Foreign.

For Humans, a podcast all about life in consulting.

You're with Ian and with Mike.

And in each episode, we'll be shining a light on a new topic that gets to the heart of what makes you and all the other consultants out there happy and successful.

On the Consulting for Humans podcast.

It's our mission to add just a little bit more humanity to the lives of consultants, and we'd like to bring some of the skills and perspectives of consulting to human lives, too.

So if you're a consultant who's trying to be more of a human, or even a human who's trying to be more of a consultant, then welcome.

Pull up a chair.

We think you're going to enjoy what we have for you today, right, Mike?

Oh, absolutely.

Because in today's episode, we're going to take some time out to pick up some listener questions.

Let's see what's in the mailbag and go wherever the questions take us.

What do you say, Ian?

Excellent, Mike.

I've taken a quick look down the list.

I think we've got some great questions here.

First of all, here's a question from a listener asking about trust.

It says, you often talk about the importance of building trust with clients.

What's a practical tip for a new consultant to quickly establish credibility and build rapport with clients, especially in those initial meetings.

And Mike, it's so easy for us to start out feeling like outsiders.

This is a really, really great question.

Yeah, I do love that.

I do love that.

And glad new consultant thinking about establishing trust, building credibility and rapport with clients early on.

Well, so I would say, number one, I remember talking to a client at one point who said, I have a very simple test.

Anytime I'm talking to a salesperson, especially somebody in services, when I'm having that first conversation with them, I ask.

I have a simple ask.

I ask them to do something for me, send me something, find out something, do something, and I jot it down and I put their name next to it.

You said back in the days that people had business cards, I would write a on the back of the business card.

And he said, then I put a follow up on my diary and I see if they do it.

And if they do it, they go into my pile of people to be considered.

If they don't do it, they go into my wastebasket.

I'm trying to think what all this is called around the world here.

Exactly.

It was very simple, right?

If you can't come through, talk about building credibility.

If you can't come through, when you're selling me.

I'm sure what I'm paying you, you're not going to do any better.

Fantastic.

It's a really good test.

It shows how real and simple the world of trust building is for clients.

Right.

Rule number one is find a promise you can make and then keep it.

And I think that's a really good lesson.

This question also reminds me of the Rules of Romance from one of our favorite books by David Meister.

And he says the best way to get trusted is to go first.

Just like on a first date, be interested in the other person and offer something about yourself.

And I think that's also good advice.

David Meister's books are always a good read.

If you've not come across them before, you're going to hear them mentioned many, many times on this show.

But we love the works of David Meister.

So, Mike, good learnings there, good tips on trust and rapport.

What else have we got in the mailbag?

Well, you talked about the importance of understanding a client's culture.

Yeah.

What's a quick way to get up to speed on a client's organizational culture before an initial meeting?

Well, this used to be much harder than it is now because these days we've got LinkedIn.

And I don't know where the gray area is between LinkedIn and stalking, but it's there somewhere.

So we get a little bit more about people's context.

Culture is not just about their body language and the words they use.

It's also about the context that they're in.

So you can find out indirectly if you want to know what someone's like.

Take a look at how their teammates are or how their bosses or how their subordinates are.

You get a bit of a clue.

Take a look at how they organize their working life.

Take a look at who's around them.

I think there's a lot of interesting indirect stuff that we can learn about a client's culture and the way our individual clients are responding to that culture.

I'm not going to say that everybody is exactly their real selves on social media, but LinkedIn is a pretty good tool as well.

What's been your experience, Mike?

What's a good way to get on the inside of somebody's culture quickly?

Well, I think also, especially if you're working in a larger firm, well, actually any size firm, stop and ask who's worked with this firm before, who's worked with this individual before, who's worked with this department before.

I think sometimes you'll be surprised to find out Even people that you had no idea have some connection to people, teams, organizations, and can give you a heads up or put you in touch with somebody who can.

So that simple ask is a great one.

I've found that out in the past in a post mortem meeting where somebody said, oh, well, I didn't realize you didn't know that.

