Welcome to Consulting for Humans.

You're with Mike and Ian.

In each episode, we explore a new topic that gets to the heart of what makes consultants happy and successful.

That's right.

On the Consulting for Humans podcast, it's our mission to add just a little bit more humanity to the lives of consultants.

And as we've been doing lately, we'd love to bring some of the skills and perspectives of consulting to regular civilian human lives, too.

So if you're a consultant who's trying to be more of a human or a human who's trying to be more of a consultant, we think you're just our kind of person.

Absolutely.

So, Mike, what are we up to this week?

We've been talking about our internal advisor series theme now for a little while.

What's coming up this week?

Well, this week we're reaching out to all the questions we've had, the comments we've had across episodes 27 to 31.

And we're calling this between you and me.

We call this our listener mailbag.

And, you know, we see what a nostalgic thought, you know, the postman with the mailbag.

And even though they didn't arrive in a bag, we've got those questions for you here.

Right.

Listener Google Drive subfolder is what it is.

Right.

So we've got some great questions.

We've had questions from aspiring strategic partners new in their careers, hungry for a bit of learning.

We've also had some questions from the perspective of veterans who've been around the block who want to bring their experience and are bringing us a healthy dose of skepticism.

We've had some great challenge questions this week, so let's dive in.

Mike, the first one's a good example of that.

Take us to the very first question in our virtual mailbag here.

Yeah, I love this, because this one gets right to the core idea of this show.

This podcast, they ask, isn't adding humanity to consulting a bit idealistic?

Most clients just want answers fast.

How realistic is this mindset in high pressure environments?

I think, let me say to this listener here, who shall not be named, you know, it's a fair point.

It, you know, in high pressure settings, speed matters.

But being human doesn't mean slowing down.

It means showing empathy, understanding the context, and treating people like people, not transactions.

Right.

And I can think of plenty of times in my life when it has net saved me time to have that kind of patience and have that kind of perspective.

When people feel heard, they're actually quicker to act on advice and quicker to change their Behavior.

And we're going to talk a lot today, I think, about how the subtleties of these skills help to drive behavior.

And it's a nice one, but it's a bit of a false dichotomy.

They're saying pressure equals must drive fast equals the opposite of doing kind of humanity.

I think there's not quite going to be pulling indefinitely opposite directions.

Yeah.

And I think it goes more than just kind of philosophical reflections or, you know, positive psychology here.

You know, a very wise man, matter of fact, it's the one who's sitting at the other end of the microphone chain here across the Atlantic.

That's.

That's.

Bradley once advised me and the rest of the team, as we're in one of those environments, let's begin the way we wish to carry on.

Right.

And, and you know, I always try to think in, in, you know, what's most effective in high pressure settings.

You know, how do we want to begin and carry on?

As you always said in.

And, you know, one concept that stuck with me for a long time was this amygdala hijack from Daniel Goleman's emotional intelligence.

Well, you know, as the years roll on, I found out that neuroscience says, yeah, probably that IQ loss metaphor of Goleman's isn't true.

However, it also confirms.

Neuroscience confirms that being overwhelmed by intense emotions like fear and anger sometimes kind of the.

The way we perceive that high pressure, if you will, impairs memory, it impairs decision making and perspective.

And by that they mean the ability to see things from others perspectives.

All as we've been talking about throughout all the episodes and especially these last five, you know, critical strategic partner ability.

So while it may be true, I'm not arguing that, you know, some people that tell me, no pressure, no diamonds, we do believe that the most valuable diamonds come from this combination of humanity and consulting.

Right.

And I'd like to push back on the idea that humanity is somehow opposite or imperfect compared to doing a good rational job of solving problems.

I think the imperfections of humanity, of being a human are at the heart of what makes teams and organizations successful and individuals as well.

Decisions are made by humans based on the world as they perceive it, not as the world as it objectively is.

The majority of the risks or uncertainties in any project or business undertaking are based really on the unpredictability of human behavior.

