Read Extra 11: Process or expert

Each apply for an advice and each given advice has two main aspects: one of the content and one of the process. What has to be done and how are we going to do it.

The question could be for instance: what should be the communication of our organisation. The content requires knowledge of possible ways of communication, channels of communication and of communicative behaviour. The process consists of integrating that cognitive knowledge in action: seeing to it that this organisation will communicate effectively and efficiently.

The content aspect of an advice has more or less the characteristics of the medical interview model, the anamnesis doctors use in order to diagnose the complaints. The doctor is the one who investigates, in which the own medical (expert) frame of reference is used as guideline. The doctor comes in this way to an expert diagnosis and advices on therapy or prescribes a recipe. In this analogy the consultant is the expert.

The aspect of the process is based on a model of cooperation, in which the expertise of the consultant is combined with the know how of the insider: the client. The participation of the client is stimulated in the phase of data collection, in thinking on the analysis and in the phase of the implementation. The consultant is the facilitator.

In literature authors speak of the resource consultant and the process consultant. For a long time these two extremes were practised in their pure form. A consultant was either an expert consultant or a process consultant. Nowadays the general view is that a good consultant is both.

The modern consultant who represents only one of both poles is no longer taken seriously. The expert is the consultant who writes beautiful reports for the drawer. The process facilitator is the one who answers questions with: what do you think yourselves?

Nowadays one thinks more of variation in roles of the consultant. A consultant has to be able to function in a variety of roles: that of knowledge supplier, of trainer, of conflict interventionist, sparring partner and process facilitator. The choice which role to take is decided by the nature of the problem and by the part the client or client system can play.

Vrakking (a Dutch author on consultancy) describes a rising hierarchy of role choices of the consultant, from very expert to very process, in which the consultant and the client play complementary roles.

The consultant as reflector, raising questions for reflection. The specialist on processes, who observes the process of problem solving, who puts questions under discussion in which feedback is reflected. The collector of information who makes people reflect. The one who defines alternatives, who helps to overview the consequences and to make the choice. The one who offers alternatives for problem resolution and who participates in the decision. The trainer who designs learning experiences. The technical expert who supplies information and who makes suggestions for decisions on policy or practise. And the advocate who set the directives, who persuades or who guides the process of problem resolution.