Empathy is a trait crucial for a Search Consultant, both in client and candidate contacts. It is "the" key to personal effectiveness. What empathy allows is :

1. Understand the character, values, perceptions and personality of individuals, and the context they're embedded in.

2. Build deep and meaningful relationships

3. Give an appropriate response to others

Empathy allows to learn about the crucial intangibles in people; as such it enables a consultant to manage expectations efficiently and appropriately. It is the tool par excellence to develop client loyalty because it delivers a unique insight in the personal and professional context surrounding an executive. How are his or her relationships with peers and boss ? How skilled is this person politically ? What makes this person tick, motivated, passionate ? How does he  perceives the marketplace and its pressures ? Will he fit within the corporate culture of the client company ?

Empathy is enabled through:

1. Listening skills

2. Self-awareness and control

3. Humility - which unfortunately tends to diminish when one's success grows.

Empathy means business because it is at the core of succesful relationship building and management. It is the skill most prominent in great (search) consultants and trusted advisors, and in executives at the top of their game. It is the best indicator of the depth of trust people are able to generate and maintain.

Therefore the ability to empathize is directly correlated to what what search consultants in common parlance designate as "seniority"; and why emotional and social intelligence are becoming so much more important than technical skills when climbing the corporate ladder.

Have you ever been in a situation where despite communicating in the clearest, most confident and transparent manner to a client, you just can't get through?  You fully understand the problems causing the pain points in his organization, and you can provide the right the solution for the mess he finds himself in. Despite explaining yourself at length you can't seem to show him the light. Incomprehensibly, that light seems more to blind rather than to illuminate.

A teaching story from Sufism (the mystic tradition of Islam often maligned as too liberal, compromising or outright heretic by most of its hot-headed followers) can explain the quagmire. Its a parable that makes a lot of sense to any consulting profession, because it puts a finger on some of those intractable, nasty hidden problems during assignments experienced as impossible to manage.

Once upon a time, there was a man who strayed from his own country into the world known as the Land of Fools. He soon saw a number of people flying in terror from a field where they had been trying to reap wheat. "There is a monster in that field," they told him. He looked, and saw that it was a water-melon.

He offered to kill the "monster" for them. When he had cut the melon from its stalk, he took a slice and began to eat it. The people became even more terrified of him than they had been of the melon. They drove him away with pitchforks, crying, "He will kill us next, unless we get rid of him."

It so happened that at another time another man also strayed into the Land of Fools, and the same thing started to happen to him. But, instead of offering to help them with the "monster", he agreed with them that it must be dangerous, and by tiptoeing away from it with them he gained their confidence. He spent a long time with them in their houses until he could teach them, little by little, the basic facts which would enable them not only to lose their fear of melons, but even to cultivate them themselves.

An experienced Search Consultant can quickly see the naked truth about a management problem in the clients organization: lack of leadership, vision, a culture-values mismatch, various forms of organizational dysfunctionality, and so on.

This truth, so obvious to the consultant, does not make the client free, because he  often cannot  or does not want to perceive the issues as the consultant does. If consultant pushes further, all what he will evoke in his clients is their stubbornly resistant insistence on clinging to their disbeliefs and attitudes that at least provide the security of known misery, rather than openness to the risk of the unknown. Therefore, facts do not change attitudes and associated cultures. Right: facts do not change attitudes, less cultures.

Though the above does not pertain to all situations, the Search Consultant should absolutely avoid directly revealing the naked truth about a clients pain or problems. He should use images, metaphors, allegories, figures, wondrous speech, or other hidden, "roundabout ways".

A search process and closure can teach a client a lot about his own organization, culture and attitudes. The great Search Consultant knows this process starts with the very first prospective meeting, and the learning process he initiates continues further through the relationship. This is why patience, tact, respect, discretion, and a sniff of wisdom are critical ingredients for a successful client engagement and relationship development.

