Professionalism in Consulting

Like many profound ideas, "professionalism" is an ambiguous concept used to refer to a wide range of attitudes, skills, values and behaviours. For example, if one asks people what is meant by referring to a consultant as "really professional," one hears a variety of replies. A really professional consultant, I am told,

• Gets involved and doesn't just stick to their assigned role
• Reaches out for responsibility
• Does whatever it takes to get the job done
• Is a team player
• Is observant
• Is honest
• Is loyal
• Really listens to the clients' needs
• Takes pride in their work, and shows a commitment to quality
• Shows initiative

This list indicates some of the differences between a "really professional" consultant and an ordinary consultant. It reveals that a high level of professionalism doesn't stop with a foundation of technical qualifications and analytical skills. In addition to these basic attributes, the right attitudes and behaviour must also be in place, and these become the distinguishing factor for achieving real professionalism. My former business manager said it best: "Professional is not a title you claim for yourself, it's an adjective you hope other people will apply to you. You have to earn it."

"You have to earn it" may not be a bad way to summarise what professionalism is really all about. It means deserving the rewards you wish to gain from others by being dedicated to serving their interests as part of an implied bargain. Professionalism implies that you do not focus only on the immediate transaction, but care about your relationship with the person with whom you are working. It means you can be trusted to put your clients' interests first, can be depended upon to do what you say you will do and will not consistently act for short-term personal gain. Professionals make decisions using principles of appropriate behaviour, not just short-term expediency.

Significant efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to "professionalise" consulting by promoting the use of the CMC -- Certified Management Consultant -- qualification. However, professionalism is not about qualifications and certification. Having an MBA from a name school or official recognition from a trade association or certifying body might say something about your knowledge, but these pieces of paper are unlikely to be predictive of your attitudes and behaviours, and maybe not even your skills. No formal qualification will ever provide complete assurance to the buyer that the provider will act appropriately, even if equipped with the required skills.

Forging Attitudes

The B-School Problem

It is not clear how consciously business schools, even those with special programs on consulting, set out to forge the appropriate attitudes for consulting. Through oversight or neglect, they may even sometimes create inappropriate behaviours. For example, many professional schools, whether in the law, business or medicine, work hard to create a sense in their students that they are an elite, the "best and the brightest." This can breed arrogance that later shows up (no matter how unintentionally) as pompous, patronising, condescending behaviour when dealing with clients. "You are the person with the problem; I am the trained expert, so shut up and do what I say." Only in recent years have medical schools begun to provide programs to fight this socialisation, and few business or law schools have anything substantive in this area.

Some schools have attempted to tackle the difference between knowledge and skill by building real or simulated consulting projects into the curriculum, but few, if any, are consciously designed to provide a critical examination of the consulting experience by debriefing and exploring issues such as (a) what does it feel like to be a client?; (b) what is the difference between being an expert (providing answers) and being a skilled advisor (helping the client solve his or her own problem)?; (c) what is the consultant's role when members of the client organisation are at odds or in disagreement?

Yet the need is readily apparent to each of us whenever we contemplate our own experiences as buyers of professional services. In working with professionals, I frequently ask them to tell me what they dislike about having to deal, as a client, with other professionals such as doctors, accountants, lawyers, interior designers and, yes, financial management consultants. The list I am given of how people are treated as clients by these professionals is remarkably similar, regardless of the profession being discussed. Professionals ("those guys"), I am told,

• Are pompous, patronising, condescending and arrogant
• Don't listen
• Treat me like a job, not a person
• Don't explain what they're doing and why
• Don't like to be asked questions or challenged
• Leave me out of the loop and take over my issue
• Tell me what they think I must do instead of giving me options
• Are more interested in my money than me
• Ignore my feelings and treat the issues as purely technical
• Apply standard solutions and approaches; don't make me feel as if they are customising to my needs
• Don't act as if they care about me

Test this list against your own experience as a patient or client with professionals. Does it sound familiar? What should be obvious about this list is that many, if not all, of the behaviours reported as missing are the very ones we would use to describe someone as a real professional. Note, however, that none are technical in nature, and all relate, one way or the other, to the provider's attitude toward dealing with the client.

A business school education does little to help students distinguish between the "consultant as expert" (I can solve your problem) and the consultant as helpful advisor (I can facilitate your decision-making process and help you make your decisions).

Successfully conveying an attitude of trying to help (as opposed to being right) is a pre-requisite for all consulting work: without the ability to earn a client's trust, content expertise will not be listened to by clients.

Few consultants report that they have been trained in these human interactive skills. Their entire education in schools and in firms has been about logic, rationality and intellect, and little, if any, experiential learning was provided to them on how to earn trust, win influence and establish relationships. Many do not want to engage in the interpersonal, social and emotional activities that being a "trusted advisor" requires. Many consultants consciously avoid anything that smacks of intimacy with their clients and rush to return to the "high ground" of detached, logical analysis where they feel most comfortable.

Further attitude problems, perhaps unconsciously, can be formed from the educational experience itself. In case-study-intensive programs, the student is invited to stand as the "outsider" and form judgments on the solutions to business problems. This can breed an attitude of detachment or disengagement; a view that logical, rational, intellectual analysis is the primary virtue; and that emotions, passions, and interpersonal dynamics are relevant only as subject matter to be studied and likely of secondary importance in consulting unless one is a "behavioural" consultant. At no time does the student receive the message that immersing oneself in the messy human dynamics of a business situation is a requirement to finding constructive solutions.

This problem is accentuated by other social conditioning absorbed in business schools about what business is about and what management involves. In one school of my acquaintance, hardly a single case study was examined without someone saying something like "This company is not in business to make widgets, it's in business to make money," thereby dismissing any need to feel passionately involved in the product, the customers or the employees. For better or for worse, such attitudes will influence the future consultant's view of what is important in his or her profession and inevitably send the wrong signals to clients.

Firm Weaknesses

The socialisation that takes place in consulting firms varies immensely. Firms often develop their own cultures of what they think "professionalism" is, and consciously or unconsciously socialise their employees into their specific definition of the term. They use the term constantly in their hiring and in proposals to prospective clients.

These varying definitions of professionalism differ immensely from firm to firm, probably appropriately so. For example, some firms emphasise "implementation" as the key to their professionalism, while others stress that their value is added by providing a "big picture" review. Is one of these strategies more "professional" than the other? Clearly not. It would be wrong to conclude that, for example, one must be involved in implementation or give the big picture to be deemed fully professional. The underlying issue is really one of integrity. Is the firm consistent in what it claims to be and do? Does it deliver on what it claims to provide? In essence, the issue is whether or not the firm has (and lives by) a clear ideology of high standards.

Some firms with a clear ideology, such as McKinsey, go out of their way to indoctrinate new hires into their value system (their way of doing things), which includes concrete positions on the role of the consultant, the appropriate way to work with clients and the attitudes expected of all consultants. Of course, what makes this formal indoctrination "stick" is whether or not the attitudes preached are, in fact, the ones that the young consultant sees modelled every day by the more experienced people in the firm.

Other firms, such as the Boston Consulting Group and Bain, also have a reputation for articulating clear, consistent, firm-wide positions on what they consider the role of a consultant to be (an ideology) and to which all members of the firm are expected to adhere. Naturally, these definitions are not identical firm to firm, but all serve the role of communication and forming a set of attitudes that are required by the firm. Whether or not the firm provides formal training or documentation is of lesser importance than the fact that there is a clear role model that all recruits are expected to emulate, and that the culture is strong enough to rein in instances of non-compliance.

However, many firms, particularly those who provide widely varying services to widely different market-places, experience a harder time in conveying a clear, unambiguous view of the consultant's role. In addition, many firms do not have a firm-wide ideology on this point. For these firms, which are probably in the majority, there is no enforced, common approach to working with clients. Individuals are socialised not through formal indoctrination but informally and randomly by the specific individuals they happen to work with. Little or no attempt is made to formally discuss the consultant's role and the attitudes it requires. As a consequence, the concept of professionalism is left ambiguous and, almost certainly, randomly implemented.

Skills with Clients

The range of skills that an effective consultant who wishes to become "fully professional" must develop is, in fact, a long list. While many firms train their people in such things as presentations, written communications, proposal writing and selling, a much smaller percentage actually teach their people about how to work with a client. Client service training, where it exists, is spotty and usually an after-thought. Almost none of it is taught in business schools.

Again, there are singular exceptions. Not surprisingly, McKinsey, with its reputation for making a heavy investment in training, is one of the shining examples. Formal programs of "influence skills" are available and required, taught by psychologists, and there is a common practice of reinforcing this learning by inviting a second or third consultant to sit in on client meetings to observe and debrief the interactions. Such activities take place in other firms, but few have such an organised approach that is clearly signalled and is mandatory for skill development, rather than one that is optional and idiosyncratic.

Other skills are required as a consultant develops. Paul Glen, in his book Leading Geeks (Jossey-Bass, 2002) lists, among others, the following competencies needed by an IT professional:

• Ability to manage client relationships
• Ability to manage technical teams
• Ability to play positive politics
• Ability to help expand client relationships
• Ability to work through others and make them productive
• Ability to manage ambiguity
• Ability to manage time horizons
• Ability to manage client relationships

To this fairly familiar list one could add a number of skills that most consultants wish they had mastered earlier in their careers:

• How to earn other people's trust and confidence
• How to earn, deserve and thereby nurture a relationship with a client
• How to give advice without being assertive or patronising
• How to deal with conflicts among client personnel
• How to manage meetings
• How to supervise others so they want to work for you again
• How to get the best out of those in support or administrative roles
• How to get someone in a more senior role to want to help you
• How to receive work delegated to you so you know what you're supposed to be doing
• If, when and how to say "no" to a senior person or client
• Getting feedback from others, inside and outside, in a timely form you can use

All of these are learnable skills (some are even teachable), and all are components of what I mean by the term "a fully skilled professional." Some of these are commonly contained in the typical firm's training program; a remarkable number of these skills are not.

Integrity at the Core

Integrity is usually taken to be central to the idea of professionalism. But what, precisely, does integrity mean? Consider the following list of statements, each taken from the mission or values statement of a real consulting firm:

• We always put the clients' interests first, ahead of our own.
• If a client wants to pay us to do things that we think aren't in his or her best interest, we'll turn the work down.
• If we have even the smallest doubt that we can't do this work to excellence, we'll turn the work away.
• We never lie, misrepresent or exaggerate, in any way, to anyone, under any circumstances.
• We stand by our work. If clients don't like our work, we refuse to take their money.
• If a client treats our people badly, or with a lack of respect, we'll walk away from that client.
• We will fire any employee who fails to treat others (at any level) with respect and dignity.

