Morgan Friedman (Host): Hey everyone, welcome back to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. I’m excited today to have with me, Catherine Llewellyn. Did I pronounce your name correctly?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Perfect.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I get a gold star. As they say in New York, with that and a subway token, you can get a subway ride. So let’s jump in right to the story, getting right to the action. Catherine, tell us all about your favorite client horror story.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): It’s so interesting. I was thinking earlier about telling you this story today.

And I thought, this might be a slightly cathartic experience for me, because this is one of my memories, a nightmare memory, you know, and I think it was… it must’ve been in the, the 1980s or maybe early nineties that this occurred. So back then, I was a trainer and I would travel around the countryside with my team, training people on behalf of our clients.

So we would go to a client’s site and take a part of their premises and run a training course for them. And, the training team was distinct from the sales team. So, the sales team would go in and get the contract, and then the sales team would brief the training team, and the training team would go in and deliver the contract.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I want to interject for a second. What’s interesting, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know where this story is going. I just want to say that’s a yellow flag all the time. Like, the less sales and the implementers talk to each other to more of like a disconnect. There is the tree.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): So right. The only problem was in those days, the people who were good at training, were really bad at selling, and the people who were good at selling were really, you wouldn’t want to let them train people because they were too bossy. They were just bossy go getters and they weren’t the right kind of people. And also, we were all very young, each of us could only be good at one thing.

You know as everyone gets older, they can be good at more than one thing, right. But, and that’s… We were lucky to have people who could sell a tool, and we were lucky to have people who could train at all. So, we were young. This particular contract, we went off and we were always in a Ford Sierra, which is like a, very standard sort of rep vehicle in those days.

We were harrying up and down the motorway. We went down to this place, I think it was a travel agency, something like that, down near the south coast of England and we had been contracted to go down and run a telephone sales training, a two day telephone sales training, teaching them skills on the telephone, so they could set appointments for their reps and also take orders.

So we arrived. The first red flag when we arrived was to discover that the room we had been given for the training was in a separate building to the main office building and this separate building was almost derelict. So the room we were supposed to use, it had plaster on the walls But beyond that, it was dusty, it was filthy, there was barely any, they put some plastic chairs in there for people to sit on.

They put these chairs on this dusty, filthy floor in this room. There were bare light bulbs hanging down. I mean, you wouldn’t, , it was really bizarre. So we first then had to spend. We were exhausted from the traveling.

We just wanted to have some supper and go to bed. We had to spend several hours, the whole team, washing the walls, cleaning the floors, cleaning the furniture, tried to get them to give us a flip chart, they found one somewhere. The whole thing was just really weird to begin with.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay, so that’s actually interesting. So, what I love in these client horror stories is to hear situations that I’ve never heard before, because often, they’re the same things, make sure you document everything. But, this is actually a very new sort of situation.

So, a few quick comments that might be useful to everyone listening. First, I think it’s interesting how nice or not nice the physical space you’re given is, is representative. For like, the management approach or the management values something, hey, if the queen of England, oh no, king of England is coming, then you’ll like give them the nicest room.

But just judging by like how nice or disgusting a room is, it’s already a symbol for how much interest, attention, love, and support that they have for what you are doing.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Precisely, and also lack of respect for their own people.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ooh, good point, good point.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): You know, and also a lack of understanding that the environment makes a difference to the value that you get. If they wanted to get maximum value from the whole thing. That’s not the way to do it. They’re wasting their own money, really.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That is a good point, because I think a lot of people just think, no, we’ll just put them in a room. And like, the more important they are, the nicer the room. But actually, the physical setting can like influence in psychological, subconscious sorts of ways.

Like , do you actually want to be there? If the room is really disgusting, you’re like, I want to get out as fast as possible.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. Can I relax? Can I go into the peaceful frame of mind to actually take in the information? Can I feel safe to experiment with things? All of that. So immediately we thought, well, this is insane.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And it but, before you go on the insanity, I also want to point out, it speaks highly of your team that you guys cleaned up the room. That’s like far outside the job description. But, it shows like your willingness to do what’s necessary to get the job done.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): That was one of our strengths. It was a strength, but it was also a weakness, in fact. Because our willingness to do whatever’s necessary is fantastic when it’s possible to get the results.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Good point.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): If it’s not possible to get the result, then you’re just going to kill yourself.

Morgan Friedman (Host): When it’s a losing battle.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And that’s been something actually for me as a practitioner, when do I realize that this actually is not going to work? When is it time to pull out? When is it time to say to everybody, we are beating our heads against the brick wall here.

We’re doing it diligently, but we’re still not achieving anything. So, that was before we’d even started, okay. Before we even started. So I then thought, well, I better have a chat with the client, because I’m concerned.

Oh, he’s on holiday. The guy who’d contracted.

Morgan Friedman (Host): He was on a holiday.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): He was on holiday, and I thought that’s interesting, you know.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Was this the person… the person on the plane, was it the person you were supposed to train or just like the boss who would… okay, okay.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): In those days, I wasn’t training or working with the bosses, I was working with the staff.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Right, right, right.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): So, I thought, I wonder if that’s a coincidence, you know, or not, we don’t know, anyway. Anyway, we turned up the next day, with all our material and content and we wrote on the flip chart… “Welcome, we’re here to do the sale, telephone sales training.” And all these people walked in, they all sat down in the chairs and they looked at us and they looked really unwilling, resistant, uncooperative.

So we thought, well, we’ll try and win them over with our charm where we just started and then we said, is there a problem? And one of them said, “We don’t do telephone sales in our job.”

Morgan Friedman (Host): Wait, so you’re going to train them on something that they don’t do?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. I said, what do you mean? They said, “It’s not part of our job to do that. So, we don’t understand why we’re in this room being taught how to do telephone sales.” And I thought, “Oh my God”, and the rest of the team were looking at me because I was the lead trainer and I’m thinking, I don’t know why you’re looking at me. I don’t know what to do. I was completely, it was absolutely new to me.

This had never happened before. It was a shock. But, because the other thing was we were all geared up, you know, we’d had a meeting between the trainers and we’d all worked out who’s going to do what and how are we going to make it a really good couple of days for everybody and all the material.

Then, suddenly, it’s like a roadblock where they said, “But, that’s not in our job to do that.” So we had a conversation and we said, “Oh, well, why don’t you learn it anyway? It’s great skills to have.”

Morgan Friedman (Host): So i’ll just add as a parenthetical, It’s interesting also, how times change because you said this story was in the late 80s, 90s. Now, you would just like send a text message, WhatsApp to the boss like “What’s happening? What’s the situation?” But, back then you were like pre cell phones, you had to use your judgment.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Exactly. I couldn’t do that. I probably called back to base, to our company. I can’t remember whether or not I called back to base. I probably did.

And they probably said something like, “Well, just make it work.”

Morgan Friedman (Host): Just make it work.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Just make it work, you know. So first of all, we tried to persuade.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Headquarters never wants to lose the revenue.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Also, nobody wants to look into how this had happened. You know, it was a nasty shock. I mean, if we’ve been told this three weeks beforehand. These people may not want to do it because they don’t themselves, we’d have had time to do something about it, but, it was now like 9:15 in the morning, on the day when the training starts at 9am, and it’s two full days worth of content, you know.

Anyway, so we tried to persuade them to do the course anyway, and they went, “No, not a chance”, and they were all sitting there with their arms crossed. “No bloody way. If we let you teach us this, then we’re going to be forced to get on the phones and do telephone sales, which we don’t want to do.” So we said, “Okay, all right, why don’t you just do, one day with us and we’ll just teach you some communication skills, just general communication skills that are not strictly telephone skill related.”

They went, okay. So we did a one day thing with them, which we just kind of, rolled with it because that’s another kind of training that we did people who didn’t do sales. Just communication skills. So, we did that with them for the day But, we were really demoralized by the whole experience and it was very hard to do that day.

Because we had to try to be more positive than the people who were in the room with us and encouraging to them. They felt really disrespected by the whole situation.

We felt disrespected and it was a very, very upsetting situation altogether. And of course the people in the main building, we told them what was going on. They were really, “Oh my God, what’s he done?” You know about the boss, they’re, oh god, you know, everybody was upset.

Morgan Friedman (Host): So, even in the main building, no one had an idea why they were supposed to be given telephone training.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Everyone was just, we’re just done done. Anyway, so we.

Morgan Friedman (Host): What I’ll also add is, there’s an obvious lesson here about communication, and I hope soon we find out what the boss was thinking, but before that, a less obvious lesson is the importance of being around.

The situation would have been different had the boss done this, but the boss was sitting in the main building, but hey, do this weird thing and disappear, like a large portion of the job of both a consultant and a boss is to deal with edge cases.

Like deal with weird situations when things don’t go as expected, which is why being there is being physically around is just half the job.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. Just to that point, about being there, let’s say I or a member of my team or me and my team had been there, let’s say the previous week, let’s say we’d gone down the previous week just to meet people, have a chat, wonder around, we would have found out about this mismatch.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ah,… that is a good point. It works both ways. Not only should the boss have been there, but had your team spent more time there, been there more, you would have realized this beforehand.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): That’s right. That’s right. But the contract was done such that…. , it’s like a surgical strike.

You know, you fly in, you do the thing, you fly back out and it’s done. And that means they get it for a good price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s the piece of learning I took from that.

Morgan Friedman (Host): So that’s actually… … two thoughts on that. One, this reminds me of a classic saying from Woody Allen as a good New York Jew.

We love quoting Woody Allen nonstop, where he said, “90 percent of success is showing up.” So like, this is an example where like the boss’ biggest problem so far is he literally just didn’t show up…

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And also it’s an interesting point on the approach being like the surgical strike, like, don’t come get to know them, no contact before, just show up, do the surgery… and leave because I think they’re very different approaches, and this reminds me of a personal story where long, long ago.

I dated a girl who’s mother was dying from some like fatal cancer and I remember that they went and spoke to the top doctors in Chicago and in order to find the right doctor and basically there’s like the best doctor in Chicago.

But he was like the surgical strike, like he was a total asshole. We just come in and do the surgery, but he had … the best reputation and then there was this other one who was like really good but not the superstar famous one, but he would like a meeting after meeting, explain, context, hold their hands.

And they ended up choosing the second one, even though he wasn’t like … the superstar famous one, but that context getting to know, holding your hand just goes so far.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Totally. Makes such so much difference and in fact, that’s one of the things I learned from it. And then later on, after I left that particular company and set up on my own, whenever I was asked to work with a group, I would say, “I’m going to meet every single member of that group for at least an hour and get to know them prior to doing this, prior to doing the session and prior to agreeing with” You know, you’re not going to do it without that.

Morgan Friedman (Host): You know, actually, I hadn’t really thought about that before, but that’s interesting because often like in a sales context, you’ll meet like the head of the company you’ll work with or the person hiring you… but you’ll actually be working with the lower level people and just spending an hour with each of them, go so far towards not just having a good working relationship with them when you start working with you, but helping you decide, do you actually want to work with them?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And also, what is it that everybody wants? You know,

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yes, yes.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Is there something that everybody wants? Because getting together for two, three, four days is a lot of effort and time, and emotional… cost and energy cost and everything.

If everyone’s being dragged into something that someone else has come up with that is not what they want or need, that’s, it’s not going to work. Well, sometimes it does. Let’s say everybody’s got to learn basic Excel or something or basic how to do something, you know, and they need it for their job.

That’s one thing. But, if it’s something of a more human interpersonal nature, like teamwork or management or personal development or any of those things,… the human will and the desire and the spirit and the soul has got to be in the room.

Morgan Friedman (Host): With 1000 percent and often just meeting them is the only way to know if the soul is going to be there or not.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay, such insightful points. I love it. So then what happens?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Well, so then we sort of dragged our way home a day, a day early, because we’d only done the one day instead of two and tried to find out what had happened. So, to begin with the sales person who’d sold the contract was angry with us because we haven’t done what we’ve been asked to do, which was to teach them telephone sales skills. Right.

So I said, “Do you realize that these people, that’s not in their job description. That’s not what they think they’re supposed to be doing. Well, do you not realize this?” And, and the salesperson said, “Well, the client never told me that. The client said he had this team of people he wanted them trained… and I just assumed that it was their job.” You know.

So, … she was then quite cross about the situation. And of course, being a salesperson, she wanted us to leave her alone so she could get on with selling more stuff. She didn’t want to have to go back over old ground of stuff she’s already sold. She didn’t want to do that. But anyway, she looked into it.

