The Reluctant Leader
Why Independent Consultants Need to Embrace Leadership
I had a realization while working with a nonprofit client. The executive director introduced me to her team as "our leadership consultant." I almost corrected her. I'm not a leadership consultant, I thought. I help with strategy and organizational development.
But later, I wondered why I resisted the leadership label. Many of us independent consultants don't think of ourselves as leaders. What are we leading? Aren't we just hired help?
This mindset limits us. I've come to see that as independent consultants, we lead in at least two critical ways.
First, we lead our own businesses. We make decisions about direction, priorities, and growth without the safety net of organizational structures.
Second, and perhaps more fundamentally, we lead our clients. This realization changed how I view my work.
I noticed in my consulting engagements that clients seek me out for my perspective. In my previous nonprofit roles, I was often tasked with implementing someone else's vision. As a consultant, clients recognize the value of an external viewpoint. They ask me to think deeply about challenges they face.
This shift feels like freedom. Creative freedom. Autonomy. The space to observe, analyze, and recommend without organizational constraints. Yet there are barriers internal to our clients and in our own minds, and that's what this newsletter aims to address.
Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
The Leadership Mindsets That Serve Consultants
I've been reflecting on what makes some consultants thrive while others struggle. The difference might lie in mindset rather than technical skills.
Consider how we approach client outcomes. Effective consultants focus on destinations over journeys. We clarify what success looks like for our clients while giving ourselves room to determine how to get there.
We also create our own measures of success. Unlike traditional employment with clear performance metrics, consulting requires us to invent our yardsticks. This can be uncomfortable, especially for those of us schooled in environments that emphasized measurement and evaluation.
I struggled with this early in my consulting career. How would I know if I was succeeding? I learned to create my own metrics based on client outcomes and my professional growth.
The Power of Expectations
Our mindset as consultants shapes our effectiveness far more than our technical skills alone. This principle is illustrated by a fascinating study covered in an episode of This American Life where researchers labeled identical lab rats as either "smart" or "dumb." Despite being randomly sorted into each category, the "smart" rats significantly outperformed the "dumb" rats in maze tests.
Why? The researchers' expectations subtly influenced their behavior. They handled the "smart" rats more gently and created conditions that allowed these rats to succeed.
This same principle applies directly to our consulting practice in two critical ways:
How we view ourselves: When we embrace our identity as leaders rather than mere service providers, we bring different energy to client engagements. We speak with more conviction, take more initiative, and fully own the outcomes.
How we view our clients: Our expectations about a client's capacity for change can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we genuinely believe in their potential for growth and learning, we create conditions that make that growth more likely.
This mindset shift represents a powerful but underutilized tool in our consulting toolkit. By consciously managing our expectations — both of ourselves and our clients — we can dramatically enhance our effectiveness as change agents in the social impact sector.
National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, from This American Life
Initiative Matters
The classic essay "A Message to Garcia" tells the story of a soldier named Rowan who was tasked with delivering a critical message to General Garcia during the Spanish-American War. Without asking "Where is he?" or "How will I get there?", Rowan simply accepted the mission and completed it against significant odds.
This quality — taking full responsibility for outcomes without constant guidance — distinguishes exceptional consultants in the social impact space. Our clients, often working with limited resources and facing complex challenges, need partners who can:
Move beyond analysis to implementation: Not just identifying problems but actively helping to solve them
Navigate ambiguity: Proceeding confidently even when the path forward isn't entirely clear
Overcome obstacles: Finding creative ways around barriers rather than using them as excuses
This kind of initiative directly connects to our leadership role. When we take ownership of client challenges as if they were our own, we transform from external advisors into true partners in the client's mission.
In practice, this might mean going beyond the original scope when necessary, connecting clients with resources they didn't know they needed, or proactively identifying emerging issues before they become problems.
The social impact organizations we serve often lack the bandwidth to manage consultants closely. By bringing this ownership mindset to our work, we deliver exponentially more value while embodying the leadership role that our clients need from us.
Helping Clients Learn
Beyond initiative and execution, perhaps our most important leadership role is helping organizations learn. As independent consultants in the social impact sector, we're uniquely positioned to help organizations overcome barriers to learning. But first, we need to understand these barriers and how they affect our work.
A Harvard Business Review article, "Why Organizations Don't Learn," identifies four key biases that prevent organizational growth. By addressing these biases through our consulting approach, we transform from mere service providers into true learning catalysts who help mission-driven organizations evolve and thrive in complex environments.
