All business leaders need guidance from time to time. Knowing your development areas and blind spots is key to evolving and progressing professionally. Professional help can be a great way to work through challenges. Business coaches and consultants can both offer advice, but they differ slightly in their approaches.
What is consulting?
Business consulting is the use of a skilled consultant’s knowledge and experience to provide practical solutions to a problem or for a specific project. Consultants will be engaged for a specific purpose and can operate at all levels of a business. Consultants are usually subject matter experts.
What is Coaching?
Business coaching is usually a slightly longer-term relationship than business consulting. It focuses on giving the business the ability to deal with problems (that a business may pay a consultant to deal with) by themselves. It focuses on building skills, confidence and capability – think of it as teaching a business to fish!
Forbes magazine has recommended the use of business coaches for senior leaders Business coaches will be more focused on building a strong working relationship with their clients to build trust so that they can be honest about growth areas.
What is right for your business – consultancy or coaching?
The good news is that a Gloucester business advisory service such as https://www.randall-payne.co.uk/services/business-advisory/ will offer both consultancy and coaching services. This means that if you aren’t sure what service you need, you can start with one and perhaps move on to the other.
If you have a one-off project that your business lacks the skills to manage, like an IT system change, a merger or a short-term project, then consultancy might be a good place to start. If your business is facing issues with profitability, growth stagnation or low staff morale, then coaching may be more suitable, as these can be long-term problems that require more tailored support.
Whether you decide to use a consultant or business coach, you can’t go far wrong by making use of expert advice to help your business grow.