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‘You don’t need costly consultants – just a good HR professional’ is the headline of a People Management interview with Debra Lang, director of HR and professional services at Visit Britain/Visit England.
Reading the article in this month’s issue at the same time as reading ‘No B*llshit Leadership‘ (Chris Hirst) with it’s peppered comments like ‘Consulants make a very large amount of money from helping leaders find these complicated answers’ made me reflect again on the reason why we chose to name our team Team Coaches.
Headline from The Independent online
Consulting has a bad rep. Headlines like ‘Government’s bill for coronavirus consultancy now £175 million‘ cause much tutting and ire. And while there are no doubt examples of poor practise, and ‘wasted’ monies in consulting, let’s just take a step back.
Consultancy is a massive industry, worth about £81 billion in the Uk alone. Management consulting within the business consulting sector is meanwhile sized at £6.5 billion. But consulting at it’s heart is about businesses and organisations seeking additional expertise, one that comes with a external perspective.
We recognise there’s only two reasons why any organisation would approach us for support
- capacity – you just don’t have the internal resource to support the change you’re looking to make
- capability – the resource you have don’t have the specific skills required to make the change or deliver the activity required
So while we’re happy to ‘wear’ Business Consultant as one of our five ‘hats’, it’s used to denote our clear focus on only delivering activities and outcomes that have impact in support of the organisations agenda.
Team Coaching is a coaching engagement with an entire team, to help team members coordinate efforts and use their resources more effectively (Traylor, Stahr, & Salas, 2020).
This deliberate choice of descriptor means all of our team; along with Business Consultant; also wear the ‘hats’ of
- facilitator
- coach
- learning expert
- and to be there for you
Our success is measured not by embedding ourselves in the team, or become an ongoing crutch for the organisation. Rather our success lies in seeing teams and individuals gain the belief, skills and behaviours to self-sustain and develop towards even greater high performance.
If your experience of ‘consultants’ isn’t delivering that, perhaps it’s time to engage a Team Coach?
