. Equally critical are the items we are rarely
taught: social skills, interpersonal skills and, above all, emotional
skills. All are critical to being a successful consultant.
Focus on the other Person
There is an old saying from Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People):
"You'll have more fun and success when you stop trying to get what you
want and start helping other people get what they want."
For
some this sounds like an idealistic spiritual or religious principle.
Others may think of it as communism: a cry to place others before
yourself. However, a moment's reflection will reveal that the aphorism
is the very definition of what a capitalist exchange economy is about.
To get what you want from someone, you must first focus on giving them
what they want!
This is harder than it looks. In the midst
of a conversation with a client, we are likely to find ourselves
thinking things like "How will I solve this problem?" "How will I get
the client to buy this idea?" "What am I going to say when the client
finishes talking?" "How can I appear expert?" We're not thinking about
them. We're thinking about our reactions to them. We're thinking about
ourselves.
If we strip down all these distractions to their
core, we are likely to find fear: fear of embarrassment, of failure, of
appearing ignorant or incompetent, or fear of loss of reputation or
security. Ironically, the professions attract people who are prone to
these fears.
More often than not, we consultants are high
achievers who have consistently overcome our fears through constant
application of skill and hard work in the pursuit of technical mastery.
And, up to a point, these things are rewarded. In the early levels of
consulting life, we are often asked to focus on little else.
Then
comes that crucial career transition from technician to full
professional, from content expert to advisor. As technicians, our task
is to provide information, analyses, research, content and even
recommendations. All of these are basically tasks performed out of the
clients' presence. In contrast, our task as advisors is an "in-person"
and "in-contact" challenge to help the client see things anew or to
make a decision. This requires a complete change of skills and mindset.
It
can be unsettling to find that the client is primarily interested in
having his or her problem understood, in all its emotional and
political complexity, as a precondition to having the problem diagnosed
and solved. Some of us never make it over this hurdle. The key to prior
career success (technical excellence) can actually become an impediment
at this level.
The types of people who typically succeed in
consultant service firms are driven, rational and meritocratic, with a
high need to achieve. It is the natural thing for such people to stay
focused on their own individual performance (something that is
reinforced by many firm cultures) and to look for confirmation that
what they are doing is all right. This is not a situation
conducive to building skills in developing trust. It is in some sense a
wonder that so many do so well.
Another prime obstacle to
focusing successfully on the other person is the apparently common
belief that mastery of technical content is sufficient to serve clients
well. It is ironic that a business in which the serving of clients
depends so heavily on interpersonal psychology should be peopled with
those who believe in the exclusive power of technical mastery.
The
professions are havens of rationality for those less comfortable with a
more direct, emotional approach to life. Good social skills and an
excellent mind, in the professions, can generally compensate for a very
large degree of emotional avoidance. Combined with an ethos that
worships the mind, it is not surprising that some advisors feel that
working on consulting skills such as intimacy is risky and
uncomfortable.
An Example
I once had to hire a
lawyer to probate a relative's will. The first few lawyers I spoke with
tried to win my business by telling me when their firm was founded
(really!), how many offices they had and how much they would charge.
None of this inspired much confidence. In fact, the more they talked
about themselves and their firms, the less interested they appeared to
be in me and my problems.
Finally I encountered a lawyer
who, in the initial phone call, asked how much I knew about probating a
will. My reply was "Nothing!" The lawyer then offered to fax to me a
comprehensive outline of the steps involved, what I needed to rush to
do and what I should forget about for a while because it was not
urgent. The fax also provided the phone numbers of all the governmental
bodies I needed to notify, even though this had nothing to do with the
legal work (or the lawyer's fees).
All of this (immensely
helpful) information was provided freely (and for free) before the
lawyer had been retained. Naturally, he got the business. He had built
confidence by demonstrating that he knew what information was most
relevant to me, even though some of it had nothing to do with the
practice of estate law. He had earned trust by being generous with his
knowledge and by proving that he was willing to earn the potential
client's business. He wasn't focused on himself: he was focused on me,
and it was irresistible!
Professional or Prostitute?
Whenever
a consultant is trying to sell something, there is only one question on
the client's mind: "Why are you trying to sell me something?" There are
two possible conclusions the client could come to. First, he or she
might believe that the consultant is trying to sell something just to
get more revenue. Or the client might believe that the consultant is
trying to sell something because he or she is interested in the client,
truly cares and is sincerely trying to help.
