Issues in Client-Consultant

Relationships
The Heart of OD
 Entry & Contracting
A matter of getting in touch
Consultants expertise ( a fit or not?)
Face-to-face meeting and an exploration of
the problem
To sort out in the first meeting what would
be the logical starting point for an OD
intervention
Collaborating team
Inclusions and exclusions
 Establishing norms of
contract
Mutual confidence and trust building
phase
If both parties agree, these conditions
become part of the overall psychological
contract between consultant and client
The formal compensation aspect of the
initial contract are also worked out
Contracting, in both psychological and
financial sense, occurs over and over in
OD consulting
 Defining the client system
The initial client may be an individual or a
management team
A small, top management team (for example the
CEO, VP HR, and another VP) comprises the initial
client group
Client may also be a steering committee
comprised of representatives from different levels
and functional areas. In this case if the CEO is not
a member, the consultant will need to be
sensitive to who represents the CEO, i.e. who
represents the power structure
The whole process would be futile if the steering
committee is not empowered to act in the
absence of the CEO
 The trust issue
A good deal of the early interaction
between client and consultant is about
mutual trust building
A key client for example, might be fearful
that things will get out of hand with the
outsider intervening in the system the
people might get a chance to criticize the
superiors
Subordinates may be concerned that they
will be manipulated towards their
superiors goals at the expense of their
own
 Cont
The consultant will need to earn trust in these and
other areas and high trust cannot be immediate
Also the consultants trust of the client may be
starting at neutral
The consultant will be trying to understand the
clients motives and to unearth the hidden ones if
any
On the positive side, the client may see OD as a
means of increasing the effectiveness of both parties
Trust and resistance problems also emanate from the
good guy bad guy syndrome.
People usually want to work collaboratively with
others in the pursuit of common ends but people
tend to resist being pushed around, or put down
Confidentiality is to maintained if trust is to be
maintained
The Nature of the Consultants
Expertise
Owing to unfamiliarity with OD
method, clients often hand over an
impossible mantle to the OD
consultant in terms of the expertise
he is to exhibit
The OD consultant needs to resist
the temptation of playing the content
expert
 It may be dangerous to make a big deal of
the expert role
At least 4 good reasons should encourage the OD
consultant to avoid for the most part the expert role:
1. OD effort is to help the client system to develop its
own resources
2. The expert role requires the consultant to defend his
or her recommendations
3. Any impression that the consultant is making
recommendations inimical to the members of the
client puts the consultant in the role of the adversary
4. This has to do with expectations if the consultant
goes very far in the direction of being an expert on
substance in contrast to process, the client is likely to
expect more and more substantive recommendation.
This will negate the basic idea of the consultants
intervention which is to help the client with process
 Diagnosis & Appropriate
Interventions
A pitfall for the consultant is the temptation to
apply an intervention technique he or she
particularly likes and that has produced good
results in the past, but may not tally with the
immediate situation
For e.g. giving sub-groups an assignment to
describe what is going on well in the weekly
dept. head meetings
instead
what is preventing the meetings from being as
effective as one likes may be more on target
 Cont
Acc. to Herbert Shepard, the consultant should
start where the system is
We may think that the consultant should do what
he or she can do, but the intervention should be
appropriate to the diagnosis, which requires an
intensive look at the data, for e.g. the themes
that emerge from the interviews
The wider the range of interventions with which
the consultant is familiar, the more options the
consultant can consider
The more the experience and expertise, the pain
of selection is in lesser degree
 Depth of intervention
Acc. To Roger Harrison, depth of
intervention can be assessed using the
concepts of accessibility and individuality
By accessibility is meant, the degree to
which the data are more or less public
versus hidden or private
By individuality is meant, the closeness to
the persons perceptions of self and the
degree to which the effects of an
intervention are in the individual in
contrast to the organization
 Cont..
Harrison suggests two criteria for
determining the appropriate depth of the
intervention:
First, to intervene at a level no deeper
than that required to produce enduring
solutions to the problems at hand
Second, to intervene at a level no deeper
than that at which the energy and
resources of the client can be committed
to problem solving and to change
 The dilemma
The change agent is continuously confronted by
the dilemma of whether to lead and push, or to
collaborate and follow
Harrisons orientation is towards the latter
To be effective, the consultant needs occasionally
and with some caution to be a risk taker
Another way of viewing depth intervention might
be to think about the performance of units by
descending order of systems and subsystems
moving from the unit to the individual
The consultant needs to have the skills to
intervene effectively down the progressively
smaller systems
 The dangers of Conformity
The change agent cannot afford to join the
culture of the client organization even though one
needs to join the culture enough to participate in
and enjoy the functional aspects of the prevailing
culture
Participating in the organizations pathology will
neutralize the consultants effectiveness
Internal change agents may be even more
susceptible to absorption they have to maintain
political distance from their own units; change
agents cannot become part of the problem
 Ethical Standards in OD
Misrepresentation of the Consultants skills
Professional/ technical Ineptness
Misuse of Data
Collusion
Coercion
Promising Unrealistic Outcomes
Deception and Conflict of Values
 Implications of OD for the Client

To enlarge the database for making

management decisions
To expand the influence processes
To capitalize on the strengths of the informal
system and to make the formal and the
informal system more congruent
To become more responsive

To legitimize conflict as an area of collaborative

management
To examine its own leadership style and ways
of managing
To legitimize and encourage the collaborative
management of team, inter-team, and
organization cultures