The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook & Companion, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19Investing in Our Humanity: Women’s Leadership Collaborative

Nancy Voss

Becoming a good consultant requires a continuing investment in ourselves. Many consultants focus their learning on new techniques and developing new ways of thinking about the work. We sometimes talk about consulting as a series of “interventions,” which connotes a certain professional detachment, as if there were a set of tools separate from ourselves that we bring to each project. We learn about new exercises, change strategies, and new models. We participate in the search for what is next. All of these are useful, but without a parallel investment in our own humanity, we forget that in a service business, the person is the product. Who we are, our own consciousness, our own capacity to make contact, our own ability to see and work with compassion in the world as it is become the essence and foundation for our models and strategies.

The power of Nan’s chapter is her deep understanding of the importance of the person. She shares with us a very personal, long-term investment she made, and what is compelling is the extent to which the women opened themselves to whatever surfaced and whatever learnings emerged. It takes courage to be this open, to move toward dangerous waters, to value the pain as an essential part of our development. And it takes faith: faith in ourselves and faith in the ultimate goodwill in the people on the trip with us. As you might guess, Nan not only writes about these qualities, ...