What are we doing here (when we consult)?
Last summer I was working with a client who asked me why I wouldn't just tell him what to do. Yesterday I had a similar experience: I had been asked to consult on a difficult team issue, when I attended the meeting so did the company lawyer. She spent the time telling the CEO what to do, whereas I spent much more time asking questions, ascertaining what was actually going on, not grasping a theme and moving straight to actions. The actions the CEO and I drafted at the end were more varied and tailored than those the lawyer suggested at the outset.
I thought that this was a good example of the differences between expert consultation and process consultation. My colleague as a lawyer has been trained to be the professional problem solver and advice giver and she did this very effectively. Our clinical psychology experience has taught us to attend to all the processes operating in order to help the person, group or system learn and change. In this meeting I was interested as much in the way the CEO told the story as the content of the story itself. I wanted to know more about the context and the type and styles of the people concerned. I wanted to know how the CEO construed the problem and what she had in mind to do. I wanted to know what her style was and the expectations of everyone involved. I was looking for solutions that would fit the context. The lawyer by contrast told us the law and the consequences of certain actions. She made assumptions very quickly and based her solutions on these. She was clearly confident about her knowledge and position.
Often described as the USP of clinical psychology, the skill of formulation is central here: the clinical psychologist starts with a blank sheet and a set of appropriate theories, models and experiences to interpret meaning and implication and then matches a set of solutions to the problem. Formulation requires the gathering of a wide range of information, which sometimes may be seen by others as superfluous or 'odd'. From here, he or she formulates a hypothesis which is tested as more information emerges or different approaches tried. In this way interventions are locally grounded in the client's system and are more likely to be effective.
Process consultation depends on a number of other skills familiar to clinical psychologists:
- working in partnership to solve a problem
- the integrity and self awareness of the consultant: the ability to prevent the imprinting of the consultant's personal values, beliefs and emotions on the client's situation
- relationship building between the consultant and client (and ensuring we are developing such a relationship with the person most able to enact the solution in the client organisation is often part of the process itself)
- being able to use language to ask, explain and hypothesise so that the client is engaged and inspired while we creatively solve the problem together
My legal colleague did challenge my view, as did working with the client I mentioned earlier. If I had just told them the answer, would I have given the right answer without the exploration? I would certainly have saved time. Edgar Schein, the father of Process Consultation reminds us that just as we need to use different communication styles with different people we need to know when to use which consultation model in which situation. There are many times when the answer seems straightforward and it can be tantalising to go straight there. However my learning so far is to have confidence in my process and formulation skills even when the client or other advisors 'go expert' as this yields more innovative and far reaching solutions.
Kate
Reference: Schein E. H. (1999) Process Consultation Revisited: Building The Helping Relationship. Addison- Wesley