Process Consultation
Consulting is all about prescribing, advising or working with someone in trouble, on the move or trying to do something better, faster and comparatively cheaply. A Consultant has objectivity, broad experience, analytical skills, dedication and ability to achieve results without bringing history, baggage and emotions to the table or having any personal ties to client environment. Consultant simply brings long standing expertise with him and works on improving the situation. Process Consultation is an intervention for Organisation Development, which in itself is one of the many mechanisms of Human Resource Development (HRD).
Process Consultation (PC) is the creation of a relationship with the client that permits the client to perceive, understand and act on the process events that occur in the client’s internal and external environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client. The key assumption underlying PC is that the client must learn to see the problem for herself or himself by sharing in the diagnostic process and be actively involved in generating a remedy. The reason the client must be involved, is that the diagnostic process is itself an intervention and any intervention has ultimately to be the responsibility of the client and be owned by him.
The Consultant without being prescriptive or an expert gains from the clients’ inputs and develops a helping relationship without taking the problem onto his own shoulders, by discovering his inner reality to learn and to distinguish what he knows from what he assumes he knows, from what he truly does not know. Accessing is the key to overcome expectations and assumptions that he makes an effort to locate within himself about what he really does not know and should be asking about.
