Podcast EP 112 | Coach vs Consultant - Which is right for you?

Coach­es and con­sul­tants per­form dif­fer­ent roles in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions for busi­ness­es. It’s impor­tant to under­stand in what sit­u­a­tions you should use a coach, and when you should use a consultant.

In this episode of The Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast, Kevin Lawrence and Brad Giles talk about the results and out­put you should expect from both a coach or a con­sul­tant. They dis­cuss the rela­tion­ship and time frame you should expect from each, and then dig into how account­abil­i­ty works both in con­sult­ing and coaching.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles 00:13

Wel­come to the Growth whis­per­ers where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. My name is Brad Giles, and I’m joined today as always by my co pilot, Kevin Lawrence. Hel­lo, Kevin. How you doing today?

Kevin Lawrence 00:26

Great Brad. Love shar­ing new stuff on this pod­cast. I get a kick out of doing it, grate­ful that we get to put a show togeth­er every week. It’s awesome.

Brad Giles 00:39

We always like to start with a word or phrase of the day what might be your word or phrase today.

Kevin Lawrence 00:50

Proac­tive. I’ve been focus­ing more on try­ing to get far­ther ahead of things. And I know as a leader, our job is to be far­ther ahead and far­ther into the future. But some­times we get sucked into the present and what’s going on? So I’m just try­ing to be more proac­tive, is my intent and my progress.

Brad Giles 01:13

Very good. Mine is reten­tion. I’ve been doing a lot of work on a book about onboard­ing, as you will know, onboard­ing new employ­ees. And the cost of reten­tion in the data is just amaz­ing. So yeah, yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 01:33

I can sew this one togeth­er, Brad. Active reten­tion. That’s it’s almost too easy. That’s been proac­tive about reten­tion. I mean, being proac­tive about any­thing is good. Right. That’s why we plan­ning and push­ing ahead and kind of takes us into the theme of the show today to Brad That’s just a beau­ti­ful segue. I’ll set it right up there for you on a platter.

Brad Giles 01:56

So today, we’re talk­ing about the dif­fer­ence between a coach and a con­sul­tant. Now, gee, you know, Kevin, you and I have been mates for I guess, 10 years, give or take. And, you know, through that jour­ney, a lot of the peo­ple that we know have had a bit of a chal­lenge around the def­i­n­i­tion of a coach or a con­sul­tant, and what role they play and how the mar­ket might miss might per­ceive if they’re a coach, or if they’re a con­sul­tant, or what hap­pens. But you just kind of got to own it. Right? So today, we’re talk­ing about Coach ver­sus con­sul­tant, and which is right for you.

Kevin Lawrence 02:42

You know, what’s inter­est­ing, years ago, I actu­al­ly stopped call­ing myself a coach, I used to go by coach Kevin, I stopped call­ing myself a coach. Because there’s always peo­ple call them­selves coach­es that are like, not even close to the def­i­n­i­tion of a coach, in my mind. They’re like retired exec­u­tives, who are men­tors or advi­sors or con­sul­tants call­ing him­self a coach, I felt that kind of dirty the term and because a coach is some­thing very spe­cif­ic in my mind. Right, and, and we’re gonna dig into that a lit­tle bit here today. So the dis­tinc­tion that I learned ear­ly in my career going back almost 30 years ago, is, you know, basi­cal­ly a coach is some­body. Now, I don’t make it clear. I’m not a pure coach, I coach, and I con­sult. But real­ly, when I do my best work, it’s a blend, but in the purest form. A coach believes that you have the answers, and asks you ques­tions to help dis­cov­er it and flush it out. But they believe that the intel­li­gence sits with­in you, and they’re try­ing to help you find your way. And in the purest form I had actu­al­ly, who was called a men­tor ear­ly in my life, a man by the name of Jeff Coro­na, bril­liant man, he had a him and his broth­er, I believe, found­ed a com­pa­ny called Karo Design in Van­cou­ver, they were very suc­cess­ful, great, great guy. But every time I’d asked him a ques­tion, he asked me anoth­er ques­tion. And then he would always draw me a lit­tle mod­el of three box­es, four box­es, two cir­cles, he’d always have mod­els for every­thing. He was like a mas­ter coach, I don’t think he ever answered one of my ques­tions. So he helped me to find my way. And so that is a coach, where­as a con­sul­tant is some­one who helps you to find the answer, and you gen­er­al­ly bring them on because they’re good at find­ing the answer. And they’ve often done a lot of times so con­sul­tant gives you the answer. The coach draws the answer out of you is at a macro lev­el in their purest forms. And I know there are lots of dif­fer­ent ones in between, but in their purest forms, that’s, you know, that’s my take on it anyways.

