I’m one of many career-transitioners that joined the tech industry in my 30s, and brought some experience with me that I didn’t initially realize would be very valuable in my role as a consultant.
My previous career before tech was in the music industry, which is 95% about building relationships. Ideally, you really like and trust your bandmates in order to open up together musically and let that vulnerable headspace generate music. You have to convince venue owners, festival organizers, record labels and fans to care about your music and give you a shot. You have to organize groups of people to be in the same room, at the same time, and open to learning, playing and contributing to your music, and you to theirs. And you have to do all of these things with basically no money in the mix. For perspective, my highest grossing year in the music industry was around half of what I earned in 2018.
I once tweeted:
“Opinion: empathy in a consulting context means actually concerning yourself more with how your client team can succeed at their jobs than how your internal team can. The later should be framed as *part* of the strategy to support the former.”
This tweet is the tl;dr of my advice. But a friend and mentor nudged me to write more about this down, and so here we are.
Leveraging empathy in relationships to help clients succeed (and therefore you succeed too):
1. Listen in meetings (obviously)
But don’t just listen to what they are telling you. Listen for what they are not telling you. Formulate a list of questions in your mind, or even better, on paper. I have an embarrassing number of notebooks on the go at all times. You can interrupt and ask clarifying questions that relate directly to the topic at hand if it feels natural.
But for the most part I like to take my list of questions away, think and expand on them, and then book a follow up meeting to get answers and clarity. I like to group the questions into similar categories so I can invite the right people to those follow ups (no one likes having their time wasted). If my questions are technical, I like to book technical stakeholders and people who are responsible for implementing the technical pieces both internally and on the client team. People have expertise, leverage it to help them.
2. Find root causes
Use your conversations, meetings and lists of questions to try to find root causes to the various surface problems, and see if there are any common connections. It’s like treasure hunting or solving a whodunnit. People might articulate their problem really well to you, but they may not actually know what the real problem is. When you’re deep in the weeds it can be hard to have objectivity and see what is wrong, so it’s our job as consultants to search for it and communicate those findings to the client in a way that is honest and sensitive.
3. Be friendly and authentic
Throw in dad jokes, references to pop-culture, nerd topics or personal interests here and there to signal that you’re a human being and that they can be human beings too. Give people the space to be themselves and a little more relaxed in meetings and they will reveal more about the problem space naturally. I promise. It relieves some corporate tension and that’s when the best teamwork gets done.
I ask occasional questions about client’s interests outside of work in 1:1 meetings to show that I’m invested in them as people as well as professionals. It’s important to find things you are actually interested in to connect about, authenticity is the key. For example, I had a stakeholder who was really into lego, which I found out at a group client dinner. I love lego and wanted to know more about it. He ended up showing everyone slides of his extensive collection the next morning in a meeting and was genuinely excited to share.
Some could view this a waste of time in a 10+ person meeting. But for me, that’s when we connected as colleagues and was when I knew we had established trust. It probably also humanized him to his team, which pays its own dividends. I was stoked about his lego models (especially the millennium falcon he built) and my interest probably made him feel validated and at ease. From that point on I knew I could speak honestly with him about the project.
4. Try to see where stakeholders are coming from
If you’re comfortable with the process (UX thinking is a can of worms for many, so this may not always be possible), consider doing rough persona sketches or write-ups for your stakeholders. Ask yourself at least in your own mind, what is motivating them? What are their pains and gains? Not just with respect to how they function on their team, think about what their goals are within their career trajectory and how this project fits that picture.
If you get to know them really well, consider how their life outside of work might affect their decisions. For example, I’m a single mom. Asking me for a favour most days is totally cool. But if you ask me on a morning where I was late for work because my 6 year old mutated into hurricane Avery before school, I may be less open to helping (she’s a lovely and perfect child at all times of course 😇).
5. Care more about the client team’s success than your internal team
Actually. Who cares if your internal team of wizard developers and designers is crushing it if your client team is falling behind? Being better at your job than the client is not actually a good look. It makes the client delivery team look bad, and their bosses may lose confidence in their own team’s ability to deliver. The consequences can be huge.
