Growing the Internal OD Consultant

Successful internal Organization Development (OD) practitioners routinely bring the new and different to clients. Evidence for the new and different visibly grows from a consultant’s ability to recognize his or her development needs, limitations, and strengths. In this construction, there is recognition for growth and development and for acceptance. In other words, healthy client-consultant relationships include affirmation of the individual, with the recognition that both the client and the consultant are persons who are in the process of growing and developing. Acceptance and affirmation of the individual is a fundamental value in the humanistic practice of OD.Primary parties to the client-consultant relationship bring multiple needs and wants to an engagement. While good contracting processes address many of these needs and wants, both the client and consultant bring desires for effective relationships. The desires that clients and consultants have for each other are often unspoken but take form or shape in expressions such as: “If he would only be a little more,” “If she could just do this one thing,” of “I wish that he wasn’t so (fill in the blank).” In these expressions is the enemy of acceptance — perfection. Typically, client and consultant working relationships fall short of perfection, given the very nature of human interaction in organizations. Bringing humanity into the client-consultant relationship facilitates acceptance of the individual and acknowledges the possibilities for growth and development of the person. This is the context to consider the professional development needs of internal OD consultants.Expertise, Interpersonal Skills, and GroupsThere are many ways to describe the attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge important to OD practice. Some frameworks describe competencies in relation to stages in the consulting process, while others describe competencies in terms of intervention areas. Regardless of approach, three competencies define internal consultants held in high regard by others. First, highly regarded consultants demonstrate expertise. Superior interpersonal skills are the second domain of expertise of gifted OD practitioners. Finally, extraordinary internals “get” groups in a variety of ways. Variation of skill, even among the most successful, is diverse, except in one regard: creating and making the most of learning. Within a learning context, each domain remains developmental, contributing to lifelong growth and consulting effectiveness.In the area of expertise, clients come to an OD consultant with an expectation that something could be different with the unique lens of OD. Given the breadth of OD practice, great variation exists among practitioners. From the label “OD Consultant,” a client can infer some recognized domain expertise in the area of people and organizations. Expertise might come in the form of coaching, organizational design, team development, change management, or other areas associated with OD practice. Clients are dependent on the consultant for this domain expertise, however well informed. Expertise is a given at the entry stages in the consulting relationship. To enter, the consultant needs to acquire and demonstrate expertise in competency areas associated with OD practice. In this area, some consultants choose to specialize in industry or intervention areas. Specialization often assists the client and consultant in starting a relationship quickly. Others might acquire and demonstrate expertise through career experiences or outlets, including speaking and writing. By demonstrating expertise, a consultant quickly brings value to an engagement.OD practitioners need to speak truth to power. The relationship to power and authority is formed early in life. OD practice recognizes and works with authority and power in organizational contexts. Power is constructed in many ways, but fundamentally, there are power-over and power-with approaches. Perhaps it is the recognition of power that requires extraordinary demonstration of interpersonal skills. The consultant must be a superior listener, easily gaining the trust and confidence of others. The consultant must be able to engage over-busy executives in people issues relative to performance. These tasks, often not easy, are reputation builders for internal consultants. Clients and consultants operate in an initial environment where trust is freely given and, in successful engagements, both developed and nurtured.The OD consultant typically works with groups in some capacity. If not in a team setting, it may be in working with a meeting involving hundreds or thousands. The consultant must have an appreciation for the ability to be “in” the group in some way, through directing, controlling, liberating, or some other approach. Effective consulting practice includes the recognition and use of differences. In this area, the consultant needs to understand his or her relationship to group life and work, regardless of group size. One approach to skill development in this area is participating in groups and seeking feedback. A further approach is through the collection of quantitative feedback at the end of a presentation or meeting. The best consultants know that feedback is an interactive process, and one-way evaluations provide a partial view. Good practice in this area is to incorporate feedback and evaluation as regular discussions during an engagement.Development in these areas is influenced by many organizational factors, including the demands that change efforts bring, the navigation of other organizational relationships, and the unique nature of the client-consultant relationship. As an internal helping others through transition, the internal needs to remain aware of personal well-being. The consultant navigates relationships with different organizational units; in large organizations, it might include Strategy or Human Resources (where the OD consultant is often administratively located). Relationships demand time and effort, both limited resources for internals, depending on client demand. The significance of multiple relationships is often unique to OD practice, as some in organizations rarely interact with others outside of defined task areas. As practitioners, OD consultants also operate at the margins of group and organizational life. Often defined by the time-bound nature of engagement, these margins have different shapes and forms when compared to margins affecting external practitioners.Realizing Development InvestmentsThe underlying artifacts of various OD competency areas are common to the extent that they are developmental. The shifts in development flow on a scale from technical to transformative. In the technical realm, it may be learning to use a new approach, for example -- a large group method or a particular team development model. On the transformative end of the scale, the development experience may alter practice approaches (e.g., from deficit-based orientations to appreciative approaches). It is important to distinguish and understand development turns as they affect relationships within organizations. All good development, regardless of scale, includes and incorporates elements of feedback.Some feedback is the process of discovery. It is a bit of a sorting, ordering, and centering process of becoming the person you are. You recognize when you have done your best work, when you have let yourself down, and when the autopilot is in control. In addition, the successful consultant accepts his or her centrality to this role, providing for effective use of self in the consulting relationship.Additional feedback comes from other stakeholders. It is often about what is said, not said, or coded within the normative behavioral principles of the organization. It might be as wonderful as “that really helped us to make progress” to “you didn’t seem to be on your game today.” Feedback varies based on the strength of the relationship. The quality of feedback can assist in creating significant personal change. Effective consultants routinely seek feedback throughout the engagement without making it take center stage during the engagement.Another avenue to demonstrate a return on a development investment is to apply the lessons in practice and to assist others interested in developing competency in a given area. A new behavior demonstrated once or twice may give way as a practice style for a certain period or particular situation. In addition, it may be an area for the consultant to assist others on development journeys.________________________________________________________________Effective development usually involves a support network. These networks, consisting of peers, clients, and bosses, are differently available to internal OD practitioners than to many others, and it is often because the consultant, in some way, brings disruption to a particular client system - -the new and different. Internals require development as part of the healthy context for developing effective internal OD practices and outcomes.