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Lesson#12
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OD Practitioner Skills and Activities
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OD Practitioner Skills and Activities
Much of the literature about the competencies of an effective OD
practitioner reveals a mixture of
personality traits, experiences, knowledge, and skills presumed
to lead to effective practice. For example,
research on the characteristics of successful change
practitioners yields the following list of attributes and
abilities: diagnostic ability, basic knowledge of behavioral
science techniques, empathy, knowledge of the
theories and methods within the consultant's own disci
pline,
goal-setting ability, problem-solving ability,
and ability to perform self-assessment, ability to see things
objectively, imagination, flexibility, honesty,
consistency, and trust. Although these qualities and skills are
laudable, there has been relatively little consensus
about their importance to effective OD practice.
Two ongoing projects are attempting to define and categorize the
skills and knowledge required of OD
practitioners. In the first effort, fifty well-known
practitioners and researchers annually update a list of
professional competencies. The most recent list has grown to 187
statements in nine areas of OD practice,
including entry, start-up, assessment and feedback, action
planning, intervention, evaluation, adoption,
separation, and general competencies. The statements range from
"staying centered in the present, focusing
on the ongoing process" and "understanding and explaining how
diversity will affect the diagnosis of the
culture" to "basing change on business strategy and business
needs" and "being comfortable with quantum
leaps, radical shifts, and paradigm changes." The discussion is
currently considering additional items related
to international OD, large-group interventions, and
trans-organizational skills.
The second project, sponsored by the Organization Development
and Change Division of the Academy of
Management, seeks to develop a list of competencies to guide
curriculum development in graduate OD
programs. So far, more than forty OD practitioners have worked
to develop the two competency lists.
First, foundation competencies are oriented toward descriptions
of an existing system. They include
knowledge from organization behavior, psychology, group
dynamics, management and organization theory,
research methods, and business practices. Second, core
competencies are aimed at how systems change
over time. They include knowledge of organization design,
organization research, system dynamics, OD
history, and theories and models for change; they also involve
the skills needed to manage the consulting
process, to analyze and diagnose systems, to design and choose
interventions, to facilitate processes, to
develop clients' capability to manage their own change, and to
evaluate organization change.
The information in Table.1 applies primarily to people
specializing in OD as a profession. For them,
possessing the listed knowledge and skills seems reasonable,
especially in light of the growing diversity and
complexity of interventions in OD. Gaining competence in those
areas may take considerable time and
effort, and it is questionable whether the other two types of OD
practitioners—managers and specialists in
related fields—also need that full range of skills and
knowledge. It seems more reasonable to suggest,
whether they are OD professionals, managers, or related
specialists. Those items would constitute the
practitioner's basic skills and knowledge. Beyond that
background, the three types of OD practitioners
likely would differ in areas of concentration. OD professionals
would extend their breadth of skills across
the remaining categories.
Based on the studies available, all OD practitioners should have
the following basic skills and knowledge to
be effective:
1. Intrapersonal skills.
Despite the growing knowledge base and
sophistication of the field, organization
development is still a human craft. As the primary instrument of
diagnosis and change, practitioners often
must process complex, ambiguous information and make informed
judgments about its relevance to
organizational issues. Practitioners must have the personal
centering to know their own values, feelings, and
purposes as well as the integrity to behave responsibly in a
helping relationship with others. Because OD is
a highly uncertain process requiring constant adjustment and
innovation, practitioners must have active
learning skills and a reasonable balance between their rational
and emotional sides. Finally, OD practice can
be highly stressful and can lead to early burnout, so
practitioners need to know how to manage their own
stress.
2. Interpersonal skills.
Practitioners must create and maintain effective
relationships with individuals and
groups within the organization and help them gain the competence
necessary to solve their own problems.
Group dynamics, comparative cultural perspectives, and business
functions are considered to be the
foundation knowledge, and managing the consulting process and
facilitation as core skills. All of these
interpersonal competencies promote effective helping
relationships. Such relationships start with a grasp of
the organization's perspective and require listening to members'
perceptions and feelings to understand
how they see themselves and the organization. This understanding
provides a starting point for joint
diagnosis and problem solving. Practitioners must establish
trust and rapport with organization members so
that they can share pertinent information and work effectively
together. This requires being able to
converse in members' own language and to give and receive
feedback about how the relationship is
progressing.