Stakeholder confidence in the over-all project will likely dip, and energy will be put into thinking about this rather than staying focused on solutions to support the project goals. Client-side teammates may feel defensive and insecure, and they could share these feelings with stakeholders.
Ultimately as consultants, we’re rarely on projects throughout their entire lifecycle. We need to be considerate about this. Instead of obsessing over how many story points we can deliver, obsess over how to support their team and their goals. If you can see they need technical mentorship, find a way to work this into your sprint (assuming you’re working in an agile context). If you’re worried that the stakeholders will think you aren’t delivering enough, make sure they are aware about the value the whole team is getting out of that mentorship time. You are literally levelling up the whole team even when you’re working 1:1 with someone which is an investment in their company’s long-term goals (as well as that person’s).
6. Check in with client-side delivery folks, a lot.
Ask them frequently if they are blocked or if there is anything your internal team can do to support their efforts. Acknowledge them for doing things well, even if it’s just a little thing. And do it publicly sometimes so their bosses see. Build a sense of trust and ease with them so they feel comfortable asking you for help. If you’re commenting on pull requests, do so with empathy (see my colleague & friend Ankita’s awesome article about how to do this). If they seem uncomfortable with comments, take the time to talk with them one on one, ideally on a video call where they can see you and read your expressions.
Make sure you try to figure out where the client-side dev team’s skills are at with respect to the product’s current and future stack. If they are less comfortable with frontend, don’t wait until they ask for help. Message them directly to ask if they would like some pairing time and let them know you and your team are available to help.
7. Check in with stakeholders, a lot.
Don’t just do weekly sprint demos. Book 1:1 time with stakeholders to see how they view the project health. Ask them questions that will get them thinking about it if they are stuck in the routine of delivering their own OKRs. Some people in senior roles have so much on their plate that they may not be actively thinking about the delivery goals and objectives all the time. Give them a relaxed environment in these check-ins so they have space to think out loud. This is one of the best ways to check for blindspots in the project.
Record your meetings (with consent), always. You won’t regret it. Send group meeting videos out if key people could not attend and then follow up with them for feedback.
8. Be the client’s consigliere, not a salesperson.
Clients don’t want to be sold anything. They have budgets to stress over and consultants are a big investment. What they are purchasing is more than your ability to deliver software, it’s the capacity to transform their internal team too, at least for the most forward thinking clients.
If they need more resources to accomplish their business goals, tell them and explain how those resources will help them get to where they need to go. If you realize they need different resources than they purchased initially, surface this internally and then externally and be ready to explain why. If they need less resources than they purchased be honest about this too.
9. Admit When Change is Needed
Be open and transparent when you’ve found a mistake or need to pivot for another reason. If you have completed 70% of a project and realize there is a fatal flaw that needs to be addressed, you have an obligation to surface that information. You aren’t doing anyone a favour by finishing if the final product misses the mark or fails to solve the problem it was intended to. Ultimately, the stakeholders have to decide if they want to scrap a chunk of work or change direction. That pressure and burden isn’t yours. But you are failing them if you don’t try to convince them of necessary change.
10. Unify the Team
Aim to make your internal team and the client team come together as a unit. If you can unlock this Jedi level of alignment where everyone feels like they are on the same team despite different time-zones, geography, bosses, KPIs, etc you’re golden. And your job will be maximum fun. Don’t forget to include your stakeholders in this team. Fully achieving this synergy is very rare, don’t beat yourself up if you can’t get there. But make this your goal. Make #1–9 on this list of advice serve this objective.
So there you have it, my advice on how to treat people like humans first and professionals second in order to help them achieve their goals. Success metrics are hard when your goal is alignment and empathy. Trust me, if you make this a priority, your clients will be successful, your internal team will be successful, and you will become a great consultant.
Follow me on Twitter @AT_Fresh_Dev
