Ascension is seeking an accomplished Senior Human Capital, Organizational Development & Executive Coaching Consultant to provide strategic workforce, organizational development, leadership development, assessment, training, succession planning, career development, and executive coaching services in support of Frederick County, Maryland.

The ideal consultant is an experienced Organizational Development/Human Capital Management professional who combines strong analytical capabilities with the interpersonal skills required to advise executives, managers, supervisors, teams, and employees. This individual should be comfortable moving between strategic workforce issues and hands-on facilitation—for example, analyzing workforce capacity and skill gaps in one assignment and subsequently facilitating an executive leadership workshop, organizational assessment, succession-planning session, or individual coaching engagement.

The consultant will help County organizations strengthen leadership effectiveness, improve workforce capability, develop future leaders, address organizational and team performance challenges, and translate workforce data and organizational assessments into practical recommendations.

This role is important to the County’s broader objective of empowering County employees, aligning leadership and employee goals, improving organizational effectiveness, optimizing processes, and producing visible, measurable, and impactful results.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Senior Human Capital, Organizational Development & Executive Coaching Consultant serves as a trusted advisor to County executives, managers, supervisors, HR professionals, and other stakeholders.

Assignments may include workforce analysis and forecasting, organizational assessments, leadership and personnel assessments, leadership development, executive coaching, team development, succession planning, career development, training design and facilitation, organizational effectiveness, and change management.

The consultant must be able to enter an organization or business unit, quickly understand its operating environment and workforce challenges, gather quantitative and qualitative information, identify root causes and organizational risks, and develop solutions appropriate to the County’s culture and objectives.

The ideal candidate will be:

• Detail-oriented, highly organized, and capable of managing multiple concurrent priorities.
• Self-directed and comfortable working independently under broad direction.
• Skilled at identifying underlying organizational or workforce problems rather than simply addressing symptoms.
• Experienced working confidentially with senior executives and sensitive personnel matters.
• An effective facilitator who can establish credibility with executives as well as frontline employees.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments where requirements may evolve as additional information becomes available.
• Skilled at transforming workforce data, assessment findings, stakeholder feedback, and organizational observations into practical recommendations.
• Capable of anticipating obstacles, presenting alternatives, and helping leaders make informed decisions.
• Diplomatic, objective, collaborative, and able to maintain appropriate professional boundaries in coaching and assessment engagements.
• Focused on measurable improvement rather than simply producing reports or conducting meetings.

Frederick County Service Areas Supported

This position is expected to provide primary or significant support for the following Frederick County service areas:

Workforce Analysis, Forecasting and Needs Assessment

Professional/Leadership and Staff Development and Training

Professional/Leadership and Personnel Assessment, Development Planning and Coaching

Training Development and Delivery

Assessment of Workforce or Subsets of the Workforce, including skills strengths and gaps and staffing needs/projections

Leadership Coaching and Development

Teambuilding and Group Cohesion

Operations-Related Subject Matter Expert Training

Succession Planning

Career Development/Career Coaching

Executive Leadership Group Training

The consultant may also support related assignments involving change management, organizational effectiveness, strategic planning, organizational/resource analysis, data analysis, report development, and agency evaluation when those requirements intersect with workforce and organizational development.

Position Responsibilities and Anticipated Activities

The consultant will be expected to:

