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On coaches, counselors,
facilitators and behavioral
consultants
Jack Denfeld Wood and Gianpiero Petriglieri
Summary
Executive coaches, career counselors, psychotherapists, group facilitators
and behavioral consultants all have overlapping, yet different areas of
expertise. To make an informed decision about the kind of long-term
leadership development program you want, it is crucial that you understand these differences and limitations. In individual sessions, coaches,
counselors and psychotherapists work with very different aims and at
varying psychological depth. In group work, the contribution that experienced behavioral consultants make to the process of learning from the
group’s experience can make the difference between success and failure.
In recent years, the trend in executive education has turned increasingly
toward behavioral topics. Corporations come to business schools seeking
faculty skilled in one-on-one coaching sessions and intensive small group
work. Beyond the traditional business school curricula of readings, lectures
and case discussions on the topics of general management, most programs
now include behavioral sessions dedicated to personality questionnaires,
360° feedback inventories, business simulations, and outdoor leadership
activities of various sorts.
However, because full-time faculty members seldom have either the time or
the behavioral background to fulfill these demands, business schools hire
independent practitioners from outside to do much of the intensive one-onone and group work. But these practitioners – ‘coaches,’ ‘counselors,’ ‘facilitators’ and ‘behavioral consultants’ – come from different backgrounds and
have different abilities and expertise. Prospective clients need to know what
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those differences are. This chapter will outline the principal differences
among the backgrounds and roles of executive coaches, career counselors,
group facilitators and behavioral consultants.
Working with individuals
Single-session coaching
One can approach human behavior in a number of ways. One can work, for
example, with off-the-shelf questionnaires as a basis for a one-on-one
discussion. This is the domain of ‘single-session coaching.’ Questionnaires
such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality inventory
based on the psychological thinking of Carl Jung, or any of several commercially available 360° feedback inventories1 are popular. Anyone with a good
feel for people, one or two days training and a familiarity with the specific
questionnaire can become an effective single-session coach. This style of
coaching involves listening well, explaining unclear aspects of the
questionnaire, identifying trends and patterns in the results, and
occasionally dispensing advice for action. In other words, it all boils down
to helping managers make sense of pages of summary data as well as encouraging them to do something about the results. This is different from longerterm ‘executive coaching.’
Executive coaching
In the last two decades, executive coaching has become a flourishing
segment of the ‘leadership industry.’ Individuals who market themselves as
‘executive coaches’ usually sell a variety of services that go beyond elucidating questionnaire results. Their services are typically delivered in the
executive’s office, over the telephone or via the internet.
Most executive coaches work from a base of contractual cognitive
psychology, that is, at a conscious, overt and rational level. Advice, support
and encouragement are the cornerstones of their methods. They invite
managers to identify personal strengths and weaknesses, set measurable
goals and prepare action plans for ‘improvement.’ Structured exercises are
suggested for practice of desired behaviors, as well as to provide feedback
and measure progress over time. Executive coaches may give explicit,
straightforward advice on surviving office politics, strategies for promotion
and ‘good career moves.’ They may also dispense tactical advice on how to
work with difficult bosses, peers, subordinates and customers.
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The sponsoring company and the individual manager are usually the
executive coaches’ primary ‘clients.’ It’s not uncommon for executive
coaching to be imposed on talented managers to smooth their ‘rough
edges.’ Occasionally, executive coaches market new and different services
than the traditional career-related ones. For example, within the wider
mandate of increasing managerial productivity by restoring stressed-out
executives to equanimity over lunch breaks, many different types of
‘coaches’ are now offering nutritional advice, meditation techniques,
work–life balance guidance, security coaching and all sorts of New Age
practices.
The majority of executive coaches are former managers who, often as a
result of a mid-life transition, decided to pursue an independent career,
helping other managers achieve their personal and professional goals. The
most popular ones can easily charge thousands of dollars for an hour of
advice. A smaller segment of the executive coach supply comes from other
walks of life – they are former athletes, sport coaches, members of military
Special Forces, actors, and health workers of various sorts. Most ‘qualified’
executive coaches have completed some training over several months or
years. These courses are often based on management models popularized by
pop-psychology bestsellers – Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,2 Primal
Leadership,3 Fish!4 – and represent a cottage industry by themselves.
