We’ve all had people giving us their ‘expert advice’ as we were growing up—they were called our parents, aunties, uncles, brothers, sisters...you get my drift! You’ve probably stepped into that role yourself several times to help those who are close to you or who work with.
As grown-ups, we all need advice about one thing or another because we aren’t ‘experts’ in everything. We need established systems that can help us learn and succeed and ideally, we want to work with someone we know and trust to give us the right level of support in order to help us achieve our goals. This is where coaches and consultants step in to help move to the next level!
Where does your level of expertise fit best?
Whatever your background, it’s important to understand whether you can best serve your clients as a coach or as a consultant – maybe it’s both.
Essentially, a coach helps their clients to understand their challenges and why they are an issue, then to plan and motivate themselves to take action and make the changes they need to make to achieve their goals. This approach focuses more on the client doing the active work with the coach there to support, guide and keep them accountable for their success.
However, a consultant are professionals in their field and their roles are much more pro-active in helping their clients with a specific goal or project, providing support, advice and ideas, as well as working directly with them and their team to lead or manage the process through to the end, which can also include measuring results.
Whilst both roles are advisory in nature, their actual functions are distinct in nature. There are 3 key reasons why you could be hired as a coach or a consultant.
1. Motivation and Empowerment
One of the biggest benefits of working with a coach is the motivation and empowerment they provide to their clients. Being able to help someone see the best in themselves and develop their mindset so that they have a clear vision of how amazing they are is one of the most satisfying aspects of coaching.
As a coach you are helping them to stay accountable and giving them the tools they need to get up and work through their plan, because they feel great about themselves and milestones they are achieving – hitting deadlines, doing an amazing job with their work and making significantly more money.
They no longer feel like unmotivated. They are focused on growth, their passion, their purpose and ultimately their success.
2. A System for Success
Having a simple and proven success system that your clients can learn and instantly use in their business or life, instead of trying to work out how to accomplish their goals themselves is being a consultant really adds value.
If you are a sales consultant for example, you could offer to teach your clients the sales techniques you have learned either in a face-to-face environment such as a training class, or you could sell an online course outlining the system they can use to boost their sales.
As a coach you can also leverage the same process, by putting together a plan or structure such as a step-by-step guide that your clients can follow without having to think it through themselves.
3. Saving Time
Time is a precious commodity, so having someone else come up with a system or a process to help them solve their challenges will be extremely valuable to your clients.
Whether as a consultant you create a new process or offer training to help them increase productivity or save time by changing aspects of their service delivery, or as a coach, you work with your clients to teach them exactly what they need to know to succeed in their goals, being more efficient in the way they work or accomplish a task is always appreciated.
With so many different ways that you can help a client to save time, money and energy, this is also one of the most beneficial reasons why you can be hired to provide your consulting or coaching services.
In the next article, we will discuss the common misconceptions of starting your coaching or consulting business and the things you need to know to be successful as a coach or consultant.