Joydeep Dey

Being an Effective Consultant Whether you’re working as a professional consultant or simply trying to polish up your ability to advise clients, in order to become truly effective you’ll have to satisfy your customers, learn to fight your corner, take the views & expertise of others on board and structure interactions with clients as efficiently as possible. And there’s a common set of principles which can help you to do all that. To understand these principles better, let’s deep dive. Consulting is about objectively analyzing a business and implementing lasting change. It is a high-impact service delivered across a wide variety of specialist domains. In the best cases, the consultant teaches a client to solve future problems independently through a deeper understanding of the company’s work and managerial roles. All consultants have one interest in common - to leverage their skills, knowledge and experience to get the best for their clients. Communication Having the best ideas in the world doesn’t make a difference if you can’t communicate them to other people. And that’s especially true in the world of consulting. Open communication is the key to effective consulting. To effectively communicate your ideas, you have to create space for people to share their fears. As a consultant, you’ll sometimes have to work your way through people’s emotions. You as a consultant, need to create space for people to be authentic and share their fears. This will build trust and allow your clients to realize that you have their best interests at heart. And once people share their fears, you can reassure everyone by explaining (for example, the benefits of the new software) and describing a planned training program. Interpersonal dynamics Consultation happens primarily on two levels: the technical / business level and the interpersonal level. And even amid the most technical, complicated systems, we can’t forget that every employee is a human too! Being rational is good, but focusing on interpersonal dynamics and emotions is even better. Many believe that being rational is the key to making effective decisions. So managers often try to suppress their more impulsive, emotional sides and focus on being logical. The bottom line is that a consultant can’t truly grasp the problem if he/she doesn’t understand the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of the situation at hand. And while interpersonal dynamics are important, as a consultant, don’t ignore your own feelings. Pay attention to your first response to a situation; it might shed light on a deeper issue, as well as effectively highlighting a potential solution. Consultant vs. Manager A consultant is an independent advisor, not a surrogate manager. For consulting to be effective, both consultants and managers are needed - a consultant comes up with a good solution, but a manager is the one who actually puts the solution into action. Thus a manager is a very important part of the consulting process. However, a consultant must be an independent agent with the latitude to objectively analyze the situation. Most managers don’t have the analytical skills to correctly diagnose a problem. Consultants, on the other hand, are trained to do this. For many managers, a consultant is hailed as an expert troubleshooter, providing helpful answers to a company’s myriad problems. Yet no matter how much a manager wants a consultant to provide that quick fix, a consultant can only advise and educate – not take over. Resistance Resistance is a natural response to the consulting process. As a consultant, you need to be open and deal with it directly. People can be scared of change, but consulting is all about change! Resistance is only natural. Dealing with resistance is a tricky balancing act. Your aim shouldn’t be merely overcoming it but also acknowledging its sources. For example, often asking a question forces the client to articulate their resistance, which lead to a discussion. Once the client’s feelings are out there, you have the opportunity to neutralize their resistance by explaining exactly how you arrived at your conclusions. Flexibility is another valuable technique that’ll help you head off potential problems. Plan for potential resistance to make sure you get your assignment done as efficiently as possible. Consultants often recommend significant changes which, if implemented, can even result in layoffs. Then there’s a more primal factor – people don’t like outsiders telling them what to do! That means that anticipating potential resistance and uncooperativeness is an essential part of your work as a consultant. Walk the talk A consultant can do two things: advise people and try to motivate them to implement new ideas. So if you are a consultant, how can you be as effective as possible? First, people won’t listen to you at all if you come off like a hypocrite. Openness and honesty are the key characteristics a consultant needs to have. In short, you have to practice what you preach. Since people often learn by imitation, if you want someone to follow your advice, you have to walk the talk, too. This way, people will not only learn from what you say but also from what you do. So, consulting isn’t just about finding a technical solution for a problem, but also about winning people’s confidence and getting them to commit to implementing your ideas. Consulting methodology Consultancy essentially demands two ingredients – your expertise and experience – to help your clients realize their goals. These pillars can support a basic consulting proposition. Whether you lean more heavily on expertise or experience varies from situation to situation. Each new job needs to be tackled in a series of stages before a successful solution is discovered - from setting