How many firms do you know that could meet all these standards? If you think the standards are too tough to be realistic, how would you change them? Do you think a firm that lived by these rules would flourish financially or die? What else do you think belongs on the integrity rules list? Every firm (and individual consultant) should reflect on the above questions.

The key point is that integrity cannot be judged by what you advocate, only by that which you always do. A claim to integrity is only meaningful if it includes this follow-up statement:

"We treat our espoused values as non-negotiable minimum standards, and counsel anyone who is not in compliance with them. If, after counselling, the person does not, or cannot, get into compliance with our values, we will help them find alternative employment."

One of the readers of my website, where I first posted this statement, responded as follows:

"No firm meets all these tests. Putting the clients' interests first, ahead of our own, is difficult to rationalise in public corporations. The commonly held guideline for behaviour (maximise shareholder value) inevitably leads to a violation of the spirit of this principle. Leaders are willing to deceive (if not outright lie) to anyone producing a "drag coefficient" on revenue, including customers. Can (should) this change? I don't think that adherence to strict integrity rules would actively constrain a firm's performance. However, the traits that lead to violations may lead to disadvantages down the road, e.g., lying can work in the short term, but not the long term."

Another reader of my website posed the following question:

"Do you think many professional firms are compromising their integrity in favour of money? The more competitive their environment and the larger their firm, it seems the pressure to maintain or increase revenue is just too great. Are professionals in such firms just high-paid technicians if the driving force from the firm is to make money even if this means risking its reputation?"

As these cynical comments show, there clearly are those firms out there that send a clear message to their people: "It's about the money, stupid: do whatever it takes." I have experienced first-hand those consulting clients who create such pressure to meet short-term financial goals that their people are led into faking orders, padding bills, neglecting client service and beating their staff to a pulp. In fact, if you read the gossipy bulletin boards on the Internet about consulting firms, you can easily conclude that such behaviour is more common than not.

Integrity Pays Off

It is difficult to prove with hard science, but my 20 years of watching consulting firms leads me to believe that in consulting you can't get away with a lack of integrity or ethics for long. I'd risk the generalisation that those consulting firms that have, over the years, vigorously enforced values, standards and principles will also have achieved the best brand names and the highest profits.

In 2001, I surveyed 5,500 people in 139 professional firm offices in 13 countries, posing 74 culture questions, as well as obtaining three years' worth of financial performance data. Using both step-wise regression and structural equation modelling (path analysis) I discovered that the answers to only nine questions accounted for more than 50 percent of all financial performance differences between and among these 139 businesses. They were

1. Client satisfaction is a top priority at our company.
2. We have no room for those who put their personal agenda ahead of the interests of the clients or the office.
3. Those who contribute the most to the overall success of the office are the most highly rewarded.
4. Management gets the best work out of everybody in the office.
5. Around here you are required, not just encouraged, to learn and develop new skills.
6. We invest a significant amount of time in things that will pay off in the future.
7. People within our office always treat others with respect.
8. The quality of supervision of client projects is uniformly high.
9. The quality of the professionals in our office is as high as can be expected.

The firms that succeeded financially were not those that preached these standards (nearly every firm does) but those whose staff, top to bottom, agreed that they were the principles on which their firm actually operated. What's notable about this list is how familiar it is. All it says is that the firms making the most money are those who are actually living up to familiar standards that everyone preaches. The message is that you can make more money when you behave and enforce standards, not when you superficially advocate them or merely post them on a bulletin board or company website.

Whether or not a consulting firm actually has the necessary standards of professionalism is proven by whether or not there are consequences for non-compliance. If a firm has a partner who does not treat others with respect, that partner must be counselled, and if the counselling doesn't work, then that partner must be fired. If the firm is prepared to go that far, it can, in my opinion, be called truly professional and will likely make more money.

Origins of Failure

If all this evidence is valid, why then is excessively risky short-term behaviour reported to be so common in business in general and is even found in many consulting firms? Why do we keep hearing of managers "forcing" their people into behaviours that at kindest can be described as "cutting corners" and at worst as unethical?

The most important point to make is that you don't have to be unethical to be dumb. As my questioner put it, consulting firms are doing things to make short-term profits that put their reputations at risk. That's not necessarily a lack of integrity, it's just stupidity. And, at some level, it's even understandable stupidity. A slightly compromised reputation might hurt you tomorrow, or the day after that, but, hey, that's the future, and you wouldn't believe the discount rate we apply to profits in the future compared to today! (And we'll have a year or two to make up for it, won't we? And maybe the clients will forget that we weren't that great two years ago!) Call this the short-termism excuse.

There are others too. I have sat in strategy meetings where firm leaders acknowledge the future cost of compromising reputation, but argue that by the time it hurts the firm they will have made their pile and cashed out. These people aren't really short-termers; they're just selfish and greedy.

Then there are consulting firm leaders who don't really believe their own mission statements, vision, values and strategy. They say that they believe a reputation for excellence is worth its weight in gold, but they are not willing to actually put the proposition to the test. For example, how many firms that preach dedication to outstanding client service are also willing to give an unconditional client satisfaction guarantee? Not many! These people are not being excessively short-term thinkers: they are cynics and unbelievers. They don't really think that building or sustaining a reputation is worth sacrificing any amount of short-term cash.

Another pathology that occurs among a firm's leaders who are not short-term thinkers, are not greedy and are not cynical is that they are very scared and lack courage. They would really like to stick with the firm's strategy and standards and not accept a short-term hit, but they are frightened to take such a risk, either because they think their partners will rise up and revolt, which is actually quite possible, or, if they are publicly held, that Wall Street will take out a substantial chunk of their market value.

A final group of consulting firms with low standards engages in short-term compromises and acts of expediency because they actually don't have ambition. To accept a short-term adverse consequence, you've got to have a passionately held ambition to get somewhere. Otherwise, why would you make sacrifices? Yet many firm leaders are more concerned about not messing up than they are about "going for the gold."

So what have you got to have as a person to "do the right thing?" You have to have integrity, and really believe in your strategy, mission and values, and have a dream, fervently desired, and have the patience and courage to bet on the long term, and resist palpable pressure from the constituencies you serve and

be willing to accept the short-term consequences of your actions. This all takes a level of self-discipline that few of us measure up to in our everyday behaviour. I guess that's why it's not common. And I guess that's why they call it professionalism.

Problems of Enforcement

If you really want to obtain the commercial benefits from any strategy, you must put in a system that forces you to execute that strategy. The tragedy of many consulting firms, and the source of their lack of professionalism, is that they have not put in place systems to enforce accountability for standards.

As an example of one that has, consider EDS, the computer services giant. They have a Web-based project management system that records everything about the project -- when are the next due dates, what have we done, what's on time, what's delayed, how much of the budget has been spent and accumulated? Here is the key point: this information is entirely accessible to the client! At any time, the client can log in and see where his or her project stands, with budget, due dates, deliveries, etc. EDS asks its clients to log in every two weeks to indicate on a simple scale of one to four their level of satisfaction with the client project so far. The chairman of this multibillion-dollar company logs in every day and can see client feedback from every client for the entire company, and that is the first thing he does every day.

What's impressive about EDS is not the technology but the willingness to be held inescapably accountable to high standards. Many consulting firms haven't even got a decent internal project management system, let alone one that they would give clients access to. Most firms have a mission statement that declares a commitment to client satisfaction and client service. But how many have a feedback system where they regularly ask clients, at the end of every transaction, how happy they are with the work? Only a few! How many publish those results with the names of the relevant partner to everybody in the firm? Even fewer! Instead, what exists in most firms is a frequently espoused belief that client service is very important, but a refusal to establish behaviours to accept accountability for it.

Firms typically leave it up to the individual and his or her self-discipline to accomplish high standards of professionalism, but that usually doesn't do the job. If there is no system that keeps people honest about performing up to standard, you don't get the benefits. The key, if you really want to make something happen, is to not leave it to self-discipline. If you really want to make something happen, create an external discipline. And if you don't want to try that hard, and if you don't want to be held strictly accountable, then fine, move on to something else. But if you can't find anything you're prepared to actually commit to, then recognise that you're probably never going to be anything other than no worse than anybody else.

The Upside

Imagine a world where every junior member of the firm says, "In this firm, one thing you can bank on is that you will be superbly supervised on every transaction. It is a matter of professional principle with us. We don't do work unless we supervise it superbly" (note that this was one of the nine profit predictors in my statistical study). What commercial benefits would come to that consulting firm if it were true that supervision was always done superbly?

First, from the firm's point of view, there would be less wasted time and rework, and the firm would experience lower write-offs and higher realisation. You could obtain better economic leverage because people would feel more confident in delegating work to trained people. Second, the firm would spread skills faster and the firm would do a better job of retaining people.

Clients would notice a higher level of quality and therefore might feel less fee sensitive, knowing that they had found someone who always supervised the work well. This is terribly scary, because maybe that might mean they would also notice when the work was not supervised superbly.

If, as a senior partner, I knew that every junior consultant had been supervised superbly since the day they joined the firm, I might actually trust these young people and delegate more to them; whereas if I am living in a normal consulting firm where excellence in supervision happens only sporadically then it's quite logical never to delegate because the juniors are untrained, unguided missiles.

This list of benefits for both firms and clients can be obtained by diligent, enforced adherence to a high standard of project supervision. But here is the issue: Why are many consulting firms not getting these benefits despite everything they promise to new recruits about the importance of quality, professional pride and great work environments? Why does the average consulting firm not enforce this standard? Because they can get away without doing it!

Many consulting firms fail to meet the high standards of professionalism not because they do not believe in them and advocate them, but because they fail to enforce them. It's not an issue of being "unprofessional" or unethical. It's simply a matter of the difference between the true pursuit of excellence and the acceptance of mere competence. They have wonderful standards of quality that are preached. But they will forgive any partner who does not do this, as long as he does not go to the opposite extreme and do something ugly -- sexual harassment or get us sued. Competence ("don't mess up") is not the same as professionalism ("uncompromisingly high standards").

