Corporate Therapy And Consulting

Len Sperry, Len Sperry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135062767
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Published in 1996, Corporate Therapy and Consulting is a valubale contribution to the field of Psychotherapy.

1

The Practice of Corporate
Consulting and Therapy

I fondly remember my early years as an organizational consultant. Starting in 1972, I functioned as an external consultant doing executive assessments, executive consulting and coaching, team building, management development training, and stress management workshops. Later, I became an internal consultant, functioning as Director of Staff Development for a large, multinational corporation that had been one of my early clients. In this position I designed and implemented a leadership development program and overhauled the corporation’s performance appraisal system. I also supervised a staff of four Ph.D. organizational psychologists who spent most of their time doing executive assessments, career development counseling, training programs, as well as some test validation work.

Consulting to organizations, however, is very different now than when I first began in the field. At that time I had never heard the terms “corporate reengineering” or “downsizing,” and while I facilitated the corporation’s long-range planning, it was a far cry from the “strategic planning” consultation I do today. In those days, we talked a lot about “planned change” and “organizational development,” but our interventions were narrowly focused and rather superficial, when compared with the kinds of changes organizations are undergoing today. So why is organizational consultation so different today?

The Phenomenon of Change

The environments of business and organizational life are radically different, compared to 10 years ago, because of a number of political, economic, and cultural changes. To better appreciate these differences, it is useful to clarify the term “change” itself. If change is thought of as the process of transforming the manner in which an organization acts from one set of behaviors to another, change can be either planned or unplanned. When I first began organizational consulting in the early 1970s, “planned changes,” or deliberate and systematic change efforts, were common. These included implementing performance appraisal systems, initiating management development training, and the like. “Unplanned” changes such as a product recall, union strike, or the death of a senior executive were not particularly common crises. More common unplanned changes involved, for example, the turmoil created by an alcoholic or manic-depressive executive.

In the early 1970s I was never asked to consult on such problems as an employee stalking another employee, a hostile takeover, or an unexpected mass layoff of middle managers. In the past, changes were typically incremental or “first-order” changes, while today, changes are just as likely to be fundamental in nature or “second-order” changes. Table 1.1 defines the various terms involving change and the change process.

Table 1.1
The Terminology of Change

Change	=	Process of transforming the manner in which an organization acts from one set of behaviors to another; can be planned or unplanned, first-order or second-order
Planned Change	=	Deliberate and systematic change; may be policy driven
Unplanned Change	=	Accidental; without a plan or not policy driven
First-Order Change	=	Incremental change (i.e., stress management program)
Second-Order Change	=	Fundamental change (i.e., reengineering)

Twenty years ago, the external environments of organizations tended to be relatively stable. Changes-and even crises-primarily originated from within the organization, and consultants were sought to aid in managing these internal planned and unplanned changes; implementing management development programs and performance appraisal systems were among common consultation requests.

Today, both the internal and external environments of organizations seem to change constantly, with crises further exacerbating the levels of stress experienced by the organization’s leaders and members. Needless to say, hostile takeovers, large-scale downsizing, unprovoked violence, and other crises have significantly increased the stressors associated with organizational life. Not surprisingly, consultation requests have likewise changed. Consultation is now more likely to involve reestablishing stability between internal and external environments, as well as dealing with the clinical sequelae of change and crises. Instead of being narrowly focused on management development or performance appraisal systems, consultation now may focus on changing the organization’s strategy, structure, culture, and team functioning in order to increase productivity and competitive advantage, while also attending to the psychological well-being of its leaders and members-including their clinical needs. While traditionally trained management consultants and industrial/organizational psychologists may be quite adept at effecting planned change efforts in organizations, they do not have the clinical background needed to effectively deal with serious psychological crises.

On the other hand, clinicians are trained to deal with crisis situations and their sequelae. As such, they have much to offer organizations beyond the provision of traditional psychotherapeutic services. With their understanding of organizational change processes and additional assessment and intervention strategies and skills, clinician-consultants can readily meet a number of the challenges that contemporary organizations face today.

I am not suggesting that this new breed of clinician-consultants will replace organizational consultants or that they should. Rather, I am suggesting that clinician-consultants can complement the work of the organizational consultant. Organizational consultants have tended to consult with larger, for-profit corporations. But there are other segments or “niches” in the consultation market. There are many nonprofit community and professional organizations, as well as health care organizations and family-owned businesses, that have not traditionally been serviced by organizational consultants and that could be well served by clinician-consultants who provide corporate therapy and consultation or even traditional organizational consultation. Clinician-consultants should be able to develop expertise in one or more of the clinical-consulting areas described later in this chapter. Such “niche” consultation services will probably be a growth industry throughout the second half of the 1990s and into the next century.

