HYCS # 48 –Authentic = Congruent

Authenticity is a way of being in the world.  The authenticity skills of saying what’s so without blame or judgment, using I statements and speaking the unspoken are like training wheels for those of us who have trouble simply being ourselves.

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Reading Time: 2.6 minutes

Assignment Time:  A hilarious 10 minutes

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Recently, I had a chance to watch a colleague work.  She was in one of those tricky situations:  Someone had promised a client a service that was all wrong for them.  And not just slightly wrong: it was catastrophically wrong for them.  The client had been assured this service was the answer to the problems they were facing.  The consultant had been warned that this client was “difficult, needy, and entitled.”

In her first meeting with this client, she opened with, “We can’t do that for you,” then sat and waited for the client’s reaction.  It took my breath away.  Her client started to speak, then paused and sat quietly for a few seconds before saying, “Why not?”  The tone of the conversation was thoughtful and curious rather than belligerent and confrontational.

The consultant laid out 3 reasons, then offered to review the plan she’d brought along outlining what she could do for this client.  This “difficult” client nodded thoughtfully, and said “I’d like to see your plan.”

It was one of the most naturally skillful exchanges I’ve ever seen.

When I asked the client about how it had been to get disappointing news up front, she said,  “It was clear I wasn’t going to get what I wanted, and that it couldn’t get any worse, so I was willing to see if it could get better.”

This consultant refused to protect her client from a difficult truth.  She didn’t agonize over how to say it to soften the blow.  Instead, she trusted her client to be resilient enough to weather the disappointment.  This gave her time come up with a plan that fit that client’s needs better.  She was rewarded with a client who trusted her and had realistic expectations in only a few minutes, the holy grail of consulting. 

Because she was so congruent with herself – that is, her words matched her tone, body language and intention to be helpful – it was easy for her client to grasp the truth and to trust her.

The 97% Rule

Remember that study that everybody misquotes, the one that says 97% of communication is nonverbal and only 7% is what’s said?  The original study was narrowly focused on what people pay attention to when your words don’t match your non-verbal communication.  When verbal and non-verbal communication are not congruent – when they don’t match – no one pays much attention to the words.  When what’s unspoken and spoken match, your communication packs a punch.

That consultant I watched was all lined up:  words, music, actions.

 Authenticity is matching the words with the music; connecting what’s spoken your tone of voice, facial expression and posture.

That’s why technique alone doesn’t work.  If you are using all the right words to establish rapport while you are trying to hide your anxiety about letting the client down, guess what will come across?  That you are hiding something.   They won’t buy your attempts to establish rapport.  Your music is drowning out your words.

If you keep telling your client that you want to help them, but aren’t showing that what they’ve said so far has touched you, they won’t believe what you are saying.

On the other hand, if your tone of voice, facial expression, posture and language line up, you will connect powerfully with your clients.

You are always communicating, even before you’ve said a thing.  And your clients are always listening.

Assignment

Sometimes the best way to find your congruence is to exaggerate the mismatch between words and music.   These are more fun when you do them with a partner or in a small group, but they are effective if you only have a mirror to talk to.  Have fun with them.

Try these:

Say “I want to help,” in a dead monotone, or while looking away from the person you want to help.  Don’t be subtle about it.

Say “I have a lifelong love affair with __(your topic here)__.” while keeping your voice even and your face locked.  Would you believe you?

Say “That’s really funny,” without actually smiling.

I bet you can think of many, many more.  Sentences you use with clients are especially effective in this exercise.  I guarantee you’ll catch yourself in an inauthentic, incongruent communication soon after playing with these.  You’ll catch others as well.

HYCS #42 – Can you measure consulting success?

Before you can measure consulting success, you have to ask yourself how much consulting you’ve been doing.

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Assignment Time:  No assignment this week.

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That means we’ve got to revisit the differences between Selling, Teaching, Coaching and Consulting.  There is often confusion about how these roles differ from each other and whether a consultant can play more than one of them.

