4 - Skills in challenging the client

Summary

This chapter brings together the skills that a consultant may draw on in order to add value by being appropriately challenging.

• • Section 1 looks at the ‘zones of debate’ and especially the ‘Zone of Uncomfortable Debate’.

• • Section 2 discusses the ‘hilltops’ metaphor and the importance of recognising differences in perspective in consulting work.

• • Section 3 discuses cognitive distance and how this can help provide challenge or aid the transference of knowledge between consultant and client.

• • Section 4 outlines the ‘push-pull’ approach to influence, with this section providing the introduction to six mechanisms for influence: ‘listening’; ‘questioning’; ‘summarising’; ‘re-framing’, ‘advising’; ‘going ahead and doing it anyway’.

• • Section 5 explores unconscious mental processes and influence.

• • Section 6 looks at individual client characteristics through the lens of the Social Styles Inventory.

The ZOUD and challenging the client

Professor Cliff Bowman promoted the idea of the ZOUD, or ‘Zone of Uncomfortable Debate’. The ZOUD is one of three levels of dialogue – or zones of debate – suggested by Bowman, and perhaps the one most relevant to challenging a client's thinking.

The three zones of debate are the Zone of Comfortable Debate, the Zone of Uncomfortable Debate, and the Intuitive Core. All have a role in a consulting process, but the ZOUD is potentially the most productive and also the one many consultants find the most difficult.

The Zone of Comfortable Debate describes convivial conversation. What is being discussed between consultant and client is noncontentious. This means either that the subject is light and/or that both parties are in agreement. Dialogue in the Zone of Comfortable Debate will move a conversation forward, but usually in only two ways. It can provide a platform for reflection, helping the client's own thoughts to move their perspective on a situation. It can also work in a summarising capacity, where mutual acceptance of an opinion enables a conversation to progress to the next stage. However, it is in a social cohesion role that the Zone of Comfortable Debate makes its biggest contribution to effective dialogue. A challenging conversation can only really work if there is sufficient cohesion between the two parties. Cohesion keeps things together and mitigates against the tension that challenge causes.