Foreign.

Welcome to Consulting for Humans, a podcast all about life.

In consulting, you're with Ian and with Mike.

And each episode we are shining a light on a new topic that takes us to the heart of what makes consultants happy and successful.

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

We'd also love to bring some of the skills and perspectives of consulting to human lives, too.

Fantastic.

And Mike, in today's episode, we're setting our sights high.

We're going to talk about superpowers, the kinds of superpowers that that consultants wish they had.

And maybe if we think about it a little harder, maybe they almost already have.

So Mike set the scene for us.

How can we get to talking about superpowers today?

Well, it's funny.

One of our favorite warm up conversations in calls, in workshops and training sessions is to ask everyone what consulting superpower they'd like to have in order to be more successful in whatever it is we're talking about in that particular get together.

It always raises a laugh.

It generates some predictable and some wildly off the wall answers.

And I guess perhaps from the successful and happy side of things, it also ties back to, as you were kind of alluding to, Ian, what we can actually do to essentially have that superpower.

Right.

And I think it generates a fun and engaged conversation because there are super.

Some real powers, maybe not exactly superpowers, but there are some real powers, you might say, real skills that consultants do possess.

And maybe if you look around at the most experienced and the most kind of capable consultants that you work with, you see them and you see what they can do, and the fact that they have these great skills looks almost like a superpower, you might even say, almost like magic.

And Mike, you and I have talked in the past about this great quote from Arthur C.

Clarke.

Right.

How does that go?

Yeah.

So one of Clark's maxims here, a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And I think these superpowers the same way as you say.

Yeah, very good.

So we've got a list.

We've trawled through all of our flip charts from ages gone by.

We've thought hard about what we've seen from people on virtual meetings.

We've got our list of the superpowers that we've heard mentioned most often, plus a couple of extras that came up as we were preparing for the show that we think open up the conversation a little bit.

We'll give you the whole list right now here at the top of the show.

And we'll go into them each one by one.

So, Mike, first of all, we're going to have superhuman knowledge and intelligence.

And then mind reading.

Oh, yeah.

Then we're going to get into time.

Travel and one of my favorites, mind control and persuasion.

Shape shifting is going to come next.

Or at least the kind of shape shifting that's related to invisible.

Right, right.

Then some newer ones, digital integration or maybe even DNA or biohacks.

Ooh.

And finally another infinite superpower.

The power of infinite self control, you might say, Mike.

Infinite equanimity.

Ooh, nice.

So there's our list of seven.

Like all good consultants, we know that the maximum number of things is always seven.

Before we get started though, let's think about our own perspective here.

Put yourself, Mike, back in the middle of your career that, I don't know, mid-30s, early-40s time when you were really flying along there.

Which one of these do you think you would have been asking for at that time?

I think it's a toss up, Ian.

On the one hand, one from our list, super human knowledge, intelligence.

I think that idea that great consultants know all this stuff and I think I was still possessed of that, that it really was about knowing.

And part of that was the imposter syndrome that we've talked about before.

So that was that one.

Although I think if you had asked me back then, I would have probably said what I really want is a transporter machine from Star Trek.

I really, you know, this is what I spent.

You know, I can't even imagine how much of my life was spent traveling to and from client site and having to be gone all the time.

So that ability just to jump back and forth, to give me back days and nights and weekends and time with family and friends, you know, to be anywhere at any time would have been high on my list.

Fantastic on my list.

I think back in my 30s, I think I was in execution mode and get it done mode.

So I think that time travel one, you know, go back and multiply the productivity that I have.

I would have been really, really keen on that.

I'd like to think I had enough self possession and self knowledge knowledge to want to read people's minds.

But I think I was too impatient.

Maybe a clone would have helped out as well.

Oh, yeah, we'll put that on the list too.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Some minions.

Oh, yeah.

Now we have a few of these that are probably more for fun, for a bit of a laugh.

A few of these have got some really Fascinating.

Serious consulting skill points behind them, Mike.

So let's go through them one at a time.

First one on our list here is superhuman knowledge and intelligence.

What do you think that would look like to a consultant?

Well, I think we've talked about this a little bit before.

We're so intellectually competitive sometimes consultants and maybe because we still suspect that there's someone out there perhaps working for a more prestigious firm or for an investment company or think tank who's even smarter.

Than we are, heaven forbid.