I think of it like this:  I sell my services, and I teach and coach in my role as a consultant.  These are all possible activities for a consultant, but they happen within role as a consultant.  I don’t suddenly become a salesperson or a teacher or coach.  That would be confusing.

Because I am a consulting role, I first listen carefully to what my clients say they want and ask questions that help them get clearer about what’s going on for them, what they want, and what they can handle.  Then I engage them in figuring out what the best approach is.  If that isn’t working with me, I make a referral.  My goal is to be kind, truthful and helpful, not to make a sale, show off, or to set someone straight.  On the way to being helpful, kind and truthful, I might teach, sell or coach.  Or, I might simply refer.

When you get to the Assessing and Closing stage of an engagement, it’s important to look back at the role you’ve been in and the goals you set out to accomplish before you begin to assess.  Here’s a rundown:

 Selling

I think the key difference between being a salesman and a consultant is the commitment my client and I have made to change.  If I am more focused on selling you a product, I’m more likely to throw it over the wall and run.  Perhaps I will have a customer support center to help you learn to use it, and my commitment to you will extend for up to three years or as long as you own my product.  That’s the case with the MacBook Air I’m using right now.  The customer service Apple provides is focused on getting me to understand the way their product works so I can get it to do all they’d envisioned for it.  The geniuses at the Apple store believe in the genius of their products and want me to buy the next version.  How I plan to use their product is beyond their scope.

 A salesman sells me a fish.

Teaching

If I want to learn how to use my mac book to make a video, that training is available.  If I go to a video class, a teacher will teach me the “best” workflow for making a video on that machine.  Workflow – doing the steps in the right order – is the way to use technology efficiently, the way the engineers designed it.  I am on my own to make the prescribed workflow fit with my creative process and needs.  The focus of most teaching is passing on knowledge in its pure form.  It’s up to me to apply it to my situation. 

A teacher teaches the principles and methods of getting my own fish.

Coaching

If I need to vary the standard video workflow, I can always hire a coach.  Unlike the sales person who is always selling me on the genius of the product, or the teacher who is suggesting, however subtly, that the problem is with my skills rather than the workflow or the product, the coach comes in primarily interested in me.  My goals and needs and beautiful peculiarities are what a coach uses to help me tailor the standard approach to making videos.  Nothing beats coaching for applied learning. 

A coach helps me hone my ability to get my own fish.

 Consulting

A consultant comes in and asks questions about why I want to use video in the first place, how it fits into my business plan, how I will measure success, and what my level of interest in the nitty-gritty of video production is.  A consultant will ask me if making my own videos is the best use of my time, and be open to my answer.  A consultant puts my needs and agenda ahead of theirs.  A consultant will help me see my situation differently in a way that changes me, and the way I approach my business. Consultants work in partnership to show people how to work better for the long-term, according to the clients needs, wishes and capacity.

Consultants help their clients anticipate their ongoing need for nutrition so they can keep a variety of food on hand.

To my mind, this is the divide between consulting and sales:  Sales people do not attempt to help the people and organizations to which they sell products or services change for the better.  As a consultant, change is my product, and transformation is my service. It’s a product that can’t be sold, it has to be joined.  That makes all the difference That makes all the difference in what you assess as you close an engagement.

HYCS #33 – Don’t Collect Data Without a Plan

If you are using data too soon in the consulting relationship, you may be selling rather than consulting.    If you aren’t using all 4 steps of the Diagnosing stage, you are almost certainly selling.

Reading time: 4 mins

Assignment Time: No additional time:  It’s a thought assignment

Are you surprised that Diagnosis has 4 stages?  In a Consulting Skills class I recently taught, it came as a shock that data collection needed to be structured and involve the client so deeply. Diagnosis is a pivotal stage in the consulting cycle. Going through all 4 stages shows clients the gap between what they have now and what they want.  It also turns customers into partners.

