Counselor v/s Consultant

15 Jul

Posted by Arun as General

Today while walking towards the office, I saw this huge hoarding professing that their “councelors” were unique in that they “listened”. Incidently that was a quality of a good consultant as well (or a good leader, husband, etc etc). But what really intruiged me was that I couldn’t clearly differentate between a counselor and a consultant. Time to Google I thought.

The outcome of the searches were very interesting. Firstly, there were some overlap in meaning for eg:

counselor
One whose profession is to give advice in law, and manage causes for clients in court; a barrister

con·sul·tant
A physician or surgeon who does not take actual charge of a patient, but acts in an advisory capacity to the patient’s primary physician

After cursory research, I will pretend to have understood and try to explain. A counselor is one who applies his domain expertise (eg: law) into the client situation, whereas a consultant tries to redefine the problem itself and attempt for, perhaps radically, different solutions to enable you reach your goals.

Thus the goals of a counselor and consultant are different. The counselor seeks to give you the best out of a situation. The consultant tries to alter the situation itself keeping in mind your goals and objectives. The latter is clearly more painful and time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding.