Eduquo is online education website that assists students improving their studies by providing useful articles related to their academic subjects, particularly in the areas of education, management, and psychology with subtopics: online teaching and learning counseling psychology online, education psychology, psychology online, human resource management.

 

Download Full Text The Importance of Interpersonal Skills in Consultee-Centered Consultation:G. Evette Horton And Duane

 

Consultation as an intervention strategy has received less attention by researchers than has counseling (Brown, 1985). The result has been that counselor educators involved in designing training programs for consultants and counselors attempting to upgrade their consultation skills have had few empirical guidelines for their activities. Fortunately, this picture has begun to change in the last 10 years. The purposes of this article are to review the empirical literature regarding the importance of interpersonal communication skills in the consulting enterprise and to draw conclusions for counselor educators, counselors, and researchers.

Background

The history of consultation has two roots. One of these roots is a concern for enhancing the functioning of organizations. The other root is a concern for making mental health services more effective and efficient (Brown, Pryzwansky, & Schulte, 1987). Caplan (1970) is credited with founding the mental health consultation movement, and from the outset he emphasized that interpersonal skills are essential to consultant effectiveness. Carl Rogers (1961) was one of the primary influences on the organizational development consultation movement, which has been directed at humanizing the workplace. It is therefore not surprising that the interpersonal aspects of the consulting process have received considerable attention by practitioners and researchers alike. The empirical literature to date has not generally examined the influence of interpersonal skills on either the process or outcomes of consultation. Rather, researchers have explored the importance of interpersonal skills mainly in consultee-centered consultation (Caplan, 1970).

Consultee-centered consultation focuses on improving the ability of the consultee not only to deal with a particular client (e.g., a student with a discipline problem) but also with similar clients in the future. The role of interpersonal skills in other models of consultation, such as organizational development or expert models, has not been explored. Therefore, any implications drawn from this review must necessarily be restricted to consultee-centered consultation. Generalization of the research findings regarding the importance of interpersonal skills in consultation is also restricted in another sense—in that the majority of the research in this area has been conducted in school settings.

It is also worth noting at this juncture that the research on / interpersonal skills in consultation has been influenced not only by the humanistic tradition (e.g., Carkhuff & Truax, 1967; Rogers, 1961), which focuses on positive regard, personal congruence, and genuineness, but also by a behavioral perspective that emphasizes skills (Bergan & Tombari, 1975, 1976). While one could argue that behavioral skills and the ability to communicate positive regard and genuineness are highly related, the approach elected here was to examine the research regarding consultants' facilitative characteristics and their verbal and nonverbal skills separately. A synthesis of these two approaches to looking at the importance of interpersonal skills in consultation is made in the Conclusion.

Research on Consultants' Facilitative Characteristics

Schowengerdt, Fine, and Poggio (1976) examined the relationship between teacher satisfaction with consultation and the consultants' facilitative characteristics as measured by a modification of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (1962). They found that while the facilitative characteristics of the consultant, years spent teaching by the consultant, academic degrees held by the teacher, and chronological age of the teacher accounted for 54% of the variance associated with teacher satisfaction with consultation, the facilitative characteristics accounted for all but 10% of this variance.

White and Fine (1976), taking a somewhat different approach, examined the relationship of intensity of contact to perceptions of consultant facilitativeness. They defined intensity of contact as the amount of time spent with the consultee and found that intensity did not increase consultees' perceptions that the consultant was more empathic or congruent or held them in higher positive regard. Interestingly, consultees who did spend more time with the consultant in follow-up sessions did perceive consultation to be more of a cooperative enterprise. It should also be mentioned that the findings in this study contradicted those of an earlier study by Tyier and Fine (1974). Therefore, the influence of time spent in the consulting relationship on perceptions of consultant facilitativeness or consultation outcomes is open to question.

Hansen and Himes (1977) examined the correlates of teachers' perceptions of consultation effectiveness. The teachers in this study rated consultant instructing (offering explanations or advice), consultant characteristics (openness, understanding, and objectivity), and the consultation relationship (supportive, reassuring, and positive) as being the hallmarks of an effective consultant, while a lack of openness, understanding, objectivity, and structuring were most often associated with ineffectiveness. No measures of actual increases in client or consultee effectiveness were taken.

Weissenburger, Fine, and Poggio (1982) looked at classroom teachers' existential life position, dogmatism, and perceived consultant facilitativeness as predictors of consultation outcome as perceived by the teachers. The dependent variables were teachers' satisfaction with the consultative experience, teachers' perceptions that they were better prepared to cope with future problems (teacher strength), and teachers' belief that the problem was in the process of resolution (problem resolution). Consultant facilitativeness was the single best predictor of teachers' satisfaction, teachers' strength, and teachers' problem resolution. The authors reported a significant inverse relationship between teacher dogmatism and the criterion variables.

