It’s natural for clients to rely heavily on a consultant’s expertise and guidance. Ultimately, business leaders initially engage consultants for their knowledge and advice! However, it's important for consultants to support autonomy in their clients by using a consultant approach that also meets the development needs of our clients. After all, the goal of consulting is to enable a client and their organization to successfully thrive after a consulting engagement ends. A client and their organization should be better for having worked with the consultant not because they are forever dependent on the consultant’s services.
Clients seek out consultants for expert support, and, as a result, can become overly reliant on their consultant’s expertise. This dependence can become problematic particularly when transitioning to strategy implementation. To prevent dependence, we support an approach that cultivates client autonomy and encourage self-awareness. This article will discuss strategies consultants can employ to promote client autonomy and lead to successful engagement outcomes.
Tips to Foster Client Autonomy
Co-Creating Solutions with the Client
Consultants should work collaboratively with their clients to co-create solutions. This partnership fosters an environment of trust and open communication that allows the consultant to share their expertise and the client to share their insights into the organization. Consulting is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor; each organization has its unique challenges and strengths. By working together, consultants and clients can create tailored solutions that meet the organization's needs while addressing areas needing improvement.
Use an Adaptive Approach
We use our “5i” approach (Inflection, Inspiration, Ideation, Insights, and Implementation) to guide our clients through change. We use this ethnological systems framework to enable us to determine the best recommendations to offer to clients and ultimately implements. This means we place an emphasis on how an organization’s social environment and systems influence the humans (e.g., employees, managers and leaders, customers, volunteers, board members, suppliers, the local community, etc.) it serves. This requires that we understand and take into consideration the local community context, the people that make up the organization and the culture within an organization to allow us to co-create solutions with clients.
Development of Client Leaders
Effective leadership is critical to the success of any organization, and it is essential to provide individual support to our client leaders. This can include formal coaching on specific areas of improvement, such as communication or decision-making, as well as informal support and guidance to increase self-awareness throughout and engagement. By supporting the development of your client leads, consultants can promote a culture of adaptive leadership throughout the organization, ensuring that it continues to grow and succeed long after the consultant's engagement has ended.
Serve as an Advisor
Serving as an advisor instead of always being in execution mode allows you to step back when still engaged with the client. While it can be tempting to dive in and take control of every issue, this can create an over-reliance on the consultant. Instead, stepping back and preparing the client to take the lead in implementation is essential. Allowing clients the space to “test their wings” with oversight is an excellent way to ensure that clients are integrating new skills as leaders. Consultants should remain available for support and guidance, but ultimately, it is up to the client lead to execute a plan successfully.
Creating a Roadmap for Success
Once areas for improvement have been identified, consultants should begin to consider what uniquely must be done to create an environment for successful implementation of solutions. While it’s tempting for consultants to take the reins, success comes from preparing clients for and guiding clients through implementation in the following ways. Once a solution has been created, the next step is to create a roadmap that outlines the implementation process. We present our final change recommendations during the implementation phase and then continue in our role of “teaching the organization to fish”. At this stage we reinforce new behaviors by coaching client teams and individuals through execution. This creates more learning along the way and strengthens the organization’s change and continuous improvement muscles.
Trust the Experts for Effective Management Consulting
It is vital for consultants to cultivate client autonomy and enable client self-awareness within the organizations they support. By co-creating solutions with the client, using an adaptive approach, developing client leaders while serving as an advisor and creating a roadmap for success consultants can ensure the organization they support continue to grow and improve long after consulting engagements end. Our consulting teams believe in empowering their clients to succeed. Book a consultation today for more information on how we can co-design your organizational transformation.
