Guidelines for Education and Training at the Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Level in Consulting Psychology/Organizational Psychology

Education and Training Committee¹
Division 13, APA

Approved by Division 13, APA: August 5, 2000
Transmitted to APA (Sara Jordan): December 1, 2000

Purpose of the Guidelines
This document outlines the expected competencies to be obtained by persons receiving training at the doctoral or post-doctoral level in Consulting Psychology (CP). It was prepared to assist faculty and academic administrators in designing doctoral or post-doctoral programs in CP.

Working Model and Assumption of the Guidelines

Areas of Training Affected. Although there are other applications of CP for which alternative or additional competencies may be relevant (e.g., health-related CP), the specific areas of expertise addressed in this document relate to CP as it is applied to the organizational CP. These Guidelines are not intended to replace, usurp, or conflict with training policies or guidelines that have been developed and approved for other areas of practice such as those in I/O, clinical, counseling, or school psychology.

Non-Exclusivity. These Guidelines also recognize that there are appropriate ways other than doctoral training in CP to become proficient in the competencies here described. Academic training in areas such as Industrial/Organizational Psychology (e.g., Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1985) and Clinical or Counseling Psychology can provide considerable training that is relevant for the practice of CP. These Guidelines are intended to assist in the specific development of doctoral and post-doctoral programs in CP.

Scientist-Practitioner Assumptions. Consistent with the orientation of Division 13 of APA, these Guidelines assume that the practice of CP is guided by the science of psychology in evaluating and assessing the effectiveness of CP interventions and its assessment methodologies. It is therefore assumed that the fully trained consulting psychologist is competent to conduct and/or to evaluate and to utilize scientific-based research in the practice of CP. The effective consulting psychologist has in-depth knowledge of the major theoretical models in psychology and of their particular methodologies and applications as they apply to individual, group, and organizational consulting domains.

The profession of CP embraces a scientist-practitioner model of training, including training in traditional research skills (e.g., statistics, research design and the like). No single model of empirical research, however, is assumed to have a monopoly on truth by the endorsement of the "scientist-practitioner" model of consultation. CP trainees learn, e.g., not just about research methodologies but also about the role of the consultant as an active participant in the consulting process at hand. Action research, e.g., is often important in CP in being able to apply complex constructs in practice.

Evolving Field. The practice of CP has evolved over time and involves a body of knowledge and methods of service delivery. These Guidelines have been created to reflect the current state of the field and to provide a conceptual framework for the development of training programs. It is expected that these Guidelines will continue to change over time to keep pace with advances in research and practice.

·        Individual assessment for purposes of career and vocational assessment

·        Individual assessment for purposes of employee selection or development

·        Job analysis for purposes of individual assessment

·        Executive and individual coaching

·        Individual-level intervention for job and career-related problems

Primarily Group-level Core Competencies:

·        Assessment of functional and dysfunctional group behavior

·        Assessment and development of teams

·        Creating group level teams in organizations (e.g., self-directed work groups)

·        Inter-group assessment and intervention

·    Group boundary assessment and intervention

·     Identity group (racial, gender, ethnic) management in the organizational context  

Primarily Organizational/Systemic-level Core Competencies:

·        Organizational diagnosis including systemic assessment of the entire organization or large component parts of the organization

·        Attitude, climate, and satisfaction surveys

·        Evaluation of corporate management philosophy, organizational culture and nature of systemic stressors

·        Work-flow and project planning activities

·        Identification of aggregate performance measures

·        Assessment of organizational values and management practices

·        Organizational level interventions

·        Change management of organizational systems

In the following sections of this document the core CP competencies are elaborated and illustrated. The competencies described here necessarily constitute a selective listing of skills important in becoming a consulting psychologist.

I. Individual Domain Consulting Psychology Competencies

In the individual domain, consulting psychologists are skilled in performing assessments and interventions centered on persons as separate entities in organizational and work contexts. Consulting psychologists are expected to have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to assess and intervene with individuals in non-clinical work- and career-related contexts and to be able to differentiate situations requiring assessment or intervention with abnormal psychological conditions and those with the more normal range of behavior. 

