Every role of a specialist requires a distinct combination of cognitive and emotional orientation
I’m encouraged by the response I received to Part 1 of the blog on this subject . I have been asked by a few mid-level and senior-level employees if it is too late for them to do a course correction as they have digressed somewhere in the journey. My answer is, it’s never too late to go back to what you enjoy. In fact the experience will only make one more sincere and focused in one’s efforts to specialize.
In my earlier blog I had referred to three classes of roles a specialist can pursue in the “lead” stage of one’s career – Consulting, Entrepreneurship and “Craftsmanship”.
It is important to understand that every role requires a distinct combination of cognitive and emotional orientation. Where a wrongful alignment is bound to cause deep stress to the individual, resulting in poor to mediocre performance on the job, a good alignment will result in outstanding performance. In this blog, I have picked the dominant cognitive and emotional characteristics for each role class to help you assess your match.
Consulting
There are many viewpoints on what consulting is, but in my view, consulting is about giving an idea a convincing shape and form. Consultants are usually stereotyped as individuals with experience and suaveness. But I think there is much more to a consultant’s role. A bid manager creating a convincing proposal, or an HR manager coming up with a convincing employee engagement program make them consultants in their own right. Based on my own research and experience, I have listed below, the top 3 cognitive and emotional characteristics of the consulting class of roles, along with questions to assess your match to the role.
3 Dominant Cognitive characteristics of the Consulting role category: