Process Consultation Revisited - Building The Helping Relationship (PDFDrive)
Process Consultation Revisited - Building The Helping Relationship (PDFDrive)
Process Consultation Revisited - Building The Helping Relationship (PDFDrive)
·OD SfRlfS
WESLEY
•
Process Consultation Revisited
Edgar H. Scl1ein
Sloan School of Managenient
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
..,,,�..,,, ADDISON-WESLEY
Schein, Edgar H .
Process consultation revisited: building the helping relationship
I Edgar H. Schein.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-201-34596-X
1. Business consultants. 2. Social psychology. I. Title.
HD69.C6S283 1998
658.4 '6-dc21 98-24926
CIP
iii
iv Series Foreword
how conflict management can turn conflict into constructive action; and
Hirschhorn's Managing in the New Team. Environment builds bridges to group
psychodynamic theory.
In the mid 1990s, we continued to explore emerging then1es with
four revisions and three new books. Burke took his highly successful Organi
zation Developrnent into new realms with more current and expanded con
tent; Galbraith updated and enlarged his classic theory of how i nformation
management lies at the heart of organization design with his new edition of
Competing with F lexible Lateral Organizations; and Dyer wrote an impor
tant third edition of his classic book, Team Building. In addition, Rashford
and Coghlan introduced the i mportant concept of levels of organizational
complexity as a basis for intervention theory in their book The Dynamics of
Organizational Levels; in Creating Labor-Management Partnerships, Wood
worth and Meek take us into the critical realm of how OD can help in labor
relations-an area that has become increasingly important as productivity is
sues become critical for global com.petitiveness; In Integrated Strategic
Change, authors Worley, Hitchin and Ross powerfully demonstrate how the
field of OD must be linked to the field of strategy by reviewing the role of
OD at each stage of the strategy planning and implementation process; and
finally, authors Argyris and Schon provided an in1portant link to organiza
tional learning in a new version of their classic book entitled Organizational
Learning ll: Theory, Method, and Practice.
Now, as we continue to think about the field of OD and what it will
inean in the 21st century, we have added several titles that reflect the growing
connections between the original concepts of OD and the wider range of the
applications of these concepts. Rupert Chisholm's book Developing Network
Organizations: Learning from Practice and Theory, explores and illustrate.s
the link between OD and building community networks. I n their new book
called Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture, Cameron and
Quinn explore one model and technique of how to get at the crucial concept
of culture and how to make this concept relevant for the practitioner. Finally,
the theme of process consultation has remained central in OD, and we have
found that it continues to be relevant in a variety of helping situations. In
Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship, Schein
has completely revised and updated this concept by focusing on process con
sultation as a general model of the helping process; his new volume pulls to
gether n1aterial fro1n previous work and also adds new concepts and cases.
Our series on Organization Development now includes over thirty ti
tles. We will continue to welcome new titles and revisions as we explore the
various frontiers of organization development and identify themes that are
relevant to the ever more difficult problem of helping organizations to re
main effective in an increasingly turbulent environment.
Change by Design
Robert R . Blake, Jane Srygley Mouton, 1 989 (0-201-50748-X)
and Anne Adan1s Mccanse
This book develops a systematic approach to organization development and
provides readers with rich i llustrations of coherent planned change. The
book 1nvolves testing, examining, revising, and strengthening conceptual
foundations in order to create sharper corporate focus and increased pre
dictability of successful organization development.
Work Redesign
J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham 1980 (0-20 1 -02779-8)
This book i s a comprehensive, c learly written study of work design as a
strategy for personal and organizational change. Linking theory and practi
cal technologies, it develops traditional and alternative approaches to work
design that can benefit both individuals and organizations.
use (or not use) the diverse and growing nun1ber of organizational i1nprove
n1ent tools that are available today. Comprehensive and fully integrated, the
book includes inany different concepts, research findings, and competing
philosophies and provides specific examples of how to use the information
to improve organizational functioning.
Matrix
Stanley M. Davis and Paul Lawrence 1977 (0-201-01115-8)
This book defines and describes the matrix organization, a significant depar
ture from the traditional "one man-one boss" n1anagen1ent system. The au
thors note that the tension between the need for independence (fostering
innovation) and order (fostering efficiency) drives organizations to consider
a inatrix system. Among the issues addressed are reasons for using a matrix,
rnethods for establishing one, the impact of the systern on individuals, its
hazards, ai:id what types of organizations can use a matrix system.
xi
xii Preface
Many people have influenced my thinking over the years, but none 1nore
than Douglas McGregor, Alex Bavelas, and Richard B eckhard. McGregor
and Bavelas were both teaching at MIT when I first took a seminar there in
1952, and they functioned as my faculty mentors when I returned there as an
Assistant Professor in 1 956. I met Dick Beckhard in 1957 and began to work
closely with him first i n Bethel and l ater at MIT where he became an
Adjunct Professor. Warren Bennis joined our group at MIT in 1 95 8 and also
beca1ne a close colleague and co-author. What I learned most from these
mentors and colleagues is that, i n human affairs, it is best not to dictate to
others but to help them to discover what they need and then helpfully steer
them toward that. One cannot really control people's motives, attitudes, and
thoughts; but if one can help them to discover what it i s they need, one can
at least align and inaybe even integrate one's own needs with theirs.
A story about Alex B avelas has always stuck i n my mind. When he
taught at MIT i n the early 1 950s, he would announce at his first class meet
ing: "I am Alex Bavelas; my office is down the hall. When you have figured
out what you want to learn i n this class come and see me." He would then
walk out and not reappear until some student delegation summoned him. Af
ter some weeks of "testing," the students realized he meant it, got to work
figuring out what they wanted and needed, and then had a dynamite class for
the rest of the semester. I have always thought that this story i s prototypical
of a philosophy going back to Kurt Lewin and Carl Rogers that the learner
must be involved in his or her own learning and that, in the end, one can only
help people to help themselves. The spirit of this philosophy has stayed with
ine as an organizational consultant, and I am grateful especially to Dick
Beckhard because he showed me many times how to im.plement it.
I learned another great lesson from Dick-that managing human af
fairs i s largely a matter of designing and managing processes. What helpers
really have to become expert in i s the design and manage1nent of process,
especially the design portion. In iny 1 5 years of working at Bethel I learned
how to design three-, two-, and one-week human relations workshops and
xiii
xiv Acknowledgments
Edgar H . Schein
Ca1nbridge, M A
Contents
1
2 Process Consultation Defined
This book is about the psychological and social processes that are
involved when one person tries to help another person. Whether a
therapist i s helping a patient or working with a group, a parent i s
helping a child, a friend is helping another friend, or an organizational
consultant is working with managers to improve some aspects of the
organization, the same fundamental dynamics are involved. What
goes on between a helper and the person or group being helped is
what I have called process consultation or PC for short.
The emphasis is on "process" because I believe that how things
are done between people and in groups is as-or more important
than-what is done. The how, or the "process," usually communicates
inore clearly what we really mean than does the content of what we
say. Process, however, is often less familiar to us. We are less skilled in
thinking about processes, in observing them in action, and in designing
processes that will accomplish what we intend. In fact, we often design
or participate in processes that actually undermine what we want to ac
complish. To become aware of interpersonal, group, organizational,
and community processes is, therefore, essential to any effort to im
prove how human relationships, groups, and organizations function.
I will describe what PC i s and the role it plays in daily life and
in organization development, change, and learning. Any form of con
sultation implies that one person is helping another person, hence the
central focus of this analysis will be on deciphering what is helpful and
what is not helpful i n any given human situation. I will also be looking
at PC as one of the key activities that takes place at the beginning of and
throughout any organization development (OD) and learning effort. Or
ganization development is typically defined as a planned organization
wide program, but its component parts are usually activities that the
consultant carries out with individuals or groups. The mode in which
these activities are carried out reflects the assumptions that underlie
PC. Recent emphases on organizational learning and organizational
4 What Is Process Consultation ?
1"He" or "she" will be used alternately and randomly throughout the text.
Models of Consultation and the Tacit Assumptions on Which They Rest 5
to the proble1n. In such a model when clients are disappointed in the re
sults, they are blamed for not having been clear in what they wanted or
for being unwilling to do what the consultant recommended. In my ex
perience, however, the person seeking help often does not know what
she is looking for and indeed should not really be expected to know. All
she knows is that something is not working right or some ideal is not
being met, and that some kind of help is therefore needed. Any consul
tation process, then, must include the important tasks of helping the
client figure out what the problem or issue is and-only after that-de
ciding what further kind of help is needed. Managers in an organization
often sense that all is not well or that things could be better, but they do
not have the tools with which they can translate vague feelings into the
clear insights that lead to concrete actions.
The mode of consultation I will describe i n detail deals espe
cially with situations of the kind just described. The consultant oper
ating i n the PC mode does not assume that the manager knows what
is wrong, or what is needed, or what the consultant should do. For the
process to begin constructively the only requirement is that someone
wants to improve the way things are and is willing to seek help. The
consultation process itself then helps the client to define the diagnos
tic steps that will lead ultimately to action programs and to concrete
changes that will improve the situation.
MODEL l
The Purchase-of-lnfonnation or
Expertise Model: Selling and Telling
The telling and selling model of consultation assun1es that the client
purchases fro1n the consultant so1ne information or an expert service
that she is unable to provide for herself. The buyer, usually an indi
vidual manager or representative of so1ne group in the organization.
defines a need and concludes that the organization has neither the
resources nor the time to fulfill that need. She will then look to a con
sultant to provide the information or the service. For example, a rnan
ager 1nay wish to know how a particular group of consu1ners feels, or
how a group of e1nployees will react to a new personnel policy, or
what the state of morale is in a given department. She will then hire
the consultant to conduct a survey by means of interviews or ques
tionnaires and to analyze the data.
The manager may also wish to. know how to organize a par
ticular group and may need the consultant to find out how other
companies organize such groups-for example, how to organize the
accounting and control functions given the capabilities of current
infonnation technology. Or the inanager may wish to know particu
lar things about competitor companies, such as their marketing
strategy, how much of the price of their product is determined by
production costs, how they organize their research and development
function, how many employees they have i n a typical plant, and so
on . He will then hire the consultant to study other companies and
bring back data about them. Each of these cases assumes that the
inanager knows what kind of information or service she or he i s
looking for and that the consultant is able t o provide the i n forma
tion or service.
The likelihood that this mode of helping will work then de
pends on
The frequent dissati sfaction with consultants and the low rate
of implementation of their recommendations can easily be explained
when one considers how many of the above assu1nptions have to be
n1et for the purchase model to work effectively. It should also be
noted that i n this model the client gives away power. The consultant
i s com1n i s sioned or empowered to seek out and provide relevant in
fonnation or expertise on behalf of the client; but once the assignn1ent
has been given, the client becomes dependent on ,,vhat the consultant
comes up with. Much of the resistance to the consultant at the later
stages n1ay result from this initial dependency and the discomfort it
inay arouse consciously or unconsciously in the client.
In this model the consultant is also likely to be tempted to sell
whatever she knows and i s good at-when you have a hammer the
whole world looks like a bunch of nails. Hence the client becomes
vulnerable to being misled about what information or service would
actually be helpful. And, of course, there is the subtle assumption that
there is knowledge ''out there;; to be brought into the client system
and that this i nformation, or know ledge, will be understandable and
usable by the client. For example, organizations frequently purchase
surveys to determine how their employees feel about certain issues or
even to "diagnose" their culture. When the "expert" i n formation
comes back i n quantitative form, I have observed managers poring
over the bar graph data, trying to figure out what they now know
when they note that sixty-two percent of the en1ployees think the or
ganization has a poor career development system. What kind of infor
mation value does such a statement actually have, given the problems
of sampling, the problems of questionnaire construction, the seman
tics of words like career and development, the ambiguity of whether
sixty-two percent is really good or bad outside so1ne broader context,
the difficulty of determining what the employees were thinking when
they answered the question, and so on? Reality i n this situation is an
elusive concept.
joint diagnosis, reflecting the reality that neither the client nor the
consultant knows enough at this point of initial contact to define the
kind of expertise that might be relevant to the situation. The consul
tant is willing to deal with an individual client or co1ne into an orga
nization without having a clear inission, goal, or defined proble1n be
cause of the underlying assumption that any person, group, or
organization can always irnprove its processes and becorne more ef
fective if it can accurately locate the processes that inake a difference
to its overall performance. No organizational structure or process is
perfect. Every organization has strengths and weaknesses. Therefore,
the manager who senses that something i s wrong because perfor-
1nance or morale i s not what it should be should not leap into action
or seek specific help until he has a clear idea of the strengths and
weaknesses of the organization's present structures and processes.
The n1ain goal of PC is to help the manager make such a diag
nosis and develop a valid action plan based on it. Implicit in this goal
is the assu1nption that the client and consultant 1nust both ren1ain in
power. Both must share the responsibility for the insights obtained
and actions planned. From the PC point of view, the consultant must
not take the monkey off the client's back but recognize that the prob
leni is ultiniately the client 's and only the client's. All the consultant
can do is to provide whatever help the client needs to solve the prob
lem himself.
The in1portance of joint diagnosis and action planning derives
from the fact that the consultant can seldom learn enough about any
given organization to really know what a better course of action
would be or even what information would really help because the
inembers of the organization perceive, think about, and react to infor-
1nation in terms of their traditions, values, and shared tacit assump
tions-that i s ; their organizational culture and the particular styles
and personalities of their key leaders and me1nbers 2 . However, the
consultant can help the client to become a sufficiently good diagnos
tician herself and to learn how to manage organizational processes
better so that she can solve problems for herself. It is a crucial as
sumption of the PC philosophy that proble1ns will stay solved longer
and be solved niore effectively if the organization learns to solve
2Most of the points on organizational culture and leadership are drawn from
my book on this subject and related literature that will be referred to i n various chap
ters (Schein, 1 985, 1992).
10 What ls Process Consultation?
MODEL 2
The Doctor-Patient Model
Another common generic consultation model i s that of doctor
patient. One or more managers in the organization decide to bring in
a consultant to "check them over," to discover if there are any organi
zational areas that are not functioning properly and might need atten
tion. A manager may detect sympto1ns of ill health, such as dropping
sales, high nu1nbers of custo1ner complaints, or quality problems, but
may not know how to make a diagnosis of what is causing the prob
lems. The consultant i s brought into the organization to find out what
is wrong with which part of the organization and then, like the physi
cian, is expected to recommend a program of therapy or prescribe
a remedial ineasure. Perhaps leaders in the organization discover that
there i s a new cure being used by other organizations such as Total
Quality Progra1ns, Reengineering, or Autonomous Work Groups, and
they mandate that their organization should try this form of ther
apy a s well to improve the organization ' s health. The consultant is
then brought in to administer the program. In this model the client
12 What ls Process Consultation?
the organization that may b e a far more significant reality than what
ever data the survey itself may reveal.
A fourth difficulty with the doctor-patient model is that even
if the diagnosis and prescription are valid, the patient may not be able
to 1nake the changes recommended. In the organizational context this
1nay in fact be the most common problem. It is often obvious to the
outside consultant what should be done, but the culture of the organi
zation, its structure, or its politics prevents the recommendations fro1n
being i1nplemented . In many cases the consultant does not even find
out about cultural and political forces until recommendations are re-·
jected or subverted, but by then it may be too late to be really helpful.
In other words, the degree to which the doctor-patient model
will work w i l l depend on
and suggest several books and papers. When 1ny wife asks n1e what
she should wear to the party, I instantly think I know vvhat problern
she is trying to solve and dispense reactions and advice accordingly.
The te1nptation to accept the power that the other person grants you
when he asks for advice is overwhelming. I t takes extraordinary dis
cipline in those situations to reflect for a moment on what is actually
going on (deal with reality) and to ask a question that inight reveal
more or encourage the other to tell you inore before you accept the
doctor role (access your ignorance).
If the consultant is to be helpful, it is essential to ensure that both
the other and the consultant understand what problem they are trying to
solve and that they have created a communication channel in which they
will understand each other so that they can solve the problem effectively
and jointly. It is the ultin1ate purpose of PC to create such communica-
tion channels to permit joint diagnosis and joint problem so1ving.
The fact that how we go about diagnosing has consequences
for the client system reveals a fourth overarching principle to be
added. We must recognize that everything the consultant does is an
intervention. There is no such thing as pure diagnosis. The common
description in inany consulting inodels of a diagnostic stage followed
by recommended prescriptions totally ignores the reality that if the
diagnosis involves any contact with the client systen1, the intervention
process has already begun. How we go about diagnosing inust, there
fore, be considered from the point of view of what consequences our
diagnostic interventions will have and whether we are willing to live
with those consequences.
MODEL 3
The Process Consultation Model
Let ine now sum1narize the inain assumptions of what I a1n calling the
process consultation philosophy, or model. The following assump
tions may not always hold. When they do hold, when we perceive or
18 What Is Process Consultation ?
zation. In a sense both the expert and doctor models are re
medial models whereas the PC model is both a remedial
and a preventive model. The saying "instead of giving peo
ple fish, teach them how to fish" fits this model well.
This last point differentiates the models clearly in that the ex
pert and doctor model can be co1npared to single-loop, or adaptive,
learning, whereas PC engages the client in double-loop, or generative,
learning. One of the goals of PC is to enable the client to learn how to
learn. The expert and doctor models fix the problem; the goal of PC
is to increase the client system's capacity for learning so that it can in
the future fix its own problems. 3
The helping process should always begin in the PC mode be
cause until we have inquired and removed our ignorance we do not,
in fact, know whether the above assumptions hold or whether i t
would be safe or desirable to shift into the expert or doctor mode.
Once we have begun this inquiry, we will find that one useful way to
decide whether to remain in the PC role or inove to one of the other
1nodes is to determine some of the properties of the type of problem
being faced by the person seeking help.4 If both the problem defini
tion and the nature of the solution are clear, then the expert inodel is
the appropriate one. If the problem definition is clear but the solution
is not, then the doctor has to work with the patient to develop the right
kind of adaptive response using his or her technical knowledge. If
neither the problem nor the solution is clear, the helper has to rely ini
tially on process consultation until it becomes clear what is going on,
The events to be observed, inquired about, .and learned from are the
actions that occur in the normal flow of work, in the conduct of meet-
Summary, Implications and Conclusions 21
51 was influenced here by the Gestalt movement. My first trainer was the Jate
Richard Wallen, who taught me a great deal about observing what is inside me. Sub
sequently I was greatly influenced by Ed Nevis, who applied Gestalt principles to or
ganizational consulting (Nevis, 1987). In my graduate training and early career, I was
heavily i nfluenced by the work of Kurt Lewin and the work of Gestalt psychologists
like Koehler and Koffka.
22 What Is Process Consultation ?
helpful. If it turns out that the client wants si1nple information or ad
vice and the consultant is sati sfied that she has relevant information
and advice, she can safely go into the expert or doctor role. However,
when she switches into that mode, she must be aware of the assump
tions she is making and recognize the consequences of encouraging
the client to become more dependent on her. She must also be careful
not to take the problem onto her own back.
What the consultant must be really expert at, then, is sensing
from one moment to the next what is going on and choosing a help
ing mode that is most appropriate to that immediate situation and that
will build a helping relationship. No one of these models will be used
all the time. But at any given moment, the consultant can operate
from only one of them. The experienced consultant will find herself
switching roles frequently as she perceives the dynamics of the situa
tion to be changing. We should, therefore, avoid concepts like "the
process consultant" and think more in terms of "process consulta
tion " as a dynamic process of helping that all consultants, indeed all
humans, find to be appropriate at certain times.
Though PC is increasingly relevant in today' s organizational
world, i t is important to see how the model applies as well to our
daily relationships with friends, spouses, children, and others who
from time to time may seek our help. Ultimately what is being de
scribed here is a philosophy and methodology of the helping process
and an attempt to show its relevance to organization development and
learning. Central to this philosophy is a set of operating principles.
All told there are ten such principles, five of which have been identi
fied and discussed so far:
Case Examples
Case examples will be used in several different ways throughout the
text. At tin1es illustrations and even longer cases will be inserted into
the text where they are needed to provide concrete examples. At other
ti1nes they will be placed at the end of the chapter to give the more
practice-oriented reader an opportunity to dig into cases in greater
depth. If the general material is clear, the reader can skip these cases.
I was interested in this company and wanted to learn more about var
;ous company cultures, so this seemed Like an ideal match. I agreed to the
terms as originally stated and was then told that further briefing on the meet
ing would be provided by Sprague, who had become an executive vice presi
dent reporting directly to the chairman of the company. We arranged a
m.eeting in New York during his next trip to the United States. Sprague agreed
that niy time and expenses were from this point on billable at my usual rates.
At the m.eeting Sprague talked at length about the strategic situation of
the company, saying that it was critical at the annual nieetin.g to take a real look
at whether the direction on which the company had embarked still made sense,
ivhether it should be slowed down or speeded up, and ho"vv to get the commit
ment of the top group to whatever was decided. I also learned at this point that
Sprague was in charge of the overall design of the three-day meeting and that
he not only wanted to brief me but wanted to review the entire design with m.e.
The initial call had focused on niy lecturing on culture, but Sprague
was now asking me to be an expert resource to help design the annual meet
ing and was making himself the primary client. I found myself switching
roles from. process consultant to design expert because we were discussing
the design of a meeting, a topic about which I obviously knew niore than he,
and we both understood this switch in role and made it explicit.
We reviewed the design of each component of the meeting in terms of
Sprague 's goals, and the idea emerged that for m.e to function as a process
consultant throughout the meeting might be helpful. Since my schedule per
mitted attending the whole meeting, it was decided by Sprague, with my
agreem.ent, to have me play several roles throughout. I would give a short in
put on culture and strategy early in the meeting and define my role as one of
trying to see how these topics would relate to each other as the meeting un
folded. I would do my session on culture on day 2, and, most importantly, I
would run the session on day 3, during which the whole group would draw
out what areas of consensus they had reached about future strategic options.
