Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

by Peter Block
Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

by Peter Block

Hardcover(4th ed.)

$80.00 
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Overview

An expert discussion of the timeless fundamentals and latest tools that form the foundation of successful influencing

Renowned consultant and author Peter Block delivers the latest and fourth edition of his best-selling Flawless Consulting, an intuitive and insightful step-by-step guide to the five phases of effective consulting. The book offers a deep exploration of the skills, tools, and behaviors required to successfully influence others. You'll see exactly what you need to say and do to help others achieve their goals, whether you are an internal or external consultant or anyone in a leadership position who wants to build effective partnerships in business, healthcare, education, or community work.

Along with newly updated examples, case studies, stories, and suggestions for putting the flawless consulting process into everyday practice, you'll find:

  • A new section for consultants living in a highly virtual world that explains how to achieve authentic engagement with your clients in virtual and hybrid environments
  • Invaluable information for leaders and internal consultants operating within their organizations
  • Concise and digestible techniques for successful contracting and discovery

For over 40 years Flawless Consulting has been the go-to guide to building trust and structuring meaningful partnerships with others for greater influence and impact. This latest edition ensures that the book will remain the gold standard in the industry for many years to come.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781394177301
Publisher: Wiley
Publication date: 04/25/2023
Edition description: 4th ed.
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 33,444
Product dimensions: 7.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

PETER BLOCK is a bestselling author and veteran consultant who creates workplaces and communities that work for everyone. He is the founder of Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops to build the skills outlined in his books.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 8: Understanding Resistance

...It is always amazing to me how important it is for people not to be surprised. It seems that whatever happens in the world is OK as long as they are not surprised. When you have completed a study, you can tell a manager that the building has collapsed, the workers have just walked out, the chief financial officer has just run off with the vice president of marketing, and the IRS is knocking on the door, and the manager's first response is, "I'm not surprised." It's like being surprised is the worst thing in the world that could happen. The manager's fear of surprise is really the desire to always be in control. When we run into it, it is kind of deflating. It can signal to us that what we have developed is really not that important or unique and downplay our contribution. See the client's desire not to be surprised for what it is - a form of resistance and not really a reflection on your work.

The most blatant form of resistance is when the client attacks us. With angry words, a red face, pounding his fist on the desk, pointing her finger in your face, punctuating the end of every sentence. It leaves the consultant feeling like a bumbling child who not only has done poor work, but has somehow violated a line of morality that should never be crossed. Our response to attack is often either to withdraw or to respond in kind. Both responses mean that we are beginning to take the attack personally and not seeing it as one other form the resistance is taking.

Whenever a client comes to us for help, the client is experiencing some legitimate confusion. This may not be resistance, but just a desire for clarity.After things become clear to you, however, and you explain it two or three times, and the client keeps claiming to be confused or not understand, start to think that confusion may be this client's way of resisting.

This is the toughest of all. We keep making overtures to the client and get very little response in return. The client is passive. A client may say he has no particular reaction to what you are proposing. When you ask for a reaction, he says, "Keep on going, I don't have any problems with what you are saying. If I do, I'll speak up." Don't you believe it. Silence never means consent. If you are dealing with something important to the organization, it is not natural for the client to have no reaction. Silence means that the reaction is being blocked. For some people, silence or withholding reactions is really a fight style. They are saying by their actions, "I am holding on so tightly to my position and my feelings, that I won't even give you words." Beware the silent client. If you think a meeting went smoothly because the manager didn't raise any objections, don't trust it. Ask yourself whether the client gave you any real support or showed any real enthusiasm or got personally involved in the action. If there were few signs of life, begin to wonder whether silence was the form the client's resistance was taking.

When a person shifts the discussion from deciding how to proceed and starts exploring theory after theory about why things are the way they are, you are face to face with intellectualizing as resistance. The client says, "A fascinating hypothesis is implied by these results. I wonder if there is an inverse relationship between this situation and the last three times we went under. The crisis seems to have raised a number of questions."

Spending a lot of energy spinning theories is a way of taking the pain out of a situation. It is a defense most of us use when we get into a tight spot. This is not to knock the value of a good theory or the need to understand what is happening to us. It is a caution against Corroding with the client in engaging in ceaseless wondering when the question is whether you and the client are going to be able to face up to a difficult situation. The time to suspect intellectualizing is when it begins at a high-tension moment or in a high-tension meeting. When this happens, your task is to bring the discussion back to actions, away from theories.

