Flawless Consulting

A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, Third Edition

By: Peter Block

Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt

Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

When the landmark best-seller Flawless Consulting was first published more than three decades ago, it was quickly adopted as the "consultant's bible." With his legendary warmth and passion, Peter Block explained how to deal effectively with clients, peers, and others. The book continues to speak to people in a support function inside organizations as well as to external consultants.

This thoroughly revised and updated third edition of Peter Block's groundbreaking book explores the latest thinking on consultation. It includes new insights about how we can organize our consulting around discovering the strengths, positive examples, and gifts of the client organization or community. The book remains a practical and specific guide for anyone who needs to develop a capacity for deeper relatedness and partnership - which means it is for all who wish to make a real difference in the world.

This new edition covers the consulting challenges that have arisen from the way we routinely communicate electronically and live in the virtual world. Block suggests ways to overcome the distancing and isolating effects inherent in electronic connects. The book also includes practical guidance on how to ask better questions, gives suggestions for dealing with difficult clients, and contains expanded guidelines on more engaging forms of implementation.

Flawless Consulting includes two new examples, taken from health care and educational reform efforts, to show how consulting skills can be useful (and often transformative) in a broader context. These illustrative examples point the way for achieving changes for leadership in business, government, religion, human services, and more.Like the first two editions, Flawless Consulting affirms the notion that authentic behavior and personal relationships are the key to technical and business success. By demonstrating their ability to be truly authentic at each step in the process, consultants can aim toward creating workplaces that are more collaborative and ultimately more successful.

©2011 Peter Block (P)2012 Gildan Media Corp

Critic reviews

"Surpasses the high standards of relevance, clarity, and wisdom characteristic of previous versions... Whether one's consulting experience spans five years or fifty, there is a great deal in this new edition to prompt us to reflect on our own practice and to discuss with colleagues." (Roger Harrison independent consultant and author of Consultant's Journey: A Dance of Work and Spirit and The Collected Papers of Roger Harrison)

IO512 textbook The Chicago School

Where does Flawless Consulting rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Very high

What did you like best about this story?

It's a textbook. The topics are presented very clearly and are well organized

Which character – as performed by Erik Synnestvedt – was your favorite?

n/a

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I laughed I cried I got an A in the course.

Any additional comments?

Excellent format for covering assigned reading while commuting.

Excellent content, mediocre narrator.

The content of this book is indispensable for anyone working as a consultant. The narrator is not the best unfortunately, and has an annoying way of clipping his sentances. still worth a listen!

Great book, terrible narrator.

This is a great book and the way it provides examples and teachings is great, and it came highly recommended. The audiobook is the issue as the reader has a terrible way of dragging almost each word at the end. I wish there was an option to get a new audible copy by a different narrator.

General consulting from an experienced expert

A general consulting book. This book has sections about industries such as management, technology, health care, and education. Because numerous industries are covered, the methods are more generalized than may be wanted for specific scenarios. For example, technology consulting requires some fairly fine tuned methodologies that stem from computer science disciplines and technological implementations. With that being said, learning how consulting in different disciplines and industries compare is a decent way to develop some business knowledge. For example, problem solving in medicine is labelled as diagnosis, while in technology it is called troubleshooting and repair, or testing and debugging. All are focused on solving specific problems, yet the information and methodologies differ greatly.

A large amount of the book was also focused on client interactions. Namely, strategies and procedures for gathering information, drafting contracts, and working with varying levels of client participation were described. Means of preventing project failure were given, and client relations were described in numerous social and organizational contexts. I did notice the author used a large amount of negative terms, such as describing managers as experiencing agony and pain whenever minor business problems occur. I had the impression the author often tried to gain negotiation leverage through references to the nervous system and negative emotional spectrum. As if his services would also fix the negative emotion or feeling. Although slightly humorous, I didn't think this a good technique for getting the job done, and such language would most likely damage client relations and reduce repeat business.

In spite of his defensive and offensive interpersonal strategies, the author had great knowledge of some great techniques. He provided very organized checklists for various project phases. These checklists appear malleable to numerous industries, and appear as good frameworks and additional points to be considered while consulting, project planning, or design a system.

Narration ruins the book

Where does Flawless Consulting rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

low because of narration...

What was one of the most memorable moments of Flawless Consulting?

The moments when I could actually pay attention to the content and not the annoying inflection of the narrator

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

not narrated this book....he puts a speedy emphasis on the last syllable of almost every other word and then sort of lets words trail off in a mumbling kind of way...and its intentional...so very aggravating.

Any additional comments?

redo.

Great approach to the human element!

I'm an independent business coach, and this was a text for my Executive MBA program. As a coach, I found it very insightful regarding the deeply human issues at play in environments where learning and growth potential can only be realized through real human connection & communication.

This book is more powerful than the consulting books more focused on the technical aspects.

New Approach to Living a Rewarding Life

I am a homeschooling mother who interacts with people from all walks of life. This book is an amazing resource for learning new ways of interaction in order to create opportunities for success in personal, business, and educational spheres.

Decent content, annoying narration

I found the narrator to be pretty distracting. He ends every statement with a weird inflection that makes it difficult to focus. Dece

good book bad narrator

very nasally narrator is distracting and annoying. otherwise good book. it takes a tangent toward the end to get preachy about public education

The narration ruins the book!!

I listened to this during my commute and it drove me nuts. The guy has the same inflection for every sentence regardless of the context. The way he ends sentences just... Kills me so slowly. The content of the book is useful, but I struggled to stay engaged bc of the voice :/