Personal Leadership Moves to Exemplify Withness in Process Consulting

Personal Leadership Moves to Exemplify Withness in Process Consulting

Lon Swartzentruber, Interim CEO of the Society of Process Consulting and Design Group International, introduced the concept of Withness in his latest blog. When Lon reached out to Scott Hackman Ventures to contribute to the series on withness as it relates to Process Consulting, what arose is the mindfulness Process Consultants play when meeting with executives for one/one coaching and advising. More specifically, what are the personal leadership moves that can be made across the three competencies of listening, helping, and learning that support the idea of withness.

This blog will review how curiosity supports listening with; compassion supports helping with, and courage supports learning with.

Withness in Listening

When working with clients around listening, a personal leadership move that can be made to exemplify withness is curiosity. When listening to a client context and situation, one’s own thoughts and perspectives of that situation naturally arise. Embodying curiosity about our own thoughts and ideas is essential to truly walking alongside the client.

How to Practice Curiosity as a Personal Leadership Move

• Hold your ideas loosely. Be curious about why you have a thought/input. Is it to feel a sense of worth by providing expertise? Is it because you have an idea that may be valuable? Before directly providing the thought/input to the client, be curious and ask “Would this be helpful for the client?” or “Am I trying to solve, save, or fix?” Before sharing, consider whether your input will be helpful or if it's an attempt to solve or fix the situation. If it's the latter, set it aside and refocus on actively listening.
• Ask a curious question. I was having a conversation with a business owner about important decisions they were making in their organization around acquisition. Being this person’s executive advisor, I was also dually aware of this leader’s deep passion for their business and their challenge to keep people informed that will be impacted by the decision. In this case, a spouse. Since I am in business with my spouse, I have personal experience with their scenario, and it was easy for me to see myself in the story. When I begin thinking about myself in the client story, I am no longer listening to the client and instead over identifying with the client. When this happens, a personal leadership move can be to ask, “Can I turn my identification into a curious question?” In the instance above, find a question that centers the client, such as “How are you thinking about communicating your decision?”

Part of being with a person is bringing your own lived experience that can inform client questions. Be curious towards yourself and leverage that curiosity to increase your withness when listening to clients.

 Withness in Helping

As Lon mentioned in his blog, “Peter and Ed Schein often described this level of Client relationship in the 2nd editions of Humble Inquiry and Humble Leadership. The Schein’s described withness in the language of level 2.5, a professionally appropriate personal level 3 relationship with a Client.” In other words, as Process Consultants, we get into intimate, trusting, relationships in a professional environment.

When working with clients around helping, a personal leadership move that can be made to exemplify withness is compassion. Compassion is vital when mistakes are made or boundaries are crossed in client relationships. As Process Consultants, we need to have compassion for ourselves and seize these moments as opportunities for trust-building rather than trust-breaking.

For example, I can overly empathize with a client’s situation. With another executive, I found myself feeling anger towards the injustice the person was experiencing in their role due to the lack of planning from the founder. The person was put into a position of extreme stress for an extended period, which takes a toll physically and mentally. In this case, it caused a low confidence despite their decisions having positive results. I passionately expressed how great I thought their decisions have been. After emoting, I noticed something that was unsettling for me in my body. I had compassion on myself realizing I made a mistake in expressing myself based on my own feelings and not in the posture of helping the client. Later in the conversation, I acknowledged I centered myself in the way I was communicating instead of centering them. If I didn’t acknowledge this with the client, it could have easily morphed into crossing a boundary of being responsible for their emotions instead of walking alongside them.

Compassion is to have kindness towards oneself and others. By modeling self-compassion, you help clients turn their mistakes into valuable learning moments. This places the Process Consultant in a space of withness, focusing on a client-centered and client-inspired path to growth.

“Withness in Learning”

When working with clients around learning, embodying courage is a personal leadership move to exemplifying withness. It takes courage to admit that you don’t have all the answers.

Approaching clients with a posture that you are learning together versus bringing the answers is a mindset shift that is brave. This approach can feel uncomfortable and disconcerting at first, but as a Process Consultant, developing this muscle of courage is essential for true growth and connection.

Courageous Questions to ask with Clients

• What did we learn?
• What’s the takeaway?
• What growth have we witnessed?
• What mistakes were made? What did was learned from them?
• What do we have now?
• What is evidence of the shifts we have experienced?

Having the courage as a Process Consultant to step in and answer these questions alongside a client allows for increased challenge and evolution. This courageous approach provides clients with a mirror to see the progress they've made in their personal and professional development

These questions can be asked in the moment during sessions or after a client engagement. I was advising an owner/successor, and after several years, we sat back and reflected on how they have you grown and what evidence we were seeing of the shifts they experienced. The time of learning provided clarity on how they improved their communication, decisiveness, conflict management, and created structures that served the organization.

Withness in learning involves the courage to build the muscle of discomfort – admitting you are not the expert, and co-discovering what has been learned along the way.

From an energetic level, leaders energize a role that intersects all areas of change and decision. How you approach working with clients and the mindful practices you make can have an impact on the client situation. As a Process Consultant working one/one with leaders, the personal leadership moves of curiosity to support listening, compassion in helping, and courage in learning supports the idea of withness with clients.

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Written by Scott Hackman

Founder and CEO, Scott Hackman Ventures

Collaboration from Andrea Hackman and Diya Wu-Sallah

If you'd like to write a blog post for the Society for Process Consulting, please e-mail Lon L. Swartzentruber at lons@designgroupintl.com.