Employing Differences, Episode 17: What if my consultant is wrong?

Paul: 0:02

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:16

I'm Karen Gimnig,

Paul: 0:16

and I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:19

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question?"What if my consultant is wrong?

Paul: 0:28

So I want to asterisk this and explain just a little bit what do we mean by consultant. In the way that we're framing this– the way we're thinking about this– a consultant is someone who sits outside of a group or a system, who is coming in to help in some way with the way that the group or system operates. They're really looking at the processes that you're using, and they're going to go away at some point. They're there to help that system, that process improve, and then leave. So there's usually some capacity building as part of it, there is some reflection, there's some discovery, things that happen there. Consultant is the general term. That happens to be what both of us do, but I come out of the Agile space. Oftentimes the Agile Coach fills this kind of role or a Scrum Master might fill this kind of role. So if you're coming from that kind of space, you could even phrase this question as"What if my coach is wrong?" So that's where we're coming from, that space of: You're working with someone who's there to help the group to improve its process, to figure out how to function better together, to adopt some sort of method, and you're just going,"This person has no idea what they're doing. That will never work here. It's not working right now. What they're telling us is just bunk."

Karen: 1:55

Yeah. So I think that to figure out what to do when you ask that question, you need to look at what's come before. So hopefully what's come before is a reasonably robust hiring process, some amount of trust and safety building, that there's really been a pretty significant selection process, and hopefully the team has had some buy in and it hasn't just been some external person deciding here,"Go work with them, whether they want you or not." So we're kind of assuming that the team had some amount of say, or at least started with some kind of confidence. If you just never wanted that person and hated them from the get go, that's a different conversation. But here we're talking about someone you've had a chance to get to know them. You chose as a team, or at least were okay or felt good about as a team. This is somebody who's going to come in and help us because they know some stuff we don't.

Paul: 2:52

And that you've seen some glimmers of that. I think that's maybe that's maybe the place to start from is,"Hey, this person was here, they were kind of helpful for a while, and now they're wrong."

Karen: 3:06

I think this is tricky space. One thing that's tricky about it is, if you knew how to do it, you probably wouldn't have hired them. So I think there's a piece of this that– probably give them the benefit of the doubt on the theory that they're trying something new, there's a fair chance it's not going to be entirely comfortable, and we hired them for a reason. It's worth a little bit of experiment, it's worth a little trial and error, it's worth"Let's see what we can do. We've invested in this person. Let's see what we can get out of that."

Paul: 3:48

There is a tool that I use all the time called the Rule of 2% Truth. When there's a thing that's hard for me to hear, and I find myself getting defensive about it,"What is the(at least) 2% of it that I can agree with?" When you find yourself thinking"What this consultant is telling us is wrong," is"What is the 2% of that that maybe you could agree with?" That can be particularly difficult because oftentimes we feel they're wrong when they're telling us that we are actually contributing to the problem that we want to solve. If we're in a situation where we really want to have a more participatory decision making process, where it isn't just– in the corporate space, we would say, the HiPPO decision making process, the Highest Paid Person's Opinion is what goes. If you're the HiPPO, if you're the boss, you've maybe even hired this consultant, and they're doing what you've hired them to do, it's going to start to get uncomfortable for you because whether you realize it or not, you are the problem. You're doing it unconsciously, unintentionally. You actually want something different, but the impact of your actions is the same. One of the things that may be telling you is,"Hey, this thing that you're doing is contributing to the thing that you've asked me to help address." You may say"That's wrong." It can be really useful in those moments to say,"Maybe it's not a hundred percent right? What's the 2% of that that I can agree with?" For me, that's part of giving them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they don't have the whole picture. They certainly don't have the whole picture. You know more about your context, and what's going on with you, and all o f the things around in your organization t han they do. They're the external expert, you're the internal expert. What is the piece of it that you can give them the benefit of the doubt about? What is the piece you can agree with?

Karen: 5:46

I think that example points to another thing you can do, which is ask around,"Am I the only one that is seeing that the consultant is wrong?" Because in your example, the HiPPO thinks the consultant's wrong, but probably if you ask around the team, they're like,"Yes! Yes! This consultant is my favorite person!" One measure would be probably somewhere on your team, there's somebody with some discernment to see the 2%– or maybe the 98%– so that's one way to sort of check."Is my discomfort or my disagreement with this consultant my thing, or is it actually a thing that we need to be addressing?"

Paul: 6:31

That was one of my favorite things about when I was internal to a company is that occasionally we get consultants that would come in, that would say things that we all knew were true and maybe people would listen because someone from the outside came in and said them. In a lot of ways– and speaking from the consultant's perspective– I'm coming in already fired. I don't have to worry about my continued employment in an organization or whether or not I'm going to get promoted. I don't have to be as guarded about the things that I say. Oftentimes we're not used to people telling us what their real experiences of our systems, of our groups, of our teams, of our ways of working are. If you are working with a consultant who isn't making you a little bit uncomfortable by telling you what they're actually seeing, they're hiding something from you most likely. But sometimes they have a complete misread on your situation. What do you do in those situations? I think is another piece.

