3.4Behavioural roles of the consultant

This section examines the concept of the consultant’s behavioural roles (consulting modes), a topic that is very popular in the literature on consulting. It describes, in a condensed form, the most typical and frequent consulting behaviours, how consultants relate to clients, what inputs they make, and in what way and how intensively clients participate. The roles assumed depend on the situation, the client’s preferences and expectations, and the consultant’s profile.

There is no shortage of descriptions and typologies of consulting roles. We have found it useful to make a distinction between basic roles, which include the resource and the process role, and a further refinement of the role concept, in which many more roles or sub-roles can be visualized in order to facilitate the understanding of the various intervention modes used in consulting.

Basic roles: the resource role and the process role

In the resource role (also referred to as the expert or content role), the consultant helps the client by providing technical expertise and doing something for and on behalf of the client: he or she supplies information, diagnoses the organization, undertakes a feasibility study, designs a new system, trains staff in a new technique, recommends organizational and other changes, comments on a new project envisaged by management, and the like.

Management collaborates with the resource consultant, but this collaboration may be limited to providing information on request, discussing the progress made, accepting or declining proposals, and asking for further advice on implementation. Management does not expect the consultant to deal extensively with the social and behavioural aspects of the change process in the organization, even if the consultant is expected to be aware of these aspects.

In the process role, the consultant as an agent of change attempts to help the organization solve its own problems by making it aware of organizational processes, of their likely consequences, and of intervention techniques for stimulating change. Instead of passing on technical knowledge and suggesting solutions, the process consultant is primarily concerned with passing on his or her approach, methods and values so that the client organization itself can