From currency exchange markets and the stock exchange, you know, all the way out to all the subtleties of the way your team is going to think and react Next week.

The obstacles to success, our own success as individuals, are often rooted in our humanity.

Not in our lack of objective perspective, but in all of the vulnerabilities and the subjectivity and the kind of complexities of our motivation that make us human.

So all of those things are real.

All of those things we can examine and deal with.

And let's get one more time back to rejecting this idea of high pressure means.

You have to go faster and not think.

If you think business is a high pressure environment, then go spend some time with firefighters or coast guards or jet pilots.

They train and work in ways that are absolutely adapted to their own humanity, to the skills and limitations of being a person.

And their training, by the way, is often designed so that in those highest pressure situations, they are actually forced by the process and by their training to slow down their decision making.

I once got taught by somebody who was an ex pilot, he said, when an engine falls off the airplane, the first thing you do is you.

You wind your watch.

Sometimes literally, sometimes only metaphorically, like when something really bad happens.

Take a breath.

And I think lots of what we've talked about in the show has been about taking some kind of a breath.

Well, it's fascinating because I'm reading all kinds of high mental performance in extreme sports.

I'm reading things by Navy SEALs and Rangers and stuff.

And over and over again, what you just said, box breathing.

The importance of all that is absolutely paramount in those high pressure situations.

Yeah, that sniper is.

Got to slow that heartbeat down before they squeeze.

Well, Ian, we're obviously very committed to the consulting and humanity part.

Let's get back in episode 28.

We were talking about the rush to a quick solution here, and the question came up.

It says, sometimes my manager just wants a quick answer.

But I can see there's a bigger issue.

How can I introduce that without sounding like I'm slowing things down?

I mean, you could just kind of get tough with your manager and say, go wind your watch for five minutes.

That might not play.

That might not play.

I think it's fine if somebody's asking for a quick answer, and if there's a valid answer and it's right within reach, then given that there's nothing that says you can't do that, respecting the fact that somebody's communicating to you that the urgency is important to them, and also respecting the fact that you see value in understanding the bigger picture.

So when you can do both, why not try to do both?

And hopefully the person you're working with will learn that sometimes Taking the bigger picture and getting the more considered advice from you is going to get them a better outcome somehow.

I like that.

This idea of giving them that immediate answer and then offering to share something, you know, that could help us even more longer term.

That's that a little fast food, a little healthier side dish here, you know.

French fries is an appetizer.

Salad.

Yeah.

Life is uncertain.

Eat dessert first.

I love it.

There's an interesting dilemma here as well about how do we use whatever authority we have, which often is not very much.

How do we use whatever authority we have to assert the power of a big picture or assert the value of taking a wider perspective?

And I think sometimes what we've got is our experience or even the experience of other people.

So rather than say, I insist we should look at the big picture, you can talk about your own experience or borrow someone else's.

You could say something like, hey, you know, I saw a similar thing happening when I was at xyz.

Or you could say, hey, my buddy Mike saw a similar thing happening when he was at xyz.

The bigger problem was a whatever it is, if we hadn't spotted and fixed it, the consequences would have been X or Y.

So mention a thing that happened, mention a consequence, and then put it back on them to evaluate the consequence and evaluate the validity of that other perspective.

If they still want to stick to the quick answer or the familiar answer, then maybe you let it go.

But I think if you started out by thinking about consequences, maybe you can keep half an eye open for the consequences just in case they turn out to be real.

All right, so, Mike, we've talked about the view that other people have of us and how we can make use of how it is.

Now we also need to talk a little bit about how we can change the view that people have of us.

We've got an interesting question here about this strategic partner pyramid, this framework that we've talked about a few times.

The listen says this, you've described the pyramid as progressive.

Like, we move up the layers, but in real work, don't we often move up and down depending on the situation?

How should we think about that movement?

What do you think there, Mike?

Oh, that's a great point.

Very, very much a fair point.

Because we do, I think when we're teaching this, when we're sharing on this, when we're coaching on it, sometimes we do teach it as progressive.