Actually, I used to work there.

Oh my gosh.

This is a team member that joined at the end, but nobody asked, including me.

There you go.

And we sometimes talk about people's hot buttons.

What are individual people's kind of pet things that they care about?

Have you come across that?

Well, I have, Ian.

This is one of those.

Oh, gosh, what I wish I knew then.

Anyway, I had a meeting with an executive at a big client and it was early in my early days, so I wasn't attuned to some of this.

I was really back on the, you do great work.

And I was actually spiffing up something that I'd caught sitting there, you know, pre meeting.

I thought, oh, wow, there's a typo here.

Solicited a little help.

It was, you know, I was handing out actually printed copied pages in a report and ran off with great help from folks in this organization to go fix that page.

Got back to go in, talk to the executive and his team and the door was locked, door was locked.

Knocked on the door, there's no answer.

Sat down, waited, thought, you know, maybe they're an executive session, they'll be back out.

Door opens, people leave.

My client comes out and says, mike, short session today.

The keynote speaker never showed up.

Before the meeting started, I found out that Walt's hot button was punctuality wouldn't have mattered if I had the typo.

What mattered was if it starts at 9, you're there at 8:50.

So you know, and there's all kinds of things like that, you know, that are kind of personal, emotional, not necessarily content things that we talk about culture.

There's also those individual sorts of things that become really important.

Yeah, that's a great lesson.

Oh, like you say, if only I could go back in time.

Right.

How many times?

Right, right, right.

So this next question intrigued me because it's another delve into the world of the personal.

But it's talking about us now and ourselves.

The question says this.

In episode 15, we talked about the tension that between loyalty to a firm and the need for self reliance.

As a consultant, how have you navigated this balance in your career?

What advice do you have for experienced consultants who Might be considering going independent.

What do you say, Mike?

Wow.

This is.

Oh, it's a great question.

And I've wrestled with this a little bit and seen various instances of it on so many different levels.

One on a firm level, I mean, the classic old example was, you know, McKinsey's up and up or out culture where people who were leaving were oftentimes actually leaving at McKinsey's behest.

Say we found you a great opportunity with a client, which was their way of saying to you, you're not going to make the next step.

Yeah, but we're going to take care of you because you're going to take care of us going forward.

And, you know, I was fascinated by that.

I found it was a real challenge when you would meet some of these people and you were bidding against McKins.

And I've worked with firms who treated people leaving as if they were lepers.

That was, you know, you were kind of, what do you mean you're going to work for a client?

What do you work, you're going for another firm.

And they would just shun them.

And it was a crazy thing.

So for me, I've kind of looked back on this personally and said, yes, I'm always, if you will, a company of one.

Even, you know, when I'm part of a big company and I have got my own credibility and my own brand and my own, all of that own performance standards to always live up to.

And I know that creating value anywhere is always.

It's a team effort.

Yeah.

There are multiple people and things that come together to create value.

We don't ever do any of this on our own.

So my big advice is don't burn bridges.

Yes, you can.

You can be a company of one inside a bigger company.

You can do other ones.

But you will meet again.

These are small industries.

These are, you know, who.

The kinds of folks you're going to see again.

And so you can go your separate ways, do it in ways that create value for everybody involved.

Do it in ways that preserve relationships, that build foundations for future things, whether they come about or not.

They certainly won't when we burn those bridges.

Yeah, exactly right.

And this is another one of those generational shifts, and we've talked about it in some of our recent episodes.

Maybe a generation ago, maybe less than a decade ago, you would have found people who would have been nervous about the idea of moving away from, from a firm that they've grown to find a space within or even people that would take a, like you say, this very negative view of people moving on and going on into a different part of their career.

I think it's generally healthy that people are much more flexible.

And if you're in a place that doesn't suit you and you don't suit it, then sticking around for 18 months to make it look like a stable part of your cv, I don't think that pays off.

And I think that's generally a positive thing for me.