Partners' Failed Leadership

If you go to the typical consulting firm today and ask, "What percentage of your partners would put hand-on-heart to say that they regularly read every issue of their main client's trade magazine? Not all your clients -- just your main client?" I can report from experience that, around the world, the answer is sadly in the single digits. Yet we all know that clients like for their consultants to show an interest in their business. So let me ask again: "Do you act as if you care about your clients?" In the typical consulting firm, the honest answer is, "We believe that we should care, but we frequently don't act that way."

I often talk about meeting three kinds of partners in consulting firms: dynamos, cruisers and losers. These, by the way, are not different people; they are all of us at different stages in our lives. A dynamo is somebody who is always acting like they have a career. In addition to taking care of this year, every year they are doing something to bring about their personal future. Every year they're always saying, "Where do I want to go next, and what do I do today to make that happen?"

The cruisers (by definition, not losers) are a very important category that includes the majority of partners. They are good, solid citizens, coming in each week to make the sausages. They come in next month and they make the sausages. They come in next year and they make the sausages. And everybody knows those sausages are fabulous. The quality is there. The hard work is there, but that person isn't actually going anywhere. He's acting like he's got a job, but if you said, "Where do you want to go next with your career? What kind of transactions do you want to be doing three years from now?" he'd say, "Sausages!" He has no particular desire to advance his professional career.

At some stage in your life, you're probably a loser. The usual reasons: divorce, alcoholism, cocaine, manic depression, the kids have been arrested again. Things happen. If you're lucky you deal with it and recover; if you're unlucky you get stuck.

In the typical consulting firm, I am told by firms around the world, the percentage of partners in those three categories is about 15 percent dynamos, 75 percent

cruisers and 10 percent losers. If that's the makeup of the typical partnership in the typical consulting firm, only 15 percent of the partners are trying to get somewhere and the large majority is just coasting along while making sausages day after day. Is that professionalism?

If my estimate is accurate, firms should not waste their time doing strategic planning. Because strategic planning in that environment is like trying to figure out which way to point the thundering herd when the herd isn't thundering. The issue is not direction or strategy. The issue is, "Do they or do they not have the appetite to go somewhere, and to accomplish it with high standards of professionalism?"

We therefore come to the key choice if you're considering a firm to join as a partner: which gang do you want to belong to? The tolerant firm says, "If you want to cruise, that's okay. Not only is it acceptable, it's actually the overwhelming norm here," just like in many consulting firms. Or you might want to join a firm where they say, "The rule here is you've got to be learning and growing, because otherwise you're not meeting your requirements as a partner. It's something we have a right to expect of each other, that we are all continually learning and growing." Notice that there's an option here for firm leaders to confront and decide. The choice is, do you want to set forth and enforce a high standard in your partnership agreement?

The Real Bottom Line

The lessons should be clear. You get the benefit of that which you actually do, not that which you encourage. Ultimately, professionalism goes beyond attitudes, knowledge and skills and is about dependable, reliable, consistent behaviour. You may believe in something, know how to do it and be skilled at doing it. But unless you can be relied upon to actually do it, and do it unfailingly, then you cannot hope to develop a reputation for professionalism.

The way you make money in consulting is not to be good at managing the money. The way you get money is to decide which product you want to deliver -- quick, hot fast food or fabulous cooking for some cuisine connoisseur -- and then enforce the standards appropriately for that choice though superb leadership. The money is an outcome of how high your standards are and what you do about them. He or she who lives to the highest standards -- in other words, is most professional -- wins.

Marketing is a Conversation

"The awful truth about marketing is that it broadcasts messages to people who don't want to listen ... much of business communication is written in contrived and artificial language, supposedly designed to impress, but actually signaling just how impersonal the firm and its professionals are."

As the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto (Perseus Publishing, 2000) suggest, it's time we stopped thinking of marketing as a one-way propaganda campaign.

Being talked to, preached at, or lectured to by those trying to win our business is generally felt as annoying, not persuasive. As clients, we don't respond to conventional, one-way, "packaged" marketing because it doesn't answer the questions we have when we are trying to buy, nor tell us what we need to know.

If you want to win my business, give me the chance to talk to you, person-to-person, about my needs, wishes, and wants. Make it easy and comfortable for me to share my secrets. In short, if you really want my business, let's talk; let's have a conversation.

There's nothing conceptual or special in our use of the term "conversation." We mean it literally, the way we all use the word in everyday speech.

A conversation's characteristics include:

• It's person to person; not role to role. People use normal language, not "corporate-speak."
• Both sides talk, and what one says is dependent upon what the other has just said.
• Both parties are engaged in joint problem solving; neither is trying to win or prevail.
• It's designed to allow people with different views to learn from one another.

Marketing (and selling) begin to work when a conversation moves away from being a role-to-role exchange of capabilities, contracts, and costs, and becomes a person-to-person interactive dialogue about ideas, beliefs, and perspectives. Only then can it build the chemistry, confidence, and commitment that lead to new revenues.

An Example

To illustrate the power of conversations versus one-way communications, consider how you might maximise your marketing effectiveness if you were invited to give a presentation at a client's industry meeting.

Being invited to give the plenary speech provides you with an opportunity to impress the audience with your great insights and personal style! But consider how much more effective you could be if you asked the conference organisers to let you also run a breakout discussion session, in competition with other simultaneous sessions, later in the day.

Here are some of the reasons why the small-group conversation would be the superior marketing activity:

• You get to talk to someone who, by choosing to participate, is admitting that he or she has a need (and you don't waste time or money on people who haven't).
• You can now not only naturally share your thoughts but also get these potential clients to tell you how they see the issue you discussed and how it relates to them and their firms.
• You can better tailor your comments to their questions and needs rather than, as in the plenary speech, guess which topics might have the broadest appeal
• You have a chance to discover what your client thinks are his or her most troublesome issues.
• You can let your potential buyer meet, understand, and get comfortable with the individual who will serve him or her.
• It provides both a reason and permission for you to make a follow-up call ("I've thought some more about the issues you raised last week and have put some ideas together. May I come by and share them with you?").

Both the one-way speech and the small-group discussion can be parts of your marketing package. But while it sometimes feels that being the featured speaker is high-impact, the truth is that you usually earn a higher return on your time by engaging in a real dialogue with people who have chosen to talk with you.

In professional services, the measure of marketing effectiveness is not the number of people who hear your message but rather how effectively and quickly you can get a client to share his or her problems with you.

This applies equally to both prospects and existing clients. Despite firms throwing around terms such as "customer relationship management" and "cross-selling," there is no more certain way to deepen an existing business relationship (and generate additional business) than by having regular, ongoing conversations with your clients, person-to-person, about the things going on in their business and how you might help them address any emerging threats and/or opportunities.

Note the eternal paradox: the less you try to sell in any one of these ongoing conversations, the more comfortable your clients are likely to feel about sharing their concerns, issues, and needs -- and hence the more likely it is that you will attract added revenue.

Turning traditional marketing approaches into conversations

In stressing the need to create conversations to improve your marketing effectiveness, we do not mean to imply that all traditional marketing approaches should be discarded. Rather, they need to be restructured into conversational activities. Here are some ideas that work:

1. Instead of commissioning market research, hold a "salon" with a small group of clients.

People are increasingly numbed and inured to the various forms of data collection used in market research. When was the last time you filled out the hotel's "please tell us how we are doing" form, or agreed to participate in the market research company's late-evening unsolicited telephone survey?

Why don't you make it more personal and real by inviting some people whom you really like and admire to come and discuss important issues of mutual interest? Be sure to invite interesting people, not just those from your biggest and most profitable accounts.

A number of consulting and accounting firms discovered long ago that to make a seminar effective, it wasn't necessary or even desirable for firm members to "hog the podium" and make all the presentations.

The mere fact of organising and running regular get-togethers for clients and prospects allowed the firm to learn what was on clients' minds and, not coincidentally, demonstrate that the firm's people were in the flow of what people in the client's industry were thinking. That's what hosting a "salon" is all about.

You can kick things off by posing a what-if question that challenges a key assumption, and let the conversation unfold. You will intervene with a prompt only when the attendees can't think of the next thing to talk about.

To promote real discussion, ban presentations. Instead, use themes that centre around "Why?" and "Why Not?" questions; and debate new ways of understanding client issues.

Then you can wrap up by asking your clients if they think your firm should spend time around one or more of the ideas that emerged. Ask whether that would be of value to them.

Meetings do not have to be in person. You could make your top professionals available for live "call-in" sessions for interested clients, so that they can "Ask the Experts. "Then, you could record each session and offer them as podcasts or as rebroadcast programs from your website.

One of our clients does this superbly: a group of their clients meets monthly by phone around lunchtime, so they can eat sandwiches at their own desks while still participating in a 45-minute conversation moderated by an advisor from the firm. Clients describe it as unobtrusive, personal, effective, and free -- and as a solid means of winning their business and earning their loyalty.

2. Instead of focus groups, satisfaction, and other qualitative research, create private online communities for clients.

The salon concept can be extended to cyberspace. Today's on-line technology not only facilitates this old idea but perhaps even requires it.

The Internet, including blogs, chat rooms, and forums, has changed how people get ideas, share information, communicate in a human voice, ask questions, and respond. Its two-way style has been embraced, changing how people want to learn, connect, and build relationships. Conversations, once key, are now crucial.

Hosting and moderating such a private online community site (or forum) allows clients (and possibly prospects) to pose questions to peers, to provide input on developing industry issues and, yes, to comment on your new or enhanced services. Clients will be able to find new ideas not only from you, but also from their peers.

If someone is going to provide the place for people to chat on-line about the issues your firm serves, shouldn't it be your firm?

3. Instead of developing a capabilities brochure (including making your website an electronic brochure), turn your website into an interactive location offering advice, ideas, and commentary on trends.

The Internet offers many ways to invite visitors to your site to interact and participate. You can, for example, use "how valuable was this" buttons to get people to tell you what types and formats of information are most useful to both clients and prospects.

You can get visitors, viewers, and listeners to suggest topics for future content. You can use interactivity to find out which means of communication each client prefers: video, audio, or the written word, and let them select their preference. You can help each individual client experience your people and their thinking in the manner that they prefer, instead of treating all clients as an undifferentiated part of a mass audience.

4. Instead of a newsletter, create and maintain a blog (a regular journal posted on the web), sharing your ideas on topics relating to your clients' sectors.

Blogging forces you (for better or for worse) to think about your ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and how they are relevant to your marketplace.

