234. The #1 Management Mistake Independent Consultants Make

Welcome to the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast. I'm Melissa Lieberman, a fellow IC and business coach. On this podcast, I teach you to become a consistently booked independent consultant without becoming a pushy salesperson or working 24-7. If I can do it, you can too. Listen on to find out how. Welcome to episode 234 of the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast. This is Melissa Lieberman, and today I am so excited to talk with you about the concept of the number one management mistake that I see independent consultants making and how to overcome it so that you're able to be more successful with the business that you're running. So this is a great complement to last week's episode, which is number 233 of the podcast, where we talked about the biggest leadership mistakes. Today we're going to talk about the biggest management mistakes. So if you haven't yet listened to that one, no problem. Stay here, listen to this one, and then you can go back to that one because they really go hand in hand. As you think about the roles that you're playing in your business, you're the leader, you're the owner, you're the manager, and you're the doer. So today we're focused on you being the manager of your consulting business and of yourself and how to avoid the number one management mistake that I see most independent consultants making that I'm working with and talking to and to help you avoid that mistake. So with that, let's talk about the agenda for today's episode, and then we'll dive right into the content. So first, we're going to talk about why does this matter? So I just touched on that, but we'll talk about it in even more depth. Why does it matter about you being a good manager for your consulting business and for yourself? And why is it a mistake if you are overlooking this or not considering this as you're thinking about the way you're running your business and the way your priorities that you're setting on a weekly and monthly and quarterly basis? And then we'll talk about just briefly that difference between what's the leader and the manager. In the context of what today's episode is about and comparing that to the episode last week about being a good leader and helping you to tease those two out so you can really put both of them into place to be really a powerful owner of your business ultimately. And then I'm going to break down what I believe are the five components of a good manager. I think it's really fascinating to think about, you know, what are those components of a good manager? Have you had managers in the past? You've been a manager likely in the past in some form or fashion, and really thinking about what makes a good manager and what doesn't, and how do you want to be a manager to yourself in your business? Because you've created your employer of choice here, and we want to make sure that that employer of choice has a good manager in place. For sure, you don't want to be working for a bad manager. That's partially why you left corporate probably. So let's not recreate the wheel here inadvertently. So let me just say that more specifically, we're going to talk about the five components of a good manager, at least my proposal on what they are, and hopefully give you some food for thought on what you think a good manager is so that you can put that in place really intentionally for yourself and your business. So we're going to talk about what those five are and what that looks like specifically in your consulting business, and then we'll wrap up the episode with the next steps to put it into action. So with that, let's talk about bad managers for a moment. I was, in thinking about this episode, thinking back to all the bad managers that I had in my corporate days, a few good ones that stand out, and the one that stands out to me the most that's most relevant, especially to an independent consulting business, is the ghost manager. If you think about that ghost manager, did you ever have one? This is the one who disappears. You can't reach them. You can't get on their calendar. I have some horror stories. I'll just give you a snippet of one, which was the manager would come in. He was not living in Denver, where our company was based. He was remote. I won't share too many identifying details, but he was remote. And so he would fly in every week, and then he would go to the strip club in Denver. This is a true story. And then he would pretty much stay there for four days and then go home. So you couldn't reach him. You couldn't get decisions made. You couldn't get budgets approved. It was very difficult to make progress. We'll just put it that way, because he was absent. He disappeared like that ghost manager, disappeared for days, no communication, and then suddenly would pop out of nowhere and start demanding things like, where is this? Why isn't this initiative completed? Why are we missing our numbers? I've got a board meeting. I need the details. All of these things, very aggressive and asking for things to be changed and wanting immediate results and criticizing the progress that we had made or not made, and then would go dark again. Honestly, back to the strip club, sadly to say. You probably have some examples of this in your own life. Maybe not the strip club heart, I hope. But the point is here, that ghost manager. There's so many different personas of bad managers, of course, micromanagers, ineffective managers, all the things. I picked this ghost manager persona as an example to start this episode with because this is what we often do to ourselves as independent consultants. We do this where we're just a ghost manager, right? We're working on executing for our clients, which of course is incredibly important, but we're asleep at the wheel when it comes to managing our business and managing that version of ourself who's responsible for executing, running the business. So we're missing for days and days and days and weeks and weeks and sometimes months. And then we pop up out of nowhere criticizing ourselves for the results that we haven't created or the progress we