5 Tips for Hiring a Corporate Leadership Consultant

Companies seek outside assistance from leadership consultants for many different reasons. These may include re-aligning the focus of the leadership team so that the company can achieve a single, unified vision, adapting to the continuous change of 21^st century business practices, or resolving communications or other issues within a leadership team.

Knowing how to find and hire the right leadership consultant can be challenging.

Here are five tips for hiring the right leadership consultant

1. Make sure your company needs a consultant. It is important to continuously examine your company’s requirements and needs. Define your problem sets, and then examine how an external leadership consulting can help best accomplish your mission.
2. Craft your initial interview questions with the consultant so you gain confidence from the responses that you are selecting the right person. When vetting the experience of potential leadership consultants, obtaining forthright and professional answers to your questions is important. Structure your interview questions such as “What types of results were achieved in your last consulting agreement?” or “How did you overcome the internal leadership issues in your last consulting work.”
3. References. Obtaining solid qualifying references for the consultant you select is a key step. Your company is preparing to welcome someone into your inner-circle who can make a positive difference in the long term success of your enterprise. Choosing someone with proven standards of trust and competence is necessary.
4. Make it about your company. An agreement to engage in leadership consulting should never be about the consultant, it should always be about your company and the results you are working to accomplish. Establish clear initial guidance, and set measurable goals in concert with the consultant. If you sense that the consulting work has caused priorities to shift then making an immediate request for clarification. Maintain an open and transparent communication between consultant, your leadership team, and yourself.   Sustain the focus on a successful outcome for your company.
5. Finally, have a written contract. Having a contract sets the right expectations for both your organization and the leadership consultant, and sets the required legal context for this business transaction.

Leadership Exercise from David Huntoon

In my long experience in leader development and team building, I have found that a straight-forward, clearly understood, and continuously reinforced approach to mission accomplishment results in success for everyone in the organization. Often a major subject to address is the ability of a leadership team to successfully communicate up, down, and across the team, as well as to many external audiences.

As your organization takes on a relationship with a leadership consultant, consider the following questions:

1. What are the results we achieve when we meet as a leadership team? (How are we doing?)
2. How often and how well do we achieve the objectives we agree to accomplish as a team? (How do we measure success?)
3. What prevents me from delivering on my goals to the team?
4. What prevents us from delivering on our goals as a team for the customer?

These are tough questions to answer because they all involve personal and team accountability. But they are a good starting point for that initial conversation with a qualified, professional leadership consultant. D2H Leadership Consulting, LLC is prepared to help you and your team succeed. Contact me today.

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