Process Consultation

Fundamentals

Schein describes and contrasts three helping models: the doctor-patient model, the purchase model, and process consultation. The doctor-patient model of helping is grounded in the familiar process of a client experiencing a problem and going to an expert, who performs an assessment and prescribes a solution that the client implements. This approach to receiving help is both prevalent and most useful as the knowledge of experts is an important contribution to addressing problems. However, as Schein points out, certain elements need to be in play for this approach to be effective. The client needs to have identified the problem area correctly and reveal the necessary information for an accurate assessment by the expert. The expert needs to have the necessary expertise for effective assessment and [Page 609]prescription. The client has to accept the assessment, implement the prescription, and have the problem solved after withdrawal of the expert. In the purchase model, the client purchases the skills of the expert, who implements them on behalf of the client. This approach also depends on the client’s performing a correct assessment and so identifying the relevant expert and the client’s accepting what the expert has done; similarly, the problem is solved after the expert has withdrawn. Organizations draw on the doctor-patient model when external experts are brought in to perform an analysis and to write a report with recommendations for organizational action. They draw on the purchase model when they employ external expert skills, for example, to design and install technology or other systems.

The third model, process consultation, is defined by Schein as the creation of a relationship with the client that permits the client to perceive, understand, and act on process events that occur in the client’s internal and external environment to improve the situation as defined by the client. From this definition, it can be seen that core elements of process consultation are building a collaborative relationship between consultant and client so that the client sees what is going on, develops some understanding, and builds a plan to act. Process consultation is based on the underlying assumptions that managers often do not know what precisely is wrong in an organization and so need a special kind of help to understand what their problems actually are. They may think only of the doctor-patient model and therefore have a limited knowledge of the different kinds of help consultants can give and so may benefit from help in knowing what kind of help to seek. More important, they may want to solve the problems themselves and not hand over to an expert who provides a prescription, but at the same time they need help in deciding what to do. In this manner, it may be understood how process consultation is an organizational equivalent of what occurs in therapy, where the therapist helps clients solve their own problems.

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