Consultants as Partners, Not Doctors
Posted by Andrew Town on Thu, May 06, 2010 @ 09:06 AM
Edgar Schein has been a driving force in the evolution of the practice of consulting (Lambrechts, Grieten, Bouwen, & Corthouts, 2009). This post focuses on an article in which Schein (1990) makes a compelling case for process consultation, which he contrasts with "expert" and "doctor" consulting roles.
The "expert" role works perfectly when a client knows exactly what the problem is - the client asks the right question, and the expert consultant offers a practical resolution. When the client is unsure of the exact problem, however, the expert is of no use.
When playing "doctor," the consultant diagnoses what's wrong with a problem area and recommends a solution to fix it. This seems quite logical, but it assumes the client has identified all the appropriate area(s) of concern and will provide all of the pertinent information necessary to arrive at the right conclusion, will accept the prescription, do what the doctor recommends, and remain healthy after the doctor leaves.
While they may be appropriate in certain circumstances, the expert and doctor roles in consulting disempower clients to productively resolve problems on their own, both during and after the consulting engagement, because they place excessive responsibility on the consultant. Consultants should help increase the client's ability to identify and resolve problems without creating an unhealthy dependence on outside experts.
Clients commonly expect consultants to play expert or doctor roles, and consultants are only too happy to oblige; we like to feel needed and respected for our unique knowledge and contributions. However, an inappropriate focus on the consultant's expert or doctor proficiencies tends to undermine the success of the consulting engagement. Clients take less ownership of identifying and resolving their problems, consultants don't gather enough information to provide the best possible guidance, and clients are relatively unlikely to fully implement the consultant's recommendations due to their low level of participation in creating those recommendations; it's human nature to more fully embrace the ideas you came up with and discount the value of someone else's suggestions (Bass, 2008).
Schaffer (1999) suggests a similar set of problems with the common consulting approach due to its exclusion of important client input in the assessment phase and the common absence of the consultant in the implementation phase. Lambrechts et al (2009) encourage a focus on the relational aspects of process consultation since, as opposed to a set of diagnostic tools or back-room analysis, the relationship between the consultant and client is the most important part of the consulting relationship.
It's important to note that Schein recommends against withholding expert advice when the client needs it, and some consulting engagements may require heavier reliance on the consultant's expertise. However, the consultant should avoid focusing excessively on the expert or doctor role whenever possible; these roles place excessive responsibility on the consultant while taking it away from the client, with whom it ultimately belongs.
References
Bass, B. M. (2008). The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications (4th ed.). New York: Free Press.
Lambrechts, F., Grieten, S., Bouwen, R., & Corthouts, F. (2009). Process consultation revisited: Taking a relational practice perspective. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(1), 39-58.
Schaffer, R. H. (1999). Replacing recommendations with results: A new paradigm for consulting. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 51(4), 242-251.
Schein, E. H. (1990). A general philosophy of helping: Process consultation. Sloan Management Review, 31(3), 57-64.