Communication: Consultancy Skill to Improve

COMMUNICATION IS THE CONSULTANCY SKILL TO IMPROVE
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COMMUNICATION IS THE CONSULTANCY SKILL TO IMPROVE 1. Introduction Consultancy is a significant service that offers expertise and advice to organisations. In particular, consulting can help a company to understand legal jurisdiction, customs, culture, national regulations, and enable a business to build a good relationship with its stakeholders (“Consulting Across Borders and Cultures,” 2022, p. 6). A consultant adds values to a firm, improves management activities, such as planning, organising, directing, staffing, and controlling, and enables a company to focus on achieving short and long-term goals and objectives (“The Nature of Consulting,” 2022, p. 2). All in all, an effective consultant should be highly skilled and experienced. The paper focuses on communication skills, which is something that an individual should improve to become an effective consultant. 2. Communication Skills Communication is the primary skill of an effective business consultant. During the initial contact phase, the consultant meets with a client to understand the context of the issue or situation that the latter wants to advice. For instance, the consultancy might be industry, functional, finance, or marketing-related. However, effective communication between the consultant and a client gives appropriate information about what needs to be done. People learn or get training on different concepts or strategies through communication. Regardless of the type of consultation or dimension involved when advising another party, the details must be communicated clearly and concisely (“How to Design and Deliver Effective Training,” 2022, p. 13). Management consulting might include information technology (IT) management, technical, operations, risk management, outsourcing, human resources, and organizational development (“The Wider Consulting Context and Processes,” 2022, p. 5). As such, communication skills must be mastered well to avoid confusion and other adverse consequences during consulting. 3. The Importance of Communication Skills for Management Consultants Specifically, communication is an essential skill for management consultants. As far as it promotes directing, controlling, staffing, planning, and organising, it also supplements, complements, differentiates, enhances, and integrates a company since relevant information is exchanged between the consultant and client. Effective communication facilitates the sharing of correct information timely. As such, the information can be used to make the right decisions or act accordingly (“Communication Skills and Presenting Your Ideas,” 2022, p. 3). Communication improves distinct areas of decision-making, including normative, prescriptive, and descriptive. Normative entails rational methods, such as financial management and operations planning. Descriptive involves guiding managers in what they should do to overcome various challenges (“Decision-Making in the Client Context,” 2022, p. 2). Moreover, prescriptive entails supporting and advising individuals, such as managers, so that they can improve their decision-making skills for an organization to have positive outcomes. The lack of communication skills can contribute to ambiguity. Notably, ambiguity causes abstraction in people’s experiences or thinking processes leading to increased unintended and unanticipated consequences (Weick, 2015, p. 118). Let’s assume a scenario where the management consultant recognizes that a specific firm needs to reduce the employee turnover rate to be productive and avoid losses. If the individual does not have proper communication skills, one might recommend to the manager to increase workers’ salaries, instead of making the working environment conducive to promoting employee motivation and job satisfaction. As such, it leads to ambiguity, since the description or solution given is not well-communicated to overcome the problem at hand (“Learning from Experience,” 2022, p.3). However, a management consultant who is a good communicator understands the existing situation and reflects on his experience to give feasible strategies or new insights. Critical reflection is a key component of critical human resource development (CHRD), which cannot take place without effective communication. In most cases, consultants should be knowledgeable, self-reflective, and willing to come up with moral judgments without forgetting to be socially responsible (Cotter, 2015, p. 461). As such, for these specialists to transform businesses and help them to overcome or set proper strategies, they must understand the context of their clients appropriately. Besides, one of the primary skills of an effective consultant is communication, which entails the ability to identify the problem, analyse it, and provide proper suggestions (“Consultant Skills and the Project Proposal,” 2022, p. 2). As such, management consultants should be good communicators for them to perform their duties well. 4. How to Improve Communication Skills Some of the things that a person will do to improve one’s communication skills are engaging in more interactions to enhance building trusting relationships, listening actively, asking the right questions, and challenging others constructively (“Consulting Soft Skills and Working with the Client,” 2022, p. 5). Specifically, relating with the client well enables the management consultant to get more accurate information about the issue or situation at hand. That is why the management consultant should be attentive and ask the right questions, which do not foster negative criticisms or create unnecessary arguments. A management consultant should always reflect on things. Notably, reflecting entails thinking about the present, past, or upcoming situations, actions, or events so that one can make sense of them (Reynolds, 2011, p. 5). That way, it becomes easy to implement good decisions or make the right choices.  The other things that a person should do to improve communication skills ar...