Choosing the Right Consultant or Executive Coach

It seems that everyone is a “coach” these days. There are business coaches, executive coaches, and life coaches. How do you know whom to trust? Ask about their training, experience, certification, and length of time working in the field. And in particular, if you want a coach to help you with your business, make sure that they have business experience beyond having their own private consulting practice.

Organizational consulting demands that consultants be highly trained in helping people modify their perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. It takes an advanced-degree behavioral expert to be successful at helping people and organizations make major changes. With the advanced-degree training, these professionals generally possess the following competencies:

• Advanced rapport-building skills and techniques that can quickly establish trust, credibility, and confidence in the consultant

• Diagnostic acumen and the training to apply a wide range of instruments used to measure characteristics, performance, skills, etc.

• A keen eye for non-rational behavior and the intervention techniques required to neutralize such behavior

• The ability to neutralize, harness, and channel resistance by individuals and the organization to the process of change

• Systems thinking and causal analysis

• A humanistic orientation and psychological maturity

• The ability to harness conflicts for constructive and even creative ends

• High-impact and accelerated behavior-change methodologies and techniques

• A deep understanding of what motivates people to change

• Patience and the genuine desire to help others in a selfless way