But in fact, as you say, you do absolutely operate at different levels of the pyramid depending on the context.

Sometimes you are Just answering questions.

Other times you're reframing.

Sometimes you're provoking new thinking and you're not necessarily moving from the bottom all the way up to the apex there.

However, while you absolutely are right, think of it as a toolkit, not a ladder, I think the latter part is about mastering the foundational skills.

So that if you're going to be, you know, if you're going to be effective above, you really have to have the skills below.

And then, you know, that other skill that you're kind of referring to with your question here is the skill of knowing which level is most useful in this moment.

You know, what does this situation call for?

So well done and thank you.

I think it's going to help me think a little bit about talking about that a little differently.

Right.

So practicing the high level skills doesn't mean that we reject the lower level skill.

It means we're obliged to practice them.

We're obliged to practice them efficiently and we're obliged to practice them selectively.

But we still know that they're the foundation.

Yeah.

And our capability to do that well means that we really have spent time and mastered some of those ones down there.

So, Mike, we're getting into this idea of moving up the pyramid that raises also the question of how do we position ourselves by asking better questions?

So I've got a great question here for a listener that you might want to take a swing at.

The question says, if I already know a likely answer, how do I still use questioning to add value rather than just jumping straight to the solution?

And my part of me wants to say, oh, this is like the parent that says, why have you not tidied your room?

When you know darn fine well why they have not tidied their room.

But I think it goes a little bit deeper.

It's a little bit more subtle than that, right?

Yeah, I think so.

And you know, it's that question.

Great nuance here.

Well, I think one really important thing for you and the other person is that even though you may already know the likely answer, you can use your questions to help the other person arrive at the answer with you.

And that way they're going to own it.

Now, that's great about helping them.

But, you know, let me kind of underscore one of the reasons that we do this and get really good at it, because it protects us too.

Because sometimes, as we've talked about throughout several of these episodes, the obvious answer isn't the right one this time.

There might be something else in this situation.

In this context, with these stakeholders, with this problem or opportunity that says, wow, this really looks and smells and acts a lot like something else.

But in fact, the solution is going to be a little different here.

It's great, isn't it?

And that's the reward that we get for still being ready there with our questions.

I think there's another reward as well, and that's about trust.

Nice.

People will trust you if they know that in the recent past you were there to listen to their concerns and to give them validity.

So asking questions generates value not only because of the exchange of information, often, as you say, Mike, surprising new information, but it also generates value because of the growth of trust.

So if you're somebody who's good at having a conversation, good at asking questions and absorbing the answers, then the payback also comes later because you get that trust and that rapport with people, and that's a big part of the stock in trade, if you like, of anybody who's an advisor from within a company.

And I'm sure we're going to talk about this later on in the, in the mailbag here.

Absolutely.

Well, Ian, you know, talking about, you know, trust and relationships, I think here's one that really piggybacks nicely on that.

Listener asks, how do you balance being genuinely curious with respecting the limited time that stakeholders have?

How do you ask enough questions without exhausting people?

Right.

I think part of it begins with the basics, like do your homework and know the person that you're trying to get hold of and whose time you're trying to use and offer them some expectation setting.

Like, I have three questions.

And if you're going to say, I have three quick questions, make them quick and make them three and signal that you have respect for time.

I can think of plenty of really senior, really busy people to whom I've offered and delivered a quick 15 minute, kind of pick your brains, kind of a call.

And at minute 14, they've gone, Gee, do you know what?

This is really interesting and really important.

I'm going to stick around.

Let's open this up for another half an hour.

Nice.

Yeah.

So I think you've got to be willing to respect time.

But if you do a good job with the questions, you'll get invited for more.

Maybe this is a depth versus breadth thing.

I think a really powerful question, a really well thought out, insightful question is worth much more than 10 shallow questions.

So you think first, like, what do I know?

What does my stakeholder already know?

And if everybody here is short of time, then it's pretty disrespectful, like we say, to ask a question to which you've already heard the answer or to which the answer can be looked up in a manual or a report someplace.