Critical to a blog's success is a feature that not only allows but encourages people to post replies. Reply to the repliers. Analyse what topics are being read the most. Pay attention to data about where you're drawing people from, and factor that into your marketing planning.

It's really hard to sustain a conversation, especially on a blog, when you don't have anything interesting to say. Should you find you are getting stuck and are groping for something to write, it may be a signal that you, individually or as a firm, have a lot less to contribute than you thought.

And if your clients don't find what you are saying to be interesting, your problem is more than a marketing challenge!

5. Instead of having a set of slides for sales presentation talking about your capabilities or your philosophies, talk about things that people like to listen to: stories!

Stories help you make meaning and decipher complexity. They present points in a way that allows the listener to accept their truth without ego or ownership getting in the way.

They are memorable and repeatable, thereby helping employees and clients tell others about your firm.

They are the soul of conversational marketing. "Here's a story that's interesting ..."

Anytime you can get the other person to say "... and then what happened?" you will be making great progress in connections, relationships, and creating the desire in that person to talk with you more and to work with you. You need to be ready to not only describe key principles, but also to give interesting anecdotes that illustrate your ability to offer innovative ideas and solutions.

But don't keep it just one way. Make it easy for clients to tell you their stories. You'll learn a great deal about what needs they have, what issues they are prepared to tackle, what past experiences they have had with others in your profession, and even what new projects they are prepared to launch and pay for.

6. Find ways to see the client's perspective of what you are communicating.

By definition, we professionals, when we write or speak, are doing so for clients who are not necessarily trained in our field. We must write for the intelligent layperson, communicating our expertise clearly without condescension.

One rule that works effectively for us is that no article (or any document of any length) leaves the office until both one's spouse and one's secretary have read it, said it makes sense, and that it flows reasonably well. Both "checkers" are intelligent laypersons with no formal business training; yet they prove exactly the right audience to test our language, tone, and sense.

How else are you going to make sure that what you say and intend to communicate is truly being heard as you wish it to be? Writing (or speaking) to be easily understood, and not just to impress, is a skill that can take a great deal of conscious effort to develop.

7. Instead of developing presentations and proposals, conduct sales and proposal meetings as "joint problem definition and option generating" sessions.

When you force clients to sit through pre-packaged presentations, you often create dynamics destructive to the chances of establishing connections that win business. Formal, prepared presentations force clients into passive listening roles, and make presenters appear pompous and more concerned about talking about themselves than about helping the client.

If you doubt this, think back to the last time you had to sit through a PowerPoint presentation. How engaged were you? Most of us sit through such presentations, patiently or impatiently, silently asking ourselves, "When is this person going to shut up, so that I can ask about the real issues on my mind?"

So, what should you do? Simple. Start a conversation. Sit down at eye-level with your client or prospect, and say: "I've brought along all the materials and information you suggested -- it's in this set of handouts I'm giving you now -- but rather than my starting talking, perhaps I can ask what it is that you'd most like to find out in this meeting?"

You'll waste less time, and your clients will be grateful that you are treating them with respect. And you'll win more business by getting quickly to the issues on their minds.

This analysis can be taken further. As I pointed out in Negotiating Quality, you can't really write a proposal until you find out which version of success a client wants with this project. Does the client want the version with the least up-front cost, or the biggest long-run impact? The quickest impact, or the one that requires the least involvement by their people? Any of these are valid client requirements, but you can't write a proposal until you have had an in-depth conversation about the alternatives. Saying "Here's our firm's approach" is a gamble at best, and most likely suicidal. Proposals should be developed and written together with the client as a joint activity.

8. Instead of worrying about your logos and the appearance of your written materials, pay attention to your physical space ensuring that it is designed to encourage true conversation.

For example, you can take the tables out of some of your conference rooms. You can turn one wall into a white board on which participants can write as ideas emerge. You can make another wall a cork board for sticky notes so that ideas can be attached as conversations unfold. If you want clients to engage, create an environment that facilitates this!

9. Instead of spending their time planning and strategising, get your firm's leaders to conduct a series of key "royalty to royalty" meetings outside of formal presentations.

Clients are sceptical about powerful CEOs or managing partners who show up for key sales presentations or "beauty parades," never to be heard from or seen again. It's an old idea, but still an under-utilised one: use your senior officers to have meetings with senior client officers, talking to each other about issues in a way that the mere mortals serving clients day-to-day may not be able to do. The goal of good marketing is not only to create more conversations. It is to create more kinds of conversations that will lead to new insights, stronger relationships and better ways of working together.

Some guidelines for creating and conducting effective conversations

So far, we have discussed some of the opportunities that professionals and their firms have to create conversations. Now let's turn to the topic of how you ensure that you are skilled, engaging conversationalists in all of your marketing activities.

Think of a dinner party conversation. What makes a good conversationalist at a dinner party? He or she:

• Has a fresh point of view, but does not try to thrust it upon everyone else
• Speaks politely and respectfully
• Tells good stories to illustrate key points
• Is good at drawing other people's views out and drawing them into the conversation
• Speaks intelligently on a variety of subjects, but is not afraid to admit areas of ignorance
• Avoids trotting out well-worn arguments that have been made time and time again
• Listens with genuine interest
• Is light-hearted in style, but always respectful of other's views

All of these conversational skills also apply in effective marketing. You may remember to behave this way at a dinner party, but do your sales meetings really meet these criteria? What about your seminars, speeches, articles, blogs, and websites?

The tone of the experience you provide clients in your marketing efforts should be friendly; it should invite people in to chat and to think about ideas; and it should encourage both sides to get to know each other as people.

This, of course, requires that you are comfortable in your own skin, and that you are who you are. Much of traditional marketing is designed so that people aren't required to put their own humanity on display. They hide behind formal, corporate language and tactics. Not only are such approaches ineffective, but they create the impression that the professional or the firm is afraid to let its hair down.

I recently advised a major corporation that was reviewing its relationships with five outside PR firms. All five of the established firms explained their credentials and relevant case studies, all of which sounded remarkably the same. They all stressed how results- and client-focused they were, again sounding remarkably the same. They all asked the right questions. It was difficult to distinguish one from another. None was trying to engage the client in a dialogue. Each firm's style was more report-like than rapport-like.

The company finally called in two underdog firms that didn't fit what they had previously thought should be the criteria for selecting an agency. Because these agencies didn't think they had much of a chance of getting the business, they were frank, funny, provided unusual insights, challenged the company's assumptions, and were blunt about what it would take to improve the company's reputation.

"Those guys are great," was the overwhelming company response after the first meeting, and again through all subsequent meetings. The company hired both of the underdog agencies instead of the established firms.

The traditional marketing (or sales) approach had failed miserably because it took the safe road, presenting capabilities and talking "at" the prospect rather than beginning a conversation that made the other side want to continue the dialogue.

If you want to impress your prospects, you can't afford to make arguments and points that are commonly made. You must have a fresh point of view -- and it's rarely effective if it's just another claim about you, your firm, or "your philosophy."

Summary

In discussing these thoughts with our clients, we often hear the view expressed that "This all sounds nice, but we are often only given a small amount of a client's (or prospect's) attention. There's no time for a real conversation. Shouldn't we use that brief amount of time to communicate what's special about us?"

This reasoning is flawed for many reasons, most importantly because when your initial time with a client is brief, the main success goal is make the client want to have another meeting, to continue the conversation. And talking about yourself (or your ideas) is an unlikely way to make this happen.

Far better to use your limited time to get the client or prospect thinking about things in a new way, and hence eager to schedule a follow-up meeting and continue the conversation. For example, why not do what a good dinner-table conversationalist would do. Offer a provocative or counter-intuitive hypothesis and begin to ask: "What if we looked at this in a different way?" "That might be interesting." "I wonder what the reaction of others might be."

The goals of initiating and deepening relationships are vastly more important than conventional marketing's goals of "building "awareness" and generating "leads." And nothing -- nothing -- builds relationships better than regular, meaningful conversations.

To have these interesting, meaningful conversations, you must have something new to say. Developing fresh points of view means reframing issues, and creating new metaphors and language to talk about them.

However, the message itself is only the beginning of marketing. Its value exists only if it leads to a dialogue with clients: "That was interesting, tell me more!"

And if your clients aren't asking for more, then they aren't finding value in your message. Let's never forget: if it's not a conversation, then it's not effective marketing.

Management: What it Really Takes

I received a call from the partner in charge of practice development at a major New York-based professional firm. "We are trying to get more of our partners actively involved in marketing," he said. "Our question is how to motivate partners to do this."

"You motivate partners, like all human beings, one at a time." I said. "Someone needs to sit down, informally, with each partner to find out what kind of practice each individual wants to have, say, three years from now, and then actively help that person figure out how to bring that desired, personal future about, preferably by assisting them with first steps."

"Who in the firm should do that?" he asked. "Well," I replied, "the logical candidates would be the practice group leaders." "I'm not sure that they see that as their role right now," he said, "and I'm not sure they know how to do what you describe." "I'm not surprised," I replied. "Few practice group leaders do."

Management in professional firms suffers from (at least) five problems. First, the job of a practice manager (how he or she adds value and makes a difference) is ambiguous and not well understood. Second, firms frequently use the wrong criteria in selecting practice managers. Third, few professional firm managers (at any level) receive training in how to manage people. Fourth, practice managers are evaluated and rewarded based on the wrong set of behaviours, creating perverse incentives. Finally, and most important, management, if it is not to be arbitrary, requires the existence and acceptance of common standards. This vital commitment is often missing in professional firms.

Traditional Approaches

Professional firms tend to be very well administered. Administrative topics such as financial controls, cash-flow management, billable hour targets, receivables control and the like are in place almost everywhere and are deployed to great effect. However, all this is about managing money. Little or none of it is about managing people, who remain largely unmanaged at all levels of the firm.

Consider, for example, the way many (if not most) professional firms do go about motivating people to get involved in marketing, the topic about which I was asked. Typically, this motivation is accomplished simply by announcing that those who bring in business will be rewarded. And that's it! They just say, "Do it and we'll pay you!"

This is, at best, a somewhat limited view of human motivation, especially among bright, educated people. It mostly succeeds in rewarding those who were going to do it anyway and were already skilled at doing it. It does not do a good job of engaging people who start off weak at marketing, or who are scared of it or uninterested in it.