To help members learn new skills and behaviors, practitioners
must serve as concrete role models of what
is expected. They must act in ways that are credible to
organization members and provide them with the
counseling and coaching necessary to develop and change. Because
the helping relationship is jointly
determined, practitioners need to be able to negotiate an
acceptable role and to manage changing
expectations and demands.
3. General consultation skills.
OD starts with diagnosing an organization or
department to understand its
current functioning and to discover areas for further
development. OD practitioners need to know how to
carry out an effective diagnosis, at least at a rudimentary
level. They should know how to engage
organization members in diagnosis, how to help them ask the
right questions, and how to collect and
analyze information. A manager, for example, should be able to
work with subordinates to determine
jointly the organization's or department's strengths or
problems. The manager should know basic
diagnostic questions some methods for gathering information,
such as interviews or surveys, and some
techniques for analyzing it, such as force-field analysis or
statistical means and distributions.
In addition to diagnosis, OD practitioners should know how to
design and execute an intervention. They
need to be able to define an action plan and to gain commitment
to the program. They also need to know
how to tailor the intervention to the situation, using
information about how the change is progressing to
guide implementation. For example, managers should be able to
develop action steps for an intervention
with subordinates. They should be able to gain their commitment
to the program (usually through
participation), sit down with them and assess how it is
progressing, and make modifications if necessary.
4. Organization development theory.
The last basic tool OD practitioners should have
is a general
knowledge of organization development. They should have some
appreciation for planned change, the action
research model, and contemporary approaches to managing change.
They should be familiar with the
range of available interventions and the need for evaluating and
institutionalizing change programs. Perhaps
most important is that OD practitioners should understand their
own role in the emerging field of
organization development, whether it is as an OD professional, a
manager, or a specialist in a related area.
The role of the OD practitioner is changing and becoming more
complex, Ellen Fagenson and W. Warner
Burke found that the most practiced OD skill or activity was
team development, whereas the least
employed was the integration of technology (see Table 1).
The results of this study reinforce what other theorists have
also suggested. The OD practitioners of today
are no longer just process facilitators, but are expected to
know something about strategy, structure, reward
systems, corporate culture, leadership, human resource
development and the client organization's business.
As a result, the role of the OD practitioner today is more
challenging and more in the mainstream of the
client organization than in the past.
OD Practitioner Skills and Activities
Susan Gebelein lists six key skill areas that are critical to
the success of the internal practitioner. These are
shown in Figure15. The relative emphasis on each type of skill
will depend upon the situation, but all are
vital in achieving OD program goals. The skills that focus on
the people-oriented nature of the OD
practitioner include:
•
Leadership.
Leaders keep members focused on key
company values and on opportunities and
need for improvement. A leader's job is to recognize when a
company is headed in the wrong
direction and to get it back on the right track.
•
Project
Management.
This means involving all
the right people and department to keep the
change program on track.
•
Communication.
It is vital to communicate the key
values to everyone in the organization.
•
Problem-Solving
.
The real challenge is to implement a solution to an organizational problem.
Forget about today's problems: focus constantly on the next set
of problems.
•
Interpersonal
.
The number-one priority is to give everybody in the organization the tools and
the
confidence to be involved in the change process. This includes
facilitating, building relationships,
and process skills.
•
Personal.
The confidence to help the organization
make tough decisions, introduce new
techniques, try something new, and see if it works.
Figure 15: Practitioner Skills Profile
The OD practitioner's role is to help employees create their own
solutions, systems, and concepts. When
the practitioner uses the above-listed skills lo accomplish
these goals, the employees will work hard to make
them succeed, because they are the owners of the change
programs,
Consultant’s Abilities:
Ten primary abilities are key to an OD consultant’s
effectiveness. Most of these abilities can be learned, but
because of individual differences in personality or basic
temperament, some of them would be easier for
some to learn than for others.
1.
The ability to
tolerate ambiguity
.
Every organization is different, and what worked before may
not work now; every OD effort starts from scratch, and it is
best to enter with few preconceived
notions other than with the general characteristics that we know
about social systems.
2.
The ability to
influenc
e
.
Unless the OD consultant enjoys power
and has some talent for
persuasion, he or she is likely to succeed in only minor ways in
OD.
3.
The ability to
confront difficult issues
.
