Wed 13 Mar 2024
By Gareth Russell
In January 2018, I walked away from a 15 year career in central government to go it alone as a leadership development coach, trainer and facilitator.
I’d got to a point where the pending regret of not going for it weighed more heavily on my mind than the risks of actually doing it.
Thanks to a combination of naïve optimism, serendipity and good coffee I’m still ‘going for it’ some 6 years later.
In that time, I’ve helped over 4,500 people develop leadership and consulting skills. And I’ve coached around 20 leaders on personal effectiveness, resilience, change and transition, career progression, confidence and personal impact.
I’ve also expanded my skillset into consulting, work I find hugely fulfilling and – at times – wildly stressful.
I’ve had the pleasure of leading some fascinating capability consulting projects for Dods Training, including:
- Creating guidance and training for 41 Police, Fire and Crime Panels across England and Wales, in both the English and Welsh language, to improve scrutiny of Police and Crime Commissioners.
- Designing a capability framework for 26 officers located in UK Embassies and High Commissions across the world, contributing to the highest level of foreign direct investment intent recorded to date into the UK.
Not only have these projects given me licence to do what I enjoy most – being endlessly nosy about how people and organisations work – but they’ve taught me some valuable lessons about being a consultant. Here are four bits of consulting advice I wish I’d known sooner:
To resolve the problem, first define the question
Typically, clients have a problem they need help with. How to help them with that depends on the question they’re trying to answer.
A problem might be ‘our people aren’t great at working with financial data’. But what’s the decision the client needs to take to fix that?
How should we define our financial strategy to develop the required skills?
How can we improve our existing L&D offer?
How should we design a new L&D offer?
How can we reconfigure peoples’ roles and assign financial work to experts?
These questions are all capable of solving the problem ‘our people aren’t great at working with financial data’, though they would each involve very different solutions.
Time spent up front defining the question the client is seeking to answer is time well spent.
Trust is key to consulting relationships
Trust with clients needs to be built from the get-go. Without it, your advice might be ignored or rejected, no matter how great it is.
I can’t claim credit for this wisdom. It’s taken from the go-to text I recommend to build trust effectively – ‘The Trusted Advisor’ by David Maister et al.
My top tip to build trust fast is to focus on the initial meeting with the client. Ask questions to understand not only the work, but what the client cares most about. Pay attention to what they say, any emotional changes, and play back to them what you’ve heard and noticed (extra ‘trust points’ for doing this using the client’s own words).
Manage risks, or they’ll manage you
‘Risk’ is simply shorthand for ‘uncertainty’. And as there’s plenty of that around, you’ll need to get good at managing it well.
It’s not sexy or exciting, but defining and agreeing a governance structure early on is another one of those things that pays dividends throughout the project.
My top tip is to discuss risks and suggested handling strategies at every project check point meetings. Have the client agree next steps and always follow that up in writing, so that everyone is clear about what was agreed, when, and by whom.
Prioritise client wishes above appearing clever
Linked to ‘trust’, if the client thinks you as the consultant might be suggesting a solution which isn’t what they want personally, expect resistance.
You might be recommending a solution stakeholders unanimously asked for during the discovery phase, but if the client thinks they are better placed to know what stakeholders really need, then you’ll need to box clever.
Either give the client what they think they need – flagging the risks appropriately, of course. Or you’ll need to find a compromise to appease both stakeholders and the client. Do neither of these things well, and you can expect to need to find a new client project.
Gareth Russell is a Dods Training Associate. If you would like to find out more about our consultancy offering, email customer.service@dods-training.com
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