Under what
conditions is the sale made? It should be clear that new business will
be won only to the extent that the client believes that the consultant
is interested, cares and is trying to help. The noble path wins. One could argue that the consultant's task is to make the client think
that the consultant cares, meaning that consultants must learn how to
fake sincerity. (Indeed, many sales training courses are filled with
such tips and tactics.) However, faking sincerity is a prostitute's
tactic, not a professional's. It may work occasionally, but not as
often as real sincerity.
Is this moral counsel or business
advice? Either way, the conclusion is the same. You will get hired,
rehired, obtain referrals and have lessened fee sensitivity to the
extent that you care passionately, both about your work and your
clients. Believe passionately in what you do, and never knowingly
compromise your standards and values. Act like a true professional,
aiming for true excellence, and the money will follow. Act like a
prostitute, with an attitude of "I'll do it for the money, but don't
expect me to care," and you'll lose the premium that excellence earns.
True professionalism wins!
How Much Do You Care?
Very
few consultants become known by their clients as "great" purely as a
result of their intellectual or technical abilities. The opposite of
the word "professional" is not "unprofessional"-the opposite of
professional is "technician." Professionalism is predominantly an
attitude, not a set of competencies. A real professional is a
technician who cares. (You may recall the old slogan, "People don't
care how much you know until they know how much you care.")
One
of my favorite discussion questions is to ask people, "Why do you do
what you do?" Too many consultants don't do what they do because they
want to help their clients: they're in it only for the money or the
personal prestige. Such consultants may become good-and even earn good
incomes-but they will never be considered great. The reason is simple:
the clients can tell! (If you're not sure you believe this, draw on
your own experiences as a buyer. Can you tell if your doctor really
cares, showing an interest in you as an individual? Does it matter to
you? Can you tell if your accountant is just sticking to the technical
tasks or is thinking ahead on your behalf? Does it matter? Does it
affect your buying behavior?)
Being a professional is
neither about making money nor about your professional fulfillment.
Both of these are consequences of an unqualified dedication to
excellence in serving clients and their needs.
Perhaps it is
time for our schools and our consultant firms to stop teaching students
that they are the best and the brightest, the special elite in the
noblest profession of all (whatever that profession happens to be).
Maybe schools and firms should find ways to teach more about what it is
to serve a client, and about how to work with people
(not just business problems). When I talk with business school alumni
about their careers and what they would do differently, the most common
reply is "I wish I had paid more attention to the courses about dealing
with people."
Consulting success requires more than talent.
Among other things, it requires drive, initiative, commitment,
involvement and, above all, enthusiasm. Yet these things are often
missing from consultants' lives. Consider the following quiz.
Think
back on all the work you have done in the past year or so, and divide
it into one of three categories. The first category is "God, I love
this! This is why I do what I do!" The second category is
"It's O.K., I can tolerate it-it's what I do for a living." The last
category is "I hate this part-I wish I could get rid of this junk!"
Before reading on, estimate your answers to this question.
Figured
it out? Then let me report the results of putting this question to top
consultants in prestige firms around the world. The typical answers I
am given are 20 to 25 percent for "God, I love this!"; 60 to 70 percent
for "I can tolerate it"; and 5 to 20 percent for "I hate this part." In
other words, the typical consultant in a top firm is (I am told)
positively enjoying his or her work about one day a week.
Now,
a second question: Think about all the clients you have served in the
past year and, again, divide them into one of three categories.
Category one is "I like these people and their industry fascinates me."
(Yes, I know, I'm combining two things.) Category two is "I can
tolerate these people and their business is O.K.-neither fascinating
nor boring." Category three is "I'm professional enough that I would
never say this to them, and I'll still do my best for them, but the
truth is these are not my kind of people and I have no interest in
their industry."
Ready to compare results? Typical answers
from top consultants around the world are 30 to 35 percent for "I like
these people," 50 to 60 percent for "I can tolerate them," and 15 to 20
percent for "I really don't care for them." (I must stress that these
are not my opinions about professional life, but what individuals in
top-drawer firms tell me about their work lives.)
These
estimates provide the single biggest reason to reintroduce some energy
into your professional life and into the process of client development.
Why spend the majority of your professional life working on tolerable stuff for acceptable
clients when, with some effort in (for example) client relations,
marketing and selling, you can spend your days working on exciting
things for interesting people? Do you really want to have your
tombstone say "He (or she) spent his life doing tolerable stuff for
people he could tolerate, because they paid him?"
A
consultant should build the skills involved in practice development
(generating business) for one main reason: the better you are at
getting hired, the better your chances of working on fun stuff for
people you can care about and the less you will be forced to take on
work and clients you don't truly enjoy. You won't be forced to take on
clients simply because you need the money.