A. Individual-Level Assessment  - Doctoral level consulting psychologists understand and can competently employ individual level assessment methods and techniques appropriate for the types of problems and issues confronted by individuals in work, career, and organizational contexts. They are competent in conducting individual level assessments and evaluations for purposes of career assessment, personnel selection, personal development, and in the context of determining appropriateness for, and specific needs of, coaching and counseling of persons in the work and career context. Such assessments are based on relevant evaluations using, as appropriate, psychological tests and other assessment procedures. The fully-trained consulting psychologist is able to understand intrapsychic individual level dynamics affecting observed behavior and can integrate these characteristics into the client's situational context. CP individual level assessment skills do not normally include assessment of abnormal personality or mental dysfunction except to the extent that the consulting psychologist is expected to be able to differentiate the needs of persons whose characteristics may require a different type of intervention (e.g., referral for a formal mental health evaluation or intervention).

Fully trained doctoral-level consulting psychologists are competent in individual level assessment methodologies and are skilled in the administration and interpretation of a representative-level sample of relevant instruments and in providing feedback to individuals completing such measures. These Guidelines intentionally do not specify a list of assessment devices, procedures, or psychological tests (e.g., specific measures of occupational interests, abilities, and personality traits) in which fully trained consulting psychologists must become competent, since any such list would quickly become outdated or irrelevant. What is important is that the consulting psychologist have meta-skills in individual-level psychological test administration, interpretation, and feedback and experience administering, interpreting, and providing feedback with a sufficiently large number of scientifically-sound instruments that new tests can quickly be mastered as they become available. Consulting psychologists working at the individual level are able to define relevant assessment questions, to choose appropriate instrumentation, competently to administer the relevant tests, and to provide competent feedback, including behaviorally-based feedback, to all relevant parties. Feedback includes helping the individual(s) assessed (and other relevant parties, such as third parties) understand the results and limitations of the assessment, helping to place the results in the appropriate organizational context, addressing the affective aspects of such feedback, and helping identify the relevant implications of the results of the assessment.

Thus, consulting psychologists are able to identify the strengths and limitations of each of several assessment methods: empirical methods (e.g., behavioral, content analysis), psychometric methods (cognition-learning, affect-behavior, conation-willing i.e, integrative decision making), and more intuitive methods (projective and other).  The history of the development of each methodology is supplemented with detailed exposure to preferred techniques, emphasizing the strengths and limitations that pertain to diagnostic outcomes specific to CP: classification for description, evaluation, placement; classification for performance competency; classification for consultant-intervention, therapeutic recommendations, or referral for clinical treatment.

At the individual level, the consulting psychologist understands and is able to integrate the various components of psychological assessment (e.g., test results, behavioral observational data, relevant background and life history information) and to synthesize these data into pragmatically relevant results. The consulting psychologist is skilled in a range of individual-level assessment procedures (e.g., objective, projective, structured observation, ethnographic field methods, interviews, etc.), and applies skilled synthesis-level thinking to produce integrated results that are germane to the referral question(s) for which the assessment was undertaken. 

B. Individual-Level Interventions - Fully trained consulting psychologists are able to successfully implement a range of interventions that focus on the individual level. These interventions can be classified as follows:

1. Educational - Consulting psychologists should know how to provide educational-based interventions for individuals.  The goal of such activities would be to promote the acquisition and use of new knowledge by clients.  The range and depth of such educational interventions will vary greatly and may incorporate various modalities including face-to-face and various telecommunications-based formats.

2. Training - Practitioners should know how to provide training interventions for individuals.  The goals of such activities are to assist individuals in developing and strengthening skills relevant to the workplace. The range and types of skills applicable to jobs are enormous, and it is not expected that organizational consulting psychologists be able to demonstrate competency in all of them.  However, practitioners should be able to assess problems and design skill-building interventions that will help clients manage the challenges that they face.  

3. Coaching - Practitioners should know how to provide competent, assessment-anchored coaching and other individual-level interventions.  The goals of such activities include helping clients to improve their abilities to diagnose problems that they are confronting in the workplace, to change problematic attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors that may interfere with their performance, and to improve their skills, self-awareness, and self-efficacy in their work related roles.  Coaching may include education and training interventions as part of a package of activities that are usually negotiated and delivered to a client in the context of a formal agreement.

