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All About Consulting – Guidelines and Resources

All About Consulting – Guidelines and Resources

© Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:
Consulting and Organization Development - Book Cover

Many people have the mistaken impression that consultants are people who primarily give expert advice to solve problems for their clients. However, a much more accurate description is given by Peter Block in his seminal book, Flawless Consulting. Block explains that a consultant is someone in a role to help another person, team or organization to change, but who has no authority to make them change. Thus, a consultant can be an advisor, trainer, coach or facilitator.

This topic provides the guidelines and resources for doing consulting. However, you cannot develop skills in consulting, unless you actually practice applying that new information.

Sections of This Topic Include

Internal / External Consulting

Different Approaches in Consulting

Resources for Externals Starting a Consulting Business

Test Your Knowledge of the Field of Consulting

Take this online quiz.

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Glossary of Consulting Terms

Learn More in the Library’s Blog Related to Consulting and Hiring Consultants

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blog that has posts related to Consulting and Hiring Consultants. Scan down the blog’s page to see its various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

Library’s Consulting and Organizational Development Blog

PROFESSION OF CONSULTING

What is a Consultant, Really?

See a video about overview of methods of advising, coaching and facilitating; which methods to use and when; when to switch methods; and major myths about consulting. From the Consultants Development Institute.

Misunderstandings About Consultants

As mentioned above, a consultant is someone in a role to help another person, team or organization to change, but who has no authority to make that change happen. There are many myths and misunderstandings about consulting, the most common of which is that consultants always provide expert advice to solve “problems”.
Actually, a consultant might use many different styles, approaches and methods, depending on the nature of the client and focus of the consulting project.

Continuum of Roles of Consultants

Roles can range along a continuum from that of an expert who gives ongoing advice to that of a coach or facilitator who supports a person or group with ongoing reflective questions to bring out their own wisdom and apply it.

Thus, consultants can act in the role of (alphabetically):

  • Coach – helping individuals to clarify and achieve a goal by helping them to bring out and apply their own wisdom.
  • Collaborator/partner – working with another to benefit from the mutual relationship.
  • Educator/trainer – helping others especially to develop new knowledge, skills and insights.
  • Expert – providing specific information and expertise in specific areas.
  • Facilitator – helping members of a group to clarify their desired goals and how they want to achieve them — and then helping them to bring out and apply their own wisdom to achieve the goals (thus, a coach who is coaching a group also works in a very facilitative manner).
  • Problem solver – helping others to clarify their problems and then helping them to “solve” them.
  • Researcher – collecting, organizing, analyzing and reporting information for others.

Other roles might include analyst, synthesizer, impartial observer, critic, friend and mentor.

NOTE: The manner in which consultants works in these roles can vary widely.
See How Consultants Customize Their Approaches.

When Consultants Should Facilitate, Coach or Train

Types of Consultants and Their Services

See a video about definitions, types of consultants, primary goals of consultants, identifying real clients, and differences between internal and external consultants. From the Consultants Development Institute.

It is useful to know the general types of consulting services because they are often used to categorize, for example, in advertisements, catalogs of training programs and tracking statistics about consultants. Consultants might use roles ranging from the expert to the facilitator in any of the following categories depending on the nature of the client and focus of the consulting project.

Types of Services

Private Practice Consultants

They focus on professional services, for example, counseling and coaching, that include helping others with individual and professional development. They work in a highly facilitative and collaborative manner with their clients, and in a highly confidential relationship, as well. (The term “private” is often used to suggest that the consultants are working as independent consultants. However, it can also apply to the strong requirement for confidentiality in the nature of their work.)

(Note that the above use of the terms counseling and coaching refer to services that are delivered in a carefully designed relationship in order to accomplish significant personal goals with the client. This is in contrast to an informal counseling and coaching activity in which a person offers advice or thoughtful questions in a spontaneous conversation.)

Technical Consultants

They provide highly specialized content and expertise regarding certain specific systems and processes in the organization, for example, information technology and business analysis. The types of services provided by these consultants are often referred to as technical assistance.