I think the lesson here is for leaders and managers, it's very easy to presume that when everything's going right, it's entirely to your credit and that people are going to be loyal to you forever because you've been awesome and they've had this great success.

And to a certain extent, that's true.

Consulting teams, individual project teams, or the small teams that get built up around an offering or a service can be really, really tight.

And some of my strongest friendships with people I've been in that environment with, but that's not the same as meaning that this team or this firm is the best for me forever.

And I think I remember the moments in my career when as a leader, I realized I just had to let it go.

You know, somebody's going to move on and do the next thing.

It doesn't mean that I was a lousy leader.

It just means that their career and their opportunities are moving on to the next step.

So I think expecting people to be willing to lay down their weekends and their evenings for you forever, for their entire career is not a fair thing to expect.

And it's not.

Not what's going to make consulting firms and teams a happy place either.

No.

And I'm constantly amazed at how many people end up returning to different places or people who were those leaders end up going to another firm and going, oh, that person that left that I kind of scorched.

They're my boss now, or they're a key client contact now.

So it just, you know, by all means.

It's funny.

I'm in the process of helping to organize a reunion for one of the firms that I used to work with in the past.

If you're listening to the show and you're part of that reunion, you know which one I'm talking about.

And I'm looking down this list of people.

First of all, I'm with a big grin on my face because these are all people that I'm going to really enjoy getting back together with and having a beer with and talking to.

Some of them older and more senior than me by A long way and some of them junior to me, but it's just going to be great.

But I'm looking at this and thinking a, this list has got current clients and past clients of all of us on it.

It's got people who've double dipped.

I can think of one person who I think has triple dipped, like been out in, out in.

So it really is a small world.

And when you get these relationships that last for a long time, they're going to be valuable whether you're in the firm or not.

And like you say, Mike, treat everybody like you're going to meet them again one day.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, Ian, another listener says we were talking again in episode 15 about the lack of diversity in early consulting.

Any stories that you have about a time when you witnessed positive change or progress in terms of diversity and inclusion in the consulting industry.

Not a step change within a firm.

I think most firms that have done a good job of this have moved quick, quickly, but sort of sustainably.

I think what I noticed is moving from one firm to another.

So for example, my first consulting job change, I went from consulting firm number one to consulting firm number two.

I also went from a very general, old fashioned, multi industry focused firm that to be honest was quite male.

The folks I was working with were probably 75, 80% male and also British and white and middle class to, but still a meritocracy, like still a place that I'm very proud of that I worked, but it was definitely a Gen X hangout, if you know what I mean.

And I moved to a firm that was more of an industry specialist that was also, by the way, in an industry that was much more gender balanced than the other industries that I worked in.

And suddenly I was in an environment that was, still had a way to go on treating the, treating the genders completely equally.

But in terms of population there was much more diversity.

Also much more non British people.

And I remember feeling not so much that not only that it was better as a working place and that we were getting better results, but I thought this is more like the world.

I'm now sitting in a work environment that feels more like the streets that I walk around at the weekend, it feels more like the place that I live rather than going to a place that was sort of isolated and special and separate in a way.

So I don't think I saw a revolution in one working place, but I saw big changes in other career changes that I saw later in my life as well.

How about you?

Well, for me and this had a great impression on me.

Late 90s, early 2000, you know, as you said, you talked about consulting firm number one.

Well, the whole consulting industry looked a lot like consulting firm number one back then.

And I was now stepping into a consulting role to build a consulting business inside IBM.

And the thing that was really nice, twofold one, IBM actually had started making changes internally, very intentionally.

And so we got to see the mothership with a lot more diversity and inclusion for the day.

And we were under.

We had a great opportunity to grow very quickly and we needed to recruit talent very fast.

And we needed to be really good really fast.

And we were doing that around the world all like 24 7.

And what we found was a competitive advantage in realizing very quickly that if we looked about the talent pool at IBM, if we looked at the talent pool in new countries, as we looked in training classes and recruitment possibilities, there was by opening the aperture, you could get incredible talent at this.

Just it worked.

