Coaching or Consulting: Which one is right for me?
I often get people asking me "Are you a coach or a consultant?"
And I reply, “Well… It depends on the need”.
The difference between a consultant and a coach might not be always clear, and if that is still something that eludes you, let’s see if we can shed some light here.
The way I generally point out the difference between a coach and a consultant is the following:
- A consultant is generally brought in to fix problems in a business by giving you ready-made specific solutions that will deliver a particular outcome. Those are often ready-made strategies based on prior experience, personal & industry expertise, and successes in a specific industry sector.
Often the focus in consulting is more on the strategic and tactical aspects of running the business and outcome driven. In other words, it’s easy to identify a clear KPI to measure the change brought up by a consultant in a business.
Consulting is focused on improving business systems and structure.
Coaching is conceptually different.
- Coaching is about empowering people to find their own answers so they can create their own success strategies. Coaching is process driven with an outcome. Coaching is more about holding the thought space, acting as a sounding board, opening up the mind to new possibilities and helping people connect the dots. It’s more of a guiding process than a directive one.
In coaching, we focus on helping people to better understand themselves and how they function so they can come to their own conclusions and set the behaviours and motions in place to achieve the desired results.
Coaching is focused on understanding people and behaviour to effect change.
Consulting and coaching can be employed separately or in conjunction depending on the challenge to resolve.
Consulting doesn’t always give the desired result because the focus is on the external ‘things’ and it doesn’t necessarily take into account the main actors in a business – people and how they function.
Ultimately, a business can be reduced to a people affair and making sure people’s values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours are aligned with the change that is intended is key to making any consulting process work.
Paying attention to people's emotions, attitudes, individual values and drives, aspirations, and habits is key to ensuring the successful implementation of change processes.
That is why so often “change management” fails to deliver its promise. Simply because it ignores the actors of change.
A great system or strategy is only great to the extent that people are implementing it.
Under the complexity of business systems and procedures, lies human behaviour. Without addressing human behaviour first, desired results cannot be guaranteed.
Understanding how the brain works and what dictates and influences human behaviour are necessary for coaching but not for consulting. Consulting is more specific and technical, while coaching is more general.
Ultimately, in an ideal situation, to create the desired change in a business, a combination of both coaching and consulting is required.
- Diagnosing the ‘real issue' is the first step to take in any problem-solving.
- Then, making sure the approach employed to resolve the issue addresses both the soft side (people) and the technical side (systems/structure) and that there is synergy is ultimately what will deliver the best results for the company and its employees.
In Nutshell:
Thinking inclusively as people “and” systems/processes rather than “or” is key to optimising performance and results for organisations and people. Design an approach that will address both the ‘soft’ and the ‘hard’ sides of the business and will deliver the greatest impact.
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