These areas of consensus would deal with the business strategy, but
it would be easier for me to test for such consensus than it would be for any
of the insiders to do so; it would also free the chairman to play an advocacy
role. It therefore made sense to both of us to have me play the consensus
tester role, and I judged that Sprague knew the personality of the chairman
well enough that an outsider's assuming such n role would also be accept
able to him. Sprague 's insight throughout the discussion reassured me that
he had a good grasp of the issues and knew the climate of the organization
well. In any case there was no time to meet the chairman, so I had to accept
this role on faith.
My participation during the three days worked out as planned. The
chairman was comfortable with having me present as an. outside resource on
Case Examples 25
process because he felt that this would permit him to focus more on the con
tent, the strategic issues the group was wrestling with. It permitted him a de
gree offreedom that he ordinarily did not feel because he had played the role
of consultan t as well as chairman in prior nieetings. He explained my role to
the other executives and took ownership of the decisions to have me present
in my multiple roles.
The active interventions I made focused heavily on task process. For
example, I occasionally atternpted to clar�fy an issue by restating what I
thought I had heard, asking clarifying questions, restating goals, testing
consensus when conclusions seemed to be reached, and keeping a swnmmy
of areas of consensus for purposes of my formal input sessions. When it was
time to present my feedback on culture, I gave sonie formal definitions and
descriptions of culture as a set of basic assumptions but then asked the
group to provide the content. Several members of the group asked m.ore
pointedly how I perceived and evaluated their culture, but I hadfoundfrom
past experience that it was best to remain speculative about this because
e ven ifI provided an answer that was technically correct, it might arouse de
fensiveness or denial. I kept emphasizing that only insiders really could un-
derstand the key cultural assumptions and invited members of the group to
provide the answers.
On the final day I formally tested consensus by structuring the areas
of discussion that had been covered and inviting the group to state conclu
sions, which I then wrote down on .fiip charts to make them explicit to every
one. My playing this up-front role made it possible for the chairman to he
111.uch more active in providing his own conclusions without using his formal
power to override the conclusions of others. I sharpened many of the issues
based on my listening during the three days and challenged the group in ar
eas where the participants seemed to want to avoid being clear. In this role I
was partly process consultant and partly management expert in giving occa
sional editorial comments on the conclusions being reached.
For example, the group talked of decentralizing into business unhs,
but doing so would take power away from the units currently based in d�ffer
ent regions. The business unit headquarters were all in the home city, so they
were really centralizing as much as decentralizing. I pointed out the implica
tions of this for various other kinds ofpolicies, such as the movement ofpeo
ple across divisional or geographic lines.
The event terminated on a high note and the decision was rnade to re
visit the results several months later. I met with Sprague to review results and
learned that both he and the chairman.felt that things went as expected. They
felt that bringing me in as an outside resource had helped very much, both at
the level ofprocess and content.
26 What Is Process Consultation ?
went ahead but then he later fired one or both of them. He concluded that
this would undennine the team building and that it was not really fair to the
two people about whom he was unsure.
After discussing the pros and cons of having the teani-building ses
sion at all until he had made up his mind about the marginal people, we de
cided to postpone the meeting until he had decided, and we all breathed a
huge sigh of relief that this issue had surfaced at this time rather than late1:
Dealing with current and emerging realities means that the consultant must
be prepared to do less as well as more. This case illustrates how useless it
is to think in terms of selling services, given what may be going on in the
client system. .
I was asked to attend a large Swiss multinational organization's an
nual management conference to help the president develop a senior manage
ment committee. The divisions were operating in too isolated a fashion and, if
we could use my educational input as an excuse to bring a small group to
gether regularly, that group could gradually begin to tackle business problems.
The contact client was the director of management development and
training, who briefed me during several meetings on the company's situation.
They badly needed to find a vehicle to start the autonomous division man
agers ' meeting but felt that such meetings would not work without an outsider
to serve as both the excuse for the meeting-that is, the planned seminar
and as the facilitator. So an educational intervention made sense, even though
the real goal was to build a more collaborative management team.
After our planning had proceeded and a date had been set some
months hence, we scheduled a meeting with the president at the headquar
ters in Europe to discuss the details of the project. The meeting with the pres
ident revealed a somewhat different issue. He was worried that two of his key
division managers were fighting all the time and undercutting each othe't:
One of these was too dominant and the other too subservient. What he hoped
to do was to bring them together in a group situation in which some feedback
28 What Is Process Consultation?
Conclusion: Complexities in
Defining the Consultant Role
What these examples have illustrated is the difficulty of defining the
emerging realities in a dynamic client situation, and the need to switch
roles as new data emerge. Not only does the client shift in unpre
dictable ways, but with each intervention, new data are revealed that
alter what it means to be helpful. Frequently the consultant has to
switch to the expert mode, but then he must be able to switch back
smoothly to the process consultant mode.
Conclusion: Complexities in Defining the Consultant Role 29
30
The Initial Status Imbalance in Helping Relationships 31
1This topic has been of great interest to the more psychoanalytically oriented
consultants and has been written about extensively. The work of Hirschhorn ( 1 988,
199 1 ) i s most helpful in this area. An excellent summary from the psychoanalytic
point of view can be found in Jean Neumann's contribution to the Proceedings of the
International Consulting Conference ( 1 994).
32 The Psychodynamics of the Helping Relationship
Some years ago I was working with the top team of a young company at their
weekly Friday afternoon staff meeting. My job was to help them make the
meetings more effective. What I observed was a hardworking group that
could never get niore than halfway through its JO-plus item agenda in the
two hours allotted to the nieeting. I tried various interventions aimed at cut
ting down fruitless arguments or diversions to topics not on the agenda, but
to no avail. I realized I had to deal with the reality of how this group worked,
but I also realized that I had not really "accessed my ignorance " in the sense
that I did not really know why they worked in the way they did. I had been
working from a stereotype of how the meeting should go.
A t one point, after witnessing many frustrating meetings, I asked in
true ignorance where the agenda came from. I was infornied that it was put
together by the Presiden t 's secretary, but we all suddenly realized that none
of us knew how she constructed it. She was asked to come into the room and
The Initial Status Imbalance in Helping Relationships 35
revealed that she took items in the order in which they were called in and
typed them up neatly for the group's meeting. Without my saying another
word, the group immediately decided to change the system by having her
produce a tentative list of items which the group would then prioritize so that
only the less important items would be tab led or dropped. The quality of the
nieetings and the sense ofprogress both dramatically increased. What had
helped the group most was my genuinely innocent question about the origin
of the agenda.
inay be hiding things fro1n himself, and many of these do not surface
until the relationship is based on mutual trust.
If the consultant is to be truly helpful, therefore, she must first
create a relationship that reestablishes the client's sense of se�f
esteem, that equilibrates the status between the client and helper,
and that reduces the sense of dependency or counterdependency that
the client may initially feel. If such an equal relationship is not built,
the risk remains that the client will not reveal, not hear, reject, be
come defensive, and in other ways undern1ine the help offered. Both
the client and the helper are then the losers.
n1ay be shocked and dis1nayed when the client turns on her and im
plies that the suggestion was trivial or clearly unworkable. In build
ing the helping relationship, it is important that such feelings be
treated as a source of learning, not as a source of disappointment in
each other. These feelings have to be treated as a normal process of
relationship building and as a further source of insight and learning.
Complicating these social forces are the psychodynan1ics of
transference and countertransference that require the consultant to be
come highly aware of the client's proj ections onto the consultant and
the consultant's tendency to project onto and misperceive the client's
reality. For the consultant, learning to see and deal with reality is ini
tially a process of learning to see and deal with her own internal dis
tortions. It is crucial for consultants to learn how to access their
j gnorance and overcome their own stereotypes.
The relationship begins to be productive when both parties be
gin to feel comfortable with each other's relative status and roles.
Cultural norms play an important role here in that we regard certain
kinds of dependency as more legitimate than others. If you go to a
highly reputed counselor, psychiatrist, coach, or consultant you are
more prepared to make yourself dependent on that person than if you
were sharing a problem with a friend or acquaintance. I f you go to
your boss with a work problem, you are more prepared to make your
self dependent than if you go to a peer or subordinate with the same
proble1n.
In every society there are norms about what kind of dependency
is legitimate and what kind is a loss of face. In Western, competitive,
individualistic society almost any kind of dependency is viewed as a
loss of face, whereas in many Asian cultures one i s expected to be
dependent upon more senior or higher-ranking individuals. The more
egalitarian the society, the more difficult it is to sort out how one should
feel about making oneself dependent on another, hence the sorting out
of such feelings in Western society is probably more difficult than in
some other cultures.
what each needs? The best model for describing this process is to think
of it as a series of 1nutual tests to see at what level each party can ac
cept the other. As the client unfolds her story she will be paying close
attention to the degree to which the helper is actively listening, under
standing, and supporting what she is saying. If the support is consis
tent and she feels that no matter what she says it will at least be
understood, if not always approved, she will experiment with going to
a more private level until she feels she might be getting into a level of
revelation that would not be acceptable either to the helper or possibly
to herself. The consultant must realize that cultural nonns will alvvays
put some limit on how "open" a conversation can become. There is no
such thing as "letting it all hang out." There will always be layers of
consciousness that the client will not want to share with even a trusted
consultant, and ultimately there are layers of consciousness that we
cannot accept i n ourselves, and therefore keep them repressed.
The helper, on the other hand, is calibrating how responsive
the client is to her prompts, to her questions, to her suggestions, and
to her whole demeanor as a helper. She is testing how dependent the
client seems to want to be and how willing she (the helper) is to ac
cept that level of dependency. As the client becomes more accepting
of the helper, she (the helper) will reveal more of her private thoughts
and escalate the conversation to a deeper level. B u t throughout this
process both parties are always testing and alert to any disconfirrning
feedback. When such disconfirmation occurs, both parties have to re
calibrate and rethink the psychological contract-did either party
overstep some implicit boundary and create offense? Can the itnplicit
contract be renegotiated or has the relationship reached a level be
yond which it cannot move? Or, worse, has the relationship been
damaged to the point where feelings of being one-up or one-down are
so strong that either the client or the consultant feels they must sever
it? A s we have all experienced, to build trust takes much more time
and energy than to lose it. The essence of building mutual acceptance
i s therefore to go slowly enough to insure that the movement i s to
ward higher mutual acceptance and more equal status in the relation
ship. The critical interventions are to let the client tell his story and
actively inquire to access and remove the helper's areas of ignorance.
Notice that this process can be viewed as one of mutual help
ing. The helper can create trust by really accepting at every level what
the client reveals and possibly changing his own conceptions of what
1nay be going on. In a sense, the helper is dependent on the client for
accurate information and feelings, and the helper must be willing to
Relationship Building Through Levels of Mutual Acceptance 39
be helped in order for the client to build up the trust necessary to re
veal deeper layers. The relationship gradually becomes equilibrated
as both parties give and receive help.
Practical Implications
To establish a climate that creates an effective helping relationship.,
the helper must first remember the previous five overarching princi ··
ples "Always try to be helpful," "Stay in touch with the current real
ity," "Access your ignorance," "Treat everything as an intervention"
and "Remember that it is the client who owns the problem." We can
now add a sixth principle to be observed at all times.
The helper must try to sense where the client and the relationship are
headed and try not to impose too many stereotypes or needs on the
situation. If I am really trying to understand the reality of the situa
tion, and am in touch with what I really do not know, and realize that
every question or action on my part is an intervention, and know that
I an1 not obligated to take the problem onto myself, it will feel very
natural to adopt the idea of going with the flow, letting the client's
feelings and my own reactions guide me to next steps rather than
falling back on arbitrary rules of how a consultation should evolve.
It helps to be aware of the pitfalls mentioned previously and to
keep asking the question-are we working together as a team, is our
status equilibrated, are we each giving and getting what is expected?
Process-oriented questions such as "Is this conversation being help
ful?" "Am I getting a sense of the problem?" "Are we talking about
the right set of issues?" can be very helpful to keep you on target.
If we take seriously the point that the client's situation is likely
to be co1nplex and that the consultant i s quite ignorant of that con1-
plexity early in the relationship, it will keep the consultant from mak
ing premature evaluations and judgments. It is not just a matter of not
40 The Psychodynamics of the Helping Relatfonship
The cases presented in the next chapter will illustrate many of the
points raised here.
Exercise 2.1 Giving and Receiving Help
The purpose of this exercise i s to give you practice in ( 1 ) adopting
expli citly a "helping" role, (2) observing what the psychological
dynamics are between the helper and the client, and (3) focusing on
the skill of accessing your ignorance.
1 . Ask a friend to share some problem or issue with you.
2. As the friend begins to reveal the problem, make a conscious
effort to catalogue in your mind or write down on a pad all
the things you do not know in relation to that problem.
3. Try to formulate a set of questions that will reduce your ig
norance and then ask them.
4. Make it a point not to react to what the friend tells you, with
advice, j udgments, or e1notional reactions, even if he or she
asks.
5 . After about twenty minutes, discuss together the feelings
you were having during the first twenty n1inutes. Review
whether you or the friend were having any of the feelings
mentioned in this chapter.
6 . Review the areas of ''ignorance" to determine how successful
you were in overcoming your stereotypes or preconceptions.
f
r
:>
l
3
It goes without saying that one of the most important things for the
consultant to do initially is to listen carefully to the client. Listening
is, however, a rather complex activity that can be pursued very ac
tively or very passively. If we are to go with the flow and access our
ignorance, it would appear at first glance that we should be fairly pas
sive and attentive to let the client develop the story in his or her own
way. But in many situations, the client just asks a question or two and
then falls silent with an expectant look. It is at this moment that the
consultant must be careful not to fall into the trap of taking on all the
power that is offered.
For example, after a lengthy discourse on the strategic issues
the organization is facing, the client may ask: "So, how should I orga
nize my executive team?" The consultant, eager to display his areas of
expertise, may well be tempted to answer: "Why don't you do some
team building with the group. I could develop a team-building seminar
for you." Not only will the client possibly not understand what has
been offered, but, if her dependency needs win out, she may agree and
launch into something that may have nothing to do with her problem.
Or, if the feelings of one-downness win out, the client may silently
conclude that this consultant is just trying to sell his favorite off-the
shelf product and reject the suggestion even though it might be the an
swer to her problem. No help has been provided in either case.
If one starts with the philosophy of PC, one would, first of all,
be sensitive to the psychological dynamics that are operating when
the client first reveals a problem or asks a question and would then
engage in a multi-purpose inquiry process whose main purpose
would be to rebuild the client's self-esteem and raise her status. Giv
ing the client a sense that she can better understand her own problem
(and maybe even figure out what to do next) i s the essence of this
building and status-raising process. The assumption is that unless the
42
Active Inquiry 43
client begins to feel secure in the relationship she will not reveal the
pertinent ele1nents of her st?ry anywa?', a� d the helper wi �l be operat
. . .
ing with 1nco1Tect information. The tnck is to be actively in charge of
this process while maintaining a supportive, listening posture. The
process of creating this situation can be thought of as active inquiry
which includes but supersedes basic listening.
The active inquiry process has several purposes:
1.To build up the client's status and confidence.
2. To gather as much information as possible about the situation.
3 . To involve the client in the process of diagnosis and action
planning.
4. To create a situation for the client in which it is safe to re
veal anxiety-provoking information and feelings.
Strategically the goal is status equilibration and the building of
a team with the client so that ( 1 ) diagnostic insights make sense be
cause client and helper are speaking the same language and (2) reme
dial ineasures are realistic because the client is processing their
validity in terms of his own culture. Tactically the implementation of
active inquiry involves recognition that the inquiry must be managed
in such a way that the client's story is fully revealed and that the client
begins to think diagnostically himself. If the client's story does not
co1ne out in his own words and using his own concepts, the consul
tant cannot get a realistic sense of what may be going on. It is all too
easy to project into what the client is reporting from one's own prior
experience. The helper's initial behavior, therefore, must stimulate
the client to tell the story as completely as possible and to listen in as
neutral and nonjudgmental a way as possible.
Active but nonjudgmental listening also serves to legitimize
the potentially anxiety-provoking revelations of the client. The rela
tionship between helper and client must become what Bill Isaacs 1
calls a safe "container" in which it is possible to handle issues that
may be "too hot to handle under ordinary circumstances."
Active inquiry is summarized in Table 3 . 1 .
This process can be stimulated with several kinds of inquiry
questions, but they must be carefully framed so as not to interfere
Table· 3.1
TYPES OF ACTIVE INQUIRY QUESTIONS
I. Pure Inquiry
The client controls both the process and content of the conversation.
The role of the consultant is to prompt the story and listen carefully
and neutrally.
What is the situation? Can you tell me what is going on?
What is happening? Describe the situation. Tell 1ne more. Go on.
with the story. "The story" i s the client's own perception of what is
going on and should be revealed in as unbiased a fashion as possible.
2Fritz, 1 99 1 .
Types ofActive Inquiry 47
"Did it occur to you that you, (he, she, they) did that because
they were anxious? (in the situation where the client has not
revealed any awareness of that emotional possibility)
either forces or allows the client to now abandon her story and work
within the framework provided by the consultant. And, in this process,
the great danger is that further information about the reality of the
client's situation will be lost because she is now busy dealing with the
new concepts instead of revealing what is in her own memory banks.
The issue with confrontive inquiry, then, is when and how to do it.
Constructive Opportunism
In deciding when to switch from pure inquiry into the diagnostic or con
frontive 1node, timing is crucial. So1netimes such a shift will be appro
priate within a few ininutes of the beginning, and so1neti1nes one has the
sense that one should stay in pure inquiry throughout the interaction.
Often it is appropriate to jump back and forth an1ong the three modes
based on what one is heating and on the strength of one's own reactions
and ideas. There are no simple criteria for deciding when the timing is
right for a shift in focus. Ideally the focus should be put on events in the
story that offer some potential leverage either for better understanding
of the client's issue or problem, or on the kinds of remedial action that
might be possible if the problem is obvious. The danger is that one for
gets the previous principles-the need to be helpful, to deal with reality,
to access one's ignorance, to realize that every question is de facto an
intervention, to let the client own the problen1, and to go with the flow.
The teni.ptation is tremendous to leap in with insights and suggestions,
and to project one's own version of reality onto the client.
At the sa1ne time, one cannot beco1ne just a passive inquiry ina
chine because strong feelings and ideas will arise as one listens. And
one's own feel ings and ideas may be highly relevant to helping the
client understand his or her reality. Going with the flow 1nust, there
fore, be balanced by another principle of "constructive opportunism."
My inajor criterion for when to seize an opportunity to shift focus is
when the client has said something that has obvious significance to the
client's story and that is vivid enough to be remembered by the client.
In other words, intervention must be obviously linked to so1nething the
client said, not merely to iny own thoughts or feelings.
When the timing feels right, the consultant must take so1ne
risks and seize an opportunity to provide a new insight, alternative, or
way of looking at things. As the case below illustrates, in seizing such
opportunities the consultant will so1neti1nes make an error, either in
tern1s of timing or the level of the intervention, leading to rejection by
the client and a period of tension in the relationship. At such times the
Constructive Opportunism 49
cons ultant 1nust recognize that the client's reaction reveals not only
that the consultant may have erred, but also new data on how the
client reacts to certain kinds of input. In other words, everything that
happens is data to be learned from.
We make conversational errors all the time in what we say, how
we say it, or in the ti1ning of when we say it. Instead of being discour
aged by such errors, we need to recognize that they provide opportuni
ties for learning and should therefore be welcomed. 3 We may learn a
lesson such as "be more careful in how you state things" or "don't
111ake assumptions, access your ignorance," but we must always go be
yond the lesson and ask what the new data reveal about the situation.
Thus the learning occurs in two don1ains; the reaction to the error
gives us data about ourselves and what we n1ight have done differ
ently, and data about the client how he thinks about things and what he
is ready for. All of this can be sun11narized in three further principles.
Any given intervention might work at one time and fail at another
tin1e. Therefore I must ren1ain constantly diagnostic and look for
l those ntoments when the client's attention seems to be available.
"
All client systems have areas of instability and openness where
1notivation to change exists. I must find and build on existing 1no
s tivations and cultural strengths (go with the flow), and, at the
e same time seize targets of opportunity to provide new insights
t. and alternatives. Going with the flow must be balanced with takm
e ing some risks in intervening.
e
ff
h 3Don Michael pointed out long ago in his seminal Learning to Plan and
Planning to Learn ( 1 973, 1 997) that errors should be "embraced" as keys to learning
11
instead of denied and regretted. Fortunately, this important book on organ izational
y learning has being reissued with a new foreword and epilogue because its applicabil
1e ity today is greater than ever.
50 Active Inquiry and Listening as Status-Equilibrating Processes
The following case illustrates some elements of this choice process, the
importance of ti1ning, and the process of learning from one's errors.
A Case Illustration
A colleague, Jim, wanted some help in fig uring out why in his role as a con
sultant to management he had had a series offour experiences in which his
report to management was poorly received, leading to termination of the re
lationship with those four clients. Jim's task was to advise them on how to
organize the information function in their companies. The conversation
began with my asking Jim to tell me about these events and prompting him
with pure inquiry questions. After about 15 minutes it became obvious to me
that he had been operating with his clients entirely from a doctor-patient
model. He felt he had made careful diagnoses and given sound recommen
dations and, therefore, could not understand how these carefully thought-out
diagnoses and recommendations could be so quickly dismissed.
ceived?" Jn effect I was asking "Why do you suppose this has happened?"
focusing on the general events and stimulating him to get involved in diag
nosing the situation with me. He quickly identified the possibility that the
clients did not want to hear negative things about themselves and that their
defensiveness was probably legitimate. But he did not extrapolate to the
possibility that his own. decisions on what and how to report might have
stimulated this defensive response. However, his analysis gave me more in
formation on where his blind spots were and activated him to begin figuring
out what niight have been happening.
