Organizational Change and Development

Module 5 (Notes)
Counselling
Introduction to Counselling
Counselling is a professional processes in which clients — individuals— come
for help to a trained professional to sort out personal, emotional or
psychological problems. The use of counselling in organizational context is to
help employees deal with workplace stress, personal problems or things that
can hinder their performance in job. Counselling is intended for individuals to
learn better coping techniques, improve their mental health and increase their
productivity.

Areas that are covered on counselling in organizations include conflict

resolution, stress management, career development and personal crises. The
counsellor supports and guides the client in a working process that helps face
problems, self-awareness and getting better.

Counsellor’s Attitude: Counselling skills

The attitude and skills of the counsellor plays a far more effective role in the
effectiveness of counselling. A counsellor should exhibit the following qualities:

Empathy: Ability to understand and explain to the client. It helps people to

trust you and to be comfortable with you to open up.
Non-judgmental Attitude: Counsellors should constitute a safe, nonjudgmental,
accepting place for the client to express his behavior or feelings.
Active Listening: The ability to pay full attention to what the client is saying,
understand, respond and remember the things the client is saying.
Patience: But change is a slow process and counsellors have to be patient and
very supportive during this time.
Confidentiality: To foster trust within the relationship it is critical that the
privacy of the client’s issues be maintained.

Key skills include:

Communication Skills: Effective understanding and meeting of clients’ needs
require both verbal and non verbal communication.
Problem-Solving Skills: Counsellors need to have the ability to discover
difficulties and help client work through possible solutions.
Emotional Intelligence: Counselling is the skill of being able to recognise and
deal with one’s own emotions, the emotions of others, and when they should
be dealt with.

There are several build up of the counselling process, stages which are
prepared to allow the client to understand the personal or professional
problem and to resolve it. Below is a more detailed explanation of each stage:

1. Initial Assessment
Counselling process starts with an initial assessment. At this stage the
counsellor would wish to know about the clients’ concerns, challenges, and
background. It entails collecting a ton of information on the client’s personal
life, what they do on the job, how the current situation is affecting them
emotionally, and any factors in the client’s life that could be playing a role in
this. The assessment phase typically involves:

Active listening: The counsellor listens and does not interrupt, nor take sides.

Open-ended questions: In his way, a counsellor comes asking questions to try

to find out how the client feels, what the client does and what the client has
experienced.
History and background: A counsellor may ask you a family background, about
your work history, your past experience, to know in what background are you
innovating into problems.

Purpose: This phase serves to help the counsellor understand the client to the
fullest so you can guide the counselling process.

2. Setting Goals
Setting a goal for the client should come next after understanding their
concerns. The counsellor and the client agree on the objective of counselling
sessions. Typically the goals of the counselling process are stated in terms of
what the client is hoping to get from the counselling process.

SMART goals: The goals are often written in Specific, Measurable, Achievable,
Relevant, and Time bound (SMART) terms.

Client involvement: For goal setting to work, the client is a key part, they need
to feel invested in the outcome.

Example: A goal might be to teach a client ways to avoid or manage stress and
expect them to employ these techniques over time (say, for the next three
weeks or whenever).

3. Intervention
The actual counselling work is what happens in the intervention part. This is
the stage when the counsellor offer to the client ways, tools, and direction for
dealing with the client’s concern and working towards the agreed upon goal.
Intervention methods can vary depending on the type of counselling and the
issues being addressed, and may include:
Cognitive-behavioral techniques: Helping clients change bad thinking patterns.

Problem-solving strategies: The aim is to develop solutions based on clients’

challenges.

Communication skills training: To resolve issues of ineffective interaction and

interpersonal relationships at work, in an office or a business, with friends or
family members, and to generally produce these results in younger people,
potentially.

Emotional support: Providing the client with a safe space to talk (express and
explore in) their feelings.

Example: In career counseling, a client may be instructed to complete exercises

like those that can improve things such as time management or decision
making skills.

4. Evaluation
During periodic staging within the counseling process, a stage that evaluates
the progress towards the goals is carried out. In this phase, the counsellor and
client decide if the interventions are working and the goals achieved. Our plan
can be adjusted if needed.

Progress check-ins: Also, sessions are discussed regularly with the client about
experiences, challenges and areas of improvement.

