Psychological Consulting To Management

A Clinician's Perspective

Lester L. Tobias

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138869110
• eBook ISBN: 9781317839200
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

1

What Is Psychological Consulting to Management?

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

Our statures touch the skies.

Emily Dickinson (“Aspiration”)

Consulting psychology, management psychology, or corporate psychology, as it is variously called, is the application of the principles of psychology to help people in organizations become more effective (DuBrin, 1982). Its history has cut across and borrowed from the specialities of clinical and counseling psychology¹, guidance counseling², personnel psychology³, sociology⁴, personality and social psychology⁵, and industrial and organizational psychology⁶, and it shares with all of psychology a century of research, theory, methodology, and applied wisdom (also, see Mangham, 1978, for contrasts between “systems,” “humanism,” and “interactionists”). Its practitioners tend to hail from the applied disciplines, and each imparts to the interdisciplinary soup the flavors of that individual’s specialty cuisine and theoretical tastes.

The origins of management psychology are, therefore, wide-ranging. Many of its roots are undocumented, since the field was invented many times and in many different ways by individual practitioners, who primarily passed along their knowledge orally, if at all, and usually only to close colleagues or members of their firms.

Two broad traditions can be distilled, roughly corresponding to the industrial and organizational specialty and the clinical and counseling specialty. The former emphasized the study of groups, social processes and social structures and, typically, employed large-scale assessment strategies; the latter focused more on individuals, personality theory, and the assessment of individuals. Each tradition tended to define organizational processes and problems within its own semantic, linguistic, and theoretical framework and measured them with its own measuremental research methodology and technology. The practitioners of the industrial and organizational tradition found problems of morale, or productivity, or organizational structure. The clinicians found executives not working up to their potentials, leaders reenacting their family dramas, and workers whose strengths and weaknesses were misaligned with their assigned tasks.

In designing interventions, each tradition focused most on those independent variables that were the stock-and-trade of their specialties. Those who studied organizations modified environmental variables and worked with groups, whereas those more clinically inclined focused on changing individuals through one-on-one interventions. A practical, real-world basis was added by the personnel psychologists, who had been focusing on predicting sales performance, designing and evaluating training programs, and measuring performance and morale.

In the course of consulting, the organizational psychologists were impressed by the degree of impact single individuals could have—both positively and negatively—in setting the tone, in bringing out the best and worst in others, and in promoting or blocking change. They began to notice how these individuals’ personalities and developmental histories predisposed them, sometimes automatically, toward certain actions. The clinicians, on the other hand, were increasingly impressed by the power of organizations to elicit the talents and flaws in individuals—how what was maladaptive at an organizational level could be adaptive at an individual level, how thwarted individual strengths could become organizational liabilities, how organizational cultures facing the ageold dilemmas of liberty versus order played the music to which individuals danced. As perspectives widened, the traditions borrowed from each other, consciously as well as unconsciously, and many cross-specialty wheels were reinvented in the process since it was the perspectives that changed rather than the nature of people in organizations.

Management psychologists, then, are people who look at organizations from one or more of a number of psychological perspectives. They explore organizational problems and opportunities and look at groups of people and at individuals using psychological methods. They apply psychological principles in order to help the people in organizations to be more effective.

The issues management psychologists address include:

• Strengthening employee morale

• Upgrading hiring practices

• Improving organizational cultures

• Helping individuals reach their potentials

• Promoting teamwork

• Enhancing communication

• Maximizing the good fit between a person and a job

• Helping people and organizations cope with stress

• Reducing unhealthy organizational conflicts

• Reducing employee turnover

• Fostering creativity and broader, deeper, and more objective thinking

• Implementing programs which can succeed because they better account for human nature

• Helping organizations encourage, assess, and reward individual and group goal attainment

• Helping people or groups in crisis to cope

• Helping fired employees move on with their lives

• Helping managers to help their people develop and grow while contributing to organizational objectives.

In short, they may well deal with anything and everything that has impact on the growth and satisfaction of people in organizations.

Management psychologists deal with people one-on-one, in groups, and in seminars and classrooms. They work at client companies and at their own offices. Their written work ranges from psychological evaluations of executives to reports of the results of attitude surveys. The consulting psychologist serves as a sounding board, an objective outsider with no ax to grind, who usually promises confidentiality. The psychologist helps develop psychological job descriptions, interviews job applicants, provides them with feedback once they are hired, and helps them and their managers cope with each other more effectively as time goes on. The psychologist may serve as a clinician, a counselor, an assessor, a teacher, and an expert in psychological techniques and perspectives.

