The day following our last class I sat with my Dad in my kitchen and interviewed him for a project that I am working on for MGMT 682 - Staffing. For this job analysis, I needed to review with him a list of tasks, knowledges, skills and abilities that are required by an organization (for which he is Board Chairman), Open Arms Institute, for the role of Child Care Center Director. Knowing that there had been a recent high profile failure of a director in one of the centers, I was a bit nervous about the conversation and the project to say the least. Besides my anxiety, I could tell right away that my dad was struggling and pretty anxious. So, even putting the job analysis aside, it was hard not to go into the Exploratory Inquiry right way. This was also somewhat natural because we had dialogued about the issue several times in the past two weeks so I already knew a bit about the situation.
What do you do when a client is already emotional?
How do you engage in a pure inquiry first?
How do you move him or her off of the feelings and into the the exploration of reasons and actions?
If you are aware of the situation (as I was), how do you reframe the conversation into a new examination?
I think Schein gives us great and practical suggestions about these 3 phases of inquiry. I hope that at some point in my career, these questions will come more naturally and that I feel more practiced in the process.
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Rachel – This is an excellent example of the real types of encounters that happen during consultative conversation. Here again is where I find Schein’s insight to be more advanced than Block’s take on relationship skills.
ReplyDeleteBefore getting into corporate HRD, I was in outside sales. I was fresh out of college and figured it was a good employment learning ground. It was pain that only my enemies should experience! One thing I learned during my four years in sales was that people – even males – are emotional beings. Sales Lesson: If someone is emotional about an issue or decision, those feelings need to be acknowledged in order to move through the conversation. If the emotions are ignored, stifled, or disrespected, the progress will either be temporary or negated. And often, those emotions resurface with greater intensity. Here are some ideas for the question you offer:
• What do you do when a client is already emotional? Verbally acknowledge it. This is of benefit to the client and at the same time it forces the consultant to think about the intricacy of the situation in order to verbalize an acknowledgement statement. It also builds trust. Empathy is not always easy and it’s a step that always slows me down and forces me to think of the other person first. (It’s so tough to put my needs second!)
• How do you engage in a pure inquiry first? Hmmm – off hand I don’t know. I start by scripting out my introductory statement that includes an objective and then listing a set of questions. Next, I role-play them with someone I respect. (Once I did this with someone whom I didn’t respect and their feedback as lame - - - probably because I didn’t respect them anyway.)
• How do you move him or her off of the feelings and into the exploration of reasons and actions? I have very advanced relationship skills and my wife will back me up on this. Do not try to move someone off of the feelings until after verbal acknowledgement. Then you may ask permission to turn the focus of the conversation onto the business side of the issue or topic. For example: “It must have been a difficult situation with the events surrounding the dismissal of the last director. That sort of thing impacts many people in personal ways. Let’s consider one specific area within this situation and talk about the reasons for evaluating the current competencies for this position….”
Well, those are some of my ideas and of course I always feel better after sharing them.
Boy, Rachel, you pose more questions than answers this time and they are GOOD questions indeed.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the chapter in Schein on Active Inquiry, and the discussion we had in class last week, I reflected on the things I do naturally when I am pretending to be in active inquiry. The thing that stuck with me was what Dr. Carter said (ironically but perhaps not merely by chance) in response to the scenario you were describing with your friend: as consultants, at some point in the inquiry process, we move beyond "pure" when we infuse our own thoughts, ideas, emotions, etc into the helping conversation. Once that begins, the process has been tainted, somewhat, because what emerges is not just created by the client--it becomes a joint venture that could potentially be created or directed by us, as consultants, to a much greater degree than is really helpful. Clearly, the transition from a pure process to a diagnostic, confrontive and directive process needs to happen at some point. And I imagine that one can move in and out of pure to the other--but it will never be the same once the pure inquiry has been transgressed (or so I imagine and have experienced a little). The pure inquiry phase seems to be the one chance we have to hear and try to understand the client's world view, his perspective, before we begin the process of intervention. And a chance to have that kind of insight is a gift. It seems to me that if we get good at being present and listening to, feeling, seeing the energy, then we might be better in our attempts to help.
So I guess it's a judgement call about the whens and the hows of real life consultation inquiry. Good judgement comes from experience and reflection and taking chances and making mistakes and always, always learning.
I wonder if you were able to put aside what you already knew about your dad and his experience and behave as though you didn't? I wonder if you, in attempting to use the active inquiry process that Schein describes, explained to your dad that's what you were doing? Are emotions and reasons/actions mutually exclusive? Can't one, in the exploratory inquiry stage, ask about both?
These are the questions that your questions raise for me.
Hi, Rachael, Steve, and Jess,
ReplyDeleteI'm really enjoying this exchange among the three of you about pure inquiry as Schein describes it. To me, this first stage of active inquiry is all about HEARING what the client says, how he/she describes the problem and how he/she experiences it. It's so seldom that we really listen to another and try to walk in their shoes without offering our own perspective. It takes discipline to listen first before we offer our knowledge, our ideas, our suggestions (which come later in the exploratory and confrontive inquiry stages).
A favorite learning theorist of mine (and Jess's, too, I think) is Carl Rogers who writes very convincingly about the rarity of hearing another person.
Rogers says,
"When I say that I enjoy hearing someone, I mean, of course, hearing deeply. I mean that I hear the words, the thoughts, the feeling tones, the personal meaning, even the meaning that is below the conscious intent of the speaker. Sometimes, too, in a message which superficially is not very important, I hear a deep human cry that lies buried and unknown far below the surface of the person.
"So I have learned to ask myself, can I hear the sounds and sense the shape of this other person's inner world? Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of, yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows?"
This, to me, is active inquiry. Listening to the client and hearing what is said, attempting to put myself in that client's world and experience the problem as he or she experiences it without imposing my own worldview.
The hearing, I think, is important to me in understanding the real problem, which always has within it an aspect of how my client is managing the problem. My listening establishes a rapport with the client that says that I care about him as well as the problem and will seek to understand it as he does.
Just thoughts to add to the conversation ...tjc