This intervention is labeled "confrontive" because it forces the client to
think about content that the client may never before have thought about.
Whereas the other interventions interfere with the client's thought process, this
intervention interferes with the content. The client must now consider some
thoughts that the consultant is having. Suggestions, advice, and other more
directive interventions are all in the category of "confrontive" by this same
definition.
The reader will recognize that part of the skill of helping is to know how to
move through these various kinds of interventions in such a way that the client
is stimulated to tell his or her story with minimal disruption of either the process
or the content. Why is it important to hear the client's full story? Because the
client will typically not tell the helper what is really the problem until he or she
trusts the helper to be helpful. One of the first tests of that is whether the helper
is willing to listen without being too intrusive.
The major implication of this line of thinking is that in the training of
consultants/helpers far more emphasis needs to be given to the clinical skills of
"on-line" intervention. Right now the training is heavily biased toward the skills
of data gathering and toward academic theories of large and small system
interventions. In that process the consultant may learn all about how to gather
information as a prelude to designing the grand intervention and, in that very
process, lose the client or, worse, damage the client by thoughtless inquiry
processes.
A second implication is that if clients are more likely to reveal what is
really bothering them as they come to feel more like a team member in the
inquiry process, more valid data will surface for a theory of what goes in
organizations. One reason our organization theories are weak is that they are
based on superficial data gathered from reluctant "subjects." A clinical inquiry
model that stimulates real openness on the part of clients will reveal a set of
variables and phenomena that will make it possible to build far better theories of
organizational dynamics.
In conclusion, if we go back to the original question posed in the title, it
should be clear to the reader that I view "Process Consultation" and "Clinical
Inquiry" to be essentially the same, but that the concept of "Action Research"
has come to mean two quite different things that should not be confused. Action
research as defined by researchers involves the client in the data gathering but
is driven by the researcher's agenda. Action research as defined by the
clinician involves the helper consultant in the client's inquiry process and the
process is driven by the client's needs.
I have tried to argue that the clinical model is the more appropriate one
for consultation and organizational development projects because its
assumptions fit better the realities of organizational life and are more likely to
reveal important organizational dynamics. It is time we took the clinical model
of action research more seriously and trained consultants to implement it
appropriately.