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Bias #1: The Success Obsession
Organizations focus excessively on success while avoiding discussions of failure. For independent consultants, this creates several challenges:
Our vulnerability as solo practitioners: Without an organizational safety net, we often feel we can't afford to fail. A single unsuccessful project can damage our reputation and future prospects.
The expert trap: Clients hire us as "experts," creating pressure to present ourselves as having all the answers rather than acknowledging areas for growth.
Attribution bias in our work: When projects succeed, we attribute it to our skills; when they fail, we blame external factors rather than examining our approach.
As leaders, we must model a growth mindset for our clients. This means openly discussing our learning process, acknowledging when we don't have immediate answers, and creating safe spaces for clients to examine failures.
Bias #2: The Action Imperative
The HBR article notes that organizations favor action over reflection. This bias manifests in several ways that can undermine your client's effectiveness:
Exhaustion culture: Teams operate in perpetual crisis mode, moving from one urgent task to another without pausing to assess what's working.
Meeting overload: Calendars packed with back-to-back meetings leave no space for processing information or strategic thinking.
Deliverable fixation: Focus remains on producing outputs rather than evaluating outcomes and extracting lessons.
To counter this bias, we need to build reflection into our practice. This might mean scheduling regular time to review completed projects, creating learning journals, or building reflection sessions into client engagements. When we prioritize reflection in our own work, we demonstrate its value to clients. When introducing these concepts to clients who are deeply embedded in action-oriented cultures, try these approaches:
"I notice your team is incredibly responsive and action-oriented. How might we preserve that strength while creating space to learn from what you're doing?"
"What's one decision from the past year that you wish you could revisit with the benefit of hindsight? How might we build that kind of reflection into your current work?"
Yuko Shimizu, Harvard Business Review
Bias #3: The Conformity Pressure
While organizational employees feel pressure to fit in, independent consultants face a different version of this challenge:
Client adaptation syndrome: We feel we must adapt to client culture rather than bringing our unique perspective — the very thing clients hired us for.
Underutilized strengths: In trying to meet perceived client expectations, we might not leverage our signature capabilities that could provide the most value.
Fear of challenging: We worry that pushing back against client assumptions might jeopardize the relationship.
Our leadership role requires us to maintain appropriate distance from client culture. We must be willing to stand apart, ask uncomfortable questions, and bring perspectives that might initially create tension but ultimately lead to breakthrough insights.
Bias #4: The Expert Dependency
Organizations often rely too heavily on external expertise rather than developing internal capabilities. As consultants, we can inadvertently reinforce this bias:
The hero complex: We position ourselves as all-knowing experts rather than collaborative partners who facilitate learning.
Solution delivery: We focus on delivering expert recommendations without adequately involving client staff who have valuable contextual knowledge.
Knowledge hoarding: We may (consciously or unconsciously) withhold our methodologies to maintain dependency.
True leadership means developing our clients' capabilities, not just solving their immediate problems. This requires us to be transparent about our methods, involve stakeholders in the problem-solving process, and transfer skills whenever possible.
Leading Through Learning
The most effective consultants, regardless of their own practice's focus, transform how their clients learn. Here are practical ways to do this:
Create psychological safety: Establish environments where clients feel comfortable discussing failures and uncertainties.
Design learning-focused processes: Build reflection and knowledge capture into your project methodologies.
Ask powerful questions: Use inquiry to help clients discover insights rather than always providing answers.
Model vulnerability: Share your own learning journey, including missteps and course corrections.
The Consultant as Learning Catalyst
By understanding and addressing these four biases, we fulfill our leadership role in the deepest sense. We solve today's problems, and we help organizations develop the learning muscles they need to address tomorrow's challenges.
What learning biases have you encountered in your consulting practice? How have you helped clients overcome them? I'd love to hear your experiences.
Thanks for reading ! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Weaving Your Leadership Story
Each of us has a story we tell ourselves about our work. These narratives influence our satisfaction and effectiveness.
I used to see myself as a technical expert who happened to work independently. Now I view myself as a leader who guides organizations through change. This shift expanded my sense of possibility and impact.
What story do you tell yourself about your consulting work? How might reframing yourself as a leader change your approach?
The social impact world needs consultants who embrace their leadership role. Our clients face complex challenges that require more than technical solutions. They need partners who can guide, inspire, and catalyze change.
I'm still growing into this identity. Some days I feel more like a hired hand than a leader. But I'm learning that by embracing leadership, I bring more value to my clients and find more meaning in my work.
Thanks,
Sam