SelfhelpMagazine

by John E. Glass, Ph.D.

Question

Where (how) does the consultation take place?

Answer

Three important considerations impact the decision as to where (how) and when consultations are held: vacyprivacy, convenience and urgency.

Privacy:

This topic is included in the consulting agreement you establish with the company. In the initial discussion with each executive you help define their particular needs for privacy. Do they want complete privacy: meeting in the consultant's office out of business hours, with the executive paying out-of-pocket? Meeting in their office during business hours only provides content confidentiality; knowledge of the meetings quickly moves into the public domain.

Each executive and company defines the need for privacy within their overall understanding of the consultations. Executive enhancement consulting poses few privacy problems. Executive remediation consulting requires some privacy controls to allow the executive and the consultant to develop their change-making relationship, independent of the company's interpretative forces.

Unless there are good reasons to the contrary, guests or visitors are to be discouraged. Their presence draws the consultant further into company politics than she already is. Since the consultant is a guest, it is wise (and good manners) to remain a "disinterested" guest and not to become a pawn in company politics.

Convenience:

Usually, meeting in the executive's office is more convenient for the executive than meeting in the consultant's office. If you arrange to meet before, or after, business hours, you lessen some of the privacy issues.

E-mail, or telephone, conversations are convenient, supplementary meeting settings. The security of e-mail needs to be assured. In the very near future, we will have e-mail audio-visual (in real, or when-available, time) conversations as the major consulting setting.

Consultations should never be conducted in informal or public settings as they powerfully undermine the professional consulting relationship. While they may seem convenient and private, they interject innumerable, uncontrolled, competing meanings that significate the meeting.

Urgency:

Once-a-week meetings of about 50 minutes usually suffice. As in any consulting relationship, there are emergency situations that call for more frequent, or longer, sessions.

All these factors: privacy, convenience and urgency, need to be spelled out at the outset in both the consulting agreement and the informed consent agreement. The executive coach calls the executive shortly after sending the informed consent material so that it can be decided where (how) and when they will meet.

About the Author:

John E. Glass, Ph.D. is a sociological practitioner with over 11 yearsexperience as a consultant, educator, counselor, educator, and researcher.He is on the Board of the American Academy of Sociological Practitioners, on the faculty of the Institute for Integral Development, a member of the Sociological Practice Association, and a member of the International Coach Federation.

Behavioral Dynamics Consulting, "Stay Whole, Feed Your Soul", 3520 Cedar Springs Avenue, Suite B, Dallas, Texas 75219, Voice: 214.526.8676 Fax: 214.526.0500