• ASSESS organizational, workforce, leadership, team, and employee-development needs through interviews, surveys, workshops, document reviews, observations, workforce data, and other diagnostic methods.
• ANALYZE workforce composition, staffing levels, competencies, attrition, recruitment pipelines, retirement exposure, skill gaps, leadership capacity, workload, and future workforce requirements.
• FORECAST workforce and talent requirements based on organizational priorities, demographic trends, operational requirements, organizational changes, and anticipated service demands.
• IDENTIFY workforce risks, critical positions, vulnerable competencies, institutional knowledge dependencies, leadership gaps, and succession vulnerabilities.
• DEVELOP workforce plans, competency models, talent-development strategies, leadership-development plans, succession frameworks, career pathways, and workforce recommendations.
• CONDUCT organizational, leadership, team, and personnel assessments using interviews, surveys, competency assessments, 360-degree feedback tools, or other appropriate assessment methodologies.
• INTERPRET assessment findings and translate results into individual development plans, organizational recommendations, leadership-development priorities, and measurable improvement objectives.
• COACH executives, senior leaders, managers, supervisors, emerging leaders, and other identified personnel through structured individual or group coaching engagements.
• FACILITATE executive leadership sessions, leadership retreats, strategic-planning workshops, team-development sessions, workforce-planning workshops, and organizational-development interventions.
• DESIGN leadership, management, professional-development, and organizational-development curricula based on identified competency and performance gaps.
• DEVELOP instructor guides, participant guides, presentations, exercises, case studies, job aids, assessments, surveys, and other learning materials.
• DELIVER instructor-led, virtual, hybrid, or facilitated training programs to leadership and staff audiences.
• APPLY adult-learning principles and experiential learning techniques to improve participant engagement, knowledge retention, and practical application.
• FACILITATE teambuilding interventions designed to improve trust, communication, accountability, collaboration, role clarity, and group cohesion.
• EVALUATE team dynamics, organizational culture, communication practices, leadership behaviors, and structural factors affecting organizational performance.
• DESIGN succession-planning processes that identify mission-critical positions, readiness levels, competency requirements, potential successors, development requirements, and knowledge-transfer strategies.
• SUPPORT employees and leaders with career planning, competency development, professional growth, leadership readiness, and career-path discussions.
• ADVISE County leadership on organizational-development, human-capital, talent-management, workforce-planning, employee-development, and leadership-development strategies.
• RECOMMEND interventions that improve organizational effectiveness, leadership capability, employee engagement, workforce readiness, and operational performance.
• ESTABLISH measurable performance indicators for workforce, training, coaching, organizational-development, and leadership-development initiatives.
• MEASURE program effectiveness through participant feedback, pre/post assessments, behavioral indicators, workforce metrics, stakeholder feedback, and other agreed performance measures.
• PREPARE executive presentations, assessment reports, workforce analyses, recommendations, implementation roadmaps, dashboards, briefing materials, and other deliverables.
• PRESENT complex workforce and organizational findings in clear, concise, decision-oriented formats appropriate for executives and nontechnical stakeholders.
• DOCUMENT decisions, recommendations, action items, risks, deliverables, assessment results, and other project information in accordance with County requirements.
• MONITOR assigned Task Order activities, milestones, risks, deliverables, and stakeholder commitments.
• IDENTIFY potential obstacles affecting workforce or organizational initiatives and recommend practical mitigation strategies.
• PARTNER with County stakeholders to promote ownership of recommendations rather than creating consultant-dependent solutions.
• TRANSFER knowledge, methods, templates, tools, and approaches to County personnel to promote sustainable internal capability.
• MAINTAIN confidentiality and exercise diplomacy when working with personnel assessments, executive coaching information, organizational concerns, and other sensitive information.
• RESPOND to routine County inquiries within required response periods and provide timely support for urgent requests.

Problems This Consultant Should Be Able to Solve

The successful candidate should be capable of helping County organizations address challenges such as:

• Difficulty forecasting future workforce requirements.
• Critical workforce or leadership skill gaps.
• Insufficient succession pipelines for key positions.
• Retirement or attrition risks affecting institutional knowledge.
• Leadership-performance or management-development gaps.
• Employees who need structured career-development pathways.
• Organizational units experiencing communication or collaboration problems.
• Teams affected by role ambiguity, conflict, low trust, or ineffective working relationships.
• Managers transitioning into leadership positions without sufficient preparation.
• Difficulty translating workforce data into actionable management decisions.
• Training programs that are not producing measurable workplace improvement.
• Organizational changes requiring structured stakeholder engagement and change management.
• Leadership teams needing facilitated strategic alignment and goal setting.
• Lack of consistent competency, assessment, coaching, or development processes.
• Limited mechanisms for measuring leadership-development or workforce-development outcomes.

Core Technical and Consulting Competencies

Candidates should demonstrate proficiency in:

• Workforce planning and forecasting
• Workforce needs assessments
• Workforce competency and skills-gap analysis
• Organizational development
• Organizational effectiveness
• Talent management
• Leadership development
• Executive and leadership coaching
• Succession planning
• Career development
• Training needs analysis
• Curriculum development
• Adult learning
• Training facilitation
• Team development
• Group facilitation
• Stakeholder engagement
• Organizational assessment
• Change management
• Strategic planning
• Performance measurement
• Survey and interview methodologies
• Qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Executive briefing and report development