Brad Giles 04:57

Yeah, I’m sim­i­lar. I had a men­tor for some time a chap called John Schae­fer very suc­cess­ful local busi­ness­man here. And, and he would­n’t ask any ques­tions to my rec­ol­lec­tion, it was always telling me what to do, which is fine that that serves a pur­pose. And I got some amaz­ing learn­ings from that over the, over the peri­od, and he helped me no end. But there is a dif­fer­ence and under­stand­ing what that dif­fer­ence is, before you step into a rela­tion­ship is quite impor­tant. Only the oth­er day, a per­son came to our firm look­ing to do some work. And they said, Yeah, we need an we need a con­sul­tant, and they were talk­ing about the big con­sul­tan­cy firms, but they weren’t a good fit for them. Because they were they were sim­ply too small. And so we kind of dug into it, and he did­n’t need a con­sul­tant he need­ed a coach. And, and it’s so it’s real­ly quite impor­tant to under­stand what do they do? How do they help? And how are they dif­fer­ent? So I guess your dis­tinc­tion, coach­es ask ques­tions expect­ing you to have the answer. And con­sul­tants are hired to give you the answer. So I kind of have this, this vision or this, this, this image of the they come in, they under­stand what they they they learn about the prob­lem that you’ve got con­sul­tants, they work on it, they write you a big report. And then there’s this mas­sive fight as the report hits the desk. And this is the answer. Now that may be a bit, you know, unfair, but that’s the think­ing that I have, it’s about the report and the answer and what they do there. The coach, on the oth­er hand, is there for a bit of a per­haps longer jour­ney, they’re there to help you to answer the ques­tions that you don’t even know that you need to answer.

Kevin Lawrence 07:03

Anoth­er way of think­ing about it is that a coach is work­ing with you on improv­ing your per­for­mance and the per­for­mance of your team, if that’s what they’re engaged for. It could be one or the oth­er, over a long peri­od, like it’s almost like they’re there through for you through the through it all the chap­ters of your growth, where con­sul­tants are gen­er­al­ly just in for a Chap­ter. Yeah, if you got to do a turn­around, you got to do a piv­ot, you got to open a new mar­ket, you’ve got to get a prod­uct approval, you’ve got to do some­thing notably dif­fer­ent con­sul­tants are there for a chap­ter where a coach is almost there as part of your ecosys­tem and your oper­at­ing sys­tem over time. And again, this is not good or bad. I love con­sul­tants, con­sul­tants are amaz­ing. I push for clients to get them because they help you to get short­cuts to an answer. Like I had break­fast with a CEO. Fri­day morn­ing last week that I that I know, well, we caught up. And he was telling me about when he want­ed to expand into anoth­er coun­try, he spent 250 grand for some­one to go tell him how his prod­uct would fit or not fit in that coun­try. Now he did go over with them to that coun­try and do a trip. But I said, you know, was it worth it, he goes well, it was a lot of mon­ey. He goes, one of my team prob­a­bly could have done it for the equiv­a­lent of $30,000 of cost. But they did­n’t have the time, they did­n’t have the exper­tise. And it would have been their first time doing it. So the result would have been mediocre. The con­sul­tants write these reports non­stop. So in his mind, and even if his num­bers were wrong, he was able to get a detailed answer with a lot of data that no one has the capa­bil­i­ty to do because they’re too busy run­ning the busi­ness. So like I love con­sul­tants, when they are used well, in busi­ness­es, I have a whole thing about how to use con­sul­tants well, because, you know, through the clients I’ve worked with, there’s been spends of mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars. And there’s a great way to engage and there’s also not great way, and I can thank my clients for teach­ing this to me. But they’re both super valu­able, but in very dif­fer­ent ways.