Revising goals: The goals might be modified or extended if progress is slower

that expected to fit with the pace of the client.
Example: For example, if a client has done well with stress management but is
bogged down in communication at work, the goals may bend towards
interpersonal relationships.

5. Termination
It is the end of the process of counselling. It’s when the client has reached their
desired goals at the start or feels they are well enough to continue anyway
without extreme (weekly) sessions. During this phase:

Review of progress: The counsellor and client then look together at the
progress that has been made during the sessions together with what the tools
and skills the client has experienced and developed.
Planning for future challenges: The counsellor may be of help to the client to
develop strategies to maintain the progress in the future challenges on their
own.
Closure: Although the relationship between the counsellor and the client closes
in the formal sense, the client might return on further sessions at some future
date if required.

Problems in Counselling
Counselling, whilst very effective, also presents with a number of problems
which can make the process difficult. The problems may arise through the
counsellor, the staff or in the counselling process itself.

1. Problems with the Counsellor

Counsellors themselves may face personal or professional challenges that
affect the quality of the counselling they provide:

Burnout: High caseloads and working with intense emotional issues can make
counsellors emotionally exhausted, leaving them less than effective.
Lack of Skill: The counselling may be ineffective if a counsellor doesn’t have
appropriate experience or specialized skills to deal with a client’s specific
problem.

Over-involvement: A counsellor who too emotionally sinks his or her teeth into
a client's situation will become less objective.

Example: Such situation can create counsellor emotionally overwhelmed by a

client’s traumatic experiences, which makes this person to not be able to give
the appropriate distance and clarity needed for guiding the client.

2. Problems with the Staff

In organizational settings, employees may present challenges that limit the
effectiveness of counselling:

Resistance to Counselling: There may be employees who would be resistant to

counselling because of personal belief, stigma, or mistrust of the process.

Stigma: It’s all the more likely to be struggles in cultures that don’t speak
openly about mental health, including those in which employees fear being
judged or stigmatized when they seek help.

Lack of Trust: If employees do not trust the counsellor’s confidentiality or his

intentions, they may deny any and all information and not get as much out of
the sessions as they could.

Example: If help seeking is viewed as unhelpful (or even a sign of weakness) in

a company, employees may as a result default to no counselling, or superficial
counselling, which will not necessarily delve into the heart of the problem.
3. Problems with the Process
Sometimes, issues within the counselling process itself can lead to poor
outcomes:

Insufficient Time: Short or infrequent counselling sessions may not be long

enough to explore issues in depth, so are unlikely to produce sufficient
progress.

Lack of Follow-Up: If counselling doesn't have proper follow up, clients might
not find implement the changes that were talked of during counselling and it
will become stagnant or relapse to the past habit.

Inadequate Resources: The efficacy of the program will suffer when the
organization fails to supply adequate resources for counselling (time, space,
counsellors who are trained).

Example: In such case, an organization that allows employees to attend 15

minute counselling sessions only once a month may not be able to give the
employees the time in which they can discuss about the challenges they are
facing and hence the impact of the counselling process will be reduced.

Issues in Counselling
There are several potential issues that can arise in counselling, each of which
can complicate or limit the success of the counselling process:

1. Confidentiality
Keeping confidentiality is one of the main issues in counselling. So clients need
to feel like their personal information is going to stay private from them
otherwise they’re not going to be willing to share some of the important
things. Breach of confidentiality can hurt the counsellor client relationship and
break trust.

Example: When a counsellor shares a client’s situation with management

without the client’s consent it creates a break down of trust between the two
so that the client feels reticent to continue the counselling process.

2. Dual Relationships
Dual relationship is defined as a relationship between counsellor and client
outside the counselling process, for example counsellor and client are manager
or colleague. It is possible that the counsellor could develop a conflict of
interest, be less objective, and it is harder for the client to be completely
honest, as there is a known connection between the counsellor and the client.

Example: However, a counsellor-manager who gives their time to counselling

their direct reports may find it difficult to contain their duty of supervision in
order to allow the counselling process to take place.

3. Cultural Sensitivity
Counselling process can depend on cultural difference between the counsellor
and the client. Cultural background, beliefs and values of the client, and how
these could affect the clients view of the problems to hand and the process of
counselling itself, should also be taken into account by the councillors.

