4. PHASES IN THE CONSULTING PROCESS There are six major phases in any consultant-client working relationship. 1. Engaging in initial contact and entry; 2. Formulating a contract and establishing a helping relationship; 3. Identifying problems through diagnostic analysis; 4. Setting goals and planning action; 5. Taking action cycling feedback; and 6. Completing the contract (continuity, support, and termination) (Lippitt and Lippitt, 1985, p. 28). In order to more fully understand these phases, the following description of each one is presented to ensure that the reader can appreciate the scope and breath of the consultant's role. PHASE I: Engaging in Initial Contact and Entry. The initial contact with regard to a potential consulting relationship may come from any of the following three sources: 1. The Potential Client. A sense of pain or a problem may be interpreted as a need to seek help, accompanied by an awareness that certain kinds of consultation may be appropriate sources of help. 2. The Potential Consultant. Contact may be motivated by a general search for new clients or the consultant's knowledge that he or she has been helpful to other, similar client systems. 3. The Third Party. Some who perceives a need for help in a client system may be aware of the skills and resources available through consultation. Whether the potential consultant is internal or external makes some difference in this contact initiation. The Internal consultant knows more about the existence of difficulties or pain. On the other hand, the external consultant often has an advantage because the client system finds it easier to share a problem with an outsider. When contact is established through referral by a third party, a link can be established between an outsider and a system. Mutually shared work in which the consultant explores the readiness of the client system to devote time, energy, and the committed involvement of appropriate people to a problem-solving process is important. Almost any type of change effort requires changes in the assignment priorities of personnel and the commitment of management to additional tasks. Goodstein (1987) discussed the differences between consultants and line managers in role, perspective, and world view. He emphasized that planning organizational change is different from managing organizational change, the latter having to contend with the political and emotional impact that underlie resistance to change. He also noted a need for management to implement the change process and underscore its full time role as opposed to that of the consultant. Each of the parties explores and tests the potential for an effective working relationship. Familiarity can lead a client system to stereotyped preconceptions of an internal consultant's particular responses, and these preconceptions may be quite correct. The potential client may have conscious or unconscious fears about the difficulties of withdrawing from a working relationship with an internal consultant, whereas terminating a contract with an external consultant may be seen as easier to accomplish. Phase I should produce at least a tentative decision on part of both the consultant and the client either to discontinue the exploration or to move toward some kind of agreement about the nature, objectives, and conditions of the working relationship. PHASE II: Formulating a Contract and Establishing a Helping Relationship. It is not enough to just agree that there is a problem or that a change is desirable. It is important to explore what kinds of outcomes are possible and desirable if the working relationship is to be successful. Determining who should do what is critical. The client has a strong need to know how much time, energy, and commitment the consultant is ready to put into the helping relationship. Simultaneously, the consultant has a strong need for clarification about who should be involved, what kinds of activity would be feasible, what kind of support could be expected from the top power structure, what kind of financial and time commitments would be made, and how the contract would be terminated. Another part of formulating the contract includes clarifying the projected time period allowed for accomplishing the desired outcomes and the evaluation procedures to be used in assessing progress toward the desired outcomes. PHASE III: Identifying Problems Through Diagnostic Assessment. The processes of entry and contract formulation involve preliminary diagnostic activity, readiness for change, and the dynamics of a working relationship. This is all preliminary to the much more intensive diagnostic work and planning for action required in any successful consultive relationship. The internal consultant, usually aware of the existence of diagnostic data, is able to recommend appropriate targets for data collection, but being part of the organizational family is more likely to create defensiveness and resistance. It is easier for the external consultant to request unfamiliar types of data collection and to use new methods and tools. PHASE IV: Setting Goals and Planning for Action. A good diagnostic procedure should provide the basic warmup for productive goal-setting process. This process must include the complementary activity of step-by-step planning of the work required to reach a goal. Acquiring a diagnostic sensitivity to the current situation and operating problems, the client and consultant is ready for the challenge of looking ahead. This is aided by surveys of what is wanted and needed by those the consultant serves. To set meaningful goals, both the consultant and the client must have a clear picture of a preferred and feasible future. This picture provides a basis for planning. The key to success when planning the implementation of meaningful goals is devising a sequence of steps toward each goal. The plan stipulates that simultaneous steps be taken by different persons and groups. One of the most critical and neglected phases of planning is an anticipatory rehearsal. It helps to answer the question of who should be involved in order for a plan of action to have the best probability of success. Once these people have been identified, the question of how to involve them must be answered. This sets up new planning sequences and new goals that are concentrated on involvement strategy. The internal consultant probably has more knowledge and more access to knowledge about the potential resource value of people and units that should be involved at various stages in the problem-solving action. It is also more difficult for the internal consultant to request the participation of top power figures in the client system and the involvement of parts of the system that are uncommitted but crucial. The external consultant often has great leverage with respect to involvement due to his or her being outside the mainstream of the organization. PHASE V: Taking Action and Cycling Feedback. The payoff of consulting lies in successful action and in the continuity of long-term gains after the first bursts of energy and effort are expended. In this phase, the consultant is responsible for helping people to develop skills necessary to increase their chances of achieving success in the actions they take. He or she must celebrate the small successes on a step-by-step path of action. The internal consultant is better able to observe the action that takes place and to assess the levels of skill needed for this action. The external consultant probably has better leverage for introducing skill-development activities and for initiating sessions designed to examine the progress and to review process issues. Feedback is only helpful if it is used rapidly in re- examining goals, revising action strategies, and perhaps prompting decisions concerning the mobilization of additional resources and changes of assignments and roles. The internal consultant may be in a better position to be aware of needed but used resources, at least those within the system. But the external consultant has an advantage in using the data to confront blockages and resistance to effective action, and he or she probably has a better perspective from which to suggest alternative courses of action and the need for external resources. PHASE VI: Completing the Contract. The greatest problem with many consultation efforts is that the changes achieved often succumb to one of three pitfalls: 1. They are short term and followed by regression to old patterns; 2. They are fragile and lead to poor continuity of the new status; 3. They are marked by the growth of counter-reactions that must be coped with quickly in order to guarantee their continuity. In order to avoid these types of problems, the consultation process must include a plan for follow-up support or provisions for gradual termination of the consultant's help and installation within the system of the successfully used resources. This designing of support systems for the successful continuity of the change effort is perhaps the most significant test of the consultant's competence. Sometimes, the result of this effort is a plan for a continuing review of events, including and involving a wide circle of personnel from the client system. Support conference calls are one method to ensure that change efforts are continued. This may sound strange, but a professional responsibility and goal of most exceptional consultants is to become progressively unnecessary. How can the successful consultant achieve this? Here are several strategies suggested by Lippitt & Lindaman (1979). 1. Training an insider to take over the functions initiated by the consultant; 2. Setting a series of dates for decreasing the budget and the involvement of the consultant; 3. Having a termination celebration for the final product of the collaborative effort, such as a publication; 4. Establishing a minimal periodic maintenance plan such as an annual review session; and 5. Creating temporary task forces to enhance continuing organizational development.