Management Consultants

They help leaders and managers to be more productive in the practices of planning, organizing, leading and coordinating resources in the organization. For example, they can help with practices in strategic planning, financial management and personnel management. They might work in an expert role while training others about best practices and then in a facilitator role when supporting others to apply those practices.

Organizational Development Consultants

They help organizations to improve performance in a significant portion of the organization or in the entire organization itself. They might use a wide variety of approaches, for example, training about best practices in accomplishing successful change, facilitating groups of leaders to plan the change, and informal coaching conversations to maintain momentum during the change.

Many people assert that there is a difference between the phrases “organizational development consultants” and “Organization Development consultants.” They would use the latter phrase to refer to consultants who consider themselves to be working in the field of Organization Development.

Types Can Overlap

Each type of consultant might be needed at various times in a project. For example, an organizational development consultant might work with various groups to identify the most important problems to address in an organization. Then management consultants might train various managers about the best practices needed to address the problem, for example, strategic planning, management by objectives and supervision. Concurrently, a professional coach might coach the chief executive officer through the challenges of dealing with a major change.

Nature of Expertise

Generalists and Specialists

Whether the consultants are generalists or specialists depends on the nature of their services. The more specific the nature of their services, for example, information technology or market research, the more likely they would be referred to as specialists.

Many people would consider private practice and technical consultants to be specialists. They have rather unique and extensive expertise, such as in medicine, counseling and coaching — even though they can often vary widely in how they provide their services.

Many people would consider management and organizational development consultants to be generalists, although both types might use a mix of specialist and generalist expertise, especially when working on complex projects.

Context of Their Services

An external consultant is not a full- or part-time employee of the client’s organization and instead works independently to serve a number of different clients. In contrast, an internal consultant is a part- or full-time employee in the client’s organization. It is very useful to know the typical differences between the two, especially in terms of how they are viewed by their clients and the different parameters in their roles.

Internal Compared to External Consultants

Overall Goals of Professional Consultants

To know the overall, recurring goals of professional consultants, regardless of their type, we again defer to Block. He suggests that the following goals be primary for professional consultants, especially if they are often working to help others accomplish significant change.

  1. Establish a collaborative relationship with your clients.
    As a consultant, you should work with your clients as if you are peers working as a team. Working in a collaborative fashion with your clients helps you ensure that recommendations — generated from you and/or the client — are accurate, that clients follow the recommendations and that they adopt the necessary changes as needed.
  2. Solve problems so your clients can solve them later themselves.
    The approach to solving the problem in the project should always involve your client’s learning about what is being done and why, so your client can very likely repeat the approach as much as possible after you are gone.
  3. Ensure equal attention to solving the problem and your relationship with your client. The quality of the relationship between you and your client is a reliable predictor of the quality of the outcome from the project. Clients often judge projects, not only by their outcomes, but also by the quality of their working relationship with the consultant.

What Should Be Primary Goals of Consultants?




Professionalism in Consulting

Professional consultants should always adhere to certain principles and ethics in their work, as well as continually developing themselves as individuals and consultants. The following resources provide numerous guidelines to help you as a professional.

See a video about principles for successful consulting, defining “success”, principles for ethical consulting, managing risks and liabilities, and knowing when to leave. From the Consultants
Development Institute.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES IN CONSULTING

Phases in Consulting Projects

All Consultants Follow General Phases in Their Consulting – Just Differently

All professional consultants tend to follow a general design, or framework, in their consulting that includes a general sequence of cyclical and highly integrated phases. Phases often include, for example, a start-up or contracting phase that clarifies the project’s goals and roles, then specifying the actions to achieve the goals, then implementing the actions and then doing a final project evaluation.

Very Different Styles in Going Through the Phases

However, different consultants might go through the same general phases very differently along a continuum of styles. At one end are consultants who prefer clearly delineated beginning and ending points for each phase, as well as specific kinds of sequential deliverables within them. They might see themselves as leading in all aspects of the project. Technical consultants often prefer this kind of approach to ensure that the project activities closely conform to the steps needed to successfully install the technical systems or practices, such as installing computer systems and conducting market research.

