The Who, What Why of Performance Consulting, Part 3 of 3

The bottom line of what is important in Performance Consulting

By, John Errigo, MS

Understanding managers’ needs is essential to a consultant, after all, it is the manager who will be able to help the consultant understand the business need by provide access to staff, and who will be the one who will ultimately have the authority to implement any recommendations as an agent of change. Without cultivating this important relationship from the beginning, developing a collaborative process, the consulting project does not have any room to grow and thrive. The relationship building aspect of a consultant is one of the paramount aspects of the consulting process. I agree with Robinson since the “how” is not something everyone can answer, we can always find out the “what” through a model or process, but the “how” is more ambiguous and not easily defined, hence why in certain respects, performance consulting is indeed art. Not everyone can define the how and when to define it, not everyone is capable of making “art.”

I am not taking an elitist approach here when I compare performance consulting liking it to art, I am merely distinguishing how fragile some aspects of the performance consulting are than others. The relationship building including when to push when defining the “how” are among those fragile aspects. Getting to the how is more than asking questions, however “performance consultants influence more by what they ask than by what they tell” Robinson and Robinson (2006, p. 6). The performance consultant must know what appropriate questions to ask as well as how each question will paint a bigger picture of the company and understanding “how” things work. More importantly the consultant must be able to get to the bottom of the “how” by asking tougher questions and knowing when and in what tone to ask them. The “when to ask the tough questions” and the “tone in how you ask them” is where the art of performance consulting comes into the picture. You may ask all the questions you want, but if you don’t know when and how to ask them, you won’t get the answers you would need to understand the big picture of what is going on –what needs to be addressed –and how certain aspects should be addressed. ‘Questions asked should use language and terms that directly connect to the client’s business needs” (Robinson and Robinson, 2006, p. 7).

The questions asked however should also able to define the business need, if they do not help define the business need, they why ask them? “To evidence that art of HPT, you need to develop a partnership with the client based on credibility and trust, you also need to approach the situation from the clients perspective” (Robinson and Robinson, 2006, p. 7). The partnership developed the relationship built is where the “art” of performance consulting comes into play, and knowing what questions to ask is also based upon this same principle. As a consultant you will know what type of questions to ask, because hopefully at this phase you have developed such a relationship you have already have the framework of the “big picture” and then you are able to ask more questions that will not distance you from the client, but will be able to help build the trust and confidence of the client even more.

All rights reserved (2010) and my not be duplicated or refernced without written permission of author: John Errigo, M.S., by corporate authorization, HODT, Inc. (synergy@hodtinc.com)