Les caractéristiques personnelles liées à l’efficacité de la consultation

Consultation is an important part of the professional practice in several fields such as psychology, human resources, management, education, informatics and accounting (Bordeleau, 1998; Lescarbeau, Payette et St-Arnaud, 2003; Stern et Tutoy, 2003). Several businesses regularly hire consultants to help them resolve problems, improve a process or train their employees. Individuals also contact consultants to help them clarify their objectives and make an action plan. These consultants can play an expert, partner, coach or psychotherapeutic role. They help their clients by analysing their needs, listening to them, finding solutions, making an action plan or acquiring new skills. Yet the degree of success of the mandates may vary and several factors may affect success.   The introduction focus is on the personal characteristics of the effective consultants, because the consultants may improve it by training, coaching, supervision and experience. Moreover, this research is useful and original since only a small amount of studies were found on this topic. The results are presented in two articles, one more theoretical and the other presenting the exploratory research results.  The first article presents the literature results on consultation, effectiveness and the personal characteristics of consultants that are related to it. Six categories of consultant characteristics emerged from the analysis: interpersonal and intellectual skills, behaviours, knowledge, socio-demographic and personality characteristics. The literature is based on authors’ descriptions, case studies and a small amount of empirical and exploratory studies.  The second article presents exploratory research results on personal characteristics of the consultants related to consultants’ perception of effectiveness. This study was conducted to address the lack of research found on the subject. It was designed to answer two questions: 1) What personality and socio-demographic consultant characteristics are related to a) consultation global effectiveness b) each effectiveness criteria? 2) What is the predictive power of personality and socio-demographic characteristics in relation to a) consultation global effectiveness b) each effectiveness criteria? In total, 135 consultants from four firms and two professional associations participated in the study. It was possible to measure two categories of the consultant characteristics identified in the first article: personality (Hogan et Hogan, 2007) and socio-demographic characteristics, through two self-reported questionnaires. Moreover, the consultants evaluated the effectiveness criteria used and achieved in their consultation (Roy, 2008). Thus, analysing the results, it is important to say that they reflect consultants’ perception of what they consider important for their effectiveness. The article presents these results in detail following correlational and regression analyses that were performed. Personality traits such as interpersonal sensitivity, love for social interactions, being socially proactive, sociability, interest in a variety of experiences and contacts, ambition, leadership, being action oriented, being concerned about the opinion of others, and trust in others seem to be related to the perception of the overall effectiveness as well as to several consultation criteria related to the satisfaction of the consultant and the conduct of its intervention.  Finally, the discussion of this second article, as well as the thesis conclusion, make links between these results and the literature results, present the contributions and limits of the research, as well as future research directions.

Keyphrases: Consultation, Consultant, Effectiveness, Characteristics, Personality, Socio-demographic