haven't made or the things we haven't done. And so I just want to call this out because for so many of us, we make this mistake of being the ghost manager. Whatever you're missing too, mostly it's working on client work, of course, not doing something like the strip club example, but you don't want to be that ghost manager for yourself. We've talked about this on the podcast before, becoming the employer of choice for yourself. And one of the critical components of being an employer of choice is having a good manager. You want to be a good manager to yourself. Don't be that ghost manager, for example, or whatever version of a bad manager that stands out to you. Don't be that guy. Don't be that person. So let's talk about the impacts of being a bad manager for yourself, the impacts of being a bad self-manager. Of course, this is me pointing out the obvious in so many ways, but it's important to really a step back and think about, truly think about what are the impacts of you being a bad manager to yourself? Likely there are things like having inconsistent results because you're kind of coming and going and diving in and then disappearing. So of course there would be inconsistent results for your business. You're likely underachieving because your manager isn't giving you consistent support and priority. You're likely missing opportunities because you're not thinking about and being that manager to yourself and therefore missing opportunities because you're so focused on the execution side. You're likely creating constant overwhelm. When you're a bad manager, think about that, like that ghost manager, for example. The amount of overwhelm is incredible because not only is it the ghost manager is missing, so then you're kind of dreading, I don't know about you, but when I was in corporate and having this ghost manager situation, the person wasn't there. The leader slash manager wasn't there. There was overwhelm because we were worried about when he comes back, what are we going to do about that? We knew that this kind of whirlwind was going to happen whenever he did pop up. And then at the same time when he was there and there was all this flurry of activity and second-guessing and criticism and pressure, that created overwhelm. So it was just a constant state of overwhelm. So if you think about yourself as potentially a ghost manager, then you're creating that constant state of overwhelm for yourself as well. You're also creating stalled growth because you're not focusing on thinking about, as a manager, what needs to happen in the business and helping your employee, which is obviously you too, to achieve those things, those steps. You're stalling your growth. And ultimately, eroding confidence. Eroding confidence in the ability of the company to be successful. Eroding confidence in the ability for you to be successful in running the business and executing for clients and juggling all the roles that you have to play. And eroding the confidence of, can I trust the person who's leading and managing this company to set the right direction, to set the right priorities, to provide backup when there's too much demand? All of those types of things. Those are the impacts of being a bad manager and a bad self-manager. Again, this is not rocket science, right? But this is really calling you out on, think about the impacts for you, both when you were in corporate and had a bad manager and how that impacted you. I know for me, it was, I think it took 18 months to get just like unwind from this situation that I was describing to you and finally feel clear and capable and confident again. And so for you, think about the impacts of times where you've had a bad manager in the past and what the impact was in that moment and then later on recovering from it. And the same thing for you as self-manager. What is the impact for you on your business because of the ways that you're not being the most effective manager possible for yourself? Listen, I don't think you're a bad manager. You're likely not a bad manager of yourself, but certainly we can all improve in what we're doing to manage ourselves. And that's why we're here talking about this today, because if you're like so many consultants, you are falling into that trap of being a ghost manager, and that's not the type of manager. I would imagine you want to be for yourself. You certainly don't want to work for a ghost manager. It's great when they're away sometimes, because you can be left to your own devices, but knowing that when they come back, the reality starts hitting the fan, you don't want that dynamic. So don't do it to yourself. Okay, before we dive into the five components of a good self-manager, let's talk about the difference between leading versus managing, just to set up the context of what those five components are of a good manager. So remember, again, last week's episode, it was 232, I believe, was all about self-leadership. So what is a good self-leader? I'll just give you a snippet here, and then you can, of course, go back and listen to that episode if you haven't already. But the self-leader or the leader, the leader, right, a good leader is setting the vision, they're setting the directions, they're setting standards, they're inspiring movement and momentum toward that vision. And we talked last week about the five components of an effective leader, vision, inspiration, opportunity creation, strategic approach, and integrity. So go back after this, like I said, and listen to that episode if you haven't already. But today, with that context in mind of really you being the self-leader and the self-manager, let's talk about what that means to be a leader versus a manager. So the leader, again, is setting the vision, the direction, the standards, and creating momentum and movement toward that vision. And the manager is building the structure and the process to make that vision a reality. That manager is ensuring the direction actually happens. So in that context, we're talking today about the manager. And what are the five components of a good manager? Of course, there's no right answer here. There's no one answer here. But in thinking about