4. Counseling - Consulting psychologists are able to provide counseling interventions for individuals.  The goal of such activities is to help individuals overcome internal psychological or behavioral barriers to the performance of their roles in the workplace.  Although consulting psychologists should be familiar with and able to apply an array of counseling theories and methods, they are not necessarily expected to be prepared to conduct mental health treatment with clients. Rather, consulting psychologists refer such clients to appropriately prepared colleagues when they believe that such care is necessary.

Foci For Individually Directed Interventions: CP training programs prepare practitioners to intervene with individuals in the workplace who may be encountering a wide variety of problems and issues.  To be sure and inevitably, the academic and practice aspects of the programs will not be able to expose students to the full array of difficulties and challenges that clients may present to them once they leave school.  However, there are some foci for individual interventions that are reasonable to expect programs to include in their curriculum.  These can include such specific applications as those depicted in Table 1.

Course work and practicum experiences in CP training programs integrate theory, research, technical skills and implementation methods, and approaches to evaluating individually based interventions.  Graduates are prepared to design, implement, and evaluate these approaches.

C. Self-Awareness, Self-Management, and Professional and Psychological Maturity - Most individual level assessment and intervention methods reasonably assume certain personal characteristics. Consulting psychologists' graduate training programs, which should include one-on-one supervision relevant for learning individual intervention skills, should assist graduates in developing the capacity for self-directed reflection, the ability to receive critical feedback from clients and colleagues, and the willingness to change behavior as needed to work effectively with individuals in work-related contexts.  Graduates of CP Programs are expected to have been exposed to models and methods for accomplishing these tasks and to have demonstrated a reasonable ability to implement them before graduating.  The capacity for developing self-awareness and self-management can be strengthened and deepened in a wide variety of ways, and the curriculum of each Program should demonstrate how the faculty assists students to achieve the level of professional and psychological maturity necessary for effective practice in the field.  

II. Group-Level Consulting Psychology Competencies

Group-level consulting psychology competencies take the group as the primary unit of analysis.  The group-level frame of reference, however, does not pertain only to the internal (i.e., interpersonal) relations among task groups.  It also addresses such phenomena as role analysis, leader-follower behavior, interpersonal conflict, workflow intergroup relations, diversity, authority dynamics, labor-management relations and inter-organizational relations.  Crucial propositions are: (1) roles in organizations are shaped by group level forces; (2) individuals in organizations function as group representatives, whether or not they intend to do so;  (3) the internal dynamics of groups cannot be adequately understood independently of the external relations of those same groups; and (4) unconscious processes within individuals, within groups and between groups affect individual roles, intragroup dynamics, intergroup relations, and inter-organizational relations. 

Effective doctoral and post-doctoral education programs in consulting psychology prepare consulting psychologists to carry out interventions with groups embedded in organizations.  This education includes knowledge about: (1) the self in relation to these phenomena, (2) relevant concepts and theories, (3) specific case studies and statistical research results, and (4) appropriate social technologies.  Effective intervention depends upon favorable confluence among all four of these elements.  If any one is missing, or if all are not brought together in a congruous fashion, then education is incomplete.    

Types of Group-Level Assessment and Interventions - This section elaborates specific types of group level assessment and intervention approaches in which the consulting psychologist is expected to be trained.

A. Role Analysis and Re-negotiation -  The goals of these activities are to enable individuals in roles within organizations to understand the forces that shape their roles and to adjust those forces that cause dysfunctional consequences for themselves and the organization. 

Consulting psychologists who provide this service should be able to establish their own roles in relation to the work, know several versions of role theory (including those that take account of group level processes), understand the empirical research on role dynamics in organizations, and be able properly to diagnosis and assist clients in analyzing and re-negotiating their roles. 

B. Group Formation and Development - The goals of these activities are to enable group leaders and members to form the group, establish productive relations between the leader and members, develop constructive relations among peers within the team, and fashion cooperative relations between the focal team and other groups and organizations with whom the team must relate in order to perform effectively. 

Consulting psychologists who provide this service should understand their own pre-dispositions toward authority and group dynamics; know one or more sophisticated theories of group and intergroup dynamics; understand the empirical research on groups in organizations; and be able properly to diagnosis problems of the team, design interventions to address those problems, and assist the leader, team members and others who may be appropriate to implement the interventions. They are further able to identify both optimal, positive models of functioning and those that are dysfunctional and pathology-driven. 

