Consulting Skills in Family Communication

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In resent years, since I leave home for my college, the dynamic between my parents and me has changed little by little. Now, when I am in the USA and they cannot just come to see me whenever they are, our relationship is reversed in someway compared to what it was like when I was young and at home. Years ago, my parents was in the domination of our relationship, and I was under their command. It was like the traditional relationship of consultant and client. My parents were the experts, while I was a lost client. However, our position is exchanged. More often, my parents have difficulties catching up with the new trend of technology and other aspects of social culture. Sometimes they will turn to me for help. Therefore, I become the consultant.

One typical example is my parents learning to use mobile device to have online talk with me. They were confused by the new jargons, concepts and devices, and asked me to set everything ready to use before I left. I thought there was no use to explain the procedures of setting and even if I did, they would not understand, so that I set up the all the devices and told them how to turn on the app to call me. In the process I played a role of expert, taking all the responsibility and doing all the jobs for my clients. It seemed to be quite easy and timesaving for me as well as for my parents, and they were pretty satisfied when the problem was quickly solved.

However, it was not the end of the story, and I have to admit that the quick fix is not the best solution since it bears potential problem. About one month after my leaving, my mom called me by phone and told me that the Ipad couldn’t pick up wifi signal at home after the maintenance of the home Internet.  The similar thing had happened before, and I know it just take a few step to set it right. If I had shown my mom how to set the device, she would know how to deal with this situation, or at least less lost when it happened. I was thinking about saving trouble in the beginning, which led to more trouble later. I had to explain the process to them on phone and give oral instruction to help them with the setting, which was much more labored than showing them in person. Although there were several times when I wanted to give up, after a long time of effort, the pad finally picked up wifi signal again. Honestly, I was surprised that although not easy, they got it in the end.

There are mainly two points I learned from this experience. First, focus on long-term effect instead of the short-term one.  For a consultant, immediate solution is usually quite alluring, since it demands less effort and show one’s personal capability. But after the short period, problems underneath the surface will show up again, and the clients will be as lost as they were last time. Second, really try to understand the clients and trust their capability. In my example, I did what I thought would be the best for my parents, and didn’t believe in their ability to deal with technology. However, my perspective was not accurate about how they felt. When I took time to understand their perspectives, I saw much more possibilities within them, which led to the real learning eventually.

Feedback in Family Communication --- Understanding

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The second key point that has to be addressed in successful feedback is understanding of the problems. Understanding means that the giver can relate to the situation where the listener is, and fully acknowledge the hardship that the listener has experienced. It is one way to show the support to the listener and get him ready for the giver's opinion. If the feedback-giver does not express his acknowledgement of the real situation, no credibility will be built, and that is why the listener may interrupt and say "you don't understand what I have been through". Sometimes this feeling is not necessarily orally communicated. But, in stead of buying in what the giver has to say, the listener is no more than pretending to listen. I would like to call it "silent doubt".

"Silent doubt" usually happen between people from different hierarchies, when the one with authority, or of higher level,  gives feedback to the one from low hierarchy. The authority usually enjoys some kind of privilege without awareness, so that they may be blind to the need of understanding and fail to express it in feedback. Due to economic, political or cultural reasons, the listener cannot say "you don't understand" directly. Therefore, they will keep this in mind and stay in silence, which undermines the effectiveness of the feedback as a whole.

In family communication,  parents are authorities, while the child is the one of lower level. When parents try to correct their child's certain behavior, they tend to emphasize how wrong and unacceptable it is, and what the right behavior is.  In this way, the massage about what the child should do is very clear, but, at the same time very hard for the child to absorb. He may know that his parents have a point, but he had his own reasons for the wrong behavior. If the parents could express their understanding by saying "I know school is hard""I had also been there", and analyzing the situation with the child, it will be very helpful to smooth the emotional reaction and draw the child into what they have to say.

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Feedback in Family Communication --- Supportiveness

There is also a doubt within myself. Why I tend to share my life with my best friends instead of my parents? I know that I love them very much, but I just do not feel like to talk with them, especially about my problems.Last week, when I was reading about how to give feedback, I had a "a-ha" moment about this question. I believe that part of the reason lies in the way I received and gave feedback in my early childhood.

According to Block's book, feedback need to be deliberately designed in order to be acceptable and constructive. The way that information is organized, the language chosen to deliver the information and the attitude of both sides determines how useful the feedback could be.In family communication, especially when parents give feedback to child, it is very important to make sure that the feedback is well-designed and well-delivered.

In many cases of family communication,  parents do not necessarily emphasize the positive feedback about what the child had done well. On the contrary, they tend to focus on the problems and the way to fix it. Also, since family members are so close to each other, there is little consideration for the organization of language. With insufficient awareness of how to give feedback to child about what he hasn't done very well, the feedback experience could be painful and ineffective for both the parents and the child. If this keeps happening, the desire for communication will decrease, which leads to estrangedness.

