Consulting Tips and Tools

Celebrating Independence Day, I am reflecting on the great joy it is to have the opportunity to serve others through consulting. To have the freedom to be invited to provide an independent perspective and ideas or resources to a team or organization is a blessing for which I am very grateful.

Providing a valuable independent view or voice also requires a high degree of self-awareness.

How to ensure a balanced and informed perspective as we take in the sights, sounds, and feelings of a team or unit we are asked to work with? A useful question to keep in mind is: “To what degree am I simply observing what is, and to what degree are my own values, beliefs, and experiences filtering what is seen, heard, and felt?”

Certainly your own experiences and values are a resource for your present task. They have opened the door to your contribution as a consultant. At the same time, they may color what you observe to the point that you could miss something important, or misinterpret something observed.

How can you check the impact of your own “filters”? One way is through partnership with your customer or client. As you report your initial observations, ask, in an appropriate and respectful way, for their feedback or impressions of your findings. Ask them to fill you in. Ask those in the organization or team you speak with about what you are observing.

Another way to check your “independent” observations is to work with a consulting partner, so that you can compare observations and interpretations. Confidentiality permitting, it can also be quite helpful to use a sounding board of teammates or associates to check your conclusions or recommendations.

Randy

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