??CSM-7: 4 steps to embed new consulting skills

Welcome to Consulting Skills Mastery - issue 7! In this issue I share some of the ways I aim to make learning stick - using the McKinsey Influence Model.

Before that: We are launching a new small group Masterclass for anyone who wants to develop their skills in designing million-dollar consulting slides. If you're interested you can get on the waiting list .

New tech to help old goals

Last week I attended the Learning Technologies conference at the ExCel in London.

There was a great buzz in the exhibition with lots of debate on everything from 'Content as Code' to interactive video to - of course - using AI to help with learning interventions.

But, the softer theme I picked up through the time I spent there was a real focus on embedding skill development. The excitement about the new tech was really an excitement about the long-standing goal of having more impact as learning professionals.

There were talks on engaging learners before, during and after a training session. Technology to personalise learning content and deliver it exactly where the individual needs it. AI-coaches achieving better outcomes - and more trust - than human equivalents.

The nature of a conference is you get lots of snippets of information, ideas that spark other ideas, and afterwards you have to join the dots. There's rarely an overarching framework you can easily fit all the things into.

As a consultant, I feel the need for that!

Embedding new skills is behaviour change

The framework I think about for this is the McKinsey Influence Model .

When your goal is to equip someone with new skills in a consulting setting, what you're often doing is trying to change their behaviours. Let's take an example - the skill of building trust with clients.

There are 4 elements of being trustworthy - Credibility, Reliability, Emotional Intimacy, and low Self-Orientation. As a trainer you might be aiming to equip someone to be more Reliable , and train them in some practical ways to do that.

Those practical steps - like being on time to client meetings, taking good notes, active listening, and sending meeting materials in advance - are all behaviours that need to be applied consistently. The same goes for technical skills, like using certain Excel formula or structuring a dataset in a certain way.

So to embed skills we need to embed new behaviours. And the Influence Model is a tried and tested way of doing that.

There are 4 core steps to the Influence Model.

1. Role-modelling: "I see my leaders & colleagues behaving differently"

2. Fostering understanding & conviction: "I understand what is being asked of me and it makes sense"

3. Developing talent & skills: "I have the skills and opportunities to behave in the new way"

4. Reinforcing with formal mechanisms: "I see that our structures, processes and systems support the changes I am being asked to make"

To make learning stick with my clients I think through those 4 core steps and encourage a holistic approach to it.

Frankly, I don't want to just deliver "sheep dip" training that people attend and then forget about. I want to help people get better at their jobs and build skills that will serve them for years. That requires embedding behaviour change.

Here are some of the ways I do that across the 4 steps of the Influence Model.

Role-modelling

• Ensure senior leaders are bought into the need for training
• Only use expert trainers who are active consultants and have "walked the walk" of what they are teaching
• Set-up post-training peer groups so people can share their wins as they put the training into practice
• Train on tried-and-tested frameworks, models and best practices - used by leaders in the field, rooted in solid research wherever possible

Fostering understanding & conviction

• Baseline with pre-training assessments of confidence and experience, so we can meet learners where they are
• Build content so they Pay Attention -> Understand -> Remember -> Act
• Ensure each training session is as relevant as possible to the exact consulting work they do
• Provide follow-up group coaching sessions to course-correct when they are trying their new skills in the 'real world'

Developing talent & skills

• Talk to clients about how the 70:20:10 model applies to consulting - the majority of learning coming from project work (apprenticeship model, 70%), influenced by coaching & feedback (20%), and enabled by formal training (10%)
• Provide space, and safety, to try things and fail - then give constructive and personalised feedback
• Within the training, start small & simple and build systematically to more complex exercises
• Encourage commitment to a single weekly SMART action, with an accountability partner or peer group to check-in with once it is done

Reinforcing with formal mechanisms

• Aim to ensure that the training we're providing maps to the firm's competency framework (and that the competency framework maps to their performance reviews!)
• Set-up internal 'expert communities' to curate examples of best practices and celebrate them across the team
• Change internal processes to increase peer review and feedback - after all, the ultimate test of skill mastery is if you can teach other people

Bringing all this together takes a lot and requires commitment from clients. But the results can be significant and rapid when it works, as this quote from a recent client of ours shows:

"I feel it’s had an amazing impact on the team and helped them 
redefine what it means to be a good analyst"        

We are only a month in to working with that client. They have set-up a structured Data Visualisation Committee, we are running monthly group coaching sessions, their CEO, CRO and CFO are seeing and celebrating their new skills, and we are making plans to cascade down to their more junior team.

With a committed approach to change the impact can be seen quickly, and start to stick. This stuff really does work.

Whether you're developing your own skills or developing others, how can you influence more systematically to make new skills stick?

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