An alternate approach often taken is to hire an outside speaker or training firm to "convince" partners of the importance of practice development and to give them some techniques for doing it. One-on-one this might have some chance of success, but offered in the mass (as it so often is) rarely will it make a lasting impact.

Why People Don't Participate

The "give them a speech and training program" approach fails to recognise that before you can get someone to do something they are not doing, you first must understand why they (as individuals) are not doing it. Among the possible reasons why people don't get involved in marketing (or associate supervision or anything else the firm wants them to do) are the following:

1. The individual doesn't understand the action's importance.
2. The individuals see the action's importance to the firm, but don't see what's in it for them personally.
3. The individual doesn't know how to do the action or some aspect of the action.
4. The individual knows what to do but is just not very skilled at it.
5. The individual doesn't want to do it. They'd rather stick to their technical discipline.
6. The individual has lost his or her enthusiasm for innovation and are in an "I'll just do my job" mode.
7. The individual hasn't been given the support or tools to do the action.
8. The individual thinks the firm (in spite of its exhortations) really wants them to be billable only and not to engage in non-reimbursed activities.
9. The action is viewed as discretionary; the individual thinks that participation is optional.
10. The individual views the activity as a long-term investment, and they'd rather work on things that provide more immediate gratification.
11. The individual feels more accountability and pressure for other things; they intend to do or would like to do the action, but they feel that they don't have the time to do it.
12. The individuals feel that the action is not "valued" by their peers: the corporate culture doesn't reinforce the action.
13. The individual views the action as a personal choice and is not thinking of team-level impacts (or approaches).
14. The individual perceives the reward for the activity, but thinks it will only be given for high levels of performance -- so why should a beginner even try?
15. Perhaps most important of all: When the individual doesn't do it, no one reacts (except perhaps once a year at performance evaluation time). Since there are no short-term consequences for non-compliance, why bother when there is so much else to do?

The list is incomplete, but the key point is clear: there are myriad reasons why people don't engage in various initiatives like client service and other aspects of client relations, knowledge management, associate training, teamwork, and a host of other supposedly strategic behaviours. Getting an individual to change and participate will require a sophisticated ability to engage in a non-threatening conversation with each individual in order to uncover (and respond to) the true reasons for non-participation.

How to Influence People

If enthusiastic participation in these various endeavours is to be obtained even from the weakest and most reluctant, what will be needed is a process that has the following characteristics:

1. It will involve informal, confidential meetings between each individual and someone they trust (ideally, the practice group leader). It will be essential that the group leader be perceived by the individual as trying to help him, not, as is all too common, acting as a representative of upper management, policing the individual. ("Why did you miss your billable hour target?")
2. Whatever behaviour the group leader wants the individual to exhibit, the group leader must be able to convincingly convey why it is in the individual's interests to pursue it. (The leader must answer the question "What's in it for me?") Appeals to do things because they help the firm (i.e., exhortations to citizenship) are notoriously ineffective in getting people to change.
3. The proposed change in behaviour must be incremental, with small and definite target accomplishments and specific, short-term deadlines. ("How about committing to writing one article in the next three months? Do you think you could do that?") People participate in change if they can see a realistic chance for an early success. Large, transformational targets ("You need to generate $1 million of business") tend to de-motivate, not encourage. (The employee concludes "There's no way I can do that. It's just not me.") Naturally, each first challenge must be customised to the talents and enthusiasms of each individual, not arbitrarily imposed on all group members.
4. The practice group leader must drop by to visit each individual to help with any road-blocks and to provide further encouragement. The group leader needs to convey the seriousness of meeting the commitments made ("You must keep your word. Don't attempt or promise things you are unsure about completing. It's better to deliver on something smaller than to fail to deliver on a bigger promise.").

There is nothing magical about this process. It is based on fundamental truths about helping another human being improve, and applies to parenting, weight loss, sports team coaching or any other human endeavour.

The Managed Professional Firm

Let's try and imagine what a professional firm that applied these principles might look like. Imagine a firm where the following statements were true:

1. Group members receive effective coaching to help them succeed, not just demands that they do so (or rewards if they can figure out how to do so).
2. Practice groups function effectively as well-coordinated teams, helping each other.
3. Members of practice groups have a clear understanding of their rights and obligations as group members and how they are expected to function together.
4. Members of the group know why their group exists, where it is going, what it is trying to accomplish and what its core priorities are.
5. Group members honour their commitments to each other and can rely on other group members to do what they said they would do.
6. Group members share their collective wins and losses with each other, honouring and recognising each other's efforts and contributions.
7. Group members help each other succeed and grow, and then share in the excitement of each other's accomplishments.
8. Group members hold each other to high standards of performance and provide each other with honest feedback, coaching and compassion.
9. Group members believe they are recognised for contributing to the team purpose, and act accordingly.
10. Group leaders have high levels of inter-personal skill in coaching, influencing and motivating others.
11. Group leaders are trained in how to be effective coaches (or managers or leaders).
12. In evaluating and rewarding group leaders, the performance of their group carries more weight than individual, personal performance.

It should be self-evident that, in such an environment, more would be accomplished. Individuals would fulfill more of their potential, and true collaboration and teamwork would lead to greater accomplishment than the sum of individual efforts. It should also be clear that, except for the most individualistic of partners, this would be a more pleasant and harmonious work environment. Why, then, do so many firms fail to achieve this state?

Basic Agreements Needed

In the typical professional firm, the barriers to attaining this environment are not trivial. They do not involve mechanics, but fundamental philosophies. A managed professional firm requires firm-wide agreement among the partners on some key principles:

1. Partners need to agree to be coached and to give up some degree of their autonomy; they cannot behave only as they see fit.
2. There must be an agreement, up front, as to what shared values and standards of behaviour the practice group leader is empowered to coach on the basis of. (If the firm does not put into place certain standards and communicate certain values that are expected of the entire firm, a practice group leader will probably fail to get individual partners to espouse them.)
3. Partners must agree to function as team members, accepting the discipline and obligations that come as a part of team membership.
4. Practice group leaders must accept responsibility for the group's performance, and must be willing to devote whatever time becomes necessary to help the individuals within the team and the team as a whole.
5. Partners and the firm's executive and compensation committees must agree, in advance, that a practice group leader's evaluation will be based primarily on the group results and not on that individual's personal statistics.
6. Finally, the executive and compensation committees must, through their decisions, reinforce the requirement for team collaboration by partners.

These are significant firm-wide agreements that will not be obtained lightly. They must be discussed, debated and formally made part of the firm's constitution before a managed firm can function effectively.

Take one example: Suppose the firm has concluded that greater success can be achieved by living to a standard of excellence in associate supervision. Imagine further that this has been left at the level of a "strategic initiative" rather than as a requirement affecting all partners. The group leader sees that someone is "competent" in this area but is not pursuing excellence.

The group leader decides to visit the individual to help. If there is not consensus in advance that excellence is a firm-wide standard, she can (and probably will) reply, "I'm not messing up in this area; leave me alone. I've got more important things to worry about!" At this point, the group leader can do nothing. It is too late to debate the principle.

If, on the other hand, the partner accepts the principle and responds with "Yeah, you're right, it's important. But I'm having difficulty getting it done," then the group leader can switch into help mode. The rule is simple: If the standards are agreed to, the group leader can deal with performance issues in a nurturing fashion. If the standards are not agreed to, the group leader cannot function. So, how clear are the standards of behaviour that partners must adhere to in your firm?

Essential to the functioning of any group is agreement in three areas:

1. Mutual accountability. All group members must hold one another accountable for individual and group performance.
2. Shared contribution. All group members must have an opportunity and the obligation to contribute.
3. Shared values. All group members must adhere strictly to the values, principles and standards established by the group.

If the firm has not established these agreements, it is mandatory that the group leader take his or her partners through a discussion that establishes them for the group. Only when points of consensus are established can the group leader hope to have influence.

Characteristics of an Effective Manager

The job of a manager is to help the people in his or her group achieve more than they would if left on their own. The manager must cajole, nurture, challenge and inspire each group member to stretch for achievement. Beyond this (and what is much harder), the manager must get the individuals to function as a team.

What is often over-looked, especially in professional firms that prize intellect, is that the job of management has almost nothing to do with intelligence, rationality, logic or IQ. The job is almost entirely about the ability to influence other people's emotions: to create energy, excitement, enthusiasm, passion and engagement. The key requirement for the job is not the knowledge of what to do but the ability to get others to do it, to participate willingly and enthusiastically.

Unfortunately, this is not the basis on which managers are usually chosen in professional firms. People are promoted to department head, office head or higher firm management based on their technical skills, business development abilities or financial orientation. While it is critical that a firm possess significant amounts of these talents, none of them is a qualification for effective management.

Management As A Social Skill

Management is inherently a social skill, an interpersonal ability and one requiring large amounts of what today is called "emotional intelligence." The job of a manager is to get others turned on. Note that this requires that the manager have his or her ego under control: he or she must be content to focus on helping others do the work and receive the glory. A manager who needs to do everything herself may be a great practitioner, but will be an ineffective manager.

Through my articles, I have been able to demonstrate that managers achieving higher financial returns showed certain characteristics: They were seen by their people as being:

• Even-keeled and even-tempered.
• Genuine.
• Good at reading people's characters and skill levels.
• Sensitive to personal issues.
• Someone of high integrity.
• Apolitical.
• Sincere.
• A good listener.
• Accessible.
• Comfortable with allowing other people to get (and take) credit.
• Disciplined about standards, though open to reasons why they may not be met.
• Enthusiastic.
• Studied and precise in conversations.
• Thoughtful.

How many managers at any level are today chosen based on how well they embody these characteristics?

What a Good Manager Does

The only management worthy of the name is one-on-one. Everything else is window dressing. You don't excite people by giving speeches or posting mission statements on the wall. Again, through my articles I have been able to provide some statistically-validated answers. To achieve superior financial returns, managers must

• Act as if not trying is the only sin.
• Act as if they want everyone to succeed.
• Actively help people with their personal development.
• Always do what they say they are going to do.
• Believe in, and keep the faith with, what they are doing.
• Do what is right, over the long term, for clients and for their people.
• Facilitate, not dictate.
• Give credit where credit is due.
• Manage people in the way that works for each individual, not just in they way they want to manage. Good managers don't have to be chameleons, just adaptable.
• Deliver bad news in a non-threatening, non-upsetting way.
• Remember what people tell them.
• Understand what drives individual people.
• Respect confidences.
• Show enthusiasm and drive.
• Take work seriously -- not themselves seriously.
• Walk the halls and know all the people.
• Let people know them as human beings, not just as managers.

