Training professionals are not only learning leaders but business leaders. But partnering with business leaders and gaining a seat at the decision-making table isn’t easy. We spoke with Susan Kish, an education and training advocate for The Superior Group, and De’Lisa Stringer, a project manager and diversity and inclusion practitioner, to learn how L&D leaders can build internal consulting skills and become trusted business partners.
Listen now to learn more on:
- The skills you need to become an effective internal consultant.
- How to gain a seat at the table.
- How to partner with stakeholders for more impactful training.
Listen Now:
Related Content:
- Course – Beyond Implementation: Internal Consulting Master Class
- Infographic – 4 Tips for Effective Internal Consulting
- Model: The Comprehensive Internal Consulting Model
- Article – Training Diagnostics in Great Training Organizations: Listening, Identifying Problems and Recommending Solutions
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Business of Learning, the learning leader’s podcast, from Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
Welcome to The Business of Learning. I’m Sarah Gallo, an editor at Training Industry, here with my co-host, Taryn Oesch DeLong, managing editor of digital content. Today’s episode is brought to you by The Training Industry Internal Consulting Master Class.
Ad:
In today’s business environment, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. Learning leaders must consistently work to identify and respond to evolving business needs. Training Industry’s Internal Consulting Master Class was designed to help you become an effective business partner through strategic communication skills. Take your L&D career to the next level by learning how to effectively partner with stakeholders, for more impactful learning. For more information on the program, visit trainingindustry.com/icmc.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Training professionals are not only learning leaders, but business leaders. After all, delivering training programs that drive business outcomes requires a strong knowledge of business priorities and needs, as well as stakeholder support. But partnering with business leaders and gaining a seat at the decision-making table isn’t always easy. With that in mind today, we’re speaking with Susan Kish, an education and training advocate for the Superior Group, and DeLisa Stringer, a project manager and diversity and inclusion practitioner. They’ll share with us how learning and development leaders can build their internal consulting skills and become trusted business partners. DeLisa and Susan, welcome to the podcast.
Susan Kish:
Thank you.
DeLisa Stringer:
Thank you for having us.
Sarah Gallo:
Great, well to get started. Why don’t you both define internal consulting for us. Susan, do you want to start us off?
Susan Kish:
Sure. So when I think about internal consulting, the first word that comes to mind for me is collaborative partnerships. Internal consulting for me is collaborative partnerships across various business lines so that I can apply my broad base of knowledge and experience to help develop those business line initiatives and professional development.
Sarah Gallo:
DeLisa, did you have anything to add on?
DeLisa Stringer:
Absolutely. Susan’s response was a great one. In my experience, when I think of internal consulting, it’s truly leveraging expertise to improve performance or increase adoption, or for what we’ve seen in the past year, really just change behavior across the board.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Great, thanks. Alright, so now we’ve established what internal consulting is, what skills do learning and development professionals need in order to be effective internal consultants in their work and in their organizations, and what tips do you have to help them to develop those skills? DeLisa, do you want to kick us off here?
DeLisa Stringer:
Absolutely, and that question can be answered in so many different ways, but when I think of what skills do L&D leaders need to become effective internal consultants, I think that being an effective consultant really requires having both technical skills and interpersonal skills. The technical skills are typically specific to your business or your function. For instance, a technical competency could be facilitation, it could be project management, it could even be cost or quality control. But then when we look at the interpersonal competencies, that could include things like communication and agility. I’d like to pull the thread of communication just a little bit, because when we talk about being an effective communicator, we’re talking about becoming proficient and adaptable in the way you communicate. The reason that having adaptable communication is so important is because you’re working with many different audiences as an internal consultant and knowing what’s important to them is important, knowing when to listen and when to use your voice is important. Also, being an adaptable communicator also means having a healthy balance that allows you to know when to ask effective questions that can help the group get to the root cause or generate insight and when to inform people.
