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Process Consultation Process Consultation (PC) is the creation of a relationship with the client that permits the client to perceive, understand and act on the process events that occur in the clients internal and external environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client. The focus of PC is to build a relationship with your client and help them figure out what to do. 1. Build a Relationship 2. Help the client figure out what they should do about the situation PRINCIPAL 1: Always try to be helpful. Consultation is providing help. Obviously, therefore if I have no intention of being helpful and working at it, I am unlikely to be successful in creating a helping relationship. If possible, every contact should be perceived as helpful. PRINCIPAL 2: Always stay in touch with the current reality. I cannot be helpful if I dont know the reality of what is going on within me and within the client system; therefore every contact with anyone in the client system should provide diagnostic information to both the client and to me about the here- and now state of the client system and the relationship between the client and me. PRINCIPAL 3: Access your ignorance. The only way I can discover my own inner reality is to learn to distinguish what I know from what I assume I know, from what I truly dont know. I cannot determine the current reality if I do not get in touch with what I do not know about the situation and do not have the wisdom to ask you about it. PRINCIPAL 4: Everything you do is an intervention. Just as every interaction reveals diagnostic information, so does every interaction have consequences for both the client and for me. I therefore have to own everything I do and access the consequences to be sure that they fit my goals of creating a helping relationship. PRINCIPAL 5: It is the client who owns the problem and the solution. My job is to create a relationship in which the client can get help. It is not my job to take the clients problems onto my own shoulders, nor is it my job to offer advice and solutions for situations in which I do not live myself. The reality is that only the client has to live with the consequences of the problem and the solution so I must not take the monkey off the clients back. PRINCIPAL 6: Go with the flow. All client systems develop cultures and attempt to maintain their stability through maintenance of those cultures. All individual clients develop their own personalities and styles. Inasmuch as I do not know initially what those cultural and personal realities are, I must locate the clients own areas of motivation and readiness to change, and initially build on those. PRINCIPAL 7: Timing is crucial Any given intervention might work at one time and fail at another time. Therefore I must remain constantly diagnostic and look for those moments when the clients attention seems to be available. PRINCIPAL 8: Be constructively opportunistic with confrontive interventions. All client systems have areas of instability and openness where motivation to change exists. I must find and build on existing motivations and cultural strengths (go with the flow), and at the same time seize targets of opportunity to provide new insights and alternatives. Going with the flow must be balanced with taking some risks in intervening. PRINCIPAL 9: Everything is data; Errors will always occur and are the prime source for learning. No matter how carefully I observe the above principles I will say and do things that produce unexpected and undesirable reactions in the client. I must learn from them and at all costs avoid defensiveness, shame or guilt. I can never know enough of the clients reality to avoid errors, but each error produces reactions from which I can learn a great deal about the clients reality. PRINCIPAL 10: When in doubt, share the problem. I am often in the situation where I do not know what to do next, what kind of intervention would be appropriate. It is often appropriate in those situations to share the problem with the client and involve him or her in deciding what to do next.