Students will learn and use the collaborative consulting approach at each stage of a simulated consulting process. Special emphasis will be placed on approaches and techniques for managing client resistance and transference issues, common concerns found also in the relationship between psychotherapist and patient. Students will choose, or be assigned to, a live organizational client and will facilitate the change process at either the individual, group or organizational system level. Case presentation, peer review and coaching during the semester will provide accountability, feedback and support for each student. Students utilize models and methods to assess, plan, develop and manage strategies for a complex change intervention and consider the intervention from a total system perspective.
Case analyses and guest speakers are among the teaching strategies utilized.
Since many students decide to focus specifically on change methodologies targeted to group and team effectiveness, this course provides opportunities to further explore and enhance group facilitation and intervention skills. Similar to the basic Group Processes course, it is experientially-based and utilizes a variant of the group laboratory teaching model. As organizations struggle with the complexity of increasingly multi cultural work environments, managers and change agents alike must understand the nuances of how this complexity can impact the change process. The course investigates employee diversity and multi cultural issues from theoretical and practical vantage points and considers their impact on organizational change interventions. This course addresses such topics as adult learning processes, identifying training needs, developing effective training programs, and evaluating the training effort from the perspective of the training specialist, the manager, and the employer.