2. CONSULTATION: AN EXPANDING PROCESS Consultation is defined as a two-way interaction. It is a process of seeking, giving, and receiving help, and is aimed at aiding a person, group, organization, or larger system in mobilizing internal and external resources to deal with problem confrontation and change efforts. The values, intentions, and behaviors of consultative interaction differ from those of leadership, supervision, evaluation, therapy, and friendship. Many people function in a consultative way when carrying out some of the tasks involved in their primary roles as administrators, supervisors, counselors, therapists, friends, or parents. They are not, however, consultants in the professional sense (Lippitt and Lippitt, 1985). The role of a growing number of people labeled consultant describe their helping function. Many of these consultants are designated as "external" because they function as helpers from the outside of a system. This provides them a measure of objectivity in their dealing with client. Others perform as "internal" consultants, operating as part of the systems they are attempting to help. Though they lack some of the objectivity their external counterparts possess, they are capable of moving adroitly within a system because they are familiar with its internal mechanisms and know how to cut through the "red tape" present in all organizations. Throughout history, professional and volunteer helpers acquired or were given status and credibility based upon their ability to solve problems. Some, like tribal wise men, medicine men and women, and priests developed special skills as helpers in personal and group problem solving. No special training was initially necessary. In time, charismatic leaders, such as Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, and Confucius developed circles of followers, who, through role modeling, conceptual training, and some supervised practice, developed helping orientations and skills and presented themselves to people as helpers and change agents. Formal training programs and internships developed as preparation and certification, first for religious ministries and for medical practice, then for psychologists, social workers, and public health workers. Helping tended to be differentiated into consulting and training. Recently, individuals have been professionally trained to help solve the problems of all functions of the modern community: business, management, labor leadership, education, health, public service, social welfare, recreation, religion, corrections and rehabilitation, and personal therapy. Several futurists like Toffler (1970) pointed out that one outcome of the increasing rate of change increased the complexity of problems to be solved, and consequently, the need for integration of different disciplines or sources of expertise or experience is mandatory. Several trends appear to be related to this need for increased mobilization of problem-solving intelligence, and these present implications for the growth and development of the consulting industry. 1. Technical Development. The rapid rate of technological development is a trend which has and will continue to impact lifestyles, social organizations of enterprise, and political and economic systems of the community, state, and nation. Increasingly complex problems of interdependence, welfare, education, leadership, and decision making are being created. There is a greater need for individuals and groups to collaborate, to ask for and give help, and to support one another. The motivations and skills of people lag far behind the increased need and the knowledge of how to solve problems, how to generate and use new and unique resources like computers and other communications devices, and how to set up collaborative efforts. 2. Crisis in Human Resources. People are more and more conscious of the underutilization, underdevelopment, and misuse of such resources as racial and ethnic minority groups, women, children and youth, the handicapped, the elderly, the unemployed, and the undereducated (all protected-class people). This misuse represents a great challenge to the professional consultant. 3. Undeveloped Consulting Skills of Workers. Many managerial and nonmanagerial workers demonstrate undeveloped skills as consultants, coaches, teachers, trainers, and counselors. This is currently being identified as a major problem in many organizations, and they are receiving training in these areas. These efforts have increased the pool of available helping talent. 4. Discretionary Time. More people now have discretionary time to spend beyond the demands of wage-earning and life- maintenance activities. This time is available for creative volunteer work. The quality of community life and individual lives could be significantly improved if interpersonal helping and support were accepted as a valuable activity. "Good neighboring" could become a rewarding priority and a revitalization of democracy. For example, President Clinton's proposal that college students would be able to work off their college loans by being in service to communities is one creative way to add to the pool of talented, voluntary (relatively speaking) individuals in communities across America (Lippitt & Lippitt, 1986, pp. 5-7). Lippitt and Lippitt (1986) contended that the consequences of these four trends is that the needs for help in many sectors is accelerating faster than the preparation of professional helpers - consultants, trainers, teachers. They believed that top priority should be given to the recruiting and training of professionals and nonprofessionals in the skill of helping and supporting and creating of teams of professionals and volunteers as helping-consulting teams. Several factors greatly inhibit the development of skilled and motivated consultants and leaders of helping teams: the territorial attitudes of university departments, the specializations of disciplines, and the lack of curriculum collaboration between the departments and the professional schools. The spread of participatory management, although slow according to Lippitt and Lippitt (1985), is more rapid than the spread of participatory learning in higher education. Another serious and pervasive block are the notions that "doing it oneself" is the greatest sign of competence and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Because the highest value in an organization is usually placed on the line people who are producers, typically there is a reluctance to invest in staff people, such as internal consultants. If help is needed, organizations tend to depend on inside resources in order to "keep it in the family." The foregoing discussion is only a small sample of the reasons why the use of consultation resources lags so far behind the need and why the professionals and volunteers who are attempting to fill consultant roles are relatively unprepared to do flexible, competent jobs in different problem-solving situations.