this in the context of an independent consulting business, this is what I see. And I would encourage you to answer this for yourself. We're going to go over these five components right now. I'm going to tell you what all five are. Then I'm going to dive into each one individually to talk about, okay, what's a good manager with respect to this component? What's a bad manager with respect to this component? And give you a guiding question to really be thinking about this for yourself, of how to improve yourself as a self-manager. That's what we're going to do. Let me give you the five first. So as an independent consultant, the five components of a good self-manager are being a planner, number one. You're someone who translates that vision into clear, realistic steps and routines and habits. You're a systematizer. You're someone who designs repeatable processes and tools and workflows for efficiency. You're an ownership driver. You're holding commitments to deadlines and quality standards by monitoring what's happening with your team. You happen to be your team, right? And following through, making sure your team is following through. So you've got the planner aspect of being a manager. You're always forward-thinking. You're systematizing or encouraging your team to systematize everything so it's repeatable. You're an ownership driver. You're also a protector. That's the fourth component of being a good manager, a protector. You're someone who clears roadblocks. You're managing capacity. You're managing boundaries to sustain performance. Again, going back to corporate, those great managers were the ones who were able to find resources, whether it was time, getting more resources like actual humans to help augment the team to achieve a goal, or potentially more financial resources or systems. Those are the types of managers that you love working for, right? Because they don't just say, well, work with what you've got and make it happen. They're the ones who are out there getting creative to figure out how do we get more resources to make our team successful. And they're protecting that team. They're protecting the capacity of that team and the longevity of that team and clearing roadblocks. So that's the fourth component of being a good manager. And the fifth component of being a good manager is being a coach. Think about the managers you've worked for in the past, the managers who just tell you what they want to be done and how to do it, and you're kind of turned into an order taker. That's not a good manager. The managers who are teaching you how to think about something so that you can do the work, or asking you how you're thinking about it and helping you to redirect the way you're thinking so that it puts you in the best position to accomplish whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. That's a critically important component of being a good manager. So we've got the planner, we've got the systematizer, we've got the ownership driver, we've got the protector, and we've got the coach. That's what I would submit to you are the most important qualities of being a good manager for a consulting business, especially a business of one. So let's dive into each of these individually and think about what makes a good manager as it relates to each of those components, what is not good, and what's the impact, and then ultimately that reflection question. So let's talk about being a planner first and foremost. So you're someone who's taking, as a manager of your consulting business, your job is to translate the vision that you've set for yourself as the leader of your business and the business owner into clear, realistic steps. That is one of your key critical roles as being the manager of your business. So what makes a good planner? You're someone who's breaking down the goals into specific initiatives and into routines that have clear timelines and steps and milestones and governance. When you're not fulfilling that planner responsibility as a manager, you're operating without structure. You're relying on memory, you're reacting to whatever pops up. You've got the goals, you've set the goals as the leader, but then you haven't really broken that down at all. You're just kind of hoping, you feel good that you set them and you're hoping they come to fruition, but you're really not breaking that down into a structure for yourself. And of course, the impact of this is without planning, those long-term goals, or even medium and short-term goals are pushed aside for the urgent tasks and you become very reactionary and you either don't achieve your goals, you underachieve and or create plateaus. So when you think about yourself, being a good manager to yourself and that component of being a planner, the reflection question that I would give to you as homework for today's episode is how clearly have you broken down your goals and your vision into clear, actionable, time-driven steps and routines? I'll give you a little plug for my quarterly business planner that should be on Amazon soon. Hopefully, by the time this episode airs, we'll put the link in the show notes. So you can go to melissaleiberman.com forward slash growth dash Atlas dash products. And there you will find the waitlist to join where you can go grab, once it's live, you can go grab that quarterly business planner and this will help give you a structure that lays out everything from the vision of your business and then ultimately all of the plans to achieve and move forward toward that vision. So if you want a structure, you can go grab that. Otherwise, just answer for yourself. How clearly have you broken down your goals into clear, actionable, time-driven steps and routines? And how can you make it more, even more clear for yourself? Okay. The second component of being an effective manager for your consulting business, whether it's solo or a boutique, is that you're designing repeatable processes, tools, and workflows. So you've got an efficient way to deliver what you're delivering for your clients and also for your own business. If you treat it as one of your clients, they're one in the same. So think about being a good