How New Consultants Lose Confidence

People will continue to do what has worked in the past or what they intuitively think will work. They fail to challenge their own assumptions. As mentioned before in our work with world-class performers, one of the universal things we uncovered is that world-class performers are willing to challenge their intuitions and do things that are “counterintuitive” in order to succeed.

One of the problems we see new consultants experiencing is what we call the “confidence slide.” This slide involves four steps:

Step #1. The technique or action does not work, so instead of adapting, we just do it more often and even harder, causing stress and lost energy.

Step #2. Our failure to adapt and our heightened stress is met with resistance from our intended audience and the message is interpreted by us as, “they aren’t getting it,” instead of, “we aren’t getting it.”

Step #3. We then begin to judge our audience as “stupid” or “against us” and blame them for our failure.

Step #4. We do not understand why we are failing and begin to take it personally, allowing our confidence to slide away.

In order to break this slide, we need to have a mechanism to challenge each step along the process, so any fix is process related (adapting) and not personal (lost confidence).

Different circumstances require different actions. The truly world-class performers realize this and adapt accordingly. There are five areas where new consultants need to be counterintuitive to succeed. What may have been “natural” work habits and beliefs in the past now need to be challenged in the face of a new reality.

In future blog posts, we will discuss the counterintuitive challenges facing consultants today.

This article is an excerpt from Buddy’s latest book, "Experience Matters: How to Succeed as a Consultant in Today’s World." To download your free copy of the full version CLICK HERE.