The diagnostic question. revealed some new data that had not previ
ously been reported and that were obviously significant. At this point I de
cided to focus on. exploring further the various actions that had been taken
by going to action-oriented questions. This kind of question not only forces
further diagnosis but also reveals more about the mental process that the
client is going through and what options for action might be entertainable.
Action-oriented questions might be prompts like "what did you do then.? " as
contrasted with the pure inquiry question. of "what happened next? " or
might ask the client to tell about the actions of others. The focus can remain.
on the past to continue to stimulate the story or can ask about the present or
future, i.e. "what do you plan to do next?" or "what are you thinking about
52 Active Inquiry and Listening as Status-Equilibrating Processes
doing?" One can also ask about others-What will so and so do ? " or, to
complicate the process even further, get into what family therapists describe
as "circular questions" by asking what others might do in response to some
action on the part of the client.4 For example, I could have asked my col
league what ·would have happened if he had/ought the CEO instead of apol
ogizing to hJm. In this case I decided to focus on the CEO because it was his
behavior that seemed most puzzling.
I asked Jim why the CEO might have acted the way he did. Surpris
ingly, Jim could not fig ure out the CEO' s behavior. So I shifted gears and
asked him why he felt he had to apologize to the CEO ,· what had he done
wrong? I was, in effect, testing my own hypothesis that Jim should .first have
given the CEO the presentation in draft form and in private to gauge hoH1 he
would react to the criticisms about the culture. The explanation Jim offered
reiterated his own sense of guilt and of having made a mistake, leading me
to decide to try a more conji·ontive intervention. I asked Jim, directly why he
had not gone to the CEO first with his analysis .
Note that with this question I was for the first time revealing my own
thoughts about the situation and what might have happened. This forces the
client to think about other elements of the content of the story and is therefore
legitimately thought of as "confrontive." These kinds of confrontations can
still be couched as questions such as "Had you thought about meeting the
CEO privately to share the culture data? " or, to keep the client on the hook,
can be in the form ofproviding more than one alternative such as "Could you
have either gone to the CEO or to the group first with a draft of the report?"
4Borwick, 1 983.
Elements of the Choice Process 53
tioned someone and reflected on why I had made the err01� i.e. time pressure,
impatience, or arrogance. A t the sawi.e time, I learned a great deal more about
rhe events of the case and Jim's tendency to blame hirnselffor not having
done a pe1fect job. I also wondered why he had omitted thJs crucial event in
his story and pondered wbat this told me about his own mental map of what
was and was not important. The pattern of self-blame led to a situation where
a more confrontive intervention proved to be genuinely helpful.
After Jim reported that he . had met with the CEO privately but that
the public outburst occurred anyway, I stated a new hypothesis that the prob
lem may have been that the CEO was embarrassed to have the culture criti
cized in front of his team. Jim responded that this might have been the case
but that he had assumed the executive team was "together" on this project.
Jim seemed insensitive to the status and power differential between the CEO
and the rest of the team. He also said forcefully that as a consultant he was
obligated to report as clearly and validly as possible what he had.fo und in
conducting his intervievvs no matter how the audience was constituted. His
own sense ofprofessional expertise seemingly was overriding his ability to
sense what was going on in his client system.
The lesson so far is that en·ors will occur, that errors are there to
be learned from, and that errors in c·ontent must be clearly distin
guished from errors of timing and presentation. I might have been cor
rect in sensing that something was going on with the CEO, but I erred
in when and how I presented my thoughts. I inade it n1ore confrontive
than necessary by providing a single hypothesis instead of providing
several options about the events between Jim and the CEO. I also got
enough of a sense that I was somewhat on target in my hypothesis that
the issue inight have been the public revelation in front of subordinates.
keel" does not necessarily mean that the two parties are literally of
equal status. What it means is that the implicit contract between them,
the level of dependence, the role of the consultant, and the degree to
which the client feels accepted, meet their mutual expectations. Both
feel cornfortable with what they can give and receive.
The signals that this is happening are subtle. The client begins
to be more active in diagnosing his own story, the tone of voice
changes, and the content becomes more assertive. Self-blame or
blan1e of others declines and objective analysis increases. A sense of
being a team with the client emerges in figuring out what went wrong
and what might have been the causes. In my conversation with Jim,
he began to sound less worried and began to explore more objectively
what inight have been going on with his four clients. As shown below,
this empowered me to become even more confrontive.
The pattern in Jim's story strongly reinforced my sense that he was operat
ing as the "super-expert-doctor-diagnostician" and was so caught up in
how to do his very best within that role that he had become quite insensitive
to process issues. I decided to test his readiness to face this self-defined
expert role by going beyond inquiry and giving him some direct and confron
tive feedback. I knew that he understood my distinctions among types of con
sulting roles so I could be direct.
I said: "In these four situations in which you were rejected, were you
really operating as the doctor giving the patient diagnoses and prescriptions
in a situation that might have required more of a process role? Why did you
not share the process issue of what to report to whom with one or more in
siders, even the CEO ? Why did you .feel that you personally had to make all
the decisions about what to report and to whom, and that it had to be in writ
ten form with a formal presentation ? "
Table 3.2
THE CONCEPT OF APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY
geared to generative learning, but such learning often starts with what
the client experiences as an immediate problem that requires a fix.
A similar point has recently been 1nade by Marshak in identify
ing at least four different ways we can think about change, as shown
in Table 3.3.8 The table shows how we can implicitly operate fron1 a
physical engineering point of view and think of fixing, 1noving, or
building things; or from a chemical process point of view of catalyz
ing or changing how things work by mixing the right kinds of people
to create good "chemistry"; or from an agricultural biological point of
view, in which growth and develop1nent are largely under the control
of the individuals or groups being helped but the helper can provide
nutrients, sunshine, and fertilizer to help natural evolution along.
Table 3.3
METAPHORS FOR CHANGE9
8Marshak ( 1 993).
9The categories presented here are a revision and elaboration of a similar set
first published by Marshak ( 1 993).
�
.,
These ilnplicit inodels inay not affect the early inquiry process
but most certainly will influence how the consultant pursues diagnostic
and confrontive inquiry. It is therefore important for the consultant to be
aware of her own metaphors and assumptions. If we start with a prob
le1n orientation, we are more likely to follow up with questions that
highlight what is wrong; if we start with more of an appreciative orien
tation, we are inore likely to follow up with questions that emphasize
what is working, what makes the client feel good, what her goals and
ideals are, and where she wants to go. Similarly, our orientation toward
machine n1odels of fixing versus biological n1odels of enabling growth
will detennine how we help clients to diagnose their own situations and
the kinds of 1nental n1odels we provide for thinking about change.
The contrast between the various approaches will be least rele-
vant at the beginning of a helping relationship because it will be the
client's metaphor that will dictate the situation. Given what we have
said about help-seeking in our culture, it is likely that most clients
will start with an engineering problem orientation. They will want a
fix, and preferably a quick fix. If the consultant works from more of
an appreciative inquiry capacity-building position, she will begin to
ask more positive health-oriented questions as the relationship
evolves and help the client to see the value of appreciating what
works instead of bemoaning what does not. At a recent meeting,
Cooperrider 1 0 gave an excellent example.
A friend who was an internal consultant came to him for help because
she had been doing sexual harassment training for decades and was
beginning to feel that it was not really helping. Instead of probing in
detail why the training 1night not be helping, he asked the client what
she was really after. She admitted that what she really wanted was
well-functioning relations at work regardless of gender. He then asked
her whether she knew of any cross-gender working pairs or groups
that felt they were working well together. They decided to issue a gen
eral invitation across the organization for any cross-gender group that
felt they were working well together to come forward and discuss
their positive experiences. Dozens of such groups volunteered to
share their experiences, permitting the consultant to develop a com
pletely new kind of approach to the sexual harassment issue. By ana
lyzing the common properties of relationships that worked, they were
able to build an entirely different kind of training program that
worked 1n uch better.
Case Example
This case illustrates a clear conflict in expectations and the need/or the con
sultant not only to manage his role carefully but also to have clear profes
sional standards. What I was willing to accept as the strategic goals of the
project clearly did not mesh with what the client expected from the consul
tant; hence the consultation was terminated at an early stage.
Case Example 61
out. To be helpful in this situation I felt I needed to get the family to see their
l
.
64
Who ? Basic Types of Clients 65
The contact client, the person who initially contacted the con
sultant, usually introduces the consultant to other people in the organi
zation who, in turn, may work with the consultant to plan activities for ·
still others in the organization. As the project proceeds, the consultant
inust be careful to distinguish between the client types, especially be
tween primary clients who pay for the work, the unwitting and ultimate
clients who will be affected by it, and the nonclients who will resist and
attempt to subvert it. The definition of what is helpful inay change as
one deals with intennediate, prilnary� unwitting, and ultimate clients,
I requiring the consultant to use broader mental models that pennit
l
�
I
f
66 The Concept of Client
2An excellent review of such interventions has been published by Alban and
Bunker ( 1996).
68 The Concept of Client
tween ine and the 1nanager, a direct telephone conversation with the
inanager, or maybe just some further questions to put to the manager
regarding what she may have in mind. I f the contact client and I agree
that the next step is for this "intermediate client" to call n1e directly
or to set up a meeting, my focus shifts to the creation and manage
ment of the intennediate client relationship. This involves setting a
schedule, making a time for a call or n1eeting, deciding on where to
ineet, who should be at the meeting, how long the meeting should be,
and what the purpose of the meeting should be. Note that the ques
tions the1nselves keep involving the contact client in diagnostic issues
and not only help her to own the next steps, but train her in how to
start thinking diagnostically herself.
of doing the interviews and would set-up the process with his technical
people.
After sonie months of careful interviewing, my colleague and I col
lated the data and wrote a fairly complete report on all of the issues that had
been identified by the technical staff. As might have been expected, among
the complaints registered were many about the managerial style of the' direc
tor: We noted these complaints in one section of our report. A feedback ses
sion was scheduled with the director during which my colleague and I were
prepared to go through all of the data in the report. We requested two hours
since there was a lot of information to cover and we wanted to be very thor
ough in showing how valid the information really was by showing various
statistics.
My colleague and I walked into the director's office, presented him,
with a copy of the report (he was the first person in the company to see it),
and started our presentation while he leafed through the report. He imniedi
ately spotted the section in which his management style was mentioned, read
it over quickly, and then interrupted us in a rather angry manner with a curt
"thank you " and dismissed us. We had had no more than 15 niinutes with the
director and were not invited back either by him or the VP. We never found
out what happened to the report that we left with the director.
traps with unknown outco1nes, by not figuring out who the primary
client was and involving that primary client in designing the project.
We never found out what happened to the report, to the director, or to
the relationship between the VP and McGregor. In retrospect, if we
had paid attention to the fact that the project was paid for by the VP,
we should have insisted on a session with him to try to learn more
about his motives and why he was willing to foot the bill . We should
have asked why it was not being charged to the research lab. Our ig
norance and our failure to access it led us to a series of interventions
whose impact we could never determine.
Once the primary client is clearly identified, the consultant
must engage in an active exploratory inq�iry process with that indi
vidual or group. As the previous case illustrates, one cannot take the
word of the contact or intermediate clients on what the primary client
might want or need. Getting information directly from the primary
client not only guarantees accuracy, but, more importantly, begins to
build a relationship that allows the consultant and the primary client
to work together to diagnose the situation and develop further inter
ventions. If we remember the principle that it is the client who owns
the problem, we can avoid the trap of the consultant starting to make
suggestions and interventions based on second-hand information. If
the consultant moves ahead on her own, the primary client may be re
lieved, may become dependent, and create the inappropriate situation
of the consultant ending up owning the problem. Therefore, I am will
ing to be passed on to new primary clients only if the current one I am
working with takes joint responsibility with me for the decision, and
if the n1echanisms we jointly work out for involving the new client
make sense to both of us.
I
nization. Only if I can justify in my own n1ind that the ultimate client
will be better off in terms of my own values can I justify helping this
inanager.
'
t
t
76 The Concept of Client
as well. We could then work out together how to meet the needs of the
primary client as well as the unwitting and ultimate clients.
major interventions are 1nade. One of the most important roles I find
n1yself playing is when managers propose major changes, to "force"
the1n to think through who would benefit, who inight be threatened, and
who would oppose the changes. Based on such analysis we can then
plan interventions that will take all such constituencies into account.
Case Examples
84
Deciphering Hidden Forces and Processes 85
laying out everything that i s going on, yet the client can completely 111isun
derstand it because there is neither the ability nor the motivation to deci
pher it.
The first step in making things visible, therefore, is ( 1 ) to create the
conditions that will motivate the client to see more deeply and (2) to help
the client to learn how to see. Just as artists must learn how to see what
they wish to render, so must we as problem solvers learn to see what we
wish to create, enhance, or fix. We all need the feeling that we are in con
trol of our lives, yet we often feel out of control, victilns of other people's
actions or social conditions we cannot influence. If we cannot get a feeling
of control, we often blame ourselves instead of realizing that much of what
happens to u s is the result of forces and structures we are not aware of.
So1ne of these forces are the result of cultural assumptions that we have
learned and that now structure our thinking, but we have forgotten that they
were learned, not embedded in nature. Some of these forces are the result
of the social structures and systems in which we are embedded. Also, son1e
of them co1ne fro1n the structural complexity of our minds and personali
ties, from our unconscious, and fro1n the way our brains and bodies are put
together.
In the next two chapters I will review a number of concepts and
n1odels that have been helpful to me i n trying to understand what goes on
beneath the surface when two or more people are i n some kind of relation
ship. These "hidden forces" become especially relevant when one person is
trying to help another person. In Chapter 5 we focus first on what goes on
inside the head. Then in Chapter 6 I analyze the cultural forces that deter
mine the essential patterns and rules that govern face-to-face relationships
and explain some of the psychodynamics of the helping relationship that
were reviewed in Chapter 2.
5
Observation (0)
Observation should be the accurate registering through all of our
senses of what is actually occurring i n the environment. In fact, the
nervous system is proactive, programmed through many prior experi-
1 There are many models of this kind dealing variously with the learning cy
cle or with problem-solving cycles. The model presented here includes what many
leave out: the role of emotions in the total process.
86
Observation (0) 87
1
Intervention (I)
l
Judgment (J)
Figure 5 . 1
THE BASIC ORJI CYCLE
ences to filter data that come in. We see and hear more or less what
we "expect" or "anticipate" based on prior experience, and we block
out a great deal of i nformation that is potentially available if it does
not fit our expectations, preconceptions, and prejudgments. We do not
passively register information; we select out from the available data
what we are capable of registering and classifying, based on our lan
guage and culturally learned concepts as well as what we want and
need. To put it more dramatically, we do not think and talk about what
we see; we see what we are able to think and talk about.
Psychoanalytic and cognitive theory has shown us how exten·
sive perceptual distortion can be. The defensive mechanisms of de
nial (refusing to see certain categories of information as they apply to
ourselves) and projection (seeing in others what is actually operating
in ourselves) are perhaps the c learest examples. But it has also been
shown that our needs distort our perceptions, such as when our thirst
1nakes us see anything in the desert as an oasis. To deal with "reality,"
to strive for objectivity, to attempt to see how things really are (as
artists atte1npt to do when they want to draw or paint realistically), we
1nust understand and attempt to reduce the initial distortions that the
perceptual systern is capable of and likely to use.
Some psychologists relate. this "ability to see" to right brain
versus left brain functions, arguing that it is the left "critical" brain that
causes many kinds of misperception. That theory is consistent with
what 1nany art teachers argue, that we cannot draw better because we
do not actually see what we are drawing; we are drawing what we
think things should look like. 2 Similarly, some sports psychologists
2Good descriptions of "learning to see" can be found in Frank, 1973 and Ed
wards, 1979.
88 lntrapsychic Processes: ORJI
argue that our critical brain interferes with our "natural" ability to do
things, as when the tennis player convinces himself that he cannot
make a certain shot and consequently misses it. 3 To learn to observe,
then, is to learn about and overcome the traps to which a history of ex
perience and learning has exposed us. The consultant cannot deal with
reality if he or she cannot learn to perceive accurately what is going
on, and that ineans getting in touch with one's own history to identify
one's own predispositions, stereotypes, and preconceptions.
Reaction (R)
The inost difficult aspect of learning about our emotional reactions is
that we often do not notice them at all. We deny feelings or take them
so for granted that we, in effect, short-circuit the1n and move straight
i. nto judgments and actions. We inay be feeling anxious, angry, guilty,
einbarrassed, joyful, aggressive, or happy, yet we do not realize we
are feeling this way until someone asks us how we are feeling or we
take the tin1e to reflect on what is going on inside us.
Feelings are very much a part of every inoment of living, but
we learn early in life that there are many situations where feelings
should be controlled, suppressed, overco1ne, and in various other
ways deleted or denied. As we learn sex roles and occupational roles
and as we become socialized into a particular culture, we learn which
feelings are acceptable and which ones are not, when it is appropriate
to express feelings and when it i s not, when feelings are "good" and
when they are "bad."
In our culture we also learn that feel ings should not influence
judgments; that feelings are a source of distortion, and we are told not
to act impulsively on our feelings. But, paradoxically, we often end
up acting niost on our feelings when we are least aware of them, all
the while deluding ourselves that we are carefully acting only on
judg1nents. And we are often quite oblivious to the influences that our
feelings have on our judgments.
Forces we are unaware of cannot be controlled or managed. If
we can learn to identify our true feelings and what triggers then1, we
have a choice of whether or not to give in to those feelings. If we do
not know what they are or what causes them, we are de facto victi1ns
of them. It is not impulsiveness per se that causes difficulty, it is act-
ing on impulses that are not consciously understood and hence not
evaluated prior to the action that gets us into trouble. The major issue
around feelings, then, is to find ways of getting in touch with them so
that we can increase our areas of choice. It is essential for consultants
to be able to know what they are feeling, both to avoid bias in re
sponding and to use those feelings as a diagnostic indicator of what
inay be happening in the client relationship.
Judgment (J)
We are constantly processing data, analyzing information, evaluating,
and 1naking judgments. This ability to analyze prior to action is what
makes humans capable of planning sophisticated behavior to achieve
co1nplex goals and sustain action chains that take us years into the fu
ture. The capacity to plan ahead and to organize our actions accord
ing to plan is one of the most critical aspects of human intelligence.4
Being able to reason logically is, of course, essential. But all
of the analyses and judg1nents we engage in are worth only as 1nuch
as the data on which they are based . If the data we operate on is mis
perceived or our feelings distorted it, then our analysis and judg1nents
will be flawed. So it does little good to go through sophisticated plan
ning and analysis exercises if we do not pay attention to the manner
in which the information we use is acquired and what biases inay ex
ist i n it. Nor does analysis help us if we unconsciously bias our rea
soning toward our emotional reactions. It has been shown that even
under the best of conditions we are only capable of limited rationality
and make systematic cognitive errors, so we should at least try to
minimize the distortions in the initial information input.5 The most
i1nportant iinplication for consultants is to recognize from the outset
that our capacity to reason is limited and that it is only as good as the
data on which it is based.
4Elliot Jaques ( 1 976, 1 982) has noted that one of the ways that different lev
els of management can be distinguished is by the time horizon that they consider
when they plan and by the length of the time units over which they are given discre
tion. Thus, workers on the shop floor may have autonomy over minutes, hours, or
days. Low-level managers may have autonomy for days or weeks. Senior managers
plan for and have autonomy over months or years.
5Simon, 1 960; Tversky and Kahneman, 1 974; Nisbett and Ross, 1 980;
Carroll, J. and Payne, J .W. (eds.) 1976.
I
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f
I
I
It
90 Intrapsychic Processes: ORJI
Intervention (I)
Once we have made some kind of judgment, we act. The judgment
inay be no more than the "decision" to act on emotional impulse, but
that is a j udgn1ent nevertheless and it is dangerous to be unaware of
it. In other words, when we act impulsively, when we exhibit what are
called knee-jerk reactions, i t seems like we are short-circuiting the
rational judgment process. In fact, what we are doing is not short
circuiting but giving too much credence to an initial observation and
our emotional response to it. Knee-jerk reactions that get us into trou
ble are interventions that are judgments based on incorrect data, not
necessarily bad judgments. If someone is attacking me and I react
with instant counterattack, that may be a very valid and appropriate
intervention. But if I have misperceived and the person was not at
tacking 1ne at all, then my counterattack. inakes me look like the ag
gressor and may lead to a serious communication breakdown . A s a
consultant I have to remind inyself repeatedly that everything I say or
do is an intervention with consequences.
Let us examine a typical ex.ample that frequently occurs 1n
group meetings.
I find myse(f at a group meeting with one member, Steve, who has consistently
undermined me or disagreed with me in past meetings. I make a particular
point, and it is followed immediately by Steve saying some words pertaining
to my point. The cycle now may unfold as follows:
Observation-Steve is attacking me by disagreeing with my point.
What I may be unaware of is that I am perceiving what Steve said as dis
agreement because I expected it, and I am seeing disagreement as attack be
cause I also expected to be attacked.
Reaction-/ am anxious and consequently angry at always being dis
agreed with and attacked. I feel like really fighting back to make my position
very clear. What I may be unaware of is that my emotional reaction is now
based on the motives I attributed to Steve, not on what Steve 's motives may
actually have been. What I may also be unaware of is that my anxiety reac
tion to the perception of being attacked is valid but that there are other
possible ways of dealing with the anxiety besides getting angry and counter
attacking. I may not be aware that, in a sense, the anger is a .feeling that I
have chosen. It is not automatic.
