Consultant, coach, and counsellor

I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the word “consulting” lately…
I wonder what the alternatives are?

Consultant: “I am the expert. I will tell you the right answers. I will implement for you the right solutions. You hand me the responsibility to fix it.”

Coach: “I will guide, advice, support and motivate you to achieve your goals. I have the framework to help you making things happen .I have suggestions and models too. And you do the work.”

Counsellor (therapist): “I will listen, reflect and be here. I will try and understand your point of view without judgement. You have the resources within yourself to get there – you just need the time to work through your thoughts and feelings to discover them. I can’t tell you what to do.”

2 comments on “Consultant, coach, and counsellor”

1. Stephen Collins said:
   

   Zern, I’m inclined to agree with the consultant thing – breeze in, dump answers (not necessarily the right ones) everywhere, breeze out. I like the idea of coaching and am a little less comfortable with counselling.

   I think our work needs to be a combination of all three – giving limited answers where necessary, but only the ones that guide our clients to better ways of thinking and doing so that they can use us as a sounding board for their emergent ideas.

   Maybe advisor in the sense it’s used in Maister’s The Trusted Advisor (http://www.amazon.com/Trusted-Advisor-David-H-Maister/dp/0743212347).

   
   2 August 2007 at 1:22 pm
2. Andrew Boyd said:
   

   Hi Steve,

   I am not sure that is what consulting is about I would have said that it was about providing the needful – solutions rather than answers.

   Cheers, Andrew

   
   2 August 2007 at 4:30 pm

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