Scholars and practitioners need not speak such different languages

I am bilingual. I can speak two languages: academic psychobabble and consultantese. Neither language is superior, and both are very useful. And although they have common roots, they are often very different.

I have been a full-time academic since 1979 and have been doing consulting work since 1985, establishing my own company a year later. I also do executive coaching. I like to think I understand – and have had success – in both these worlds, despite their mutual mistrust. I’ve become an adept translator – and this article is my attempt at diplomacy.

I chuckle knowingly when serious academics pour scorn on the “simple-minded analysis and conclusions of greedy, out-of-date consultants”; I have coaching friends who have never considered the evidence for whether their practice ever works and have no qualifications whatsoever except the ability to bluff. Equally, I nod in agreement with my consultant friends who point out that “academics stuck in their ivory towers are impractical, naive and utterly irrelevant”. But, over time, I think I have become what cross-cultural psychologists call a mediator, taking from each of these groups the best of what they have to offer. It is the migrant in me.

I do a good lecture on the difference between coaching, counselling, mentoring and psychotherapy. I also know the difference between an academic lecture and a business presentation. I know that teaching students about leadership and giving a lecture about leadership on a business course are not the same thing.

Years ago, my good friend and co-author David Pendleton tried to make sense of these two worlds when comparing our experience of teaching work psychology to students and training managers. Both were demanding, for different reasons.

In academia, one had to keep up to date with the growing complex literature; everything merited close scrutiny and criticism, and woe betide you if your analysis was “simple-minded”.

By contrast, as a consultant on a training course, we discovered that our task was give advice and hone skills that lead to better outcomes. The idea was that we had studied various types of problems and had better solutions to them than our listeners did. At first, I felt a bit of a fraud: their expectations were too high. But I learnt that counter-intuitively busting a few well-known myths goes down well.

So do case studies. These are a sort of parable, preferably with a happy ending. The comparing and contrasting of theories, or the evaluation of evidence in favour of a hypothesis, is much less appreciated. Consultants find that their presentation style is all important: you have to be animated, enthusiastic and persuasive. Humour also works better in a consulting setting, although you have to be pretty careful these days.

Students are expected to read the literature. Consulting clients expect you to read the literature for them and summarise it succinctly in everyday language and adduce the practical upshot – particularly the short-term one!

As a psychologist, I attribute many of these differences in expectations and enthusiasms to divergent personality types. Although this might seem a crude exercise in stereotypes, I do think it is significant that, in my experience, academics are much more likely to be what are known as disagreeable introverts, with a good dash of OCD conscientiousness and, often, lamentably low doses of emotional intelligence. Consultants, by contrast, tend to be stable extroverts (sanguine) and many score highly for the trait named openness to experience.

Since you ask, I too am a stable(ish) extrovert, who is ambitious and competitive but also highly self-monitoring. And in the Hogan MVPI (motives, values, preferences, inventory) personality assessment, I come out high on three values. One – which no doubt explains my flitting between the academic and commercial worlds – is affiliation: valuing frequent and varied social and professional contact. Another is recognition: valuing fame. And a third is science: valuing learning, new ideas, technology and analytical problem-solving.

Consultants score higher than I do on commerce (valuing business activities, money and financial gain) and much higher on power (being influential, asserting authority and control and outperforming others).

Academics and consultants also use different skills. Academics usually engage in serious analysis, be it logic or statistical. They pride themselves in “getting it right”, “interrogating the theory” and drawing logical conclusions. Consultants have learned to be good at marketing and sales, they establish and maintain good relationships and they are up to date with all the fads. 

In positive psychology speak, both academics and consultants “have a number”: that is, they have both strengths and weaknesses, although not everyone would agree what they are. I have been taught by brilliant academics but not all led me to run to the library or go the extra mile. I have been thrilled by their elegant analysis of complex issues and excited by my new understanding. But I have also been bored to death by academics quite indifferent to the (real) needs of students and the goal of learning.

Equally, although I have come back from commercial conferences persuaded that intractable human problems can be overcome with enough practical determination, I have been driven mad by flaky consultants whose analysis of complex human problems is at best superficial and at worst wrong.

I think my temperament and lifestyle point towards consultancy and my values and ambition to academia.

I advise my students to do consultancy work for fun, money and real-world experience. I advise my consultant friends to learn academic psychobabble and keep abreast of the scientific literature. Fun and money shouldn’t come at the expense of rigour.

Adrian Furnham is professor emeritus at the Norwegian Business School.