The Grateful Consultant

It is almost Thanksgiving.

At our house we all sit around the turkey, for those who partake, and four-cheese mac-n-cheese for those who don’t, and say one thing we are each genuinely grateful for. Saying just one thing often precludes career stuff, I mean it doesn’t really stand up to health, and the love of family and friends gathered together,

But I am grateful for my thirty-seven year career in consulting, my clients, my colleagues and for interesting work, and enough remuneration that I was able to retire.

I actually think that gratitude is a required value for a good consultant. If you are genuinely grateful for your job, for the opportunity to help clients and their companies change, for the relationships you build and the collaborations with clients and colleagues, wouldn’t that make you a better consultant?

When I worked for myself, and received a check, I called, or wrote my client and said “Thank You.” Sometimes I sent hand written “”Thank You” notes. Thanking people for their business always seemed to pleasantly surprise people. When I called, I said thanks, and people often asked what I really wanted. “Just to say Thank You.”? “Really?” “Really.”

Thank You

Did you ever thank your boss or your colleagues? I wish I’d done more of that. I got wonderful opportunities and enjoyed working with mostly smart nice people.

I told clients I pitched, thank you for the opportunity, and I may have said the same when I was interviewing, but I don’t think I said ?‘thank you’ enough after I was hired.

I’m pretty sure I’ve told George Litwin I appreciate the way he mentored me and for some of the most exciting projects of my career. Thank you again, George. Did I thank Ellen Hart for hiring me at Gemini Consulting? Not sure. Thank You, Ellen. Did I than Jon Katzenbach, Marc Feigen and Niko Canner when I was hired at Katzenbach Partners or at any time before I quit four years later and left the same day? Thank you, Jon, Marc, and Niko.

Did I thank my partner Keith Morton at Morton-Culler and Company or my Results-Alliance partner the late Ric Taylor? I think I did, maybe not enough. Thank You Keith and Ric.

Thank you to Jere, John, Roopa, and Brigitte, and any and all who helped me and especially to those that I behaved in a less than grateful way.

I was probably better at thanking clients than I was at thanking bosses and colleagues. How very me.

“Hey, wait a minute,” you say. “What about self-confidence? Isn’t that the core of consulting? Shouldn’t? bosses, clients, and colleagues be grateful to work with me?”

You make an interesting point, person powering up. You are smart and nice and a little insecure so you work really hard. (This is the hiring spec for most consulting firms.) But are you sure that you aren’t covering your insecurity with confidence? Consultants sometimes do that so well that they come off as arrogant. Of course, there are also consultants that have been told for their whole lives how smart they are; these consultants come to believe their own press and their insecurities become buried so deeply below projected confidence that no one, not even them, know their insecurities actually exist. (Guilty.)

Don’t be that guy? (Most of these consultants are men, but perhaps gender-jerk correlation is not causation.)

Gratitude, though? Is that really necessary? Yes.

Let’s say you work in a firm with two mid-career consultants. One thanks the analysts and production people who stay up all night so the consultant has the deck for the client at 9:00 a.m. The other says “That’s the job. I did it. They’ll do it if they want to stay with the firm.” Who gets their work prioritized in a crunch? Who gets analysts to request to be staffed on their project and who gets those who are “available,” no matter how often the project manager complains to staffing “availability is NOT a skillset.”

Gratitude is a leadership trait and the definition of a leader is a person others want to follow.

And you have to be grateful even when you get bad news, “We need more time,” “The data show that your hypothesis isn’t true,” or “I made a mistake.” How a leader (grateful consultant) reacts to bad news, influences whether people tell you the truth, or are willing to take the calculated risks you ask of them.

Gratitude and humility are correlated, maybe even causally. The core of humility is respect for others. It is the willingness to admit that someone might have a better idea than you, or work at least as hard, or see a way to proceed that you might be blind to. If you respect others to that degree, wouldn’t you be grateful that they are on your team?

Some, who have met too many ungrateful, unhumble consultants will guffaw now, or at least, not believe this thesis. If I thought my apologizing for my own misdeeds and those of the miscreants of my former profession would help, I’d say “I’m sorry.” I am sorry.

My current contribution is to encourage others to be humble, ask more questions before you present an answer, and respect not just your client, but all junior members of the client system. Respect your colleagues even those much below your level. And be grateful these people give you the opportunity to help make positive change.

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At this Thanksgiving time, I am grateful for grateful consultants, for all my former clients, consulting colleagues and bosses, for subscribers to Wisdom from Unusual Places, and for those who helped me with, bought, read and/or reviewed my book, Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors.”

https://1link.st/alancayculler.author

Thank You!

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