Susan Kish:
That’s excellent. I’m glad that you did pull that thread of communication because that leads right into something else that I was hoping to be able to add, and that is your consulting skills. Being that creative thinker, being the problem solver and using your curiosity about what someone is interested in pushing forward in their business line or in their department is important, and you need those communication skills to be able to communicate what you’re thinking, to be able to communicate solutions to the problems that are presented to you, and then to ask the right questions in that curiosity.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah, great. Well, looking at these skills in practice, I’m curious to hear how you both personally worked to become effective internal consultants at your organizations. Susan, would do you like to start us off here?
Susan Kish:
Sure. I have a unique situation where I’m working with the Superior Group. I started out with the Superior Group as a 19-year-old apprentice electrician, working out in the field. Then, after finishing my apprenticeship program, decided that I wanted to go to college. I became an educator, so I taught K-5 information skills and library media skills to public school children. Then coming full circle, was tapped, “Hey, we need some help with our leadership development. We have no learning and development with the Superior Group. We’d like for you to come back and head that up.” So I’m back at the Superior Group and a completely different role. I’ve been able to use the technical skills as an electrician, my connections in the public education world, to come back and help them get their learning and development program started. I’m a team of one right now, so sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed and that’s where I take on the role of that internal consultant. They are the content experts, I’m the person that can help them get it organized and help them get their objectives on paper and then I will pull in those subject matter experts and give them a little coaching on what effective teaching looks like and let them run with it and support them, because there’s no way, as an internal consultant, that I could perform all those functions of an L&D department. I feel like those advantages that I had as my field experience as an electrician and as an educator have helped me build relationships with the organization. Then just my love of talking to people and I want to know what they do, I can build on that curiosity. That’s what’s made me effective here at the Superior Group.
Sarah Gallo:
Wonderful. You know, Susan, being a team of one is definitely not easy, and a challenge we’ve heard here at Training Industry, just covering learning and development. Do you have any other tips for learning leaders who are that team of one and really have to prove up their impact on their own?
Susan Kish:
Data collection is very important. I find that after every session, whether it’s a consulting session or something that I’m leading as far as teaching and learning goes, or even when I have those subject matter experts, we’re always collecting data after that. Then we sit down and talk about it afterwards to show them the impact that they’ve had just through the learner statements of how they’re going to change their practice or how this impacts them. Then you’re also counting things, right? How many people attended and what’s the time away from the job? What was the business goal that this met and how has that business goal been achieved or accomplished through that? The more data you can collect, the more you can go back to business leaders and say, “This is the value that we’re bringing. Then, actually, after being at this job for about three years now, I’ve been able to say, “And this is why we need more people.”
Sarah Gallo:
I’m sure. Perfect. Well, DeLisa, I’m excited to hear about your experience as well, if you want to chime in.
DeLisa Stringer:
Absolutely. Susan and I have very kindred backgrounds in terms of just the contracting world. I worked for a general contractor and very familiar with electrical scopes of work. When I think back over the experiences that have brought me to where I am, I really do believe that trust is the heart of internal consulting. As Susan touched on, building trust at all levels of the organization, from leaders to individuals that are on the front lines, is so critical. Investing in the time to build and nurture those relationships is really a by-product of the outcome of creating a relationship with trust. Most importantly, I think from an L&D perspective and what building trust looks like, it’s important for others to know that you have their best interests at heart and that your engagement is about doing what you can to make sure that they are successful in what they are doing. I really do believe trust is the heart of internal consulting. I’ve spent a lot of my time with folks that are putting work in place, as well as decision-makers, to build that circle of trust. They know that I have their best interest at heart as a result of that. Also, for an L&D professional, having experience that is rooted in the core business function itself helps create a integrated understanding of what drives the organization’s economic engine. I think that’s super critical. Myself, for example, I started in operations in the construction industry. I’m an engineer by education. Had I not spent the time and the energy really becoming proficient at what being an operations manager looks like or what being an engineer in my field looks like, then it makes it a little harder to relate to people who are on the front lines and to help meet their needs. Having that background and being rooted in the core business, whether it’s spending time actually on the job with those individuals or getting some sort of foundation for yourself, is super important to becoming an effective internal consultant at your organization. I’ll also just add here, Susan mentioned data, and as an engineer, I’ve always been fascinated by data. There’s such an extremely healthy balance between having qualitative data and having quantitative data. Too much of one without the other is never really ideal, and so exploring ways to create qualitative data as well as getting more concrete data is super important and can help drive outcomes to become more effective within the organization.