Turned out, that, it was true. It wasn’t part of their job description. It wasn’t what they’d been hired to do.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Actually, hold on. Before you tell me what happened, I’m excited, a question that I forgot to ask, when you’re in that room, in those initial 15 minutes, what had they been told the training was for? Because … they were clearly told that you have a two day long training.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah, they hadn’t been really told anything. They’ve just been told, show up for training.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay. … ridiculous.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Utterly ridiculous. But people are probably still doing that today, unfortunately. You know, it’s your job. Show up at work on time. Oh, today you’re being trained.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): It’s tragic. It doesn’t work. But, so anyway, the salesperson who was well thoroughly fed up because she wanted to, you know, didn’t want to do this, but she went and checked, turned out that it hadn’t been part of their job, but the boss had decided, that he would now like them to begin to do sales on the phone.

That’s what he now would like them to start to do. So he decided that his method of informing them about that was to hire us to come in and train them to do it. And the reason he went on holiday at the time was because he didn’t want to be around on the day when his staff found out that they were now supposed to be doing telephone sales on the phone from some external people.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Wow. That sounds like.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): What he hadn’t done, he hadn’t actually said, when your trainers come in, part of their job is to tell my people that part of their job now is telephone sales. He didn’t say that. But he, of course, he didn’t say that because if he had said that, our salesperson would have said, no, we can’t do that.

That’s not our job. That’s your job. So he was trying to get us to do part of his job because he was frightened of doing it because he was frightened that they would not want to do telephone sales. So he was trying to manipulate them into doing it without being upfront and telling them. That’s what he wanted them to do.

Morgan Friedman (Host): It sounds like a disaster. Boss definitely lives up to the “horror” name.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Definitely. But I’ll tell you … that was a very, very significant situation where lots of things were wrong, you know, which , in a way, it’s a good thing because you can’t not notice it. You know, … you can’t go home and go, there was something a little bit off about that.

No, the whole thing was a nightmare. That was unavoidably a nightmare. And so it stuck with me and since then, I’ve had a really good antenna for bosses trying to do something like that, you know. Bosses do this a lot. They, instead of having a conversation with somebody and saying, “I don’t like this about what you’re doing.”

Sometimes they will hire a coach or a trainer or somebody. They’ll say to the coach or trainer, I want you to get this person to stop doing this thing. Whereas, they’re the person who should be telling them, but they hire someone else to do it on their behalf and I’ve had lots of clients try and make me do things like that on their behalf.

And I’ve had to say, no, that won’t work. That’s disrespectful to your people. Do you not see that? Do you not see that you’re the one who has to tell them and have a conversation with them and see if they’re willing to change it?

Morgan Friedman (Host): I think part of being a boss, in fact, I’d say one of the most important skills of being a boss is having hard conversations and the boss that doesn’t know how to have hard conversations probably shouldn’t be a boss.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. I mean, I have no idea what happened to that business after we left, but,… it would not surprise me if it didn’t really survive because there was so much about that dynamic. I would not surprise me if a lot of those people just decided to resign because it was just really,… you can’t work for a boss like that.

That’s just, and I’ve been in that situation as well where somebody is sent to come and tell me something, which really my boss should be telling me, you know, something he wants me to change.

Morgan Friedman (Host): All right.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): You know, and then suddenly you go, “Oh, so and so would like you to meet with you and you go, what is this meeting?”

Sometimes, it’ll be an HR professional, let’s say, you’re asked to meet with HR and HR tells you that your boss is upset about something that you’re doing and it’s a horrible experience. It’s just a, be like, if somebody, turned up and said, “I’m here to tell you that your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to dump you.” You know what I mean?

It’d be like that experience. It’s just incredibly disrespectful and very … kind of abusive, really, in my opinion, … I think that’s not honourable.

Morgan Friedman (Host): A few interesting takes on this that are worth exploring. One side is, I wonder if people who are like this, while it’s like, let’s say, terrible communication, and like, terrible boss behaviour, it makes me wonder, why are these people even promoted, like how does that even happen?

And it makes me wonder, can someone be a great boss in other ways? But let’s say just a terrible communicator or is it, or are these so linked that like the ship, the entire ship sinks or swims with, … … based on how he communicates. I don’t know the answer.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Well, no, I’ve seen situations where, where people who are very poor communicators have had very successful bit successful businesses, but when that’s occurred, it only occurred when there are other people around them.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ahh.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Slack and taking care of it.

