Summary prepared by Linda Myers, Ed.D. 

Here’s what some of the participants who were able to attend Dr. Larry Hirschhorn’s September 20^th workshop, Consulting: From a Psychodynamic Point of View wrote were their "take-aways" from the day:

• A clearer understanding of how deeply emotional issues impact our work decision-making and ability to take action.
• The model of primary task, risk, inadequate versus legitimate authority and the concept of a working note to share in its entirety with a client
• The distinction between anxiety and risk as well as the associated distinction between irreducible and reducible risk.
• A renewed understanding that we operate unconsciously and develop social defenses to attend to our own anxieties. Our job as consultants is to uncover reality.

Dr. Hirschhorn, is a principle consultant with the Center for Applied Research in Philadelphia. Author of numerous articles and books, including Reworking Authority: Leading and Following in the Post-Modern Organization, and The Workplace Within: Psychodynamics of Organizational Life, Dr. Hirschhorn offered this workshop to introduce the concepts of psychodynamic consulting.

The workshop began promptly with a group discussion of a case that participants were to have received and read prior to workshop. Once foundation concepts had been established, participants had the opportunity to build on their understanding by reading and discussing two additional cases, both of which were working notes used in actual consulting engagements and distributed to clients in a retreat setting. In a culminating exercise, volunteer participants applied new learnings through client-consultant role-plays with Dr. Hirschhorn as observer/coach.

The Model

Hirshhorn’s model requires that you, as consultant, fully understand the history of the client’s presenting problem. Client history is necessary for diagnosing key symptoms in the search to uncover a root cause. Uncovering the root cause is the first step in your quest to identify unconscious, unexpressed verbal anxieties. Your mission is to surface the unspoken by "meeting the unconscious mind through dialog."

Beginning

After interviewing the client and key players, questions you, the consultant, might ask yourself, include: What’s the presenting problem? What’s the primary task my client faces? What’s the primary risk my client faces? Is this reducible or irreducible risk? Where is the inherent uncertainty? Am I certain this is the major source of anxiety? Who is stuck? How is that ‘stuckness’ manifested? Is the leader perceived, by observing the behavior of those who are led, a legitimate authority or an inadequate authority? How are both the leader and the led expressing their anxiety, and what might be the source of that anxiety?

Middle

Anxiety produces social defenses including withdrawal, aggression, and blame from the current reality. Social defenses are unproductive when they take people away from the current reality. It is your role as consultant to raise your client’s awareness of the issues at hand. This presents risk for both you and your client. In a psychodynamic engagement, your overall purpose is to support the success of your client by balancing truth and empathy with your client.

Be an honest broker. Find language to balance truth and connection with your client. Meet your client where s/he is. Enable the client to indicate that s/he is ready for your feedback. Use language that piques the interest of the client and resembles the following:

• "One of my experiences in organizations like this…"
• "This is extremely important, but in additional ways that we may not have realized."
• "You know what I think this might be about…?"

End

You will have feedback about your effectiveness when your client expresses some kind of affective response, as relief with a new insight, or will express it verbally; "Oh, I see."

Only now may you and your client begin to examine options to solve the problem at hand.

About the program...

Do you ever find yourself in the middle of a consulting project asking, "What’s really going on here?"

Join PRODN for a mind-expanding day with Dr. Larry Hirschhorn, a consultant who is continually driven to make sense of complex situations, and determines what is going on in an organization by contemplating and calculating as many of the interrelationships as he can encompass. These might include quantitative financial and industry data, operational realities of the enterprise, the organization’s culture, and the psychodynamics of the leadership team.

In this one-day session, Larry will introduce us to psychodynamic concepts that enable consultants to help groups and organizations become more effective. The session will include:

1. a review of key psychodynamic concepts, including "primary task," "anxiety," "social defense," " authority," "passion," and "real work."
2. learning from a case study of a consulting firm (the case will be mailed to those who register for the workshop)
3. a diagnosis of the case using the "working note" method
4. participants as a group consulting to a participant’s case
5. live lab consulting, in which one participant consults to another participant’s case in "fish bowl" style

   "By the end of the day", says Larry, "participants will understand what psychodynamic thinking is and how it applies to consultation, will be able to draft a "working note", and will experience how psychodynamic consulting actually feels to a client and a consultant."

   Participants will receive the case study by e-mail upon registering for this program. They are urged to read the case study ahead of time and to come prepared to discuss one case/situation of their own.

---

Dr. Larry Hirschhorn (http://www.cfar.com/hirschhorn.html) is a Principal in the Center for Applied Research, which has worked with business executives for 25 years to evaluate situations, identify options, shape decisions, and implement solutions, combining analytic rigor with business know-how, and the best research methods. A prolific writer, with a doctorate in economics, Larry applies economic concepts to analyzing markets and their evolution. He is author of numerous articles and books, including Reworking Authority: Leading and Following in the Post-Modern Organization, and The Workplace Within: Psychodynamics of Organizational Life.