expectations at the beginning of a job - to gathering requirements and data collection - to implementing an appropriate solution - to finally collecting feedback once a successful solution has been implemented. Your first aim is to achieve results by successfully applying your skills and expertise to a problem. That’s about adopting a roadmap that guides you through the assignment and a set of tools that help you deliver the result. Taken together, that’s your methodology. To effectively address your client’s problem you’ll need to agree on a time-frame and a budget and stick to them. And once you arrive at a deeper understanding of the customer’s problem, you could then advise the company on better and cost-effective solutions. A consultant has a unique set of skills and talents that help to create the value-adding components that their clients’ businesses lack. The value that they add comes from two sources: content expertise and process expertise. Content expertise is earned through study and work in a specialized field, where the wealth of your experience and professional relationships lie. This expertise is rooted in the specific skills and talents that made you successful in one particular industry or field of study in the first place. This contrasts with process expertise, which transcends specific industries, is applicable in almost any environment, and involves a set of highly effective methods. For solo consultants especially, process expertise is often more valuable than content consulting. This is because process expertise has a wider range of applications across a broad spectrum of diverse industries, which can help to make up for a lack of content expertise. Meetings Consultancy involves a lot of back and forth. Addressing your client’s needs and issues requires plenty of interaction. That usually comes in the form of meetings. Find the right balance between structure and flexibility to maximize the efficiency of meetings. It’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of meetings. The way to do that is to have a clear structure that helps you ensure the key issues are being addressed. The first step to boosting the efficiency of your meetings is to agree on your objectives before you start. Remember, your job is to act in your client’s best interests. To do that, you need to understand what it is that they want. And that’s something that can change too. So be prepared to add new issues to the agenda when a client brings them up. Client satisfaction is the key So what’s the best way of managing client satisfaction? Well, by devoting half your attention to results and the other half to your client’s experience! Your expertise and ability to use resources efficiently are key to achieving your goal. As a consultant, it always best to act in your client’s best interests. Focusing on short-term gains will end up undermining their trust in you, and that means jeopardizing future collaborations. Most importantly, acting in their interests preserves your credibility as a consultant. That’s not as gratifying as instant profits, but it’s integral to your long-term success. Provide your clients with a satisfying all-round experience and you’ll set yourself apart from the crowd. Take the time to make sure your clients are happy, and they are bound to stay loyal to your services. Driving value A consultant adds value to their customers’ cause. Don’t charge for time, but instead for value. This is because the time you spend on a project has no intrinsic value for the customer. The only thing that the client is interested in is improvement, or value. However, if your fees are based on the time spent on a project, then your goal is actually to maximize time rather than add value. Such a pay-scale puts you and your client in opposition to one another: the client wants fast and profound improvement, and you want longer project times. In reality, however, value-based fees and shorter project times are far more appropriate for meeting your client’s need for fast results and your need for personal, professional, and financial growth. Changing climate There is virtually no other profession with a steeper learning curve than consulting. And diversification is the best protection against bad times. With the right strategy, you can actually use a crisis to your advantage. Regardless of the economic climate, however, you should diversify your services – both your content and your process expertise – in order to address the industries that thrive in booms and those that thrive in busts. Being a teacher A great consultant teaches a company how to do things on its own; or in other words, how to not need a consultant! You have to convince employees to believe in your ideas, as it’s the only way your ideas can become reality. That’s why convincing everyone on the team – and especially staff – to support your vision is such a crucial part of the job. Consulting is also about knowing when to stand firm and when to give way. Your job as a consultant is to act in your client’s best interest and that includes speaking up when you think they’re making a mistake. Standing your ground when you know you’re in the right is an important and admirable trait. But you also need to know when to give way and acknowledge that your clients may know things that you don’t. That means your best bet is to combine confidence with humility. Ultimately, being a great consultant is about making yourself superfluous. Because once a new system runs smoothly and autonomously and is supported by managers and employees, there’s simply no need for a consultant! To sum it up, consulting is a “relationship business,” where no one cares about your methodology or degree. The only thing that truly matters is the value you add to your client’s balance sheet.