Even though this employee will be working in a consultant's capacity, there is no guarantee that he or she will be effective. According to Peter Block in Flawless Consulting, a consultant has influence over individuals, a group, or an organization but no direct power to make changes or implement programs. The staff consultant employee would be brought in because of his or her expertise, but a truly effective consultant must have a collection of competencies in addition to expertise.

Many people in an organization have strong technical knowledge and skills, but are missing and needing desperately the ability to use their technical expertise in a way that solves problems, improves performance, and gains the support of others. These people range from IT professionals, systems engineers, quality control managers, financial analysts, to human resource professionals. Skilled technicians in any of these fields may not have the interpersonal skills necessary to build trusting relationships with customers, and may not know how to influence effectively. These "soft" skills are the "hard" skills to learn, but are not impossible to acquire.

The challenge is learning how to use these technical skills more effectively by using consulting skills to benefit the client. Accordingly to Block, "The core transaction of any consulting contract is the transfer of expertise from the consultant to the client."

In the article "Stay a Step Ahead" in the October 1997 issue of Workforce, Jennifer L. Laabs suggests that internal consultants should have five basic skills:

1. Credibility. "Credibility . . . forms the foundation for business relationships. (Consultants) need to know how to build relationships with the people who are their customers. They need to demonstrate an understanding of the company's business before their customers will give them the chance to apply their expertise."
2. Knowing the customer. Laabs suggests sitting down with line managers and other customers -- when there's no crisis on the agenda -- and learning what their issues are. "They must understand senior managers' goals. They've got to look at organization charts, read business units' mission statements and read articles highlighting their customers' industry challenges."
3. Leadership. "Real leaders are the people who others in an organization tend to seek out, whether or not those leaders have management titles."
4. Diagnostic insight. Consultants must be able to "effectively gather information, interpret complex issues and quickly be able to cut to the chase -- figure out what's critical for the business and what isn't."
5. Versatility. Consultants, according to Laabs, need to be able to work on a broad range of projects and work with a wide variety of people in the organization.

But above all, consulting is the art of building trusting relationships. Trusting relationships are a function of integrity, honesty, competence, reliability, consistency/congruence, concern for others, and fairness.

In The Future of Staff Groups, Joel P. Henning points out that staff groups and their clients do not know how to successfully talk and work with each other and must change if the full measure of the staff's contribution to the business is to be realized. "For staff it means choosing accountability for creating a staff business that offers something of worth. It means putting everything at risk by offering promises and guarantees about business impact . . . A compelling and credible offer is a promise to use the best expertise available to build the capacity and competence of client units to prosper in the marketplace. The promise is backed by a guarantee."

According to Henning, the offer has three components: expertise, relevance, and accountability. Expertise is the technical knowledge, set of theories and methods that can make a difference to business outcomes. Relevance means that staff can make clear to the client how the application of their expertise can improve the capacity of a business to make it in the marketplace. Finally, accountability is being accountable for results and being able to tie yourself to business outcomes.

The common theme with these experts is that not only do consultants need to have the technical knowledge and expertise to advise, recommend, counsel, plan, and influence, but they need that expertise to be coupled with the ability to communicate with clients so they can add value to the company. This is the true challenge for the consultant.