And to look at our teams back then and even kind of going 10 years forward, teams at some other institutions going, that was kind of a miraculous place to be.

We were an incredibly diverse, incredibly talented thing.

And the funny thing, I guess for me too, Ian, is we still had five old white guys.

We weren't old white guys then, but we were on our way to becoming that.

And a little bit of a boys club in terms of the first five folks that we started with.

There were two of us that became five.

And it did take a little bit of time to crack that.

But as a result of the great talent we had it, it didn't take much over a year.

People knocked on that door and made their, made their desires known in terms of what was needed to be good at what we were doing.

And I loved it.

So, you know, my tip of my hat for some of you listening out there who grew through that with me, you remember, and we had some superstars of every Ilken variety.

Right.

And by the way, Fast forward to 2025, Mike, you and I both are partners in P31.

And I'm very proud that I'm their only.

Well, you and I together, I think are the malest and the whitest.

Right, right.

Well, and I.

That's excellent.

I think about our training, you know, classes, I think about people that we're mentoring and coaching, people that are in leadership.

The world looks very different as well and continues to look more different, which is great.

It looks more, as you say, Ian, like the world.

Yeah.

Excellent.

So, Mike, we can build on this topic.

I Think about connections between people.

Because another one of the episodes that I think lots of people have now listened to is the episode on networking.

And as well as the fact that we all enjoy that.

Great interview with Natalia.

We had a great conversation as well about what it takes to do a good job of networking.

And this listener says, can you share a story of a time when a connection that you made through networking led to an unexpected opportunity or helped you overcome a challenge?

And Natalia had her story.

Mike, how about you?

What stories spring to your mind?

Two, very immediately.

One was I was actually reporting for duty in New York day one at IBM.

I'd actually locally gone into an HR office to become an official employee, but that was in North Carolina.

I'm going up, I meet a CEO on the flight.

I actually sign a deal to do this.

And I walk into the office saying, okay, before we start whatever meetings are first, I want to get this contract in and get this thing on the books.

As I'm thinking, this is the consulting mindset.

We've got to.

We're starting this new business.

We got to generate some income and found out that there was a whole world of processes within this firm that you have to go through to do that.

You can't just walk in with a deal.

It has to be.

Has to go through these people and these processes and everything else.

So that networking thing, had I just read my book or prepped something, those processes would have been a place for a lot longer.

As a result of that first five minutes of my first day on the job, we changed a lot of things as consulting got off the ground.

That said, this is the way things work in IBM.

This is the way it has to work in our consulting and services now, kind of coming down from that and looking more over career.

I remember at one point during the financial institutions crisis, you talk about overcoming a challenge.

We had a number of clients that were going to be caught up in a wave of unraveling that was not of their making.

And I have always had this belief that you respect other people because of who you are, not because they somehow have earned it or deserved it.

That's, you know, that there's a basic respect for you have for other people.

So even if they're rivals or adversaries or on the opposite side of court cases or legislative battles and fighting tooth and nails, they're still worthy opponents.

They're still there.

And in order to remedy this situation, like almost overnight, within days, we had to have court intercessions, federal regulatory intercessions.

The good graces of the press not to cause a stampede.

And based upon networking, relationships developed actually over the course of a couple years with some people who would have loved, if you will, opponents in court cases and podence in legislative said, yeah, burn it to the ground because of those relationships that all came together over a weekend and a major story was held.

The Supreme Court weighed in the legislative, regulatory agencies, things that would have taken months to probably never happen happened.

And it's really solidified for me that vital element of networking which is not just the oh, you and I like each other and we get along well and we've got common interest to create value, but again, you never know who is who, whose talents and skills that access you're going to need.

So that was one that saved not only my bacon, but a lot of people's life savings and investments.

That's a fantastic story.

I don't think I can top that.

I can think of lots of situations where people introduced me.

Like most of my work these days comes from people going, oh yeah, Ian, I gave your name to this other person and she's going to call you.

