Getting Naked - Matt Goodrich
I joined Slalom, my previous employer, in February 2018. During onboarding, I was given a copy of Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding the Three Fears that Sabotage Client Loyalty, as was every other consultant that joined the office at the time. At that point in my life, I was (foolishly) proud that I hadn’t read a book in a number of years. Now, nearly 6 years later, I finally read it.
Without spoiling the book, the three fears that sabotage client loyalty are: fear of being embarrassed, fear of feeling inferior, and fear of losing the business. Having been in a consulting role at several points in my career, these resonated with me like you would not believe.
Day one of my first job after I graduated from university, I showed up to the office to get a crash course on identity and access management and PingFederate (thanks, Cody Cook), and the next day I flew to a client site where I was expected to be “the expert”. All three of those fears ran deep through me that first week, first month, first year, and at many points during my later six years of consulting.
Having been out of the consulting game for four years now, I can tell you that these three fears are not specific to consulting. I see examples of each of these in my current role fairly frequently. So often I see nobody speaking up in a large group setting, only to get a myriad of questions behind the scenes. Speaking up in those settings, particularly as someone early in career or working with a new team, requires vulnerability.