Judgment-/ make the judgment that Steve must be competing with
nie for status in this group and I can not let him get away with putting me
Intervention (I) 91
down. I have to assert myse?f to protect 1ny position. What I am probably un
aware of at this point is how this entire seemingly logical conclusion is
premised on my initial interpretation of what I thought I saw and my partic
ular emotional response. If I now act on this judgment, I may or may not be
acting appropriately because I do not in fact know whether or not my initial
observation was correct.
Intervention-/ vigorously put down Steve's point, leaving him puz
zled and having to deal with his own ORJI cycle. If his response is in turn
unpredictable, I will not be able to figure out what happened because I am.
unaware of how my own preconception has led to an intervention that may
have nothing to do with Steve 's intentions.
In this case, Dave had the opportunity to make up for his ear
lier error and, as he became aware of how he misperceived the situa
tion and how this led to an inappropriate intervention, he could train
hi1nself to check on what he was observing before allowing himself
to respond "emotionally" in future situations. He discovered that
emotions are not automatic, that they are based on what we perceive,
and that if we can check our perceptions, we can also control our
emotions b y this process. Note, however, that often we do not have
second chances as Dave did. We do not discover our misperceptions
and possibly never learn why our actions did not produce the re
sponses we desired. The bigger lesson is to have a more realistic view
of the ORJI cycle in the first place and to develop our ability to "see"
and reflect on what we are seeing before we make judgments and leap
into action. Not only do consultants have to become aware of this dy
namic within their own minds, but they must help clients understand
how these processes may have led them to inappropriate behavior and
how to think more realistically about the relationship of perception
and thought to feelings and behavior.
External Event
- - -- ©
...,
f,--.
-
Expectations, Prejudgments I
�-0rz---...S- -�- - - - -
- - - - -
' ;J::
Observat � _
Reactio_
....
_
___
n _
(Volition (Cognition
Decision Analysis
Action) Evaluation)
New External
Event
Traps:
Q) Misperception
© Inappropriate emotional response
@ Rational analysis based on inconect data
© Intervention based on incorrect data
Figure 5.2
A MORE REALISTIC DEPICTION OF THE ORJI CYCLE
94 Intrapsychic Processes: ORJI
response. But in order to inake choices and decide what will be most
facilitative in a given situation, we need to know our biases.
Identify Cultural Assumptions in Judg1nent and Reason
Reasoning and making judgments is not a culture-free process. Cul
ture provides us with assumptions that tell us how to reason and what
conclusions to draw from what data. If we do not know what our as
sumptions are, we may reason correctly from our point-of-vie'-"' and
still make errors from the point-of-view of others. Such errors often
occur because of tacit assumptions about time and space. 6 For exam
ple, I might wish to have a "private" meeting with the client. In my
cultural setting, privacy might be assured if we can find a quiet cor
ner of a large office co1nplex, but 1ny client might define privacy as
being behind closed doors and out of anyone's sight. If I do not un
derstand his definition of privacy, I might not understand why he is ill
at ease when I try to talk to him i n the open office setting, even
though no one can hear us.
As another example, if in my culture being on time is a 1nark
of efficiency and respect for the busy schedule of others, I 1night be
offended if my client keeps me waiting for fifteen n1inutes past the
appointed time. In my client's culture, however, being fifteen minutes
late might be appropriate. He might assume that both of us would
keep others with subsequent appointn1ents waiting for as long as we
wished, and this is how he would sho·w his respect for the importance
of our meeting. These kinds of cross-cultural traps are so pervasive
and difficult to identify that one :must be careful in any helping
process to be working with others who understand the local culture.
For example, I once did a seminar in Mexico for two groups in a bank. One
of the managers was my client. Partway into the seminar he asked me to de
scribe various kinds of organization development interventions. After I
described an intergroup exercise in which each group meets to develop its
own self-iniage as well as its image of the other group, both my client and
one of his colleagues asked me to show them how to actually go through it. I
reasoned that they wanted a clearer illustration by trying it out and was
not aware that they wanted this exercise to help them resolve a major issue
between theni.
6Good examples can be found i n Hall ( J959, 1966, 1976, and 1 983) and
Schein ( 1 992).
How to Avoid Traps 97
even answering her own question or going ahead with her story in
a way that suggests she did not really want or expect an answer
fro1n me.
Conclusion
If consultants are to be helpful, they must intervene in situations. And
one cannot not intervene, because silence is itself an intervention. If
those interventions are to be appropriate and helpful, they must be
based on accurate observation, appropriate emotional responses, and
a reasoning process that mirrors (or at least takes into account to
some degree) what the client observes and how the client reasons. All
of this requires some self-insight, and such self-insight is best ac
quired by maintaining a genuine spirit of inquiry toward oneself and
others. Self-insight does not come about automatically. It requires
conceptual tools such as the ORJI model, a spirit of inquiry, and re
flection and analysis time by oneself and with helpful others.
To build observational and reflection skills one must discipline
oneself to take the time to learn to see and to think about what one is
seeing. Just as the artist must study the characteristics of what she is
going to draw or paint, the helper inust study the clients, the situation,
and her own responses to it in order to form as clear a picture as pos
sible of the realities. Careful listening and actively picturing things in
one's mind are important elements of this active inquiry process, in
that it focuses our vision and controls irrelevant distractions. Access
ing one's ignorance by actively figuring out what one does not know
is, in the end, one of the most important process tools available.
How to Avoid Traps 99
required someone unemotional, nor did it occur to the group that their in
ability to find Europeans to promote to this level was a direct consequence
of the way they defined the requirements of the job. The group was trapped
in two cultural assumptions that they could not bring to consciousness:
( 1) that to be a senior manager requires you to be unemotional, and (2) that
European managers who were more emotional were less competent than
their unemotional American counterparts.
I was not expected to intervene in this process, so I could only ob
serve what was going on. It is interesting to speculate, howeve1; what I might
or should have said if the group had asked me to make an observation on
their process. What would have been a helpful intervention in this situation?
Face-to-Face Dynalllics:
Cultural Rules of Interaction
and CoDlinunication
101
102 Face-to-Face Dynamics
Table 6.1
SIX FUNCTIONS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
2 . To figure out what others are all about, to get to know thern.
We also learn early in childhood that others are a source of
satisfaction and threat, and, perhaps most of all, a mystery.
We try to establish communication in order to demystify
them, to understand them, and to determine from that under
standing how we should react. This theme is heavily used in
stories about visiting aliens and the intrinsic difficulties of
communicating with them.
3. To make sense of anibiguous situations by sharing percep
tions and thoughts. Life presents us with a constant flow of
new data that require deciphering. Once we have a shared lan
guage with others, we use that language to collectively figure
out or make sense of what is happening. Is it going to rain to
day? Who should I vote for? Is that department threatening us
or not? What did Jane mean when she said what she said?
What do the falling sales figures mean? If we analyze the talk
between people we find that a great percentage of it is devoted
to joint sense-making, to a joint process of figuring out and
defining the situation so that we know how to operate in it.
4. To gain advantage by structuring situations to our own
needs, to persuade, sell, convince, teach. We communicate
not only to make sense but to structure situations to our own
advantage. We often know what we want so we communi
cate to make it happen as best we can. We may use formal
processes of rhetoric or manipulate the situation in various
ways to achieve hidden agendas, but in all cases we are us
ing communication of son1e sort to achieve our goals.
The Role of Language 103
' Excellent reviews of these rules of interaction can be found i n the writings
of Erving Goffman ( 1 959, 1 967) and John Van Maanen ( 1 979).
Social Justice: Bas;c Communiction Must Be a Fair Exchange 105
What our language tells us is that the n1odels that best explain
a great deal of what goes on between people focus on ( 1 ) social eco
nomics and social justice, and (2) social theater or drama. As we learn
to perform on various life stages, we learn what is an appropriate actor
and audience behavior and we learn what kinds of exchanges are fair
or unfair. Our emotional responses are very much determined by what
we regard to be situationally appropriate and what we regard to be
"equitable" or "just" social exchanges.
The relevance of all of this to the consultant or manager de
rives from the fact that help must be provided within the constraints
i1nposed by these cultural rules. Even the definition of what is helpful
is culturally detennined, so the helper cannot function unless she
knows a good deal about the culture in which she is working. Recall
the se1ninar in Mexico (pp. 96) in which my primary client was hurt
because I did not understand the rules by which he and his colleagues
were operating and, once they switched to Spanish, I could not even
observe what was going on. Of necessity then, the discussion in this
chapter focuses on Western and U.S. culture.
n1ary, one of the major hidden forces that governs human interaction
is our tacit sense of what is a just and fair exchange.
Helping as Dra1na
One of the complexities of consulting and helping derives from the
fact that the idea of "helping" is not well defined or scripted in our
society. There are many definitions and concepts of what it means to
"help." To n1ake 1natters even more ambiguous, helping is one of
those dra1nas that is defined more by audience response than by the
script-writer or lead actor (i.e. the consultant) . In other words, help is
defined by whether or not the client feels helped, not by whether or
not the helper asserts that he or she has provided help. Aspiring
helpers must therefore vary their own behavior according to the
stream of feedback signals they get from their audiences, the clients,
and they 1nust be prepared to rewrite their scripts constantly. Helping
involves "audience participation," and the helper needs help from the
audience, the client, to figure out how to be helpful.
Managers and consultants may have general principles in mind
when they intend to be helpful, but they have to be innovative in ap
plying these principles in a particular situation. Helping is a perfor
mance art more akin to improvisational theater than to formal drama;
but as in all arts, the aesthetic elements introduced by the individual
artist still have to be consistent with basic principles of design, color,
and harmony. To pursue the analogy, helping as theater of improvisa
tion requires not only the basic skills of acting and knowing something
about audience response but also improvisational skills and spontane
ity. As pointed out earlier, the consultant must "go with the flow" but,
at the sa1ne time, be prepared to "seize targets of opportunity."
108 Face-to-Face Dynamics
2It is no accident that one of the great consultants of all time, Richard Beck
hard, was a stage manager i n his early career.
The Sacredness of the Person: The Dynamics of Face Work 109
A vivid example of double humiliation resulting from not knowing the local
cultural rules occurred when I tried to purchase some stamps at a local
small-town post office in Provence. I was patiently standing in line, and just
when it was my turn to ask the clerk for stamps, a man came into the post of
.flee, walked up to the window, interrupted me, and made a request of his
own. I expected the clerk to ignore him and deal with my request, but, to my
horror, she gave her complete attention to him and processed his request for
several minutes before returning to mine. Needless to say, Ifelt upset a t this
seeming violation of the rules, but when I recounted the event to 1ny French
colleague later in the day, he smiled and said: "Ed, the situation is even
worse than you imagined. By letting this man get the clerk's attention, and
by not reasserting your claims, you were demonstrating to everyone in
the post office your low sense of self-esteem. If you had put more value on
1 10 Face-to-Face Dynamics
yourself, you would have interrupted the man and.forcefully insisted that you
be served.first." So much.for trying to manage a situation effectively in a cul
ture in which the rules of.face are slightly different.
4See Schein, 1 9 6 1 , 1 978 and Van Maanen & Schein, 1979. Deliberate de
struction of self also occurs in certain forms of therapy and in coercive persuasion of
the sort experienced by prisoners of war and civilian prisoners during the Chinese
communist revolution (Schein, 196 I ).
The Sacredness of the Person: The Dynamics of Face Work 113
worthy in the relationship. As any helper has learned over and over
again, only after much listening and being supportive will the real
problem surface. From this perspective, the client's response is a nor-
111al and expected one, one the helper must be prepared to accept.
If the listener shows i1npatience, laughs, implies that the client
is silly or stupid for not having figured out what to do, or if he gets an
gry at the client for having the proble1n, he is, in one way or another,
humiliating the client, causing him to lose face. Given the cultural
rules of face, he has then given the client license to express the anger
caused by his humiliation and loss of face. The client then feels enti
tled to get back at the helper any way he can. Solving the problem now
becon1es secondary to gaining revenge and, thereby, re-equilibrating
the situation.
None of this is likely to be conscious. Cultural rules are so
over-learned and automatically applied that most of the processes de
scribed happen outside of awareness. The humiliated client finds the
consultant's suggestion silly or off target, or he finds hi1nself telling
the consultant all the reasons why the solution will not work, without
necessarily recognizing that he is doing this because he is angry at be
ing humiliated and needs to get back at the consultant, not because
the reco1nmended solution is wrong.
In the managerial relationship, we have to additionally consider
the rules of deference and demeanor. It is easy for superiors to humili
ate subordinates, and bosses should not later be surprised at the depth
of anger the subordinates inay feel toward the1n. Sitnilarly, subordi
nates who unwittingly cause their bosses to lose face should not be
surprised at the extent of the repercussions in the forn1 of poor assign
ments, lost promotion opportunities, and verbal abuse to which they
inay be subjected. One sociological reason why "whistle blowers" are
so often punished is that in the process of revealing what may have
happened in their organization, they i nevitably threaten the face of var
ious superiors. In these cases, the requirements of efficient task per
formance n1ay tun counter to the cultural rules of face maintenance.
Adopting the expert or the doctor role in a helping situation in
creases the risk that the client will feel humiliated and will lose face.
This has happened most in my own experience with diagnoses or pre
scriptions that turn out to be things the client has already thought of and
rejected. The client feels foolish and put down by my suggestions be
cause they imply that the client did not or could not have thought of
them hi rnself. It is more helpful to start out in the process consultation.
n1ode because it assumes that the client has the capacity to help herself
114 Face-to-Face Dynaniics
One of the dramatic differences between Ralston, the Allen Company's divi
sion manager, and Stone, the Billings Company's founder and president, is
their totally different self-presentation. Ralston is a man of great pride. /-le
takes a very paternal role toward his subordinates. He is not easy to confront,
because he makes high claims for himself in interpersonal situations and ex
pects considerable amounts of deference. He presents himself as a teacher
and communicates this by giving long speeches at department meetings.
Ifpeople disagree with him, he goes to great pains to explain his po
sition and to adhere to it. On the surface he espouses participation, but his
manner, body language, and style of communication often send signals to his
subordinates that his mind is already made up. To challenge him openly,
therefore, runs the risk of making him lose face. Consequently, his subordi
nates "work around him " rather than directly through hini, and often are
frustrated because they cannot figure out how to get a practical point across
when it disagrees with Ralsto n 's position.
The relationship between Ralston and his department heads was
viewed by most of theni as inequitable and they often felt unfairly treated.
They felt that they accepted and met the challenge of Ralston 's tough targets
but that he did not give them enough credit. Instead of rewarding them and
giving them a bit of rest, they felt he kept piling on more new programs. Froni
their point-of-view there was no way to win. They felt that they were always
disappointing their leader somehow or other.
The Sacredness of the Person: The Dynamics of Face Work 1 15
Such .feelings of inequity and inadequacy are, in the long run, dan
gerous, so one of the primary goals of the consultation effort in the Allen Co.
was to resolve this issue, either by having Ralston demand less or by having
him reward success more. I was able to raise these issues with him because
he treated me with great respect and deference and .frequently asked/or help
andfeedback. Nevertheless, the issues had to be raised in such a way that he
always .felt valued and appreciated.for what he regarded to be his great lead
ership skill. He only changed his behavior, for example becoming less puni
tive, when he saw that punitive behavior was not necessary to achieve his
goals. He could change some of his behavior if he felt his ego and social
worth remained intact, that he was still the great leader he fancied himse�f
to be.
In -contrast, Stone, the founder of the Billings Co., presents himself
as one of the boys, easy to confront, easy to argue with, ready to get into a
scrap with anyone, but always powerful enough by virtue of his position to
say, "Enough, I've made my decision." He is able to clearly communicate
when he has had enough, though his subordinates sonietimes complain that
he does not sufficiently explain his decisions once they have been made.
Stone maintains less distance between himself and his subordinates
and is willing to spend a lot of time listening to others in meetings. He views
himself as a process-oriented manager and always asked me after the meet
ings whether I had any feedback that would help him to be more effective in
that role. Deference rituals were much less visible in the Billings Company,
therefore, though there was evidence that there were areas that Stone had de
clared as undiscussable, so the group never challenged him in those areas.
Because of Stone 's self-presentation it was possible to give him quite
direct feedback and criticize his behavior. On the other hand, he felt equally
free to criticize others, often in public, which changed many of the rules of
face work in the meetings. Public humiliation of subordinates was common
and became normalized by being rationalized as "not really being humilia
tion." You could be highly criticized in .front of your peers yet not lose status
because it meant that Stone cared enough about you to want to improve your
pe1formance. It was a much more serious loss offace to be ignored by Stone,
to not be valued enough to become a target of criticism!!!
If one attended meetings in both organizations one noticed immedi
ately how much attention was given by group members to the maintenance
of each others 'face. One mechanism in the Allen Co. was to agree to let dis
agreements stand. The agreement to disagree rather than to resolve issues
became a way to avoid the risk of making someone lose face by forcing him
to back down. When the Allen Co. 's department heads met without Ralston
they were niore confrontive of one another and resolved issues, but they
managed face by not going out on a limb. They presented their ideas as trial
1 16 Face-to-Face Dynamics
balloons or asked for recommendations from task forces so that no one 's
own face was on the line with respect to a given decision. The group had
learned how to manage task conflict without its becoming personally threat
ening to face.
Meetings in the Billings Co., on the other hand, were vivid examples
of high human drama, sometimes comedies, sonietimes tragedies, but always
highly charged. Stone and the key executive vice president were the main ac
tors and the rest of the group was often put into more of an audience role.
Confrontation, argument, and putting each other down was the norm, with
Stone taking the lead role. Hours would be spent after each meeting trying
to decipher the messages and licking wounds. Much of this post-meeting
sense making was restoring face that had been lost and rationalizing that the
publi c humiliation was really an attempt by Stone to help them. They didn 't
like what was going on but did not know how to handle the situation any d�f-
ferently. Stone 's strong personality and confrontive style trained the group
mem.bers as well as me to play by his rules of communication, but the more
traditional cultural rules operated in the post-meeting meetings where rela
tionships, face, and status were painstakingly restored.
Are we here to give the boss a chance to tell us his ideas? Often this
process of "defining the situation" is not verbalized until someone
raises the question "What are we here for?" or "What is our task?" The
definition of the situation goes beyond specifying the goals or task to
be achieved. It is the complete set of perceptions pertaining to one's
own role and others' roles in the situation, its duration, its boundaries,
and the norms that will govern it. Obviously, what we say and how
we say it will be largely governed by how we define the situation. One
major reason why relationships or groups have com1nunication diffi
culties is that the participants come with different definitions of the
situation and do not discover this or remedy it. A common definition
of the situation is a prerequisite for almost any kind of effective group
action.
and less-further confirming for the others his lack of potential con
tribution-and gradually assumes the role of a noncontributor.
In both cases, the final outcome is the result of initial expecta
tions that produce a certain communication style, which in turn leads
to confirmation of the initial expectations. The danger is that the ini
tial expectations inay have little to do with the actual potential contri
bution of A and B to the group product; yet A will be a high
contributor and B will be a low contributor. Only by beco1ning sensi
tive to this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, can the group protect it
self from getting a mix of contributions that are unrelated to actual
ability.
A key role for the process consultant is to ask herself, when
she observes different rates of participation and contribution to the
group, whether this accurately reflects ability · to contribute or is the
result of circular processes of the sort described. If the consultant
finds evidence for the latter, she must help the group reassess its own
operations, reexamine its stereotypes of who can contribute what, and
build norms that pennit the low-confidence contributor to gain confi
dence by being listened to by others. For exan1ple, she may repeat B ' s
point herself or redirect the group's attention to B when they gloss
over it.
Conclusion
Cultural rules of interaction are the most elusive but, at the same ti1ne,
potentially the most powerful detenninants of whether or not a viable
helping relationship will be established. Clients see1n to feel best
when they feel they have been helped without being put down. Their
dignity is intact and, in fact, they feel stronger after the helping
process than before. When we consider managers as helpers, this
point beco1nes even clearer. Subordinates co n s i st en t ly prefer a boss
who makes them feel that they can solve their own problems, who
will coach the1n and help them but not do it for them. A boss who is
too smart and skillful and who always displays his superiority with
his subordinates will get results, but he will be resented and, in the
end, will have a weaker and dependent organization.
Maintaining one another's face is central to societal function
ing. If someone loses face in a relationship, not only does that person
feel e1nba1Tassed, humiliated, and ulti1nately vengeful, but the person
who caused the loss of face shows hi1nself to be unreliable in the hu-
1nan dra1na. Someone who cannot be relied on to pJ ay his proper role
Conclusion 121
122
Intervention in the Service of Learning 123
have much less experience with process events such as chronic interrup
tions, some members using up too much air time, n1en1bers leaving the
roon1 at key times or drifting off the topic of discussion, and so on. Typi
cally we just co1nplain about such events with the general statement of
"committees are no good." We do not have the intervention and design
skills to remedy these situations.
In terms of structure a dramatic example is the automatic reliance
on "inajority rule," the tacit assu1nption that a majority 's will should pre
vail and that the minority should be good scouts and go along, even if the
vote was 8 to 7 . I have also observed a structural assumption i n Western
groups that everyone should get their fai r share of air time and is obligated
to participate, reflected in the chairperson's willingness to call on people.
The tacit cultural assumptions are that we have the right to equal air ti1ne,
that people will prepare for meetings, that chairperson's have the right to
call on people, and so on. Such assumptions also tend to arise around the
timing of meetings, their length, the kinds of decision processes that will
be used, and so on.
In the chapters that follow I have incorporated the simplifying mod
els that have been most useful to me in figuring out what goes on when I
participate i n and observe a group in an organization going about its work.
Chapter 8 deals with group task processes, how groups tackle problem solv
ing and decision making. Chapter 9 focuses on the interpersonal processes
in groups and how groups manage their internal relationships i n the service
of n1aintenance and growth. Chapter 1 0 discusses how various of these
processes come together i n the concept of dialogue, and the role that dia
logue can play in facilitating learning.
