A new book, The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook & Companion: A Guide To Understanding Your Expertise, outlines the fears that most consultants face when they step into a new position.

The book is a companion to author Peter Block’s 1981 industry bible, Flawless Consulting. According to Block, there are four fundamental fears consultants have to deal with.

Fear #1: Being A Fool
   To be a fool is to appear naive, overly innocent. To violate social convention. We lack sophistication. Perhaps get emotional, speak instinctively without enough forethought. To hope for what can never be. To be unschooled, ill bred. Every minority experiences the dread that the majority has within them the power and the grace that they cannot quite comprehend. That somehow in my life I missed the point that others saw clearly. When I stand up, people laugh
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Fear #2: Being Abandoned
   Peers and bosses will withdraw from me. I will become invisible. That I will live my life unseen, unnoticed and unrecognized. I am the one others do not remember, pass unacknowledged on the street, the one who people look past upon meeting. I have not been an insider, found no one’s coattails to ride. My recommendations fall on deaf ears. At the end of the class I am conducting, there are half the people in the room as when I started. When I stand up, people leave the room.

Fear #3: Being Assaulted
   I will be attacked and discredited publicly. The fear of being destroyed. My fatal flaw that I have spent so much effort concealing will be exposed. That management will use me as an example of what they are not looking for, and they will do it in a large meeting. One mistake and it is all over. The panic when at the end of the meeting, the boss says, Peter, can I speak to you for a minute. When I stand up, I get shot.

Fear #4: Being Insane
   Feeling out of touch. The feeling that no one else sees what you see. People act as if everything is working well when you know this is not true. You attend meetings that are dead and filled with unstated problems and others talk about how productive the meeting was. You get obsessed with tension and conflict, think about it in the middle of the night, and no one gets it. You withdraw more and more, dread changes, think constantly of being somewhere else, give up even trying. When I stand up, I will be taken away.