C. Work Groups and Intergroup Problem Solving - The goal of these activities is to assist two or more identified groups with improving their relationship in order to carry out interdependent work assignments more effectively.  Intervention may apply to peer groups (such as engineering and production or production and sales) that have different functions along a flow of work or to groups at different hierarchical levels (such as between field units and headquarters, between entities attempting to merge, or between labor and management). 

Consulting psychologists who provide these services should understand their own pre-dispositions toward authority and intergroup relations (especially those that involve ethnocentric forms of conflict) and be prepared to determine whether they can work alone or should join with one or more additional consultants to provide the service.  In situations in which teamwork among consultants is called for, consultants who work together should be prepared to manage their relations with one another and in relation to the client in ways that enhance rather than diminish the quality of service.  They should be knowledgeable about intergroup theories, informed about the empirical research concerning the specific intergroup problems presented, and prepared to assess and intervene in a manner that utilizes multiple group perspectives.

D. Identity Groups and Intergroup Relations: The goal of these activities is to eliminate group-level forces that result in members of some identity groups within organizations being treated unfairly by members of other identity groups on such matters as work assignments, salaries, and promotional opportunities.  Identity group membership is defined in terms of birth and biology, including variables as race, ethnicity, gender, family, generation, and sexual orientation.  Interventions to alter unfairness among identity groups include both forms of education to change the knowledge and self-awareness of individuals and procedures to alter the distribution of authority and power among identity groups within organizations.

Consulting psychologists who provide these services should have a thorough understanding of their own identities in those areas in which they provide services and a demonstrated capacity to work cooperatively with members of members of related identity groups to effect change (e.g., whites with blacks, women with men, etc.).  They should be highly knowledgeable about theory and research concerning the identity groups about which they provide services. They should be able to develop group-level interventions appropriate to the conditions found in organizations facing groups in their areas of expertise.

E. Group-Level Interventions -  Consulting psychologists apply what they have learned about groups to address specific issues and problems within the organizational context. Relevant areas include, e.g., managing group conflict, enhancing group functioning so that it is better aligned with organizational objectives, assisting groups in creating conditions of social support to ameliorate the effects of organizational and occupational stress, and helping organizations design work groups that effectively bridge individual and organizational needs.

III. Organizational/Systemic-Level Consulting Psychology Competencies

This domain focuses on interventions in which entire organizations is either the targeted intervention level or in which the organization itself is integral in effecting changes to segments of the larger organization.  Consulting psychologists often play prominent roles in conducting organization-level interventions, including surveys (organizational culture assessments and other employee opinion surveys); organizational strategic planning; change management programs; organization effectiveness/ development programs and other types of research and evaluation functions.  Competencies to be learned in conjunction with this domain of intervention include the following:

A.  Organization Theory and Design: Prior to practicing organization-level assessments and interventions, consulting psychologists need to have a solid theoretical foundation from which to work.  Training in organizational theory, behavior, and design are the foundations on which effective intervention are built. Relevant topic areas include: organizational theory: modern and historical (e.g., scientific management, the human relations movement, and open systems theory, organizational diagnostic theory); organizational structure and design (e.g., legal structures; centralization/decentralization, matrix configurations); organizational ecology (e.g., the effects of size, growth, market and life cycle); organizational effectiveness (financial indicators; industry benchmarking) globalization (economic, social, and legal challenges; multilingual and multicultural issues); organizational diagnosis; and organizational culture and ethics. 

B.   Organizational Assessment Competencies: Organizational Diagnosis:  The goal of organizational diagnosis is to develop a widely shared understanding of a system by its members by using the methods of applied behavioral science.

The phases of organizational diagnosis include entry, data collection, analysis, and feedback.  Consulting psychologists who provide this service should be prepared to develop a sound contract for the work and then carry out structured and unstructured observation, individual and group interviews, organic and standard questionnaires, and archival searches.  Having obtained data from multiple sources and in various forms, they should be able to conduct appropriate qualitative and statistical analyses and to integrate the results.  They should then be able to present their findings, first orally in appropriately designed meetings and then in writing.  A full blown organizational diagnosis potentially addresses all of the foregoing areas of group-level inquiry (i.e., roles, teams, work-flow, and identity groups) as well as organizational/systemic constructs.  The requirements for proper preparation in each of those areas apply to organizational diagnosis as well.  Conversely, the methods of organizational diagnosis also apply to the conceptually focused areas of inquiry.      