I do remember once with my P31 partner, Tish, she and I sitting down talking about a couple of people that we knew and I realized that there was this connection to this other part of this other client.

And on a bit of a sort of Hail Mary, I emailed two or three people right at the top of this organization going, hey, I see we have this connection.

How, how about we do something?

And the thing ended up being keynote speaking at their their annual kickoff.

But I literally just emailed this guy and said, hey, you and I haven't spoken for a while.

How are your plans for your kickoff?

I'm thinking I could help in the following two or three ways.

And I was pretty sure I'd get crickets back.

But actually I got a response back the same day and six weeks later we were doing the thing and I was standing up being nicely paid for a really nice keynote kickoff address.

And I think it reminded me first of all that people in your network are going to be delighted to hear from you, even if you think that they will have forgotten and that nobody minds asking people mind if you ask selfishly, over and over again, but nobody minds if you ask.

And I think that was a really good lesson as well.

Boy, I love that, Ian.

I love that.

And I think it was Ben Franklin used to say, you know, if you want to title relationship from somebody, ask them to do a favor for you.

Yeah, what?

Ask them to do a favor for you.

Yeah, there you go.

So what comes next?

One listener says, I heard Ian talk about a spiralist career path.

You know, always seeking upward movement.

And they say, how can a new consultant balance ambition with building a solid foundation and avoiding the pitfalls of job hopping too early?

Oh, it's a really good one.

As we said a few minutes ago, I don't think the pitfalls are as great as we used to think that they were.

And I don't think future employees are as critical of, you know, a job that worked out to be only 9 or 12 months on the CV.

Job hopping is great when you're learning.

So not only because your career is advancing and you're being more economically successful, but you're learning.

What would bother me, I think, is if my career had featured a few hops of a few jobs, and I hadn't really had the chance to do anything new or learn or progress.

So I think I'm going to say it depends on what your definition of ambition is.

If you really want to be making half a million dollars a year by the time you're 30, then there's a limited number of places that you can do that, and you need to be the very active spiralist that we're talking about.

But I think most people's ambitions are also about seeing the work that they do have impact and learn.

And again, we've got lots of that from our discussions about the generations in the last four weeks.

So I think ambition is great.

The solid foundations will emerge if you're a solid character.

And lots of consulting firms screen very hard for that.

They're looking for people who've got something about them who are willing to be interested in giving service to clients, and they're interested in solving problems intellectually.

And if you've got that, then I think your foundations will help you anyway.

Maybe.

I'm very optimistic today.

What do you think?

Well, no, I think you're absolutely right, Ian.

I think that, you know, you.

I'm such a fanatic about creating value.

If you're creating value where you are for yourself, for others, for your team, for your clients, including that skill building, that relationship, developing, I think that you move on, you've contributed, you've done your good part, you've contributed, you leave without burning those bridges.

Absolutely.

Keep going.

Now, I have found some folks that leave a lot of wrecks in their wake and have been very opportunistic and thought and really moved up very quickly.

And my point was always to go back and Ask a few people.

So how were they?

And that's where you hear some of this clean up on aisle five.

And, you know, it's just that sort of thing.

People that left folks in the lurch that really had no mind for that.

And I thought, nope, don't need you here.

Thanks.

You know, I'm not just going to be your stepping stone on up.

On the other hand, I've seen some folks come through, as you say, and learned, done good things, left with good relationships, even when they've been short stints.

It was, like, great to have her here and boom, she's moved on.

And it was a great opportunity.

And so it's like, awesome.

I'm glad to have my chance at whether it's a long or a short one.

I'll take it.

Yeah, very good, Mike.

You and I seem to be so well adjusted when we talk on this podcast.

I'm so glad we're pulling the wool over people's eyes.

Oh, we're so Zen.

We're so chill.

It's great.

I love it.

That's the benefit of perspective on years, right?

Well, I think it's years.

And having been burned so much, you could say, okay, here I can distill a little bit of wisdom out of some of those stupid things I've done.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, here's what might be a quick fire one.

The listener says, back in episode 13, we talked about the challenges of business casual dress codes.

