Issues in Consultant Client Relationship

Presented by:

Vineet Kumar

Sumit Bedi

Greiner and Metzger (1983: 7) have defined business consultancy as

“ an advisory service contracted for and provided to organisations by specially trained and qualified persons who assist, in an objective and independent manner, the client organisation to identify management problems, analyse such problems, recommend solutions to these problems and help when requested in the implementation of solutions.”

Ingredients of the definition:1)an advisory service2)There is a contract for such service3)Provided by specially trained and qualified

persons.4)These persons provide assistance in an objective

and independent manner.5)Perform the following functions: Identification of management problemsRecommending solutions to such problemsHelping in the implementation of these solutions.

A consultant can see the problem as outside of it. Hence, his opinion is free from organizational limitations and biases.

Usually there isn’t any inhibition whatsoever in his intellect, to convey a correct solution ,if the MD himself is wrong.

Seeing the problem at the micro level and then at the industry level and then Globally.

Collect information , bring out a solution, which most suits the unit which is in problem

With Consultant the horizon of knowledge expands. And it becomes easier to solve the problems.

Client-consultant relationship:

1.The Client as a buyer of knowledge2.The Consultant as a problem-solver or as an

agent of change3.The Consultant share all the relevant

information of the firm4.The Consultant has the resources of the

firm at his disposal5.The Consultant can act as the agent of the

firm, without having any contractual liability, in the strict sense, of an agent.

Phase I: The Discovery Phase: In this phase the client’s expectations are unearthed.

Phase II: The Definition Phase: In this phase the shape, form and boundaries are given to the expectations.

Phase III: The Delivery Phase: In this phase activities are undertaken to meet the defined expectations.

1. Entry and Contracting

2. Defining the client system

3. Trust

4. The nature of the consultant’s expertise

5. Diagnosis and appropriate interventions

6. The depth of interventions

7. On being absorbed by the culture

8. The Consultant as a model

9. The Consultant team as a microcosm

10. Action Research and the OD process

11. Client dependency and terminating the relationship

12. Ethical standards

The initial entry process may be as follows:

a. A phone call is made to the consultant by the prospective client

b. A brief description of the problems is made and the same are discussed briefly.

c. If it seems that the consultant’s expertise fits the clients requirements, a face to face meeting is fixed.

During the first face to face meeting:

a. The consultant explores with the client some of the deeper aspects of the problem.

b. The consultant and client start to sort out which group will be the starting point of OD interventions

c. If the problem appear to present to OD interventions, the consultant propose possible solutions.

The following issues may arise during the entry phase:

1.Who can and who should attend a workshop?2.When and where the workshop is to be held?3.Whether or not the management group has to be

away from their offices for the purpose of attending the workshops?

4.Whether or not the top person has to be briefed about the interview themes prior to the workshop?

5.The extent of confidentiality of the interviews? Etc.

Contracting refers to the act of reaching at an agreement between the parties as to the terms and conditions of any job.

The conditions agreed upon in the initial meetings become a part of the overall psychological contract between the consultant and the client.

It is necessary that the more formal financial aspect must be clarified and documented at the initial stage itself.

But it must be kept in mind that “Contracting, in both psychological and financial sense, occurs over and over in OD consulting.”

Who the client is is very important issue in consultant client relationship.

Initially, the initial contact, a single manager is the client.As trust and confidence develop between the key client

and the consultant, both begin to view the manager and his subordinate team as the client.

Then at the last stage, the manager’s total organization is viewed as the client.

Hence, the health and vitality of the various organizational subsystems, as well as , the effectiveness and growth of all individual members of the client system, clearly become the consultant’s concern.

The early meetings between consultant and client are attempts at building trust, but there may arise many problems, some of them are as following:

1.Subordinates may be concerned that they will be manipulated toward their superiors’ goals with little attention given to their own.2.The Consultant must start neutral. Then the efforts must be to understand the motives of the client.3.The “good guy, bad guy “ syndrome4.Confidentiality must be maintained.

Due to unfamiliarity with the OD methods, the client tends to put the consultant in the expert’s role (on substantive content).

But the consultant should avoid being an expert due to the following reasons:

1. The objective of OD intervention is to help the client system to develop its own resources, whereas the expert role creates dependency.

2. Expert role requires consultant to defend his recommendations. This reduces flexibility.

3. Expert role hinders in trust building.

4. Expert role leads to enhanced expectations, whereby increasing dependency.

Note: The OD consultant should act in the expert role on the Process used but not on the Task.

The consultant may have a temptation to apply an intervention technique which he particularly likes and which has produced good results in the past, but may not suit the immediate situation.

The intervention should be appropriate to the diagnosis.

The wider the range of interventions with which the consultant is familiar the more options the consultant can consider.

Depth of Intervention, is an admixture of the following two factors:

1. Accessibility: The degree to which the data are more or less public versus being hidden or private and the ease with which the intervention skills can be learned.

2. Individuality: The closeness to the person’s perceptions of self and the degree to which the effects of an intervention are in the individual in contrast to the organization.

The inherent risk with depth of intervention is that the closer one moves to the sense of self, the more the inherent processes have to do with emotions, values, and hidden matters and consequently, the more potent they are to do either good or harm.

Harrison suggested two criteria for determining the appropriate depth of intervention:

1. To intervene at a level no deeper than that required to produce enduring solutions to the problems at hand;

2. To intervene at a level no deeper than that at which the energy and resources of the client can be committed to the problem solving and to change.

The dilemma is whether to “lead and push, or to collaborate and follow”.

Another way to look at the depth of intervention is to think about the performance of units by descending order of systems and subsystems.

One of the mistakes one can make in the change-agent role is to let oneself be seduced into joining the culture of the client organization.

While one needs to join the culture enough to participate in and enjoy the functional aspects of the prevailing culture, participating in the organization’s pathology will neutralize the consultant’s effectiveness.

It deal with the issue “Whether change agents are willing and able to practice what they preach.”

In the area of feeling, the consultant may be advocating a more open system in which feelings are considered legitimate and their expression important to effective problem solving and at the same time suppressing his own feelings about what is happening in the client system.

The consultant must give out clear messages and for that the consultant’s words and apparent feelings need to be congruent.

The consultants working as a team can be viewed as a microcosm of the organization they are trying to create:

1.The consultant team must set an example of an effective unit if the team is to enhance its credibility.

2.Practitioners need the effectiveness and that comes from continuous growth and renewal process.

3.The quality of the inter-relationships within the consulting team carries over directly into the quality of their diagnosis, their intervention designs, and their interventions.

Whether the OD process itself will be subject to the ongoing action research being experienced by the client system. This considers on the one hand the issue of congruency and on the other hand the viability of the OD efforts and effectiveness of the consultants.

Unless there are feedback loops relative to various interventions and stages in OD process, the change agents and the organization will not learn how to make the future OD interventions more effective.

This can be done via simple questionnaires and interviews.

As the Consultant is in the business of enhancing the client system’s abilities in problem solving and renewal, the consultant is in the business of assisting the client to internalize skills and insights rather than to create a prolonged dependency relationship.

In this context an issue of personal importance to the consultant is the dilemma of working to increase the resourcefulness of the client versus wanting to remain involved, to feel needed and to feel competent.

As a solution to this dilemma one approach can be adopted that is “there can be a gradual reduction in external consultant use and as an OD effort reaches its maturity.”

Another issue arises when the consultant senses that his assistance is no longer needed or could be greatly reduced. In order to save his resources and to avoid inconvenience to the client, the consultant must confront this issue.

Another dilemma is that when the use of the consultant, according to the consultant, is declining more rapidly than progress on the OD effort seems to warrant.

There are five categories of ethical dilemmas, which arise in the consultant-client relationship:

1.Misrepresentation and Collusion2.Misuse of Data3.Manipulation and coercion4.Value and goal conflicts, and5.Technical ineptness