A Consultant’s Mirror
When I began my journey in the world of organizational change, I was 23 years old, bright-eyed and just out of graduate school. I remember it clearly. In a town in the southeastern Sri Lanka, victim to brutal sectarian violence two years before. A tenuous peace still holding. I sat there with hundreds of faces, watching them process inter-religious violence, trauma, and the non-linear path to the rebuilding of relationship.
And I remember thinking — this just isn’t my work. Not here, not on the front lines. I wanted to be more behind the scenes, helping others be out front and center, making change. And so I met with someone who seemed to be a wise elder at the time, asking for advice. I told him I was more interested in helping organizations be the best they could be, rather than the one on the front lines doing the change work. And he said very clearly: no. Only people with 20 or 30 years’ experience should be doing that kind of work.
Fast forward 20 years. I followed my passion and did the work anyway. Was I right? Was he right? I still contend with the fragile line between knowing and unknowing, experience and inexperience, insecurity and confidence, and humility and hubris. Internal voices arise in different contexts, each representing facets of me.
I have accrued my own set of varied experience.
Other people have more real-life experience than me.
Others are smarter than me.
I put more thought into situations than others do.
I am smarter than others.
I feel more comfortable thinking before I speak.
I have strong and immediate gut reactions.
Our final week of the Practical Self-Management Intensive focused on working out loud. Perhaps more concretely: on generosity, give and take, and being brave in public about both the giving and the taking.
A common exercise in my organizational change work is using a case study framework for teams. Many of us have used variations of this. It allows the person in the ‘hot seat’ to present some sort of block or challenge and to go through a process of inquiry, receiving of advice, and then integration of that advice (similar to the generative decision making processes, but with a different purpose).
When I facilitate these sessions, one thing I like to convey is that while it seems to be about the person in the hot seat, there are inevitably surprises that emerge about the ‘blocks’ that prove relevant for each person giving advice. Because we are mirrors to each other. We can be, in the best of worlds. And when we let someone else’s challenge in, we miraculously find within ourselves an amazing ability to pattern that vulnerability and grow as well.
The idea of giving is traditionally considered unilateral — one person helping another person. But in so many instances of giving, that energy is mutually reinforcing, enlightening, lightening, lightning. I give not because it feels good, but because it is one of the most human gifts to be able to do so. Because it reminds us how inextricably connected we are to one another.
I think about this in the context of who I am as a consultant. I see consultants around me filled with hubris and knowing. What is best for the client. What they should do. What all organizations should do. And I have moments where I stumble into that, particularly as I get older. And yet, the practice of acts of generosity, of asking for help, of working out loud — almost feels to me like a requisite ritual for every consultant. Because that unknowing, that vulnerability, makes me better. It reminds me that I am really just a mirror. That I do not really know what that person or team is going through. And while I can hold the vessel for their journey, the moment I forget that I too am in design, in vulnerable unfolding, is the moment that I no longer can serve as that mirror.
So I ask myself, as a practice:
How much am I asking out loud?
How much am I thinking before speaking?
How much am I practicing I don’t know?
How much am I wondering before advising?
How much am I purposely creating moments of vulnerability?
How much am I creating space for my unknowing?
This is not about discounting knowledge, experience, and perhaps even wisdom accrued over time. Often clients want answers, so this is not a directive for being in relationship with a client with a blank canvas. This is also not about insecurity masked as humility. Rather, it is about the palette I offer. I believe that the more I intentionally practice the values I center in my work — inquiry, brave communication, experimentation, learning (and unlearning), transparency — the more I will be able to be the kind of consultant (and person) I hope to be. A person who can hold complexity and contradiction. Knowing and unknowing. A mirror that reveals an infinite number of reflections.
Part 5 of a series of reflections during my participation in the Practical Self-Management Intensive.
