Consultant as Parent? Relinqishing Ownership of Success

In IM lingo, it reads, POS: parent over shoulder. If it were a crossword puzzle clue, it would read “end to ‘helicopter’ and ‘velcro’.” Enter a new age of high parental involvement, the age of the hovering, overconcerned progenitor whose sons and daughters are hard pressed to find unbridled freedom. In mild cases, parents remain on call if a crisis situation arises; in more dire situations, parents will fight their kids’ battles for them in both school and work.  Speculation abound as to why this is–a chance to live vicariously through their children, or the desire to engage in “peer-enting” instead of parenting (see Phil Dunfee, “Modern Family”)–but whatever the reason, parents are getting überinvolved. It’s gotten to a point that colleges even create parting rituals during orientation to explicitly tell parents when they’ve overstayed their welcome.

In parents’ defense, most of it springs from a genuine concern for their children. Now that they’re given the opportunity to make sure that Billy or Susie is okay 24-7 via cell phones and Skype, it seems foolish not to do so. It’s a much different era from the one when you couldn’t be reached as soon as you left the house. And often it’s nice to have guidance from someone who does know better, if not best. Ultimately, though, it results in a loss of ownership of successes and failures on the part of their children. It’s one thing to take someone’s hand. It’s another to yank their arm out of the socket while dragging them around.

Consultants are like parents. It’s our job to give our clients guidance, and we’re assumed to know best. But there is again a fine line between making suggestions and making demands. If your word becomes bond, you become the only trusted authority for decision making, and you can effectively cripple your clients. Additionally, if your advice goes sour, you become the scapegoat. Part of consulting is putting a framework in place to aid your clients without them continually tracing their results back to you. Think of it like the Inception of business. Yes. You are the Leonardo DiCaprio of the corporation. Instill the idea, but let them take ownership.

The question is: how can you feel comfortable letting go of your clients? What steps can you take to be sure that your clients will make good decisions in the future without your guidance? How can you prevent your inclination toward hovering?

One means of doing so is by providing your clients with frameworks and formulas. If you attempt to fix every problem they encounter, they’ll see the solution to any future problems as “ask someone else what we should do.” Frameworks act as tools for them to use when they need to make decisions themselves. The principle is captured in the adage, “give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” You can hand them the answers, but it’s much more effective to allow them to come up with them on their own. Although it seems counterintuitive, it’s your job to make them a higher functioning team, not a higher dependency one.

When they get to a good solution, stress their success. Show them specifically how it was that THEY achieved their goals. Push them toward valuing their own agency in the decision making process. Once they realize they have the power to make change and be successful, your role might naturally phase itself out. And what might help is to change your mindset as well. Your success should be viewed as facilitating the success process, not directing it. Just as a parent teaches their child to remove their training wheels, you should encourage your clients to see that they can be successful without help.

It’s hard to let go of a client. Without constant follow-up, you’ll never know if your guidance was received correctly. At the risk of becoming a helicopter consultant, though, you have to know when to let go, and attempt to give them tools to be successful when you’re not around. Your clients are kind of like your kids–you want to see them grow, and you want to share in their successes. But you have to know when to let them go it alone.

There is some good that arises from increased parental involvement. But child leashes…that’s just a whole new level of unfair.

To our readers: what do you do to put ownership of success in the hands of your clients?