Now, I know it's uncomfortable to think about, but it's certainly possible.

And what are we going to use our knowledge for?

We're going to use our knowledge, our infinite knowledge, to understand new industries in the blink of an eye.

Synthesized vast amounts of data in the tenth of a blink of an eye.

You know, identify those patterns, those cause and effect loops, identify innovative solutions and come up with crazy ideas.

If we had infinite intelligence, Mike, we'd be able to do all of this.

And maybe it's a bit of an old fashioned perspective.

I can still see this.

In some parts of consulting, we recruit and hire and reward lots and lots of this.

The raw intellectual horsepower is something that we tell ourselves we just can't get enough of.

Yeah, and it's funny we keep saying this and doing this over and over again, but, but I think if we look at corporations and consulting firms that have really acted on this strongly, we've seen plenty of super smart people who've caused enormous damage to relationships and teams and cohesion.

Yeah, I could think of multiple examples in my life.

But going back very, very early, you know, we had one super, super smart guy, a guy that, you know, I think would legitimately called scary smart in that it was so astonishingly brilliant and got better results than any of us could imagine getting.

And he ran an investment portfolio for us and some of our clients.

This was consulting tied into insurance.

So, you know, these investments were really important.

But this guy was so scary brilliant that we realized very quickly we could never let him talk to our clients.

He almost, if there's an old cartoon of Peabody kind of this almost like childlike super brilliant scientist in his little lab coat, that was Bill.

You best keep him in his laboratory of financial investments.

Now, more recently, I don't know how widely watched this is, there's a series on Amazon prime called the Boys, Amazon Prime Video.

And in there is sister Sage in the Boys who is the smartest woman in the world.

And you can see how this is, you know, scary smart in a different way.

More of an evil way here.

But there are other characters as well that are super smart, right?

Sherlock Holmes, Tony Stark, these people are all portrayed a little bit as having a bit of sociopath in them as well as super smart.

And like you said with your colleague, maybe it's easy to characterize somebody who's very smart as also being a bit young or a bit naive or a bit childlike, either in their, in their physical presence or in the way that they are.

Now.

How much of that's real and how much of that's what we imprint on them, I don't know.

And certainly Sheldon Cooper does not fit into that.

Sheldon Cooper and otherwise.

So, Mike, I don't think we can really follow a trail into superintelligence as a real consulting superpower.

So maybe we can move on to another one here we've got mind reading.

Now, this very often comes up when we ask the question.

And if I was to ask a consultant the question, why would you like to be able to read minds?

They'd probably say things like, I'd like to instantly understand what the client needs, what they're really thinking, their concerns, their hidden agendas.

Because we're a little paranoid, as we're going to say later on, we believe everybody's got a hidden agenda.

We'd like to be able to understand office politics, organizational pain points, their real decision making criteria.

All this stuff that seems to us opaque in consulting life.

It would be opened up if only we could read minds.

And that's got to be an unadulterated good, right?

Oh yeah, yeah.

And you know, to get all this, I mean, how much time is spent in so many consulting projects in discovery?

Oh, what if we don't really need to do that because we now know all of that, or we get it very, very quickly and think about how accurate and tailored and you know, it just would be so nice.

But maybe there's another reason this is so important to a lot of consultants.

Well, yeah, I think we're naturally a bit paranoid, aren't we?

We're thinking some of the time, what do people really think of me?

What do they really think about my firm?

If like lots of other consultants, you've got incipient imposter syndrome and frankly, who doesn't?

And then the idea of mind reading is one of those terrible double edged swords.

On the one hand you could find out, but on the other hand you could find out.

How do you live with the anxiety of, on the one hand wanting to know how they see us and on the Other hand, realizing that you might have your worst fears confirmed, if only you knew.

That's a never ending bit of paranoia here.

It's funny, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about Shakespeare, and I was thinking, this is why Hamlet in the Shakespeare play maybe, is a management consultant.

That great line, what was it?

Conscience does make cowards of us all.

I think he's got a line on management consultants.

We might have to dig in that in another episode.

Nice, nice.

Well, and speaking of this, you know, perhaps paranoia, I remember we had a colleague who was brilliant and so good, but whenever we were getting client feedback, if 99% of it was just off the charts positive, but somebody made one negative comment, you know, she would rather not know about any of it than have to read that.

