Process Consultation
Process Consultation Paper
“Process Consultation is a set of activities on the part of the consultant that help the client to perceive, understand, and act upon the process events that occur in the client’s environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client” (Schein 1988). The purposes of this essay is to examine some of the contextual factors of how group dynamics evolve and the role of a process consultant, by exploring the similarities and differences that characterize, to established and effective process consultation when working with a group or team. The systems approaches focuses attention on the relationship between a system or sub-system and its environment rather than trying to understand things automatically. It follows from this perspective that any enterprise aimed at studying group processes will be shaped by the environment in which it exists. A well design process implies that the consultant should always select the proper intervention that will be the most helpful at any given time; the consultant should be familiar with a variety of questions, exercises and other forms of intervention when working with groups, at the same time is very important that the proper feedback is given as the group evolves during such process. Group relations training creates multiple and at times conflictual role constellations. Proving an effective group dynamics process requires some of the multiple role relations that are contained within the consultant-team relationships. Studying group dynamics in the here-and-now evokes primitive dimension of unconscious life and along with it powerful emotions that are often suppressed in natural work organizations.
Using as an example experiential group relations between students the efforts of introducing the Lewin’s model which was based on his observations of group dynamics and organizational development, “unfreezing-change-refreeze” the model focuses on how people can be
“Process Consultation is a set of activities on the part of the consultant that help the client to perceive, understand, and act upon the process events that occur in the client’s environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client” (Schein 1988). The purposes of this essay is to examine some of the contextual factors of how group dynamics evolve and the role of a process consultant, by exploring the similarities and differences that characterize, to established and effective process consultation when working with a group or team. The systems approaches focuses attention on the relationship between a system or sub-system and its environment rather than trying to understand things automatically. It follows from this perspective that any enterprise aimed at studying group processes will be shaped by the environment in which it exists. A well design process implies that the consultant should always select the proper intervention that will be the most helpful at any given time; the consultant should be familiar with a variety of questions, exercises and other forms of intervention when working with groups, at the same time is very important that the proper feedback is given as the group evolves during such process. Group relations training creates multiple and at times conflictual role constellations. Proving an effective group dynamics process requires some of the multiple role relations that are contained within the consultant-team relationships. Studying group dynamics in the here-and-now evokes primitive dimension of unconscious life and along with it powerful emotions that are often suppressed in natural work organizations.
Using as an example experiential group relations between students the efforts of introducing the Lewin’s model which was based on his observations of group dynamics and organizational development, “unfreezing-change-refreeze” the model focuses on how people can be
References: Fredrick H. (1999), Hand Book for Coaching. Edgar H. Schein. (1988), Process Consultation Volume 1, Its Role in Organization Development. Kurt Lewin. (1947), System Practice Volume 9 Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom, 1996. Organizational Change and Development, Journal article by Karl E. Weick, Robert E. Quinn; Annual Review of Psychology, 1999