For a moment, we get it. We see the infinite and the minute, all in one breath – the forest AND the trees.

That pure, brilliant clarity – how can we as consultants and coaches bring that clarity to our work with clients? And can our clients be the excuse for a practice that brings such clarity to our own lives?

When we sit on that rock overlooking the sea, several things are happening (this is not an exuastive list, by any means…)

• We are giving ourselves time to just be, to barely even think – to just let what really “is” wash over us. We feel like we are coming back to something we knew before we were born, a sense that pre-dates anything we can remember.
• We are seeing life’s inter-relatedness.
• We are getting out of our own skin, seeing the vastness we are part of. You can’t sit on a rock, staring at a vast valley outstretched for 100 miles in any direction, and seriously think it’s all about you.
• There are no demands. You don’t have to be smart. Or right. No expectations.

If you have ever been with someone who is sitting on that mountaintop for the first time, experiencing that sense of WOW for the first time, it is amazing. Watching the effects of that moment, we realize that connectedness to something larger than ourselves – that is something born deep inside each of us.

I am on the train from Perth, Western Australia, to the coastal town of Freemantle. A colleague who commutes from Fremantle to Perth every day had alerted me about the ride. “When we’re heading home, as the train comes around the bend and the ocean comes into view, everyone gets quiet. Heads turn to the window. Just for a moment, every single person on the train breathes. Then we all go back to our lives.”

It is Sunday morning, and across from me on the train are two teenaged boys, acting very much like teenaged boys (which is to say I spent most of the ride thinking, “Do you have any idea what asses you look like?”). The train turns the bend as Lyn had described, and the ocean comes into view. And even those boys become still, turning their heads to the sea. It is astounding how connected we all are to water, that even 16 year old boys acting like complete dweebs stop being dweebs for long enough to connect.

There is something in all of us, even 16 year old boys, that we are all able to come back to. That power is the “touchy feely” stuff we are taught, as consultants, to ignore in favor of the “hard stuff.” The content. The tools and metrics and doing.

But that sense of being, of relatedness, of simultaneous grandness and smallness – that is where our strength lies. That is the source of our power to change, to transform. That spirit is what makes all things possible.

So what, then, would it make possible if we could bring that strength to our consulting and coaching clients?

How would that change our job as consultants – and even, perhaps, the very definition of what it means to “consult?” What would we do? How would we do it?

The Place of Infinite Possibility
Imagine that every time you worked with a client, the room were filled with the same calm sense of being fully present that you might find in that place by the sea, that place on the mountain.
If that was the space you were always occupying with a client, from the time of the very first phone call, what would that make possible?

Could it make possible all the bullet items noted above? Could it allow for bigger, inter-related thinking? Might it eliminate the fear? Create context?

And if even a small part of that result were possible, what could you accomplish?

Suddenly we see that that place of presence, of being, of context – it is not airy-fairy and touchy feely. It is real and concrete. It is the source of their power to transform.

Suddenly changes happen overnight that have been blocked from happening for years. (Think of a time you sat by the sea, and suddenly the entire solution to a long-irking problem appeared fully formed, in all its detail, as if handed to you by the gods.) The concreteness of that reality is astounding.

So what would that take?
It would take creating that environment. It would take encouraging clients to stay in that environment. It would take understanding in ourselves that that environment is where the good stuff happens.

But first it would take being in that place ourselves. Learning to be that. Learning how to practice that. Learning how to stay there.

It takes letting go of the things that no longer serve us. It takes aligning our own work with what is possible. It takes amplifying those parts that connect to possibility, and turning down the volume on the parts that move us away from that possibility.

It takes remembering, touching back to say, “Yes, I thought that once, too. Now I am seeing something more effective – something that will not just solve your immediate problem, but aim you at the change you want to create in our world.”

It is easy for clients to spin off into the day-to-day of what is not working. The day-to-day is why they call. It is what they want fixed.

It is easy for us consultants to get sucked into that as well. The day-to-day is what we have learned to do in our years of experience. Raise money. Establish a recruitment process. Set up a Facebook page. The doing is the easy part, the part we have done so repeatedly it has become as much an unthinking habit as tying our shoes.