1. Planning

2. Collecting Data

3. Analyzing Data

4. The Data Feedback Meeting

Data is powerful.  It can help open a closed mind when it’s handled skillfully.  It can make difficult or expensive action seem inevitable and light a lasting fire under a client.

But, it’s not the data that does all that work.  It’s the conversation about what the data means. Because data isn’t much of any use to anyone until we decide what it means.

Planning

The best plan comes directly from the goals you’ve helped your client uncover in the Entering phase of the Consulting Cycle.  Without those goals, how do you know what data to gather?

For example, say you’ve got a client who wants to attract the best scientists in the area.  Although you and your client have some ideas about what scientists really want in an employer, data would be better.  Your plan includes what data to gather, how to gather it, and where to get the data.  Will you hit the library, conduct focus groups of scientists, survey your competitors and your current employees, interview scientists, or split-test web pages with employment ads?

That’s only the first level of planning.  The next level is to design the specific questions, research parameters or ads you’ll use and the information you hope to collect from each.  Then you assign deadlines and leaders for each activity.

The rest of the plan lays out who will analyze the data as well as who will hear the results in a data feedback meeting.

Collecting Data

This is where you execute your plan, and gather the data.  Wherever possible, your client does the data collection.  In our example, we’ve decided to split-test ads that tout different strengths of the company for two-weeks, post on the 3 major online forums where scientists look for work, interview our employees and have them  interview their fellow scientists.  I like doing interviews with an internal partner.

Analyzing the Data

Collecting data makes a big mess.  There’s too much of it.  It’s not uniform, it’s hard to know how to value it, it can lead to unexpected and unwelcome conclusions, and it’s time-consuming.  The most important thing in data analysis is not to change its meaning as you manipulate the data.   You don’t want to decide what it means yet.  You just want to wrangle the data so it’s more manageable, and easier to present in the data feedback meeting.  There is a sweet spot between leaving the data too raw and sprawling,  and analyzing it to the point your client rejects it.  Err on the side of raw and sprawling.

As much as possible, I do this with an internal partner so we can keep each other neutral.  The analysis has to be done quickly so the data doesn’t get stale.  1-2 weeks is what I allow for this phase; less is better.

The Data Feedback Meeting

The data feedback meeting is like a fulcrum:  Getting the right people in the room for this meeting is the difference between a project that goes forward with support and one that is resisted and undermined.   You will include people in the organization that so far have not participated, like executives, sponsors, employees.  You plan will specify who is coming.

The data feedback meeting that demands superhuman meeting skills.  Do not attempt this without help.  You must listen without defensiveness and be more patient than is humanly possible.  Your job is to help people work through their reluctance to accept the data so that they can agree on what it means.

You will be tested:  They will question your data collection methods, your decisions about which data to collect, the way you analyzed it and what it seems to mean.  They will question you.  Do not lose your cool or your patience: this is how people act when they are coming up a long learning curve.  You will know when they have finished the climb because they will get quieter and more thoughtful.  They will start talking about their personal reactions, what it all means and “what we need to do.”

Write it all down so everyone can see it and ask them to lump them together in categories.   Those categories are your diagnosis.  An action plan will spring naturally from them and be carried out by them.

Your prize:  A successful Diagnosing stage shifts the weight of implementation to the client.  It’s like magic.

Assignment:

Notice when you are working with your client to diagnose and when you are doing it for them.  Diagnosing with a client means they leave with the to do list.  Doing it for them means you won’t have their full participation in anything that follows.  Which is more typical for you?  Is there something you can do differently?

HYCS #20 – Handling the Rigid Client Request

A client shows up with the answer and they want you to just get it done.  But what is the question?

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Assignment time: mere moments

We’ve all had this happen:  A client wants you to do something that doesn’t make sense.  They are adamant, and pressuring you to get it done now.  It’s usually something that won’t survive a cost-benefit analysis:  It will take a great deal of your time and energy to produce little or no effect on the client’s business results.  There’s a name for this: Bad work.