There are several key characters of good feedback. First and foremost, it should be supportive. This deals with the level of emotion, where the listener decide if she wants to listen to the giver. Th willingness to listen and accept is crucial. If the listener chooses to ignore the feedback, no matter how well-designed the rest of the feedback is, it won't have any impact. It is the giver's responsibility to show the listener that he intends to help. Once this message is successfully conveyed,  the listener is more likely to be open to the feedback. Also, there is a case of trust that is built throughout time. If the trust is not reinforced through each feedback, it will get harder to convince the listens that the feedback will be supportive.

Supportiveness was one of the problems in the communication between me and my father. Although I am very clear about how much he loves me and wants to help me, his feedback was not necessarily convey supportiveness. Sometimes when he yelled at me about some trifles, I could tell that he was just upset about something else. When this happened, I didn't feel supported, because I though he was just complaining about everything he saw to vent his anger. Consequentially, when responding to his words, I show no support, neither, but just reflect the anger. Since this kind of situations keep repeating, the trust between us decreased.

It always takes much longer to rebuild trust than to damage it. Therefore, in the very beginning, both the parents and the child need to realize the significance to be supportive and show it to each other by expressing the genuine concern of each others' welfare. The good thing is that my father and I have better control of our emotion now, and have become more skillful to express out opinions in a supportive manner. As a result, we have a better relationship now and I begin to regain the trust in him. This definitely help me listen to his words more carefully.

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About Contracting Meeting

Last week we had the first textbook topic presentation by Katherine. She talked about the contracting meetings with clients according to Block. There are generally 11 steps to follow, which sound to be rigid but quite useful and flexible in practice.

After the presentation, it is made clear that the main goal of contracting meeting is not to diagnose the problem specifically and come up with possible solutions. As Dr. Hurst put it, you have a whole program period to do that. The goal of contracting meeting is, primarily, to meet with those who are in charge and get their permission of the project and the necessary access to further information which is needed to complete the project successfully.We need to make sure all the wants and offers of the both sides are clear and accepted, and the responsibility will be 50/50. Usually the hardest part is to negotiate with clients about what they need to devote other than the consultant's paycheck. Clients may expect consultant to be  superman who saves the world with his bare hands. However, that is not how process consultation works. As consultant, we need clients' permit, support, cooperation and commitment. Clients are supposed to take no less responsibility than us. Only when this notion is accepted can the consultation be flawless and can the client get most from it.

This ideas is closely related to my experience in the English Language Resource (ELR) program at the Writing Center. As a ELR consultant, I work a lot with international students who need extra help with their English, especially written academic English . I am supposed to help them gain self-correcting skills by doing line-by-line revision. It is not enough to correct the mistakes I notice in their papers, but to show them how to recognize mistakes, how to utilize grammatical rules to correct them, and how to avoid similar mistakes in the future. This is pretty much a mini process consultation.

Normally one ELR consultation lasts for 60 mins. In the beginning, after greeting the student,  I will ask him or her what he or she wants to work on today. This is what Block mean by "communicate understanding of the problem"(Blocks, 2011). Usually the student respond like this:"Well, I am writing a paper for my XXXX class. The paper is finished. I just want you to check the grammar and make sure there is no error in my paper." By saying this, the student makes his wants very clear, which is to have me play a role of a doctor, or an editor (as it's put in the Writing Center). But this is not what I should do. It does not match with my wants and offers as an consultant. So I need to negotiate with the student and make sure he understand how things will work in the consultation.

To respond him, I would first express my understanding of his concern. I will be honest with my background as a non-native speaker and let him know that I can totally relate to his situation. Then, I will ensure him that the grammatical issues he worries will be addressed in the consultation. After that, I will go to the "consultant's wants" by saying "probably it is impossible to go through the paper with in 60 minutes. How about this? Let's take a close look at the the first half of the paper and try to make it perfect. Then you can use the skill we use during the consultation to work on the rest later. How does that sound to you". It is expected that student may feel a little disappointed, but most of them can take it well. Sometimes, especially the paper is due two hours later, the student may be impatient and urge me to check out the whole paper. If this is the case, I will try to calm them down by making it clear that I will help them as much as I can, and suggest them to come early next time for better result.

As an ELR consultation, ending the project is not my option. I have the obligation to help the clients even if they are not very cooperative. Therefore, if the student is very impatient no matter what I say, or the paper will be due in 2 hours and the grammar is the primary problem, I will do as the student wants, while making it very clear that this is not the best way to work on his or her paper, and encouraging him or her come earlier next time to allow more time for constructive work.   

Although the contracting stage is quite short in the 60 mins consultation, Block's steps and suggestions are still practical. By following the steps, I am able to analyze students' reaction and respond in a polite and efficient way.

Work cited:

Block, Peter, 2011, Flawless Consulting, A Guide To Getting Your Expertise Used (3rd ed.), San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Reflection 1 - Consulting Skills

Sitting in front of the computer and recalling what we have discussed in class, the first thing jumps to my mind is the question raised at the begin of the 2nd class meeting, "if I have no say about the implement, then what's the meaning of my work?" If the plan ends up in the shelf, does that mean all my work is in vain?