Example: Getting counselling for our emotional or mental health problems is

considered to be a stigmatized activity in some cultures, which might put
clients off from participating fully in the process of counselling. In navigating
these cultural sensitivities, counsellors need to be very careful.
4. Ethical Dilemmas
Counselling can be unethical when the counsellor has to make a decision about
whether or not to report, or whether or not to tell, and when it might harm
you. For instance, if a client says they want to harm themselves or someone
else, the counsellor may be required to do so ethically, even though the
expectation of confidentiality would usually be in place.

Example: A counsellor is told by a client that they are thinking about self
harming. The counsellor faces an ethical dilemma: at the same time still
respecting the client’s privacy while still considering it may need to intervene
to protect the client’s safety.

OD Integration with Organization Strategy

OD is planned, systemic approach to improving organizational effectiveness. OD
is only successful if it’s aligned with the strategy of the organization. At the
integration level, integrating OD with strategy is about assuring that the
interventions and the development programs are in line with the company's
mission, goals and objectives.

Key areas of integration:

Aligning OD interventions with strategic goals: Long term objectives of the
organization should be supported by OD efforts. For instance, if the goal of an
organization to move towards a more customer centric strategy, OD programs
must be centered on improving customer service and client engagement skills.
Developing leadership capacity: To implement strategy, you need effective
leadership. Like other OD interventions, leadership skills are frequently
developed to lead the organization through strategic changes.
Building a culture of adaptability: OD contributes to the development of
flexible and open organizational cultures which are compatible with the
strategies that involve, for instance, innovations, growth or restructuring.
Competitive Advantage, Change and the role of OD.
Business environment is characterized by change, and organizations that
handle them well tend to have competitive advantage. Preparation of the
organization, its leadership, and its workforce to adapt to changes in market
conditions, new technologies, or organizational fundamentals is an integral part
OD’s role of managing change.

OD intervenes to create a culture of continuous improvement with the

capability of adaptability; this makes the organization competitive in the
changing environment. This can involve:
Employee Training: Creating enough skills and knowledge so that employees
can adapt to new systems and new market conditions.
Process Improvement: Improving efficiency, and decrease costs by streamlining
operations increase.
Change Management Programs: Structured change management which works
to help employees smoothly transition into working in new organizations.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can be a challenge for organizations because

they represent bringing together two or more companies, all with their own
cultures, systems, processes, and business models. Managing change
successfully during the M&A process is absolutely critical to the long term
success of the newly formed organization. The success of this depends heavily
on Organizational Development (OD), bringing the two organizations together
without disruption, maintaining positive employee morale and delivering the
organization’s strategy. In this post I’ll take you through the important aspects
of managing change during M&A, and then provide you with more detail about
one example.

1. Cultural Integration
M&A often face the most complex challenge on cultural integration. When
merging or acquiring each organization involved had a corporate culture;
values, norms, communication styles and work practices. An example of
merging comes to picture when two companies from different cultures come
together; this can lead to tension, lower employee engagement and less
productivity.

Key elements of cultural integration:

Assessing Cultural Differences: The first step OD professionals take is to
compare cultural differences between the merging organizations by defining
and determining which areas of alignment of values, communication styles,
work ethics, and leadership behaviors.
Finding Common Ground: OD is used to discover common values and create a
common culture that combines the strengths of the two companies. And this
usually takes some compromise, but it should be to move the strategic goals of
the now entity.
Mitigating Cultural Clashes: There can be proactive OD interventions to prevent
possible cultural clash: cross cultural training and team building activities.
Leaders are important in showing desired behavior and bringing unity.
Involving Employees in Cultural Redefinition: To the extent that employees can
help input into the cultural integration process by means of focus groups or
workshops they can feel valued and invested in creating the new organizational
culture.

Example: Integrating culture was a big focus for privacy when Disney bought
21st Century Fox. After all, Disney’s corporate family friendly and highly
structured culture had to grow a new arm around the more diverse and
independent creative culture that 21st Century Fox brings to the table. OD had
been a key player in finding areas of cultural compatibility when you worked to
merge the special touches of both organizations. The two cultures were
integrated smoothly by Disney, thanks to the shared values: innovation,
storytelling.

2. Leadership Development
Leadership change is often a side effect of an M&A, whether it means replacing
a new leadership team with a leadership team for the newly merged entity, or
the merging of two companies’ leaders. The uncertainty and anxiety
surrounding leadership transitions can be a difficult time for employees;
without direction and priorities it is not easy to know what to expect.