A common reply I hear to lists like this is: "But they didn't teach us this in professional school!" No, they didn't, and -- perhaps surprisingly -- they don't teach it in business school either. But that's no excuse, for any of us, for not working at developing these skills.

Managers in professional firms, like managers everywhere, are almost entirely untrained in managing. They may receive training in business, but that's a different subject. Whether in a small firm or large, how many professional firm managers know how to stop a prima donna from de-motivating the rest of the team?

How many know how to get people to stretch for excellence and not settle for competence? How many know how to suppress turf battles and get different partners to function like real teams because "that's how we do it around here"?

The answer, of course, is that there are some true "naturals" as managers out there. They can pull all that off and more. But if you're not a natural, there's nothing the firm provides to help you learn it.

Getting the Incentives Right

Finally, evaluation and reward systems for managers in professional firms are often dysfunctional. There's one logical way to evaluate and reward managers: since their job is to promote the success of their group, they should be evaluated and rewarded on whether their group has raised its performance. Unfortunately, it is still true in many firms that group heads are given individual, personal targets for utilisation and/or business generation.

Accordingly, whenever there's a trade-off between meeting their personal targets and helping the group (and, of course, given the limited number of hours in a day, there's always a trade-off), those managers worry about their personal numbers first and the group performance second.

It's not difficult to see that this is the wrong choice. Fewer personal billed hours by the group leader is a loss, but it's miniscule compared to the benefit of raising the group's performance by even a small amount. The group contains many people (let's say ten for illustration), and raising their contribution by, say, 10 percent each would represent a 100 percent improvement. The group leader could only make an equivalent individual improvement by doubling his or her own performance. Why not manage instead?

Have no doubt about it: if you do not manage your professional firm, individuals will achieve less of their potential, your teams will function less well and your strategic initiatives will be implemented only sporadically. Again, why not manage?

Are You Abusive, Cynical, or Exciting?

Until 2006, I featured a Question and Answer forum called "Ask Richard". The forum has since been replaced by my blog. Here's a question from April 2005 (slightly edited) followed by my much-expanded response:

It seems as if confrontational and abrasive leadership styles are more prevalent in professional firms today than in the past. It's clear that people suffer in these tense environments. Why do you think this is happening?

Many, if not most, professional firms have indeed become less pleasant places to work in than they used to be. It is not uncommon for me to be told by partners (or "partner-level" people) that even though their firm has achieved impressive financial results, they have been accomplished by management consciously creating an environment of "fear and insecurity."

The simplest explanation for the prevalence of this "abusive" management behaviour is the simple fact that, in the right situation, it works!

It gets results without the delays and frustrations of having to worry about people's emotional state, not to mention the difficulty of developing the requisite skills to "manage people."

You can and do get higher performance out of individuals and organisations by being excessively demanding, terrifying in manner, and (apparently) completely lacking in human sensitivity. There is, in fact, a time and place for this approach.

Think of a military unit under fire. Social graces are not exactly a critical element in motivating the forces to action and achieving team cohesion. Quite the opposite! In fact, it has even been observed that bad language is sometimes used in such circumstances.

Using this approach does not mean you are being insensitive to people's emotions. Sergeant majors know exactly what they are doing when they yell at raw recruits. Rather than ignoring human emotions, they are demonstrating a highly developed sense of what human beings will respond to. It's just that a different decision is being made as to which emotions to work on!

The same perspective can be gained by considering how you would interact with a child under your supervision who was about to put himself or herself in harm's way.

Would you be a calm nurturer, entering into a Socratic dialogue (in baby talk, of course) that leads the child to a deep understanding that certain things in life should be avoided?

No, you'd almost certainly scream at the top of your lungs, "Don't TOUCH that!" and grab the child (roughly if necessary) to pull it to safety.

The child will cry bitter tears (as complaining employees and even partners also have a tendency to do) but you will take great pride in the fact that you did the right thing. Appropriately, you will reassure yourself that more was accomplished by focusing on the outcome and not caring at all about the manner in which it was accomplished.

It's not a matter of being unfeeling, but of matching the appropriate temperament and style to the task.

Do we need results now? Do we have to show immediate results to please Wall Street? Are our heavy-hitting rainmaker partners threatening to leave us if we don't get firm profits up by raising the demands on everyone else?

Well, these situations are exactly like the baby putting its hand in the fire. This is no time for niceties.

At least that's how the "yellers" justify their behaviour. In reality, it may just be that they are "Do it my way or take the highway" people. But they can make a good case that their way is mandated by the situation.

We truly will get the best and, more important, the quickest results, they will argue, by inaugurating a reign of terror, instituting iron discipline, and putting in positions of influence people who know how to intimidate, scare, and cow otherwise intelligent people.

This is the best, most effective way to make it happen -- once.

The "Exciting" Alternative

The problem with this approach is that if it is used too frequently or, as in many professional firms, continuously, it begins to feel as if one is living in a world of continuous, non-stop, extended battles and wars, otherwise known as business as usual. Over time, different effects begin to result.

As every parent knows, yelling and screaming, repeated too often, lose a little of their effectiveness and are increasingly resented. Non-stop battle ("We just had our greatest year ever, so we are raising next year's targets by 15 percent!") leads to fatigue and shell-shock.

With lessened effectiveness comes the temptation (rarely resisted) to escalate the yelling and screaming in order to achieve the same results. Resentment builds even further.

People become worn out, suffer burn-out, and leave, and the troops' efforts, rather than rising to the rallying cry one more time, slump back into compliance (to avoid abuse), not the pursuit of excellence. The culture of the organisation becomes miserable, if not poisonous. But take heart. None of this matters if you don't care about tomorrow.

There is another way: If you (first) energise and excite your people about the work they do (and the clients they do it for), they will serve your clients better, and, in turn, the clients will then (and perhaps only then) give you superior financial rewards.

I was delighted when my statistical data reaffirmed that firms following this sequence made (on average) the most money and grew the fastest. I could truly show that the key to superior profits was to "turn the staff on."

Note that the test is not, "Are your people happy?" That's nice, but not necessarily a profit determinant. What my data show is that the vital ingredient is the energy that comes from a sense of meaning or purpose and a common cause, direction, or mission.

The test is not whether your company has an official mission. The test is whether or not the individuals within your organisation act zealously about that mission.

These results are consistent with, if not identical to, the approaches advocated by many modern business authors such as Tom Peters, Jim Collins, and James Heskett, in his book, The Service Profit Chain.

The conclusions always sound fine and dandy. Many people would be willing to accept that "turning people on" is a great approach and, in time, would lead to greater accomplishments than the "get it done at all costs" approach.

But you'd only take this approach if you (a) truly wanted to get somewhere in the future, (b) were willing to incur costs today to invest to get there, (c) had patience and got your need for instant gratification under control, and (d) were more interested in building something new (a career, a firm, a skill, an achievement) than exploiting what was immediately available.

Those are a lot of conditions to meet! And most of them are about time and time orientation. To succeed by means of exciting your people, you must have some rare qualities: the patience and faith to stay the course.

Meet the Cynics

Since 2001, I have run countless seminars exploring the conclusion that an excited, energised organisation is demonstrably the key to superior financial returns.

These discussions have not always gone well. Apparently, there's something scary about the idea. The discomfort with, and resistance to, the conclusions take many shapes.

Among the questions I hear are the following:

1. If we excel at turning our people on, don't we run the risk of creating unfulfillable expectations? They might expect to get promoted fast, and then, since we might not have the space for them, they will leave.
2. Anyway, what's wrong with people not being turned on? Don't you need a certain number of people who are cruising (and not trying to go somewhere) in order to take care of the repetitive work that always needs to be done? Can't we just pay them less?
3. The people writing books say we will make more money if we require everyone to learn and grow. But can everyone learn and grow, or even become excited? Do we want them all to be ambitious, dynamic? Don't we make money off employees (and partners) who will just do their job and not expect too much of the rest of us?
4. We can make a lot of money by just getting people to work harder. Why can't we just set higher financial targets and enforce them, instead of worrying about things like inspiration and motivation?
5. Time spent managing people could be spent getting out, winning clients, and billing hours. Isn't this a more certain path to success than spending valuable time trying to motivate people?
6. In books like Good to Great, business authors say that successful firms have an ideology and live up to high standards, even if it costs them something in the short run. In today's world, is this really possible to do? Can we actually afford to incur short-term costs to enforce a principle of high standards? Can't good enough be good enough?
7. In the recent past, in down times, people hoarded work they should not have held on to in order to look busy, because management penalised people who were under-utilised. How can management now credibly convince them that the path to success is to delegate familiar work in order to start "growing their skills"? Won't people think this leaves them exposed? Would they ever trust the management of our firm to support them through a transition or an investment period?

People who ask questions like these are not abusive, abrasive, or confrontational. But they are cynics and sceptics. They just think there's a (low) limit to what can practically be done in the "real" world. They say that they believe in principle in certain things (and may even include them in their own internal speeches and presentations) but think that, on any given day, other forces actually determine what can realistically be done.

The questions posed above are all valid, and there are answers to each of them given in the books I have cited. (I won't repeat them here.)

The problem the cynics create by focusing on the questions much more profound. The problem is that, by being so evidently "pragmatic," they elicit precisely the same reaction from those they manage. If management doesn't really care about excitement, excellence, and our mission, why then should we?

Consider the message, the hidden assumptions, being communicated by these statements:

"We don't want you (employees or junior partners) to expect us to make any promises about your career progress. If you want to act as if you have a job, not a career, that's OK with us, we'll just respond with appropriate pay decisions. We think we've hired some people who are incapable of learning and growing. We just want you to keep your heads down and hit higher work volumes. And we're too busy with other activities to spend any time managing you."

Even if they are never actually said out loud, these thought processes are immediately obvious in managers who think this way. Managers who have these "yes, but" attitudes send off very clear signals to those they manage.

And if your people think that you have attitudes reflected in the above statements, how do you think they are going to respond? Will you truly be able to achieve the excellence goals you say you want to aim for?

Cynics and sceptics in managerial positions are more dangerous even than the abusers.

Through their cynicism they are the people who allow the abusers to be tolerated! ("Can we really afford to tackle the big hitter who refuses to show up for meetings?") Because of their tolerance, the abusers are never confronted and things never improve.