So you're right.

Well, this is a superpower mind reading.

That is.

That's agonizingly close to being a real skill.

People give signals all the time of what's on their minds.

It's present in people's behavior, their body language, their gesture.

Human beings other than consultants are actually quite well equipped to read what's on people's minds from their body language.

That's why we all watch reality TV and why it's so popular.

So I think, Mike, there's room for us to dig into this a little bit more in the Luminaries episode.

Think about what kind of social skills, what kind of other mindsets might help us to read minds almost as deeply as if we had a superpower.

We'll get into that in the Luminaries show.

Nice, nice.

So, Ian, what's next on our list of consulting superpowers?

Well, next on our list, Mike, is that old Chestnut, time travel.

So what do you think about when you're thinking about time travel?

Well, first off, let's just state some assumptions.

This is time travel both forwards and backwards in time.

Which gives you one of the parts of the superpower unlimited do overs.

Gosh, wouldn't I love that.

And by being able to do this, advance knowledge of what's about to happen.

And not just consultants want this, right?

Lots of us want knowledge about the future.

Think of all the exciting things you could do.

Think of all the different ways you could be successful if you knew the future.

Playing the stock market, gambling, bitcoin mining, politics, God forbid, sports punditry.

And while we're in the world of cultural references, Mike, this has been a popular theme in fantasy storytelling.

Back to the Future with the DeLorean, Dr.

Strange, Paul Atreides in the Dune you know, hitting yourself up with the spice to see into the future.

Humans can benefit from seeing into the future.

If only it were true.

Consultants maybe particularly wish for this either because they want to have infinite chances to correct their mistakes and have multiple do overs, get multiple chances to tinker some more with their PowerPoint slides before they're due and generally multiply their productivity.

And I think that the people who ask to be able to travel backwards in time tend also to be the people who want the superpower of cloning themselves.

Yeah, I absolutely agree, Ian.

I mean, this goes way beyond just knowing which of those 95 pages in their latest presentation is actually going to be one the client needs to see and understand.

But it really would help consultants.

You know, I'm thinking back to our lives so many times.

Meet impossible deadlines, handle multiple concurrent client engagements, achieve work life balance.

Oh my gosh, that's what I wanted my Star Trek machine for.

But this could be even better.

And have time for deep analysis while maintaining rapid delivery.

Really nice.

That would be great.

And again, Mike, I think this is one of those skills that is agonizingly close to being a real thing.

We spend a lot of time in consulting, thinking about patterns, about cause and effect.

So actually consultants are quite good in their limited way at looking into the short term future.

We've also, from time to time, as consultants had to be good at looking further into the future for clients futurology and scenario planning.

I mean, we've talked about those before on the show.

Mike.

You're right.

I mean, you know, when you can make accurate predictions or at least pin the corners on the future, when you can identify risk early, you can develop robust strategies and help clients prepare for future scenarios.

You know, multiple future scenarios.

Which has the added benefit of getting them to pay attention to what's going on.

To what, look at signposts and everything.

That's pretty magical, as we used to say to folks in the midst of these kinds of projects or in introducing them to them.

Anybody who hasn't been to the future is doomed to be surprised by it.

Right?

And I think our clients are often paying for us to take the edge off some of the surprise that's coming around the corner for them.

So, Mike, let's take our next superpower here.

That one's going to be mind control coupled with persuasion in particular.

This is probably the most requested of all of them.

To be able to reach into someone's mind and influence their thinking and their decision making.

It just, it's enticing.

Who doesn't want to be like Obi Wan Kenobi in Star wars, distracting the stormtroopers with a little flick of a wrist.

And they whispered, these are not the droids you're looking for.

Do you like that they did the voice there?

It was beautiful and well done.

Yeah.

And it seems that a consultant's life is partly made up of finding new or only partially known facts and then persuading the client that they the new facts are relevant and actionable.

Shortly followed by trying to persuade the client that what they need next is more work from consultants who undercover more partially known facts and then persuade.

Well, you get the idea, right?

A never ending cycle of discovery and persuasion.

That sounds beautiful to me.

Like that sounds like a story written in the stars forever.

Nevermind.

I'm getting too excited here to be able to control someone's mind.

Obviously, Mike as well, there are payoffs in selling in negotiation.

Now I don't think actually that persuasion is all there is to our profession.