Brad Giles 09:09

The real­ly impor­tant point that you made there is that the coach is part of the ongo­ing oper­at­ing sys­tem. And this is what you and I do, right? So I mean, the aver­age tenure that I might work with a team for is five or 10 years, or maybe even more. And I know it’s the same for you. Yeah, we are a part of the lead­er­ship team and a part of the oper­at­ing sys­tem is a great, a great way to put it. A good anal­o­gy that I’ve been think­ing about it late­ly is imag­ine a sports team. So you may have a con­sul­tant if you’ve got your favorite foot­ball team con­sul­tant would come in and they would tell you how to exe­cute a par­tic­u­lar move or do a par­tic­u­lar thing with either your head or your body. Okay, it could be some­thing about the Mind Body to help you to per­form bet­ter. And then they would go, but the coach is there all the time, the coach­es they’re work­ing on your mind and your body as well through that jour­ney, and you know that they’re going to be there through the highs and the lows look­ing into the future.

Kevin Lawrence 10:19

So in a con­ver­sa­tion I had with a CEO today, they were shar­ing a chal­lenge they had with an acqui­si­tion, as they’re walk­ing me through the chal­lenge. And then I just start Okay, ask­ing a bunch of ques­tions. And, and at some point, they go, Oh, my, it’s so obvi­ous, isn’t it, and I go what it was, well, this is the same thing I would do if it was one of my direct reports. I just should­n’t be doing it with the acqui­si­tion, and they got lost in a bunch of weird­ness and blah, blah, blah, and they’re like, Okay, I just need to treat them like a direct report, when some­thing has­n’t gone well. And fol­low the I got­ta tell them to tell me the root caus­es. What do they pro­pose to do to solve the root caus­es? What’s the action plan, and we dis­cuss it for 90 min­utes. And then they come back and see me once a week for half an hour to tell me how to do it. And then we will, but they’re just like, but they’re in the mid­dle of it. And then the chaos and the blah, blah, blah. And as they were talk­ing, it’s just like, it was so damn clear. Yeah. And the dis­tinc­tion I will share, though, I have learned pure coach­ing, you have no opin­ion, no agen­da, you only ask ques­tions, pure con­sult­ing, you know, you dig mind data, go to sources and come back with a solu­tion or report. Some of the best con­sul­tants do a lit­tle bit of coach­ing. And some of the best coach­es do a lit­tle bit of con­sult­ing, I would say that in my work with CO CEOs, if you just sit and ask ques­tions the whole time going to dri­ve him bonkers, yeah, they want answers. Some­times they want opin­ions, some­times they just don’t want them all the time. So in my world, I am prob­a­bly some­where between 60 and 70%, coach, depend­ing. And then the rest is con­sul­tant because I have a lot of been there done that because I’m in the board­room all the time. The dif­fer­ence is when I’m going to switch gears and go from coach to con­sul­tant say­ing, Hey, want me to share with anoth­er client did? Hey, do you want me to share my per­spec­tive? Hey, do you want me to role play how to com­mu­ni­cate or artic­u­late this? You’re like, it’s like I asked, because I’m coach­ing, I asked per­mis­sion to shift gears. So now I’m gonna go into advice mode.

Brad Giles 12:30

Yeah, yeah. And so what makes a great coach, you and I have got, this is what I found. The you and I have got a very spe­cif­ic def­i­n­i­tion of coach­ing as we see it. And it might be very dif­fer­ent to oth­er peo­ple. But I reck­on that one of the things, giv­en every­thing that you’ve just said that makes a great, great coach is that they can run to the fire when they see a sit­u­a­tion. You know, that’s an anal­o­gy for, for a fire man, fire per­son, some­one who’s a fight­er. But they will have no fear when it comes to con­flict, and get­ting into that know­ing the out­comes can be quite pos­i­tive. Where­as some peo­ple, they just haven’t got that in their heart, they don’t have the heart to run to the fire. And if they don’t have that courage, that kind of can be one of the things that can sep­a­rate good and great coaches.

