Facilitation, Coaching and Consulting

What’s the difference, what’s it all about and why would you use it?

I had a very interesting conversation about facilitation today, Richard said, “Facilitation is a much abused term, even estate agents call themselves facilitators these days, while a few years back everyone was a consultant, now those that aren’t facilitators are coaches”.

Consultant had become a term of abuse, implying someone that told you the bleeding obvious and charged you an arm and a leg for doing it. Ironically, this is often what clients wanted to buy because often even the most level headed, logical, articulate manager seems to lose their ability to influence change from within merely by becoming part of the status quo. As an outsider a consultant can state the obvious and make it clear to everyone what they should be doing. Even if many of the incumbent managers can say “I told you so” afterwards. One of the lessons I learnt very early on is that consultants are rarely engaged as experts. Consultant roles include arbitrator, referee, adjudicator and researcher often in the same assignment and more often, in the same afternoon. I’m inclined to think that “consultant” became a bad word when big consultancies started using it as a catch all term for employee when really they meant developer, project manager or big wig that drops in occasionally charges £2000 and takes the boss to lunch. Most consulting assignments consist of a kick-off to meet all the stakeholder, a period of 1 on 1 interviews to hear what the issues are, a period of analysis and research to put the interviews in context, a workshop to share and shape the results and finally either a written report or a presentation.

A facilitator makes things happen by enabling people to see firstly where they are going, and secondly how to get there. Do consultants facilitate? Yes. Do facilitators consult? Yes to that too, the differentiation is really in the model employed. A facilitator will usually work in a group intervention or workshop. Facilitation is an overarching process that keeps the exercise on track, in that respect it can differ considerably from consulting in that the consulting process while possible linked to an organisational outcome need not follow a route that the organisation would recognise or be part of.

Coaches usually work on a one to one basis. Company or Personal goals are identified early in the process, and the coach works with the individual to help them reach them. The techniques used are reflective and supportive providing a “safe” sounding board for the individual and a mechanism to provide feedback on performance. Corporate coaches use pretty much the same approaches but with the individuals in the organisation.

The major differences then are the working models and the core strengths of the provider. Facilitators need to be comfortable in group environments and able to encourage and balance individuals within a group from the intensely shy to the soap box outspoken. Coaches need to be stronger on a one-to-one basis where building trust is a key skill. Consultants need to be able to assimilate opinions with hard facts come to a conclusion and make a recommendation. An individual can be all three, but probably not in the same assignment and certainly not at the same time. One of the key pieces of advice for individuals buying consulting and consultants selling their services is to understand the role you are expecting to play and to make sure that the culture of the two match. Hippy style facilitators will rarely succeed in an assignment where a suit and tie style consultant is required.