Consultants are invaluable assets to any organization, providing a unique perspective and offering pragmatic solutions that can help businesses reach their goals. But what makes a great consultant? What qualities do they possess that make them so successful? In this article, we'll explore the qualities of a great consultant, the importance of communication and collaboration, and how to become an effective consultant. To be an effective consultant, you must have strong communication skills. This means being able to listen to your customers and analyze what they say, rephrasing the information and putting it in context to point out correlations between problems. You must also be able to take charge of the case and promote the conversation to resolve problems collaboratively.
Additionally, you must be a team player, developing a collaborative relationship with colleagues and clients in order to strengthen your skills and allow your consultancy to grow. But it's not just experience in a specific field that makes a great consultant. There are a range of qualities that make them valuable to their clients, some learned and others based on personality traits. These qualities have received more attention in the literature on organizational development and in the writings of behavioral consultants than in the field of management consulting. Your job as a consultant is to drive the conversation forward and keep it productive, so that it brings the customer closer to their business objectives. You must also be able to quickly identify layers of complexity within an organization and find points where they are disconnected.
This requires an extraordinary perspective at all levels of strategy, from the most abstract and visionary ideas to everyday things as usual. Part of the nature of consulting is to focus on companies where there are established ways of doing things and challenging the status quo. As managers understand the wider range of purposes that excellent consulting can help achieve, they will select consultants more intelligently and expect more value from them. If consulting is an area that interests you, keep in mind that it is a people-driven business. By having and developing key characteristics, you can have a long, rewarding and successful career. Nobody is going to tell you how to conduct a consultation session or what your next steps should be, so this profession requires an entrepreneurial spirit, especially if you are working as an independent consultant on your own. In conclusion, a good consultant can offer pragmatic solutions while achieving a balance between strategy and tactics.
They must have strong communication skills, be able to collaborate with colleagues and clients, listen carefully to customers, analyze information in context, take charge of cases, drive conversations forward, identify layers of complexity within organizations, challenge the status quo, and have an entrepreneurial spirit.
