What Is The Difference Between A Coach And A Consultant
Sometimes, businesses have a need to hire a coach or a consultant to assist them in their day to day practice, however what is the difference between the two things?
Coaches
A coach is generally an expert who is brought into a company in order to assist those who are effectively stuck in a rut and do not know how to make progress. When a business realises that they are failing to achieve their ultimate goals, a coach is often called in to help the firm to close the gap and boost performance.The Sideroad states that coaching is a creative process which involves both parties, helping companies to visualise their goals more clearly and to focus on the routes to success. A coach is an impartial third party who will utilise the company’s own ideas and build on them to demonstrate how to move onwards and upwards, working over a longer timeframe to work through different solutions and incorporate the firm’s own suggestions into an effective long term strategy.
Consultants
Like a coach, a consultant may be brought into a company to help them to move forward when they are encountering problems in achieving their goals – perhaps struggling to retain clients or attract new business, however they play a different role within the organisation. Their primary purpose is to advise, to look objectively at practice and to become involved with the process, offering their own ideas and suggestions as to how to improve performance.A consultant will offer their expert opinion on the situation. By observing practice, they will be able to draw up an action plan for the firm to follow without taking into account any ideas from the company itself. They will also not become involved with the implementation of this action plan but leave it up to the business itself to put the scheme into action, however challenging this might be.