When it comes to business consulting, the employees are never happy. And one of these employees might include the CEO. It’s understandable, you as consultant are being brought in to correct problems created by the employees or to supplement skills they lack. Either way, they’re bound to take offense and worse yet, become defensive.
As a paleontological consultant, I often encountered this. One several occasions, I was threatened. One client wished me dead. It was a tough industry to work in. But I needed the work and choosing life developed an approach to consulting that preserved my life, furthered my career and even flipped some adversaries into good friends. I’d like to share the approach here.
Get to the Bottom of things
This is the really tough stage. You’ll have to interview everyone including the guys who want you dead. The trick is to listen long enough to get to the root of the issue and then enlist the problem employee in the solution. This is a two stage process. After all the interviews are complete, you should have a pretty good idea about what happened. This always indicates that the problem employees were less than forthcoming and further interviews are needed. Here’s where the magic happens.
Remove the Problem
In most cases, the problem employee is more of an unlucky employee that the crap landed on. This is usually due to poor planning, lack of communications or a host of other issues. Your role at this point is to reassure the employee that they are safe and even safer by cooperating. A good approach is “Yeah you screwed up but anyone would under those circumstances”. And I like to add that, “I’m sure I can report that you, having the best interest of the company in mind were valuable in identifying and correcting this issue”.
Remove the Employee
And then there’ always the issue of the malcontent that everyone hates coming in to work because of. This is the easiest issue to deal with. Once identified, everyone will help you build your case and onbce the bad egg is removed you’ll get invited to all the right parties and meet new clients.
No comments:
Post a Comment