systematizer. You're someone who's creating templates. You're creating repeatable processes. You're implementing technology to help you save time and reduce errors and ultimately have a more repeatable process where you're not having to recreate the wheel every time you want to do lead generation, for example, or every time you want to follow up with potential clients and build a reputation for yourself. That's being a systematizer. When you're not an effective systematizer, you're reinventing the wheel every time. You're working inefficiently. You're sitting down at your desk on Fridays knowing that it's time to work on the business and you can't remember what it is that you're supposed to do. That's not being a good systematizer or manager for your business and for yourself. And the impact, of course, is that you're draining your energy on where you're trying to recreate the wheel every time and using up your brainpower for that instead of higher value strategic thinking, for example. Higher value executing on the business development process instead of questioning what should you be doing right now. And so the reflection question I would give you around this particular component of being a good self-manager is list out all of your business processes. Focusing on your business and delivering for your clients, even the ones that are missing, and then rate each one. And then identify one way to improve each one of those and start tackling that list for yourself. Become that systematizer so that you continuously implement and optimize those systems in your business so that ultimately the person executing them, which is likely you also, doesn't have to decide every time what they're doing or how they're going to do it. And so then on Friday mornings, when it's time for you to work on your business, for example, you know exactly what you're doing and how you're going to do it, and you can just sit down and hammer it out because you as a manager have put that in place for yourself as the doer. Okay. The third component of being a good manager for your consulting business is that you're an ownership driver. You're holding the commitments to deadlines and the quality because you've got good monitoring and follow through. When you think about being a manager, you're not likely doing the work. You're leading your team to make sure they're doing what you want them to be doing. They're executing according to the priorities you've set. They're making good decisions and they're knowing what the ultimate goals are so that they can always move toward those. As a good manager, you're making sure the deadlines are clear. The deliverables are clear. The team, in this case, again, yourself, is following through consistently. You're able to see the progress, review the progress, and ask good questions about it. If you think about having a one-on-one with yourself, what would that one-on-one entail? The bad manager in this case, the one who's not as effective at driving ownership, is ignoring responsibility or letting deadlines slide because no one is watching. No one is watching you right now except for yourself. Yourself as the manager needs to be watching the doer. Why are you not consistent? Helping work through that. Maybe you are consistent but not effective. Helping you figure out why that is. Think about the manager who's helping to troubleshoot this because they've driven ownership and visibility about what's getting done and what's not getting done and can continuously work through that to improve the results. Because ultimately, if you're not an ownership driver, you're eroding trust with yourself and you're creating patterns of underachievement and stalled growth. So here, with respect to being an ownership driver for yourself in your business as a manager, ask yourself, where have you avoided full ownership of your commitments? Where have you avoided being consistent? Where have you avoided not really wanting to look at it? And what step can you take and what steps can you take to strengthen that follow-through, that consistency, that ownership ultimately of what it is your business processes are that you've put in place and the outcomes that you're driving toward? Number four, the fourth component of being a good manager for your independent consulting business, being a protector. You're someone who's managing the capacity, acquiring the resources that are needed, managing the boundaries so that you've got a sustainable process for yourself, so that you've got a sustainable business for yourself. The manager who's really good at being a protector is the one who's setting those boundaries, the one who's acquiring the resources to protect the time and energy for high-value work, both on your business and in your business as a doer. The bad one, the bad manager in this case is the one who's overcommitting. You've worked with a bad manager before. I know for sure you have. The one who's overcommitting, if you think about it, they agree to something maybe with the CEO or with an external client, and then they tell you, here's what we've agreed to. And then you look at it and you say, this is impossible. They're overcommitting. They don't get your input. That's the bad manager. Don't be a bad manager for yourself. That bad manager is the one who doesn't protect the goals. They are so reactionary, right? They're just allowing any client demand or distraction to control the schedule. You think about a bad manager, it's that constant churn, that constant changing and shifting of priorities because they haven't protected the resources or the priorities and ultimately protecting the goals. The impact is obviously burnout, inconsistent delivery in the case of not working on your business consistently and therefore having feast or famine cycles in your revenue, and lack of strategic progress. Think about being a protector and that component of being a good manager and ask yourself, what boundary do you need to set with yourself, likely, maybe with your clients to protect your time, to work on your business? Likely you don't need to protect your time to work with your clients. You're likely prioritizing that if