Susan Kish:
Yeah. I want to add to what DeLisa has said, and that is two words, business acumen. They’re so important. Everything that we’ve been talking about here is about your business acumen. You could come in to an L&D department and you have no construction background, no electrical background. It is imperative that you start right then and there building that business acumen, building those trusting relationships, collaborating with those business lines so that you have an understanding of what their goals are and now you start collecting the correct data so that you can support what it is that you’re doing.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Thanks. I’m glad you both mentioned trust. I think that leads into the next question I wanted to talk to you about, which is what about learning and development leaders who are maybe struggling to get that seat at the table or who don’t have strong leadership support. I imagine that working on building those trusting relationships is a big part of that, but can you speak to what else these professionals can do to help bridge that gap when there isn’t that support for learning and development?
DeLisa Stringer:
Absolutely. Susan, would you like to go first?
Susan Kish:
No, I’m going to let you go first.
DeLisa Stringer:
Awesome. All right. Yeah, I’d be happy to expand on that a little bit. If I’m taking a look at the broad spectrum of what is L&D’s role at the decision-making table, it’s to be a strategic partner. In order to become a strategic partner, it really requires investing in quality time with your stakeholders and getting to know them on what I like to call a professionally personal level to understand what brings them pause, what’s keeping them up at night, what are their concerns about where we’re headed with this mission and vision. Getting time with stakeholders sometimes can be a challenge, right? I think if you’re in a less matrixed organization and you have more of a hierarchy then probably getting time with your CEO or your VP may be a little bit of a challenge. But I want to pull that thread a little bit and just say that something that has personally worked for me is that I’ve found ways to maximize those relationships with other work group leaders, outside of the VP or the CEO or whoever that direct person was that I was trying to get their attention. If you already have established rapport with other work group leaders, explore ways to support their team’s mission and vision. I’ve always been amazed at how our reputation does L&D professionals do depend on us, but they also depend on our engagement with others .I’ve had some really influential leaders throughout the company, folks who were not the CEO or folks who were not the VP or the L&D director, to really speak on my behalf for the contribution that I’ve made to their team and the value add that I was able to bring to the table. Finding ways to build a rapport with other work group leaders outside of that person that you’re trying to get a direct connection with is super critical. I often like to say, if you get enough people talking, others will want you on their team. Get enough people to talk about the work you’re doing and the value you’re adding and people will absolutely take note of that and want you on their team for the next initiative or the next project. In addition to maximizing rapport with other work group leaders, I would also like to just say, do what you can to maintain the right motive as an L&D professional. I want to pivot back to the example I gave earlier about building a rapport with other leaders within the matrix. I do not go into my engagements with a self-serving agenda. The goal is consistently and always to help others be successful in the work that they’re doing. As an L&D professional, to get a seat at the table, it’s really critical and insightful to keep the right motive front and center because it helps you maintain focus on the vision, it helps you support others effectively in what they’re doing and the goals that they’re trying to reach, and creativity flows and success often becomes a little bit more organic than it normally would, even when curve balls come into play.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect.
