Consulting
A consultant faces many challenges during his assignment. One
of them is the resistance from the client which is one of the most difficult challenges
to counter because resistance is an emotional process. The best strategy to deal
with resistance is – not to fight it and let it blow itself out. By fighting the resistance one will rather end
up intensifying it than conquering. As consultant one needs to be more
authentic and encourage clients to express their concerns and finding solution
according to it in most authentic way.
Basically there are three main steps for handling resistance
·
Picking up the cues – As a consultant one should
be in a position to identify 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.
·
Naming the resistance – Once we become aware of
resistance the next step is to encourage the client to make direct statement of
the reservation he/she is experiencing.
·
Let the client respond – Once the resistance has
been identified and highlighted, further conversation should be started from
client side rather than from consultant side.
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. The best way to counter this is to give two good faith answers to every
question and still if the question is asked for the third time then it should
be considered as resistance and should be handled in appropriate way.
When contract is clear and we are ready to deal with resistance,
attention turns to discovery phase. In recent years a new approach of
consulting has evolved where the prime focus is more on possibility than on
problem which is known as asset based approach or strength based approach. This
is mainly done to concentrate on organisation’s strength and take advantage of
those assets rather than looking at weaknesses and one of the prime tool which
can be used in this method is appreciative enquiry..
For flawless consulting the most important thing that counts
for a consultant is relationship which he/she holds with the client than the
expertise. The consultant should address
the following questions to address the real problem of the client should devise
a solution according to it
·
Ask questions about the client’s personal role
in causing or maintaining
the presenting or target
problem.
• Ask
questions about what others in the organization are doing to
cause or
maintain the presenting or target problem.
• Involve
your client in interpreting the data collected.
• Recognize
the similarity between how the client manages you and
how they
manage their own organization.
• Condense
the data into a limited number of issues.
• Use
language that people outside your area of expertise will
understand.
• Distinguish
between the presenting problem and the underlying
problem.
• Elicit and describe both the technical
problem and how it is being managed