And I’ve also seen bosses who are, let’s say, brilliant at PR, let’s say. Do you call it PR over there?

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah. Public relations.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. So, like if there’s a boss who’s very, very good at PR, and that opens a lot of doors for the business, and it gets them funding, or it gets them prestigious contracts, or whatever it is, sometimes that’s incredibly valuable, and then sometimes they have an insulating layer around them, let’s say, of the board.

I worked for a client once, this was years later, I worked with several members of the board, but not with the actual head of the board, okay.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yes.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And I had, he was the guy who originally suggested I was brought in because he’d met me through another context. And I would say to him, … “John, you always want to have a conversation with me every now and again to talk about everybody except you. The only one on your board who doesn’t want to take advantage of the fact that I’m on site to actually help you with something. Why is that?”

And he would just say, “Oh no, I just don’t want to, … I just don’t want to. I just don’t want to.” Okay. That’s cool. That’s cool. That’s cool. And all of his board would always say to me, “Oh yeah, … John is not a people person.”

They would say he’s not a people person. And what they meant by that was that he was not strong on his interpersonal skills, but he was a brilliant businessman, very, very strong businessman and he had a strong board and they dealt with everybody else in the business.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That makes sense. I think a good lesson from that is it’s important to know your weaknesses and work with other people whose strengths compensate for your weaknesses.

Because humans being human, no one’s going to be great at everything. So, … if I’m a great sales guy, okay, I need someone else to actually manage the people or vice versa. … For example.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Precisely. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay. So, this is one lesson to take out of the … boss disappearing. Another interesting lesson is, or let’s say observation, were his communication fell, but what’s interesting is like the perfect storm where he didn’t just not communicate to the team what’s happening, but he also, didn’t let you guys know that you’re supposed to do it.

So it was like, … it’s not just one side had misaligned expectations, but both. And I think that’s also a good reminder where often situations turn from bad to worse, … where it’s basically multiple problems layer … on top of each other.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yes. Yeah. And actually subsequent to that piece of work, I then went back and said to our organization, … this can’t happen again, what needs to happen, because sometimes the salesperson in their eagerness to get the contract won’t necessarily dig down and find out stuff. But really, the training team needs to know.

So I said, “Okay, from now on, if there’s a contract I’m going in on, I am going to go and have a meeting with the client in advance personally, myself.” And so we then built that into our process and in fact, that meeting would usually have the salesperson and the lead trainer for the program.

Both, meeting with the client together and making sure that all three of us had the same idea of what the contract was, why that was the contract, … what was being paid for it, et cetera, and how many days it was, you know, everything about it and that just made such a difference, made an enormous difference.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That makes sense. It’s someone in software development firms, usually it starts out with a salesman, then like second or third meeting, they’ll bring in the tech lead as well and … for that’s like the techie version of the same.

Another interesting observation that I would add is … in the US there’s lots and lots of little consulting firms and consultants like Yomi, but there’s also a small group of the superstar consulting firms, like the famous McKinsey’s, and Bain’s, and so on.

And what’s interesting is, in the US, the superstar consulting firms, McKinsey being the lead example, have a stereotype for explicitly doing exactly what we’re talking about. Where like the refutation is, okay, the boss wants to get the company doing this, but, or the CEO wants to get the company doing this, but he doesn’t have the political strength in order to do that.

Oh, pay a few million dollars to the best consultants out there and they’re the ones that come up with the strategy, … which is really what the boss wants and then the boss says, no, no, this is what the best, most expensive consultants in the world recommend doing. So we have to do it. So that, so the refutation and I’ve known a few people that have worked there and they confirm that the reputation, the stereotype is true.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Interestingly, because… later on, when I set up on my own and I was doing executive coaching with board members and CEOs, I would often be going into their premises and kind of shadowing them doing their job for the day and numerous times, I would be sitting in on a meeting they were having with McKinsey’s, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, et cetera, and witnessing the whole thing.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That’s incredible

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And then facilitating my client afterwards on how they could get what they really want out of these other consultants. I was like, which was a great thing to be doing because I wasn’t inside that big structure that those people were in. I was my own independent solo operator so I could see things that they might miss.

And I could say, “Yeah, you’re about to spend a lot of money on something. It’s not going to give you anything. You’re about, but you could spend the same money and get what you really want, which was what you told me earlier, which is this.” “Oh, how do I get them to give me that?” This is how you get them to give you that.

