The third model of consultancy approaches and roles is less a continuum and more a typology of alternative consultancy styles. The notion of styles of con-sultancy was first proposed by Blake and Mouton (1983), but has since been developed by Cockman et al. (1992).
Client
Consultant
Level of consultant activity in problem solving
Non-directive Directive
Figure 4.2 Description of the consultant’s role on a directive and non-directive continuum Source: Lippitt, G. and Lippitt, R. (1978).
Referring to them as ‘intervention styles’, Cockman et al. (op. cit.) suggest four distinct styles that can be employed by the consultant, namely: ‘Acceptant’,
‘Catalytic’, ‘Confrontational’, and ‘Prescriptive’. These are now explained.
● Acceptant style: This style of consulting is based on helping the client con-front organizational problems by encouraging them to find what is blocking their ability to solve these. It uses the employment of careful listening tech-niques, and attempts to understand the problem and difficulties from the client’s point of view empathetically and providing emotional support. It is essentially a neutral and non-judgemental style, designed to encourage clients to find their own solutions to problems and encouraging them to express their innermost thoughts and feelings about a situation.
● Catalytic style: This style of management consultancy centres on helping the client address problems and needs by clarifying existing data and/or gath-ering additional data. This data is then used to help the client make a diag-nosis of the problem. This approach is based on the notion that once clients have the relevant data or information, they themselves will be able to iden-tify options and move towards solutions. Responsibility for solutions and decision making remains with the client. This type of consultancy assumes that either data absence or overload is the main problem to be overcome.
Once this has been done, clients themselves will be able to identify solutions.
● Confrontational style: This style of consultancy is used where the consultant believes that the clients are part of the problem, and in particular, where there are discrepancies between what clients say or think they do, and what they actually do. For example, where the consultant believes that the problem is essentially one of a discrepancy between approaches, say, to customer satis-faction. Here the client might believe they are providing this when in fact they are not. It is then that a confrontational style may be appropriate. The approach taken is to highlight the discrepancies between the client’s stated values and behaviour and their actual values and behaviour. The idea is that once these discrepancies, together with the implications, are pointed out to the client, then the client will begin to move towards a solution to the prob-lem. Obviously, confrontational consultancy styles can be risky in as much as they can alienate the client. The consultant needs to have strong interper-sonal and communication skills to utilize this approach.
● Prescriptive style: In many ways, this is what many think of as being the typi-cal consultancy style. This style of consultancy involves listening to the client’s problems, collecting any data required, making sense of and interpreting this data and finally, presenting clients with a solution or recommendation. As Cockman et al. point out, typically, this is the style used by experts and is essen-tially based on the assumption that the clients themselves do not have the skills, knowledge or objectivity to make an accurate diagnosis or prescription of their own. Although it is perhaps the most traditional model of the consultancy process – in fact in most management/organizational consultancy settings rarely does the client not have some skills, knowledge or the required objec-tivity to make their own diagnosis or recommendations. The consultant, there-fore, has to be careful not to alienate or insult the client by being too prescriptive.
However, the prescriptive style can be useful where quick solutions and decision making are required due to the situation, or where the client’s expec-tations are for specific and definitive proposed solutions.
Source: Adapted from Cockman et al. (1992) pp. 22–24.
These then are three of the most useful and influential models of alternative consultancy approaches and responsibilities. Although they are different, all three models essentially compare and contrast between the more traditional prescriptive solution proposing approaches to consultancy and the increasingly used ‘softer’ non-prescriptive approaches to consultancy where the consultant helps the client to perceive their own solutions. A key issue for the consultant, however, is to decide which consultancy model or rather more specifically, approach, to use. There is no simple answer to this, as the different approaches are each suited and more suitable to particular circumstances. Even during the course of a particular consultancy project the consultant may use several approaches during the different stages of consultancy. For example, an accepted style of consultancy might be more appropriate at early stages of the consul-tancy process with clients and a prescriptive style more appropriate for later stages. Many factors affect the choice of an appropriate consultancy approach, and it is impossible and dangerous to be prescriptive about which consultancy approach/style to use and when. Indeed part of the consultant’s expertise is in knowing which style of consultancy or intervention approach to use.
Activity 4.4. Try to list as many factors as you can think of which might affect the choice of an appropriate consultancy approach or style.
Because selecting the appropriate consultancy approach and style is so impor-tant, here is another activity for you to consider.
Activity 4.5. Considering the four alternative consultancy styles suggested by Cockman et al. which style do you think is likely to be most appropriate to each of the following consultancy situations.
(a) The client has asked an external consultant to come up with proposals for designing and implementing a management information system. The client has no previous experience or knowledge of information systems and is anxious to implement any proposals as quickly as possible. The consultant selected is an international expert in the area of information systems.
(b) The client has asked the external consultant to help make sense of a sub-stantial amount of data that the client already has collected regarding com-petitors. The client is unsure how to interpret the data with a view to improving the competitive position of the organization.
(c) An external management consultant has been asked to investigate the prob-lem of increased customer turnover. More and more customers are being lost to competitors. After preliminary investigations, the consultant believes that the problem essentially lies with existing management attitudes and systems with regard to customer care.
(d) A management consultant has identified that a major problem in his client organization is conflict between the different functional areas of the busi-ness. An additional problem, however, is the fact that there are indications that the different functional managers feel unable to discuss the problem and tend to gloss over this issue.