Kevin Lawrence 13:37

Yes, they have the con­fi­dence in the faith that things will work out if you march towards what needs to be dealt with. Yeah, and won’t let that stuff slide. I mean, in many ways, and that’s the part of us where we hold peo­ple account­able. And that’s where our fourth point here is that we hold peo­ple account­able. If some­one has to let some­one go, we’ll make a tough deci­sion. I make a note and I fol­low up with them to make sure it gets done. I hold that CEO or that exec­u­tive account­able, most­ly CEOs, because it’s hard. We’re human beings, we got feel­ings. It’s hard, it’s hard to do. The oth­er thing that makes a great coach is just fit. It’s some­one that’s in sync with you at the end of the day, like my coach, her name’s Nan, she’s dead Atlanta, she is amaz­ing for me, she helps she just She’s amaz­ing. Because she’s got a lit­tle bit of soft and a lot of direct, hard hit­ting, and that’s what I need. As a coach, it’s the fit is a real­ly big thing. The final thing I’ll say about a coach this dif­fer­ence, and I just thought about this now, Brad, is that they work with you to dri­ve towards your long term goals. You know, a good coach. I spoke to a bunch of coach­es last week and you know, shared some stuff with him. But what I’ve also seen is that there’s coach­es who just coach you on what­ev­er comes up. Yeah, but I believe the best coach­es are tapped into where you want to be long term in terms of your work and for your­self and your life. And they’re help­ing you to get there and not get lost in the noise march­ing towards your goal. was march­ing towards your goals because you get lost and dis­tract­ed. And not just the pain of the day or the oppor­tu­ni­ty of the day.

Brad Giles 15:07

Yeah, I agree. And that that’s kind of mul­ti lay­ered that what you said they are at a per­son­al and a busi­ness lev­el. The only oth­er point I’d throw in there tak­ing your lead and going off agen­da is tools. I think that con­sul­tants tend to rely a lot on tools. Where­as coach­es have tools in their kit, but it’s not the every­thing, it’s that, you know, they, they’re often going on instinct and look­ing for the answers a lot more. So based on, you know, expe­ri­ence of many, many years.

Kevin Lawrence 15:47

Great. Well, let’s quick­ly wrap up. So that’s con­sul­tants ver­sus coach­es. First thing when it comes to answers, con­sul­tants gen­er­al­ly give it to you coach­es ask you to find it your­self. Rela­tion­ship coach­es are gen­er­al­ly ongo­ing and a long term part of your oper­at­ing sys­tem. Con­sul­tants are more project based or for dif­fer­ent chap­ters of your jour­ney. You know, coach­es, you know, you’ll often work with one coach or a coach on a cer­tain area, but many con­sul­tants dif­fer­ent times as you need them. Num­ber four is account­abil­i­ty coach holds you account­able. Gen­er­al­ly, you hold con­sul­tants account­able. And then we kind of threw in their stuff like, you know, both will use tools. With a coach, the fit is crit­i­cal and a con­sul­tant to but if you’re gonna work with some­one long term, there has to be a real­ly, real­ly good fit. Yeah. And oh, the last one that I men­tioned here was goals is that the coach should dri­ve you to towards long term goals.

Brad Giles 16:49

So we hope you’ve enjoyed the episode. You can find me Brad at evo­lu­tion part­ners dot Com. You and I’ve got a newslet­ter each week that you may find inter­est­ing. Kevin, equal­ly has an inter­est­ing newslet­ter. And you can find Kevin at Lawrence and co​.com Hope you’ve enjoyed the episode coach­es ver­sus con­sul­tants, enjoy your week. Look for­ward to chat­ting to you again next week on the growth whisperers.