Well, I do agree that it's so frustrating for a consultant to know that his advise is not taken no matter what's the reason behind it. But I will never take it personal. As long as I have done job step by step, it is the client's problems that he is not ready to take my advice.

Actually everybody was, is, or will be a stubborn client who refuses to take consultant's advice and have to swallow the severe consequence in the end.  For example, when I was young, my parents were my consultants about almost everything. They told me not to play with fire, do not lie, pay attention in class and watch out when going across a street. They are all excellent advices, and I don't see any reason why I didn't listen to them. But the truth was I just ignored them. Probably because I was lazy or exhausted, I cheated once about my homework and got caught. Being caught and punished made me realize that my parents’ advice was right, and I decided to take it seriously.

This is perhaps what’s going on with those clients who decide to leave the plans on their shelves and make no change. They are not ready for the change. The reasons for the absence of readiness lie in various aspects. It can be an economic problem. If the plan will cost a big amount of money at once, some of the manager may not be insightful enough to see the long-term benefit of it and decide to live with the old way which cost less each time but a lot in a long run. Also, it can be the motivation. The manager sees the benefit of the new plan, but the old one still work, and he has other priorities. So he decides to drop this issue for a moment until it becomes an urgent problem. Just like my story, I didn’t pay attention to my parents’ advise until the problem had a huge and direct impact on me. There are some lessons that the client has to learn himself. As a consultant, my job is to provide the resource of the lesson and suggest him to learn. Eventually, he is the one who decides what he is going to learn and how he is going to learn it.  This notion is in accordance with the humanist orientation of teaching. The learner has the right to decide what to learn and how to learn. The Teacher is a facilitator who helps him become the person he wants to be. I consider myself as a humanist, and this is what I believe about effective learning.

However, leaving the choice to the client does not mean less responsibility of the consultant, but, on the contrary, more responsibility. To make sure that the client is going to make the right choice, the consultant has to work carefully on all the steps from establishing relationships to designing the plan. When reading Schein’s book about building the consultant-client relationship today, I thought about one fruitless consultation I had in college. With the consulting skills we have discussed, now I can see the failure was rooted in the very begin.

It was a psychological consult (I am not sure about the English expression). Basically, there was a psychological therapist who was supposed to listen and talk to me, and make me feel better.  At least that’s what in the TV shows. At the middle of my first semester in college, I was upset about my campus life. I had difficulty talking with my friends about my problems, so that there was no outlet for the negative emotions. At that time, what I needed was just a stranger I could talk to frankly without the fear of being judged or discriminated. So I made an appointment with the psychological consultant.

Arriving the consulting room 5 minutes earlier, I found it was still closed. It should be ok to stand outside and wait for a while. But the problem was that it was just next to a classroom, which meant people, especially those who knew me, might see me waiting for a consultation. I wanted to keep it to myself, so I felt so insecure while waiting, worrying about any footstep I heard. After the suffering 5 minute, I entered the room. Thank god, no one saw me.

The room seemed not professional to me, neither the consultant, a middle-aged woman. She asked me to sit on the coach, and she sat on a chair next to the coach. “Why are you here today?” she stared the conversation. “Well, nothing big.” I answered, “I just feel smothered and want to talk to someone who don’t know me.” ”OK. So what’s the problem?” I told her that I felt frustrated about my class. I wanted to have more discussion in class. I wanted to be noticed and heard. But I just couldn’t. Once I said something, I felt the tension in the classroom that some people were getting bored or they just wanted me to stop. I couldn’t share this with my friend because I didn’t thing she would support me on this. Actually, when saying this, I was not sure if this was the real problem. I felt there was something more about my friend that provoked my anxiety, but I didn’t know how to express it, nor feel comfortable enough to express it. I guess this is what Schein means by “test” in the book (P38). Unconsciously, I was testing if the consultant was listening to me and to which degree I could trust her. I wished that she could lead me into a deeper retrospection so that I could identify the real cause of my frustration.

But her comment didn’t work in that way. She said that it was common for freshmen to feel upset about the college life because there was always a huge gap between our expectation and the reality. Also, since the university was not a top-notch one, many students were disappointed to end up here. Then she comforted me by saying things like “this university will help you achieve your dream. Just work hard.” I knew what she said was right. But it was not what I needed at that time. I believed that I had overcome the disappointment and I love my university. This was not my problem. But I didn’t feel like to talk further about how I really felt anymore, because she was not listening. She just put me into the category of students who was disappointed by the rank of the university, and I felt reluctant to argue about it. I said thank you and left the room. Fortunately, no one saw me there.

I think this is a perfect example of the importance of the consultant-client relationship. To build and develop a productive relationship, the key is active inquiry, but not quick judgment. If the consultant really listened to me and guided me to talk more, I was ready to open my heart. Hope that I won’t any mistake like this with my clients.