Contract the task and the relationship
A proposal describes a piece of work. Contracting establishes what the parties actually agree to contribute, expect, and decide. Fees, outputs, dates, and scope matter. So do access, candour, participation, confidentiality, and what happens when the work reveals something inconvenient.
Contracting happens throughout the assignment. A new sponsor, blocked access, a changed purpose, or a repeated difficulty can require a new conversation. A signed document does not remove that need.
Questions worth settling
| Area | Questions |
|---|---|
| Purpose | What are we trying to make possible, for whom? What decision or action should this work inform? |
| The work | What are the outputs? What outcomes do we hope for? What do we need to learn? What is outside scope? |
| Contribution | What do you want from me? What can I offer? What do I need from you? What can you genuinely commit? |
| Access and participation | Who and what must we be able to reach? Whose experience is missing? Who will make time? |
| Authority | Who sponsors, pays, decides, implements, and can veto? What can we change here? |
| Boundaries | What is confidential, with whom, and subject to what exceptions? What may be shared, attributed, recorded, or published? |
| Working conditions | What are the time, resource, fee, and availability limits? How will we handle disagreement? |
| Review and ending | When do we review? What could trigger a change of scope, escalation, pause, extension, or ending? |
A useful question from September: ‘If we both agree this is the right thing to do, who can still say no?’ It reveals authority that the immediate relationship may conceal.
Make wants and offers explicit
A consultant may ask for regular sponsor time, access to people doing the work, permission to report unwelcome findings, or a joint decision meeting. These are working requirements. State why they matter and distinguish what is essential from what is negotiable.
‘I can produce the review in this time. To make it useful, I need access to the people handling these cases and a decision meeting with you. If that access is unavailable, we need to narrow the claim the review can make.’
Listen equally carefully to the client’s requirements. They may need a defined report, a deadline, confidentiality, or help navigating a difficult internal position. A report is a perfectly legitimate output when its use is clear. Difficulty starts when everyone behaves as though producing it guarantees change.
Internal consulting: the triangle and the rectangle
An internal consultant belongs to the organisation they are helping. They work vertically through management and laterally across colleagues and client services. Their line manager may allocate capacity while another person sponsors the assignment. Familiarity gives access and contextual knowledge; it can also make assumptions invisible or challenge costly.
| Relationship | What to agree |
|---|---|
| Consultant ↔ assignment client | Purpose, work, mutual expectations, participation, and day-to-day decisions. |
| Consultant ↔ line manager | Capacity, priorities, support, professional boundaries, and escalation. |
| Line manager ↔ assignment client | Authority to commission, priority conflicts, resource commitments, and how changes are agreed. |
| Additional sponsor / commissioner | Add a fourth party when the person funding or authorising the work is different from the day-to-day client. Clarify their decision rights rather than merely copying them into emails. |
These are practical contracting maps. The three or four roles may be held by fewer people; affected staff, residents, partners, and other veto holders can still sit outside them. A triangle does not make those people irrelevant.
- Separate your specialist or assurance responsibility from the helping role you are taking.
- Make competing commitments visible before you absorb them into unpaid time or hidden compromise.
- Agree how information moves between the client and your manager; avoid implied confidentiality that you cannot honour.
- Name a route for disagreements that cannot be resolved laterally.
- Notice the price of fitting in: what have you stopped asking because ‘that is how we do things here’?
Download the internal consulting guide and the editable contracting worksheet.
From invitation to a workable assignment
The earlier commercial consulting material adds the work before a formal contract: earning an invitation, understanding the situation, exploring implications, and agreeing a useful next step. Questions about situation, problem, implication, and value can help. Do not turn them into a technique for manufacturing pain or steering someone towards a preselected purchase.
Separate a genuine need from a request for your preferred service. Discuss the value and constraints of the work, the basis of fees, what is included, and the assumptions behind the estimate. If the client hesitates, ask what the hesitation means. A visible reaction to price may concern budget, fairness, loyalty, authority, or something you have not imagined.
‘I noticed you paused when we discussed the fee. What is on your mind?’
Recontract when the agreement stops working
‘I was asked to _____. The useful work may be _____. I can take responsibility for _____. I need the client to take responsibility for _____.’
Use this as a preparation prompt, then speak in language that fits the relationship. Describe the change or pattern, explain its effect on the work, ask for the client’s view, and agree a next step. Recontracting may mean continuing with clearer conditions, changing the work, involving another person, or ending.
Internal consultants cannot always leave the organisation. They may still narrow an assignment, refuse an unsupported claim, document a limit, seek a different sponsor, or ask their manager to resolve competing priorities. Be realistic about power and economic dependency; agency exists within constraints.