OD consultants are often in the role of facilitators as we work with client groups. What does a facilitator do? The word comes from the Latin word for "easy" implying that we make the work of our clients easier. Carl Rogers popularized the term in the context of encounter groups. The group was guided by a facilitator, whose job was to guide the group toward interpersonal learning by making it easier for them to communicate openly and directly with each other.
In Organization Development, the consultant's approach is client centered, much like Rogerian counseling. It assumes clients have the capacity and intrinsic motivation to learn, to become more effective in their work, and to interact collaboratively with others toward shared goals.
Edgar Schein has usefully contrasted three models or approaches to consulting:
1. The Purchase of Expertise model, in which clients don't have the time or skill to do something, and hire a consultant to do it for them. An example might be market research conducted by focus group experts, resulting in a report and recommendations about which version of a product is likely to sell better. Peter Block calls this "a second pair of hands."
2. The Doctor-Patient model, in which clients ask for an assessment of a particular function and receive the consultant's analysis and recommendation--a prescription to fix the problem.
3. The Process Consultation model, in which clients and consultants work as partners in observing and understanding how key work processes are working, and then jointly develop approaches for improving them. This is a facilitative approach to consulting.
Most people are familiar with the first two models because they are in the popular culture, or simply because they are more commonly employed in organizations. The facilitative approach is less common, and harder to understand at first--by clients, or by new consultants. "Why would you pay me a lot of money to help you figure out what you already know?"
Some people choose to become consultants exactly because they want to be able to tell others what to do. In our culture, it is somewhat counter-intuitive that you can ease others' way toward their own goals by helping them get clear on what they are, individually and as groups, then consider together how they are currently working toward those goals, and how they might get more traction in doing that. The OD consultant creates conversations and interactions that clarify, remove obstacles, and engender coordinated self-directed effort. It often requires some self-discipline on the consultant's part to share control with the client.
And yet, a little experience with this approach quickly validates its power for positive change. Instead of one smart consultant figuring everything out, a group of clients who do the work on a daily basis--and have a stake in improving it--bring together their knowledge, experience, and motivation to assess current ways of operating, consider current obstacles to achieving intended goals, analyze underlying systemic causes for the difficulties, generate and assess options for improvement, and take responsibility for planning and implementing those changes. And the OD consultant? S/he makes it easier for them to do all this together, by creating and managing a forum for these conversations, and providing relevant questions for the group and its manager to consider as they proceed through this self-managed process-improvement work.
We facilitate--make communication easier for others. But that doesn't mean what we do is easy. It takes a special expertise to focus on implicit aspects of a discussion; an ability to invite shared inquiry into the usually unspoken assumptions about clients' work together; a willingness to control the process of discussion while giving control of the content or substance to members of the organization, who after all have a stake in making their own work more satisfying and effective.