Karen: 7:46

That's the next step. They need feedback. I think there's this misconception that,"Well, we hired in the consultant, they're the expert, they must just know." Well, hopefully they're an expert in some ways, and they have some experience to bring, also they aren't the expert on your team. They don't have 10 years of history of working with you, and they may not even have an expertise in your field. If I go and I'm helping an agile team, don't ask me to do the programming because that's not my expertise. The expertise I'm bringing is what's going on in the dynamics of the relationship. I'm going to need to hear back from you– speaking from the consultant's perspective– if something isn't working, the sooner, I can get feedback about that and a sense of that, and possibly even from the perspective of– if someone can come to me as the consultant and say,"You know, I'm feeling uncomfortable. Should I be?" It can be this joint conversation about where does the consultant need to adjust to be more effective. Maybe they're throwing you in the deep end and you needed to go through the shallows for awhile and they don't know that. Or maybe they're headed off in this direction that's actually not so helpful, but missing a piece because it didn't show up for them in that way or something. So feedback to the consultant often. If they're wrong, giving them feedback will often correct it.

Paul: 9:17

It is one of the best things you can do to improve your working relationship with your consultant is give them feedback, both affirmative and negative, both confirmatory and otherwise, as often as possible. Saying things like,"Hey, that exercise that we did in the meeting today, that seemed like it was really useful." Just telling them that or"I don't know how that landed" or"I'm not sure why you had us do that activity," or"Hey, I, I'm wondering if these people got a little uncomfortable" Almost certainly your consultant is asking themselves that questionl"I wonder how that landed. I wonder did that, did I push them too far?" Having a partnership with people who are trying to help you is one of the best ways of course correcting when things do go wrong, but also staying on course when they're right. The trap is that if you don't do that– oftentimes there's no feedback, no feedback, no feedback, no feedback, and then it gets bottled up and explodes at one point. That's when often you find yourself in that place of"My consultant is wrong! They're just not listening to me!" You haven't been saying anything. By building that muscle and that pattern of regular feedback, that gives you an outlet for when the thing goes horribly wrong. I was an internal consultant at one point in an organization, and I saw a problem, and I saw what I thought would be a good way of addressing it. Let's get a bunch of these different people together and instead of me solving the problem for them, we'll get together, and we'll kind of reveal,"Okay, this is the problem. Because all of you see only a piece of this, let's paint the whole picture and sort of figure out. Okay, what do you want to do about this?" I got called into the VP's office–who was my boss at the time– basically saying"Don't ever do that again, and here's why." Fortunately he and I had a good enough working relationship that he didn't fire me on the spot. That actually made our relationship stronger, because I hadn't considered how that was going to come across, how that was going to land, what his concerns were, what was going to happen with the people who I was inviting into this problem-solving, what it was gonna be like. I just had no idea. I operated from my best intent, and it was the wrong thing to do. I will own that one. I was wrong. He was able to tell me that in a way that we were able to move forward from and learn from, and it meant that the next thing that I did was right.

Karen: 12:30

I think on that feedback piece, also one more caveat. Sometimes people go and say,"Yeah, that thing didn't work. This is the thing you should do instead." And I would say that ideas are welcome, directives probably not. Remember that you hired them because they bring in expertise. So not only do they not need necessarily– tell them what didn't work. You don't have to tell them how to fix it necessarily. You may have an idea for how to fix it, but I would be very careful of,"Well, they didn't do the thing that I said. That means they didn't listen to me." It may actually be that the expertise that you hired them for had a better way to meet that need, then the thing that you thought of. So yes, a lot of feedback, but I'd be cautious of being too directive of"You didn't do this. I want you to do that." A good consultant hopefully will push back on that, but it absolutely is possible for the consultant to say,"You know, you're my client, I'm going to do what you're asking." Even if everything in them says,"Oh, bad idea." As a client, you can talk your consultant out of their best advice and you want to avoid that.

Paul: 13:51

It is really, really valuable to share with them how this landed with you, what your impression of the experience was. Going back to the way I think about feedback: Feedback is information about the effects of behavior. And so you want to let them know"This was the effect on me. This is what I think the effect was on other people." Because they may not know. And then if they're good, they'll get very curious."Oh, tell me more about that." And they might ask,"What do you think might've worked better?" What I try to do as a consultant is when someone gives me a suggestion of a thing that I should do instead, I'm going to tell them whether or not I'm going to do that and why. I'll say,"Thank you for that suggestion. I need to think about how we might, you know," Then, if I'm not going to take that suggestion, I'm going to come back later. I'm going to process and come back and say,"So I know that you suggested this thing, and here's why I'm not going to do that because of X, Y, and Z". You know, the thing that I'm bringing to this."What if my consultant is wrong?" The big answer to that is"Treat it as an opportunity to have a dialogue, to open a dialogue, to really explore what it was about that situation from everyone's perspective, so that you can move more towards what is going to work for you."

Karen: 15:25

I think one way to summarize what we're saying is you need to both treat your consultant as the expert you hired them for. Really give them the benefit of the doubt of that expertise. But don't pretend that that means they're perfect. So honor the expertise that they have, and help them out. They're human, they're a person. They don't know your team as well as you do. So give them that opportunity back and forth of conversation so that they're equipped to give you the very best service they can.

Paul: 16:01

Absolutely. Well, I think that's going to do it for us today. So until next time I'm Paul Tevis

Karen: 16:08

And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.