Are you credible as a coach or consultant? Are you hiring credible providers?

Why do many people hire a coach or consultant when it seems clear they are not credible? This week I came across a post on Facebook. The post in itself was not unusual or uncommon. But it got me thinking.

Do we need people to have any expertise of knowledge to be a coach or consultant? Do we just accept that people delivering training for our employees will just “fly by the seat of their pants” and deliver something? Are purchasers of consulting and training services intelligent purchasers?

Here is the post

Clearly, I have hidden the identity of the poster.

Not all consultants and coaches know it all

I will be the last consultant or coach to claim to “know it all”, but there are questions I would ask of peers and ones I would not.

Let’s look at this post. It is made by a person claiming to be an expert as a “Wellbeing Coach”. So why would a person that is an expert in a relatively narrow field need to ask for examples about “what works and what doesn’t”? Is that not the expertise of this particular individual?

The individual is running a course, so we would hope they have the credibility and experience to deliver this. So why ask on social media, on a public forum for examples?

Am I missing something? Is this a side effect of the ‘Gig Economy’, where people will deliver anything they are asked to do? How do people give themselves labels, are they really for credibility or are they aspirational?

What are people buying?

We all need to start somewhere. We get that. But often we specialise in topics we know and are passionate about. Why is the purchaser buying from a person that seems to know little about what they have been engaged to deliver? Are purchasers of such services intelligent purchasers?

How can we evaluate this?

If this is new for the individual and client, how are either party going to measure success? The role of the expert is to help the client measure success.