But are such qualifications enough to work with the long-term development
of business executives? Psychologist Steven Berglas warns that executive
coaches are frequently ‘purveyors of simple answers and quick solutions’
and simply make matters worse. Berglas spent 25 years working in the
department of psychiatry of Harvard Medical School and, though an
executive coach himself, is deeply skeptical about the qualifications of its
many practitioners. ‘To best help their executives,’ he wrote, ‘companies
need to draw on the expertise of both psychotherapists and executive
coaches with legitimate skills.’5 The ‘expertise’ and ‘legitimate skills’ to
which Berglas refers include some form of intensive, full-time clinical
training in psychology.
Coaches, counselors and psychotherapists work at different levels of
psychological depth. One can work at the conscious, overt and rational level
mentioned above, or one can work at a deeper psychological level with the
unconscious, covert and irrational influences in human behavior. We can
use the image of the iceberg to illustrate these distinctions. Executive
coaching involves addressing the visible part of the iceberg, the part clearly
above the surface and in plain sight. Executive coaches occupy themselves
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with their clients’ present situation to improve their business performance
and future career advancement. If a rocketing career trajectory is the
measure of performance, there is much less concern for the impact of that
career trajectory on the executive’s personal and family life. Career
counseling can go a little bit deeper.
Career counseling
Career counselors also work at the level of conscious intention and rational
decision making. However, unlike those executive coaches who are
concerned mainly with present and future business performance, career
counselors explore the individual client’s personal history and have a sense
of their life situation as a whole. In fact, the ‘client’ for the executive
counselor may be less the company paying the bill than the individual who
sits in the chair across from them. Their interventions can include suggestions for alternative jobs in other companies or even different professions
altogether. To extend the iceberg metaphor, competent counselors operate
in the visible portion staked out by executive coaches, as well as just below
the water line where the overt influences of the corporate environment
meet the covert influences of the executive’s personal history and family
life.
Psychotherapy
Aimed at examining the experience and meaning of a person’s life – with an
eye to the development of an individual who has a unique history and
destiny – psychotherapy reaches much farther into the depths below the
water’s surface. Psychotherapy is an internally directed learning process
aimed at personal exploration, integration and growth. Such an endeavor
involves accessing one’s feelings and thinking creatively about one’s
experience. It entails reconnecting with the past to discover its meaning in
the present as well as shaping the future. Effective therapy alternates
between triggering and experiencing feelings, followed by the analysis and
integration of those feelings.6 Work-related concerns are discussed in
therapy as one of many important elements in the client’s past and present
experience. Seeing a therapist is usually a personal choice, and for the
psychotherapist the individual is the primary client – no one else.
Psychotherapists are usually professionals with advanced degrees in
medicine or psychology who have spent several additional years in training,
supervision and personal therapy themselves.7
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Working with groups: Facilitation and
behavioral consultation
Working with managers in a group setting requires different skills than
working with an individual alone. Whereas individual coaching and
counseling are interpersonally oriented (i.e. on the relationship with a boss,
the relationship with an assistant, etc.), group ‘facilitation’ and ‘behavioral
consultation’ also focus on the complexity of group and organizational
dynamics (e.g. team decision making, interdepartmental conflict and
similar issues). To expand into the group domain, business schools
sometimes use group facilitators for business games and negotiation simulations. IMD uses group facilitators or behavioral consultants primarily in the
outdoor portion of leadership development programs.8
We prefer employing the term behavioral consultant rather than group facilitator in order to emphasize their depth of expertise and multidimensional
professional role. The word facilitator suggests an intention to ‘facilitate’ –
which literally means ‘to make things easier.’ We have found that making
things easier, smoother and more efficient for executives engaged in
leadership activities does not necessarily optimize their learning experience
– on the contrary. We believe the word consultant better captures the actual
function of this role in a group of managers.
The word ‘consultant’ can easily bring to mind images of the ‘Big Five’
business consulting firms recommending off-the-shelf models as solutions
to complex corporate problems. In fact, the attitude and approach of most
‘group facilitators’ clearly resembles those of a typical business consultant
working with a large corporation. Similarly, facilitators work with groups in
a manner analogous to executive coaches’ work with individuals – relying
on prescribed models and tools to indoctrinate participants in ‘appropriate’
leadership behaviors. Their background and training also resemble that of
‘executive coaches’ and, in practice, many of them use the terms ‘group
facilitator’ and ‘group coach’ interchangeably. However, a behavioral
consultant represents a different kind of ‘consulting’ – more akin to a
therapist’s clinical consultation.9
Behavioral consultants work with a collaborative clinical approach, which
relies on their own and group members’ immediate experience as a means
to explore and understand what is happening in the group.10 In short, if
facilitators are concerned with what the group should be doing, consultants
are concerned with what the group is doing – and work to discover why.
Whereas both facilitators and consultants are concerned with the success of
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their groups, their definition of success is very different. For facilitators,
success is mostly concerned with participants’ accomplishment of a
particular exercise and getting a good rating for themselves at the end of the
program. Consultants are concerned with achieving the primary task of
maximizing the learning of the participants – not with the completion of a
particular exercise, with ‘feeling good together,’ with ‘working well as a
team’ or with getting a good end-of-program evaluation.
Competent behavioral professionals do not avoid the uncomfortable nature
of their work. We strongly believe that ‘coaching’ a group to operate
smoothly, or working to maximize the group’s feeling of self-satisfaction,
does a great disservice to the group’s learning. Consultants are neither there
to make things easier, nor more difficult – they are there to support the
group’s effort to explore its own behavior and to learn from it. Where a facilitator might attempt to reduce discomfort and smooth over controversy,
consultants might do the opposite if it serves the group’s learning. While
consultants do not intentionally provoke tension and controversy as an end
in itself, they expose existing, though covert, tensions, invite the group to
look at them, provide hypotheses to understand them and, finally, support
individual and group efforts to explore what might be done about them.
This is a set of skills that few business school faculty members or freelance
business consultants have. It is an aptitude for working with subtle psychological variables that is enhanced by rigorous professional training and
serious personal work.
Professionals for world-class leadership
development
After a decade of doing outdoor leadership exercises at IMD, it became
apparent that there was a terrible loss in depth of learning using facilitators
who were unable or unwilling to work among themselves as a staff team in
the same way they demanded of the participant groups – studying their own
behavior rigorously, honestly and collaboratively in the service of collective
learning. If the aim of doing this kind of work is to provide individual and
corporate clients with a world-class leadership development experience –
one that fosters meaningful and long-lasting behavioral learning – a staff of
competent professionals is not just desirable, it is absolutely necessary. We
found that executive coaches, counselors and facilitators without a clinical
background are simply incapable of dealing professionally with the full
range of behavior that occurs in serious leadership development. Unfortu-
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nately, the qualities required to do behavioral work well are difficult both to
find and to develop.
After much experimentation, we found that doing outdoor leadership work
well requires familiarity and comfort in three domains: (a) the technical
exercise procedures, (b) the ambience of corporate business organizations,
and (c) the psychological terrain on which one is working. The strategies for
putting in place competent individuals to do the work took time.
Mountain guide strategy
Because trained behavioral faculty were not immediately available for our
work, we initially used company employees whom we had trained to set up
the technical aspects – they were primarily mountain guides with an interest
in working with people. It didn’t work. Viewing the work as technical in
nature, they learned the exercises we had given them, but were unfamiliar
with both the language of business and the behavioral complexity of this
kind of work.
Facilitator strategy
We then searched for individuals with backgrounds in human resources or
corporate training and development. Though none of the individuals we
found had faculty backgrounds with doctorates, they did have some
experience as facilitators of indoor business simulations and exercises.