Much of OD work consists of exposing issues that
organization members are reluctant to face.
4.
The ability to
support and nurture others.
This ability is particularly important in
times of
conflict and stress; it is also critical just before and during
a manager’s first experience with team
building.
5.
The ability to
listen well and empathize.
This is especially important during
interviews, in
conflict situations, and when client stress is high.
6.
The ability to
recognize one’s feelings and
intuition quickly
. It is important to
be able to
distinguish one’s own perceptions from those of the client and
also be able to use these feelings
and intuitions as interventions when appropriate and timely.
7.
The ability to
conceptualize.
It is necessary to think and express in
understandable words certain
relationships, such as the cause-and-effect and if-then linkages
that exist within the systemic
context of the client organization.
8.
The ability to
discover and mobilize human
energy,
both within oneself and within
the client
organization. There is energy in resistance, for example, and
the consultant’s interventions are
likely to be most effective when they tap existing energy within
the organization and provide
direction for the productive use of the energy.
9.
The ability to
teach
or to
create
learning opportunities
.
This ability should not be reserved
for
classroom activities but should be utilized on the job, during
meetings, and within the mainstream
of the overall change effort.
10.
The ability to
maintain a sense of humor,
both on the client’s behalf and to help
sustain
perspective: Humor can be useful for reducing tension. It is
also useful for the consultant to be
able to laugh at himself or herself; not taking oneself too
seriously is critical for maintaining
perspective about an OD effort, especially since nothing ever
goes exactly according to plan, even
though OD is supposed to be a planned change effort.
Role of Organization Development Professionals Position:
Position:
Organization development professionals have positions that are
either internal or external to the
organization. Internal consultants are members of the
organization and often are located in the human
resources department. They may perform the OD role exclusively,
or they may combine it with other tasks,
such as compensation practices, training, or labor relations.
Many large organizations, such as Intel, Merck,
Abitibi Consolidated, BHP, Philip Morris, Levi Strauss, Procter
& Gamble, Weyerhaeuser; GTE, and
Citigroup, have created specialized OD consulting groups. These
internal consultants typically have a
variety of clients within the organization, serving both line
and staff departments.
External consultants are not members of the client organization;
they typically work for a consulting firm, a
university, or themselves. Organizations generally hire external
consultants to provide a particular expertise
that is unavailable internally and to bring a different and
potentially more objective perspective into the
organization development process. Table.2 describes the
differences between these two roles at each stage
of the action research process.
During the entry process, internal consultants have clear
advantages. They have ready access to and
relationships with clients, know the language of the
organization, and have insights about the root cause of
many of its problems. This allows internal consultants to save
time in identifying the organization's culture,
informal practices, and sources of power. They have access to a
variety of information, including rumors,
company reports, and direct observations. In addition, entry is
more efficient and congenial, and their pay
is not at risk. External consultants, however, have the
advantage of being able to select the clients they want
to work with according to their own criteria. The contracting
phase is less formal for internal consultants
and there is less worry about expenses, but there is less choice
about whether to complete the assignment.
Both types of consultants must address issues of
confidentiality, risk project termination (and other
negative consequences) by the client, and fill a third-party
role.
During the diagnosis process, internal consultants already know
most organization members and enjoy a
basic level of rapport and trust. But external consultants often
have higher status than internal consultants,
which allows them to probe difficult issues and assess the
organization more objectively. In the
intervention phase, both types of consultants must rely on valid
information, free and informed choice, and
internal commitment for their success, However, an internal
consultant's strong ties to the organization
may make him or her overly cautious particularly when powerful
others can affect a career. Internal
consultants also may lack certain skills and experience in
facilitating organizational change. Inside he may
have some small advantages in being able to move around the
system and cross key organizational
boundaries. Finally, the measures of success and reward differ
from those of the external practitioner in the
evaluation process.
A promising approach to having the advantages of both internal
and external OD consultants is to include
them both as members of an internal-external consulting team.
External consultants can combine their
special expertise and objectivity with the inside knowledge and
acceptance of internal consultants. The two
parties can use complementary consulting skills while sharing
the workload and possibly accomplishing
more than either would by operating alone. Internal consultants,
for example, can provide almost
continuous contact with the client, and their external
counterparts can provide specialized services
periodically, such as two or three days each month. External
consultants also can help train their organization
partners, thus transferring OD skills and knowledge to the
organization.
