What is consulting? – Consult Skills First Post
This session opened up the meaning of Consulting for me. It never occurred to me that there could be different roles for consultants to work under. I have worked with many consultants from my previous work experience and never really thought about their roles. There are three distinct roles for consultants.
The first role is the Expert Consultant. The Expert Consultant comes in to an organization with an expert set of skills, knowledge, and abilities around a certain focused area. I have experience with expert consultants and most times I have passed judgment on their level of understanding. There were occasions when the expert didn’t seem to really be an expert in the field. In my opinion, the “experts” didn’t know much more than I. It was hard to accept that they were hired to provide their expertise when in actuality I had to lend a hand to them with the matter.
The next role is of the Pair of Hands Consultant. This consultant is hired to physically provide a service. My previous employer decided to hire an extra set of hands to perform role assignments in our enterprise application system. There were over 800 employees in need of role assignments. Because of the time crunch to get this task done an extra pair of hands were needed. This person also served as an expert in the field as well as an extra pair of hands. In reality this person could have been classified as both an Expert and Pair of Hands Consultant. This dual role was not discussed in class on Monday night. It will be interesting to explore if there is a term for this kind of consultant.
The last role is of a Process Consultant. This role will be the focused of our class for the semester. Consultants in this field works to help the organization learn how to solve a problem on there own. They are not hired to do the task. The goal of the Process Consultant is to teach the client how to fix the problem themselves. This type of consultant is very enticing to me. The work is at a very high level and the job is accomplished through a teaching relationship. The compensation for this consultant is also attractive because it is at a higher rate than the other two types of consultants. It is going to be interesting to learn more about the intricacies of the Process Consultant throughout the semester. This could possbily lead to a new career exploration.
