Whether you consider yourself a consultant or not, chances are you use consulting skills in your work projects closely related to your area of expertise, such as designing a custom training program, or ones you may not see as closely related, such as building and implementing a learning technology system. Regardless of your position, talent professionals must demonstrate strong consulting skills to lead the execution of learning solutions within an organization. You may be a practitioner working inside an organization or an independent consultant supporting from the outside. Either way, your stakeholders—who your development solutions are intended to support—are your internal clients, and they are looking for your partnership to improve performance and achieve business success.

ATD’s Consulting Skills Certificate program provides a five-phase consulting model— rooted in a performance-based approach that prioritizes results over activities—that you can use to diagnose needs, establish goals, and achieve desired performance outcomes for your learning projects. The five phases of the process lay out a practical, step‐by‐step method for addressing a consulting project, beginning from initial contact through the final step of process improvement.

With an expert facilitator and a class of your peers, you will explore how to succeed as a consultant. Collaborating in small groups, you will follow a case study from start to finish, apply skills from each phase of the consulting model to practice consulting scenarios, solve problems, role‐play meetings, try out checklists, and practice making decisions consultants make every day. You will leave the program prepared to establish strong client partnerships, overcome obstacles and resistance, and build your consulting credibility to influence decision-making.