As my probate lawyer, described above, illustrated, getting hired has no magic to it. If you really are
interested in a client, and can clearly demonstrate both your ability
and willingness to help them, you can earn their trust. The biggest
trouble for many consultants is that they haven't taken the time to
figure out who they do like. You don't have to like every
client-indeed, that's the whole point, you can't. You need to figure it
out. Now!
When one reviews who is successful (and happy)
among consultants, it quickly emerges that it has nothing to do with
IQ, where they went to school, or what training they received. Those
who succeed are those who can sustain the magic and excitement they
felt when they were first setting out to build a career and were
willing to work to make it happen. All it takes to find the fun is a
little energy, excitement, ambition, drive, enthusiasm-and passion!
However, so scarce are these characteristics today they have turned out
to be the dominant competitive advantage for both individual
consultants and firms.
The good news is that professionalism
and marketing are not in conflict with each other at all: They are the
same thing. Both are defined by a dedication to being of service and
helping people.
Building Business Relationships
In
our ordinary lives, when we want to build a strong relationship we try
to be understanding, thoughtful, considerate, sensitive to feelings and
supportive. All of these adjectives apply equally well to what is
needed to build a strong business relationship.
To earn a
relationship, you must go first. The client must visibly perceive that
you are willing to be the first to make an investment in the
relationship in order to earn and deserve it. You want to get hired by
someone someday? Find a way to be helpful to them now. Even if it's
only a small gesture, give something.
Small gestures can
count as much as big ones, as long as they don't become too rote. Take
the issue of proving or demonstrating that you care about the
relationship and value it. On a random day, of no particular
significance, call your client and say, "I've been thinking about you,
and ran across some information that made me start thinking, and I have
an idea for you. I don't think it involves us, I just wanted to
contribute the idea to you."
What are you demonstrating by
this action? That you care; that you're thinking about the client in
the client's terms, not yours; that you are a source of ideas (some
good, some not so good); and that you are someone they will want to
stay in touch with. Not a bad set of outcomes for such a simple action.
To
make anyone believe something about you, you must demonstrate, not
assert. For example, your questions can reveal that you have done your
homework: "I know by the research we've done on your firm that you
merged with [another company] nine years ago to become third largest in
the world. What I would like to learn more about is how you cope with
the integration challenges of employees from so many cultures and
backgrounds."
Such questions give evidence that you are
thorough, that you respect the client's time enough to be prepared and
that you are ready to get right to the issues.
At the core
of building a relationship with someone is convincing them that you are
dealing with them as a human being, not as a member of a group or class
or subset. Accordingly, as you listen to a client talk, the question on
your mind should be "What makes this person different from any other
client I've served? What does that mean for what I should say and how I
should behave?"
Unfortunately, this is hard work. The
natural tendency of most of us is to do the exact opposite: we listen
for the things we recognize and have met before, so that we can draw
upon past experience to use the words, approaches and tools that we
already know well. It's the way most of us work, but it doesn't always
serve us well.
Before you can help someone, you need to understand what's on their mind. You must create situations where they will tell you more about their issues, concerns and needs.
What Role Are You Playing?
Also
essential to being an effective consultant is having a good
understanding of your role. This is illustrated by a friend of ours,
who once said, "Sometimes I feel like I'm explaining things to a child.
My client can't seem to grasp even the basic logic of what I'm trying
to convey. I feel like saying ‘Shut up; just accept what I'm telling
you! I'm the expert here!'"
What makes this friend's
comments so understandable is that, in many advisory relationships, the
client may be untrained in the consultant's specialty, while the
consultant may have seen the client's problem (or variants of it) many
times before. There is for that reason an almost constant threat of
coming across to the client as patronizing, pompous and arrogant.
It
is understandable why advisors can feel this way, and it is equally
clear why clients resent it. After all, when I'm the client, I'm the
one in charge. If I don't understand what you are saying, then maybe
the problem is you, not me. Maybe you don't know how to convey what you
know and understand to a layperson. Of course I don't know your field; that's why I hired you! Explain it to me in language I can understand.
Help me get it! Your job is not just to assert conclusions, but to help
me understand why your recommended course of action makes sense. Give
me reasons, not just instructions!
Excellence in
advice-giving requires not only the right attitude but also a careful
attention to language. There are always a number of ways of expressing
the same thought, each of which differs in how it is received by the
listener. Saying "You've got to do X," even when correct, is very
likely to evoke emotional resistance. No one likes to be told that they
must do anything (even when they do).
It is usually
better to say something like "Let's go through the options together.
These are the ones I see. Can you think of anything else that we should
consider? Now let's go through the pros and cons of each course of
action. Based on those pros and cons, action X seems the most likely to
work, doesn't it? Or can you think of a better solution?"