Susan Kish:
That’s awesome, that was awesome. I’m going to recruit DeLisa right here on the spot. That was so well said. The only thing I would have to add to that is networking. When you’re a department of one, sometimes it can feel difficult to get people on your side. I would recommend using resources that you can find at Training Industry. I can’t tell you how many times of the day I’m at that Training Industry website, doing searches, trying to find articles, because a lot of times, if I can find an article that supports what I’m saying, it makes me even that more credible, right? There are times people look at me, we were just talking about jigsawing today as a way to deliver some information and everyone’s like, “What?” Once I was able to show them what it looked like and also present them with some research that backs that up, they were like, “Okay,” they were a little more willing to try it, to go out there. It’s not something that they’ve used as a tool. Use those resources that you can find. I’m not beneath every once in a while Googling and hoping I find Harvard Business Review or some other kinds of thing so that you can present yourself with some added credibility there.
Sarah Gallo:
Great. I wanted to touch really quick on something you mentioned, DeLisa, about the importance of building that rapport. We know a lot of learning leaders are now working remotely and maybe aren’t going to swing by that executive stakeholder by the coffee machine anymore. Do you have any tips on how they can really those personal experiences in a virtual environment?
DeLisa Stringer:
That’s a wonderful question. Yeah, you’re right. It’s tough than ever before, to be on another Zoom call or to get coffee time with someone. Again, back to the keeping it professionally personal, I think it’s really important to find out and spend time understanding their vision. Where do they see their organization going? What’s the current state? What’s the future state? I think also, helping them understand and getting time with them to talk through what happens if we absolutely do nothing. I call it a pre-mortem exercise that I like to do. Let’s have the conversation about if we absolutely do nothing at all with our L&D initiatives or anything that supports learning, what’s at stake? What challenges do we run the risk of bumping into? Oftentimes, asking that one question by itself, what happens if we do nothing, really generates some insight and we’ll get that other individual thinking about, “Wow, I really do need to spend some time having this conversation,” or, “It’s really critical that we really stay focused and think through what is it we’re trying to achieve. What’s our why behind this?” For me personally, I think the nature of the work that we’re doing right now, everything is in a truly Zoom environment, but I think, first and foremost, keeping it short and sweet and staying concise is key, specifically when you want time with leaders, and asking the right questions. I found that just coming to the table with more questions than answers sometimes will provoke thinking and often will leave people with a memorable experience, enough to want to spend more time with me in the future.
Susan Kish:
I was a little more sneaky than DeLisa was. When we went to a total online environment using Zoom and Teams, I found that I was struggling getting people to want to meet because their days were just filled with meeting after meeting. I found the human resources business partner for each department, and I tackled them first and said, “Hey, I see that you’re going to have a meeting with our virtual design construction VP. Can I hop on and have two minutes just to get some face time and see if there are any needs that I can serve?” I was kind of sneaking around that way. Then once I got my foot in that door, then it was a lot easier it’s to say, “Hey, I’m following up. We have this two-minute discussion. I’ve actually found some resources for you. I’d like to meet again and talk about those.” A lot of times I do hitch onto another meeting and ask for just five or 10 minutes of the agenda, get through what I need to get through and then hop off so that they can address. That way, someone’s not trying to manage a meeting with me, a meeting with HR, a meeting with finance. They can do it all in one concise meeting.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah, great, perfect.
DeLisa Stringer:
I wish we could still bring donuts to the office these days. We’re not doing that much anymore.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Hopefully someday.
DeLisa Stringer:
Absolutely.
Sarah Gallo:
Well, you both mentioned are unexperienced and gave us some great insights into building those internal consulting skills, but why is that actually so important? Why do L&D leaders need to partner with business leaders and effectively communicate their business impact?
Susan Kish:
Well, training costs money and time is money, right? You want to be able to effectively communicate what it is that you’re providing and how it is helping strategic plans, strategic alignment, and business goals. Because again, those efforts cost money and you want to demonstrate that you are being effective, that you’re being efficient, and ultimately how that impacts the bottom line.
