Process Consultation

Process Consultation

Process Consultation is a set of activities provided by a consultant that helps members of an organization to perceive, understand and act on the process events that occur in their work environment.  A process consultant helps the staff members of an organization to obtain insights into their organizational processes, their consequences, and the mechanism to bring about positive changes within the organization.  The ultimate goal of process consultation is to help the organization diagnose its problems and generate a solution for the same.

Areas of process consultation

There are five main areas of process consultation namely improving communication, clarifying functional roles of group members, supporting decision-making, specifying group norms and growth, and ensuring effective leadership.  

Communication

An administrator is expected to understand the nature and style of the communication process in an organization and a process consultant helps in doing so through observing the communication pattern in the organization followed by feedback. He/she looks at who communicates with whom, for how long and how often, what is communicated, and how it is communicated. After collecting and analyzing data about communication, the consultant recommends some relevant measures to be taken to improve communication in the organization.

Functional Roles of Group Members

An administrator needs to make sure that the agreed roles are performed by staff members in the organization to ensure effectiveness. The consultant through process consultation provides techniques that help the staff members clarify self-related activities such as self-identity, influence, and their power practices within the organization. The consultant also suggests ways to improve task-related activities such as obtaining and providing information, coordinating, setting standards, and evaluating. Another area of functional roles of group members is group maintenance activities involving encouraging, supporting, harmonizing, and compromising.

The assumed roles of the organizational members are carefully observed by the process consultant. He/she helps the management personnel to identify and diagnose such group dysfunctions to be worked on.  Power struggles and preoccupation with self-interests can be factors for dysfunctionality within an organization which can occur due to an overemphasis on task-related activities resulting in the exclusion of group maintenance activities.

Decision Making

            A very important component of an effective group is decision-making. The administrator makes decisions by identifying problems, examining the alternatives, making decisions, and implementing the decisions. The consultant in his/her process consultation supports the organization to make relevant decisions. For example, a few techniques he/she can provide to administrators of the organization that while making decisions group leader can ignore a suggestion made by the group and refuse to discuss the same. He/she can use authority and make the subordinates comply with his/her decision.  An administrator can use the majority rule or the consensus method.

Group Norms and Growth

Groups of people who work together develop group norms and standards of behavior. The consultant during process consultancy can help the organization to understand the group norms and the effect of these norms on the group functioning.

Leadership

The process consultant can help the group understand the various leadership styles and help the administrator to adjust their style to better fit the situation. This will help the administrators to understand their own behavior and how others react to such behavior.

Conclusion

Process consultation is aimed to facilitate organizational change by helping the administrators to be aware of the process of change, the consequences of the processes, and the mechanisms by which change can be brought.