At the other end, are consultants who, along with the client, co-create the content within each phase as well as the activities within each. They might not see themselves as working within phases, at all, but rather engaging in a highly collaborative dialogue in which the goals, roles and actions are continually unfolding from the relationship itself. Examples along this half of the continuum might include coaching,
process consultation, Dialogic Organization Development, collaborative consulting, whole systems change and Theory U.

The various styles in going through the phases depend on a variety of factors that are explained in the next section, “How Consultants Customize Their Approaches”.

Examples of Phases in Consulting

How Consultants Customize Their Approaches

Depends on the Type of Consultant

If they are private practice consultants, then they probably are specialists in their particular profession, which often requires certification or licensure in the profession. However, they very often use highly collaborative and facilitative approaches with their clients.

If they are technical consultants, then they probably are specialists whose work is often highly specific and procedural in nature. Thus, they might mostly offer expert advice and be rather predictable in how they work.

If they are management and organizational development consultants, then they probably are a mix of specialists and generalists. They might use a variety of approaches ranging from offering expert advice to conducting spontaneous coaching conversations.

Depends on Their Training

Their approach to their work depends on their training in a certain philosophy and associated model. For example, coaches might use a specific model focused on life coaching or performance coaching. Trainers might use a certain model to design their curriculum, such as ADDIE or SAM. Managerial consultants might specialize in a certain practice, such as leadership development or strategic planning. Organizational consultants might focus on a certain organizational performance model, such as management by objectives or the Balanced Scorecard.

Depends on the Nature and Needs of Their Clients

However, all professional consultants should be able to accommodate the nature of the individual client and the culture of the client’s organization. For example, some clients learn especially from frequent interaction with the consultant. Others prefer frequent time alone to reflect and re-energize themselves.

Some organizations are clearly and consistently structured in how they operate, including how they make decisions and solve problems. Decisions require extensive communication and formal approval. Other organizations are more adaptable and decentralized. Decisions require discussions and consensus.

Also see How to Choose Which Strategies (Interventions) to Use for Change .

Example of an Approach to Consulting: Collaborative Consulting

The collaborative consulting process is based on the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, Peter Block and others. It is not a specific model as much as a mutual way of working through the general process for the consultant and client during a consulting project. This type of process is widely used in consulting to solve complex problems and achieve major goals in organizations.
Collaborative Consulting for Performance, Change and Learning

One version of the process includes the following general sequence of phases. They are highly integrated and often cyclical in nature.

Note 1. If the focus of the consulting is on accomplishing significant change in an organization, then the Implementation Phase should be embellished with
Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents




Resources for Starting a Consulting Business

This topic assumes that you already have some expertise that you could provide to clients in exchange for a fee and that you also have a good understanding of a consulting process as described in this overall topic, and that you also are thinking about starting a business to be a professional consultant. The guidelines in this topic are focused on helping you to start a new organization or expand a current organization.

Are You Really an Entrepreneur?

Developing Your Organization

Starting a New One?

Planning Your New Organization

Deciding the Legal Structure of Your New Organization

U.S. Enterprise Law — Forming Organizations

Or Expanding a Current Organization?

Business Development

Or Starting a New Product or Service?

Product Development

Marketing Your Services, Getting Clients

Marketing Your Organization, Product or Service

Sales — Getting and Keeping Clients

Proposals and Contracts

Responding to Request for Proposals

You might develop a request for proposal (RFP) and provide it to many potential consultants, asking them to respond with proposals. This section will be helpful when developing an RFP.

Proposals

Consultants usually respond to RFPs with a proposal that specifies how they can meet the requirements in the RFP.

Contracts

See Guidelines and Resources for Contracting Phase of Consulting

Some Challenges in a Consulting Business

Fees and Getting Paid

Dealing With Clients

When to Bail from a Project

When to Bail from a Consulting Project

Minimizing Risk

Staying Centered as a Consultant

Test Your Knowledge of the Field of Consulting

Take this online quiz.

To Develop Your Consulting Skills

It is not enough to just have strong interpersonal and technical skills to be a highly competent consultant. You also need consulting skills.
Why Consulting Skills?

There are many resources from which consultants can start and market a consulting business. However, there are very few programs in which consultants can further develop their skills to solve problems or achieve goals in the clients’ organizations. Consider the following resource, the
Consultants Development Institute

For the Category of Organization Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.