The tools of the psychological consultant in industry include tests of intelligence, personality, motivation, cognitive style, managerial style, interests, and aptitudes. Many provide or use various appraisal forms, self-development guides, attitude surveys, peer feedback forms, performance review forms, as well as many others. Some forms measure individuals and groups of individuals; some measure progress; and others are meant to stimulate. Some psychologists may do formal validations or other forms of research, although most focus primarily upon applications. Given this wide-ranging laundry list, some mention of what management psychology is not is in order. It is not human engineering or consumer psychology, at least as it is most widely practiced. The practitioner may well, however, borrow from these fields. Similarly, the provision of employee assistance programs⁷ or other variants of on- or off-location delivery of psychotherapy would not usually be a defining characteristic of psychological consulting to management, although management psychologists may well offer these types of services.

A CLINICAL APPROACH

There are many valid ways to consult to management, and the valid ways have much in common. Therefore, the clinical approach to management psychology is defined by its relative position on various continua and by what is emphasized or not emphasized, rather than by adherence to any particular dogma.

The clinical approach shares with other psychological approaches a deep appreciation for the complexities of psychological causality and for the wealth of research supporting it. It appreciates the embeddedness of the individual within his or her social and cultural context. It tends, however, to stress intrapsychic causation and idiographic variables more, and it tends to focus on individuals in addressing the problems of social systems. Its emphasis is on how the growth of individuals facilitates organizational change, rather than vice versa.

Although the clinical approach, like other psychological approaches, recognizes the myriad ways in which human beings interpret, redefine, and distort reality, it tends to place greater emphasis than other approaches on defensive barriers and personality factors as they play themselves out within a situational or interpersonal context.

In addition, the clinical approach shares with others a recognition of the fallibility of the change agent, of how bounded we are by our own cultural and defensive biases, by our own maturity, and by our stage in the life-cycle. However, the clinical approach tends to place greater emphasis on consistent inner scrutiny by the consultant in the never-ending struggle to maintain objectivity and to distinguish between the realities of the client-clinician relationship and the client’s “real” life, as well as between the therapist’s perceptions and subjective experience and those of the client.

Clinicians tend to emphasize going deeper and deeper, reading into and reading beyond, and they reflexively seek out “more than meets the eye.” They are constantly questioning their own role, their own impact, their own hidden agendae, and their own inner motivation. They see themselves as simultaneously part and not part of the system, and they constantly strive to maintain a healthy equilibrium between these two roles. They strive to understand boundaries.

Clinicians tend to be patient. They recognize that the way people view, experience, and approach their world is rooted in their developmental histories and, therefore, that growth may require some time for unraveling. Clinicians tend to recognize that people’s readiness to grow is often unpredictable and transitory and, therefore, that the clinician must have a good sense of timing and adopt flexible and opportunistic strategies in order to know when to plant and when to harvest.

They see themselves as catalysts, as enablers who help people unshackle themselves from static predispositions. They do not overcommit their expectations to a predetermined result, trusting instead in the process of freeing up each individual’s unique ability and readiness to explore alternatives. They constantly look for answers in the restatement and redefinition of problems and, especially as they gain maturity and experience, they increasingly become acutely aware of the difference between being expert and being helpful.

Finally (and perhaps most controversially), clinicians are inclined to define the client as the individual more than the organization. They work from the fundamental premise that the organization will reap rewards because the individual grows. The organization (which typically pays the bill) benefits because the individual is the client. It is not a matter of “either/or” loyalty on the part of the clinician; it is a matter of focus and priority.

None of these emphases are the di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• 1. What Is Psychological Consulting to Management?
• 2. Roots and Branches
• 3. Structuring a Trusting Consulting Relationship
• 4. The Psychological Study
• 5. The Psychological Study Report and Feedback
• 6. Getting to the Root Causes of Organizational Problems
• 7. Challenges to Objectivity
• 8. Juggling Multiple Roles
• 9. Are Management Psychology Seminars Worthwhile?
• 10. Internal or External Consulting?
• 11. Managing a Consulting Psychology Practice
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: What to Evaluate in Psychological Studies
• Appendix B: Preface to Psychological Evaluation Report
• Appendix C: Psychological Studies
• References
• Subject Index
• Name Index