Mental health articles

SKILLS OF THE CONSULTANT
There are three major skills areas for consultants: technical skills, interpersonal skills, and consulting skills. Technical skills comprise an area of expertise. If you have 30 years of experience in managing inpatient hospital units, then you can probably consult
with developing inpatient programs on how to run their units efficiently. If you are a newly licensed mental health professional, you may be considered an expert on group dynamics, stress management, or mental health issues (assuming you have had the necessary training to work with organizations in these areas).
Interpersonal skills are also important for consultants. These are skills that most clinicians work on diligently in the course of their training, and they are accustomed to working to improve these skills in their clients. As a consultant, it is especially important to understand the client context and to be able to make and sustain relationships by joining with the client and building rapport. Important areas of knowledge include an
in-depth understanding of assertiveness, supportiveness, confrontation, listening, management style, and group process.
Finally, consultants must possess skills specific to consulting, which is the major focus of this book. There are five basic phases of consulting: entry and contracting; discovery and dialogue; feedback and the decision to act; engagement and implementation; and extension, recycle, or termination . Entry involves making a connection with the client or organization, and contracting involves negotiating wants, coping with mixed motivations, dealing with concerns about exposure and the loss of control, as well as contracting for the work to be done. Discovery and dialogue are analogous to assessment and diagnosis. They involve surfacing
layers of analysis, dealing with political climate, resisting the urge for complete data, and seeing the interview as an intervention. Feedback and decision making involve funneling data, identifying and working with different forms of resistance, presenting personal and organizational data, running group meetings, focusing on here-and-now
choices, and not taking things personally. At this point, the consultant must decide if the work needs to be continued, reconceptualized, or terminated.
One of the best compliments a consultant can receive is to be thought of as “a person who asks good questions.” Asking questions allows consultees to think out loud, to solve their own problems, and to become invested in potential solutions. It is a key skill
for consultants. Caplan (1970; Caplan & Caplan, 1993) maintains that the consultees’ problem-solving capabilities can be influenced by the consultant’s questions. As mental
health clinicians, we work to become comfortable avoiding direct suggestions about how clients should handle their problems. We know that advice-giving (except in such instances as crisis intervention) is a lose-lose proposition: If we give good advice, the client becomes dependent on us; and if we give bad advice, the client is harmed and terminates therapy.

Tags: consultant