Solving People Problems Using Experts or Facilitators: Which Approach Work Best?

Many managers assume that all consultants approach helping relationships in the same way—that is, just like a medical doctor approaches helping a patient. In that way, the consultant plays an expert. The expert shoulders the responsibility to diagnose the root causes of illnesses and identify the best approaches to cure the illnesses and thereby relieve “pain.” In the HR field, the doctor patient approach is known as performance consulting. Alternative names for performance consulting include human performance technology, human performance enhancement, human factors, and human performance improvement.

But the doctor-patient/expert approach is not the only way a consultant can approach efforts to solve people problems. An alternative relies on the clinical psychologist-client approach. In that approach, the consultant serves as a facilitator to help members of an organization reach some level of agreement on what problems face the organization, what priorities are associated with those problems, what solutions should be used, what priorities should be assigned to those solutions, and how the solutions should be implemented and measured. In the HR field, the psychologist-client approach is known as organization development consulting.

This webinar describes briefly how consultants and managers may use the expert and/or facilitator approach and how well these approaches work in achieving efficient and effective solutions to “people problems”.

The presenter has published many books and articles on performance consulting and on organization development consulting. Among them: Human Performance Improvement: Building Practitioner Performance, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2018); Evaluating Organization Development: How to Ensure and Sustain the Successful Transformation (CRC Press, 2017), Marketing Organization Development Consulting: A How-To Guide for OD Consultants (CRC Press, 2017), Assessment and Diagnosis for Organization Development: Powerful Tools and Perspectives for the OD practitioner (CRC Press, 2017).