1:1 Shadow Consulting
Consultant's Consultants have been called Shadow consultants for nearly four decades. Marjan Shroder coined the term, shadow consultant, in 1972 while describing the informal process that consultant's have used between each other for as long as consultants have existed. Generally, he noted that the shadow consultant "at the request of a colleague (or team of colleagues) and by means of a series of discussions, helps assess—and, if necessary, change—that colleague's diagnosis, tactics, or role in a specific assignment". (Shroder, 1974, 580) The merit of the shadow consultant "lies in his noninvolvement, which makes it easier for him to keep track of the main issues, and to take the consultant's way of functioning into account; nevertheless, because different consultants stress different aspects of a project, the shadow consultant's contribution may also broaden the consultant's general professional skills and insights." (Shroder, 1974, 581)
About Shadow Consulting
In more recent times, shadow consulting has become more formalized. Shadow consultants are built into the contract in specific situations such as when the increased complexity and size of interventions require an different set of eyes. Examples would be whole scale and transformational change initiatives.
More recently, shadow consulting has been intermingled with coaching such that the shadow consultant both consults and coaches the project leader and/or lead consultant, thereby providing an independent set of eyes for the project leader/lead consultant, the team, and the project. This additional set of eyes tends to increase the success of the intervention. For example, the consultant realizes that the client system is "pushing buttons" that typically do not interfere with the work performance. A colleague is hired to shadow by processing the work with the consultant creating more distance and less "reacting" to the client system.