Read Extra 2: The main styles of consultancy

CONSULTING AND ADVISING: Solving the problem or helping to solve the problem.

A client organisation with a problem often expects that the consultant will solve the problems of the organisation.

The consultant can choose to act in two different ways:

• solving the problem
• enlarging the capacity of the organisation (or the client) to solve problems

The practice of consulting consists of both.

The first choice reflects the consultant as the expert, the second of the consultant as a processor (consultative style).

The consultant as the problem solver

Sometimes the consultant is direct confronted with the question to solve the problem. A competent consultant will feel the tendency to act immediately, and to solve the problem (if he or she can do so).

Advantage: the problem will be solved and it will be done quick and good.

Disadvantage: the problem solving capacity of the client(organisation) will not be improved. When the same occurs a couple of times, the proof that a competent outsider is needed to solve problems will lead to  trained incompetence.

What is the alternative?

The alternative could be that the energy of the consultant is invested in the management or workers, in order to enable them to solve problems.

A ----> B -----> * (A is helping B in solving the problem, instead of overtaking the problem and solving it)

A ----> B <----> C (A is helping B to solve the problems with C, instead of intervening)

This approach should be continued in the organisation itself. The management should have the same consultative style towards the workers.

Difficulties:

• problems are attractive (the consultant is often consultant for the very reason that she or he has the capacity to solve the problems. And this approach forbids to solve problems....)
• it looks as if the consultant is incompetent (is it bearable for the consultant to accept those appearances)
• to be satisfied with a good solution: good is good enough (instead of the own brilliant solution)

The art of being a consultant is partly the art of being a  reflective practitioner.

Next to the formal ways of learning, being reflective implies knowing your script.

What is a script?

A script is the unconscious in-explicit prescription of how you should work. The do's and don'ts in your work, the way I always do it, and the assumptions of meanings.

Scripts offer security. They are comparable with the variety of fixed patterns that offer safety (the rituals in meeting procedures, the place you will choose ). They form a necessary shorthand in everyday's normal life, but they may form limits in the working life of the professional.

Where do scripts come from?

• The may be connected to the professional or peer group. Doctors think that offering a diagnosis is offering help. Teachers interpret problems as knowledge gaps, feminists interpret problems in terms of imbalanced power between men and women.
• They may be originated in important passed experiences, for instance in the family-socialization.
• Or they form part of the personality. Some people always take the lead, some are always a bit suspicious, some are always looking for the guilty ones, some think always that the management is the cause of the problem, some always try to avoid conflicts, some try always to gain control or dominance, some are always morally indignant or...some always try to solve the problem

Scripts show themselves in the initial thoughts, in the immediate inclinations, in the definitions of the problem and in the intentions to act. Maybe they are true and justified, but they are more connected to the consultant than to the specific situation.

How to avoid the pitfall of the script?

By reflection and self-knowledge. Consultants should try to understand when they ascribe intentions to others and they should be aware how they themselves - almost automatically- interpret the story of others.

This demands a big deal of self-knowledge.