Ten Fundamentals of Process Consulting: Fundamental #1
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Lon L. Swartzentruber
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Fundamental #7 – Overlapping and reinforcing the nature of listening, helping, and learning
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Dear friends,
Born from the foundational texts of the humble inquiry and process approach, the Ten Fundamentals of Process Consulting are designed to help us understand the theory and practice of being in the Process Consulting mindset.
Whether you are a Process Consultant helping a Client, a CEO leading a team, a department head bringing together leaders to solve an emerging challenge, embodying these fundamentals can be helpful to you in charting your course.
Expressed in the triad below, the ten fundamentals form our DNA as Process Consultants. They are a starting point in our work with others and our traits as we prepare to show up in service to them. In this way, they are distinct and set apart from the core competencies of Process Consulting.
Integrating the ten fundamentals into your leadership is a lifelong journey that will help you become exemplary in their practice.
Leading up to the Society for Process Consulting’s inaugural conference in a few short weeks, we offer these fundamentals for your use, iteration, and adaptation, modeling our willingness to improve, learn, and grow as humans through this publication.
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Fundamental #7 – Overlapping and reinforcing the nature of listening, helping, and learning
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At the very center of these three nesting doll imagery is listening.[1] As we have learned from Edgar H. Schein’s earliest work, we must first start by posing a question to which we do not know the answer. This is the essence of humble inquiry and what separates it from other forms of inquiry (most notably diagnostic, confronting, and process-oriented inquiry)[2].
A helpful process can be co-created through our listening that leads to Client-centered learning. As the process unfolds and your relationship with the Client deepens, the interconnected triad of listening, helping, and learning provides visibility on the next steps.
A second image that may also be helpful to you is an infinity loop. When a Client relationship deepens [3] (to say Schein Level 2.5) we are able to go back and forth from listening to learning, from learning to helping, from helping back to listening and so forth. Any iteration of the three.
The patterns of our inquiry and intervention are varied and not sequential. Our path follows the Client's learning and not our learning, their inspiration and not our desire to be inspired, their willingness to overlap and reinforce these competencies and not a prescribed path. This is the Client's journey...we are along for the ride.
If you have any comments about fundamental #7, please don’t hesitate to email me. I’d love to learn your perspective. Please watch this space for the 8th fundamental next week.
We will be reviewing all ten fundamentals at the Society’s upcoming conference on 11 - 12 November 2024 in Philadelphia. Please sign up through this link today!
As always, if you’d like to learn more about the Society for Process Consulting, please don’t hesitate to give me a call.
Best,
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Interim CEO Society for Process Consulting
[1] Listening Helping Learning, Mark L. Vincent, page 20. Tenth Power Publishing, 2022.
[2] Helping, Edgar H. Schein, page 69. Berrett-Koehler, 2009.
[3] Humble Leadership, Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein, page 28, Berrett-Koehler, 2021.
If you'd like to write a blog post for the Society for Process Consulting, please send an e-mail to admin@societyforprocessconsuting.com.
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