Being an Effective Consultant Mini-Course
Description
Instructor: Arnie Aronoff
Formerly the senior director for human resources at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, Arnie Aronoff has brought his professional expertise to educational, nonprofit, social service, and other organizations as a consultant, coach, and trainer for over fifteen years. Mr. Aronoff is an experienced instructor who has been teaching for the Professional Development Program at SSA since 1996. He earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago and pursued advanced training in organizational development from the National Training Laboratories in Applied Behavioral Science (NTL) and the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland.
Course Details
Public policy professionals are often asked to take on consulting roles within their organizations, working with task forces, committees, programs, or departments in ways that utilize their skills. They can also play the roles of external consultants, assisting organizations as experts from “the outside.”
Whether operating internally or externally, it is critical that individuals in this role develop skills for effective consultation. In this four-session mini-course, Harris School students will be introduced to some basic skills involved in effective consultation.
The goal of this course will be to introduce students to the methodology of consulting—a process we define here as an organized effort to help a group, organization, or system mobilize internal and external resources to address problems and challenges over a limited period of time.
The course will focus on how to be a consultant hired to help an organization create change in the government, regulatory, or nonprofit arena. It will not focus on how to be an independent analyst, namely a consultant hired exclusively to write a study or issue paper.
The mini-course will introduce students to eight skills involved in a full-cycle consultant-client working relationship:
- Managing the initial encounter with the client
- Formulating a contract or memorandum of understanding with the client
- Gathering data about the problem or issue
- Diagnosing the problem or issue
- Providing feedback to the client
- Presenting an action plan for change
- Implementing changes
- Evaluating the effort
The course will blend reading, lecture, group discussion, and experiential practice.
In the experiential part of class, students will work in in groups as consulting practices, helping a hypothetical client whose problem or issue is presented as a case in written form. This class will focus on how coherently an individual and a group can function as consultants, rather than the content, quality, or legitimacy of a proposed solution. This course emphasizes communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills. Class size is limited to 16.
Dates: April 22, April 29, May 6, May 13
Time: 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Location: 224