In one of our recent luminary episodes, we talked about how common it can be for us to get stuck in persuade mode when we're writing or presenting, for example.

So I think although this is tantalizing for consultants, it's so close to being a real thing for us that we might get a little bit blinded by it.

And I think we could talk about this one some more in the luminary show as well.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think that's a great idea.

And how to not get seduced by it and blinded by it, but to actually achieve that superpower for good, as Spider Man's, you know, dying relative might say.

Speaking of Spider Man, Mike, what's superpower number five?

Well, shape shifting and invisibility.

So Spider man, you know, kind of a little bit shape shifting in this web flowing, but a spider reference, I'm about to say to be a fly on the wall, maybe, maybe the fly is not as happy about the spiders.

But how many times have you wanted to be able to be that fly on the wall?

You know, I think that's what a lot of people have in mind when they ask to have this superpower.

Either being a fly or perhaps the all seeing eye of Sauron.

You know, again, that's a bit of a different take on how we view ourselves.

I suspect our clients think that we want to be the all seeing eye of Sauron.

I think we'd all just be happy being a grubby insect, you know, somewhere up among the ceiling tiles.

So maybe the benefit of invisibility that fly on the wall.

Superpower is kind of the same as the benefit of being a mind reader, as we said back in one of the earlier superpowers, so that we'll know for sure what the client is really saying.

We could be in the room with them, but invisible, maybe.

Also, it's about being able to adapt, being able to play the role of a chameleon, you know, fitting in seamlessly to different corporate cultures, adapting to different communication styles, building rapport with people in different client environments.

I know that I used to have a colleague back in the days when consultants all wore grey suits and ties, and some of our clients in telecoms and media used to wear earrings and ponytails and Grateful Dead T shirts.

These days, it's pretty much the reverse.

But this particular partner used to say he had a convergent media disguise in his locker.

Like he'd take off his suit and tie if he was going to take a meeting with a client from the media industries, and he'd go and get into his weekend gear.

It's an important thing to us sometimes to be able to blend in at least a little bit with our clients.

It is.

It is.

I remember one of my clients that had the kind of ilk that you were describing, who, if you forgot and wore a tie in, would come up to you as you walked in the door and cut it off with the scissors.

Yeah, brutal.

Brutal.

So we've talked about reading and controlling minds.

We've talked about moving through time.

We've talked about shape shifting.

Those are the majority of the ones that we've heard about when we've asked people for their favorite superpowers.

We found a couple more as we were thinking about this.

The first one's really interesting.

Very up to the minute, I think.

Mike, what is it?

Well, digital integration.

And that's digital and perhaps could be extended also into bio or DNA kind of hacks.

So how cool would it be to have tech built into your body?

Think about consultants over recent history, the last several decades, how they behave around smartphones and blackberries.

Remember the day of blackberries and the like when they were first introduced?

It would not have been surprising to see a consultant with a mobile device embedded in some part of their anatomy.

I remember partner's chief of staff, if you will, saying, you know, he would find me anywhere in the world.

And I didn't get how he did that.

And he said, oh, you didn't realize that we, you know, when we first interviewed you, we knocked you out and put that little device inside Your mower.

So, you know, I think this has been part of consulting for longer than I imagined.

Yeah, and embedding tech into ourselves.

We're back into the Marvel superhero world, Mike.

Tony Stark has an energy source in his chest.

Presumably he mainly uses that to allow him to stay up late making PowerPoint slides without needing any Red Bull or any pizza.

And for those of us of the right age to remember Star Trek, not the original show, but to remember Star Trek Next Generation.

In that show, of course, we consultants no longer had Mr.

Spock to idolize as our archetype.

By the time we got to the Patrick Stewart era, we had a new person who was the smartest and coolest individual on the Enterprise.

Step forward.

Seven of Nine.

She was half human, half Borg, with digital technology built right into her.

And besides being a very good looking lady, I'm pretty sure, Mike, she might have started her career at Accenture.

What do you think?

I'll bet so might have even been when it was Anderson.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, maybe too, Ian.

This superpower is already available to us, but we don't realize it yet.

The AI tools we've started to use in consulting are pretty much digital extensions of ourselves or.

Except they're software, not hardware.

Right.

And again, go watch Star Trek, Next Generation and the Borg.

It's all about infiltrating the software, ladies and gentlemen.

