Maslow said that “if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.” And this is true for L&D as well – imagine an employee hurts their back from lifting heavy boxes. As L&D, you have two options: train them on safe lifting techniques, or dig deeper to understand the root cause and prevent future injuries. One of these two approaches will have a longer-lasting impact. If you want to learn more, keep reading as we explore what do L&D consultants do exactly?
What is Consulting?
Do a quick search online and you find that consulting is a systemic approach to providing specialized expertise to solve organizational challenges. In other words, a consultant is an expert (say, an L&D one) who can help organizations analyze their problems (like a high turnover rate), diagnose the underlying issue (such as gaps in onboarding or skill mismatches), and propose solutions (such as a targeted training program or a competency-based hiring process).
How does L&D Consulting work?
L&D consulting isn’t that different that any other consulting. The only real difference is in the expertise. Where a change management consultant may help with large transitional projects, an L&D one would help mostly with performance-related issues, like improving employee engagement through targeted development programs, enhancing leadership skills across management levels, or creating a robust onboarding process to reduce early turnover and boost productivity.
L&D consultants can be both internal and external to the organization. Internal L&D consultants only work with one client – their organization. External ones can work with many different companies and industries. There are pros and cons of using both internal and external L&D consultants. Here are some of them:
| Internal L&D Consultants | External L&D Consultants |
Pros |
|
|
Cons |
|
|
5-step process for L&D consulting
Now that you know what consulting is, let’s explore how to do it. The 5-steps process below is something I use as an external consultant. But you can easily adapt it to your needs as an internal consultant as well.
NOTE: For the purposes of this article, I will refer to L&D as the consultant and the organization, the requesting manager or director as the client.
Step 1. Get Agreement
Before you can propose any solutions, you need to know exactly what issue needs to be addressed. Let’s say that the client is losing money. The desired outcome in this case would be to find out where money is being lost and then implement a solution to fix the problem.
In this first steps it is also extremely important that you get an agreement on what your and the client’s roles and responsibilities are going to be. In other words, who will do what. Are you going to just give advice, or will you be involved in the implementation of the solution as well? These are important details that will make your job a lot easier further down the line.
As an external consultant this is usually where I draw up a contract. If you are acting as an internal consultant, then you can simply document this in the form of an email or project charter.
To streamline your consulting process and ensure clarity from the start, check out our L&D Project Charter — a comprehensive template designed to help you define roles, responsibilities, and project goals effectively.
Step 2. Collect and assess data
Once you know what your role entitles, it is time to start collecting data and analysing the underlying issues. In other words, you need to find out who is doing what, when, how and why. The way to go about it usually through various research methods, like conducting surveys, interviews, and/or focus groups, and reviewing existing reports, like the engagement and exit surveys. All data you collect should point you in the direction of the main problem.
The key is not go into this process with a bias or an idea what the problem might be as this will skew your research approach and the conclusions you draw. It may seem a bit counterintuitive – after all, if you are a consultant, you should know should have some immediate answers, not find out what to do in step 2 (or even step 3!) of the consulting process. But a good consultant will never assume they know the answers before they have done some research. A few years ago a client requested me to create a leadership program for them. They asked what I will include in the program. And my answer was “I don’t know!” And I didn’t know for another 2 months, in which my team and I did extensive research into the needs of the participants and the organization.
Step 3. Give feedback and plan forward
This is where you would sit with your client and tell them what you have found. The way I normally structure this conversation is as follows:
1. Facts discovered,
2. Opinions uncovered,
3. Interpretation of what these (might) mean.
I recommend starting with indisputable facts. Your interpretation will always be subjective and you may not have the full picture. And when you start with the facts, you allow your client to find connections with what they already know and they may give you an interpretation that you could have never come up yourself.
For example, one time I discovered that majority of employees in a department liked learning by asking and talking to others, but they were only given access to online courses. My immediate interpretation was that no one bothered to ask them what learning opportunities they needed. But when I told the client about my findings, it turned out that they had tried social learning initiatives in the past and it wasn’t successful. So they decided to invest in online courses instead.
Once you have agreed with your client on what the facts are and what they mean, you also need to decide on what’s next. Will you do a face-to-face training or focus on individual coaching? Will this be a one-time intervention or are you looking to develop a 6-month-long development program? What kind of resources and support will the client need? How will you move from the current state to the desired state?
Step 4. Implement the L&D solution(s)
If you have done your due diligence, established the desired outcomes, and agreed on the next steps, this is when you go about implementing those steps. Depending on what the scope of your role is, you can either be involved only up to the problem definition stages or all the way to implementing large change projects.
Step 5. Evaluate the success
This is where the implementation step comes to a close and we measure how successful we were. Did we achieve the key performance indicators (KPIs) we set at the beginning of the project? How much money did the organization save as a result of our intervention? What was the effect on the bottom line?
What I normally do is to have an in-depth conversation with the client about what we achieved and what we didn’t. As an L&D consultant, you most likely will focus on the acquired or enhanced knowledge, skills and attitudes of the involved people. But you may also want to explore what was the impact of your work on the team, department, vertical or even the whole business.
L&D Consulting skills
Let’s talk about the skills that will make you a better consultant. The list can be endless, but what I have found (both as an internal and external L&D consultant) is there are 5 skills that will take you to the next level:
Problem-Solving: Curiosity about finding and fixing issues.
Analytical Thinking: Breaking down complex issues and identifying relationships.
Communication: Listening, presenting, and persuading.
Change Management: Handling stakeholders and navigating the psychology of change.
Critical Thinking: Evaluating ideas and data objectively.
Think you have what it takes to be an effective L&D consultant? Assess your skills and create a personal development plan to dive deeper!
Conclusion
Consulting can open new doors and opportunities to tackle issues on a deeper level, turning L&D from order-takers to strategic partners. Is it easy? No, of course not! But, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well! And this is doubly true for L&D. Incorporating even small parts of consulting into your day-to-day role can help you bridge gaps and implement solutions that create long-term value. And isn’t this worth pursuing?
What’s your take on L&D consulting? Let us know in the comments down below.
Commentaires