So you don't want to be naive about the way that you ask questions.

And here's an idea.

You and I, I think I associate this idea with our colleague Tish, who's been as a guest on the show before.

This is absolutely a Tish Baldez thing.

She talks about this idea of high gain questions.

So a high gain question would be one like this.

Instead of a simple open question like, what do you think of our new product launch process?

You could ask something like, what are the three things that you most wish we could change about our product launch process?

And that prioritizing tone to the question gets them thinking and gets them sequencing and comparing, which in itself is value adding that.

Therefore, we call that a high gain question.

Because you get a lot back for the amount of airtime.

You also get a lot of thinking back from the other person.

Rather than letting them be kind of glib, you are inviting them to think about this.

And Mike, this also reminds me of techniques that I've heard from other people.

You and I were talking about damping just before the show.

Yeah.

I think Dan posted this on LinkedIn just a few days ago pre.

The pre mortem technique, you know, we, many of us, I certainly have been involved in a lot of postmortems.

You know, what went wrong?

What.

What happened here?

Dan's pre mortem idea was, say you're a, you know, we're all, you know, we're pushed for time.

We pretty much got this thing.

We're ready to move forward, you know, kind of in respect to the listener's question here.

And here's one more question.

Okay.

As we're moving forward, let's assume right now that we've done this, we've implemented it, and pick the timeline that's appropriate to whatever you're talking about.

In Dan's example, he was saying, two years from now, it's failed.

Spectacular.

We're really gone into the ditch here.

What didn't work, what went wrong?

And it puts people in the mind of, oh, wait a minute, you know, from all this, let's go in, let's get started.

To think for a second in the future, looking back, what might have gone wrong so that we can do that little bit of.

Again, kind of like your high gain question, Ian, this way of.

Let me just dig just a little bit Deeper and put pool of my experience with a different net.

A different net, a different kind of question that helps us do that.

So it's the kind of thing that's memorable as well.

Right.

If you're, if you want to ask questions of somebody who gets a lot asked a lot of mundane questions, coming with a new way to frame the question can really get them.

They get their brain switched back up.

So, Mike, how about this one?

We've talked a bit about the respect for or influence of stakeholders.

Our listener here asks a question about problem definition.

When there are multiple stakeholders who all see the problem differently.

How do I know whose definition to work with?

That's a tough one.

Well, Ian, it's interesting because my immediate reaction is, you know, hold on a minute before you just pick one for whatever good reasons and there may be really good reasons to pause for a minute and compare them.

As we talked about in a couple of different episodes, there's real value in mapping the differences and showing how the perspectives connect.

And that's part of what elevates us from problem solver to strategic partner.

Now, if we've looked at that and looked about is there a hybrid we can create from this that's really, really even more powerful and helpful?

You know, that's I think, the gold standard.

And having considered those differences, yes, as you said, sometimes there are multiple stakeholders and we do want to ask ourselves, you know, which one do we take more account of?

And there's all kinds of practical considerations from typical kind of stakeholder mapping exercises, you know, who's actually making the decision, who's going to be most impacted, who has the greatest impact here.

You know, we've got all sorts of rank and influence and things that we can do there.

But I do think that pausing again to look across before we let that drive our thinking.

Because sometimes I will tell you, you know, I can, I can tell a number of stories where it was the, the newest, the least ranking person in the room that mentioned something or came up with something that made all the difference in going forward.

So if I had just picked one on the basis of regular, I would have had a very different result in projects work that I was working on.

Great stuff.

Well, Ian, I thinking about this and I'm starting to think about a number of other things that kind of get involved here.

And I think there was another question that we had that starts to overlap perhaps with this questioner's thought about which stakeholder.

So sometimes they ask the root cause is politically sensitive like leadership behavior or culture.

How should an internal advisor handle diagnosing issues that people may not want to acknowledge?

It's a tough one and I think it's at the root of, of lots of problems, right?