Maybe it’s an employee health fair that doesn’t make anyone healthier, or a brochure that pushes away the need to deal with the lack of a marketing plan for another few months.  In my world, it’s often some version of what I call the “Fix My Group” game.  It often sounds like this:  “Come to our meeting and make the group think what we want them to do is their idea.”

Bad work engagements are not fun.  They are not engaging.  Sometimes they are not even possible.  Doing pointless or manipulative work is unsatisfying.  Which is why you want to change the work and the relationship into something more riveting.  And not just for you.  Riveting for your client too.

The rigid client is the stuck client.  The stuck client is the client being stuck by someone else.  You may be looking at the tail end of an entire hierarchy of stuck people.   Stuck people stick other people.   They can’t help it.

Just because they are stuck and trying to stick you doesn’t mean you have to let them.  Clients like this need a good consultant to open up their world and let in some fresh air.

They need a consultant who will set aside their solution and hunt down the question it supposed to answer.  Who will hear the cry for help in the rigid demand and respond with compassion.

When I encounter a request for bad work, I have no interest in it.  However, I am very interested in what would lead someone to say that.  I’m fascinated that someone thinks this is actually possible.  And I’m sad that anyone thinks this is the way you treat people.

I’m also a step closer to what the problem is:  I have a client who has distanced themselves from their group or from a business problem they feel overwhelmed by.   In the process, they’ve gotten attached to something that won’t help, like a child who is overtired, but wails when you try to put them to bed.  This is a client who needs my help.

Making the Initial Request less Rigid:  The 1-2 punch

You are not after controlling or manipulating your client.  You are discovering what they really want, what will make a difference.  In order to do that, you need to know what matters most to them.  That’s what you’re after, and you are focused on this the way  a dog focuses on a squirrel.  Here’s a 1-2 punch that I’ve found works well.

1. Downgrade a demand to a suggestion

This is like throwing the window open in a stuffy room, although it may feel more like you are throwing yourself fin front of a fast-moving train.  The sooner you do this, the better; within the first few minutes is best.  You goal is to take all the drama out of the conversation.

1. When they say “I want you to do a health fair (or other low-value activity),” you say, “You want to do something to increase employee health.”

2. When your client says, “I need you to make them think they came up with this,” I say, “You want your group to agree with your approach.”

3. When your client says “I need you to drop everything and do this,” you say, “You’ve got an urgent situation you need my help with.

4. When your consulting partner says: “This is a big client.  Don’t start in with your questions or ideas.  Let me do the talking,” you say, “You’re worried I’ll disrupt the relationship you’ve worked hard to build.”

These are not complete answers.  They are what is known in chess as an opening gambit, a way of declaring yourself as a player.

2. Next, reach past the demand for the problem it solves or the result it delivers

What matters most is hidden in plain sight.  It’s just behind the demand or solution your client has presented the way the Wizard of Oz is the little man behind the curtain, not the fiery display.  Your goal is to invite them to trust you with what matters most.

1. “Let’s imagine the Health Fair ended last Friday and was a success.  What’s different in your world because of that success?” (result)

2. “How opposed is your group to what you want them to do?” (problem)

3. “On a scale of 1-10, 1 being very relaxed and 10 being life-or-death, how would you rate your situation?” (problem)

4.  “What’s the worst that could happen if I speak up?” (problem)

If you are listening to understand rather than listening to respond, you’ll start to hear some fascinating information.  Your questions and curiosity will arise without effort.  You and your client will engage each other.  Talking openly to each other is our natural state.   It was only anxiety that was making it unpleasant and scary for you and your client.  Reach past it for what really matters.

Assignment:

Use the 1-2 punch in your next conversation.  You might want to write the steps on  a post-it and take it to your next meeting.  To make it a smaller, easier step, just do one of the 2 steps.   Either one will make your life easier.

HYCS #17 – The Quickest Path to Credibility

Focusing on your accomplishments may be the wrong thing to do.