The reader should view all of these rnodels, the principles, and the
suggested techniques of focused deliberate i nterventions as the building
blocks for developing helping relationships in ever inore complex situations
as larger groups, organizational units, or parts of larger systen1s such as
com1nunities become involved as clients. These concepts and models build
on each other so it is i mportant to read first about relationships and groups
before trying to understand the complex dyna1nics of larger systems.
7
CoITiinunication and
Deliberate Feedback
In Chapter 6 I described the hidden forces that derive from tacit cul
tural assumptions about face-to-face relationships and personal fil
ters. These tacit assumptions guide and constrain the com1nunication
process. But within those limits there is an enormous range of choices
in when, to whom, and how people will communicate. Those choices
have consequences for how relationships and groups evolve and must,
therefore, be understood by consultants, managers, and anyone else
who is trying to build and manage helping relationships. In particular,
helpers must understand the hidden dynamics in trying to develop
co1nmunication processes that will enhance learning processes. One
of the most fundamental of these learning processes is to give and re
ceive deliberate feedback. Deliberate feedback is a particular form of
altering what might be thought of as the "level" or depth of interper
sonal communication, so we will begin by presenting the "Johari
Window" 1 as a simplifying model of such levels.
Levels of Communication
As n1ost of us know from observing our own behavior, not only do we
tend to react to the manifest content of what another person says to
us, but we also interpret various other subtle cues to get at the "real"
meaning of the message-body language, tone of voice, inflection,
emotional intensity, message form, and timing. The same message
carries both a manifest and a latent meaning. Occasionally, these
meanings contradict each other. One simple example i s the person
who issues an invitation with "Come over to our house anytime," but
1This analysis is based on the model Qriginally proposed by Joe Luft and
Harry Ingram, hence the name "Johari Window."
1 25
126 Communication and Deliberate Feedback.
KNOWN TO SELF
_ __.A.
_ __
r '
2 1
'-
- -- _
'V' __.J
UNKNOWN TO SELF
Figure 7.1
THE PARTS OF A PERSON
Adapted fron1 J . Luft, "The Johari Window," Hum. Rel. Tr. News 5 , l 9 6 1 ,
pp. 6-7.
manager, but then gets upset if others do not notice and praise his
work.
In the process of growing up, all of us have been rewarded for
being certain kinds of people and punished for being other kinds.
Much of this learning reflects gender and social class cultural norms.
Typically, a young boy learns it is all right to have aggressive feelings
but not all right to feel fear or tenderness when with other boys. As a
result, the boy begins to reject feelings of tenderness as not being part
of hi1nself. He suppresses the feelings or refuses to recognize them as
his own when they occur, even though they may be quite visible to
other people. How often have we described a gruff, tough inan as be
ing really very tender? We see the tender behavior, but the person
cannot allow himself to see his own tender side. He must continue to
deny it by maintaining a gruff exterior. Some men become aggressive
in direct proportion to the amount of tenderness they feel for the peo
ple around them.
On the other hand, many young girls learn early in life that cer
tain kinds of aggressive feelings are not appropriate. Even though they
experience aggression, they learn to suppress or deny the feeling. If a
128 Communication and Deliberate Feedback
woman has learned that aggressive behavior is not acceptable, she 1nay
become studiously considerate and tender in direct proportion to the
a1nount of aggression she fee] s but i s unwilling to admit to herself.
Each of us has feelings and traits that we believe are not part of us; but
we are blind to the fact that we co1nmunicate inany such feelings to
others. They may "leak out" and are visible to others.
Quadrant 4 is our truly unconscious self, which each of us and
others are unaware of. Examples of this self would be deeply repressed
feelings and i1npulses, hidden talents or skills, and untested potentiali
ties. For our purposes, it is important to distinguish three areas of the
unconscious self: ( 1 ) repressed knowledge or feelings based on psy··
chological defenses, (2) tacit knowledge, areas of unconsciousness
that are easily recovered once we reflect on then1 (such as cultural as
sumptions fro1n which we operate); and (3) hidden potentials, areas of
knowledge, skill, and feeling that are latent because they have never
been required or elicited. The presence of this area reveals itself under
emotionally extreme circumstances or when we allow ourselves to be
come genuinely creative. When the consultant attempts to help a client
decipher what she is truly after, it i s son1etimes relevant for the con-·
sultant to create conditions where such hidden areas are encouraged to
surface. However, when we tamper with the unconscious, we must
recognize that we are getting into private areas that we should not ex
plore unless we are clinically trained and the client really wants to get
into such inatters with the consultant.
The i mportant point to recognize i s that the messages we send
or do not send reflect the complexity of our psychological make-up.
We not only consciously inanage our face work, but we leak mes
sages of which we are unaware, and we conceal messages that n1ight
be very relevant to others if we chose to reveal them. To examine
these dynamics, we can use the Johari Window to illustrate the face
to-face interaction between two people. (Fig. 7 .2)
2 l l 2
A
4 3 3 4
Figure 7.2
TYPES OF MESSAGES IN A TWO-PERSON COMMUNICATION
SITUATION
does not accurately perceive how I behave and/or who cannot co1n
n1unicate what he perceives will be of little help to me.
The consultant/helper can play a critical role i n facilitating
such learning by ( 1 ) helping clients to understand the dyna1nics of the
feedback process, (2) training clients to give and receive feedback,
and (3) being a role 1nodel of how to manage this process so that face
is not threatened or lost. The case at the end of this chapter illustrates
how delicate this process needs to be.
cultural norms can be safely suspended. But equally, it falls to the sub
ordinate to seek deliberate feedback when the routine signals are un
clear. If both are motivated, there is some possibility of creating a
conversation from which learning through deliberate feedback occurs.
Once the stage is set, there are still a number of principles which
insure that the threat to face will be minimized and communication clar
ity will be maximized. Because of the dynamics of the ORJI process
and all of the filters that operate in communication, extra care must be
taken by both giver and receiver to insure that the right message gets
across. The guidelines or principles described below are designed to
insure such c larity. They are stated primarily in terms of the superior
subordinate relationship but are applicable in all helping relationships.
and what the client is trying to achieve. Only if my feedback fits into
that scenario should I feel free to offer it.
" Yo u are too aggressive " (negative, vague, general) vs. "/ have observed
you shouting other people down when they are trying to express their own
views " (descriptive, precise, specific).
" You don 't handle your people well " (negative, general) vs. " You don 't in
volve your subordinates in making decisions, and you don 't give them a
chance to express their own views " (negative, specific) or "l have noticed
that your people are more productive when you involve them in decisions
and listen to their points-of-view (positive, specific).
" You need to show more initiative " (negative, general) vs. "Instead of wait
ing for me to discover that your costs are overrunning, why don 't you set up
your own systems for finding this out and correct it before it goes too far "
(neutral, specific).
The key to semantic clarity is specificity. The more general the co1n
ment, whether positive or negative, the more l i kely it is to be misun
derstood. The more the feedback can be anchored in behavior that both
the giver and receiver have observed, the less likely it is to be misun
derstood. Another way of saying this is that feedback should deal pri
marily with 1nalleable behavior so that the receiver can do something
about what he has been told. On the other hand, if some stable charac
teristic of the person prevents him from attaining goals he desires, it
may on occasion be necessary for someone to tell him this rather than
allowing him to live with illusions and unrealistic expectations.
Constructive Motives.
Another problem with deliberate feedback has to do with the per
ceived motivation of .the feedback giver and receiver. If the recipient
believes that the giver is genuinely interested in helping, she is more
likely to listen and pay attention than i f she doubts or mistrusts the
giver's motives. We have all had the experience of feeling angry with
someone and, as a way of expressing the anger, saying, "Let me give
you some feedback." Needless to say, the receiver senses that the
giver's needs are the ones being served.
Lack of clarity about the receiver's motives is equally a poten
tial problem. What incentive is there for the giver to make the effort
if she believes that the receiver is not listening, only wants reassur
ance, or in some other way signals lack of motivation to learn
136 Communication and Deliberate Feedback
fron1 the feedback? Again, the following examples will clarify what
is involved.
" You should motivate your subordinates to control their costs n'iore because
this quarter we have again gone beyond our budget" (the boss wants the sub
ordinate to improve the performance of the next layer down, but the suborch
natefeels that the boss is only working his own .financial needs) vs. "Basically
the operation is going well, but I continue to worry about the fact that we are
again overrunning our budget. What suggestions do you have for getting your
subordinates to be more cost-conscious?" (the boss is appreciative, makes his
ownfeelings clear, andfocuses on the spec�fic issue with a specific question).
"I think you need to learn to handle customers better" (the boss niay per
ceive the subordinate to be a person of high potential who has to overcome
only one area of weakness, but the subordinate may perceive herse(f to be
generally failing and therefore become defensive) vs. " You are already very
effective and could improve that effectiveness even more if you concentrated
on learning how to handle customers better" (the boss makes clear her mo
tive to make already good peiformance even better).
"I could get you only a 2 percent raise this year because things are gener
ally lean in the company" (the boss is trying to be truthful but is vague; the
subordinate may conclude that he is being subtly told that he is only an av
erage pe1former and become demoralized) vs. " Your performance overall
was excellent this last year, and I wish I could reward it with money, but the
company has had a generally lean year, so no one got more than a 2 percent
raise " (the boss is being specific, puts the subordinate performance into the
proper context, and expresses appreciation).
at all , thus making all of the effort to give negative feedback see1n
ingly a waste of time. But if the boss really has a negative evaluation
that influences her handling of the subordinate, she is putting the sub
ordinate into a position of having to guess why there have been no
pro1notions, good raises, or good assignments for hi1n.
The solution here, as i n the previous scenarios, is to avoid
vague generalities and focus on clear, specific behavioral examples of
what led to the negative evaluation. For exa1nple, I can accept criti
cism of some specific behavior in a specific situation, but I find it
much harder to accept criticis1n of my traits and more general charac
teristics. If my behavior is being criticized, I can assess for myself
how much of it is due to the i1nmediate circu1nstances and learn how
to avoid such circumstances, or, if I conclude that it is due to my per
sonal traits, I can decide whether to try to change them or whether I
a1n fundamentally misn1atched with the job. But that has to be 1ny de
cision, based on clear feedback.
If the giver of feedback criticizes my traits or personality, n1y
self-in1age and self-esteem become involved, and I cannot readily
change general parts of my personality. Hence I will resist or deny the
criticism. On the other hand, if the negative feedback deals with some
concrete behavior that both the giver and receiver have witnessed, the
giver can express his own feelings about the behavior and his evalua
tion of it, and the receiver can avoid ego involve1nent. In other words,
if my boss is angry at nie, this may be a problem for me, but if he is
angry at something specific that I did, I may get so1ne new insights
from that feedback. Some examples of how to give negative criti
cisn1s using these guidelines follow.
" We need more teani players at higher levels in this company, and your per
formance so far has made me doubt whether you want to be or can be
enough of a team, player " (negative, general, and attributes motives and ca
pacities to the receiver) vs. "My problem in seeing you move ahead into
higher levels of this company is that whenever you get into a group, you im
mediately seem to want to take over, like in the XYZ committee. And when
you were on the ABC task.force, the group never made its best possible con
tribution because your loyalty to your department m.ade the discussions into
win-Lose debates. When I see you putting down others that way, it makes me
angry, and I worry about whether or not you can learn enough new behav
iors to m.ove ahead in the company" (negative and judgmental, but specific
so that the basis of the boss's anger is clear).
138 Communication and Deliberate Feedback
" You really lack initiative; you are just not aggressive enough for this kind
of work " (deals with general traits that may be hard to change and gives no
spec(fic data on what the boss means by initiative or aggressiveness) vs.
"Several things have concerned me about your perfonnance this past yea1:
When we got stuck on the ABC project, you seemed willing to let matters f
E
drift instead of coming up with some proposals for how to confront the prob I
lems and niove forward. When the other division challenged the direction
you were going, you backed off instead of showing them why your solutioll
was the right one. I have seen both of these patterns on other projects and
am concerned about the lack of initiative and aggressiveness that is implied
by such behavior" (keeps the general attributes, but gives the behavioral
data that led to them).
" You really blew it at the last sales meeting; we almost had it sewed up until
you stuck in your oar and made the client back off" (evaluates the whole
person based on one observation) vs. " When you brought up that XYZ
issue at the last sales meeting, I thought you really blew it; we almost had it
sewed up until your comments were made, and they seemed to make the
client back off" (the emphasis is shifted to the person 's behavior, and the
giver softens his evaluation by making it his own opinion rather than an ab
solute judgment).
havior was inappropriate or "bad." The same logic applies for posi
tive feedback. Saying that some of your behavior delighted me or
made ine proud is far more valuable to the learning process than just
saying "You did a good job."
The second implication is that the giver should consciously at
tribute the observations, emotional reactions, and judgments to her
self and not allow them to become vague generalizations. The
implications are subtle in that they focus on a small difference in
feedback behavior. I can say "You are great" (or "You are no good")
which makes iny judgment a universal statement, or I can say "I think
you are great" (or "/ think you are no good"). In trying to be more
specific, I can say "When you challenged the client you blew it" or I
can say "When you challenged the client it made me feel angry be
cause it see1ned like he started to back off; I really felt you had blown
it at that point."
It is important for the giver to own the feedback in order to
inake it discussible and a source of potential learning. I mpersonal
generalities are demeaning because they remove the rationalization
that it may be just the giver's idiosyncratic reaction. Generalities in1-
ply that the giver has committed herself to a final judgment that can
not be challenged or explored. A general judgment also implies that it
has been tested with others and is a final conclusion rather than the
giver's immediate reaction.
giver should own his own feelings and reactions rather than resorting
to impersonal generalities, and both giver and receiver should be psy
chologically ready for a feedback discussion.
To recapitulate, whether we are considering the boss doing per
formance appraisal or the consultant inquiring about a client's situation,
everything the helper does is de facto an intervention. The consultant is
providing feedback all the time, even when she is being silent. The
choice, then, is when, how, and in what fonn to escalate to deliberate
feedback. When and how is it appropriate to interrupt the "normal"
flow of inquiry and set the stage for a different level of communication
based on the suspension of some of our norms of face work? Or, to put
the question another way in terms of the forms of inquiry discussed in
Chapter 3 , when is it appropriate to switch from pure or di agnostic in
quiry to confrontive inquiry because confrontive inquiry is a form of
deliberate feedback, albeit delivered in a very low-key manner?
There is no clear and simple answer to this question. As the re
lationship between consultant and client evolves, the consultant must
be perpetually diagnosing the situation internally and calibrating how
"ready" the c l ient is for more confrontive kinds of interventions.
Clearly, one cue is when the client asks for direct input. Another cue
is when there are enough data on the table, so to speak, to give the
consultant confidence that the client can see for herself what may be
going on. The more the consultant can link the feedback to behavior
that both have witnessed, the more likely it is that the feedback will
be accepted and learned from . In either case, one must presume that
the conversation between consultant and client has reached the level
where there is a fairly good mutual understanding of each other's as
sumptions and goals.
At the beginning of the chapter I summarized a model of two
person communication that reveals why deliberate feedback is neces
sary and yet difficult. We need such feedback in order to remove
so1ne of our blind spots, to learn how we impact others, and to dis
cover what signals we send that we may not even be aware of. At the
same time, cultural rules dictate that the other person will conceal re
actions to the signals we send. The dilemma of creating a deliberate
feedback situation, then, is for the two parties to find a way to sus
pend the cultural norms of face work sufficiently to allow opening up
son1e of what we conceal. I t takes both parties to create such new
norms, and it implies a high level of mutual trust. Deliberate feedback
is, therefore, a type of communication from which much can be
learned, but it must be carefully managed.
142 Communication and Deliberate Feedback
Setting the stage for feedback is not always a carefully planned process. I
was nieeting with the top management committee of the Billings Company
on a regular monthly basis, usually for one or two days at a time to discuss
major strategic and operational issues in an "off-site " setting. Stone, the
founder and CEO, usually dominated the agenda of these meetings by ;ntro
ducing topics that he wanted to discuss even if they were not on the formal
agenda. In the middle of the first day of one of these meetings, he announced
that he thought it would be a good idea if the eight members of the group
gave each other some feedback on how they were doing their job and how
they could improve their situations.
The moment Stone made his suggestion, the tension in the room shot
up because of the mutual recognition that he was expecting to get feedback
as well. Given his personality and emotionality group members could not
calibrate how safe it would be to tell him anything at all, much less anything
that was critical. My own tension shot up when Stone turned to me and said:
"Ed, with your experience in training groups, why don 't you suggest how we
should go about giving each other feedback." It was said in a tone that would
not have made it easy to suggest postponing the whole exercise, so I.felt on
the hook to suggest something that would be "safe."
In those moments when the consultant is "on the hook," one hopes
one 's intuition will come through. My main concern was that the group not
get into recriminations about past behavior so I suggested that the best way
to go through the exercise was to take each person at a time and discuss how
his particular job could be performed more effectively in the future, i.e. in
the next 12 months, to fit best into the company's overall strategy. The logic
to suggesting ''future " behavior was that criticism could be kept implicit, al
lowing face saving. If the Finance VP was told "Joe, in the next twelve
months we think you should work more closely with the product lines to help
them manage their inventories," this statement would enable them to avoid
saying bluntly what they felt-"Joe, you really screwed us up last year by re
vealing all those audits of inventory problems before we had a chance to fix
them. " Joe had been too much of a cop and not enough of a helper and they
resented it, but Joe could not have accepted that message directly.
As each member of the group had his "turn in the barrel," I observed
the careful and sensitive way in which negative critical remarks were made
through the medium of suggestions for the future. This process was espe
cially crucial in talking to Stone himself. He insisted on his turn in the barrel
and listened carefully, especially to comments about being less critical of
subordinates in public arenas at future meetings. We managed to get through
Summary and Conclusions 143
(30 minutes)
This exercise works best in a group setting where there are at least 1 5
or more participants.
1 . Following a brief presentation of the J ohari Window, ask
each participant to take out two blank sheets of paper. Do
not put names on the paper.
2. On sheet one, write one or more things that you are aware
of in yourself but deliberately and consciously conceal from
others. Since the sheets are anonymous, feel free to write
whatever you feel like. (Concealed self)
3 . On the second sheet, write down one or more things that
you see in others that you are pretty sure they do not realize
that they are communicating. (Blind self)
4. Collect all the sheets, being careful to keep all the sheet
one's and sheet two's in separate piles.
5 . Shuffle each pile so that the individual sheets cannot be
linked to particular people.
6. Read out loud to the entire group a sample of what they typ
ically conceal fro.m others (sheet one). If you have enough
examples, you can write them on a board and classify them
by type of issue. Encourage the group to analyze with you
to get a feel for what we tend to conceal.
7. Read out loud to the entire group a sample of what we typi
cally see in others that they do not realize they are commu
nicating (sheet two). Classify these as well.
8. Analyze the relationship between the two lists. Are they
completely different kinds of items?. Are there areas where
we think we conceal but actually the feeling or information
"leaks" out and others see it? What would be the pro's and
l
144 Communication and Deliberate Feedback
Facilitative Process
Interventions:
Task Processes in Groups
145
,
What Is Process?
In its broadest sense, "process" refers to how things are done rather
than what is done. If I am crossing the street, that is what I am doing;
the process is how I am crossing-am I walking, running, dodging
cars, or asking someone to help me across because I feel dizzy? If I
am talking to another person, that i s what I am doing, but I may be
looking at her, looking at the ground, mumbling or raising my voice,
gesturing or standing very still, all of which is how I am doing the
talking. But because process is everywhere and involves everything
we do, how do we become aware of "it" and the consequences of dif
ferent kinds of processes that we may be using unconsciously? How
does a consultant/helper know what to focus on when trying to inter
vene to improve a situation and to stimulate learning in the client?
The earlier chapters on the helping relationship and active inquiry de
scribe a variety of processes that occur in the face-to-face situation. It
remains now to extend this analysis to the processes that occur when
the consultant is working with two or more people in various kinds of
meetings and group events.
Imagine that you have been invited to a staff meeting to see if
you can be helpful in making that group more effective. You may
have been labeled the "facilitator" but what does that mean in terms
of where you should focus your interventions, all the time being
n1indful of the fact that sitting quietly and observing is also an inter
vention with consequences? If you are the manager who has called
the meeting, imagine yourself trying to make the meeting as effective
as possible. What should you be paying attention to and what kinds
of interventions should you be considering beyond the traditional fo
cus on the agenda and the content of what members say? Table 8 . 1
presents a set of general categories of observable events that the con
sultant could consider as possible foci of attention.
The cells in Table 8 . 1 overlap and, in reality, the distinctions are
not as clear-cut as the descriptions imply, but we need simplifying
models if we are to make any sense at all of the complex data that typi
cally confront us in human situations. All groups, and I am including a
two-person relationship in this definition, always have three fundamen
tal issues to deal with: ( 1 ) How to manage their boundaries, defining
who is in and who is out and how to maintain their identity; (2) How to
What Is Process? 147
Table 8.1
POSSIBLE AREAS OF OBSERVATION AND INTERVENTION
(1) (2) (3 )
Who is in and Agenda Member feeling
Content who is out toward each
other
(7 ) (8 ) ( 9)
Recurring Recurring task Formal rules
Structure processes for processes, orga- in relation to
maintaining nization structure authority and
boundaries intimacy
Recall that the group had a written agenda, usually consisting of 10 or more
bullet-type items, and would start by going through the agenda one item at a
tinie. By the end of the two-hour rneeting, they would typically finish ha�{ of
the agenda or less and then express frustration that they had not accom
plished more. I also noticed that the sequence of items often did not make
much sense. My choice was to give feedback to the group on what I was ob
serving 01; as I chose to do, to access my ignorance and ask sincerely "How
is this agenda produced? "
The first reaction in the group was to look confused, as if no one
knew the answer. Then the president said that his administrat;ve secretary
produced the agenda and had it ready for each meeting. The group called
Martha into the room and learned that people phoned in items or dropped
What ls Process? 149
by to request being on the agenda and that she listed them in the order in
which they came in.
