Edgar Schein: Process Consultant or Coach?
Edgar Schein (born 1928) is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management who is credited with inventing the term “corporate culture.” In 1969, Schein wrote Process Consultation which introduced the concept of process consultation that describes one of three roles of the organizational consultant. The process consultation modes contain many of the characteristics of coaching as we know it today, though in 1969 the distinction between giving answers and helping people find their answers was not identified.
Schein (2006) defines coaching as: “a set of behaviors on the part of the coach (consultant) that helps the client to develop a new way of seeing, feeling about, and behaving in situations that are defined by the client as problematic (p. 19). He continues by stating that he sees coaching as a “subset of consultation and believes the coach should have the ability to move easily between the roles of process consultant, content expert, and diagnostician/prescriber” (p. 17).
Schein describes “the degree of overlap between coaching and consulting depends on
1) who initiated the request for coaching
2) who is being coached
3) in what role s/he is being coached
4) on what issues s/he is being coached” (p. 18).
Check out Schein’s website at http://web.mit.edu/scheine/www/home.html for more information about his latests thoughts and writings.
Who has stories to share about Edgar Schein’s influence on coaching?
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Comment by Abiel Guerra on 13 May 2008:
Vikki, excellent contribution. I haven´t found many people, coaches among them, who know Ed Schein work and ideas. I have read all three books on Process Consultation and many Schein´s articles and I´m sure coaching practice would benefit from applying Schein ideas regarding Process Consultation. Just take, for example, the 10 principles of PC and his ideas about inquiry.
BTW in your article you are quoting Schein´s article “Coaching and consultation revisited: are they the same?” published in the book “Coaching for Leadership: The Practice of Leadership Coaching from the World’s Greatest Coaches” by Marshall Goldsmith (editor):
http://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Leadership-Practice-Greatest-Coaches/dp/0787977632
Keep Up the Good Work!
Comment by Vikki G. Brock on 14 May 2008:
Thanks Abiel for the addition of where to find the book. I actually have a copy of Schein’s 1969 edition of Process Consultation.
Comment by Abiel Guerra on 14 May 2008:
Schein´s distinctions about when we are in a coaching relationship and when NOT are kind of striking for some people, mostly who work doing “executive coaching” and working for companies where someone else besides the client set the agenda in their “coaching” sessions with executives of those companies.
Schein is emphatic that we must make a clear distinction between two situations: 1) when a client defines the helping (coaching) situation as “one in which he or she wants individual help to work on a personal issue” and 2) when “a manager asks someone to take on a coaching role to work with an individual to improve job performance or to overcome some developmental deficiencies”.
In 1) “the resulting process can be likened to counseling or therapy,” and in 2) we are talking about something that could be related to “indoctrination or coercive persuasion”.
Schein is clear: “If an organization `imposes’ a coach and a predetermined direction of learning then by definition we are dealing with indoctrination, not coaching”.
These Schein´s ideas are now related with “non directive” schools of coaching.
(Quotes from Schein´s article “Coaching and consultation revisited: are they the same?”)
Comment by Abiel Guerra on 15 May 2008:
A very interesting side of Edgar Schein’s work of Process Consultation that could be very useful to incorporate in coaching practice (if you are not doing it right now) is the use of “Active Inquiry”. The assumption underlying Active Inquiry is that the client will reveal essential facts about the his /her situation when he trust the consultant / coach.
Active Inquiry is useful because:
1. Builds up the client’s status and confidence in the helping relationship.
2. Coach / Consultant gather as much information as possible.
3. Involves the client in the diagnosis and generation of solutions / courses of action.
4. Creates a helping relationship that is safe for sharing facts and feelings.
Schein describes three levels of Active Inquiry: pure inquiry, exploratory/diagnostic inquiry, and “confrontive” inquiry.
Pure inquiry, is intended to stimulate full disclosure from the client. It begins with silence from the coach / consultant, due to the fact that he´s just trying to get the story in a very factual way.
At this level, “who” and “when” questions are appropriate “why” questions are not. The coach / consultant doesn´t interfere with the cognitive processes of the clients, doesn´t suggest ideas, causes, insights.
Schein explains pure inquiry very clearly when he shares this experience regarding US POWs from North Korea and China back in 1953:
“I remember vividly advice that Rioch had given all of us, that if one is trying to elicit information in an area that may be socially or emotionally sensitive, DO NOT ASK ABOUT IT. Instead, rely on a chronology, on a natural history of events and let the sensitive stuff come out in its own way. So I asked people to tell me in as much detail as they cared to about the circumstances of their capture and then what happened. In other words I encouraged them to tell their story in their own way, and found that this elicited enormous amounts of very personal information without ever threatening anyone. The degree to which repatriates confessed to behaviors that might have been judged as reprehensible, if one did not know the conditions in the prison camps, also suggested that they were not biasing their stories just to make themselves look good. Rather I got the impression that they were relieved to be able to tell someone what actually had happened. ”
-1993, Schein, Edgar. The Academic As Artist: Personal and Professional Roots.
Exploratory/diagnostic inquiry, is useful when the client has told all his whole story. The coach / consultant now tries to direct the client’s focus with questions like “How did you feel about that?”
With exploratory / diagnostic inquiry the coach / consultant gets the client to explore her situation at a deeper level. Here, with the help of the coach / consultant questions, the client brings feelings, hypotheses, cause and effect relationships, and future actions to the conversation.
Confrontive inquiry, Schein warns us, must NOT occur before pure inquiry and exploratory/diagnostic inquiry are used. Here the coach / consultant INSERTS his/her ideas about the discussed situation. The idea here is to take the client to a more creative and critical thinking about her current situation. For example: Have you thought that she did this because….?
Schein’s PC and inquiry ideas give the the coach / consultant very good insights regarding how to approach clients in a constructive and helpful way. Schein recommends: “Be Constructively Opportunistic with Confrontive Interventions”.
You can read this ideas in Process Consultation Revisited, 1999, by Ed Schein.