The Chameleon Consultant: Crafting the personas you need to succeed
In these 3 key moments, how will it feel to be advised by you?
Consultant stereotypes come in many flavours. Are you the analytical whizz kid, the grey-haired advisor, the extroverted facilitator, the connected counsellor, or even the watch-stealer telling your victim the time?
It may feel comfortable to adopt a persona, but playing into just one of these stereotypes can hold you back. The best consultants are capable of switching between personas fluidly, adapting how they show-up to the situation they are in.
To be a great consultant you need to flex to your audience, the context you’re in, the type of work you’re doing, and the outcomes you want to get to. This is about playing the role you need to play and bringing the energy you need to bring to get the biggest impact for your client.
It is not about being fake. The chameleon is always a chameleon; it just adapts to the environment it is in. It takes real skill and self-awareness to flex your persona AND stay authentic. But it’s critical you do, because authenticity is key to being trusted.
Insights from the Warrior Training Adventure
I spent last weekend on the staff team for The Mankind Project New Warrior Training Adventure. Often referred to as MKP’s NWTA. See – consultants aren’t the only ones who love an acronym.
You probably aren’t aware of the NWTA, or the work of The Mankind Project. It’s an intense weekend for those who are willing to take some risks to look deeper into themselves. Over 75,000 people have completed it, and I’ve been privileged to help 200+ of those myself. In my experience, every one of them learnt something deep about themselves during the weekend.
Part of that learning is about how they show up in the world, unconsciously. The personas they naturally adopt.
I’ve realised that those same learnings apply to many of the consultants I work with.
One tool MKP uses to help the men we work with is the concept of Archetypes. These are different ways of approaching the world, different energies we can choose to adopt.
When we talk about Warrior energy we mean taking action, being resolute, doing what needs to be done. This is very different to the caring and nurturing Lover energy. If you’re interested, I recorded a short piece about The Male Archetypes - click here.
Making It Special: Start thinking about how it feels
In the last few years, we have started introducing similar concepts to the consultants we work with, through a consulting mindset we call Making It Special (credit to Ian Barker who leads our long-standing client BFY Group for inspiring this). Making It Special is all about putting the client at the centre of the consulting project and doing whatever it takes to make their experience of working with you special.
We centre this on 3 primary interactions: the kick-off, structured 1-2-1s, and SteerCos. Each of those are critical moments during most consulting projects. They represent opportunity, and risk.
The Making It Special model includes the practicalities of how you structure, prepare for, and run sessions like this. All of which is important.
But, the piece that makes it stand out – in my judgement – is the focus we put on mindset. On thinking about how the meeting needs to feel, not just how it needs to run. And that is heavily influenced by the persona of the consultant running the show.
The five dimensions of a consultant’s persona
I believe this persona can be consciously designed for and I use 5 different dimensions for that:
Archetype: Mindset you adopt
Performance: Scenario you have in mind
Attitude: Perspective you take
Energy: What you bring into the room
Role: ‘Uniform’ you (mentally) put on
Let me bring this to life by looking at some examples.
First, a client kick-off meeting. Take a moment to write down a few bullets on how you normally approach the first major meeting of an engagement.
Done that?
Ok.
In my experience it typically goes something like this:
Reminder re. situation / complication / key question
Present the workplan
Be clear on what we need from the client
Make sure we control the meeting and show how clever we are
This approach risks leaving clients feeling overwhelmed, disengaged, even used. Which isn’t exactly Making It Special.
When we look at this from a persona perspective it changes radically. Here’s a typical persona design for a Making It Special client kick-off:
Archetype: Learner (mindset)
Performance: First Date (scenario)
Attitude: Open (perspective)
Energy: Engaging (what you bring)
Role: Facilitator (‘uniform’)
This means that you treat a client kick-off as an opportunity to learn, not the moment to show how clever you are. You treat the client like someone you want to understand whilst making them feel safe to open up. You seek to be open and engaging. And you facilitate the conversation to bring all voices into the room and co-create the way forwards.
By stepping into that persona at the start of the project you have a much better chance of the client feeling engaged as part of the project and invested in it being a success.
Now, let’s look at another Making It Special key moment; the Structured 1-2-1. This often requires a fundamentally different mindset, centred on human connection and relationship building. Here’s how we might design a persona for that:
Archetype: Listener (mindset)
Performance: Empathetic Advisor (scenario)
Attitude: Curious (perspective)
Energy: Connecting (what you bring)
Role: Coach (‘uniform’)
Finally, let’s fast forward to a SteerCo with a senior decision-maker. She probably wasn’t in the kick-off, and you’ve learnt a lot from all the work you’ve done since then. Being in Learner mode is no longer appropriate, but you still want to make those clients feel special – especially if you’ve got half an eye on rolling the project or getting a referral (which you should have!)
At the SteerCo you might consciously adopt another very different persona:
Archetype: Expert (mindset)
Performance: Puppet Master (scenario)
Attitude: Focused (perspective)
Energy: Exciting (what you bring)
Role: Storyteller (‘uniform’)
Here, the special experience comes from the confidence you give them to make big decisions. The clarity and depth of expertise you bring to bear. The excitement you engender in them and their team.
If we just look at the Archetype dimension across these three you can see the journey that emerges as we move from Learner (kick-off) to Listener (1-2-1s) to Expert (SteerCo). Or in Energy, we see a similar shift from Engaging at the kick-off to Connecting in the 1-2-1 to Exciting for the big decisions.
Begin crafting your personas…
To get you going, here are three questions to ask yourself:
What is my default consulting persona?
Where and when does that work well with my clients?
Where and when do I need to consciously step into a different persona?
Armed with those answers you can consciously design those different personas, for you and for your team, so that you consistently make your clients feel special.
So, how will it feel to be advised by you?
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