As we sit on our own mountaintop, though, the bigger question calls to us. What do we want for our clients? What do we want to make possible for them? What potential do we want to help them achieve for their communities?

Reconnecting with that potential, we see that the difference our clients can make in the world is our own highest potential as consultants.

And so the greatest gift we can bring to our clients is our ability to stay above the reactive muck and mire of solving this or that. Our greatest gift is our ability to stay fully present to our clients’ potential to make a difference, and our ability to encourage and support those clients in staying present to that potential as well.

As consultants and coaches, our greatest gift is our ability to remember the immense power that lies innate within each of us, waiting for the train to round the bend as the ocean comes into view. Our power lies in our ability to hold open that place of potential, allowing our clients to step into their own power.

From the power of that larger context, we will indeed address the day-to-day. But it is our ability to see both the forest AND the trees that will allow us to reach our own highest potential – the potential of our clients to make a difference in the world.

I wish I had a dime for every consultant who asked a version of that question. How can I convince them? How can I get them to try?

Unfortunately, the questions often show up as frustration and blame.

Organizations won’t change.

They won’t try anything new.

They won’t do the work, even after I’ve worked with them.

Because our work at the Community-Driven Institute is about creating dramatic, visionary social change, the issue of “client readiness” has become an important one for us. If organizations are not ready to adopt new approaches, they are well guaranteed to continue to see the same old results.

We spend a lot of time talking about this in our consultant immersion classes. The questions we ask there have led to a great deal of our own thinking on the subject.

• What might we, as consultants, do to encourage clients, rather than try to “convince” them?
• What questions might inspire our clients to want to do the work?
• What stories might we share to engage them in thinking differently?
• Where do we, as consultants, need to be in our own thinking, to help clients want to try something new?

The more we ask those questions of ourselves, the more we see the obvious – that “client readiness” is not a black-or-white issue. It’s not that clients are either ready or not. Instead there is a continuum of readiness that clients move along, as they consider being differently in their work.

Before diving into our thinking around this issue, I will share that that is just what it is – thinking. We hope you will share your own thinking to what we have begun here, so we can all help our clients reach for their highest potential to create change in their communities.

One last thing: The following continuum is built upon a foundation of thinking pioneered by Suze Casey, as she researched and developed systems for Belief Repatterning. We are humbly grateful for the immense body of knowledge Suze has produced and shares so generously.

Stage 1: Resistance
“I Won’t” (or) “I Don’t”
The first rung of the ladder is the stage at which a person is completely not ready to consider a new approach. We consultants typically meet these people only when someone else says, “Please talk with Mary. She has a great concept, but the organization is floundering and she refuses to listen to anyone…”

Mary is at the stage of won’t / can’t / don’t need to. Her immediate response to any suggestion that she try something different is to get defensive. That defensiveness may sound like this: “That might be well and good for others, but it doesn’t apply to me.”

If Mary were in the supermarket, and your consulting work was a free sample of pizza, Mary would walk right past, thinking, “I don’t eat pizza. That’s not for me.”

Stage 2: Unacknowledged Curiosity
“I Might…”
At Stage 2, Mary’s resolve has softened just a smidge. Something has happened, and she is almost unwittingly beginning to be open to learning about this new thing – to perhaps think about it, read about it.

Mary probably still won’t do so publicly, though. She may read an article in the privacy of her own home. She may do an internet search. She may click on a link by someone she knows on Facebook, whose links she had previously patently ignored.

Mary is getting curious.

Asked if she had been looking for these bits and pieces of information, Mary would most likely say she just happened to find them. She happened to click a link. She happened to follow up with a Google search on something that was mentioned by a colleague. She is taking action, but sees herself as simply responding to what life has presented, rather than seeing herself as seeking it out.

In our supermarket pizza example, Mary might take advantage of the fact that the Pizza Lady is available to answer questions at the free sample table. Is it fattening? Is it tasty? Is it all natural? And because the Pizza Lady has it sitting right there on napkin with a toothpick, Mary might even taste the pizza!

Stage 3: Open Curiosity
“I’ll Try It…”
In Stage 3, Mary’s defenses are no longer over-riding her curiosity. Having done some reading – or perhaps taken an online quiz, or maybe read an easy piece of wisdom she could incorporate into a board meeting – Mary is finally open to taking a first public step into a new way of thinking.

