A “consultant” is simply someone who gives expert or professional advice. In that respect, every employee in every organization qualifies as a consultant, though few think of themselves that way. I’ll return to this notion in Chapter 8 to show you how, as a manager, your own consulting skills might be the most important of all.
For the purposes of getting started, though, let’s focus on external consultants: experts in various fields who are brought into an organization to solve problems, address people issues, improve performance, provide process expertise, or contribute functional and technical knowledge and skills that the organization and its leadership deem necessary.
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