You tell them you want it, essentially. Oh, can I really do that? Yes. So, there’s a whole thing on both sides. There was a thing we used to talk about called “Client skills” when I did my humanistic psychology master’s degree. Client skills. And what that means is.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I don’t know that phrase as a phrase.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Okay. What it means is, if you are a client, you can be more or less skillful at getting what you need. So if you’ve got really well developed client skills, it means you as the client, are really good at getting what you need from … your coach, your supplier, whatever.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Oh, I see. That, clients often hire vendors, consultants, et cetera, and then expect them, okay, I pay you and you do all the heavy lifting. But actually, if the clients who are skilled with a very particular kind of vendor consultant management skill set, … they can then … get what they need most effectively from the people they hire.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Correct. You find it as well in things like psychotherapy, for example. So, some people are very good at working with a psychotherapist, where they’re the client and are really good at getting loads of value out of it, because they are good at saying why they’re there, talking about what they hope to get out of it, … opening up, sharing, asking questions, you know, some people are very skillful at that sort of thing and then they get lots and lots of value and those are skills that you can learn.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yes.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): But some people don’t, aren’t very skillful at that,… and then it’s harder for them to get the value. And it’s the same with clients. Years later, for my dissertation for my master’s degree, I interviewed 39 different senior execs on their experience of using external consultants.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Interesting.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And they all started off by saying, “Well, it affected the bottom line like this.” And I said, “No, no, I’m not asking about statistics. I’m asking, how was it for you? What was it like for you? How did it feel?” Right. And no one had ever asked them that before ever.

No one had ever asked them. And it was fascinating to discover the degree to which most of them had not been able to … really clarify to their consultant what they really wanted.

They just haven’t been able to do that clearly enough and they haven’t been able to say, stop, this is not what I want. Quite hard to do that.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Interesting. At college, at the Britz Michael University, I was an English Literature major, and sometimes I think being an English Literature major is, like… a secret weapon. Because what is obsessing over reading, writing, how ,what’s the best writing in the universe ever, other than hmm.

Like, what is it you want to say? What is he trying to say? How do you say it? How do you say it in a way most likely to affect your goal?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Exactly these sorts of skill sets … that … had these executives had them they would have been able to manage their consultants better.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Infinitely so, yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): So, … what’s also interesting is actually, … let’s continue on the English literature tangent for a second, I was always a Shakespeare nerd and … one of my favourite tricks that Shakespeare uses over and over in his plays is there’s always like the main plot, the famous plot that you remember and you study and the tests are on.

But, but all … in almost all his plays, there’s always like all the characters have like these peasant assistants that help them and … there’s always a subplot between them but one of his favorite tricks is the subplot. It’s always like a mirror parallel to the main part, so I don’t know.

Merchant of Venice, there’s this whole theme of giving, giving each other rings to make promises and keeping or breaking your promise. But then like the servants … of everyone would like lose their rings and then break their promise with their rings, like the ridiculous version of that, and what’s interesting is, yes, this is going to … tie back into the conversation … where you and I tend to think of consultants as, okay, come in, … give advice, teach, coach, help … solve problems.

But at the … McKinsey level, it’s often, … as we’re saying, no, like the CEO wants to do this, let’s come up with the justification in order to do that and I’d like, … let’s do the annoying stuff that the CEO just can’t do himself and it feels like your story was sort of like a lower level consultant, but trying in a very, very unsophisticated and childish sort of way, trying to do this sort of McKinsey level.

Okay, I’ll hire these trainers, … but they’ll actually really … give the message to them that they’re changing their jobs, but I’m not even going to tell them that they’re giving the message to change the job.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Right, at least with McKinsey’s, they know that’s what they’re there to do. Right.

And also everybody knows that’s what that is. Everybody knows it. It’s a very, very, very expensive way of not telling people what you think. Isn’t it?

Morgan Friedman (Host): So, … like with 1000%, I like how you put it where it’s the same sort of dynamic, but guess what? Sophistication makes a difference because at the sophisticated level, the sophisticated CEO hires the sophisticated McKinsey consultants, and even if they don’t explicitly say it, … both sides … know what’s really happening.