Mary might attend a workshop. She might buy a book. Or two books. She might start conversations with others who are in the same boat.

Continuing our pizza example, if you were out to dinner with Mary, and someone suggested pizza, Mary might say, “Oh what the heck – I’ll order a slice!” (And she’ll like it, and will probably order a second one!)

Stage 4: Taking Action with Clear Intent
“I’ll Do it!”
In Stage 4, Mary is moving forward with intent. In Mary’s mind up till now, she likely believes she has been exposed to these new concepts and approaches without such intent – that these new ideas have been put in her path, and she has simply responded.

In Stage 4, Mary is taking control, making the decision with resolve. And she is excited!

Perhaps she met you (the consultant) at a workshop you gave on governance or fundraising. Mary calls you to ask if you will come speak to her board. “I’d love you to give our whole board the workshop I attended. They need to know this stuff!”

Mary has just picked up the phone and ordered her very first whole pizza.

Stage 5: Self-Identifying
“This is what I do”
At Stage 5, Mary and her organization see the “new” approach as simply how they do their work. It is not new or different. It is no big deal. It just is.

The board has an annual plan and is working that plan. Or the board has incorporated a new model of governance into the way it operates. Or the organization has a proactive resource development plan, and the plan is working.

Of course we plan. Of course we work this way as a board. Of course this is how we generate resources.

At Stage 5, Mary eats pizza for lunch several times a week. When she goes out with friends, she orders pizza. She doesn’t think of it as new or special; she just does it.

Stage 6: We’ve Always Done It Like This
“Duh!”
At Stage 6, we are not “doing” our work in a particular way; that way of being has seeped into the organization’s DNA. It is simply what the organization is. No one can remember ever being anything but that. “We’ve always done it like this!”

Mary doesn’t have to focus on doing her work in this way. The approach is her natural rhythm. It feels right, logical, whole. It is simply who she is.

At dinner, a friend will comment that Mary is ordering pizza. “I’ve always eaten pizza,” Mary replies. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t!”

Summary and What’s Next
As I have considered these stages of readiness, we see our prospective clients moving through these stages from “Won’t” to “Being it.” We see them moving from “I don’t” through “I do” to arrive at “I am.”

In Part 2 of this article, I will tackle approaches that work for helping to move clients through the stages. Someone might move through some stages very quickly – seemingly jumping over them. But regardless of where we enter the continuum (some people may be at Stage 2, for example, without ever having been at Stage 1), I believe that from there, we then go through each of those stages, however briefly, rather than skipping over some on the way to what’s possible.

But we will see. As I said, I am exploring this thinking here with you. And I’m looking forward to seeing how that evolves.

So what has been your experience? Am I close? And is this thinking helpful as you consider your own clients and their potential for working with you?

The remaining four Pollyanna Principles focus on the means we use to attain those results. If we are to reach for our highest potential as consultants, it will be important to use means that are aligned behind and aimed at those results.

The next 4 posts in this series will therefore examine those principles one at a time, to help move your practice towards its highest potential.

Pollyanna Principle #3: Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.
As consultants to community organizations, we often encourage our clients to work with other organizations to achieve their goals.  But is that how we operate our consulting practices? Here are some approaches to consider:

Create an Advisory Team for Your Consulting Practice
When it comes to your clients, the benefits of having a board go beyond legal oversight – a board can provide multiple smart minds to consider different approaches to the vision, values and activities of your clients’ organizations.  The same is true for your consulting practice.

There are many ways to accomplish this.  For example, consultants can use the same sleuthing techniques you teach your clients, to build the advisory team for your practice.

What is even more powerful, though, is to engage your clients themselves as your advisors. Talk about building upon your interconnectedness!

Example:
At the Community-Driven Institute, there are 3 phases to the Consultants Curriculum. Phase 1 is self-guided, providing content background in various subjects.  Phase 2 is the Immersion Course, where consultants spend 5 days practicing a different way of being in their work, to learn how to help clients reach for their highest potential.  Phase 3 is the Faculty Level, where graduates of Phase 2 are mentored as they put what they’ve learned into practice.