Furthermore, health care reform will continue to dramatically impact the entire health care industry: insurance carriers, HMOs, PPOs, regional health alliances, provider groups, to name a few. These groups and organizations will need corporate therapy and consultation to survive. Ongoing power struggles and interpersonal conflicts are predictable as providers, case managers, and administrators attempt to coexist in this turbulent environment. It will also be needed for many other issues, including resistance to change.

What is Corporate Therapy
and Consulting?

The phrase “corporate therapy” was used in a feature story in the Wall Street Journal to describe how psychologists are now consulting on issues such as executive personality clashes and failure-prone executives (Naj, 1994). “Corporate psychiatry” was used to describe consultation with executives experiencing emotional distress (Sperry, 1993). Earlier, the phrase “occupational clinical psychology” described the application of clinical-psychological skills in organizational settings to the psychological concerns of employees and executives in order to enhance individual and organizational effectiveness and efficiency (Manuso, 1983). Essentially, occupational clinical psychology was used as a preventive measure or for health maintenance in organizations.

Historically, occupational clinical psychology has emphasized mental health and has focused on the “troubled employee.” Harry Levinson, Ph.D., is one of the early pioneers in this field. He championed the role of what he called the “clinician-consultant” (Levinson, 1983) as distinct from the role of the traditional organizational consultant. Levinson believes that the clinician who provides consultation to an organization needs diagnostic and intervention methods for organizational work akin to the diagnostic and intervention methods used in working with individual clients and patients. Accordingly, Levinson’s book, Organizational Diagnosis (1972), reflects the distinct needs and perspectives of the clinician-consultant. His clinical approach to organizational issues contrasts markedly with the traditional consultation approach of nonclinical consultants, as described in Weisbord’s book, Organizational Diagnosis (1978).

Who are organizational consultants and how do they practice? Organizational consultants are a varied lot, representing training and development specialists, human resources specialists, management consultants, as well as industrial/organizational(I/0) psychologists. Those who are I/O psychologists practice as internal or external consultants to private and public organizations, including consulting firms. Those in consulting firms tend to serve large corporations with between 5,000 and 50,000 employees. They usually focus their consulting efforts on employee selection, organizational development, performance appraisal, and employee and managerial assessment.

Among I/O psychologists functioning in various settings, only a small percentage of consultant time is spent on personal and career counseling. Howard (1991) found that 73 percent spent no time doing career or vocational counseling, and 81 percent did no personal counseling. Among Ph.D.s who represent themselves as “consulting psychologists,” a recent survey showed that they most often provided the following consultation interventions: individual assessment, problem solving, individual process consultation, organizational development, and organizational assessment (Kurpius, Fuqua, Gibson, et al., 1995). It should not be surprising that neither I/O nor consulting psychologists report doing traditional clinical interventions.

While the organizational consultant primarily focuses on organizational troubles, the clinician-consultant focuses on troubled employees. “Corporate therapy and consultation” is simply an extension of occupational clinical psychology in that it focuses on troubled employees and executives as well as on the troubled or troubling organization in which they work.

What do clinician-consultants who practice corporate therapy and consultation do, and what skills and competence are required? Clinician-consultants should already have basic clinical skills applicable to individuals and groups. Some clinician-consultants will have considerable organizational consultation skills applicable to individuals, teams, and whole organizations. Many clinician-consultants will not have such organizational skills, which although desirable, are not required. Nevertheless, clinician-consultants should have sufficient clinical-organizational consultation skills, particularly in the niche in which they choose to practice. It is important to emphasize that those wanting to function as clinician-consultants should not practice outside the scope of their training and licensure.

Organizational vs. Clinical-Organizational vs. Clinical Interventions

What are clinical-organizational interventions, and how do they differ from clinical and organizational interventions? In the past it was relatively easy to distinguish clinical work from consultation work: the clinician typically did initial evaluations and individual psychotherapy-and sometimes couples, family, and group therapy – while the consultant typically did executive coaching and consultation, career counseling, and some type of team and/or organizational interventions. These traditional forms of consultation require considerable skill and experience and are usually provided by a variety of management and organizational consultants. With the changes in the nature and type of consultation needs, these traditional organizational interventions will still be necessary and useful, but I believe that the demand for clinical-organizational interventions will increase dramatically. Figure 1.1 illustrates the relationship of clinical, organizational, and clinical-organizational interventions.

Figure 1.1
The Interrelationship of Organizational, Clinical-Organizational, and Clinical Int...