Cynics and sceptics may not be as explicitly offensive as the abusers, but alas, they are more common.

Creating Excitement

The majority of professional firms, like most businesses in all industries, have become principle-free zones. There's hardly a thing (as long as it's legal, strictly speaking) most firms would not do for current cash.

As noted previously, one can prove that having a firm where people treat each other with respect will in the long run make you more money. Indeed, respect is one of the main profit drivers. But there's that escape clause -- "in the long run."

In the short run, I know only a few (terrific) firms that would discipline a major rainmaker if he or she didn't treat people with respect. Short-term cash trumps any strategy that you have to work at for a future benefit!

As may be seen in the blog section of my website, I keep getting people contacting me who say things like "I like what you wrote, but do any real-world firms actually operate that way?"

It seems we are all seeking something that may exist out there but which appears to be incredibly scarce: a firm that actually has principles and standards and doesn't compromise them for short-term expediency.

Why are such firms scarce? Why is all the bad behaviour becoming more common? Because our culture in general and business at large, not excepting the professions, is becoming more and more short-term oriented.

For all of the grandiose talk of strategy and vision and plans, what you see in professional firms is a philosophy that says, "Let me worry about this day, this week, this month, maybe this year. I'm under too much pressure to worry about next year."

Let's be honest. It's not just "those guys" at the top thinking and acting this way. It's everybody. All of us. You and I included. Of course, it's always easier to identify it in the other person.

For example, in almost every firm I work for, in every profession, in every country around the world, someone complains that the new generation of recruits is different from the way we were at that age. They tell me that the new generation wants instant gratification and they are not prepared to put in their time; they have no loyalty.

In other words, these senior people seem to be complaining, those awful kids are thinking short-term and not responding to our visions of the future rewards that would come from sacrificing their personal lives for (at least) the time it takes to become partner.

And clients can be even worse. Instead of looking for trusting relationships, they keep asking, "What have you done for me lately?" Long-term thinking is not what clients are showing. Instead of looking to build relationships, clients are putting consultants and auditors in place to design purchasing processes and competitive bid situations to extract the maximum juice from their vendors at minimum cost.

So, don't just blame the leaders, managers, and bosses. We're all short-term thinkers now.

How Did We Get Here?

Why have we become this way, as a society? That I don't know. Maybe we should blame MTV and the advertising community for training us to shorten our attention spans. Maybe we should blame me and my financial management consulting colleagues for convincing the professions that they needed to become more "business-like" (without actually understanding what that means), leading to obscene caricatures of sometimes disgusting leadership behaviours being excused in the name of expediency.

I don't (yet) know how to get short-term thinkers to become long-term thinkers. I've tried to be convincing that the way you get the most success is to focus on getting better, not on getting more. But people don't buy it.

Getting better takes effort and work and consistency and patience. They can see all around them the screamers succeeding at getting more by intimidating people (including clients, in some cases) into giving them what they want.

I've tried logic. It hasn't worked well on non-believers. I've tried presenting conclusive data. It hasn't worked well on non-believers. I've tried appealing to matters of principle, standards, values, and meaning. It hasn't worked well on non-believers.

I no longer believe people can be "converted" on this topic -- preferred styles seemed to be well entrenched in people's personalities long before the age at which I meet them. The best anyone can do, probably, is to help the believers develop the courage to implement what they already believe.

It's probably not going to change much except among the determined, principled few who, fortunately, are out there!

To find out what you are and your firm is, conduct a quick poll at your next group (or firm) meeting. Show them these three categories, describing a firm or group:

1. This place is abusive, confrontational, abrasive, fear-inducing.
2. We talk a good game of togetherness, idealism, and high standards, but the truth is we're pragmatists. Cash wins!
3. This is an energising, motivating, inspiring place to work. We do what's best for the long term and act in accordance with our declared principles.

Ask everyone how they would describe your environment, allocating 100 points. They can put all their points in one group if that's what they firmly believe you are all the time, or they can spread them around if they think you are a mixture. The results may surprise you.

A Great Coach in Action

The Story

When I attended university as a final-year student, I was not full of self-confidence. In fact, I was sure that I was making a mistake.

Rather than working at maximising my performance, I focused on my immediate tasks (my studying) and just tried to do my job, hoping no one would look too closely at my capabilities and performance.

For a while, this strategy worked. I was left alone. But after about six months, there was a knock at my college-room door. I opened it, and there stood one of my senior professors. "Hi, Richard," he said, "Have you got a minute for me?"

"Sure," I mumbled.

"It's such a pity that we don't have time to spend with each other," he said. "You have your responsibilities and I have mine and they keep us busy. But I was just passing by and thought we could take a minute to catch up."

"Tell me," he said, "what's your research about?"

Since I wasn't doing any research (and we both knew that) I played for time.

"Well, I've been very busy and I'm not sure I'm really ready, and there are a number of things that interest me and?" On and on, I unfolded my excuses.

Eventually, as he remained silent, just listening, I said, "But, maybe ... just maybe ... and I don't want to make any promises ... perhaps professional firms would be interesting to study."

He remained silent for a while and considered my answer. After what seemed an eternity, he spoke.

"You know, Richard, that's not a stupid choice! Now that you mention the topic, I can't think of anything major that has been done on that subject. There's a real opportunity to do something important.

"What's more, nothing in that idea conflicts with what we want to do as a school -- I would tell you if it did. Well done! What a great idea!"

Then came the devastating follow-up question:

"And what subjects do you plan to research about these firms?"

I couldn't even pretend to have an answer. For perhaps the only time in my life, I was lost for words and remained silent.

I will never forget his next phrase until my dying day. He said, "I can see you haven't thought it through completely."

"But," he continued, "I know people at some of these firms, and I hear about a lot of the issues they have. Let me pass them on to you, right now, in case one or more of those issues interest you."

He proceeded to describe a range of managerial and strategic issues faced by such firms.

Most people I discuss this with agree that at this point in the conversation I had no choice except to select from among the topics he described and say something like, "Well, I imagine it could be worthwhile to explore some of those topics with those firms."

He went back into silent thought mode. Finally, he spoke again.

"Richard, the more you talk about your plans, the more excited I get. This is great stuff! I can see it now. You'll do important work, get famous and we will all be very proud of you."

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Richard. I'll have my secretary come by and give you a typed list of all the professional firm leaders I know. Feel free to contact them, and use my name. Tell them I suggested you call."

He then looked at his watch and said, "I'm really sorry, Richard, but my duties call me away. I hope I'll be able to come by soon and see how things are going. I don't know when that might be, but sometime soon, I hope."

And then he left.

Within ten minutes (ten minutes!) his secretary was at my door with a typed list of names, addresses and telephone numbers of professional firm leaders.

Again, I had the overwhelming feeling that I now had no choice. There was nothing I could do but call those people. They turned out to be interesting and helpful, and I was on my way!

What turned out to be the thrill ride of a career had truly, finally been launched.

And here's the point as I experienced it: if he had not shown up, I know that it would have taken me a long time to get organised and start investing in my career. I suffer from procrastination as much, if not more, than other people, and self-discipline has never been a strength of mine.

It turned out, however, that with skilled coaching I was capable of getting more done than I ever dreamed of, and could achieve a great deal more when coached well than I could when left to my own devices.

The Lessons

When I tell this story in my seminars, I turn to the participants and ask, "What was it about what he did and the way that he did it that made it so effective as a piece of coaching? How did he get this person (me) who was doing OK, but did not really have the car in gear, to get going and start being productive?"

(You may wish to pause reading here and write down what you think the key elements were.)

The answers people give are numerous, but almost always include the following:

The Existence of Real, Agreed-Upon Standards

Most people who hear this story observe correctly that there was no debate in our meeting about whether or not I should be doing some research. That had been determined long before, and was a pre-condition for his coaching to work. His sole task was to help me stay true to a prior agreement.

The role of agreed-upon prior standards in effective coaching is often poorly understood in professional firms. Standards in many firms are aspirations, not minimum behaviours.

Without unambiguous, non-negotiable standards, coaching cannot work. Can you imagine the conversation?

Coach: "I'm here to help you meet the standard." Recipient: "I choose not to meet that standard at the moment." Coach: "Oh! OK! But let me try and persuade you anyway."

The tragedy of many professional firms is that this is exactly what happens in coaching, particularly, for example, between and among "partners."

In a separate article I will discuss how a firm can achieve an unambiguous "prior agreement" on its standards. However, that is not the purpose of this article, so our discussion will continue as if your firm does indeed have such standards.

Enforcing Standards

Accepting that there were real standards at the university, when did my professor begin to enforce them? Most people would say, "The moment he knocked on my door."

It was not only the conversation itself that sent the unavoidable message that the standards were real and enforced.

Perhaps even more powerful was the fact that, by his presence, he obviously (a) had been paying attention and (b) was able to respond in real time to my "departure from excellence."

The process of standards enforcement had already begun before he said a word. I remember the feeling to this day, and the familiar phrase that went through my mind: "Oh, boy! Around here, you can run, but you can't hide!"

Of course, it is a common failing among professional firms that those in managerial positions do not notice issues early and do not have the time to respond to them in short order. Poor coaching is often less a matter of not knowing what to do than it is of not having the time to do it (or perhaps placing other things ahead of it in priority).

It is important to stress that I was not (yet) "failing" or "struggling." My professor didn't wait to respond until I was "in trouble." He intervened while there was still time to help and influence me.

Essential to his impact on me was the fact that he had (or had created) the time and inclination to discuss my weaknesses with me, one topic at a time, right when they first became evident.

As simple as this sounds, it is not that common or easy. Many of us in supervisory or managerial roles, perhaps even of a majority of us, have a preference for waiting until the problem is so bad that we have to deal with it.

After all, we do have other things to do, and discussing with another person their weaknesses is not always our favourite activity.

I have direct personal experience with this. When I first set up my consulting business I faced, for the first time in my career, the task of managing someone -- my administrative assistant. I had (at least) two big problems in being a good manager.

First, my assistant was basically terrific, so it felt as if pointing out and discussing things that could have been done better was being demanding. (It is!)

Second, I did not feel confident about my interpersonal skills, and was not sure I could provide a constructive critique and get the reaction I wanted. What if, instead of responding, she took offence and quit?

As a result of these concerns, like many other managers, I decided to say and do nothing. After all, she was good overall, wasn't she? Why rock the boat?