To build Phase 2, we asked consultants we knew and trusted to join us for 5 days (the length of the class) to go through what we wanted to teach, step-by-step, to help frame and create the class.  The Immersion Course today is 100% not what we had thought it would be. The course is only the powerful force for transformation it is today because  it was co-created by all those brilliant minds.

With Phases 1 and 2 up and running, we turned to building Phase 3. Having experienced the power of creating Phase 2 from the inside out, Phase 3 is now being co-created by the very participants who have gone through Phase 2.  This is the only way Phase 3 will be effective in helping participants continue to transform how they think and be in their work with clients.

Join a Community of Practice / Learning Community for Consultants to Community Benefit Organizations
Virtually every Community Benefit Organization qualifies for membership in at least one professional association – a group that gathers like-kind organizations to learn and grow together.  From local coalitions to national and international associations, almost every type of Community Benefit Organization we might encounter has access to support for their work.

Independent consultants, however, typically operate one-or-two person shops. And consultants who lead management support organizations are generally the only ones in town who do what they do.  While both these situations offer autonomy, it also means there is only you to make decisions.  Some folks may bounce ideas off a spouse, but spouses aren’t generally known for providing an objective view!

A Community of Practice (or “Learning Community) can provide you with other like-minded spirits with whom you can learn and grow, with the goal of improving your work.

If there is no such group in your community, you can start one using this simple framework.

You can also join one of several online communities that serve a similar function. As one example, the Twitter Chat #NPCons “meets” online monthly to discuss issues of interest to consultants to Community Benefit Organizations (You can learn how to participate in that chat here).  Charity Channel’s “Consultants” forum and ARNOVA’s listserv are other online communities for consultants to Community Benefit Organizations.

Learning and growing together not only raises the bar for each of us individually; it raises the bar on the whole profession.

By using our interconnectedness as a means to achieving our highest potential, consultants to Community Benefit Organizations will significantly enhance the effects of their consulting work. And that is a strong step forward as your consulting practice becomes a catalyst for community change.

• What are other approaches for engaging clients and colleagues in helping you reach for the highest potential of your work?
• As you develop the plans for your business (if you do not have a plan, read Part 1 of this post again!), who does it make sense to engage to make that plan a reality?
• What has been your experience with using consulting colleagues or clients as advisors, to help you reach for the highest potential for your practice?

First there was this week’s live Twitter Chat, where consultants from around the world grappled with the extent to which inspiring vs. prescribing to clients is most effective. In that context, the words Best Practice came up often.

Then I received an email from a reporter, with questions about Best Practice for governance. And then, not 24 hours ago, I scanned the latest copy of the Blue Avocado newsletter, only to find an admonishment that we reconsider what we mean by Best Practice.

For the record, the term Best Practice doesn’t make me crazy because it is overused or even because it is less than honest, as noted in Blue Avocado.

The term makes me crazy because much of what is declared to be Best Practice is actually to blame for why the Community Benefit Sector has not significantly and overwhelmingly changed our communities!

“Best Practice” Issue #1: The Answers Are Outside Us
One issue that became clear in the Twitter chat this week is an issue I raised in The Pollyanna Principles – that organizations have much to build upon, and that when we use systems that build upon a groups’ own wisdom, they are more likely to own and then act upon the results.

Best Practice throws all that out the window. Best Practice assumes the answers have been predefined from outside the group, and that failure to adopt what the rest of the world is doing will be perceived as less than professional.

Best Practice suggests the group isn’t smart enough to come up with its own answers. Best Practice leads to seeing others (especially consultants and academics) as having those answers.

Encouraging a group to rely on Best Practice, then, is reinforcing for the group that they are not as smart as those other experts. Rather than empowering a group, reliance on Best Practice takes their power away.

In a world where boards so often feel like fish out of water, deferring to EDs out of their own sense of inadequacy, encouraging a board to focus on externally imposed Best Practice simply reinforces that sense of inadequacy. Use of Best Practice therefore creates weaker, less confident leaders, who do not own the results of their work, because that work was generated outside them – by experts providing externally developed Best Practice.

“Best Practice” Issue #2: Who Says It’s Best? And What is Best About It?
Blue Avocado points out that what is commonly accepted as Best Practice is more often than not simply common practice – what everyone else is doing. (Can’t you just hear your mother asking, “If everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you?”)

