Link #44 🌱🌿🌳 L&D Consulting: 6+1 ways to position yourself
Fresh perspectives and links for learners and L&D professionals.
L&D Practice: Peer to Peer Consulting #1
Following the refreshing sharing session that we had recently about the RCAA Consulting Framework, I invite you to a practice session on Monday, March 25th, 12pm CET.
We will run together 1 peer-to-peer consulting round:
Working in breakout rooms of 3 peers (1 "client" and 2 "consultants")
First: understanding the context and the problem space
Then: creating proposals for current L&D challenges of the "client"
Finally: discussing proposals and deciding on the way forward
Free to attend, limited seats, first come first served. See you there 🥂
Ways to position yourself
Here’s the first deep dive into the RCAA Consulting toolkit, built on the framework that I’ve shared with you last time: Relationship - Conversation - Agreement - Action.
In the RCAA framework, Relationship has 3 relevant aspects:
Positioning - ways in which L&D professionals can position themselves in relation to (internal) clients
Trust - ways in which they can develop the level of trust with the clients
Notes - ways in which they can easily have relevant information at hand, from previous interactions with the clients
In practice, each of us has a mix of positionings, even towards the same client, depending on the situation. Based on my experience and some inspiration from Patterns of Strategy, here are the 6 main positionings of internal L&D consultants that I’ve noticed throughout the years:
The Specialist - is good at certain specialisations from the area of expertize (e.g. from the whole field of L&D, someone can do Learning Experience Design LXD activities well)
The Generalist - is decent at many specialisations from the area of expertize (e.g. someone can do most L&D-related activities good enough)
The Expert - is very good at certain specialisations from the area of expertize (e.g. someone can do LXD activities very well and is the go-to person for this specialization in the company / in the country / in the region / in the world)
The Order Taker - is good at doing what they are told to do, on any needs that arise in the work area of L&D, coming from the client (e.g. “find me a training on AI for executives” → “sure, when do you need it?”)
The Confidant - is good at developing the relationship with the client through listening, not necessarily via execution. The client can share matters not related only to the work area of L&D (e.g. “I don’t have pressing L&D matters now, but I have lots of headaches with the recruiting process” → “tell me more”)
The Valet - is similar to the Order Taker, focusing on any needs coming from the client. The difference is that The Valet influences the relationship towards areas of personal competence. (e.g. “I need a training for my team so that they learn to deal better with conflicts” → “sure, we can facilitate a team session based on the tool that I’m certified in, that helps the team members understand and apply their conflict styles”)
There are no good and bad positionings, as an effective positioning is always contextual - given the people involved, their history, their needs, their capabilities, the resources they have at hand and so on.
You can notice that the first 3 positionings that I’ve mentioned are linked to expertize levels, while the last 3 positionings are linked to various ways of developing the personal connection with clients.
As trust is developed not only by credibility and expertize, but also by personal connection and empathy with the other people - I’ve rarely seen any of the 6 positionings mentioned above in “pure” form.
The final positioning I want to mention is 7. The Strategic Partner
This one is an aspirational mix of both high expertize and high personal connection with the client.
You position yourself as a Strategic Partner when:
You are consulted when the client creates their organizational / team / personal strategy
You consult the client when creating your own organizational / team / personal strategy
Yes, it sounds good in theory. In practice, it’s a positioning that is very energy intensive and hard to sustain with less than 5 key clients. And it’s close to impossible to maintain this positioning with 5 or more internal clients - each with their own contexts, speeds of change, levels of maturity, commitment to the relationship etc.
That’s why it’s important to decide “where to play” as an internal L&D consultant that wants to be more strategic.
A portfolio view of your client relationships
If you have multiple internal clients, it’s useful to adopt a portfolio lens for your relationships with internal clients:
Which are the critical few (if any) in which you invest to become and maintain the positioning of strategic partner?
Which are the clients that are already “willing to invest” in L&D activities (e.g. see the value of what you are doing) and have also a “low cost to serve” (efficient and effective interactions, not consuming lots of your energy, reliable in their commitments etc.)? Which positionings are the most effective for these internal clients?
Which are the clients that are already “willing to invest”, yet have a “high cost to serve” (very demanding, consuming lots of your energy, ups and down in following through their commitments etc.)? What about your positionings for these clients?
Similarly, for clients “not willing to invest” - with “low cost to serve” or “high cost to serve”
A situational view of your client interactions
Even though you might have some generic positionings in mind for interacting with various kinds of internal clients, it’s usually helpful to take a moment and ask yourself this question before meaningful interactions with internal clients (in 1:1s, work sessions, on Slack/Teams messages, etc.):
How do I want to position myself in this situation?
Here is an example from my own experience:
To put into practice my lifelong impact thesis that the quality of leadership has a major impact on the performance of the companies, which leads to the growth of the sector, which fuels the growth of the country economy:
The positioning path that I’m using most of the time is from Expert in relevant premium fields (e.g. Strategy, Org Design, OD, Change, Product Mngm) in my niche of mid-large 🇷🇴 Tech companies (as a starting positioning) working towards Strategic Partner (with the very few clients that work towards this positioning as well - as it’s very energy-intensive).
It’s one of the reasons I’m aiming to work with only a select few client organizations at a time, and not do a generalist-order taker/valet positioning mix aimed at volume. An operating model aimed at volume has minimal chances of achieving and maintaining a Strategic Partner positioning.
Even so, there are situations with specific clients when I feel different positionings are more appropriate for the next 1:1 talk or group working sessions.
Like, for example, leaving my Expert hat and putting the one of the Confidant - when my client goes through a very hard period with the Business Unit they lead.
Or, for example, leaving my Expert hat linked to the fields that I master and putting on a Specialist or even a Rookie hat for an adjacent field (e.g. Product Marketing) where I don’t have so much know-how and previous experience, yet the client situation requires it.
All interactions contribute to the evolution of the relationships with the clients in a certain way. It pays off to be intentional about how you position yourself generally in client relationships and also specifically in client interactions 🤝
I’m curious if you’ve found and put into practice other types of positioning as an internal L&D Consultant 💡 Please share a comment with your thoughts:
Next time, we’ll deep dive into the Trust aspect of the Relationship in the RCAA Framework. Stay tuned!
As a learner and knowledge creator across fields, I enjoy advising OD and L&D teams on how to create more impact with the limited resources they have at hand.
My main activity is to help leadership teams of mid and large 🇷🇴 Tech companies, as a Strategy & Org Design adviser and facilitator.
My current mission is to grow leaders in 🇷🇴 Tech.
See also: LinkedIn / Strategy & Org Design Goodies and Personal Strategy newsletters / Affiliations: IASP, APF, EODF, IAF and IG