When asked about important skills to succeed in the consulting field, there are generally some pretty standard responses: communication, organisation, team work, problem solving, and analytical thinking. Whilst these are undeniably central to the role of a consultant, there is one skill that no one ever acknowledges.
Consulting is a ‘people game’. Your role as a consultant is to speak with your client, understand them and their needs, and then find the most efficient and effective resolution to their problems. In this context, the most important skill, far more important than any of the buzzwords listed above, is the ability to understand people.
You may be the best analytical thinker, best problem solver, or most organised person on the planet, but if you lack the ability to understand and relate to people, then you will be unable to ask probing questions, manage expectations, negotiate with colleagues and clients, or address the unspoken emotional dimension of a business problem.
Imagine the following scenario. A client comes to you, tells you they have a problem with their business, goes on to define the problem in some detail, and then asks you to come up with a solution. You then go away, work on the problem as defined by the client, find a great solution, and then feed it back to the client. The client reports that they are satisfied.
What’s the problem with this picture?
The problem is that you, as the consultant, may have solved nothing.
When someone is facing a problem, the least reliable person to diagnose the problem is usually the person directly affected. The client knows something is wrong, but likely lacks expertise regarding industry best practices. By virtue of their internal position, they are also likely to lack the perspective and objectivity needed to see the situation holistically and fairly. The likelihood is that a client’s self-diagnosis will be clouded by internal biases, or by vested interests in the existing values, products, processes, project timelines, or personnel of the organiation.
Therefore, the consultant’s job is more than just running with the client’s self-diagnosis. Their job, instead, it is to get to know that client, their characteristics, their goals, and then to define the problem for themselves. There is a reason seeing a doctor is recommended over diagnosing your own health issues. Diagnosing business problems is no different. In order to be an effective business doctor, consultants must ask probing and sometimes delicate questions in order to really understand the business. To do otherwise and to misdiagnose the problem, would result in the consultant’s recommendations being worthless at best, and potentially causing more harm than good.
Let’s return to the scenario again.
A client comes to you, tells you they have a problem with their business, goes on to define the problem in some detail, and then asks you to come up with a solution. You then listen, continue to ask further probing questions, get to know the client and its business, and figure out the most likely source of the problem. You then go away and work on the problem based on your initial hypothesis. After some further analysis and drawing on your industry expertise, you clarify the root cause of the problem, and develop a suite of recommendations to feed back to the client. The client is impressed.
Anyone can take a set problem and propose a solution. We do this every day in our daily lives. Consulting is more challenging endeavour because it is a people game, which means that the consultant needs the ability to understand the client and its people. What makes consultants so valuable is their ability to use these insights to test an informed hypothesis, and to find the root cause of the client’s problems.
Sukhi R. is a graduate from Warwick Law School currently studying an MSc in Business with Consulting at Warwick Business School. She has a keen interest in the business psychology of consulting and plans to enter the industry in the near future.
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