I don't think consultants do their clients a service by becoming chummy with them. I even know many clients consider this an attempt by consultants to "go native" and settle in for a long stay, but I just think it is unprofessional. Shouldn't we just go in and get the job done?

As with many consulting challenges, the answer is: it depends. We consider "bedside manner" important in some professions, like medical treatment or social work, and not in others, like auto repair and mining. The difference is the role of the provider in helping the purchaser or consumer better understand, accept or transact the service or product. Some people don't want or need any help. I might want a skilled surgeon to remove my gall bladder and I am paying for a procedure and could care less about making friends. Alternatively, for a life-threatening condition, I might consider procedural and emotional factors equally and may even want to include my family in this need for emotional service, making bedside manner a critical decision point in selecting a provider.

It is about the emotional component of the engagement. A divorce lawyer needs skills but possibly the more important service is emotional care through the change process. A consultant's bedside manner can be just as important. Consider that clients only hired you because the organizational change process was long, complicated and difficult. You know how hard (if not impossible) it is to effectively change an organization without adequate emotional and cultural preparation.

Tip: The emotional mechanisms needed to communicate, understand and accept change may differ significantly for each of your clients, even within the same industry. If you are not spending significant time understanding these factors, then you are not doing your job as a professional or change agent. Even if you are providing a commoditized service (e.g., diagnostic survey or workshop), consider the emotional care required for effectiveness before you dismiss your service as "just technical."

© 2011 Institute of Management Consultants USA

I get that consultants should attend to cross-culture issues when doing business in foreign countries. However, in some cases, there are cultural issues from region to region within one's own country. Aren't these also important?

They absolutely are. Although perhaps the biggest (and potentially most embarrassing) gaffes occur in misunderstanding across nations, the need to understand your audience does not go away within one's own country. It is more than just differences in dress, language, business customs and how one conducts a meeting. It extends to how one uses technology, expectations about making and keeping commitments, and tolerance for lateness.

With a global business audience, a person's ethnicity, country of origin, and the region of your own country in which they generally conduct business all flow together to create a unique social construct for each person. No longer can you say, "He is from Germany so he will behave like X." or "She has worked in the southern part of the state, so she will not mind Y."

Tip: Despite all the books that claim to tell you how to deal with a person from country X, recognize that each person is more complex and requires a nontrivial bit of research to best understand how they work and think. Consider it like dating, where you spend some time understanding someone before deciding how best to develop a relationship.

© 2011 Institute of Management Consultants USA

There are times when a conflict arises with a prospect about the methodology we propose to use. Some clients are uncomfortable using an approach we have developed and successfully used and prefer we use approaches that are more widely recognized in the management literature or popular books.

The work of a professional management consultant extends to more than just dispensing common sense advice. Although it is possible to create some value by applying principles and practices developed by others, this relegates you somewhat to the role of a contractor or, at most, a journeyman. Traditionally, a journeyman was one who had completed a period of apprenticeship but had not developed the skill, independence and creativity of a master craftsman.

This is a two-part problem. First, it sounds like the prospect is more enamored with the "trusted" books and literature than with the approaches and processes that have successfully applied with your clients. You will have to make a more compelling case for how your approach would work and why it should be preferred over the popular one. Second, more subtle though not less important, is that you have not made a convincing case that the prospect should trust your judgment to select the most appropriate approach, whether yours or someone else's.

This discussion is one you first have within your team and with yourself. Are you satisfied carrying out someone else's processes and ideas or are you a master craftsman who creates new value? Are you comfortable using a process that may be the latest fad but that you know doesn't always work as proposed? Don't you have an ethical responsibility to stick to your guns and tell the client that it is not in their best interest to use a technique that, despite the number of book written about it, is really nothing new or is a departure from good "first principles" business practices?

Tip: There is a difference between a cover band and the real deal, between a karaoke singer and the original artist. The former are usually enjoyable enough (and sometimes dreadful) but they are not the value creators and rarely in a position to innovate and lead a profession. Those creators, the "master artisans," are where we all aspire to be as management consultants. Are you going to be an innovative and creative consultant, or a "karaoke consultant"?

© 2011 Institute of Management Consultants USA