No sooner had the group heard this than they realized the absurdity
of this situation and decided on the spot to keep the system that Martha had,
but to process the agenda at the beginning of each meeting in order to clus
ter items that belonged together and to arrange them. in order of priority.
This arrang;ng revealed that there were basically two types of items- ''fire-
.fighting "-type immediate decision items, and longer-range planning items.
We collectively decided that the fire-fighting itenis should be placed in prior
ity order by the whole group and that the planning items should not even be
attempted in a two-hour Friday afternoon meeting.
Instead, the group decided that once a month the whole group should
go off-site and spend a whole day or two wrestling with those longer-range
items. Over a period ofyears these longer off-site meetings became a regu
lar pattern and were institutionalized as a regular part of running the com
pany. I ended up playing an expert role in the design of these longer
meetings since I had more experience with that type of meeting. Eventually
they evolved into quarterly or semi-annual meetings that lasted two or three
days and enabled the group to dig deeply into strategic issues that concerned
the growth of the company. All of this resulted from an innocent question
about the agenda.
and other behavior tnay be displayed that gets in the way of effective
task work.
If one observes a variety of groups one may also become
aware that different groups working on the very same task may ap
proach it very differently. In one group the chair calls on people to
give their input; another group's chair invites anyone to speak who
cares to. In one group there is angry confrontation and arguing; in an
other group there is polite, formal questioning. In one group decisions
are made by consensus, in another they are made by voting, and in a
third they are made by the manager after listening to the discussion
for a while.
Task processes are elusive. It is easy to experience and to ob
serve them but hard to define and clearly segregate them from the
content that is being worked on. Group members learn that they can
partially control the content outcomes by controlling the process, as
senators do when they filibuster or as debaters do when they destroy
an opponent's argument or composure by ridicule, changing the sub
ject, or in other ways diverting the process from what has been said.
One of the toughest tasks for the consultant/helper is not to get se
duced by the content, not to get so caught up in the actual problem the
group is working on as to cease to pay attention to how it is working.
For a group to move forward on its primary task a certain num
ber of process functions must be fulfilled. These functions are often
associated with the leadership of the group or are considered to be the
duties of the chair, but in well-functioning groups different members
will fulfill them at different times, and the main role of the consultant
will often be to identify and fulfill the missing functions. A simplify
ing model of the main task functions to be considered is presented in
Table 8.2.
In order for the group to make progress on a task, there must
be some initiating. Someone must state the goal or problem, m.ake
proposals as to how to work on it, and set some time limits or targets.
Often this function falls to the leader or to whoever called the group
together in the first place, but as a group grows and gains confidence,
initiating functions will increasingly come from a broader range of
metnbers.
In order to make progress, there must be so1ne opinion seeking
and giving and information seeking and giving on various issues re
lated to the task. The kinds of information and opinions a group seeks
in pursuing its tasks are often crucial for the quality of the solution.
The consultant should help the group to assess for itself whether suf-
What Is Process ? 151
Table 8.2
NECESSAR Y FUNCTIONS FOR TASK FULFILLMENT
Task Functions
Initiating
Information seeking
Information giving
Opinion seeking
Opinion giving
Clarifying
Elaborating
Summarizing
Consensus testing
sequentially and process one idea at a ti1ne, never gaining any per
spective on the totality of their discussion. What i s missing i s the
sum1narizing function. It can be fulfilled by having a recorder note
ideas on a blackboard as the group proceeds so there is a visible sum-
1nary before them at all times. Or a group member or the consultant
can, from ti1n.e to time, simply review what she has heard and draw
out tentative generalizations from it for the group to consider.
Finally, the group needs someone periodically to test whether
it is nearing a decision or should continue to discuss. Consensus test
ing could involve simply asking the question "Are we ready to de
cide?" or could involve some summarizing: "It seems to 1ne we have
expressed these three alternatives and are leaning toward number two;
an1 I right?" The success of this function in 1noving the group forward
will depend largely on the sensitivity of the person in choosing the
right time to test, although ill-ti1ned tests are still useful in reminding
the group that it has so1ne more discussing to do.
Within this broad structure of task functions we can identify a
second sin1plifying model that focuses specifically on the stages of
problem solving. Most meetings have a purpose, a function, a specific
problem they are trying to solve.
4
Action planning
2
Producing
proposals
for
solution 5
consequences, Taking
outcomes testing action
proposals steps
Figure 8.1
A MODEL OF THE STAGES OF PROBLEM SOLVING
(5) action steps, and (6) evaluation of the outco1nes of the action
steps, often leading back to the first cycle with problem redefinition.
The basic reason for breaking the total process into stages is that
when problem solving goes awry, it is generally because a given stage
is mismanaged or is missing altogether.
In each stage there are characteristic co1nmon traps. Awareness
of these traps can help the consultant to focus on when and where to
intervene. Whether we are focusing on a two-person group, such as a
client and ine trying to establish a relationship, or a task force meet
ing that I have been asked to attend as part of getting acquainted with
--rr
I
!
154 Facilitative Process Interventions: Task Processes in Groups
Generalization
Feelings of Identification of Analysis from incidents Problem
_,. specific _.
o of _,. concering the + formulation
frustration incidents which incidents nature of the
and tension arouse feelings problem
Figure 8.2
NECESSARY STEPS IN INITIALLY FORMULATING THE PROBLEM
evaluated one at a ti1ne and that the group lapses into debate instead
of developing a dialogue fonnat. If that happens, the group fails to
look at a whole array of possible ideas for a solution and never gains
a perspective on the problem
The consultant can help here by pointing out the consequences
of premature evaluations-there is insufficient opportunity for ideas
to be judged i n perspective because they cannot be compared to other
ideas and the premature evaluation tends to threaten a given idea and
the person who proposed it. Members whose ideas have been rejected
early may feel less inclined to offer ideas at a later stage. The group
should be encouraged to start this stage with some version of brain-
storming-producing a number of ideas and keeping them all in front
of the group before any of them are evaluated as such. Brainstorming
i s built on the rule that no evaluation of ideas should be permitted
during the idea-production phase to stimulate the creativity that is
needed at this point, and ideas should be separated from their pro
posers so that they can be viewed objectively. I often find myself go
ing to the flipchart in this situation and offering to write down the
ideas, thereby also making i t easier to say "are there other ideas that
we should be getting up here . . ?" .
Once the group has a list of ideas, i t can quickly weed out the
obviously unworkable ones and explore the two or three ideas that
look like they might work. The consultant should encourage systemic
thinking at this point and invite the group to examine how the various
ideas proposed interact and relate to each other. The consultant
should also alert the group to the fact that just getting a number of
ideas out does not in any way guarantee that the job of culling them
and making a decision on which one to pursue will be easy or quick.
In my expelience when groups brainstorm they typically fail to allow
enough time to evaluate the various ideas that they have produced.
What ls Process? 157
but it requires going outside the group meeting and doing something
beyond considering alternatives. The next issue, then, is how the group
actually makes decisions and how well the decision process is aligned
with the kind of decision the group is making. A number of alternatives
should be considered.
1 The "Plop to Consensus" scheme was first developed by Robert Blake and
that their suggestions have "plopped." The floors of most group meeting
rooms are completely covered with plops. Notice that the tacit assu1np
tion underlying this method is that "silence means lack of agreement."
p rocess by which the group will work. Someone says "Let's run the
ineeting by Robert's Rules of Order" and, when no one challenges the
suggestion even though they disagree, the group ends up using a
m.ethod that no one wanted. Or, one person says, "Majority rules,
right?" and when no one challenges the statement, the group finds it
self nl.aking 8-to-7 dec1.sions that get poorly implemented. When a
self-authorized proposal is on the table i t is often important for the
consultant to say "Does the group agree with this? Is this what we
want to do?"
A single person can railroad a decision, particularly i f he is in
some kind of convener role, by not giving opposition an opportunity
to build up. The convener says, "I think the way to go at this i s to each
state our opinion on the topic to see where we all stand. Now my own
opinion is . . . ." Once he has given his own opinion, he turns to the
person on his right and says, "What do you think, Joan?" When Joan
has spoken, the convener points to the next person and the group is
off and running, having in effect made a decision about how it is go··
ing to go about its work based on the convener's self-authorization.
Another similar tactic is to say, "Well , we all seen1 to be agreed, so
let's go ahead with John's idea," even though the careful observer
inay have detected that only John, the chair, and inaybe one other per
son has spoken favorably about the idea. The others have remained
silent. If the initiator i s asked how he concluded there was agree1nent,
chances are that he will say, "Silence means consent, doesn' t it?
Everyone had a chance to voice opposition." If one interviews the
group me1nbers later, one sometimes discovers that an actual major
ity was against John's idea but each one hesitated to speak up because
he thought that all the other silent ones were for it. They too were
trapped by "silence means consent."
Perhaps the co1nmonest form of minority rule i s for two or
n1ore members to come to a quick and powerful agreement on a
course of action, to challenge the group with a quick "Does anyone
object?", and, i f no one raises her voice i n two seconds, to proceed
with "Let's go ahead, then." Again the trap is the assumption that si
lence means consent both on the part of the initiators and on the part
of the disagreers who are afraid to be in a minority of opposition.
When the group operates this way, one often has a condition of "plu
ralistic ignorance"-where everyone makes an assumption about the
opinions of nl.embers that turns out to be wrong, but no one checked.
Or, at the extre1ne, we have "group think" (Janis, 1 982) where a deci
sion is nl.ade on the presu1nption of total agreement while a substan-
What Is Process ? 161
tial rnino1ity (or even majority) inay be in disagreement but has been
silenced.
The consultant plays an important role with respect to these
decision-making methods, pri1narily because they are rarely recog
nized and labeled as decision-making methods in the first place. Yet a
great inany group decisions, particularly pertaining to the i1nportant
issue of group procedures, rules of order, and the like, are made in
these rather rapid ways. For a group me1nber to challenge such pro
ceedings, to say, "We don't really agree," is often seen as blocking;
hence there are strong pressures on group members to stay silent and
let things take their course, even though they are not in agreement.
The consultant must first make the group aware of decisions it
has made and the methods by which it has made them; then she must
try to get the group members to assess whether they feel that these
methods were appropriate to the situation. For example, the members
n1ay agree that the chairperson did railroad the decision, but they may
also feel that this was appropriate because ti1ne was short and so1ne
one needed to make that decision quickly so the group could get on
with n1ore important things. On the other hand, the group might de
cide that a decision such as having each person in turn state his point
of view introduces an element of formal ity and ritual into the group
which undermines its ability to build creatively on ideas already ad
vanced . The group might then wish to choose a different method of
idea production. The important thing is to legitimize such process dis
cussion and to have some observations available in case the group is
finding it difficult to discern what the consultant is talking about.
The clear allocation of responsibility for action not only ensures that
action will be taken but provides a test of the decision in that the re
sponsible implementer may raise questions about the decision that
had not been considered before.
In s0Ir1e cases the whole second cycle i s delegated to some
other person or group. For example, the original problem-solving
group decides "LeCs beef up our advertising campaign." Once it has
reached this decision, the group orders the advertising departn1ent to
increase advertising on certain products. The group then relaxes and
reverts to watching sales figures. I s this a sound approach? The an
swer in many cases i s "No" because when different people perform
cycle 2, they may neither understand clearly nor be particularly co1n-
1nitted to the proposal or solution that the cycle 1 person or group has
offered. They have not struggled with the problem definition or had a
chance to see the reasons why other alternatives that may now occur
to the�n have been rejected. They may also feel that the general pro
posal given to them i s too unclear to permit implementation.
Equally problematic is the case w here a management group
delegates proble1n formulation (cycle 1 ) to a task force or a consult
ing organization and then waits for a diagnosis and proposal for ac
tion in writing. In nine cases out of ten, if the originating group has
not involved itself in problem formulation and if the task force has
not thought through action implementation (cycle 2), the manage
n1ent group will not like the proposal and will find an excuse to
shelve it. Given these kinds of problems, it is desirable to ensure a
high degree of overlap (or at least co1nmunication) between cycle 1
and cycle 2 members. The ideal situation would, of course, be that
they are the same problem-solving unit. If that i s not possible, the cy
cle 1 unit should provide for an interim phase that pennits the cycle 2
unit to get completely on board before the two units sever their com
n1unication link. One way to do this i s to bring the implementer into
the problem-solving process at the earliest possible stage, or, at least,
to review completely with him all the steps the cycle 1 unit has gone
through to arrive at a proposal for solution.
In such a review, the key process would be to permit the imple
menting unit to satisfy itself completely by asking as many questions
as it would like concerning the reasons that certain other alternatives,
which might strike it as better ones, were not selected. They should
get satisfactory answers, or the cycle 1 group should go back and re
view the additional alternatives brought up by the implementing unit.
The role of the consultant here is to help the group understand how
166 Facilitative Process Interventions: Task Processes in Groups
One of the salient features of the Action Co. executive committee meetings
was the degree to which members engaged in what amounted to a communi
cations free-for-all. Members interrupted each other constantly, they often
got into shouting matches, they drifted off the topic of discussion, and they
movedfrom one agenda point to another without any clear sense of what had
been decided. I had a clearly formulated mental model of how an effective
group should work, based on my knowledge of group research and my expe
rience with training groups in the National Training Labs, where I had been
working as a trainer for JO years. My early intervention efforts were there
fore made from the point of view of an expert consultant. Whenever I saw an
opportunity, I would ask the group to consider what the consequences were
of constantly interrupting each other, communicating clearly my assumption
168 Facilitative Process Interventions: Task Processes in Groups
that interruption is "bad" and inte1feres with effective group work. I pointed
out how important content ideas were lost and how certain potentially good
ideas never got fully aired.
The group invariably responded with agreement and a resolution to
do better, but within ten minutes we were back to the old pattern. As I re··
fleeted on this dysfunctional cycle I becwne aware that I was imposing an
f
ideal model on. a group that was clearly on a diferent path, best understood
in terms of the shared tacit assumptions that were driving this group. As I
have detailed elsewhere (Schein, 1 985, 1 992) the group was trying to arrive
at " truth " and operating from the assumption that the only way to achieve
truth was to battle ideas to the ground. Only if an idea could survive intense
debate was it 1'vorth pursuing.
Once I understood this basic premise I asked niyse�f what would in
fact be more facilitative and, in that process, came to see the relevance of
process consultation versus expert consultation. I had to work within the
purposes and assumptions that were driving the group rather than impose
my models on them. I had to learn that the primary task of the group as they
saw it was to develop ideas that were so sound that they could afford to bet
the company on them. Generating ideas and evaluating them were therefore
the two most crucial functions that they worked on in meeting after meeting.
Two kinds of interventions grew out of this insight. First, I noticed
that ideas were in fact being lost because so much inforrnation was being
processed so rapidly. Partly for my own sake and partly because I thought it
1night help, I went to the flipchart and wrote down the main ideas as they
came out.
Incomplete ideas or points (because the presenter had been inter-
rupted) led to the second kind of intervention. Instead of punishing the group
for its "bad" behavior, as I had been doing, if someone was interrupted I
would look for an opportunity to give that person back the floor by sayiJLg
something like "John, you were trying to make a point. Did we get all of it ? "
This created the opportunity to get the idea out without drawing unnecessary
attention to the reason why it had not gotten out in the first place. The combi
nation of these two kinds of interventions focused the group on the ideas that
were now on the flipchart and helped them navigate through their complex
terrain. Ideas that were about to be lost got resurrected and written down.
The lesson was clear. Until I understood what the group was really
trying to do I could not focus on the right processes nor did I know how
to intervene helpfully. I had to sense what the primary task was and where
the group was getting stuck (incomplete idea formulation and too quick
evaluation) before I could determine what kind of intervention would be
''.facilitative."
ltVhat Is Process? 1 69
Facilitative Process
Interventions:
Interpersonal Processes
172
Processes of Building and Maintaining a Group 173
ineeting of a group that has regular meetings every week or, on the
other hand, may be a group that has met for the very first ti1ne to con
sider the consulting project. The people that the client may have invited
to meet with me may include some who have worked extensively with
each other and a few others who are, in effect, strangers to each other at
the initial meeting. Given this variety of circumstances, it is essential
for the consultant to have a si1nplifying 1nodel of hovv a group gets
started and develops.
The underlying theoretical pre1nise is that when two or mo.re
people come together to form a work- or task-oriented group, there
will first be a period of essentially self-oriented behavior reflecting
various concerns that any new inember of a group could be expected
to experience. As the self-oriented behavior declines, members begin
to pay more attention to each other and to the task at hand. The kinds
of behavior that help the group to bui1d and maintain itself then occur
concurrently with behaviors designed to accomplish the work of the
group. I will describe the steps in a chronological sequence because
they occur more or less in sequence, although each phase may over
lap the others.
Coping responses
Problems Resulting feelings (self-oriented)
Tension
Will the group goals 3. Withdrawal or Denial
include my own needs? Responses
Passivity, indifference,
4. Acceptance & Intimacy Anxiety
overuse of "logic and
Will I be liked and
reason"
accepted by the group?
How close a group will
we be?
Figure 9.1
PROBLEMS IN ENTERING A NEW GROUP WHICH CAUSE SELF
ORIENTED BEHAVIOR
need to control and influence others, but the amount of this need and
its form of expression will vary from person-to-person. One person
may wish to influence the actual task solution, another may wish to
influence the methods or procedures used by the group, a third m.ay
wish to achieve an overall position of prominence in the group, and a
fourth may only hope to make a modest contribution.
The dilemma for all members early in the group's history is
that they do not know each other's needs or styles, and hence cannot
easily determine who will be able to influence whom and on what.
Consequently, the consultant will frequently observe in early meet
ings a great deal of fencing, testing each other out, and experimenting
with different forms of influence. The consultant must be careful not
to misunderstand this behavior. On the surface it seems like a definite
flight from whatever task the group is facing. Underneath it repre
sents an important sorting out, getting acquainted, and coming to
terms with each other that the members need to do i n order to relax
their self-concerns and focus on the task.
If a convener insists on a tight formal schedule that prevents
some of this getting acquainted and testing, he runs the risk of either
producing superficial solutions (because members are not ready to
really work on the task), or of forcing them to do their fencing in
the context of the task work, thereby slowing down the progress and
undermining the potential quality of the solution. In this kind of situa
tion, the co_n sultant must help the convener to understand the functions
the initial sorting-out behavior performs for the members, to under
stand the need for group-building time, and to understand that good
communications cannot develop until members' self-preoccupations
have been reduced.
but she still cannot ensure that the goals she sets will involve all the
n1embers sufficiently to get them committed to the task.
A sounder procedure would be to face the paradox directly and
help group members to understand that until their needs are to some
degree exposed and shared, i t is not possible to develop valid group
goals. Enough meeting time should therefore be allocated at the be
ginning to permit members to explore what they really want to get out
of the group. The role of the consultant i n this situation is usually to
slow down the group and to reassure members that the early struggles
to co1nmunicate with each other are a necessary and important part of
group growth. It may also be useful to have a formal "check-in" in
which each person is invited to state their role or position on any
given issue that may be under discussion. As will be seen in the next
chapter, in the setting up of Dialogue sessions, a formal check-in dur
ing which each person tells a bit about their current situation is an i1n
portant component of creating a climate of inclusion.
Table 9.1
BUILDING AND MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONS
Harmonizing
Compromising
Gatekeeping
Encouraging
Diagnosing
Standard setting
Standard testing
Table 9.2
BOUNDARY MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS
Boundary defining
Scouting
Negotiating
Translating
Technological gatekeeping
G uarding
Managing entry and exit
��
··
I
. ,
the group. Thus, from ti1ne to time the group will send out inforn1a-·
tion and appoint ainbassadors to negotiate with key outsiders if con-·
flicts of interest are involved or to open up com1nunication channels
to other groups as these beco1ne necessary.
Translating refers to all those functions involved in figuring
out what others' messages mean to the group and in formulating the
group's own messages to the outside in terms that others will under
stand. In this process of information exchange with the environ1nent,
the group will need to filter, classify, and elaborate inforn1ation to en
sure internal con1prehension and external acceptance. Here the con
sultant again has a special opportunity to raise questions about what
different words will mean to others as she listens to the group.
An �specially important activity in this arena is technological
gatekeeping, the activity of bringing to the group whatever special in
formation it needs to perform its task (Allen, 1 977) . In technically
oriented groups, such as product development teams, some inembers
scan the external technical environment for critical information ite1ns
that bear on their particular task. But every group needs categories of
information that need to be brought in for effective work on its pri-
1nary task, hence son1eone must fulfill this function.
Guarding or patrolling the border refers to the activities that
ensure that the group's sense of integrity will not be violated. A1nong
the activities here are who is invited to meetings, what information is
shared with which outsiders, what agreements are made among m.en1-
bers about keeping inforn1ation confidential, how are unwelcome vis
itors managed, and how are members dealt with who leak information
or embarrass the group.
Entry and exit 11ianage1nent refers to the processes the group
uses to bring in new n1en1bers (i1nmigrants) and to release present
me1nbers who leave (emigrants or outcasts). Thus, socialization ac
tivities, .indoctrination, training, and rites of entry would occur around
new members, and various kinds of exit rites would be involved for
departing ine1nbers, depending on the conditions under which they
are leaving. Do members leave because they have been promoted out
of the group, because they have been sent on a 1nission by the group,
because they do not like the group, because they do not fit into the
group, or because they have violated group norms and are being ex
co1nmunicated? The rites of exit will vary with the reasons.
Other functions can be identified, and the particular lists I have
provided are not necessarily the best ways to classify the various ac
tivities and roles that me1nbers of a group fulfill. The i1nportant point
-�
.
for the consultant i s to recognize that every group must manage its
own creation and its own n1aintenance both internally and externally.