It seems like this is still a bit of a sticking point for some people.

What's your advice for navigating the ambiguity of business casual, especially for client meetings where dress norms might be unclear?

Ask.

Just ask.

Ask your client.

Ask a couple of members of the client's team.

And I think Mafe said it on the episode, too.

And then, you know, you never go wrong by bumping it up just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

Just in case.

Just in case somebody says, ah, no, we're all, you know, hoodies and sweats and jeans and everything.

Okay, I hear that, but I don't want to get surprised.

So I might bump it just a little.

But I'll say, I can think of some places that would say, oh, we don't have a dress code.

Like, we're.

Like, we don't have rules that way.

But you will still find that there's a way that people dress.

So rather than saying, what's the dress code?

I might say, what kind of things do you think people are going to dress in?

Perfect.

How am I going to look, how am I going to feel if I'm dressed with X or Y or Z?

And you can.

Like you say, Mike, people are glad to share this stuff.

Sometimes they'll find it funny and tell you, ha.

Yeah.

All of the partners are wearing sneakers and all the analysts are wearing brogues kind of thing.

You'll hear a bit about the culture there as well.

It's a good little insight.

It's great advice for everything, Ian.

That's a great point.

Dress.

What's the dress code?

Business casual.

I still don't know any more than I knew before I knew.

It's not.

It's not tails, but, you know, I don't know so.

Exactly.

But asks for specifics.

I love that.

That's great advice.

I need to do a better job of that.

Ian, you told that story and the listener said the cliche of the partner with the Harley Davidson windsurfer and Winnebago.

What's the most unusual way you seen a successful consultant express their personal goals or passions outside of work?

It's really interesting.

The kind of easy answer is people who've found their way into independent consulting life, sometimes you find out that they've done that in order to keep a side gig going that nobody would actually pay them to do.

So I was coaching somebody a couple of months ago who is simultaneously a healthcare industry consultant and also a professional percussionist.

Whoa.

Which is an awesome story and gives a complete other layer of interest to her character.

But that's probably the most.

Oh, wow.

I wasn't expecting that moment.

How about you?

Well, I.

I had a colleague, Steve, who was just his own person anyways, and the guy was brilliant.

He was, you know, was a wizard accounting of wizarded details, good people, person, everything.

But Steve did have some personal passions.

And, you know, one.

One was spreadsheets.

This guy was my hero on spreadsheets.

So if I would walk into his office and say, steve, where are we going to lunch?

He'd go, hold on.

And he'd write a model to decide.

And so that.

But Steve's.

One of Steve's passions was he wanted to visit every professional baseball stadium at first in the US and then later that.

That expanded.

Wow.

And so Steve did an amazing job of getting himself involved in projects that were always close to baseball stadiums.

And no matter, whatever you needed, Steve was right there.

And he was so good that everybody was always happy to have his help.

And he would, you know, by the way, I'm.

I'm going to go see this team tonight.

I'm going to see this team, you know, it's the Blue Jays in Toronto.

Yes.

At home.

So well done, Steve.

I always love that.

Good.

It's memorable.

Right?

People remember that stuff.

I think it's a good lesson for networking as well.

People don't just hang on to their record of what kind of PowerPoint slides you made.

They remember the quirky stuff, the stuff that really stays in people's memories.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, like, I think we're about up with our time and we're about up with our listener Q and A here.

So I want to say to all the listeners, we hope that you enjoyed Q and A.

We'll keep coming back to listener questions every few weeks because we think it's a really great way to get the dialogue going with you all.

If you've got questions that you haven't heard us answer yet, you know how to get hold of us.

Get onto our LinkedIn, get onto our email, get onto Instagram and let us know if you haven't had the chance to catch some of the episodes that came up.

Generational changes, networking, dress codes, consulting superpowers are some of the ones that I'm thinking of.

Then check them out.

Now is your chance.

By all means, check them out.

Please send your questions in at.

And we'd love to have you back next week on the Consulting for Humans podcast.