Our aim is to bring together Maine ATD members who are solo practitioners delivering learning and development programs and consultation to businesses and worksites. The goal of our SIG is to learn what others do and what we could do to collaborate.
Our next meeting will be:
Friday, February 8, 2019
8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
Vaillancourt Corporate Training
7 Ocean Street, 1st floor, South Portland, ME 04106 (Located in the Knightville area.)
*** Note: Please park on the street.
Please RSVP by Monday, February 4, 2019.
There is no cost to attend the meeting.
Please note: This event is BYOC – Bring Your Own Coffee!. Please feel free to share this invitation with other solo practitioners. Maine ATD membership is required for this meeting.
Our discussion for this meeting will be to share our various consulting processes. To help you think through that, Susan Gallant provided us with the following pre-work questions.
Pre-work: Reflect on your own practice and come prepared to share with colleagues. And, come to meeting even if you don’t prepare. Here are a few suggestions for reflection:
1. Generally, what is the overall purpose(s) of the kind of consulting you do? For example:
a. Providing information to the client
b. Solving a client’s problems
c. Making an assessment, which may necessitate redefinition of the problem
d. Assisting with implementation and recommended solutions
e. Building a consensus and commitment around a strategy
f. Facilitating client learning (teaching clients how to resolve similar problems in the future)
g. Improving organization effectiveness[i]
h. Other?
2. Reflect on how you approach your consulting. What are the phases of one of your typical consulting engagements? See if you can write them out and indicate their relationship to each other. To get you started, here’s an (8) phase process by Scott & Barnes[ii]:
a. Phase 1: Contact
b. Phase 2: Agreement
c. Phase 3: Information and assessment
d. Phase 4: Feedback
e. Phase 5: Alignment
f. Phase 6: Change target and transition strategies
g. Phase 7: Implementation
h. Phase 8: Evaluation and learning
3. Are there essential skills associated with each phase? If so, what are they?
4. What are you noticing? What aspects would you like to focus on at our SIG meeting?
[i] This list is from an old HBR article, Turner, A. (1982) Consulting is more than giving advice.
[ii] Scott, B.S and Barnes, K.B. (2011). Consulting on the inside: A practical guide for internal consultants. Alexandria, VA: ASTD. You could also look at: Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd Ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
