Consulting Excellence Skills
for boutique consulting firms
Combine your deep subject knowledge with effective consulting skills, to deliver exceptional client impact.
As a boutique consulting firm, you already bring deep subject matter expertise to your clients.
Yet, advancing client impact requires equally strong consulting skills.
Our learning journeys equip your consultants and managers with a common, effective way of working to solve problems methodically, communicate with influence, and engage clients with confidence.
How it works.
We use a learning journey to build skills through practice and feedback
Let’s face it, the skills we are talking about only stick when applied regularly, so they become familiar and effective. This is why we talk about a learning journey: we introduce the skills, practice in the facilitated training sessions, experiment in day-to-day work and build in a feedback loop to improve and expand the application.
Modular design to tailor the learning journey to your teams’ needs
We start designing the learning journey by talking through the skills you want to build, the behaviours you want to minimise or enhance, and the outcomes you want to see. Based on this, we can pick and choose the topics that will have the biggest impact.
Hands-on, applied exercises tied to real work challenges
Before we start the learning journey, we identify use cases where the skills can be used. These will be the setting of the practice exercises. Participants bring their own real-life example situations and tasks to the training, so learning is directly relevant for their day-to-day work. They leave the session with strategies they can implement straight away.
Flexible delivery without losing impact
The learning journey can consist of online learning, facilitated sessions or a combination. We can adapt the frequency and duration of sessions to your team’s schedule. We want to design the journey to be smooth and enjoyable as possible for participants, so they can focus on building skills!
You can pick and choose from a portfolio of skills
Problem Solving
& Critical Thinking
Structured problem solving
Hypothesis-driven thinking
Hypothesis-led work
Critical thinking & questioning assumptions
Collaborative problem-solving methods
Prioritisation
& Decision Making
Workload management
Enabling client decision making
Navigating ambiguity and managing setbacks
Ownership & accountability
Adopting a strategic mindset
Communication
& Influence
Structured, audience-centric narratives
Presentation & slide design
Executive-level communication
Presence and non-verbal communication
Stakeholder management
Leadership
& Teaming
Leading clients through change
Building high-trust teams and client relationships
Managing a team for high performance
Time & energy management for leaders
Feedback & coaching skills
Productivity
Quick Wins
Leveraging GenAI for day-to-day work
Professional excellence and business etiquette
Running effective meetings
Example learning journey:
Consulting Excellence Learning Journeys
A growing boutique consulting firm, hiring many without prior consulting experience, wanted to establish a training academy to build strategic consulting skills and a common way of working.
We started with three tailored learning journeys:
Strategic Consulting for Leaders introduced executives to the academy’s strategy and frameworks.
Advanced Strategic Consulting trained managers to use these frameworks for themselves and with their teams.
Strategic Consulting Foundations developed essential skills for early-career staff.
The programs covered five core topics:
Problem solving
Structured communication
Work planning and prioritisation
Effective teaming
Client relationships
Participants applied frameworks to real projects, supported by workbooks, reflection exercises, and additional resources.
Post-training, the CEO reported a noticeable improvement in team communication, with meetings becoming more focused and emails more concise and effective, enhancing overall efficiency across the firm.
We have now also established a regular onboarding journey with foundational problem-solving and communication skills, as well as deep-dive sessions in specific aspects of project management and consulting.
Who is this for:
Consultants and senior consultants in boutique firms looking to enhance their consulting skills and client impact
Teams seeking a common, practical approach to problem-solving, communicating with influence, and engaging clients confidently
Boutique consulting firms aiming to strengthen team effectiveness and standardise ways of working across projects
Boutique consulting firms that want to build a culture of consistent, high-quality consulting delivery and client impact
Reactions from previous learning journeys
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