Although little has been written on internal-external consulting
teams, recent studies suggest that the
effectiveness of such teams depends on members developing
strong, supportive, collegial relationships.
They need to take time to develop the consulting team;
confronting individual differences and establishing
appropriate roles and exchanges, member’s need to provide each
other with continuous feedback and make
a commitment to learning from each other. In the absence of
these team-building and learning activities,
internal-external consulting teams can be more troublesome and
less effective than consultants working
alone.
The difference between External and Internal Consulting
Stage of change External consultant Internal consultant
Entering •Source
clients
•Build relationships
•Learn company jargon
•“presenting problem”
challenge
•Time consuming
•Stressful phase
•Select project/client
according to own criteria
•Unpredictable outcome
•Ready access to clients
•Ready relationships
•Knows company jargon
•Understands root causes
•Time efficient
•Congenial phase
•Obligated to work with
everyone
•Steady pay
Contracting •Formal
documents
•Can terminate project at
will
•Guard against
out-of-pocket expenses
•Information confidential
•Loss of contract at stake
•Maintain third-party role
•Informal agreements
•Must complete projects
assigned
•No out-of-pocket expenses
•Information can be open
or
confidential
•Risk of client
retaliation and loss
of job at state
•Act as third party,
driver (on
behalf of client or pair of hands)
Diagnosing •Meet
most organization members for the first
time
•Prestige from being
external
•Build trust quickly
•Confidential data can
increase political
sensitivities
•Has relationships with
many
organization members
•Prestige determined by
job rank
and client stature
•Sustain reputation as
trustworthy
over time
•Data openly shared can
reduce
political intrigue
Intervening •Insist
on valid information, free and informed
choice, and internal commitment
•Confine activities within
boundaries of client
organization
•Insist on valid
information, free
and informed choice and internal
commitment
•Run interference for
client across
organizational lines to align
support
Evaluating •Rely
on repeat business and customer referral as
key measures of project success
•Seldom see long-term
results
•Rely on repeat business,
pay raise
and promotion as key measures
of success
•Can see change become
institutionalized
•Little recognition for
job well
done
Marginality:
A promising line of research on the professional OD role centers
on the issue of marginality. The marginal
person is one who successfully straddles the boundary between
two or more groups with differing goals,
value systems, and behavior patterns. Whereas in the past, the
marginal role always was seen as
dysfunctional, marginality now is seen in a more positive light.
There are many examples of marginal roles
in organizations: the salesperson, the buyer, the first-line
supervisor, the integrator and the project manager.
Evidence is mounting that some people are better at taking
marginal roles than are others. Those who are
good at it seem to have personal qualities of low dogmatism,
neutrality, open-mindedness, objectivity,
flexibility, and adaptable information-processing ability.
Rather than being upset by conflict, ambiguity, and
stress, they thrive on it. Individuals with marginal
orientations are more likely than others to develop
integrative decisions that bring together and reconcile
viewpoints among opposing organizational groups
and are more likely to remain neutral in controversial
situations. Thus, the research suggests that the
marginal role can have positive effects when it is filled by a
person with a marginal orientation. Such a
person can be more objective and better able to perform
successfully in linking, integrative, or conflictladen
roles,
There are two other boundaries:
the activities boundary
and
the membership boundary.
For both,
the
OD consultant should operate at the boundary, in a marginal
capacity.
With respect to change activities
,
particularly implementation, the
consultant must help but not be directly
involved. Suppose an off-site team-building session, for a
manger and his subordinates, he would help the
manager with the design and process of the meeting but would not
lead.
With respect to membership, the OD consultant is never quite in
nor quite out. Although the consultant
must be involved, he or she cannot be a member of the client
organization. Being a member means that
there is vested interest, a relative lack of objectivity. Being
totally removed means, he cannot sense, cannot
be empathetic, and cannot use his or her feelings. Being
marginal means that the consultant becomes
involved enough to understand client’s feelings and perceptions
yet distant enough to be able to see these
feelings and perceptions for what they are.