Key aspects of leadership development during M&A:

Preparing New Leaders: Wholly devoted to helping new leaders lead their
organization through the merger or acquisition. It also includes learning some
key legal leadership skills such as communication, 'conflict' resolution and
decision making.
Aligning Leadership Styles: Leaders in each merged organization may be
different, having diverse styles, leading to confusion and failure to align. By
providing OD interventions, leadership approaches are aligned to have a single
direction and same message to employees.

Building Trust: Likewise, the trust that leaders and employees have for each
other should be the focus of M&A leadership development programs. Key
factors of building trust are transparent communication, open to feedback, and
empathy.

3. Communication
Communication is key to M&A to eliminate uncertainty and rumors, and help
employees at every level understand why and what will happen as a result of
the merger or acquisition is taking place. When people are not communicating
well together there is anxiety, decreased morale and higher turnover.

Key elements of communication during M&A:

Clear Messaging: It is that OD makes sure that the messaging on the M&A
remains consistent, transparent and clear. The way to know employees will buy
into a merger is to communicate why the merger is happening, how they will
be affected and what the future will look like for the organization.
Frequent Updates: Once employees are set, regular updates are essential to
making sure employees are aware of the progress of the merger, as well as so
employees can voice any concerns or questions they have. For instance, it
could be done through town hall meetings, through emailed, through
newsletters, etc.

Open Channels for Feedback: Keeping the trust alive is something important,
and it is important to give employees to voice their concerns and ask questions.
Feedback mechanisms you find in an OD program are often surveys or Q & A’s
to make employees feel owned in the process.

Leadership Visibility: OD pushes leaders to be seen and accessible during the

transition. It helps to reduce an uncertainty and also to provide the mind with a
sense of stability and continuity.

Example: In the case of Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, OD made

communication frequent and transparent. To resolve concerns, explain the
reasons behind the acquisition, and describe steps under way to integrate the
two, Disney leadership held, and held regularly, town halls and Q&A sessions.
The open communication helped to ease employees anxiety and to provide
clarity as to what the future might hold.

4. Restructuring
When you are undergoing an M&A there is possibly a need to change roles and
responsibilities or in short restructure in order to avoid redundancies and bring
clarity on individual’s responsibilities and overall organizational structure. Race
is arguably less confused than in the 1990s, and OD interventions have come to
play a critical role in assisting this restructuring process.
Key aspects of restructuring during M&A:

Redefining Roles and Responsibilities: OD plays a part help with the

restructuring process by ensuring roles and responsibilities are clearly defined
and no overlap and confusion. For this, most often there is the creation of new
positions or redundancy of roles.

Redesigning Reporting Structures: M&A can bring in new lines of

communication and leadership too, to the top of the reporting hierarchy. OD
interventions clarify these new structures and help ensure that they fit with the
strategic objectives of what I would refer to as the new organization.

Managing Workforce Reductions: As it sometimes occurs, M&A may result in

layoffs or workforce reductions. This process is managed very sensitively, partly
by OD, which makes sure that the good employees are treated fairly, and that
those that stay understand the reasons for this decisions.
5. Employee Support Programs
M&A, of course can be a stressful and uncertain time for employees and the
morale and productivity can drop. To compensate for these, OD often uses
employee support programs to assist with the change process and help
employees to get used to the new organizational structure.

Key aspects of employee support programs during M&A:

Counselling Services: Even if M&A won’t be taking place in front of your

employees every day, there are always times of stress and uncertainty,
providing access to counselling and mental health services can help employees
cope with this.
Training Programs: OD helps train employees to acquire the required skills to
prosper in the new organization. It may encompass training to use new
systems, technologies and or processes.

Mentorship and Buddy Systems: Mentorship or buddy systems can help the
transition between the two merging organizations by helping employees pair
up and collaborate with each other and building cultural integration between
employees from the both organizations.

Employee Engagement Initiatives: To maintain morale and productivity, OD

often implements initiatives, such as team building exercises, workshops and
recognition programs to increase employee engagement very often.

Example: After the Disney Fox merger, employee support programs were rolled
out in effort to help workers adapt. In order to reassure the employees over
time left uncertain about their future, Disney offered counselling services to
staff and also prepared for them with training programmes so they would be
competent to function in the new organizational framework. Team building
activities were also created to build solidarity within employees of both
companies.