Becoming a Trusted Advisor - Professional Consulting Skills
Gain the fundamental knowledge and skills required to be an effective consultant and trusted advisor.
Description
Having developed your specialist or technical skills you may find that others start coming to you for advice in your area of expertise. Over time your role may become more focused on providing internal or external consulting advice.
Undertaking consulting work requires an additional set of skills to your specialist or technical skills. This course is targeted for people who are new to internal or external consulting roles or who are established in consulting but want to enhance their client-facing consulting skills.
Given that many consulting skills are soft skills, this course places a strong focus on real world exercises and role plays, to allow you to practice the skills that you learn.
Like all Equinox courses, this course is delivered by practicing consultants who apply on a daily basis the skills that they teach.
For groups of 5 or more, contact training@equinox.co.nz to discuss hosting a private course in-house at your place.
Outline
What is a consultant?
- What do consultants offer?
- What consultants do?
What are the qualities of a good consultant?
Managing the consulting process
- Objectives
- Approach
- Scope
- Deliverables
- Assumptions
- Reporting
Working with Clients
- Communication skills
- Asking questions
- Dealing with politics
- Managing conflict
Critical thinking
- Evaluating evidence
- Clarifying issues and arguments
- Checking for consistency
- Thinking methods
Client service
- Understanding your clients
- Client service
Key consulting skills
- Sales and marketing
- Meetings and workshops
- Report writing and proposals
- Time management
Learning outcomes
Following the completion of this course, students will:
- Understand the role of consultants and be able to identify the qualities of a good consultant
- Be able to use a consulting ‘statement of work’ to effectively manage the consulting process
- Be more effective at communicating and working with, as well as providing excellent service to, clients
- Apply critical thinking skills to work through client problems.
Audience
Anyone who is:
- Moving into an internal or external consulting role
- Seeking to balance specialist or technical skills with client-facing consulting skills.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course.