I decided to save up all my critique and feedback for a full year, and then try to give it to her all at once, at "performance review" time, just like it said in the textbooks. (Or so I thought they said.)

This meant that I tried to give her feedback in one session on 17 different subjects, months after the events we were discussing had happened, right at the time when it would influence her pay.

Can you imagine a process less likely to get someone to listen, accept and respond? Yet it's how businesses and professional firms do it all the time.

A performance discussion at compensation-setting time is the absolute worst time to get someone to engage with you, acknowledge a performance issue, and participate in designing a solution. By having the conversation at that time, you are asking them to put their income at risk. Even if they are aware of their weaknesses, they often cannot afford to acknowledge them at such a time, because they probably need the money.

Eventually, I learned the lesson we all have to learn. If I really wanted my assistant to improve, then the way to do it was the way it was done to me: dropping by on a casual basis to discuss a single topic at a time right when the weaknesses first became evident, and absolutely when it has nothing to do with pay!

I'm not saying I ever got truly good at it, but I did eventually understand what I should be trying to do!

Informal and Unscheduled

Whenever I have discussed, anywhere in the world, the story of my university professor's coaching of me, there is almost universal agreement that a key to his successful impact on me was that his approach was informal and unscheduled.

Most people agree that they were most influenced in their own development overwhelmingly through informal interactions. Very few people attribute much influence, if any, to the formal processes they experienced, such as annual performance reviews, counselling sessions and even training programs.

One of the eternal mysteries of professional firms is that while we all know what worked on us, we keep putting in place other things (formal systems) for them.

The truth is that all formal, scheduled performance appraisal processes are doomed to failure. (See Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to do Instead by Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins, Berrett-Koehler, 2000, for a similar and more detailed view.)

Performance appraisal systems in firms large and small may serve to help arrive at a compensation decision, meet statutory and regulatory requirement for human resource management, or a host of other purposes. What they never do is cause performance to rise.

We have all lived through this. Only personal attention and coaching really help us (or them) develop.

He Talked about Me -- and Only Me

Most people hearing my story remark on the fact that my senior professor barely referred to the school (or the firm, company or institution) to which we both belonged.

He did not make appeals to my sense of responsibility or duty, such as, "Remember, these are our performance expectations, Richard. Let me remind you of your obligations."

For that matter, he didn't even talk about himself, his expectations, his reactions to my performance ("I'm a little disappointed in you, Richard") or anything at all except ... me.

The entire conversation was focused on me. Which, of course, made it completely fascinating.

He focussed exclusively on helping me find what was interesting to me, not what was interesting to him, nor what was necessarily needed by the institution.

Many managers think they have influence when they talk about what "we" are trying to pull off, where "our" firm is going, what the world expects of us.

All of this can be valid, but it ignores a profound human truth: the most fascinating topic for most human beings is themselves. (Apparently, I am not the only egocentric person in the world.)

Talk to me about me, and you have my full attention. Talk to me about anything else, and the odds that I will engage go down dramatically.

His approach was guided by a simple insight. If people set goals for themselves, guided by their own true interests, they are much more likely to pursue those goals with passion and get more done than if you give goals to them or attempt to tell them what to become interested in.

If I tell you what my goals are, I inevitably give you "nagging rights." You can ask me about my progress towards the goals I set for myself without offending me. You have the right to manage me more, and more frequently.

However, if you try to get me to pursue your goals, not mine, then every time you ask about my progress towards your goals, I will feel resentment, and less will get done.

The point is meant to be a practical one, not a moral one. It just means that the coach will get better results for the institution if he or she finds out what the person is capable of being passionate about, and then finds a way to make that work for the institution. Done that way, everybody wins.

Of course, if the person is passionate about nothing or cares for things that don't help the institution, then the coach's task is clear: urgently and actively help the person leave the organisation and pursue his or her passion (or lack of it) elsewhere.

My coach asked questions encouraging me to choose my own goals, but it should be equally clear that I was not going to get out of that meeting without choosing something. There was indeed an iron will beneath that courteous exterior.

He Seemed Interested

Not only was the conversation about me, but my professor pulled off an amazing thing. He actually made me believe he was interested in me personally! He seemed to care, at least a little, about me as a person.

I invite you to reflect, at this point, on your own reactions. Would it matter to you if someone trying to counsel and coach you convinced you that he or she was interested in and cared about you? Would it matter to you? Would it make a difference?

Ask the same question in reverse: if you doubted their interest in and care for you, would that have any impact on the amount of influence they would have on you?

I am bold enough to guess that I know your answers. Whether or not the person is really interested in you has a major impact on that person's influence on you.

So if someone's influence on you depends upon whether or not you think they care about you, an interesting question arises. Can they fake interest and caring? Can other people make you think you are interested in them by learning the right skills, words and behaviours, or do they actually have to care?

Again, answer the question from your own experience: How readily do you think you can tell if someone is trying to make you think that they care, but really they do not? I can guess at your answer, but I know mine: You can perhaps fool me once, but not a second time!

In 2000, I explored this same topic in the context of dealing with clients, not peers or subordinates. It turns out that the issues and most of the answers are the same in all contexts.

As human beings, we accept the influence mostly, if not exclusively, of those we trust, and being trusted is mostly about true trustworthiness, not technique.

Whether or not the issue is sincerity or technique, the overwhelming majority of us, when conducting managerial and coaching conversations, fail to convince the other person that we are truly interested in them. Very often because we are not.

He Didn't Criticise

At no time did my professor say anything negative about me. He did not criticise me, even though a critique would have been fair and valid. ("You're not doing any research, and it is expected around here. You're studying is improving, but you're not one of the best yet.")

Why did he not criticise me? Because he was such a nice person? Perhaps. But mostly because he understood one of the primary truths about human beings, which is that the absolute worst way to get someone to acknowledge and correct a weakness is to criticise them!

As humans, we have a built-in reflex: criticise me and I will defend myself whether what you say is valid or invalid, fair or unfair.

Later in our relationship, I did ask my professor why he had never actually voiced any critiques, and had led me to form my own conclusions about what he was "implying" but never actually stated.

"I learned long ago, Richard," he said, "that if two people both know something is true, there's not much point saying out loud."

He continued, "There are better ways to get your point across. The key task is to create a way that the other person can concede the point without 'losing face.' It's not easy to learn and to do, but it almost never includes explicitly criticising people."

He Actually Helped Me

Many people comment that it must have been very motivating that my professor was substantively helpful to me, providing leads and contacts in order to get me started. It was.

I have surveyed professionals around the world for decades, and I frequently ask, "How many of you think that your manager, coach or supervisor actually helps you succeed (as opposed to demanding that you do)?" The percentages are depressingly small: often as low as 10 percent.

Yet consider the psychology of it. If someone has just asked you what you want to achieve and has taken the first step to help you get there, wouldn't you feel an overwhelming obligation to take the next step? (For more on this psychological principle, see Robert Cialdini's book Influence [Quill, 1984].)

The lesson for managers, coaches and supervisors (all synonymous terms as far as I am concerned) is obvious. If you want someone to respond to you, you must find out what they want and help them -- first.

Every time you plan to meet with some one to give advice, counsel or direction, ask yourself, "Do I know how I am going to help this person in a way that they would consider substantive help?"

If the answer is "no," then you are not ready for the meeting.

He Focused on the First Doable Steps, Not the Ultimate Goal

Many people point out that my senior professor did not focus much on the ultimate achievement or goal (e.g., "You need to write a book") but on small, carefully chosen, doable first steps: "Do you think you can call these seven people?"

As obvious as this is, most of us break this rule all the time. We try and get people energised and motivated by setting performance standards and turning the person loose: "Here's the world record -- go!"

Instead, the truth of tempting someone onto the improvement path often requires that you remain completely silent about the full task ahead and just focus on the immediate small improvement.

In fact, that's what good coaches do in all walks of life. Tell me I need to lose 50 pounds, and even if that extra weight is life threatening I will say "Forget it, I can't do that, it's not me."

But say we are going to focus on losing one pound per week, and suddenly this sounds like something even Richard Wood could do.

Similarly, coaches working with frontier athletes focus on one task at a time, reaching for small improvements in each area. They don't "raise the bar" in large jumps; they increase it slowly and help the person make cumulative, repeated improvements. That's how you help someone become a world-beater!

He Gave Me Confidence

In another recent article of mine("Management: What It Really Takes"), I stress that you can't really help someone improve until you figure out why they are under-performing.

In my case (surprising to those who know me now) my problem then was that I was not sure I could do research and writing. A large part of the explanation of why I got going after my professor's visit was that his (explicit and implicit) confidence that I could pull this off removed what was for me (and, I am told in discussions worldwide, for many people) a major roadblock to accomplishment.

Kept His Word

The last detail I'll discuss here is the fact that my professor kept his word. He did what he said he was going to do. And he did it incredibly quickly.

Again, in virtually every culture around the world, people I discuss this with say that his prompt action would significantly increase the probability that they would act. It would be the height of impoliteness to drop the ball and ignore his action. Further, the cultural precedent had been set: you do what you say you are going to do. Alas, these are not always cultural rules everywhere, and less gets done.

The message is clear: If you want your people to live up to their commitments and obligations, then you must first live up to yours. People will never live up to higher standards than the coach exhibits.

Last Thoughts

There clearly are other lessons to be gleaned from my story, but I hope I have touched on some major ones. I don't think any of the lessons in this article are new or original to me. This has just been the story of how I learned them and came to understand them.

Others have written about them before. Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People (Simon & Schuster, 1936) remains the gold standard in learning how to interact with others. Blanchard and Johnson's The One Minute Manager is a fabulous place to start for those who are completely new to thinking about all this. Peter Friedes' book The 2R Manager (Jossey-Bass, 2002) gives a great deal of detail on what precisely a manager can say and do to be effective.

But there remains a mystery: if so many people have offered such practical wisdom, and their work has been so well disseminated and publicised, why do we all need to struggle so much to learn it and put it into practice?

My guess is that many of us frequently do apply the lessons and approaches of this article, but we tend to use them more often in our personal lives than in our work lives.

When dealing with good friends, parents, spouses or children, we are more likely to be informal, questioning, helpful, use the language of suggestion and offer our confidence-building support.

Why do we tend to take these approaches in such situations? Because the underlying commitment to the other person is there, we are used to be doing things informally and because we actually care.

When we care, we do it this way. When we don't, we don't. And in either case, we get back what we deserve.