People's humanity and their behavior and their limitations and their great strengths are all of the things that underpin what happens well or not so well in organizations.

And first of all, there's a framing or a point of view approach that you can take here.

Rather than to say it's all about this person's behavior, you could talk about the outcome rather than pointing the finger.

Instead of saying leadership is the problem, we could say we're seeing repeated delays because decisions are taking longer than they used to.

So we can neutralize the language a little bit.

How much that sounds dispassionate and thoughtful and how much that sounds kind of weaselly depends a bit on the people.

It depends a bit on your culture and the language that you're using.

You can certainly ask for permission.

Like, would you mind if I shared an observation that you might find uncomfortable that I think could be useful.

That's a very nice way to open the door gently.

I think dealing with people's behavior and culture is at the heart of so many of these problems.

It's often a reason why businesses, teams, companies turn to outside help.

There are plenty of consultants and coaches who specialize in these kind of problems, but getting outside help is still, I think, only a partial solution.

People's behavior, people's culture is personal.

And most people change their behavior on a personal level when they see the impact on their colleagues or on their team members on a personal level.

So the best behavior change conversations are personal conversations where there's some trust and outside advisors sometimes have to work very hard, sometimes have to work in vain to try and get trust.

It could be that as an internal advisor, trust is the one thing that you've got in greater store than any outside advisor.

So Mike, I think you still need to be a great listener.

You still need to be skilled and good at handling feedback.

You need to be an acute observer.

As we've already said now, when it comes to helping people see the diagnosis, there are data sources that you might have around that might help.

Employee satisfaction surveys, engagement surveys, exit interviews, 360 degree performance feedback.

Lots of people and leaders in mid level and higher level positions in organizations have got access to these and sometimes don't make much use of them.

Now think carefully about whether you can use those data sources.

Even so, data helps, but it's not going to be enough.

On its own, like we said, you still need trust and you still need some of those great coaching skills, too.

Yeah.

And I think, Ian, that's why we've spent so much time in strategic partnership and being influencers and catalysts within your own organization, doing the things that build this, so that, you know, you're, you're, you know, if you will, you're, you've dug your well before, you're thirsty.

Right.

When we come into this situation, when it finally shows up, you are there and you are so much better positioned to be there and than an outside advisor.

So we think it's ideal.

Great.

Well, Ian, speaking of trust, good coaching skills, one listener asked, if my team jumps to solutions too quickly, what's a good way for me to slow things down without sounding like I'm blocking progress?

It's funny, isn't it?

We're back to this pressure of time, and am I going to seem like I'm wasting time or dragging if I'm asking to think about things a bit more deeply?

You could position it as risk management.

You could say, well, before we lock in on a solution, let's take a couple of minutes to test the assumptions, and to them, that might then feel like momentum rather than delay.

Right?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

Ian, in any situation, it helps to show people what the benefits are to them.

And as you're describing it here, it shows you're protecting the team, not dragging them back.

This is not.

I've got this long guide of things I have to go through and I'm going to march right through them regardless here.

Yeah.

I think you can also reward the impatient people in your team by giving them some intermediate points that you're going to reach on the way to a solution.

So rather than sit down and say, the goal of today's meeting is to identify the problem, figure out the root cause, and identify our plan to solve it and give the impatient people totally their head.

You can have three shorter conversations, maybe even three steps to the same meeting, and say, okay, first we're going to characterize the problem and its impact, and then we're going to either take a coffee or grab a couple of days.

Pause.

Next, we're going to agree that we're all confident that we know what the root causes are or the dominant causes are, and we get to celebrate that.

And then finally, we have a conversation where we brainstorm actions and we plan implementation and we all give ourselves a pat on the back for that.

These can still be short and snappy conversations.

It's up to us as a leader to give a bit of hoopla to the characterizing the problem bit and to the diagnosis bit, and to celebrate the arrival of those things and applaud them just as much as we would celebrate agreeing on an action plan.

I think the key is to leave a little bit of thinking time, at least long enough for coffee and reflection.