DeLisa Stringer:
Yes, and to build on what Susan just shared, I remember when I went through my CPTM training, one of the key takeaways I had is the role of an L&D strategic partner is equivalent to the role of being a solutions architect. A really experienced partner can help co-create solutions to those needs of the businesses via the ways that we’ve talked about already. It’s important to know, I think, for an L&D professional that is leaning into the internal consulting, to understand that often the challenge is not always training. The problem or the challenge that the organization is facing doesn’t always require training. An experienced partner, whether the solution, whether or not the outcome is training or not, a really experienced partner can help conduct a root cause analysis to get to the heart of the problem or the challenge that the organization is facing, assist with the necessary data that’s needed to validate that challenge or problem, and then make recommendations on the path forward. Like I said, sometimes those recommendations don’t involve training at all, sometimes those recommendations involve a shift in process or a shift in strategy. I just think it’s really important to lean into that and to know that as an L&D professional leaning into internal consulting, our job is not to always recommend training. There’s an impact to training as you alluded to in the question, Sarah, but the answer is not always training.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Thanks for explaining that connection, DeLisa. To wrap things up today, do you have any final tips for our listeners on how they can be really effective internal consultants and partner with our stakeholders to deliver more effective training in their organizations?
Susan Kish:
I think it comes back to kind of revisiting some of the things that we mentioned. We talked about networking, so networking with other L&D leaders, attending those conferences, those webinars, making sure that you’re hearing what’s happening out in the L&D world, and then networking with business leaders and coworkers in those business lines whenever you can, so that your ears to the ground, what’s happening, what are the rumblings. We have in our company, there’s a new initiative coming out. I wasn’t part of that initial conversation, but as I heard people talking, I was able to jump in and work my way up the ladder there to find out where was this coming from and how I could help and be a part of that. Networking is very important. If you have to start with the receptionist and find out, “Who’s meeting in that room over there? Do you know what they’re talking about? What’s the topic?” so that you can get your way in there. That’s what I would tell people to do.
DeLisa Stringer:
I’d love to connect the dots back to something that Susan said earlier. Consistent two-way feedback has really been my go-to for strategy, for design, for an implementation of any sort, for any program or initiative. If I had to leave our listeners with any tips, it’s maintain that consistent two-way feedback and communicate continuously. Often, sometimes as an L&D professional leaning into internal consulting, sometimes we’re short on resources, we’re short on time, sometimes we’re short on funding, and so it makes it a really big challenge to launch really important big scale initiatives and for them to be successful when you’re a team of one, as Susan put it. One thing that I have seen in my career be really successful is when you are a team of one, find ways to pull in other people from other work streams within your business, so someone from IT, if you’re in manufacturing, someone from manufacturing, if you’re focused on operations, someone from the operations team. Pull in different individuals that have expertise in their different areas and get the group together to really just talk through what will it take for this to be successful. In the construction industry, we do something called pull planning, and I’m sure that it’s done in many other industries like manufacturing, but when you pull plan, pull planning is not successful if you just do it by yourself. You have to have all of the different trades, all of the different vendors, all of the different contractors in place in order to figure out what do we all need to get to this end product. If you take that manufacturing example and use it in the context of other industries, look across your organization and see what other business functions could add value to the conversation, maybe it’s someone from your accounting department, maybe it’s, to Susan’s point, a strategic HR partner, maybe it’s someone that’s on the front lines. Bring in different individuals with different experiences to have the conversation. I guarantee you’ll see things from a different lens prior to the way you did coming into the conversation, but it’ll also help everyone clarify the objectives and get clear on the expectations moving forward.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. On that note, DeLisa and Susan, thank you both so much for speaking with us today on the podcast.
Susan Kish:
Thank you so much.
DeLisa Stringer:
Thank you for having us.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
For more insights on internal consulting, including about Training Industry’s Internal Consulting Master Class, check out the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo:
And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please go and rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. We’ll see you next time.
Speaker 1:
If you have feedback about this episode, or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com, or use the Contact Us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry Podcast.
