Читать книгу The Consulting Bible - Alan Weiss - Страница 36

Consulting demands time, especially to grow a thriving practice. If your significant other also has a career, then the two of you need to make common adaptations. You need to outsource! Hire help to mind the pets, watch the kids, clean the house, pick up the cleaning, mow the lawn, water the plants, and so forth. If a dual income isn't sufficient to hire the resources that working couples require, then there is something wrong with the dual income.

Dual careers shouldn't become dueling careers. Look for ways to substitute for the mundane (cleaning the yard, painting the house) while safeguarding the sacrosanct (taking vacations, quality time with the kids, walks on the beach). This can't be a zero‐sum game, where one benefits only if the other sacrifices. Both have to invest to reap the dividends.

But it makes zero business sense to spend $50,000 in child care when it compensates for one spouse making $40,000 on the job. The kids will grow and one can go to work then, but the kids' youth can never be recaptured.

Part of emotional support is eschewing the martyr's approach. The humorist George Ade observed once, “Don't pity the martyrs; they love the work.”

Not everyone is in a relationship, of course, which makes it even more important to have an emotional support structure and proper resources. While other consultants can provide this, beware of too much commiseration (“Don't worry about losing that business; we're all losing business right now”). You want people around you who can tell you when it wasn't your fault and when it was. You want people who can help relieve the strain and pressure, but who can also demand accountability and responsiveness.

In short, you need trust. Remember: Trust is the honest‐to‐God belief that the other person has your best interests in mind.

Find those people who can be empathetic (they understand your position) but not sympathetic (they share your feelings and position, and therefore tend to be lost in the content). These resources may change as your business grows and/or as you mature. You will certainly outgrow some of them. This can be a very lonely endeavor if you aren't able to share the pressures, ask intimate questions, and filter unbiased advice. Try to find people who don't have a personal agenda, and include a cross section.

Don't accept all feedback as accurate or valid, but look for consistent patterns and feedback that is supported by evidence and behavior. Most important, never accept unsolicited feedback, which is almost always provided for the sender, not the recipient. If you listen to random suggestions, you'll be the ball in the pinball machine, being tossed and bounced by every arbitrary object in its path.

That just winds up being painful.