Humble Consulting: How to Provide Real Help Faster [Paperback]

Consulting in Complex and Changing Times

Organizations face challenges today that are too messy and complicated for consultants to simply play doctor: run a few tests, offer a neat diagnosis of the “problem,” and recommend a solution. Edgar Schein argues that consultants have to jettison the old idea of professional distance and work with their clients in a more personal way, emphasizing authentic openness, curiosity, and humility. Schein draws deeply on his own decades of experience, offering over two dozen case studies that illuminate each stage of this humble consulting process. Just as he did withProcess Consultationnearly fifty years ago, Schein has once again revolutionized the field, enabling consultants to be more genuinely helpful and vastly more effective.Contents
1. I Am the consultant and I Don't Know What to Do!
2. What Is New in Humble Consulting?
3. The Need for a Trusting and Open Level Two Relationship
4. Humble Consulting Begins with the First Conversation
5. Personalization: Enhancing the Level Two Relationship
6. The Humble Consulting Focus on Process
7. The New Kinds of Adaptive Moves
Concluding Comments: Some Final Thoughts on How to Be Really Helpful“Humble Consultingis a fine blend of poetic writing and practical methodology. It is an intimate conversation about how service, in this case consulting, works in the real world. All who want a deeper understanding of the way to create relationships that produce outcomes will value this book. To simply recommend it is an understatement.”
—Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, The Answer to How Is Yes

“What is the most powerful force in consulting’s relational success—where you and the client move beyond the transactional to the deeper transformational?  I used to think it was what our amazing OD founders Ed Schein and Warren Bennis saw as the core value of Orgl3¦