Virtual Consulting Skills Program:
Organizational Consulting in Business

Consultants Need More Than Technical Expertise and People Skills

Peter Block, in his seminal consulting book, Flawless Consulting, writes, "There is a set of skills that is an essential part of consulting over and above technical expertise and interpersonal skills -- these are consulting skills (Jossey-Bass, 2000, p. 6). Technical skills are very powerful for improving a certain technical function, such as finances or marketing. However, recurring technical problems in a business are usually just symptoms of larger, ongoing problems in the overall organization. People skills are very powerful for successfully engaging with people, including to bring out their insights and wisdom. However, struggling organizations also need much better “business” skills, such as strategies, structures and systems within the organization.

Businesses Need Consultants With a Variety of Skills

Businesses are facing competition like never before. While globalization offers more markets and opportunities, there's more fierce competition from businesses around the world. As an external or internal consultant, leader or manager, you need to know just where to focus your attention in order to improve the overall, long-lasting performance of your business. So you need to know how business organizations work, the major functions within them and how they are connected.

This highly accessible, state-of-the-art program guides and supports you to develop the necessary skills for long-lasting, organization-wide change in businesses. Those skills include consulting, people, organizational and systems skills. See the topics in this program’s
Syllabus.

"The program has been very useful to me. I'm learning a lot, and I really like the tools and the peer coaching groups."
Akram Al-otumi, Senior Consultant, Entrepreneurial Skills Program Coordinator, Dalhousie University

Benefits to You

Audiences for This Program

This program is for highly motivated people seeking to develop people, organizational, systems and consulting skills for consulting to business organizations, for example:

• Individuals wanting to use their knowledge and experience to build a new career in consulting
• Experienced business leaders looking at consulting as their next career
• Specialists, such as financial analysts or marketers, who want to expand the impact of their services
• Coaches, trainers and facilitators wanting to add organizational skills and "business" skills to their soft skills
• Professionals in Human Resources and in Learning and Development, wanting to expand their expertise in organizations, and to “get a seat at the table”
• Leaders and managers wanting to more effectively solve problems in their organizations

You do not have to have a current business consulting project to greatly benefit from this program. The program focuses on wherever you are in your career or in the consulting process.

From This Program, You Will Be Able To:

As a result of completion of this program, you will be able to:

• Utilize people skills, organizational skills, systems skills and consulting skills in your consulting
• Customize the consulting process to suit the unique nature and needs of your clients
• Guide and support your clients through each of the phases in a successful consulting process
• Recognize the most common types of problems in businesses and how to solve each of them
• Separate the symptoms from the real causes of complex problems in your clients’ organizations 
• Develop relevant and realistic action plans to solve problems in your clients’ organizations
• Guide clients to implement action plans, while maintaining momentum, change and learning
• Conduct practical and powerful evaluations of the consulting process and its results

Abundant Sources for Your Learning During the Program

For more information about each of these sources and the unique philosophy of learning in this program, see About CDI (We also can provide this as an in-house program for your organization.)

1. Completed the pre-assessment near the beginning of the program
2. Actively participated in each of the virtual seminars in the program
3. Actively participated in the peer coaching group meetings in the program
4. Reasonably participated in the private group emails among members and faculty
5. Submitted your Learning and Development Journal to faculty for private review (your Journal will not be shared with anyone else)
6. Completed the post-assessment near the end of the program

Program’s Highly Affordable Fee

1. Consider the substantial savings to you because the program does not involve the typically significant travel expenses to attend a multi-day, face-to-face workshop.
2. You might qualify for a 20% discount if a you are a current member of one of our partnering organizations. Please email info@ConsultantsDevelopmentInstitute.org to inquire if your specific membership organization qualifies you for your discount. Be sure to mention your membership organization in your email.

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