B y observing how the group manages these various activities and
which ones get over or under managed, the consultant can formulate
in his mind where interventions are most necessary.
group 1ne1nber suddenly says to another, "I think you did a lousy job
of handling that customer." How the other group me1nbers, especially
people in positions of authority, deal with this comment will begin to
build a norm around openness and confrontation. If there is a shocked
silence and the boss acts as if nothing had happened and changes the
subject, she is sending a clear signal that such openness is not wel
come. On the other hand, if she says, "John, I understand how you
feel and would like to hear a bit more about what you observed that
inade you reach this judgment," she is not only accepting such re
marks as legitimate, but i s furthering the conversation by asking for
additional information. She may also be starting to try to build a norm
that judgments are legitimate only if they are backed up by examples,
facts, and figures.
Norms and cultural assumptions are not easy to define or to
identify in group process, yet they are very influential in determining
1nember behavior, perceptions, and feelings. Part of their influence de
rives from the fact that they operate invisibly, in that they are carried
in each member's head as personal guidelines. Even more important is
the fact that once norms and assumptions are shared, adhering to them
and using them becomes a way of expressing inembership in the
group. Once a norm or assumption is shared it beco1nes very difficult
to change without involving the entire group because each member
will resist change as a way of maintaining his or her membership.
For example, so1ne typical nonns in a group 1night be:
"We should not swear or use foul language in this group."
"We should get to ineetings on tim.e."
"We should not challenge or question the statements of the
chair of the group."
"We should be informal with each other, use first na1nes."
"Everyone in the group should participate."
"We should reach consensus and not fall back on voting."
"We should not start the meeting until all the members are
present."
Those norms that are open, verbalized, or even written down
function as the rules and regulations of the group and can for this pur
pose be called explicit norms. Those which are unspoken can be
thought of as implicit or tacit norms. We know they are there fro1n ob
serving member reactions when they are violated-for example,
shocked silences, rebukes, and "Dutch Uncle" talks. If norms are vio
lated repeatedly, members are punished in various ways and ultimately
l
expelled fro1n the group if their behavior does not confonn in critical
areas.
One important function of the consultant is to attempt to make a
group aware of its norms and shared tacit assumptions and, in that
process, to check on how much consensus there is in the group on cer
tain issues. In the previous discussion of group functions this activity
was identified as the setting and testing of standards. One of the most
destructive aspects of group behavior comes about from lack of con
sensus on critical group processes-when members assume that a norm
is operating, but, in fact, none is. Valuable ideas and suggestions are
suppressed because members assu1ne that they would not be accepted,
sometimes leading to the group doing something that no one really
wanted to do, the previously identified Abilene Paradox (p. 1 59).
The consultant can help the group by observing closely how
critical incidents are handled and trying to infer the kinds of norms
the group is building for itself, someti1nes unwittingly. The consultant
can ask what the consequences will be of handling the event in the
way the group did, or can help the group to identify and reconstruct
so1ne of its norms by recalling critical incidents during periods of re
flection and analysis. The group can then test for itself whether the
norms are helpful or constitute a barrier to effective action. For exam
ple, a group may discover that it has built a norm that people should
speak up only when asked directly for an opinion or some informa
tion. The group may feel that such a fonnal mode of operating is get
ting in the way of producing good ideas. Having identified the norm,
the group can then set about changing it by explicitly bringing it into
line with their feelings about how the group should operate.
The group may also discover that explicit and implicit norms
so1netimes counteract each other. For example, there may be an ex
plicit norm to say exactly what is on one's mind, but an implicit norm
that one 1nust not contradict the ideas of certain powerful people in
the group. A lternatively, there may be an explicit norm that all mem
bers of the group are equal and have an equal voice in the discussion,
but an implicit norm that higher-status people should speak first and
others in the group should go along with their views. Groups often
state explicitly that members should be open in their reactions to each
other, yet the rules of face work prevent such openness and everyone
understands why the explicit dictun1 is not honored. Norms can be
very subtle in their operation, and the consultant inust be able to iden
tify concrete examples if the group i s to learn to observe the effects
of their norms.
Processes of Building and Maintaining a Group 189
At a deeper level, these norms and rules deal with the management of
the affiliative and loving feelings. As in the case of aggressive feelings,
strong affiliative and sexual feelings have to be channeled into appro
priate modes of behavior. When such channels fail to maintain safety
for the participants, we see social breakdown such as in cases of sex
ual harassment.
Group Maturity
There is no single criterion that can be universally applied to test the
degree of maturity of a group, but there are a number of dimensions
that a group can use to identify and assess where it has grown and
where it may still need further development. These dimensions can be
put into a simple self-rating questionnaire that the members can fi ll
out periodically to determine how they feel about each dimension and
how these feelings change over tin1e. A san1ple of such a question
naire is shown in Exercise 9 .2, but there is nothing absolute about the
particular dimensions chosen.
The dimensions reflect so1ne of the basic criteria of maturity
·
that have been developed for judging individual personality. Similar
criteria can be applied to groups:
1. Does the group have the capacity to deal realistically with
its environment, and is it independent of its environment to
an optimal degree?
2. Is there basic agreement in the group about mission, goals,
and ulti1nate values?
3. Does the group have a capacity for self-knowledge? Does
the group understand why it does what it does?
4. Is there an optimum use of the resources available within
the group?
5. Is there an optimum integration of the group's internal
processes-communication, decision ni.aking, distribution
of authority and influence, and nonns?
6. Does the group have the capacity to learn from its experi
ence? Can it assimilate new information and respond flexibly
to it?
No group is going to achieve some perfect level on all of these
dimensions. Their major usefulness is that they permit the group to
study its own progress over time and to identify weak spots in how it
is operating. This implies a capacity to learn and puts special empha
sis on question number 6 in the list.
One can elaborate these criteria further by i dentifying what
can be thought of as a healthy learning or coping cycle for groups and
organizations-the steps that have to be successfully negotiated if the
group is to learn from its own experience (Schein, 1980) :
194 Facilitative Process Interventions: Interpersonal Processes
existence of the group; the reason for which it was called together, its
basic mission, the perceptions that relate the group to its external en
vironment and that will ultimately determine its survival as a group.
The primary task will not always be immediately obvious but can
generally be inferred or even asked about. If the timing of the ques
tion is premature, one may not get an accurate answer, so further ob
servation and checking may be required, but, in any case, it will be
helpful to the group to be forced to be explicit about its primary task.
The focus that i s safest and most likely to be productive in a
new relationship with an individual client or when managing a new
group is the process consultant's own primary task or goal as a helper
or manager. What are you and your client or subordinates trying to
do? Where do you want to be by when? What next steps make most
sense given what you are trying to accomplish? In many consulting
models this focus is often i dentified as "setting a contract with the
client." That is usually not the right formulation from my point of
view because it requires both client and consultant to guess about an
unknown future. It is better to focus on immediate goals in order to
be able to intervene effectively from the outset and to try to be help
ful to the client or subordinates from the moment of contact.
It is important to observe interpersonal process because group
outcomes result from a complex interaction of what goes on at the
task and interpersonal level, but not necessarily to intervene on what
you observe unless the group has explicitly decided to deal with in
terpersonal issues. One of the toughest choices for the consultant i s
when to intervene around interpersonal processes and when n1erely to
note the1n and leave them alone. And again, the key criteria are: How
much does the interpersonal process actually interfere with task per
formance, and how visible is the process to a1l 1 nembers of the group.
Case 9. 1 at the end of this chapter illustrates the dilemma.
relations and how the group n1aintains its boundaries, its identity, and
its integrity.
I reviewed the main structural issues that a group faces in man
aging its i nternal relations and noted that, as the various processes
become routine parts of the group's life, they can be observed as
structures for con1municating, defining boundaries, distributing
power and status, rewarding, controlling, disciplining, defining norms
for informal relations, and managing the less predictable and less
controllable events that the group faces.
The shared tacit taken-for-granted assumptions that underlie
these structures and determine how the group will ultimately relate to
its environment, manage its primary task, and inanage its internal re
lationships together constitute the culture of the group.
In choosing an intervention focus, the consultant must be care
ful not to overreact to the vivid but possibly irrelevant interpersonal
events that he may observe. The intervention focus should remain on
the task process. Interpersonal events should become a focus for in
tervention only if there is clear evidence that they are harming the
group's effectiveness and if it is clear that the group is ready and able
to deal with the interpersonal. issues.
I was asked by the head of a manufacturing group to sit in on the regular bi
weekly nieetings of the eight-person staff My primary client, the head of
manufacturing, wanted me to observe the group and his behavior as its
leader in order to make him and the group more effective. I was to sit in on
regular work meetings and intervene as I thought appropriate. I met the
group as a group, was welcomed, and attended as a regular member.
After about five meetings I noticed a disturbing but recurring pat
tern. One member, call him Joe, was systematically ignored when he would
make a comment. He had a regular assignment in the group and appeared by
all visible signs to be a fully functioning member, but the group seemed impo
lite, almost rude in their treatment of Joe. I observed this interpersonal pattern
over enough meetings to conclude that it was really there and that surely other
members would have observed it as well, so I decided to point it out. I said "I
wonder what is going on in the group around Joe 's participation ? He seems to
be niaking an effort to contribute but the group is consistently ignoring him."
No sooner were these words out of my mouth than a deadly pall set
tled over the group and, without any further comment being made on the
Summary and Conclusion 197
matter, my client, as chair of the meeting, acted as if I had not said anything
and pointedly went on to another agenda item. I realized I had walked into a
mine field but had no idea what had happened until after the 1neeting, when
my client took me aside. He explained that Joe was a technical guru who
had-early in his career-invented several important products on which this
company had made many of its successes, but that as Joe got older he be
came increasingly "obsolete " and incapable of making a useful contribu
tion. Senior management had decided not to let Joe go or to force him into
early retirem.ent, and they had canvassed various groups to see if he could
be "parked " somewhere where he would "not do too much harm."
My client had volunteered to take him and had asked his group to be
as nice to Joe as feasible under the circumstances; howeve1; everyone knew
that Joe 's contributions were not very relevant to the group 's task acconi
plishment. In my technical ignorance, I had not been able to observe the ir
relevance of Joe 's comments. Furthermore, Joe did not seem to mind. He
was happy to have a home and a sense of contribution and, as far as anyone
could tell, did not notice (or mind) the group 's rudeness.
My intervention embarrassed everyone by describing "the elephant
on the table," which no one chose to see, and it ran the risk of making Joe
aware that he should be offended. I had chosen to discuss an interpersonal
event without having enough data on whether it was in fact interfering with
group effectiveness. It was the first of many lessons showing that, until you
! really know what is going on, it is best to stick to task process issues and only
I register the interpersonal events for.future reference.
I
I
I Exercise 9.1: Helping a Group to Learn about Itself
I
the meeting to "review the decisions and the process they went
through to reach them."
The idea is to collect members' feelings about how the meet
ing has gone. Such feelings can be collected in an open-ended way or
I with the help of a diagnostic i nstrument such as that following. This
I particular set of questions focuses on internal relationships, but it
would be equally appropriate to create a set of questions around
external-boundary management if you felt that the group needed help
in that area.
If a diagnostic questionnaire is used, so1newhat more time
must be allocated to analysis. If the group is skeptical of the value of
any diagnosis, it is better to start with short periods of open-ended
198 Facilitative Process Interventions: Interpersonal Processes
A. Goals
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Confused, conflicting Clear, shared
B. Participation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Few dominate, poor listening All get in, good listening
C. Feelings Expression
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Ignored, not expressed Freely expressed
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Jump directly to solutions Seek basic causes before acting
E. Decision-Making Processes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Self-authorization, minority rule Consensus
F. Leadership
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Autocratic, centralized Distributed, widely shared
G. Trust Level
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Members do not trust each other Men1bers have high trust
Sununary and Conclusion 199
Facilitative Process
Interventions : Dialogue
1There are many versions of Dialogue floating around in the field and world
wide. The particular form I will be discussing derives from the work of David Bohm
( 1989) and is cuITently being developed by William Isaacs ( 1993).
201
202 Facilitative Process Interventions: Dialogue
give us new insights, to reveal our blind sides to us, and to provide op
portunities to see ourselves as others see us. For many, this is not only
novel but potentially devastating-even though it 1nay be ultimately
necessary for self-improvement. To receive deliberate feedback is to
put our illusions about ourselves on the line; to give deliberate feed
back is to risk offending and unleashing hostility in the receiver.
In contrast, dialogue emphasizes the natural flow of conversa
tion. It actually (though somewhat implicitly, in my experience) dis
courages deliberate feedback and direct interpersonal encounters. In
dialogue the whole group is the object of learning, and the men1bers
share the potential excite1nent of collectively di scovering ideas that
none of them might have ever individually thought of. Feedback may
occur, especially in relation to individual behavior that undermines
the natural flow of conversation, but feedback is not encouraged as a
goal of the group process.
Dialogue often works best when the group members sit in a
circle and talk to "the campfire" instead of to each other. A general
property of the group is what we all have to say, not a set of remarks
between specific individuals that others happen to hear as well. Dia
logue thus invites violation of some cultural "rules" such as the norm
to respond to questions, to look each other in the eye when we ad
dress each other, and to give everyone a chance for equal air time. To
many, the natural flow of conversation feels like a slowing down, a
loss of focus, and an abandonment of concern for getting a task ac
con1plished or reaching a conclusion. One of the most dramatic illus
trations of this norm "adjustinent" was the comment by a participant
at the end of a two-hour dialogue session that this was the first time
in inany years that he had felt "empowered to remain silent."
One of the most important differences between dialogue and
other co1n1nunication enhancers is that the group size is not arbitrar
ily limited. Whereas sensitivity training only works effectively with
groups of ten to fifteen, I have been in dialogue groups as large as
sixty and have been told that dialogue has been tried successfully
with 1 00 or more. The notion that such large groups can accomplish
anything is counterintuitive. However, large groups are often com
posed of individuals who have had prior small group experience with
dialogue. In the large groups, these people have lower initial expecta
tions and assumptions about the need for everyone to have significant
"air time." At the other extre1ne, dialogue is entirely appropriate for
a two-person group and, as I have argued, is necessary as part of the
relationship-building process between the consultant and client.
206 Facilitative Process Interventions: Dialogue
CONVERSATION
+
DELIBERATION
/ "'
{Lack of understanding; disagreement; basic choice point;
pe7evaluation of options and �y)
SUSPENSION DISCUSSION
(Internal listening; accepting differences; (Advocacy; competing; convincing)
building mutual trust)
t
DIALOGUE
l
DIALECTIC
{Confronting own and others' assumptions; (Exploring oppositions)
revealing feelings; building common ground)
METALOGUE
t l
DEBATE
(Thinking and feeling as a whole group; (Resolving by logic and
building new shared assumptions, culture) beating down)
Figure 10.1
WAYS OF TALKING TOGETHER
Case Examples
I was working with the Exploration and Production Division of a large oil
company to try to identify what the subculture of this particular unit was.
They needed to understand their subculture because the company was trying
to decide whether or not this division should survive and how its pe1for
mance should be measured. In the process of doing a cultural analysis with
the top forty members of the division, it developed that there were two strong
subcultures within it, reflecting the core technologies and prim.ary tasks of
Exploration on the one hand and Production on the other hand. The cultural
analysis produced a certain an1ount of insight but did not clarify the ques
tion of the division 's right to survive and how one would measure its produc
tivity. There were obvious indicators such as the amount of oil/gas
discovered and the effic iency of production, but the group could not really
agree on anything.
Case Examples 217
I began to i:ork with the top twelve managers of the E & p group
on
.
the task of developing the measurement system and found in several succes
sive meetin.gs that they kept getting into debates about different options. On
f
one of these occasions I had the insight that there were not just two diferent
concepts of measurement reflecting the E & P point o.f view, but that aniong
the twelve of them there were many niore assumptions about the nature of
measurement that were tacit. I suggested that for our next meeting we take
three or more hours to have a dialogue instead of a meeting.
We picked an evening time, set the room up in a circle, and started
with a general orientation. I then suggested that after a short check-in we
should systematically go around the room and give each person a chance to
talk out in a relaxed way what "measurement " meant to them and how they
would like to be measured. The rule was no questions or challenges, just
talking out. I recorded each person's concept on a flp i chart.
It took over an hour for all twelve concepts to be talked out, but by
the end of that hour every member of the group felt a sense of real progress
in that they now understood how complex the measurement terrain really
was and why they had had difficulty reaching agreement in their previous
meetings. In the next hour or so they focused on their task, reached consen
sus on the need to convince higher m.anagement to measure E & P d(ffe r
ently, and presented to senior management detailed proposals on each of the
systems. In this case the period of dialogue was a necessary detour to reach
a working consensus on their task.
What this case highlights is that dialogue as a form of managed con
versation was a necessary part of the problem-solving process, but it was
very diffic ult for the group to create such a managed detour without outside
help and without some concepts and a methodfor managing conversations
for learning ends. I had to create the container in which it was possible to
I
share their individual views without feeling unsafe in doing so, and dialogue
as that container saved face in that this group of active problem solvers
I could see the detour as an experiment rather than evidence of their failure to
I
l
reach agreement.
The required process of going around the circle with guaranteed in
I
dividual air time created safety in that the group was used to a much more
I
I
challenging debate format. Note that the structure of dialogue requires both
periods of required interaction to make sure that everyone shares in the
I
sense that "we are in this together" and other periods in which silence is le
gitiniized so that members can be safely reflective. In the case of the E & P
group, once they had gone around with their individual views, the participa
I tion changed dramatically but no one was uncomfortable with it.
218 Facilitative Process Interventions: Dialogue
219
220 Process Consultation in Action
ing about ultini.ate and unwitting clients to insure that their needs and is
sues are not ignored or marginalized. In each relationship the consultant
must be perpetually diagnostic and gear her interventions carefully to build
and maintain helping relationships. And since conversation i s the medium
through which most of this happens, maintaining a focus on the dynamics
of co1nn1unication and conversation becomes essential.
How this plays out over a peri od of time will be illustrated i n the
next chapter with case 1naterial and analytical commentary. In Chapter 12,
the final chapter i n this volun1� , I will summarize and recapitulate the es
sential philosophy of how to build helping relationships i n general.
11
Most of the emphasis in building the helping relationship has thus far
been focused on the consultant-client relationship in a two person or
s1nall group situation. But most consulting takes place in the context
of larger organizational learning or change projects. It is the use of
process consultation in those larger projects that is the defining char
acteristic of what has, in those contexts, been labeled "organization
development." It is the interplay of process consulting with expert and
doctor types of consulting that makes organization development a
more relevant process when human factors are involved in organiza
tional change, as they always are. Of course, even the most technical
problems involve human factors, so the ability to build helping rela
tionships, to function in the PC mode whenever appropriate is the
defining characteristic of any good consultation.
In this chapter I will elaborate this point by focusing more on
the organizational context. How does the consultant initially enter an
organization, develop a relationship with the various parts of the emerg
ing client system, choose a setting and a method of working with the
client, and build viable psychological contracts as the projects evolve?
Much of the case material will be based on the Billings Com
pany. 1 Billings has a special significance for me because I learned
the essence of process consultation through my many experiences in
that organization . M y work as a consultant with this organization
lasted from 1 966 to 1 993, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to
' The Billings Company referred to here is the same company identified i n
m y book o n culture as the Action Co. (Schein, 1992).
221
222 Consultation in Action
When I first encountered Billings Company in 1966 it was a small, high tech
nianufacturing company run by a group of three founders who had a techni
cal vision that they wanted to implement. They were basically electrical en
gineers who had a product idea that they felt they could commercialize, and
they had obtained a small amount of seed money from a local venture capital
organization. The organization was founded in the late 1 950s.
My first contact in 1 966 was a phone call from an acquaintance who
had worked at MIT and was then a product-line manager one level below the
founder/president and also served as the president's administrative assistant.
The contact client, Charles, indicated that there were communication prob
lems in the top management group, resulting from a recent reorganization.
Because the company expected to grow rapidly in the next decade, the group
felt they should work on these kinds of problems in preparation for their
growth. Charles knew that I was interested in the human problems of organi
zations and had had considerable training in group dynamics. Based on this
knowledge he convinced the president and primary founder, John Stone, to try
bringing a consultant into the top management group. He got approval to call
me and to set up a meeting with the president, if I was interested.
Defining the Relationship: The Exploratory Meeting 223
In Billings Company, an initial exploratory meeting took place with just the
contact client. Charles spoke openly about his concerns that the president
needed help in handling certain key people, shared his worries that the presi
dent and his key subordinates were not in good comniunication, and indicated
that recent cornpany history suggested the need for some stabilizing force in
the organization. I asked Charles whether Stone knew he had come to me and
what Stone 's feelings were about bringing in a consultant. Charles indicated
that Stone as well as other key executives were all in .favor of bringing some··
one in to work with them,. All saw the needfor some outside help.
Our two-person meeting ended with the decision to test the waters
further by attending one of the regular executive com1nittee nieetings at
which time I would also meet Stone, the founder and president, to test
whether we would find each other compatible. This step was necessary be
cause Stone had a very strong personality, and I would be working closely
with him and his immediate subordinates.
Defi11Jng the Relationship: The Exploratory Meeting 225
In 1nost cases I cannot tell from the initial contact what the real
goal of the consultation is and, therefore, can only agree to discuss it
further at an exploratory meeting. If I have some consultation ti1ne
available, I schedule such a meeting in the near future. If I do not
have time or interest, I either ask if the problem can wait or suggest
son1eone else who inight be able to help. Occasionally I agree to an
exploratory meeting with the understanding that, if anything co1nes
of it, the work will be done at a later time or by someone else. In fact,
one of the special services that exploratory meetings can provide is to
help the client to sort out what kind of help she needs, with no irnpli
cation that the initial consultant will be the one to take on further pro
jects. I son1etimes suggest to the contact client that their best use of
my services might be one or two meetings to decide what the client
needs-without any commitment on either part to a longer-range pro
ject. At this stage, the consultant functions more like the general med
ical practitioner helping decide what specialist might be needed in the
future.
