Helping Skills In The Public Sector

Recently, our company in partnership with the Institute for Solidarity in Asia, ran a Facilitation Skills Program for planners in a Government Agency. This agency plays an essential role in human resource management at the service of the entire government bureaucracy. I discovered how often we take for granted that we can’t simply wish to become “helping hands” at the flick of a switch. Instead, people in public service need to acquire robust facilitation or helping skills to truly be effective public servants.

HELPING SKILLS

I appreciated very much  learning facilitation skills, in my past career when I was hired as internal organization development consultant at San Miguel Corporation ( SMC) At that time organization development was new in the country, still emerging as a discipline and SMC was a pioneer, organizing the first Organization Development Directorate (as it was known then). 

SMC gave us a 2 year training program developing our team to acquire capacity to service requirements of internal clients. I realized they are life-long skills that are most useful.

What would a Facilitation Skills Program cover? It would cover the attitudes, knowledge and skills in  Self- Discovery and Mastery, Consulting Cycle and Skills,  Group Dynamics and Process Observation Analysis and Critical Thinking Skills.

SELF MASTERY

An internal Organization Development Consultant (which is a role of people in staff groups within agencies or business corporations)  to be truly capable of partnering with head office units or regional offices, have to enable people to achieve self-mastery. 

This means  getting greater awareness of their personhood, learning the skills of processing their own issues, doubts and expectations to truly emerge as “whole” and integrated individuals.  Only persons who have started to take the journey of discovering themselves, are capable of holding their egos in check as they listen to the needs and wants of their internal clients.

CONSULTING CYCLE

The art of helping leaders, individuals or clients can be learned by the use of the consulting cycle. This cycle includes: setting the stage, entry, contracting, diagnosis, determining action, planning and implementing and assessing and closing. Knowing the stages in the cycle enables the internal consultant to understand the demands and challenges of that stage, as well as the competencies required to deliver the stage with excellence as required by the client.

ENTRY STAGE

For example, at the entry stage, the challenges are how to create the opportunities for truly useful and meaningful  work and roles that the internal consultant wants to perform in his or her area of expertise and communicating these to internal clients. It also includes how to get connected, building relationships and defining roles and relationships.

Competencies at the entry stage are: gathering data, building trust, clarifying client needs, wants and context and preparing for contracting. Identifying the client means knowing the person responsible and accountable (often termed as process owner)  for the project, issue, problem or opportunity.

CONTRACTING STAGE

The entry stage is followed by the contracting stage that defines the purpose and desired outcomes and how the initiative supports the overall purpose and direction of the client organization. Contracting here may not refer to a legal document but a clear agreement on decisions and actions to be done. It defines the desired purpose and outcomes, the overall approach, major activities and key check points. It may also contain agreements on assessment, boundaries, budgets and roles.

DIAGNOSIS

The contracting stage is followed by diagnosis. This brings together relevant data about the client organization. The data may be drawn from relevant data about the client organization to determine hindering and helping forces, moving on to defining the problems and making decisions consistent with the goals of the contract. Diagnosis typically involves the four stages of planning, collection, analysis and feedback. Typically diagnosis requires the use of a model.

INTERVENTION

Diagnosis is followed by planning and implementing interventions. It gives the client’s agreements on the meaning of data and agreement on actions to be taken. It also explores alternative solutions or approaches and the selection of one or more interventions.

ASSESSMENT AND CLOSURE

The final stage is assessing and closure. The objectives are to assess the impact of the changes on the organization and to leave the client with a sense of closure, not leaving with “unfinished business”.

Essential skills for effective internal consulting   are managing resistance to change, the ability to understand and articulate client’s needs and wants and the ability to design the intervention responsive to the diagnosis. Indeed, helping skills are useful for all types or organizations both public and private.

Other skills include group dynamics, process observation analysis and critical thinking skills that we can try to cover in our next column. Meantime, enjoy being “helping hands” and facilitators!