A Conversation with Doug Zahn: The Power of Conversation in Consultation

Doug Zahn—recipient of the 2016 ASA Mentoring Award—is professor emeritus of the Florida State University Department of Statistics, where he taught applied statistics and statistical consulting courses for 35 years. He has also coached consulting professionals and taught a course on consultancy skills in the United Kingdom for nine years. So, it was no surprise to us when he shared his knowledge and wrote a book for consultants called Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones: A Guide to Successful Meetings and Working Relationships.

What or who inspired you to write this book?

The students from the consulting courses I taught over the years. After almost every course, one or more students made an impassioned plea that I write a book that would pass on the material from the course to a wider audience. At every ASA meeting over the past two decades, a group of them would reiterate this request.

After I retired from FSU, I finally chose to write the book. This was more daunting and time consuming than I had ever envisioned. Finally, in April 2019, I finished the book and published it with iUniverse. A long list of colleagues patiently helped me along the way. Many of them are listed in the acknowledgements section of the book. Without them, I doubt I would have completed the book.

You base your book on three core processes—POWER, RAPID, and LEARN. Can you tell us what they are and describe how they are important to having an effective conversation?

The POWER process is a sequence of five steps—prepare, open, work, end, and reflect. This process is designed to help you consistently produce effective consultations. “Power” in this context does not mean controlling, dominating, or manipulating your client; instead, POWER is an acronym for steps to achieve desired results.

“Prepare” is an essential first step toward an effective conversation. In this step, one prepares mentally, physically, and emotionally for the upcoming conversation. Completing this step ensures you are ready to engage in conversation.

“Open” entails an intentional sequence of thoughtful steps to ensure you have the information required to produce an effective conversation:

• Reach an understanding with your client on how much time each of you has for the conversation. Not having a time conversation is a guarantee for disaster unless one of you is a mind reader.
• Compile a list of your client’s conditions for satisfaction. Not having a wanted conversation results in guessing at what your client wants from the consultation.
• Identify what you are willing to do to help achieve your client’s goals. Be aware of your boundaries, such as not being willing to work 24/7 for each of the next three weekends.
• Identify what you are able to do to help achieve your client’s goals. Be realistic.
• Verify that what your client wants from this conversation matches what you are willing and able to do. This will avoid a breakdown, which is more effective and efficient than recovering from one.

“Work” is the step in which you respond with clear content that answers your client’s questions comprehensively, concisely, and accurately. An essential part of all these steps is treating your client with respect, by both your client’s standards and yours. In addition, the goal is to produce a relationship that is cooperative, rather than adversarial, and collaborative, rather than hierarchical.

“End” is often overlooked because people think they are done when they complete the “work” step. This is simply not true. Essential work that remains to be done is reviewing and agreeing on any decisions made during the conversation and reviewing and agreeing on who will do what by when to what standards. If another meeting would be helpful, agree on the purpose, time, and place of that meeting.

“Reflect” is the final step in the POWER process. Now is the time to consider the effectiveness of your words and actions in the session just completed. You can do this by yourself or with a partner. If you have videoed this conversation, you have a treasure trove of data you can use to improve the quality of your conversations. Even if you are ambivalent about videoing yourself, I encourage you to do so (provided your client agrees) because you can always erase the video, whereas you can never video the conversation after it is over.

The RAPID process is also a sequence of five steps—recognize, address, pinpoint, identify, and do it. This process is designed to help you rapidly recover from breakdowns and the resulting emotional clouds that will inevitably occur in your practice.

“Recognize” your emotional cloud is the first step to recovering from your breakdown, be it large or small. Inevitably, you will encounter surprises in your practice when things do not go as you think they will. These surprises are usually accompanied by emotional clouds. Emotional clouds are similar to thunderstorms in that it is difficult to see your way out once you are in one. In fact, if the emotions are strong enough, it is even difficult to recognize that you are in an emotional cloud.

“Address” is a natural next step to take once you realize you are in an emotional cloud. A strategy that is often helpful here is to learn what your early warning signs are when heading for an emotional cloud. Once you are aware of these signs, you can deal with the emotional clouds while they are still small, before they become a raging thunderstorm.

“Pinpoint” the breakdown is an essential step toward isolating the components of your emotional cloud.

“Identify” is an easier task when you are looking at the individual components of your emotional cloud, rather than the whole gnarly mess.

“Do it” is more manageable when you take on one individual component at a time.

The LEARN process is also a sequence of five steps—listen, evaluate, act, review, and next. It is a structured process designed to help you systematically improve your interactions.

“Listen” to your interactions. Identify one to improve.

“Evaluate” this interaction. Identify a segment you want to improve.

“Act” out a role-play of this interaction, taking an action to address the segment you want to improve.

“Review” the video of the role-play. What worked? What did not work? What will you do differently in the future?

“Next,” implement what you learned in an actual consultation. Organize a different role-play relating to another issue. Look at larger questions relating to your career.

Why is conversation so important to consulting, and particularly statistical consulting?

We must become facile in conversations, especially those that have a lot riding on them. This is often the case in statistical consulting. Yet, it continues to surprise me how often we make assumptions about important aspects of our consultations, rather than having a long enough conversation to identify and address the issues at hand. Conversation eliminates the necessity of becoming a mind reader.

What can statistical consultants look forward to taking away from this book?

My hope is that statistical consultants learn and apply these strategies for producing effective consultations, recovering from breakdowns, and learning from their breakdowns by using video.

Any tips for how the reader can use your book successfully?

Find a partner to journey through the book with as is described in the introduction. Yes, you can read the book by yourself. However, to get maximum value from the book, a partner is essential so you can role-play the situations that cause you trouble in your professional practice. You would not think of going into an interview without checking how you look in the mirror. Yet, many of us consistently make the same mistakes in a consultation because we are not using the mirror that is available, namely video, to assess what we do and what we do not do in consultations. I encourage you to address your barriers by using video starting today.

I wish you much success in systematically improving the quality of your consultations.