I knew I was late sending the proposal. Of course I knew. I’d made a commitment to send it and it had been on my mind all week, gnawing at me, sitting on my mental list of ‘Things I Must Get Done’. And, having not sent it, I was out of integrity and feeling rubbish about it.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t written it. It was ready to go, email drafted. But something stayed my hand as it hovered over the send button.
I’d never sent a proposal this big. For this much money. What if they said no? Rejected me?
Or, the deeper fear: What if they thought I wasn’t worth that much?
My Inner Game was running in full interference mode. Well intentioned, but helping no one.
The Inner Game of Consulting
In 1974 Timothy Gallwey published The Inner Game of Tennis, his thesis on how self-doubt, fear of failure, overthinking, and a litany of other things get in the way of tennis players performing to their potential.
He coined a simple equation:
Performance = Potential - Interference
Performance is our Outer Game: the things others see. Our behaviours, speech, writing, energy, and engagement. When we take the lead in a meeting. When we help a client understand something they didn’t before. When we remember the names of our client’s kids.
When we send a proposal... or don’t.
Interference is the Inner Game. We get in our own way all the time, and it stops us performing to our full potential. Sometimes it shows up in our Outer Game in obvious ways: avoiding difficult conversations, procrastination, missed deadlines. Or it may be more subtle: that familiar story of ‘too busy, don’t have time’, or the manager who dips back into work she’s delegated because she can’t let go of it.
The Inner Game idea has stood the test of time. John Whitmore built on it in his 1992 book Coaching for Performance, which popularised the GROW model you may be familiar with. Gallwey himself published The Inner Game of Work in 1998.
And around 50 years after Gallwey’s original idea, we are talking to consulting team leaders about the Inner Game of Consulting, and the common interference patterns we see that stop consulting teams performing to their potential.1
The Expert Trap
Here’s a pattern I see in senior consulting teams all the time.
They have deep expertise in their niche, whatever cross-section of industry, function, or problem they are brilliant at helping clients with. They are so expert that it becomes part of their identity. Their Inner Game grabs them and says: “You are an Expert! With a capital E! People value you for your expertise.” And they feel good, and worthy, and well thought of.
Until a question comes up that they don’t know the answer to. The conversation strays onto unfamiliar ground. Perhaps they are pitching for work, and the new client they want to impress needs something they’re not sure about.
Their Inner Game pipes up again: “You don’t know about that! This isn’t safe! They’ll think you’re NOT AN EXPERT!” And they feel threatened, and lacking in value, and a dark cloud settles over their self-worth.
I’m over-dramatising that inner voice - often it is much more subtle. So subtle we’re not even consciously aware of it. Often the first thing we notice is the Outer Game: the performance that isn’t living up to that individual’s potential.
As a firm leader, when you notice that, what do you do? You call your trusted consulting skills training partner (that’s me btw!) and say, “My team need to get better at building trusted client relationships”, or “I wish my senior people could sell more.”
And I’ll ask: is this a skills issue, or an Inner Game issue? Reducing interference can often be more powerful than increasing potential, and it needs a very different approach in the training room.
A winning proposal
I did, eventually, send that proposal. The client said yes straight away, because my skills were good enough to have met her brief. I needn’t have worried. But I did. My issue wasn’t potential, it was interference. The thing holding back my performance, and putting the project win at risk, was my own Inner Game.
The question to ask yourself: what’s stopping your team performing to their potential? Is it their skills, or is it their Inner Game?
If you’re seeing this in your team and want to talk it through, drop me a note at deri.hughes@honeycombps.co.uk.
This is the first in a series of articles on the Inner Game of Consulting. I’ll be covering common Inner Game challenges for consultants, looking at why our brains do this to us, and sharing stories and tips to help you and your team maximise performance.
The Skilled Consultant is written by Deri Hughes and Colin Mann, Managing Directors of Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training. We help consulting leaders develop exceptional teams with world-class training to support every career transition.
If this article raised a question about your own team, do drop a comment below or book a 30-minute call with Deri or with Colin to discuss how we could help you.
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Credit to our brilliant colleague Greg Segal, who brought many of these concepts into Honeycomb.