you're like most consultants. So this is about how do you protect the time to work on your business? And I've heard every single excuse in the book at this point about, we could call it a reason, every single reason as to why it makes the most sense, especially if you're working hourly, you know, to always prioritize client delivery first and then work on the business second. And I would say to you, even if you're working on an hourly basis, which likely you don't want to be, but let's say you are for right now, it's still incumbent upon you, imperative to protect the time to work on your business so that you can acquire the next client who hopefully you can sell into a value-based pricing scenario so that you can create revenue consistency. You know this, this is your job to protect your working on the business time as a manager of your business. Okay. Lastly, the fifth component of being a good manager for your consulting business is you being a coach. This is where you're teaching yourself in this case, right? You're the coach of yourself, teaching yourself to think and reflect and improve so that you can build the capability. You're not just someone who takes an order, especially because you're the one giving the orders, right? You're not someone who just takes the order and executes it. Your job is to teach yourself to think in a way that is aligned to the goals that you've set. It's building that capability for yourself of making better decisions and stronger execution. So when you think back to being a manager in corporate, how much coaching did you do? If someone came into your office, were you just telling them, here's the next thing you need to do? Or were you talking with them about, okay, what are you thinking about this? How are you thinking about what the obstacles might be to that? What about this plan? What about that plan? Like, you know, really thinking through the scenario and teaching them to think so they can make decisions on their own versus you just telling them what to do. And that's the same thing. You're coaching yourself. That's your responsibility. Of course you can have an external coach like me or someone else who can help you to implement this because it's always hard to do it for us. ourselves, when we're in our own head. But ultimately, this is also your responsibility. For me personally, I do this for myself, self-coaching. And also, I have two coaches who help me to implement these things in my business. Because even though I teach this for a living, it can be so hard to do for yourself. And you might be experiencing that as well. You teach similar things to your own clients or help them achieve similar goals to what you're wanting to achieve in your business and then applying it to your own business can get really tricky, right? But having some component of self-coaching is really important. When you're a good manager, you're using reflection and questioning to improve the decision-making of your team, to help them build new capabilities, to help them to think most effective version of the role that they're playing. When you're not a good manager, when you're a bad manager, you're the one who's just telling them what to do without teaching them how to think about it. And of course, the impact here is that your business is stagnating because when you aren't implementing that self-reflection or teaching yourself to think in a different way, you're just going to keep recreating the same results over and over again. So the reflection question that I would give you for this fifth component of the five components of being a good self-manager are what thought patterns do you think are holding you back as it relates to hitting your goals? Like take a step back and go, like take a step back and coach yourself. In what ways are you thinking in which those thought patterns are holding you back as it relates to hitting your business goals? We'll scope it down here for you so you can answer that question. Take a moment to answer that and figure out where are you holding yourself back? And if you were managing yourself, what would you say to unlock wherever you're getting stuck? How would you be thinking about something differently or consider thinking about something differently to help you get past that roadblock, whatever it is that you're hitting? All right, those are the five components of being a good manager for your consulting business. As we wrap up today's episode, I want to encourage you to look back, answer those reflection questions. Think about what do you think makes a good manager for your consulting business and for yourself? How do you want to define, because I'm creating my own employer of choice, who's the best manager, the most amazing manager I've ever thought of that I would love to work for? And then start creating that for yourself. That's what I would recommend to put today's episode into action. The other question I would encourage you to answer is look at those five components of being a good manager. Which one is your biggest opportunity? And pick one of those to focus on to start with. And then start becoming that manager for yourself and for your business. And if you want help with this, you can go to consultmelissa.com and set up a coaching exploratory call where we can talk about whether working together in a coaching capacity would be the next best step for you and your business to help you achieve your goals more quickly and bigger goals than you ever thought possible for yourself. So thanks for tuning in today and I will see you again next week. Take care. Thanks for joining me this week on The Grow, your independent consulting business podcast. If you liked today's episode, I have three quick next steps for you. First, click subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Next, leave me a review in your podcast app so other independent consultants can find and benefit too. And finally, to put the ideas from today's episode into action, head over to melissaleiberman.com for the show notes and more resources to help you grow your consulting practice from your first few projects into a full-fledged business. See you next week.