Furthermore, they understood the corporate preference for concrete
questionnaires and results. We hoped that they would develop more ‘behavioral’ depth during the work.
While this ‘facilitator’ strategy represented a modest improvement over the
mountain guide strategy, it didn’t work very well either. They learned the
technical aspects of the exercises, but their ‘training,’ ‘coaching’ or
‘counseling’ backgrounds proved inadequate to the task of operating at a
clinical psychological level. Unlike the mountain guides, the facilitators did
have a sense of the corporate world – but they played to it. They were
constantly colluding with their groups, usually to keep participants ‘happy’
and thereby bolster their popularity and ratings. To our surprise, some facilitators were even more resistant to working in depth than the program
participants.
By ‘collusion’ we mean a situation where the consultant influences, and is
influenced by, the group without being aware of it. A related way to describe
collusion is as an unconscious agreement between the group’s and the
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consultant’s defenses with the indirect aim of avoiding discomfort.
Collusion might be a normal occurrence in any group and it could even help
us to understand what is going on. But in order to put it to good use, consultants need to be honest, reflective enough to ‘catch’ themselves, and at least
willing to be challenged by their colleagues.11 Unfortunately, with rare
exceptions, most facilitators colluded as a modus operandi, ran their groups
without sharing much with staff colleagues, and resented questions.
We have seen facilitators collude with their groups in innumerable ways,
usually to allow participants to avoid being penalized, complete the
assigned tasks and experience a superficial sense of accomplishment. The
collusion included: (a) warning the participants not to touch a simulated
electrified fence; (b) letting them repeat a failed exercise; (c) secretly
prolonging the allocated time for an exercise; (d) observing a rules
infraction yet not calling attention to it; and (e) lobbying another facilitator
in charge of a competition on behalf of their own group. At other times,
collusion is more subtle – enacted in those ‘little ways’ in which facilitators
attempt to rescue individual participants, the whole group and themselves
from discomfort during debriefings or social events. This kind of insidious
collusion, if allowed or unobserved, can damage the learning experience
even further. Apart from a few gifted individuals, facilitators with a
corporate background retreated to their formal role as a ‘friendly’ instructor,
and were unable to bring themselves and their own emotions forward as an
integral part of the learning process.
The examples of collusion mentioned above are basically patronizing and
imply that the group needs to be ‘taken care of’ as one would take care of
children. In our view, this conceals a lack of faith in the capacity of adults
to learn as a group from their own experience, and it undermines the
integrity of the learning environment. Finally, facilitators had great difficulty working with more competent clinical staff members at the behavioral
depth and sophistication that we were aiming for. By 1998, we again sought
to improve the quality of our behavioral work, in order to deliver the quality
of learning our clients deserved.
Psychotherapist strategy
Since we had failed to train corporate facilitators to conduct outdoor
exercises and acquire a clinical sense, perhaps we could train the clinicians
to work with business groups for leadership development. First, we tried
using individuals with a psychotherapy background. Unfortunately, while
the therapists could work competently with individuals, most felt
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overwhelmed when facing a group of demanding business executives
during several days of tightly choreographed leadership exercises. Many
retreated into confusing psychobabble to cope and, when challenged by the
participants or even queried by their more experienced colleagues, became
defensive and insecure.
Behavioral consultant strategy
We desperately needed a staff composed of professionals comfortable
working not only with the ‘visible top of the iceberg’ but also with the
‘invisible bottom’ as well. They had to understand and intervene concurrently and competently at several ‘levels of analysis’ – at the individual level,
at the interpersonal level of two-person conflicts, at the level of the three- to
twelve-person small group, at the inter-group level of complex relations
among groups competing and cooperating, and even at the level of the
larger social system.
