How to help when your help isn’t wanted.

Technically I am a consultant. I work for an agency and go into organisations for a set period of time to help solve problems. However I regularly talk about how much I hate ‘the C word’ and the image it conjures up in peoples minds eye.

Following on from the International Gov Design conference this week (I started this blog post a while ago!) and being posed the question below, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we work with people who haven’t necessarily asked for help.

In my world the most common instance of this is when an organisation procures design however the people involved in the procurement are not necessarily those involved in the work. This leads to a few scenarios in which the people involved don’t want help because:

1. They have had help before, from a wide range of people (including consultants), and it’s never done any good so why should it now!
2. They’ve been at the coal face of X for many years now and they’ve tried it all. Good luck coming up with something they haven’t thought of because they live and breathe X.
3. They are scared of change. Who are these people and what will it all mean? We’re not sure we can take another restructure.
4. There’s no time to get help even if they wanted it because the day-to-day never stops.

I’m sure there are other contexts for which the statement is also relevant (I’d love to hear these) however this is the variety I have the most experience of.

I’d like to ponder a few ways to bridge the gap. I say ponder because I don’t believe I am qualified to offer advice on approaches as I am coming at this from one side. In my pondering I try to see things from the other side but I’d love to hear the thoughts of anyone on the receiving end.

1. Positivity

Smiling and being positive will endear people to you and seemlessly integrate you into their world. Will it? I’m not sure how I’d feel if a stranger started bounding around joyfully 3 days a week smiling profusely. Ok so perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Being friendly is a good start. No one is arguing that saying hello, passing the time of day and not stealing people’s milk is not a good idea. However perhaps a balance needs to be struck here. Also on the flip side remember consultants are not able to be happy all the time either. We’re just humans and we have bad days.

2. Openness

Open honesty is usually a good approach in most situations but consider the balance of power here. As a consultant I’m initiating this open dialogue because I usually want something in return. I want some of your time. Some of your expertise. I want to get you on side. How can we have this open forum and remove the power dynamics that are at play? Stripping things back to basics everyone wants the same thing here. For things to be better. So how can we establish a level playing field and work together?

3. Understanding

I vividly remember a project I worked on once where a partner asked me, at the start of the project, how I liked to work. Getting our cards on the table early led to a much better working relationship and a heightened ability to foresee and weather storms along the way. We don’t do this often enough because it involves being vulnerable, usually with people you barely know. Could more of this help?

3. Expertise

Everyone is an expert in something, stick to this and don’t try and pretend you know things you don’t. I’m a service designer. As a service designer I have the privilege to work on a wide range of services from retail to town planning. I can’t possibly be an expert in all these subject matters and would never profess to be. I’m a expert in design therefor I see the people delivering the services I’m helping to design as the experts in that service/subject matter. This is a hard one as it may not always come across like this so how can we get this message across more successfully and play to each other’s strengths?

4. Time

Or lack of! How do we make change while keeping the ship afloat? I don’t have the answer here. It’s a problem I face time and time again and one I’ve tried various approaches to navigating but ultimately as a consultant you have very little influence here and we have to work with what we have.

5. Trust

The best relationships I have had in my time as a consultant are those that feel balanced. The client/agency power in-balance has levelled out because we’ve come to a place of trust and respect for what each other do. It’s in those moments that I’ve done my best work and I’d like think helped the most people, likely some that really didn’t want help at the start.

Ultimately change is hard. Especially when it’s change involving something that people are close to. But remember, we’re all just humans trying to do the right thing.

If you have experience of being on ‘the other side’ I’d love to hear from you. Does this ring true? What have I missed?