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You come into the meeting nervous that your client doesn’t trust you to advise them, so you start by displaying your competence.  You need reassurance before you can relax into collaboration.

Your client is nervous because he feels vulnerable asking for help.  He needs psychological safety before he can open up more.    Neither of you will say what you need directly.  Instead, you’ll talk about the task at hand.

Do you see the problem?

The more you try to impress with your show of competence, the more defended your client becomes. Neither of you are getting what you need, and both of you are trying hard not to show your tender side.

Unless one of you changes your approach, it’s going to be a long, tense meeting.

The chicken or the egg?

In consulting, it’s both. We’ve come together to accomplish a task and build a relationship with a person.  But which comes first?  And where does establishing credibility come in?  Credibility is the natural by-product of conducting the relationship in a way that accomplishes the task.  Or, credibility is the natural by-product of accomplishing the task in a way that builds the relationship.  It doesn’t matter:  Pick the version you like best

What matters is knowing which is needed and offering it.

In the above example, even a tiny relationship-oriented comment or question could shift the tone of the meeting.  Something like:  “I talk too much when I’m nervous.  Sorry.  You were talking about why you want to do this?”  Or “If I were you, I’d be feeling interfered with, even micromanaged.  How is it for you?”  Even if your client doesn’t answer that last question, you’ve shown your interest in them as a person.

Show Them

Until you stop promoting yourself, you’re selling, not consulting.  Credibility doesn’t come from telling someone how good you are.  It comes from showing them.   Instead of trying to impress your client with your accomplishments, use quality questions and genuine interest to help your client feel more comfortable opening up.

Quality Questions

Quality questions show the client that you’ve taken the time to research and think about what is important to them.  Quality questions area about the things you don’t know and that your client may not either.  Quality questions show you’ve thought deeply about what the client wants to accomplish, not just about what they are asking you to do.  Quality questions help your client discover the joy of speaking.

The Joy of Speaking

In, Opening Up:  The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, James Pennebaker tells us that the more someone talks, the more they like the person or group they are talking to.  His research also showed that the more someone talks, the more they believe they’ve learned about their audience.

The more talking your client does, the better they will like you and the more they will believe they’ve gotten to know you.

Questions aren’t enough

It gets a little creepy if you only ask questions.  Eventually, you’re going to have to make a statement.  You may summarize the points your client was making.  Perhaps you’ll offer a simple paraphrase.  At some point, you’ll hear your client say something you need to call them on.  They might say “There’s no point in telling my boss about that.  He always shoots me down.”  To which you would almost be compelled to say:  “I notice when you mention your boss, you talk about how he denigrates your ideas.  Please tell me more about that.”

Being that direct is too much for some people, and that’s OK.  If you are not comfortable being that direct, or if you find your client shutting down, you can soften your observations with what Adam Grant in his book Give and Take calls “Talking Tentatively.”

Talking Tentatively

Here are several ways to reduce the threat of what you’re saying or asking.  These are especially helpful when clients are feeling vulnerable, or when you’ve gone overboard establishing your credibility.

Hesitations: well, um, uh, you know….

Hedges:  kinda sorta, maybe, probably, I think….

Disclaimers:  This may be a bad idea, but…

Tag Questions:  That’s interesting, isn’t it?  That’s a good idea, right?

Here’s the above example with each form of tentative talking:

“Well, er…I notice when you mention your boss, you talk about how he denigrates your ideas.  Um, could you tell me more about that?”

“Your boss denigrates your ideas.  That’s maddening, isn’t it?”

“I notice when you mention your boss, you talk about how he denigrates your ideas.   This may be a bad idea, but have you approached him about this?”

You can speak the truth without blame or judgment and create safety for your client too.

Assignment

• Listen for your client’s vulnerability the next time you are called in to help.
• Stop self-promoting and focus on asking your client questions so they will open up.
• Offer your next observation using Tentative Talk

Building Your Team as They Work

Welcome, CG #47 – The Truth About Icebreakers, Part 2 readers!  Here are the specifics for meeting processes that build teams.  Let me know what you like and what else you’d like to see in the comments.

