ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how consultancy is commonly understood and what this means for practice and will question what is it that consultants think they are doing when they are undertaking a consultancy intervention. It focuses on consultancy, there are of course contingent implications for managers and leaders who are often acting in an internal consultancy role as they work to support their colleagues in achieving whatever it is they are supposed to be achieving. The author argues that the consultant is actively engaged in this political life from the moment they start the contractual discussion with their employers, and this engagement severely constrains what it is possible for them to do. And rather than being objective, if by this term it is implied that they are somehow separate from what is going on, the author argues that what consultants bring is difference to the habitual patterning of the interactions between people in the organisation into which they have been invited.