Board gurus often cite all the Best Practice sources - BoardSource, Standards for Excellence, even the articles at our own Community-Driven Institute Library.

But what makes those sources “best?” Best at what? If, as an example, board effectiveness is measured by board participation and enthusiasm, or by an accountability-for-the-means checklist – but not by the extent to which that board is aggressively pursuing the organization’s vision and mission in the community – is that really “best?” Or have we replaced our vision for what is possible with a set of minimum standards and simply chosen to call those “best?”

“Best Practice” Issue #3: When “Best” is Actually Bad
That leads to the hardest issue to face: What happens when what is touted as Best Practice is actually harmful?

Best Practice in Governance that rewards accountability for the money (means) with zero accountability for community-driven results (ends).

Best Practice in Board Recruitment, that provides a matrix of pro bono roles to be filled (attorney, accountant, PR person, etc.), when in fact, recruiting board members for the purpose of receiving pro bono help is actually a direct cause of micromanagement.

Best Practice in fundraising (and in providing funding as a grantor) that teaches organizations to become more competitive / to sell themselves as “better than their competition” – while simultaneously bemoaning that those groups have trouble working cooperatively with the very organizations they have been instructed to “differentiate themselves against” (i.e. make themselves appear to be better than).

In just these 3 cases, adherence to Best Practice leads to and reinforces

• a lack of board accountability for end results in the community
• board micromanagement
• the assumption that organizations must treat the very people who care most about their mission as enemies

These practices move far beyond simply being “not best.” These Best Practices have caused dramatic harm – within individual organizations, within the Community Benefit Sector as a whole, and within the communities we all care about.

What To Do Instead?
If we humans are more likely to feel ownership of work we create ourselves, the answer becomes clear: Have groups establish their own “Best Practice.”

For simplicity’s sake, let’s use the board recruitment example. By scrapping the Best Practice board recruitment matrix, we can facilitate the group’s wisdom instead, asking such questions as:

• What are the qualities we want to be sure every board member has?
• What are the qualities it would be nice if some had, but not everyone needs to have?
• What are pro bono positions we wish the organization would attract? (Let’s be sure to recruit those separately as volunteers, rather than assuming we must add these folks to the board)
• What are the characteristics we never want to see on our board, ever ever ever?

From the lists of answers to these and other questions, each group will own its recruitment criteria and from there its recruitment process. And the same method of asking and encouraging the group’s own wisdom could then apply to all the other issues for which groups seek outside expertise.

What This Means for Consultants and Other “Experts”
As consultants, we are used to being asked for our expertise. Everything about the way we do our work changes, however, when instead of assuming the answer is outside the group, we assume the answer is in the room, and that our job as the consultant is to guide the group to find its own answer.

If we see our role as inspiring our clients’ own wisdom, then the consultant will ask instead of telling. Instead of a magic bag of checklists and answers, the consultant will have a magic bag of probing questions.

Instead of enforcing external standards, the consultant will practice eliciting a group’s own standards.

The consultant will still have topic-specific knowledge to inject into the discussion where needed. But that topic-specific knowledge will be a perk, an incentive for the group to want to learn more, rather than the definitive word.

In the end, the approach you choose will come down to a question that is simultaneously simple and complex: How much do you trust your own judgment and ability? And how much do you trust the judgment and ability of your clients.

This post was originally posted at Creating the Future.

As you begin putting The Pollyanna Principles into practice with your clients, imagine the impact on your practice itself if you apply those same principles to the business side of your business!

Whether you are working with clients on overall strategy, resource development, social media or anything else, Pollyanna Principled Consultants begin that client work with the end results their clients want to see in the community.

The same will hold true as you apply the principles to your consulting practice. In this article, then, we will focus on the first two of the principles – the principles re: End Results. In part two, we will address the four principles about the means we use to achieve those results.

The Pollyanna Principles Regarding End Results
Pollyanna Principle #1: We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.
Pollyanna Principle #2: Each and every one of us is creating the future, every day, whether we do so consciously or not.

Just as Community Benefit Organizations often lose sight of their focus on creating visionary, community-driven end results, we consultants easily fall into the same trap. Here are a few areas to consider.

A Clear Vision for Success
When Dimitri and I first began our consulting practice, we weren’t sure exactly what we would end up doing. What we DID know quite clearly was why we were doing it.

In those early days, we knew we wanted work that would let us grow, both intellectually and creatively, and work that would let us travel. We knew we wanted our families to join us in our travels and to grow along with us. Most of all, we wanted to know that our work was making the world a better place.

That last point has been such a strong guiding focus that it led to a complete change in our practice. It led to The Pollyanna Principles. It led to our developing the Community-Driven Institute.

Your clients’ vision for the change they want to create defines why they do what they do. As you think about your consulting practice, your own personal vision will do the same for you.

• What is your highest potential?
• What would success look like in your life?
• What future do you want to hold yourself accountable for creating for yourself and your consulting business?

A Plan for Achieving that Success
Imagine this scenario: You are visiting a prospective client for the first time. You ask if they have a plan for whatever it is you will be working on. Their response is, “No, it’s hard to find the time. And besides, in our line of work, it’s really hard to plan – one can never tell what will be coming down the pike.”

Now imagine saying to that client, “That’s ok. I understand. I don’t plan for my business either.”

Silly? Of course. But unless you are prepared for this confession, it’s time to create a plan for aiming your business at achieving the success you’ve defined in your vision.

• How will you align your work to accomplish your potential / your vision?
• What steps will you take to achieve success?
• How will you hold yourself accountable for achieving your vision?

Short Term Needs vs. Visionary Success
Consultants often encounter organizations that are prioritizing short term needs over their long term goals. As Pollyanna Principled consultants, our job in those circumstances is to encourage those organizations to see the bigger picture of what they can accomplish if they look up from what is right in front of them – seeing both the forest and the trees.

But it is one thing to advise our clients. It is quite another to apply that same thinking to our own work.

Consultants who can’t find time to do marketing, because they are “too busy bringing in money to pay the bills.”

Consultants who find reason after reason to justify why they can’t dedicate the time to writing the book / launching the website / developing the class that will bring them nearer to their vision.

Yes, we live our lives in the short term – the need to pay the bills is real. But to consciously create the future we want – our own personal vision – we must hold ourselves accountable for doing just that. It is a balance – one we might try to help our clients achieve, but that we are likely to consider too hard to do for our own businesses.

True story: In the past few years, our own consulting practice has been completely transformed, as we took on the task of developing the consultants’ curriculum for the Community-Driven Institute at the same time as I was writing The Pollyanna Principles. Talk about time-consuming! Each of those efforts would have been enough to slow us down, and we did both at the same time!

To accomplish all that and keep our business afloat meant taking on smaller engagements, moving away from the larger projects that had become a mainstay of our practice.

Was that scary? Of course it was! But we knew that although big consulting jobs would generate revenue in the short term, in the long term it would jeopardize our real goals – to create systems to share what we had learned. We could not have made that decision if we were focused solely on short term survival.

It is a simple law of physics: If we are spending time on one thing, we can’t be spending that moment on something else. For our consulting practices to help us reach for our vision, our potential, our definition of success – we must invest our time in that visionary potential.

• What important project have you been putting off for lack of time?
• What can you do this week to take steps towards accomplishing that big picture goal?
• How will you ensure the work you do today is a stepping stone to the future you want to create for yourself and your business?
• How will you hold yourself accountable for creating your own success?

Conclusion
As you consider how Pollyanna Principles #1 and #2 affect your consulting practice, you will notice how strongly the principles regarding “means” affect those end results as well. And while Part 2 of this article will address the remaining four principles, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention just one of those principles here – Pollyanna Principle #4: “Being the change we want to see means walking the talk of our values.”

Each of the items noted in this article is something we would advise our clients to do. Being the change we want to see in our own lives means walking that talk for ourselves. When we do, we find that creating visionary change is not only possible for our communities and our clients – it is possible for ourselves as well.

For Part 2 – building an Interconnected Practice – head here.

If this is your first time, look around. Watch a video. Send us a note. Subscribe to get updates when we add articles, events and classes.

In the next few months, we will also be adding an online community where you can join in the conversation with other consultants who are leveraging their practice to change the world.

However you choose to participate, we hope you will join us.

Because creating visionary change in our communities and our world is not only possible – it is practical and doable. And we can start right now.