So mate, the final one on our list here I think is one we both prize this and I think this is absolutely your wheelhouse.

Tell us about superpower number seven.

Well, seven is one that I'm, as you say, very much aspiring to.

It's way late in life, but infinite equanimity or self control.

So a dictionary definition is mental calmness, composure, evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations.

So you know, what might this look like in consulting?

Here I'm thinking about the people I've known in consulting who had this.

And when I saw them exhibiting it, it was when they didn't get stressed, close to deadlines, they didn't make hasty responses, they didn't get into pointless fights with clients who managed to punch their buttons.

Basically we're talking about the kind of person who stays cool and has a little thinking gap between stimulus and response.

I remember a few months ago watching one of those TV documentaries of surgeons operating on somebody.

This particular surgeon was doing something fantastically complex on this very sick kid.

And halfway through this procedure that was being televised, this great big jet of arterial blood came up from the table and this guy was ice cool.

He said, it seems like, we may have nicked the patient's aorta.

Let's just take a look and see what else is going on here.

I'm like, dude, the kid's dying.

Totally complex.

Examiner, nurse, why don't you clamp that part of the aorta?

I'm going to.

And he was like, totally cool.

I thought, that is the level of equanimity that I aspire to that I know I can't get to.

Well, and it's funny, I'm thinking of people that I saw like this and I don't know where this guy's head was.

I love that.

I think it's a fabulous example.

But some of the folks that I saw exhibit this didn't take themselves too seriously, which helped as well, you know, especially in consulting, because there weren't a lot of people that I saw who didn't take themselves too seriously.

Right.

And that's a problem that hasn't really gone away.

You think we'd all have mellowed as an industry over time, but it seems like we haven't.

No, no.

I mean, in the day of social media, I mean, it seems that we've always been prone to responding to perceived social slights or insults.

And I'd say in social media, we certainly haven't become any less susceptible to this problem.

Maybe more.

Absolutely.

So, Mike, that's the third one of our superpowers that we're going to dig into in the Luminaries episode.

We're going to look at equanimity and self control.

We're going to look at mind control, we're going to look at mind reading and see what connections we can make to real life practical skills for people in the consulting industry.

So, Mike, as we get towards the end of the show here, let's go back to the list again here in 2025, if you could conjure up any of these for yourself, any of these superpowers which would be on your list now.

Well, it's funny, I haven't given the digital integration, biohack DNA stuff much thought, but I'm thinking a lot and working a lot with Equanimity, so I think I'm going to pick that one for the moment.

How about you?

I think I'm the same.

And I think besides equanimity, just self control for its own sake.

It would get me a lot in other areas.

I'm thinking, particularly mind reading, particularly opening myself up, you know, becoming more aware of the situations that I'm in with other people that, oh, if I could given myself those two skills back in my 30s, boy, would life not have been different.

Amen.

Amen.

So we've talked about all these superpowers, Mike.

Of all the things that we've hinted at here, what's one thing that you think people can start to pick up on and use right away?

Well, I think, Ian, when we talk about mind control and persuasion, when we talk about things like mind reading, I mean, we've been talking about this all along in consulting for humans that if you want to know what people are thinking, if you want to read their mind, ask them, ask them, find out and do it where you're asking and then be open.

You know, all you were talking about, Ian, about the body language and actually listening and being curious and asking questions.

I think all of this starts to wrap together into people that you start to go, wow, how did they do that?

Yeah.

And my takeaway is going to be a really, really simple one.

But from a new perspective, I think both this self awareness and equanimity idea and also the idea of mind reading needs us to be a bit more curious.

So I think just asking for feedb, if you haven't asked anybody for feedback for a week or two, just go ahead and do it.

Ask somebody, what do you think's going on here?

Tell me two or three things that you've enjoyed about what I've done lately.

Tell me two or three things that you think I can do differently.

It's totally not a new idea, but it's totally something that I think gets new energy when you think hard about just how much any of these superpowers might really mean.

Well, and as we'll discuss some more, part of Equanimity is being able to be non judgmental.

And wouldn't it be phenomenally easier to give and receive feedback if we just took it as information?

Yeah, not as a consultant, but as a human.

Yes, exactly right.

Well put, Ian.

So, Mike, that's our show.

Thank you all for listening.

Please join us over on the Luminaries.

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