Life and Times of The Good Consultant
Leigh Harrison
Welcome one and all.
I'm Leigh Harrison. I'm a Cisco Consultant and champion of Good Consultancy.
I have worked for several Cisco Gold and Silver partners ranging from the very small to the very large. On my travels I have met and worked with many Consultants, some good and some bad.
I have been involved with training and coaching team members for the last 10 years in both technical and non-technical aspects of being a Cisco Consultant. I have leant many things over the years and I have found that there is no real outlet for helping advise on the “soft skills” that are needed by The Good Consultant. So I decided to step up to the plate to offer my thoughts.
Yes, we all know that the technical skills are the most important part of the job – you have to know your stuff to be The Good Consultant - that's a given and there are plenty of websites and blogs to help along with that. But, I feel there is no real guiding path to help with taking the step into becoming a Consultant and very little to help you become The Good Consultant.
To this end, I created a blog called The Good Consultant (http://GoodConsultant.blogspot.com) to try and point people in the right direction. By no means is this site set up to be a definitive list of what is needed to become The Good Consultant, it is merely an outlet for me to share my thoughts with others and (more importantly) for others to share their thoughts. As two heads are always better than one (but more on that in later posts!).
I got in touch with Eman and after some discussions he very kindly offered me the opportunity to have a column in the CCIE Flyer. I assure you, I couldn't want for a better audience from which to draw ideas and inspiration. If anybody has been there, done it and got the t-shirt (or rather the “Number”), it's a hoard of CCIE's spread over every corner of the Globe.
I personally hope to gain a lot from the column. I am always interested in talking to The Good Consultants and learning about their backgrounds, how they got into leading the kind of life they lead and what thoughts they can share and what snippets of knowledge they can impart. I also have several thoughts on the kinds of “soft skills” The Good Consultant should have in his tool kit, right there next to a console cable.
The life of The Good Consultant is not an easy one, but then, nobody ever said it would be. If you're The Good Consultant reading this, then I would be very interested in hearing from you as to your thoughts on what makes a Good Consultant. If you're aspiring to be The Good Consultant, then I would really like to hear from you to understand the “soft skills” that you have and what additional you're working on to reach the status of The Good Consultant.
I look forward to hearing from you and sharing your ideas.
LH
Leigh Harrison, CCIE#15331 is Senior Technical Architect at ANS Group in the UK. Leigh has designed networks large and small, simple and complex for companies both local and Europe wide.
Starting his career in 1997 as an Apprentice at a Cisco Gold Partner, Leigh worked on many varied projects for many varied customers. Having spent 13 years in the Cisco Consulting arena Leigh is turning his hand to assisting other in making the move in to the Consulting arena with The Good Consultant.