We finally began to select consultants who had significant experience in the
psychological professions, but who also had a familiarity with how organizations really work. These were PhDs or MDs specializing in psychology or
psychiatry, or individuals with a social science Master’s degree who had
worked in business, had a depth of clinical experience in group and organizational consultation, and had experience in individual therapy. In other words,
we sought those able to cover the entire ‘iceberg,’ from the overt and visible
concerns in managers’ rational career plans, to the covert and invisible forces
that influence their lives and eventually determine their ultimate destiny.
With such behavioral consultants, training in the methods and procedures of
outdoor leadership activities has proved relatively straightforward.
The work of behavioral consultants
In an outdoor leadership development program, the behavioral consultant
occupies several distinct roles: observer/cameraman, technician,
referee/rule interpreter, collaborative debriefer and, at the end of the
program, one-on-one coach. During the activities, the consultant observes
and films the group in action with minimal interference in the group’s
process, penalizes participants for rule transgressions, intervenes when
necessary, and calls an end to the formal exercise. During the subsequent
‘debriefing’ session – which is a crucial learning opportunity – the
consultant joins the group to reflect on the events and explore the
systematic behavioral dynamics at play.
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Technically speaking, the consultant’s principal function is to contribute to
the creation of favorable conditions within which meaningful behavioral
learning can take place. Individually and as a staff, they provide a holding
environment for participants, with two main features: containment and interpretation.12 Containment refers to a reliable presence that conveys the
message: ‘Here, it is possible to look at whatever happens, pleasant or not.
We can express our emotions and articulate our experiences, work them
through, and learn from them together.’ This stance provides a suitable
vessel for learning from one’s experiences, and a means for accelerating
personal development. Interpretation helps the group to put its experience in
context and then integrate it within a framework for application to similar
situations later on. Briefly, the function of consultants is to provide two
kinds of learning opportunities: situations and interventions. They must also
master the art of advancing the most useful hypotheses and overcome the
natural resistance that emerges in groups during the learning process.
Situations
Situations that provide an opportunity for learning set the frame of the
event, including the boundaries of time, method and place – for example,
start and finish times, formal participant roles, rules and penalties, and the
space where consultant and group debrief their work and explore their
behavior. In addition, given the complex reactions, moods and behaviors
that the consultant provokes among different participants, his or her
presence provides an opportunity to explore individual and group relations
with formal authority – if the consultant is competent and does not shy
away from making his or her role the subject of discussion when necessary.
Interventions
Consultants tend to intervene at specific input points, providing observations, descriptions, emotional reactions and provisional hypotheses. In
addition, they occasionally intervene to encourage group members to
express their thoughts and feelings, to talk to each other directly, and to
remain in the ‘here and now.’ Helpful interventions are aimed at stimulating an open and productive dialogue on a group’s behavior.
We find that there are three kinds of interventions. The worst ones are those
that tell the group what they should be doing, either overtly by judging their
behavior and giving advice on how to ‘improve’; or covertly by continuously telling the group what it seems to be avoiding – and therefore,
indirectly, what in the consultant’s opinion it should be talking about or
doing. More useful interventions cast some light on what the group is
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actually doing without realizing it, i.e. pointing out behaviors that suggest
what the group might unconsciously be aiming at. Nonetheless, the best
interventions are those that not only raise awareness of potential unconscious dynamics, but also illustrate both defensive and adaptive purposes of
behavior – what it hides and what it reveals – and encourage further exploration and dialogue.
For such an open and productive dialogue to occur, a helpful practice for
both consultant and participants is to share and discuss: (a) observations on
the overall behavior of the group (‘This is what I saw happening . . .’); (b)
simple, clear and direct descriptions of specific sequences of events and
repeating patterns (‘And each time you, Fred, take leadership . . .’); (c)
emotional reactions to those events (‘And so I felt angry/frustrated/left
out/ignored/happy . . .’); (d) hypotheses about what the group seems to be
doing overtly and more or less consciously (‘It seems as if the group is avoiding
conflict . . .’); and finally (e) some provisional observations as to what the
group may be up to more or less covertly or unconsciously (‘. . . to protect
certain shared fictions – like we’re all the same . . .’).
Let us give you a concrete example: a consultant observes that a group
believes its exercise is ‘impossible’ to complete successfully – even though it
has discarded half a dozen viable solutions. While the group is still halfheartedly engaged in the exercise, the consultant might interject a
comment such as, ‘It appears that the group favors failure over the risk of
developing one person’s idea at the expense of someone else’s idea.’ Usually
this is ignored. Later on, as they debrief the event, the consultant might
follow up a participant’s complaint that the group gave up and ‘threw in the
towel’ too soon, by offering the hypothesis that the group might unconsciously prefer to fail and feel depressed because that lets them circumvent
an uncomfortable fight for alternative ideas – and for power – among several
individuals, all of whom made good contributions, any of which would
have worked if picked up by the group and developed. Such interventions
are usually met with initial irritation before leading to a collaborative exploration of why the group is avoiding the discomfort of internal discrimination, competition and the exercise of leadership.
Hypotheses
Hypotheses such as the one above can be aimed at identifying possible
causes for the group’s current behavior (‘Perhaps we are avoiding conflict
because there is a “protection racket” among the macho guys in the group
. . .’) as well as its possible purposes (‘Perhaps we are avoiding conflict in order
to feel comfortable by pretending to be the same . . . and operate as if there
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are no differences among us . . . so we don’t have to compete or look at who
is taking over leadership and how’). Of course, human behavior never lends
itself to simple, single explanations.
In truth, countless hypotheses could be developed about the covert
dynamics occurring in a group. Perhaps what distinguishes excellent
consultants from mediocre ones is the intuitive capacity to: (a) select the
hypotheses that best promote the group’s learning at any given moment,
rather than merely the ones that by default fit the consultant’s theoretical
framework; and (b) deliver the hypothesis in a clear, simple and timely
manner so that it can be heard. Nonetheless, when consultants offer a
working hypothesis, the purpose is never to discover and announce ‘the one
and only true reason’ for what the group is doing. Hypotheses are always
provisional and never claim to be ultimate truths – they are simply
pragmatic heuristic devices to stimulate understanding and encourage
further exploration. This kind of exploration is not always welcome by a
group.
Resistance
Resistance is a natural occurrence during serious behavioral work. Behavioral hypotheses, especially when they ring true, are usually met with resistance and controversy – with either polite disregard or heated denial. The
closer to a sensitive spot and the more accurate the hypothesis, the more
provocative it is. And the more it is resisted. The consultants’ work, if done
well, upsets and comforts at the same time. Therefore their position is a
delicate and often lonely one. Helping group members to uncover what lies
beneath the surface of their visible behavior can evoke significant resistance
and the consultant can become the lightning rod of a group’s tension and
anger. It represents a learning opportunity if – and only if – it can be talked
about and understood. When this is avoided by either consultant or participants, the learning process pays a heavy price. Consultants that fear such
unpleasant moments of isolation and attempt to please the group, as well as
groups that prefer to hold a grudge and refuse to examine their feelings
towards the consultant, deprive themselves of a unique opportunity.
A balanced reaction of some defensiveness as well as sudden insight (‘Aha,
so that’s what we are up to!’) is usually a promising indication that group
and consultant are working well together. Learning proceeds most swiftly
when they work through the initial feelings of remoteness and inequality,
and become fellow explorers who are curious about ‘what might be going
on in the group now’ – of the intricate underpinnings of group behavior.
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The staff as a team
A grouping of competent behavioral professionals is not necessarily the
same as a competent and cohesive team of behavioral professionals. To do
good behavioral work, the staff of a leadership program needs to operate as
a coordinated unit. If the staff is not familiar with each other’s style and
approaches, this is impossible. To bring continuity to our work together, we
limit the core staff to around a dozen individuals. While the team members
are diverse in many ways, they share a clinical approach towards behavioral
work, a willingness to question themselves, a certain psychological eclecticism, and a playfulness and willingness to experiment.
Unlike most other program staffs, ours shares responsibility for all aspects of
the work. Beyond work with their designated group, each consultant participates in the management of the program as a whole. Their collaboration
ranges from client contact to pre-planning and program design, staffing,
remuneration, evaluations, paper grading, and taking various upfront roles
with the class. Furthermore, for quality control and staff development, we
try to use at least a few co-consulting pairs in each program. In order to
operate as a team, familiarity and co-consulting are helpful, but they
certainly aren’t enough. Long and frequent clinical meetings before, during
and after the program are necessary as well.
Staff members need to demonstrate the same commitment to explore and
reflect upon their own behavior that they demand from participant groups.
Therefore, continuous clinical meetings are an essential part of their work.
During the meetings the team discusses what is happening in the participant and staff groups. These meetings release accumulated stress and
restore psychological availability, which are necessary to create the least
contaminated learning environment possible. They are a prerequisite for
experimentation, reciprocal learning and feedback.
We always remind participants of the importance of continuing development. It is no less true for the staff members. Beyond active participation
in the clinical meetings, the staff needs commitment to continuing development of the team as a whole and of its individual members. The former
is helped through one or two annual retreats, where the team as a whole
reflects on its work and discusses potential improvements. The latter
requires that individuals regularly pursue personal psychological work and
attend group relations and group dynamics programs, to enhance their
professional skills, and to remind themselves of what it feels like to be in the
participant’s role.
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Conclusion
A company seeking leadership development can choose coaches,
counselors, facilitators or clinically trained behavioral consultants for the
task. It is crucial to consider what you really want. If you are serious about
the development of your managers and their ability to lead, it is probably
preferable to have them work with a professional who has the capacity to
engage them at whatever level is necessary for their personal and professional growth. To do so, one must ask for behavioral depth and sophistication from practitioners who have the background and skills to deliver it.
Key take-aways
■
Coaches, counselors and psychotherapists have different abilities,
expertise and approaches to working with individuals.
■
In the context of group work, the behavioral consultant’s primary
function is to provide a holding environment within which meaningful
learning can take place.
■
Competent behavioral consultants have the skills to work at several
‘levels of analysis,’ the ability to select and deliver hypotheses that
elucidate covert group dynamics, and the willingness to work with
group resistance, in order to promote learning.
■
Effective behavioral work requires the staff of the leadership program to
operate as a team, participating in the management of the program as
a whole, and engaging in frequent clinical staff meetings.
Notes
1 In 360° feedback inventories, managers rate themselves and are rated by their supervisors, peers, and subordinates on behaviors categorized as managerial ‘competencies’.
2 Covey, S.R. (1990) Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster.
3 Goleman, D., McKee, A. and Boyatzis, R.E. (2002) Primal Leadership. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Business School Press.
4 Lundin, S.C., Paul, H. and Christensen, J. (2000) Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost
Morale and Improve Results. New York: Hyperion Press.
5 Berglas, S. (2002) The very real dangers of executive coaching. Harvard Business
Review, 80 (6), pp. 86–92.
6 Yalom, I.D. (2003) The Gift of Therapy. New York: Harper Collins, p. 71.
7 Wood, J.D. and Petriglieri, G. (2004) Behind the mask: the MBA personal development elective (unpublished manuscript).
8 See this book, Chapter 18.
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12 ■ On coaches, counselors, facilitators and behavioral consultants
9 For different approaches to consulting see: Schein, E. (1999) Process Consultation
Revisited: Building The Helping Relationship. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley; Block, P.
(2000) Flawless Consulting: A Guide To Getting Your Expertise Used. 2nd ed. San
Francisco: Jossey Bass Pfeiffer.
10 See this book, Chapter 11.
11 Petriglieri, G. and Wood, J.D. (2003) The Invisible Revealed: Collusion as an Entry to
the Group Unconscious. Transactional Analysis Journal, 33 (4), pp. 332–343.
12 Winnicott, D.W. (1990) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment:
Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London: Karnac; Shapiro, E.R. and
Carr, A.W. (1991) Lost in familiar places. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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