Internal Consulting Skills

Course Outline & Objectives

Increasingly, financial services professionals are expected to contribute more to help their business achieve its wider strategic, performance or change management goals. Even those in highly specialist areas are required to apply their expertise - and engage with other functions, business units or teams - in new and possibly unfamiliar ways . . . becoming, in effect, an internal consultant.

This intensive and practical one-day course will help you understand and develop the skills needed to become an expert internal consultant: from initial research to client feedback. You will also learn some of the key tools used by successful commercial consultants and find out how you can use them within your organisation.

Attending will enable you to:

• Understand the consulting framework and process
• Examine the key consulting tools and techniques, and know which to use and when
• Explore the 5 stages of a consulting project, including the tips for success and pitfalls to avoid at each one
• Build and effectively manage the relationship with internal clients
• Take away an action plan to apply the new skills you have learned in the workplace

Who will benefit?

Anyone who wishes to develop their skills as an internal consultant. Whether or not you consider that ‘consulting’ is your primary role, if you are seen by others as someone to be consulted because of your technical expertise, then it is invaluable to learn a framework within which you can operate more effectively in that role.

Training Approach

We use accelerated learning techniques to embed learning and enhance recall.  Any theory is immediately grounded in day-to-day working practice and everything that you learn on the course can be applied directly in the workplace.

Workshop Agenda

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Introduction and objectives
• What consulting is and why people use consultants
• Consulting styles
• An overview of the consulting process
• Tools of the trade
• The consulting framework
      Stage 1: Gaining acceptance
      Stage 2: Diagnosis
      Stage 3: Vision
      Stage 4: Implementation
      Stage 5: Evaluation and next steps
• Conclusions and review of consulting skills
• Personal development planning