Consulting process and Styles

In a global survey conducted by the Society of HR Management (SHRM) on the critical competencies of a HR Business Partner (HRBP), the ability to consult with senior management and leadership of an organisation tops the list, more than any other functional or behavioural competencies. This demonstrates that a HRBP is no longer just a competent HR practitioner, but one who can engage and become a trusted advisor to decision makers internally.

Consulting or consultancy services are becoming more important and thought provoking every day. The need of consulting is increasing all over the business world. From the viewpoint of management, consultancy or consulting process can be defined or explained in such a way that it would help the other spheres of human activities too like education, health care, engineering, etc. Consulting has nowadays become one of the core areas of management studies.

Consulting is basically all about assisting another organization, group, team or individual to transform business from one state to another. The consulting process also involves assisting in such transformations predefined by the management or the individual concerned. Thus, consultancy fundamentally concerns transition between diverse states

Consulting Process Phases

Various phases of the consulting process are

Phase 1 –

This is the phase of entering the organization. It is the first contact interface between the client and the consultant. It includes the discussions to start the piece of consultancy. The client and the consultant are helped to know each other through face to face meetings. The consultant decides preliminarily that how he/she could help in problem solving and crisis intervention at this phase.

Phase 2 –

This is the stage of preliminary diagnosis. The focus of the client should be shifted towards analyzing the problem and the purpose. Cooperation between the client and the consultant blooms at this stage. The consultant has to find out the performance patterns of the organization and an assessment of the requirements and resources related to the business transformation should be carried out. Data collection is a primary task at this stage since it relates to the quality of the prospective solutions. The payment of the consultant must be cleared at this stage so that delays and other kinds of disputes can be avoided.

Phase 3 –

Contracting is the third phase of the consulting process. The contract should be designed in a lucid legal cum business language. The problem statement, objectives and aims, list of important players, milestones and declaration of re-negotiation terms are the essential parts of such a contract.

Phase 4 –

This is the diagnosis phase. This is the phase when deeper examination of the problem has to be carried out. The problem should be fully analyzed, points of consensus and contrasts should be filtered and addressed, assessment of the mentality of the client should be done and ample data should be collected through interview sessions, meetings, etc.  The consultant has to work out his or her way rather like a detective at this stage. A wide range of diagnostic techniques can be applied once the client is fully involved in the process.

Phase 5 –

This is the reporting phase. In this phase, the client must be called on to give response to the presentation of the problem. Recommendations and data are also reported. Particularly, the recommendations by the consultant must be scrutinized by the client at this stage. Also, the subsequent course of action has to be determined and the questions like how, when and what should be answered the report.

Phase 6 –

At this stage, implementation has to be done. Through implementation the client and the consultant will examine the feasibility of the proposals put forward by the consultant. These proposals can be adjusted if necessary. Further, shortcomings in the planning can be found out and rectified. Possible resistance to the process of change can be evaluated. The run time scenario of the organization should be completely analyzed to facilitate the implementation of plans and proposals. Also, staff training programs are implemented at this stage.

Consulting Styles

The organizational personality is often, the dominating aspect of consulting style to apply and includes

• The Explorer Organization tends to be future-oriented, and is likely to have people or departments devoted to activities such as scenario planning, futures, and market modeling (often called “strategy operations”). Explorer organizations hungrily consume forecasts and trend information, as well as historical analyses and industry reports. They believe they are curious organizations.
• The Achiever Organization tends to be capabilities-focused, and is likely to have a well-developed and staffed training organization running various sorts of structured training and coaching programs for all employees right up to executive level. Achiever organizations love building out corporate habits-and-processes infrastructure ranging from Lean Six Sigma for everybody to media/PR training for senior executives. They believe they are winning organizations.
• The Integrator Organization tends to be employee mental-health and “culture” focused. They love things like employee engagement programs, well-being initiatives, and diversity and inclusion programs. You will find a strong culture of listening habits inside such organizations: town-halls, manager-employee 1:1s, and effective communication training. They believe they are compassionate organizations.
• The Tester Organization is a relatively new type, since it is not exactly easy for organizations (as opposed to individual employees) to be “philosophical.” Within tester organizations, you will find habits of challenging and interrogating claims and data, strong belief in instrumentation and monitoring of operations, and a non-ironic, non-theater continuous dialogue around foundational values and principles. There will often be a culture of ritual adversarial thinking within. They believe they are rational organizations.

Consulting styles can also be though as a doctor or patient driven style as

In the doctor-centred consulting style, the doctor:

• dominates the consultation
• asks direct, closed questions
• rejects the patient’s ideas
• evades the patient’s questions

In the patient-centred consulting style, the doctor:

• asks open questions
• actively listens
• challenges and reflects the patients’ words and behaviour to allow them to express themselves in their own way
• The style can vary within a single consultation, for example open in seeking information but dogmatic over treatment.

The three prototypical styles of consulting are:

• Research-centric consulting- In this type of consulting, domain and industry expertise are somewhat less critical because a structured problem solving methodology underpins the approach. In terms of situational use as a pure style of consulting, this type of consulting may be prevalent in cases where a client lacks a rigorous approach or in cases where new businesses are being explored but where there are few role models.
• Expertise-centric consulting – In this type of consulting, a consultant brings to the table either or both domain and industry knowledge. For example, has the consultant helped to launch a mobile virtual operator before? Or does the consultant specialize in an expertise niche such as optimizing cross-media spending for mega brands using econometric approaches?
• Facilitative consulting – In this style, the consultant brings value to the table by bringing personal experiences and skills to the table. The consultant may also bring third-party perspectives which also add value. But the real value is in weaving together the consulting team and client team to solve the customer problem statement. For example, the consultant may conduct client interviews with separate functional groups within the client organization and with client customers. The consultant then organizes and normalizes information from the various interviews and develops strategic options and skeleton structures that can be used in iterative client meetings to refine & finalize strategy (e.g., by tapping into client expertise and having the consultant help with any subsequent research, analysis, and support).

To determine your consulting style, ask yourself what is the easiest kind of deal for you to close, ideally via inbound leads. Do you find it easiest to convince an HR person to sponsor a training workshop on a particular skill, or do individual senior executives tend to reach out to you for a particular personalized need based on your blog posts?