Maybe long enough for everybody to go on vacation, but to make it feel like there's momentum there, as you said.

But just break down the process a little bit.

You don't need to be the one doing the thinking in between time.

If you leave some space, you'll find that people in the team, even the impatient ones, will bring some new thoughts when you bring them to a new conversation with a new objective.

Yeah, I think that just like we do, you know, space learning, the whole idea of giving people processing and the fact that people are different, there's some of us that are, you know, absolutely on and on and on, other folks that need that time.

And it's amazing how if we have done like you said, Ian, and broken this down and directed people's attention to things, they will see things and spot things, and their, you know, their creative juices will be flowing and make the process much better.

Sounds like a great outcome all around.

Right?

Right.

Very good.

So, Mike, we've been talking about the importance of diagnosis in problem solving here.

Here's another great question.

Take a swing at this one.

Critical thinking sounds great.

In theory.

You can hear the but coming, right?

Yes.

But in practice, how do you keep it from turning into endless analysis or paralysis by diagnosis?

This sounds like it comes from the perspective of someone who's been around the loop a few times and has seen a few projects get stuck in the muck.

How do we avoid that?

Yeah, and I'm not surprised because, yeah, we've seen a lot of projects get stuck in the muck, especially with people who are kind of stuck at that bottom level of the pyramid and feel like that's.

I do well, and that's what I'm going to keep doing all the time.

And I think that, you know, it's just always important to put boundaries on the analysis, you know?

You know, we've talked a lot about threes today.

We talked a lot about threes in the episode.

We might say, you know, we're going to explore three options and then choose.

Constraints can create focus, can help us here and keep us from going too far or not going far enough.

But we always have to remember that critical thinking Isn't about analyzing forever.

It's about analyzing enough to make a confident, timely decision.

So, you know, I take a page out of one of our colleague's book, Ann Frazier, who, you know, I get, remember, I almost want to tattoo this one because I've heard Ann say it so many times.

Anytime a team member is tempted to extend the analysis or this diagnosis time too much, you know, she always asks, is this additional analysis or synthesis or diagnosis going to change the decision that has to be made or the action that's going to be taken?

Do we have enough now for them to make that decision, take that action?

Not only can this help prevent this endless analysis or paralysis by diagnosis, it sometimes by asking that question more often and taking it into consideration, suggests that some standard parts of our typical approach may not be needed.

Again, in this specific context with these stakeholders, with this problem or opportunity, this decision or action, and boy, it's a great day in a life of a consultant or a strategic partner to go, you know what?

All we have to do is this, this, and we got this that we can move on.

It's great.

There's a really interesting theme about confidence all the way through this, right?

To be a great strategic advisor, sometimes you need the confidence, for example, to ask about the bigger picture or to slow down the pace.

What you're also doing is injecting confidence into your stakeholders to go, yeah, actually, we're good now.

We've got enough insight to solve the problem.

We've got enough agreement between us and trust between us to go ahead and make the changes.

And I like this idea of confidence.

And again, that's, that's a human thing.

I, I've never yet met an Excel macro that exhibited confidence.

Only humans have that.

Oh, I love it.

I love it now.

Excel AIs, we'll have to find out.

Yeah, we'll see.

I'll test them out.

So thank you for all of the questions.

Thank you, Mike, for joining with me as we've gone through the mailbag.

I love the questions.

I love how they keep us sharp as well.

Well, and to all of you out there, please keep these questions coming.

You know, we want this podcast to be a conversation, not just a broadcast here.

Absolutely.

You heard our contact details in the, in the mid roll section there.

Please reach out if you've got thoughts and ideas.

We'd love to hear your suggestions.

We're going to be carrying on our journey through the consulting and humanity landscape.

Next episode, we'll be making another deep dive into another area where we think Consulting and humans can intersect until that time.

We're really looking forward to seeing you again in a couple of weeks, and thank you for joining us on the Consulting for Humans Podcast.

The Consulting for Humans podcast is brought to you by P31 Consulting.