The CEO knows how to message this, … McKinsey knows how to read between the lines … to know what they really need to do, while … this joker … was … the parody version.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah, absolutely. In fact, if someone had filmed the whole thing, and then, and cast … John Cleese or somebody or whoever people think is funny to do it. It would have been a hilarious management training video.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Now, people are managing John Cleese and Monty Python as like management consultant trainers.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Well, John Cleese actually did star in a lot of management training videos.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Really?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. There was a whole series of them.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Wait, before he became famous or after he became famous?

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): After he became famous.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): That’s why they wanted him.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That’s why they wanted him.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): He’s so funny and also, if you look, oh, it’s John Cleese, I’m going to watch it. … He was very, very popular, John Cleese. Probably still, I don’t know if he’s still alive or not, but … he was like a national icon.

Morgan Friedman (Host): You know, that’s actually really interesting.

I never knew, I grew up obsessed with … Monty Python. So, … I still have Life of Ryan, et cetera, like word for word by memory. I saw it many, so many times, but I didn’t know that in Britain, … he’s a national icon. I usually, he was just a really funny member of my favorite.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Oh, yeah. You know, … he’s a classic comedian of his time, you know, very, very loved.

Morgan Friedman (Host): During COVID, I went down a rabbit hole of just watching interviews with him on … YouTube and like, and he’s just absurdly funny. So it renewed my appreciation for him.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Absolutely. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay. So now, … let’s… wrap it back up.

I think analyzing the situation, we’ve got a whole bunch of interesting insights have come out on one level, the importance of communication in all directions but something that I enjoyed about our conversation was, we took it a level more subtle and in a direction that none of the previous episodes have gone before about the weak willed client that tries to use you in order to do the things that he doesn’t want to do.

My final question for you before we wrap up is, you mentioned a little while ago, there’s construction outside, sorry, I hope you can’t hear the noise.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): I’m glad it’s not somebody breaking things in your kitchen.

Morgan Friedman (Host): No.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): That is construction

Morgan Friedman (Host): When my neighbors people in the house and enforcing in our last minute. My last question for you is, you mentioned about 15 minutes ago that since this experience, you’ve developed a bit of an antenna for sensing when clients would be like this, and I’m wondering if you have any tips from your antenna on how to help younger versions of ourselves spot clients … who were likely to be like this.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Oh, thank you. Okay. Well, the first thing in general is, if you make sure before you go into the, into any meeting with the client, that your mind is clear and your body is relaxed as best you can, so that you are able to hear your intuition.

So, if you’re exhausted, and you’re running from one thing to the other, and you’re dropping papers, and you’re tense, and you haven’t had enough sleep, you can get signals, and you’re just going to miss them.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Hmm.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Right? But, if … you’re really rested, you’ve maybe sat in the reception, I used to turn up early and sit in the reception for half an hour before a meeting, and just breathe, and just relax.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Actually, what I would add to that is turn your cell phone off. Because often, oh, you turn up early, oh, I’m just going to whatever, look at Instagram, or work, do emails but even that distracts your senses. So, you’re not paying attention.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): You totally turn it all off and if you’re able to go for a little walk in fresh air before, etc.

So all of that, so that when you go in, you’re in a very, like, fully air space in your head and you’re as relaxed as possible and then you come in and then really, really pay attention, and pay attention if you get a little tiny, tiny, tiny feeling of this feels a little bit off, really listen to that tiny feeling.

Just really listen to it because that’s the first inkling that there’s something that might be a little bit off. Now, you don’t know what might be off, you know it could be that your client had a fight with his partner that morning and is really upset and is trying to hide it because they’re trying to be professional, you know.

Or it could be that they are trying to actually manipulate, maneuver something and then when you get that feeling, you listen to it, and then you just ask questions. Just keep asking questions, and really listen to the answers and write everything down.

Another thing that’s very useful is to sometimes not agree to things in the meeting.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Interesting.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And to say, this is really good. I’ve got all the information I need. I’m just going to go away and process this, it’s part of my protocol to really serve you well, whatever it is.

Just going to go away and process this. You go away and process it and you really examine it carefully, and if you’ve got somebody who you work with, like a business partner or a supervisor or like somebody who you can talk to about these things, you can say to them, I’ve got this slightly weird feeling about this.