Maitland, Fine, and Tracy (1985) developed the Interpersonally-Based Problem-Solving Scale (IBPSS), which contains a consultant facilitativeness inventory and also assesses the extent to which a consultant progresses through a problem-solving process. Consultants and teachers were asked to complete the IBPSS following the consultation experience. Teachers also completed a scale that measured their satisfaction with consultation, belief that the client's problem was in resolution, professional growth resulting from consultation, and perceptions of the behavior change of the client. The researchers found that consultant facilitativeness, as measured by the IBPSS, significantly correlated with perceptions of client behavior change (r=.34), teacher satisfaction (r=.56), problem in resolution (r=.52), and professional growth (r= .43).

This research indicates that the perceptions of various aspects of consultation are enhanced when consultants establish facilitative conditions. When these conditions are perceived to be present, consultees seem to be more satisfied, indicate that they have experienced professional growth, and that they have progressed toward problem resolution. They also report behavior change in their students. The influence of time spent in consultation on perceptions of facilitativeness is unclear at this time. The relationships between actual client and consultee behavioral change and the presence or absence of facilitative conditions in consultation are also unclear.

Research on Verbal And Nonverbal Skills

Bergan and Tombari (1975) developed a model for examining verbal processes during consultation. Their model concerns the content, process, and control of messages during consultation interviews. Message content relates to the topics discussed during consultation (e.g., background information, behaviors, and setting.) Message processes include verbal expressions of the consultant such as specification, clarification, interpretation, and summarization. Message control includes verbalizations that either elicit action or information from, or that provide information to, the consultee. In a study designed to test the communication model that they had developed, Bergan and Tombari (1976) found that consultants' verbal skills had a significant influence on the problem identification phase of consultation. Specifically, they found that when the consultant lacked skill or was inefficient in time usage, it was more likely that problem solving would not be initiated. However, the specific consultant variable of interest to the researchers—verbal process effectiveness—did not make a significant contribution to the consultees' problem identification or resolution.

Myers, Friedman, and Gaughan (1975) looked at changes in teachers' verbal behavior after consultation using a multiple baseline design. Consultants were instructed to use verbal helping skills such as verbal reinforcement, clarification, and verbal empathy to respond to the consultee during the consultative experience. The researchers compared the baseline level of negative teacher verbalizations about students before and after consultation. Results indicated a reduction in negative teacher verbalizations toward students in two of the three consultees. Because of the small number of participants in this study, the authors recommended that the results be interpreted cautiously.

Etzion (1980), in an analogue study, explored the influence of the type of consulting situation presented by the consultee upon consultants' verbal behavior. Etzion hypothesized that consultants who were primarily concerned with solving the consultee's problem would have more verbalizations, interruptions, and incongruent responses than consultants who were primarily interested in helping the consultee solve his or her own problems. When consultants were told to focus on helping the consultee solve the problem, they had significantly fewer verbalizations, interruptions, and incongruent responses than those who were told to concentrate on solving the problem. This study has some important implications for other studies regarding consultants' verbal behavior, since it appears that cuing consultants about expectations makes a significant difference in their verbal behavior.
Paskewicz and dark (1984) also researched language variables in consultation. Specifically, they looked at consultee and consultant language structure errors that they conjectured would limit the possibility of change. Taped consultation interviews were scored on three categories of language structure errors: (a) all equivalents of the word should—for example, have to, must; (b) all adjectives used to describe a child as opposed to a child's behavior— quiet, bad, afraid, and so on; and (c) all abstract nouns used to explain children's behaviors, that is, attitude, motivation, intelligence. He found that consultants made fewer language structure errors than consultees, and the consultees who made fewer language errors had the highest probability of a successful consultation. Paskewicz felt that consultants would benefit from training in recognizing consultee language structure and changing their language errors.

This review revealed only one study that looked at nonverbal communication skills in consultation. Hansen and Himes (1977), in a study mentioned earlier, had teachers rate effective and ineffective consultant behaviors after the consultative experience. Listening, defined as attending to the consultee and minimizing nonverbal distraction, was listed by teachers as an effective consultant behavior. Since listening is closely tied to empathy and other facilitative skills, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that more studies have not been conducted that focus on the importance of nonverbal skills, given the interest in facilitative conditions as contributors to the consultation process.

There can be little doubt that verbal and nonverbal skills have an impact on consultation. The literature to date, however, has provided few definite guidelines regarding what these skills should be, with the possible exception that consultants must have the skills necessary to identify the consultee's problem with the client (Bergan & Tombari, 1976).

Comments

Add New Search RSS

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0alpha3

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."