Consultation

Abstract:

Not long ago the vast majority of clinical psychologists practiced in relatively restricted roles providing assessment and therapy services. There has been a pronounced shift in the field and today most psychologists are moving into expanded roles and activities. One of these roles is organizational consultation. In this chapter some of the requisite competencies to provide consultation services to organizations are outlined at both the basic and expert levels. As there is no uniformity or agreement about the number or definition of consultation competencies, a case study approach was employed to identify the range of competencies that were employed by the author in two organizational consulting projects.

1 Overview

In 1990, I designed and taught a course entitled "Organizational Consultation" in a PsyD program at a university in the Pacific Northwest. The class was a popular elective in a doctoral program curriculum replete with required courses which prepared