Prashant Agarwal_BLP056_Consulting_03Jan2012

In the consulting class today, we learnt about the initial stages of Proposal Development. We discussed two important aspects of a consulting assignment i.e. (i) Dealing with resistance and (ii) Stage of discovery.

Consultants generally face resistance from the client in opening up and coming out with the actual problem and it is really difficult to handle this resistance because resistance is an emotional process. The best way to deal with resistance is to get the client talk more about their concern. The best way to handle this is to ask open ended questions and encourage the client to think deeply and talk about the real concerns and issues. A consultant should not push back at resistance, but face it and talk through it in an authentic and in a sincere manner. There are 3 steps to handling resistance:

1.) Pick up cues for resistance – A consultant must keenly observe what is happening and pay attention to non-verbal signals from the client. Any sign of resistance like uneasiness or odd body language in client, repetition of same points being explained again and again or feeling of disengagement from the conversation with the client is a clear signal of resistance.

2.) Name the resistance – use simple language to describe the form the resistance is taking. This would help client openly share what he is feeling.

3.) Let the client respond – A consultant should make the statement about resistance and then remain silent. The idea is to encourage the client to take responsibility and come forward and discuss the issue at hand.

Consultant should not take this resistance from client personally. The main reason of resistance is sign of dealing with something important and valuable and which is coming out in a difficult form. The majority of questions which a consultant gets are expression of discomfort and defensiveness of client. A consultant should answer a question asked by the client twice and clarify things but if the same question is asked thrice then it indicates that the client is feeling some resistance to commit to the problem or the process. Then this is the time to face the client and challenge his underlying assumptions.

Once client and consultant are ready to deal with resistance they switch to discovery phase. The goal of discovery is to be more effective at solving the client’s problem. In this phase, consultant tries to understand what he knows and what he doesn’t know. A consultant must clearly understand the client’s issue and the client’s industry in order to help him. He should get to the root of the problem – which may be different than what appears or what the client is stating. At the same time it is important at this stage that the consultant gives a clear picture on how the problem is being managed. He should not be suggesting recommendations at this juncture but should be clearly stating the facts.

The day indeed provided us with valuable learning’s and we got to know consulting one step deeper and the challenges that a consultant face in his day to day work and assignments while dealing with clients and complex organizational issues.