Being marginal is critical for both an external consultant and
an internal consultant. The major concern
regarding the internal OD practitioner’s role is that he or she
can never be a consultant to his or her own
group. If the group is an OD department, a member of this
department, no matter how skilled, cannot be
an affective consultant to it. It is also difficult for an
internal OD practitioner to be a consultant to any
group that is within the same vertical path or chain of the
managerial hierarchy as he or she may be. Since
the OD function is often a part of corporate personnel or the
human resource function, it would be
difficult for the internal OD consultant to play a marginal role
in consulting with any of the groups within
the corporate function, because the consultant would be a
primary organization member of that function.
Consulting with marketing, R&D or manufacturing within one’s
organization, for example, would be far
more feasible and appropriate, since the OD consultant could
more easily maintain a marginal role.
Emotional Demands:
The OD practitioner role is emotionally demanding. Research and
practice support the importance of
understanding emotions and their impact on the practitioner's
effectiveness. The research on emotional
intelligence in organizations suggests a set of abilities that
can aid OD practitioners in conducting
successful change efforts. Emotional intelligence refers to the
ability to recognize and express emotions
appropriately, to use emotions in thought and decisions, and to
regulate emotion in oneself and in others. It
is, therefore, a different kind of intelligence from
problem-solving ability, engineering aptitude, or the
knowledge of concepts. In tandem with traditional knowledge and
skill, emotional intelligence affects and
supplements rational thought; emotions help prioritize thinking
by directing attention to important
information not addressed in models and theories. In That sense,
some researchers argue that emotional
intelligence is as important as cognitive intelligence.
Reports from OD practitioners support the importance of
emotional intelligence in practice. At each stage
of planned change, they must relate to and help organization
members adapt to resistance, commitment,
and ambiguity. Facing those important and difficult issues
raises emotions such as the fear of failure or
rejection. As the client and others encounter these kinds of
emotions, OD practitioners must have a clear
sense of emotional effects, including their own internal
emotions. Ambiguity or denial of emotions can lead
to inaccurate and untimely interventions. For example, a
practitioner who is uncomfortable with conflict
may intervene to diffuse conflict because of the discomfort he
or she feels, not because the conflict is
destructive. In such a case, the practitioner is acting to
address a personal need rather than intervening to
improve the system's effectiveness.
Evidence suggests that emotional intelligence increases with age
and experience. In addition, it can be
developed through personal growth processes such as sensitivity
training, counseling, and therapy. It seems
reasonable to suggest that professional OD practitioners
dedicate themselves to a long-term regimen of
development that includes acquiring both cognitive learning and
emotional intelligence.
Use of Knowledge and Experience:
The professional OD role has been described in terms of a
continuum ranging from client-centered (using
the client's knowledge and experience) to consultant-centered
(using the consultant's knowledge and
experience, as shown in Figure 16), Traditionally, OD
consultants have worked at the client-centered end
of the continuum. Organization development professionals,
relying mainly on sensitivity training, process
consultation, and team building, have been expected to remain
neutral, refusing to offer expert advice on
organizational problems. Rather than contracting to solve
specific problems, the consultant has tended to
work with organization members to identify problems and
potential solutions, to help them study what
they are doing now and consider alternative behaviors and
solutions, and to help them discover whether, in
fact, the consultant and they can learn to do things better. In
doing that the OD professional has generally
listened and reflected upon members' perceptions and ideas and
helped clarify and interpret their
communications and behaviors.
Figure 16: Use of Consultant’s Versus Client’s Knowledge and
Experience
With the recent proliferation of OD interventions in the
structural, human resource management, and
strategy areas that limited definition of the professional OD
role has expanded to include the consultantcentered
end of the continuum. In many of the newer approaches, the
consultant may have to take on a
modified role of expert, with the consent and collaboration of
organization members. For example, if a
consultant and managers were to try to bring about a major
structural redesign, managers may not have the
appropriate knowledge and expertise to create and manage the
change. The consultant's role might be to
present the basic concepts and ideas and then to struggle
jointly with the managers to select an approach
that might be useful to the organization and to decide how it '
might best be implemented. In this situation,
the OD professional recommends or prescribes particular changes
and is active in planning how to
implement them. This expertise, however, is always shared rather
than imposed.
With the development of new and varied intervention approaches,
the OD professional's role needs to be
seen as falling along the entire continuum from client-centered
to consultant-centered. At times, the
consultant will rely mainly on organization members' knowledge
and experiences to identify and solve
problems. At other times, it will be more appropriate to take on
the role of expert, withdrawing from that
role as managers gain more knowledge and experience.
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