This is the situation. This is what I found out. And they might be able to help you pinpoint what the weird feeling’s about, and they may be able to help give you a few more questions to go back in with. And I suppose that leads onto. Just never agree to do something if you’re not completely happy about it.

Even if you think you might lose the sale, even if you’re worried about paying your mortgage, whatever it is, if you can stick with that determination, I’m not going to say yes to anything, unless I’m really happy with it, that will also save you an enormous amount of trouble. So those are a few things to be, all of those things I’ve just mentioned, take a lot of practice.

So, you try and do it the first time, it may not work, so you keep practicing. I’ve been practicing these things for decades, so it’s easy for me to say. But I think if people start practicing these things when they’re young, then by the time they get to my age, they’ll be way smarter and more evolved than I am now.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah, a lot of those tips are awesome and the commonality behind all of that … is, … Luke, use the force, trust your instinct in,

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yes.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And in other words, and it’s interesting because modernity seems to me to be something like a concerted effort to try to get people to ignore their gut instinct and all the distraction screens it’s trying to get you to think about this, put your mind there, like put your mind everywhere except in your gut instinct. So, and this makes it in the modern world, in other words, people 20 years younger than us, doubly hard.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Catherine, this was fantastic. Everyone who’s made it to the end, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and … I hope everyone learned and got some useful tips outta it and Catherine, thank you very much. This has been a lot of fun.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): It’s been my pleasure. May I do a very quick plug for my podcast?

Morgan Friedman (Host): Absolutely, go.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Thank you so much.

So I have a podcast, it’s called “Truth and Transcendence” and the idea is that when we find and connect with our truth, then we have the possibility of transcending in whatever way we want to.

And I have a whole host of fascinating guests.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Can you just explain that for two more sentences? Cause I think I understand it in theory, but not really.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Okay, fine. So, if you want to move forward in your life, whether it’s because things are good and you just want to go further, or things are a nightmare and you want to fix it, whatever your reason for wanting to move forward, It’s really helpful to begin by saying, what is true for me now?

What is true for me now? Where is my heart? What is nurturing me? What is an obstacle for me? What am I happy about? What am I miserable about? What’s my truth? And what’s my truth in terms of what really matters to me. What’s my spiritual truth? What’s my emotional truth? What’s my intellectual truth? You know, what is my truth in all these areas?

And when we connect with what our truth is, suddenly everything changes. Suddenly, all sorts of things that seemed completely intransigent, melt away. Because we’ve seen our truth. And a lot of the issues we experience in life are kept stuck, by us resisting, denying, not connecting with what it really actually feels true about the situation.

So truth and transcendence is all about finding our truth, connecting with it, committing to it, and then seeing what transcendence is then possible for us. So the guests I have coming on each have their own individual story about that and I’ve had a whole fascinating range of people in all different walks of life telling these extraordinary stories, which are very, very human.

And anyone can listen to that and go, oh my god, I resonate with that part. I don’t resonate with that part, or the whole thing is new to me. That’s a revelation. You know, whatever it is. And I also do solo episodes where I talk about pieces of my own truth and ways that’s helped me to transcend and ways that’s helped my clients to transcend.

So I find it very interesting podcast and my … listeners seem to like it.

Morgan Friedman (Host): What I find interesting about that is everything you said, I make very similar points all the time, friends, clients, and surprisingly, even in business context, but what’s interesting is just, I have a very different vocabulary and way of talking about the same. Where I like approaching it, where I was a classics nerd growing up and ancient Greek philosophy.

It basically begins with, Plato, through the voice of Socrates, saying, know thyself, nōrisētōn, in Greek, know thyself, and knowing yourself is, and that’s how I think about it, like, what do you like? What makes you happy? And so on. And it gets really, really complex because I like this, it makes me happy, but guess what?

It has negative consequences. So, these questions get very challenging and very subtle, but I hadn’t thought about it as, like, my truth, I think about it more as my preferences, but it’s a very comparable point of understanding yourself in a deep way, including all the darkness and all the implications, which is hard and powerful.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And all the light.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ooh.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): And all the light.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I like your optimistic take on it. I look at myself and it gets dark, but you’re right. There’s also a lot of beauty in life as well.

Catherine Llewellyn (Interviewee): Exactly.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay. This was wonderful. We can include a link to your podcast in the show notes as well, but that would be great and thank you everyone for showing up. To be continued.