If
the client doesn't want to do X, the conversation is still alive. If
you've said, "You've got to do X" and the client says "No, I don't,"
you've nowhere to go. Your effectiveness as an advisor has just been
lost, and you have placed yourself and the client on opposite sides.
The odds are that what will follow will be an argument, not a
discussion.
In many ways consulting skills are similar to
those of great teaching. A teacher's task is to help a student get from
point A (what they know, understand and believe now) to point B (an
advanced state of deeper understanding and knowledge). It is poor
teaching for the professor to stand at the front of the class and say,
"B is the right answer!" (As the old joke says, a lecture is the
fastest means known for getting ideas from the notes of the teacher
into the notes of the student without passing through the minds of
either.)
A teacher needs two skills to be really effective.
First, the teacher must have a good understanding of point A: Where is
the student (or client) starting from? What does he or she understand
now? What do they believe and why do they believe it? For what messages
are they ready? What are they doing now and why are they doing it that
way?
The second required skill is to develop a step-by-step
reasoning process that takes the student/client on a journey of
discovery. The goal here is to influence the student/client's
understanding so that, eventually, the student/client says, "You know,
on reflection, I think B is a better answer," to which the
teacher/advisor can respond, "OK, that's what we'll do!"
Among
other things, effective advice-giving requires an ability to suppress
one's own ego and emotional needs. It is immensely tempting once a
client describes an issue to jump in, even before the client has
finished talking, and say, "Oh, I know the answer to that one, that's
easy!" There is no surer way to give offence than to be too overeager
to show off one's expertise!
Do You Have the Courage?
The
single biggest barrier to success in consulting is courage. Many
consultants (and consulting firms) lack the guts to stick with the
plans and goals they have set for themselves.
I first
learned this lesson some time ago, when I set for myself the goal of
trying to become a strategic advisor to international professional
firms. Shortly thereafter a firm asked me to accept a project
conducting sales and marketing training courses for their people.
The
assignment was very attractive: a large volume of familiar,
comfortable, enjoyable work that would provide a significant portion of
my revenue target for the year. However, it was obvious that spending
most of my year doing sales skills training would do nothing to help me
achieve my strategic goal. Rather than becoming a strategic advisor, I
would, by the end of that year, be a sales trainer.
Taking
the expedient path would not have been immoral, but it would have meant
that I would not have obtained the benefits of my declared strategy.
Obviously, resisting the expedient path is hard. You have to really bet
on yourself and believe your own vision. You have to have the courage
of your own convictions. Believing in the benefits of your goals is one
thing; living by the diets that are necessary to achieve those goals is
another.
So which did I want? Easy cash (and it was a lot)
or an ambitious strategy that would require hard work to create? Did I
want a comfortable, well-paid year or one where I had to accept the
burden of generating an equivalent number of days of "real" work that
would move me toward my strategic goal as well as generate income? I
decided to stick with my strategy and pass on the "easy money"
opportunity. I arranged for a friend to look after my client, and
worked hard (and successfully) to bring in the kind of work that was
"on strategy."
All strategies at some time or another
involve a tradeoff between short-term cash (doing what's expedient) and
executing the strategy (living the vision of excellence you have set
for yourself). If you're going to pursue a strategy, you must be
willing to make hard choices and act as if you truly believe in your
own strategy. In short, having a strategy takes courage.
Business
life is filled with daily temptations, short-term expediencies and
wonderful excuses why we can't afford to execute our strategy today.
Accordingly, that new article never gets written, work is delegated
only when it must be (not when it can be), the junior staff remains
only "adequately" supervised and the marketing principle is, "We never
met a dollar of revenue we didn't like!"
The importance of
courage is not meant to be an inspirational point, but simple logic. In
business and professional life, you reap the benefits of what you
actually do, not what you hope to get around to doing some day if it is
convenient and you're not too busy. If you want to be known as
excellent at something, then you have to be reliably, consistently
excellent at that thing.
If you don't feel passionate about it, if you can't care, don't become a consultant!
David Maister is widely
acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on the
management of professional service firms. He is the author or
co-author of numerous books including "Managing the Professional
Service Firm," "True Professionalism" and "The Trusted Advisor." He
can be reached at David[at]DavidMaister[dot]com.
This is chapter 23 in The Advice Business: Essential Tools and Models for Management Consulting, (Pearson- Prentice Hall, 2004) edited by Charles J. Fombrun and Mark D. Neevins.
A pdf of this article
can be downloaded from his site at http://davidmaister.com/pdf/TheConsultantsRole.pdf. Copyright,
David Maister.
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