3 Mindset Traits in Successful Consulting Leaders

In my interviews and advisory work with successful consultancy leaders, I’ve noticed three common mindset traits. This is not to say that these traits will lead to success or that all successful leaders had all of these traits, but at least two out of three are evident in every success story I have been part of or studied.

Here we go!

1. A Humble Mindset

Let’s face it, when scoring the typical consultant on a list of character traits, humility is often (though not always) towards the bottom. The bright young Oxbridge graduate snapped up by Boston Consulting Group who ends up talking in multi-national board-rooms at the age of 26 is not going to lack in confidence.

After ten years honing their craft, becoming a world-expert in a niche, and effecting change in dozens of companies, such confidence can, in some cases, spill over into a certain arrogance over-confidence about their capabilities.

When I interviewed Equiteq Founder, Paul Collins, he argued many founders who come from large consultancies are confident experts that struggle with being a novice in many areas.

Damien Duhamel, leader of Solidiance, emphasizes that importance of humility in adjusting one’s mindset here:

‘Small firms often say that they beat McKinsey in winning a bid. You did not beat McKinsey, you were just cheaper! It’s important to be humble here – we know that we are not a Rolls Royce, we are, say, an Audi. If you want expensive luxury then go for Rolls Royce, there is a market for all types but it is important to know who you are’.

Corporate consultants, whilst often working in a team, are often solitary, competitive creatures. Sadly, in many firms, this gets worse the closer one gets to a partner, where the hoarding of information, clients, and good employees often creates more personal benefits than sharing might.

A successful growing consultancy will need to manage itself to avoid the hoarding of power, especially by the founder.

Successful growth usually involves:

• Delegating decision-making to the lowest possible level.
• Allowing subordinates to flourish by encouraging them to experiment and make mistakes
• Having a CEO that focuses on orchestrating rather than looking over shoulders
• Sharing equity so at least the senior team are motivated to make a sale successful

In additional to enabling a devolved, empowered workforce, humility also enables learning. Anand et al. (2019) found that a humble mindset improved knowledge sharing in businesses.

Mark Long, founder of Ignite, told me,

‘you must tell your students that it is a privilege to be asked into a client to help them through a stage of difficulty. If you ever lose that sense of humility, and develop the sense of arrogance that some consultants have you will stop learning and alienate clients’

How one actually goes about creating a humble mindset is not something this blog can advise on, but getting feedback on, and being aware of, one’s limitations is probably a useful start!

2. A Entrepreneurial Mindset

It is perhaps not surprising that entrepreneurialism is crucial to starting and growing a successful consultancy. It is, however, worth emphasising that in my interviews with consultancies that wanted to grow but failed to achieve this, the most common reason was an aversion to risk.

One of the ‘control group’ in my book (i.e. consultancies that should have been successful but were not) was a founder who started what would now be called a cyber-security strategy firm in the mid-1990s, with a focus on protecting digital assets.

Everything about this firm screamed growth: they have an outstanding reputation for quality, years of experience, great testimonials, and strong people. However, the founder has an aversion to risk born out of his own upbringing, and has never wanted to recruit people, to borrow, or to take on projects outside of their core offering.

Now, the company isn’t unsuccessful and has a handful of consultants (mostly family members) and a decent revenue base, but even if it had expanded at the market growth rate (let alone the cyber- rate!), they could have had revenues of $50m+, sold for nearly double that, and be drinking Pimms on a yacht. To be clear, this was not a life-style choice, but an aversion to risk that determined their position.

Of course, an aversion to excessive risk is a sensible trait in the right content, but over the last sixty years, the consulting industry has only experienced two years of contraction and growth has averaged 7% among large firms, and nearly treble that among small firms.

In this context, if you are providing a quality service in a high-demand market, a more relaxed attitude to risk may be an acceptable price for fast growth. Indeed, many successful founders, when asked about their regrets, specifically said that they wished they had been more confident: borrowing early and employing more.

I would also argue that aversion to risk is a significant drawback when it comes to intellectual property. Many solo consultants and founders I’ve coached and interviewed have often held back on sharing their expert knowledge or methods with potential clients for fear, in the words of one, that ‘the client will just steal my ideas and do it themselves’.

Therefore their videos, publications and blogs, are often devoid of depth, and even conversations or pitches with clients are purposefully coy. Yet, such attitudes are based on the false assumption that expert knowledge is a scarce commodity.

It is not. Indeed, these days, pretty much any management challenge is the subject of tomes of publicly available research, articles, videos and books. If anything, there is too much expertise. What is actually rare and valuable is the bespoke tailoring and implementation of expert knowledge, and the brand value that comes with doing this consistently well.

These days, limiting the display of your knowledge and expertise is simply limiting your reputation as an expert.

Entrepreneurship is less about about creativity and innovation than it is about persistence, hard work and resiliance. Mark Long, founder of Ignite told me ‘sales is everything in our world. Having people that can hustle and find work is crucial’.

He then reflected on the times he used to buy a pass to the first class lounge in airports so that he could intersperse his work with chatting to senior decision makers. A strategy that he assures me paid off.

Steve Newton founder of Elixrr talked on a similar theme said ‘I’ve hired a lot of senior people who want to sit in a room creating a proposition. I tell them to get out and talk to the client…Delivery is sales and sales is delivery’.

3. The Boss Mindset

A common theme in this book, and the interviews which inform it, is the ability to shift from working as an employee to working as a boss of the firm. As detailed above, many founders are experienced and ambitious corporate consultants who strike out by themselves, but have never had to run a company.

The shift from working on the company rather than for the company requires a commitment to strategy, processes, planning, leadership and communication which doesn’t come naturally for many.

Interestingly, the boss mindset can also be a trap when the firm grows past 30 employees. As with all start-ups, founders are proud of their achievements which are down, in no small part, to their own shouldering of most of the tasks. Even when in a small partnership, they are likely to have detailed involvement with every ‘function’ that a traditional firm performs.

The trap comes, we will see later, when the firm grows too big for one person to capture and communicate all management information and make all important decisions. This is, after all, why larger firms have boards of directors. Mark Long, for example, admits he ‘struggled with this for some time’.

In summary, there is an interesting paradox at the heart of the founder’s mindset. You need to be confident enough, and have sufficient self-belief, to take risks, lead a team, and to ‘go large’ (as Angie Willies, founder of The Difference Collective put it to me).

At the same time, you need to be humble enough to accept the limits of your experience, and to devolve power and decision-making to others.