As a part of the Professional Business Coaches Alliance ( www.PBCA.biz ) we regularly discuss how to differentiate a coach from a consultant. Unfortunately very few business owners fully understand the difference.
In my view a coach is someone who works with the business owner to educate, organize, and help keep them accountable for growing their business. A coach is generally knowledgeable in a wide range of business areas and generally concentrates on helping the owner/manager to get more done by themselves (than they would have accomplished without a coach).
A consultant, on the other hand, is generally a specialist (i.e. marketing, sales, operations, etc) who is hired to come in and execute a specific task in the best manner they know how. There is little training of the business manager so the consultant retains their specialist skills to apply elsewhere.
I see smaller businesses needing a business coach who can cover all aspects of business management plus educate the owner/manager so they can do more themselves. Larger SMBs and corporations tend to hire consultants because of their need for narrowly-defined special skills.
All that being said, there is a new trend in idustry towards bringing in outside coaches to help full-time employees develop. This is a somewhat of a new trend which (obviously) is being resisited by employees because they view anyone being coached as not necessarily performing well. We’ll see what happens here in the future.
- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)