Moralizing resistance makes great use of certain words and phrases: "those people" and "should" and "they need to understand." When you hear them being used, you know you are about to go on a trip into a world of how things ought to be, which is simply a moralizing defense against reality. People use the phrase "those people" about anyone who's not in the room at the time. It is a phrase of superiority used in describing people who (1) are usually at a lower organizational level than the speaker, or (2) are unhappy about something the speaker has done and, therefore, "really don't understand the way things have to be."

Phrases of superiority are actually ways of putting oneself on a pedestal. Pedestal sitting is always a defense against feeling some uncomfortable feelings and taking some uncomfortable actions.

The phrase "they need to understand" means "I understand - they don't. Why don't they see things clearly and with the same broad perspective that I do? Ah, the burdens of knowing are great and unceasing!" Frequently "those people" the speaker is talking about do understand. They understand perfectly. The problem (for the speaker) is that they don't agree. So instead of confronting the conflict in views, the speaker escapes into a moralistic position.

Moralizing can be seductive to the consultant. The moralizing manager is inviting you to join him or her in a very select circle of people who know what is best for "those people" and who know what they "need to understand." This is an elite position to be in; it has the feeling of power and it is well-protected-if the rest of the organization does not appreciate what you do, this is just further indication how confused they are and how much more they need you! Resist the temptation with as much grace and persistence as possible.

The most difficult form of resistance to see comes from the compliant manager who totally agrees with you and eagerly wants to know what to do next. It is hard to see compliance as resistance because you are getting exactly what you want - agreement and respect. If you really trust the concept that in each manager there is some ambivalence about your help, then when you get no negative reaction at all, you know something is missing.

Each client has some reservations about a given course of action. If the reservations don't get expressed to you, they will come out somewhere else, perhaps in a more destructive way. I would rather the reservations get said directly to me, then I can deal with them. You can tell when the agreeable client is resisting by compliance. You are getting this form of resistance any time there is almost total absence of any reservations and a low energy agreement. If the agreement is made with high energy, and enthusiasm and sincere understanding of what we are facing, you might simply feel lucky and not take it as resistance, even if there are few reservations expressed. But beware the client who expresses a desire to quickly get to solutions without any discussion of problems - also the client who acts very dependent on you and implies that whatever you do is fine.

If there has been elaborate data collection in your project, the first wave of questions will be about your methods. If you administered a questionnaire, you will be asked about how many people responded, at what level of response, and whether the findings are statistically significant at the .05 level. Next will be questions about how people in the guardhouse and on the night shift responded....

Table of Contents

Introduction: What is Enduring | What is New | Keeping it Simple xi

Chapter 1 A Consultant by Any Other Name 1

Part 1 Fundamentals 11

Chapter 2 Techniques Are Not Enough 13

Chapter 3 Being Right–Really 25

Chapter 4 Flawless Consulting 41

Part 2 Entry and Contracting 53

Chapter 5 Contracting Overview 55

Chapter 6 The Contracting Meeting 69

Chapter 7 Some Nuances of Contracting 87

Chapter 8 Some Agonies of Contracting 97

Chapter 9 The Internal Consultant's Dilemma 117

Part 3 More Fundamentals 125

Chapter 10 Understanding Resistance 127

Chapter 11 Dealing with Resistance 145

Chapter 12 Technology: A Marriage of Myth, Convenience, and the Virtual Hour 155

Part 4 Discovery and Underlying Concerns 163

Chapter 13 From Diagnosis to Discovery 165

Chapter 14 Whole-System Discovery 177

Chapter 15 Discovering Gifts, Capacities, and Acting on What We Know 183

Part 5 Analysis and the Decision to Act 203

Chapter 16 Focusing on the Picture 205

Chapter 17 Preparing for Feedback 217

Chapter 18 Managing the Meeting for Action 225

Part 6 Engagement and Implementation 239

Chapter 19 Implementation 241

Chapter 20 The Structures of Engagement 249

Part 7 Extension, Recycle, or Termination 263

Chapter 21 Transformation Will Not Be Televised, Livestreamed, or Managed 265

Online Appendix: Handy Checklists You Can Use 275

Further Reading 277

Acknowledgments 279

About The Author 283

Index 285

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