Consensus-Building Processes

Multi-voting

Use to narrow a list of more than 10 alternatives without lengthy discussion on alternatives no one in the group feels strongly about.

Steps:

1. Establish Clarity and agreement about decision criteria.  (Criteria can be established by either the leader or the group.)
2. List on a flip chart the options to be considered.  Assign each option a letter of the alphabet.
3. Specify the number of options each member will vote for.  The rule of thumb here is 20-25% of the total number of options.  (Do not confuse the number of options members will vote for with the number of items that will remain after the conclusion of multi-voting.  They will be different!  Example:  For a list of 15 options, members may agree to vote for three.  After the vote is taken and tallied, the list may be reduced to 8-10 options.*)
4. Individuals silently write down their choices using their letter designations.
5. Survey the group and record votes on the flip chart.  It may be quicker to ask for raised hands to indicate the number who have voted for each item, rather than asking each member to individually announce their votes
6. Narrow the list by agreeing on which options will be considered further.  Use negative voting here and start by eliminating the options no one voted for.  Example:  “I see no one voted for options 3, 5 and 7.  Would anyone object if I eliminated those from our list?”  It’s important to ask and to retain any items that even one member feels strongly about.

(*You can use multi-voting several times to reduce a list of any size to 10 or fewer items.)

Rank Ordering

Rank ordering is best used when a group needs to narrow a list of 6-10 options.  Ideally, rank ordering will reduce the list to 5 or fewer items which is the amount of items needed to move to the next step, structured discussion.

Steps:

1. Establish clarity and agreement about decision criteria.
2. List on a flip chart the options to be considered.  Assign each option a letter of the alphabet.
3. Individuals assign each item a number from 1 to 5, with “1” indicating their first choice, and 5 their last choice.
4. Use a round robin process to have members call out their rankings.  These numbers are recorded on the flip chart.  (an alternative is to have group members record their rankings on the flip charts themselves.)
5. Add the rankings on the flip chart.  This work can be split up among the members.  Remember:  the lowest number indicates the highest ranking, or most preferred option.
6. Review the results paying attention to both the totals for each number and the individual rankings.  For example, in a group of seven people, six members have given the option a 4 or 5, ranking and one has given it a 1 ranking.  The total number suggests that the option be eliminated from further consideration, but it is important to find out why even member made it their preferred option.
7. Agree on which  options will be considered further.  Look for items that are easy to agree on, for example, eliminating items that have high totals and no individual rankings of 1 or 2, or retaining items that even one member feels strongly about.

Structured Discussion

Most of the time groups rely on unstructured (or open) discussion to express preferences and reach a decision.  Unstructured discussion is likely to limit the level of exploration of ideas  to a few people doing most of the talking and by a premature fixation on one or two options.  Structured discussion provides balanced participation and supports a deeper level of listening and thinking about the options being considered.  Structured discussion is appropriate when the group is trying to achieve consensus on a list of five or fewer options.

Steps:

1. Establish clarity and agreement about decision criteria.
2. Establish the time limit for speaking each member will have.  (typical is 1-2 minutes)
3. Silent individual reflection.  This is where people get to stop and think in silence before listening to others opinions.  A few minutes of silent thought now will increase the opportunity for active listening and deep thinking when opinions are being expressed.  (Did I mention that this is a time for silent reflection?)
4. Round robin where one member expresses their opinion without discussion or rebuttal.  Have someone watching the time here.
5. Summarize the themes and points of agreement after all members have spoken.
6. Summarize the areas of disagreement and ask for ideas to resolve them.  Sometimes it is helpful to have another round robin response to the areas of disagreement because members may have changed their minds after hearing the opinions of others.  At some point the discussion will become an open discussion.  Summarizing agreements and resolving impasses are what’s needed to keep the discussion moving forward.