During the meeting, I ask inquiry questions that are designed
to ( 1 ) sharpen and highlight aspects of the presented problem, (2) test
how open and frank the contact client is willing to be, and (3) reveal
as much as possible what my own style will be. If I feel that the client
is hedging, unwilling to be critical of her own organization, confused
about her motives, and/or confused about iny potential role as a con
sultant, I am cautious. I then suggest that nothing be decided without
rnore exploration, or I terminate the relationship if I am pessimistic
about establishing a good relationship. If the contact client seems too
certain that she already knows what is wrong, if she tniscasts n1e as
an expert in something that I am not expert in, or if she clearly has a
misconception of what a consultant with an organizational psychol
ogy frame of reference could offer, I am cautious even in suggesting
a further meeting, lest we end up wasting time. I am reluctant to pro
ceed if the contact client seems to want merely reassurance for a
course of action she has already embarked on or wants a quick solu
tion to a surface problem.
questions asked should be relevant and make sense within the context
of what the client has requested. Often I choose to start a consultation
with some low-key inquiry questions to establish a relationship with
ea.ch of the people in the client system that I will be working with or
observing in group meetings. The interview is designed as much to re
veal myself as to learn something about the other person.
I do not make interviews of everyone in the initial client sys
tem a routine part of every project as many consultation models ad
vocate. There are times when the exploratory meeting has made it
clear that individuals in the client system do not feel free to speak
openly except in private or when a future n1eeting is designed to re
flect agenda inputs from various 1nembers of a group. In those in
stances the contact client and I will plan a series of individual
interviews. But the decision to have interviews and the reasons for
them should be shared by the contact or intermediate clients. It should
not be part of the consultant's routine "method" because it automati
cally puts the consultant into the expert role by virtue of the informa
tion she has collected that no one else has at that point.
If the consultant uses questionnaires, surveys, or tests, or if he
uses a lot of j argon, he himself remains an unknown quantity to the
respondent and at the same time signals that he has mysterious and
esoteric knowledge about gathering data and making diagnoses. As
long as he is perceived to be an expert with mysterious skills and re
mains unknown as a personality, the respondent cannot really trust
him and hence cannot answer questions with complete honesty.
Hence I prefer not to use any of these tools until they are clearly ap
propriate and have been agreed to by the client system.
To illustrate the evolution of these processes, I will review sev
eral cases that show different aspects of getting involved with the
client systems .
.
In Billings Company, the exploratory meeting was one of the regular meetings of
the executive committee. At this time I was to meet Stone, the founder/president,
and the other key executives to discuss further what could and should be done.
We met in the conference room next to Stone 's office and sat around a large kid
ney shaped table above which hung a mobile that consisted of six separate free
floating hands with the index finger pointing straight ahead. As the air moved
the hands around, the various fingers would point in various directions making
one think of a kind of random ''finger-pointing " process that made me wonder
about what kind of climate I would encounter in this organization.
230 Consultation in Action
2Dick Beckhard and I had developed a workshop for the National Training
Labs focusing on how to get planned change projects started in an organization. This
was to be an adaptation of that workshop. Much of the philosophy underlying this ap
proach to change is derived from Beckhard's work and is presented in detail in three
of his books (Beck.hard & Harris, 1987, Beckhard & Pritchard, 1 992, and Beckhard,
1 997),
232 Consultation in Action
In Billings and Boyd I went directly into a work group. In the Central
Co. I ran a workshop to help managers accomplish sonie of their tasks better.
A third pattern combines these two kinds of settings by organizing a meeting
to solve a particular organizational problem. The consultant manages the
meeting, but the work done by the participants is real problem solving.
This project was conducted with the Internal Revenue Service in the
1 960s. Some niembers of the IRS training department had become exposed
to sensitivity training several years back, introduced it to their middle and
senior manager development programs, and gained a good deal of sophist;
cation in analyzing organizational process. It became clear to a number of
them that one of the major difficulties of the organization was conflict be
tween the central headquarters and the various field units-conflicts over
how niuch decentralization of decision-making authority there should be,
conflicts concerning how much the system actually reflected earlier agree
ments to decentralize, and conflicts over lines of authority.
The organization had strong functional directors in the headquarters
organization who often clashed with the regional and district directors who
ran IRS operations locally. As HQs developed new financial and marketing
programs to improve IRS operations and its image, they tended to bypass the
formal line organization going instead directly to the financial and market-
ing people in the field. This caused discomfort and anger both in the HQs
and in regional rnanagement.
The central training group knew that there was an annual meeting of
all the key executives, including headquarters and field people-15 in all.
One niember of this group called me to find out if there was a possibility of
organizing one of these meetings in such a way as to enable the entire group
to work on the organizational problem and if I could help in setting up and
running such a meeting.
I had an exploratory meeting with several members of the training
group and learned that they were not sure how the Commissioner and his im-
Defining the Relationship: The Exploratory Meeting 233
mediate subordinates would respond to the idea, since there was no prior
history of exposure of the group to an outside consultant. Howevei� ·when
they polled a number of the regional nianagers who had attended sensitivitv
training groups and learned something about the potential of bringing in �'
"behaviorally oriented consultant" they felt reassured that something like
this nieeting should be tried.
A core group, consisting of the training director, two of his key stqfj'
people, and one enthusiastic regional manage1; then met with me for one dav
to plan further strategy. We decided that for such a program, to work, a sub
stantial number of the people who would eventually be at the meeting ·would
also have to become involved in the planning and design of the meeting. A
group consisting of equal nunibers of HQ and regional managers was
formed. The mission of this group was to meet for t\vo days to plan the rota/
meeting. The plan developed by the group was then to be presented for ap
proval to the Com.missioner and his key staff.
My role as a consultant was critical at two stages in this enterprise.
First, during the two-day meeting of the planning group I had to steer them
away from. a traditional format in which I would make presentations about
headquarters/field-type problems for them to discuss. Second, I had to take
some responsibility for the success of the meeting format finally chosen and
find a role for myself that would make this format work.
The plan that emerged from the two days of planning had the follow
ing ele111ents:
The first purpose in having such letters written was to provide each persoll
the opportunity to be completely frank without having to expose himself to the
possible wrath of the boss or other menibers of the group. Second, it provided
234 Consultation in Action
an opportunity to gather datafr01n all the members before the meeting began.
Third, it involved each member in helping to set the agenda, a considerable
departure from previous meetings where the agenda had been set by the Com
niissioner or his staff It could be expected, therefore, that all the menibers
wouldfeel more involved in the meeting from the outset.
The letter writing had two problems connected with it: ( 1 ) it seemed
a little bit gimmicky, and (2) it was difficult to know how someone would re
act who had not as yet niet me. Would he write a frank letter to a strange pro··
fessor about rather critical organizational issues ? We decided that we would
have to run the risk of getting no response or poor response, but that we
could minimize this risk by having the members of the planning group talk to
others they knew and make a personal appeal to write a frank letter.
The procedure was agreed on, presented to the Commissioner, re
ceived enthusiastic approval, and thus became the plan for the meeting. I
pointed out to the planning group that the Commissioner and his deputy
would have to be careful in how they managed their own role. 1f they reverted
too quickly to their power position and abandoned the role of helping to di
agnose organizational problems, the group would retreat into silence and the
problems would remain unsolved. I talked to both men and felt that they un
derstood the risks, were willing to take them, and had the kind ofpersonality
that would make them accept this somewhat different meeting format.
Having agreed to go ahead, the group then decided that the deputy
would send out the letter explaining the meeting format and inviting the di
agnostic letters. Members of the planning group were to follow up in the dis
tricts to ensure that everyone understood the plan and the fact that the plan
had come fro1n organization members themselves, even though I had sug
gested many of the separate elements.
This rather lengthy procedure was essential to obtain the involve
ment of the members in a process-oriented meeting. Even though the ideas
came originally from the training department and from, me, the concept
clearly appealed to regional and HQ managers. Had they not become com
mitted, it would not have been possible to hold such a meeting at all.
The letters were full of frank appraisals of the current situation
which made it easy to construct an agenda that the group considered highly
relevant. My role was to organize these appraisals into a reasonable number
of organization. issues that the meeting could address. I could sharpen and
focus these issues without any member being threatened because only issues
that were brought up by several people were put on the agenda. I chaired the
meeting and steered it through to various kinds of consensus on how the par
ticipants wanted to structure HQs-field relationships in the future. The Com
missioner and his deputy blended into the group and fulfilled their role of not
dominating the meeting.
The Psychological Contract 235
By carefully planning the helping process we were able to address
difficult issues that had created tensions for years, bring them out into the
open, neutraUze them, and separate them from particular individuals.
Thereby, we created a climate in which the group could deal with difficult is
sues constructively and confront each other across some tough hierarchical
boundaries. I also learned from this experience how niuch the outcome de
pended upon collaborative inquiry and intervention between me, the out
side1·; and various insiders.
In Billings the psychological contract between Stone and me was very vague.
We both had good intentions, but neither one of us knew at the outset how my
participation in the meetings would work out and how the relationship would
develop from, that point on. What I did not know then, and Stone could not
have told me, is that this willingness to be vague was not just temporary but
actually reflected Stone's basic style. A s he put it once years later in refer
ring to my contribution to the company's affairs: " When I would see a prob
lem somewhere, like in the engineering department, I would ask Ed Schein
to talk to the people and I would expect the problem to go away."
Stone expected me to intervene and fix things and saw no need to in
tervene himself or even to check-up on what I was doing. In fact, when I
sometimes wanted to report to him what I was working on, he often acted
bored and obviously had lost interest in the issue. He did not expect to moni
tor my behavior and would only get involved if I convinced him that his be
havior had to change in response to something I observed or found out.
I also learned that one of Stone 's strong needs was to have a rela
tionship with a neutral outsider with whom to think out loud. I spent niany
hours in his office just listening to what was on his mind about the conipany,
his subordinates, his frustrations, his management philosophy, and whatever
else was on his mind. We would often have an agenda for the meeting but
might abandon it in the fi rst few minutes and just talkfor an hour or more
about what was on Stone's mind that day. I had to learn to be completely
flexible in how to respond, all the way from just listening at one extreme to
challenging his thinking at the other extreme. Stone needed others to help
him think and often said when challenged to make a decision that "By my
self I'm not that smart, but when I talk it out with a bunch of smart others in
a group, I get smart very fast."
In the staff meetings I was on my own, as well. Stone and his subor
dinates were willing to have me attend and do what I could, but there were
no discussions of what I would do or when I would do it, unless I volunteered
some statement of how I saw my own role. I think the group expected me to
be helpful but until I did something specific they had no preconceptions of
the form that this help would take. Furthermore, they did not seem to have a
need for role clarification, which, it turned out, was an important theme in
The Psychological Contract 237
Billings culture. Roles and responsibilities were generally vague and the
group was comfortable with this vagueness. A more form.al contracting
process would simply not have worked.
My bills, which detailed where and how I was spending my time,
went to the VP of Human Resources, who became one of my inside infor
mants as things evolved. He and I would spend many hours discussing what
was going on with Stone and how best to handle the agendas that Stone pro
duced. Similar conversations occurred with other members of the group so
that, in a sense, I became simultaneously a counselor to all of them individu
ally as well as to the group as a whole.
for them. In no case has anything of this sort ever been formalized be
yond a general letter of intention written by the client. Once we agree
on the daily rate, I keep records of the amount of time spent and send
1nonthly bills to the client.
I try to figure out as early in the relationship as possible all the
expectations that may be deliberately or unwittingly concealed by the
client and which inay involve actions on my part that I am not willing
to take. For example, beyond wanting me to work on the presented
problem, the client may expect me to help in a variety of other ways,
such as giving her personal evaluations of her subordinates, helping
her deal with "problem people" in her organization, providing expert
opinions on how certain management problems should be handled,
giving support to some of the decisions she has made, helping her to
sell her decisions to others, serving as a communication channel to
people with who1n she has trouble co1nmunicating, and mediating
conflicts. As many of these expectations as possible must surface
early so that they do not later become traps or sources of disappoint-
1nent if I refuse to go along with something that the client expected of
ine. On the other hand, if the client wishes to conceal certain motives,
all I can do is to be diagnostically sensitive an4 avoid traps.
On my side, I have to be as clear as I can be about what I ex
pect of the client system and of myself in my role as consultant. For
exa1nple, I expect a willingness to inquire, to explore problen1 issues,
and to take enough time to find out what i s really going on. I expect
to be supported in my process orientation and to have organization
members be committed to the process of sharing ownership of diag
nostic and other interventions. I have to state clearly that I will not
function as an expert resource on human relations problems that are
unique to the organization and its culture, but that I will try to help the
client to solve those problems by providing alternatives and helping
to think through the consequences of different alternatives. I need to
point out that I will gather information by observing people in action,
by interviewing, and by any other method we mutually agree on. Fi
nally, I have to make it plain that when I am participating in meetings,
I will not be very active but will comment on what is happening or
give feedback only as I feel it will be helpful to the group in accom
plishing its task. The fact that I will be relatively inactive is often a
problem for the group because of their expectation that once they
have hired a consultant they are entitled to sit back and just listen to
her tell them things. To have the consultant then spend hours sitting
in the group and saying very little not only violates this expectation
The Psychological Contract 239
but also creates some anxiety about what she is observing. The more
I can reassure the group early in the game that I am not gathering per
sonal data of a potentially damaging nature, the smoother the subse
quent observations will go.
I have to explain fully the idea that my client is not just the
contact person or the person of highest rank but the entire group with
which I am working and, by implication, the entire organization and
the broader community. In other words, I would not support decisions
that I believe would harm any given group, such as the employees,
custo1ners, or suppliers, even if I never had any contact with such
groups. This concept of unwitting and ultimate clients is one of the
trickiest, yet most i1nportant, aspects of PC. In observing other con
sultants· operating in an organization in which I have been working, I
have noticed that many of them essentially take the highest-level
manager, typically the president, as their primary client, convince hiin
of what the remedial intervention should be, and then proceed to help
hi1n to sell and i mplement the intervention even though this may be
hurtful to others in the organization.
In contrast, I have found myself to be most effective if I can
gain the trust of all key parties with whom I am working so that none
ever thinks of me as pushing someone else's ideas. The metaphor of
being a facilitator or catalyst is more appropriate than change agent for
this kind of helping. Once a given level of trust has been established, it
is quite possible to work across several levels of the organization.
In Billings, after many months of working with Stone and his six key subor
dinates, I arrived at a point where all of them saw me as a potentially useful
communication link. My primary work was clearly with this group and its
meetings, but I interviewed them all individually over the next several
months to give each of them a chance to tell me what they hoped to get out of
my presence in the meetings. A s I got to know them better they asked me
quite sincerely to report to each one of them the feelings or reactions of oth
ers whenever I learned anything that !felt should be passed on. In particu
lar, they wanted to know how Stone felt about certain things and they wanted
me to pass on how they felt about certain things to Stone. They were quite
open with me about each other and about Stone, knowing that I niight well
pass on any opinions or reactions they voiced to me. They did not want nie to
treat eve1ythin.g they said to me as confidential, because they trusted me and
each other enough and saw my linkage to all of them as an additional useful
communication channel.
240 Consultation in Action
highly variable. It is i1nportant that both the setting and working pro
cedure be jointly decided on between the contact client group and the
consultant. Whatever decisions are made should be congruent with
the general assumptions underlying PC so that whatever learning the
client system achieves can be self-perpetuating. What the consultant
needs to be expert in is the instant design of interventions that will si
multaneously be helpful and reveal further realities. How the consul
tant reacts always has to be viewed both as an intervention and as a
source of new data.
The most difficult idea to grasp in all of this is that diagnosis
and intervention are one and the same process. I always have to be
open to the realities as they reveal themselves and, at the same ti.me, I
have to realize that whether I react verbally, just look puzzled, remain
silent, argue, or ask another question it is an immediate intervention
with consequences. I have to think about all those consequences in
the fleeting moment. I cannot take "time out" to think about what to
do next. Everything I do is an intervention.
12
These principles do not tell me what to do. Rather, they are re
minders of how to think about the situation I am in. They offer guide ·
lines when the situation is a bit ambiguous. Also they remind me of
what it is I an1 trying to do.
249
250 References
Janis, I . ( 1982) Group think (2d ed. rev. ). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Van Maanen, J. ( 1 979) "The self, the situation, and the rules of interper
sonal relations." In Bennis, W., Van Maanen, J., Schein, E. H . & Steele,
F. (Eds) Essays in Interpersonal Dynamics. Homewood, IJ_,: Dorsey.
253
254 Index
Helping relationship, 1-2, 5-6, 30, 78, Language, role of, 103-104
243 Larger system level, of problem, 68
building of, 37-40 Leadership style, 9
status imbalance in, 3 1 -36 Learning
status negotiation in, 36-37 feedback as, 1 30-132
Hidden self, 1 26-129 types of, 1 9-20
Human interaction, 2 1 , 104-105, Learning how to see, 85
109- 1 1 2 Leveling communication, 129, 1 3 1
Humiliation, 109 Listening
in active inquiry, 98, 203
Identity, in group, 173-174 in status equilibration, 42-43
Ignorance, perception of, 10-1 1 , 98, Logic, faulty, 9 1 , 94
243
Image of other, in communication, 1 1 7 Majority rule method, 1 6 1 - 1 62
Individual level, of problem, 66 Manager, role of, 69, 1 1 3, 120, 1 80
Information seeking/giving, 1 5 0- 1 5 1 Manager-subordinate relationship, 109,
fojtial contact, 222, 225 132-140
Initiation, in task process, 1 50 Measurement system, 1 70- 1 7 1
Inquiry Metaphors for change, 56-59
appreciative, 56-58 Methods, work, 228-235
exploratory, 7 1-73, 75, 223-235 Michael, Don, 49
maintaining spirit of, 98 Minority mle method, 1 59- 1 6 1
See also Active inquiry Misperception, 92, 94-95
Intergroup level, of problem, 67 Mission statement, 170
Intermediate client, 65, 73 Motivation
Interorganizational level, of problem, 68 creation of, 85
Interpersonal level, of problem, 66-67 in feedback, 1 3 5- 1 36
Intervention Mutual acceptance, 37-39
to aid learning, 122-124 Mutual cooperation, 38-39, 1 09
choice of focus for, 167-168
consequences of, 1 7, 48, 49, 7 1 , 75, Natural Step program, 68
8 1 , 90, 226, 241 , 243 Negotiation, group, 1 84-185
for exploration, 7 1 -73, 75 Nonclient, 65, 77-79
as intrapsychic process, 90-92, 94
as process, 1 23 Observation, 86-88, 208-209, 228
timing of, 48-49, 59, 194-195 OD. See Organization development
See also Deliberate feedback Open self/communication, 126-129, 1 30,
Interview, 12-14, 16, 228-229 176, 1 86-187
Intimacy, in group, 1 76, 1 9 1 Opinion seeking/giving, 1 50- 1 5 1
Involved nonclient, 65, 77-79 Organizational change, 3-4
Isaacs, Bill, 43 Organizational learning, 3-4
Organizational level, of problem, 68
Johari Window, 1 25-130 Organization development (OD), 3-4, 221
Joint diagnosis, 9-1 1 , 15, 75, 8 1 , 1 1 9 , 223
Judgment, as intrapsychic process, 89 PC model. See Process consultation
model
Knowledge, of consultant, 245-247 Perception, in group, 208-2 1 0
256 Index
The lates1· addition to 1-he a u thor's well-loved set of process consultation books,
this new volume b u i l d s on the content of the two that precede it a nd explores
the critical area of the helping relation s h i p . Process Consultation, Volume I
(2nd edil"ion) explains the concept of PC and its role i n organization develop
1,
" ment, focus i n g on the behavior of the congultant rather than on the design of
the OD prog ra m itself. Process Consulfafion, Volume II reaffi rms PC as a viable
model for working with human systems and explores addil"ional theories of PC
relevant to experienced consultants a n d managers. Now, Process Consultotion
Revisited focuses on the i nteraction between consult-ant a n d client, expla i n i ng
how to ach ieve i-he healthy helpi ng relatio n s h i p so essential to effective con
sultation. Whether the advisor is a n OD cons�dtant, therapist, social worker,
manager, parent, or friend, the dynamics between advisor a n d advisee can be
; difficu lt· to understand a n d manage. Drawing on over 40 years of experience
as a consultant, Schein creates a general theory a n d methodology of helping
that will enable a d i verse g roup of readers to navigate the helping process
successfu I ly.
Edgar H. Schein is the Sloan Fel lows Professor of Management Emeritus and
Senior Lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He started h i s educa
tion at the U n iversity of Chicago, received h i s B.A. a n d M . A . from Stanford
U n iversity, a n d earned h i s P h . D . i n social psychology at Harvard Un iversity i n
1 95 2 . Dr. Schein has published several books, i ncluding Process Consultation,
Volume I: Its Role in Organization Development ( 1 969, 2 n d ed . i n 1 98 8 ) ,
Career Dynamics ( 1 97 8 ) , Organizational Psychology ( 1 980) , Organizational
Culture and Leadership ( 1 9 8 5 , 2 n d e d . i n 1 99 2 ) . Career Anchors:
Discovering Your Real Values ( l 9 8 5 ) , and Process Consultation, Volume II:
Lessons for Managers and Consultants ( 1 9 87) , as well as numerous journal
articles. He i s a Fellow of the Academy of Management and the American
Psycholog ical Association, and he has been a management and organ ization
development consultant to many corporations a n d govern ment agencies in the
U n i ted States a n d abroad.
•
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