To paraphrase W. Churchill: while most clients won't have an issue to learn something,  they will never like to be taught. The challenge for the consultant is to have his ideas, vision or perception originate on the clients' side, so the client will take ownership and partner with the consultant to assure succesful implementation.

If you want to sell search service succesfully, give three different answers to the following questions:

1. Why does a company need your service at all ?

2. Why should they buy the service from your organization ?

3. Why should they buy that service from you personally ?

Great Search Consultants have  3 * 3 convicing answers to the above questions.

Do you ?

Search consultants and buyers of search services have one major thing in common: the former offers something invisible that the latter wants to buy. This something is called a service.

It is invisible because it is has no smell, taste, shape or touch; there is nothing empirical to it. You can always test drive a car, visit a house you intend to buy, or fit the suit that looks so good; but you cannot test a haircut or try-out a surgeon. As I outlined in an earlier post, every service has a consequence you can't turn your back on,  and this will constitute service as a good or bad experience. Indeed, the proof is in the eating of the pudding.

The problem with the "invisible" is that it is fickle. It is fickle because so many intangibles are involved, most important of all, your personal brand perception to clients and candidates. In our business, to quote Alan Weiss , "there is no empirical quality catalogue that buyers consult. The only thing that matters is what the perception of the buyer is". Therefore I can't stress it enough: perception is reality.

Therefore what matters is your communication, presentation, competence, integrity, passion and so on. Perception is established from the first time a prospect lays his or her eyes on you, throughout the time span of the business relationship. Most important, your brand perception is established de facto, with or without your help, including both positive and negative aspects.

Therefore, the fickle invisible is shaped through your interaction with everyone else in your business:  perception and personal branding happens by default, whether you like it or not. Therefore, take positive control  of all your interaction with clients and candidates.

If you believe this is unimportant, you won't stay long in the service business - you will become invisible yourself in very short time.

A plumber offering to replace tubes and pipes, a lawyer proposing to write contracts or a doctor claiming present a diagnosis will loose out quickly to plumbers proposing to plug your leaks quickly, efficiently and economically; to lawyers structuring your acquisition in a beneficial and solid manner; and to doctors curing your ailment fast and without complications.

The successful sales and marketing of services does not consist in the presentation of a series of actions that constitute the service,  but in the offer of an efficient, effective and lasting solution.

HR buyers often approach search consultants with the request to find "someone", and the majority of search consultants present a service consisting of "finding candidates". The former immediately come up with job descriptions and desired profiles; while the latter in return will pitch a search system and methodology. Both however forget to define the value to be realized from the transaction, even less to "dollarize" that value. It is similar to the mute communicating to the deaf, though in this particular case they can find an agreement.

Does the client organization want to double or triple sales, increase revenue per employee, gross margins, to reduce dramatically employee churn, inventory leakage, improve cash flow from operations, reorganize the business unit to such extent that the channel has more depth, customer satisfaction increases, manufacturing yields improve dramatically,... ? I am astonished by how few companies want to initiate a search without a clear idea of what exactly they want to improve, least by how much; and by the search consultants who will avoid any inquiry beyond the plain obvious related to the act of finding an executive.

Of course, job descriptions contain a list of responsibilities described as "the management of the sales team", "report to the VP Manufacturing", "present leadership in customer satisfaction", "deliver great quality", "manage operations profitably and efficiently", "grow international sales" etc...  They are common to the majority of job descriptions produced by HR departments. However, they do not cover the tangible and intangible improvements in value to be delivered by the executive to be brought in.

Search consultants must offer a solution to a business problem. Though that business problem is related to filling a critical and sensitive position, the solution is found not in the search for an executive, but in delivering someone uniquely qualified to create the specific improvements sought.

Search consultants who relentlessly ask questions to frame and define the value sought by their prospect are the right people to entrust the critical task of bringing in executive power. Shy away from those consultants pounding on their search methods and systems: hammering with a blindfold on is guaranteeing a risky and painful outcome. Caveat Emptor.