Developing expertise in organizational surveying and other assessment methodologies requires a combination of theory and applied practice.  Skills to be mastered include systematic data collection efforts including survey design implementation and evaluation. In learning to design surveys, attention should be paid to item design and item/survey evaluation.   Practice in developing surveys, pilot testing them on representative samples, and evaluating these pilots should be covered through a combination of class projects and practica.  Expertise in general survey design topics should also be addressed, including the effects of factors such as survey length, methods of distribution (anonymity, paper-and-pencil vs. IVR), and management (database theory and design, data security).

In teaching implementation of survey projects, skills in client definition and contracting are critical. Consulting psychologists also learn project skills, including managing a project from initial conceptualization to implementation and outcomes evaluation. As part of this process, consulting psychologists consider such issues as: incorporation of key stakeholders, development and execution of communication plans, formative and summative evaluations, and continuous quality and operational improvement of the process itself.  Additionally, consideration and costing of alternative organizational assessment procedures should be covered, helping students learn how to effectively evaluate the cost-benefits of alternative strategies.

Relevant expertise in evaluating diagnostic techniques includes the use of statistics to examine reliability (test-retest and internal consistency) and validity (content, construct, criterion) of assessment devices.  Classical test methods, and item-based methods such as IRT, should be covered in conjunction with this work. Consulting psychologists also learn a variety of diagnostic assessment methodologies, including those associated with the use of the psychologist him- or herself as an instrument for accurate organizational diagnosis.

C.  Organizational Change: The organizational change domain focuses on working with organizations undergoing changes that are atypical for that organization in amount, quality, or both.  A thorough understanding of client preferences concerning perceived change needs, organization design, theories of organizational change (including drivers of both organizational inertia and organizational resilience), and an understanding of the characteristic psychological processes change evokes, and how to manage those reactions, provides the foundation for effective intervention.  Organizational change approaches and theories of change necessarily incorporate knowledge and theories in the individual, group, and organizational domains, developmental theories, incorporation of the organization's history, and change management theories and practice. Positive approaches (e.g., those based on appreciative inquiry) are as important as those oriented to dysfunction.

The foundation of organizational change should also include overviews of legal structures in organizations and organizational change (e.g. incorporation, mergers and acquisitions), as well as the influences of market systems on organizational survival.  The history of employment and conventional “psychological contracts” will also be helpful.  The value and limitations of person-centered interventions, such as career outplacement and severance, and open communication strategies, are also relevant.  In addition, coursework and practical experience in project management skills are relevant.

D.   Organizational effectiveness/development:  The organization development domain focuses on strategies for enhancing the effectiveness of existing organizational structures.  This domain overlaps with organizational change, but is distinct in its greater focus on incremental, rather than dramatic, transformational, change.  Competency in this area will require skills to be developed in assessment, implementation design and execution, and evaluation.  Under assessment, methods of assessing organizational effectiveness should be covered, including common financial measurements of effectiveness (e.g. ROI, RONA).  Students need to learn how to determine and demonstrate the value to be added by their work. They also need to learn to translate complex psychologically-grounded procedures into terms the client can understand and use. Methods for establishing continuous evaluation strategies and heightening general awareness of these strategies, including total quality management approaches, should also be taught. 

E.  Research/evaluation: The behavioral sciences are most clearly distinguished from fad and ‘pop’ psychology by their discipline of research and evaluation.  Consulting psychologists need to learn methods of evaluating their organizational interventions to assure that clients are maximizing their return on investment. 

Evaluation coursework should include an understanding of both quantitative and qualitative methods.  Related to quantitative methods, a grounding in multivariate statistics, regression, and time series designs, as well as a basic understanding of structural equations and hierarchical linear modeling, should be part of the curriculum.  Related to qualitative methods, students should learn sound case study methodologies, as well as methods for codifying, synthesizing and summarizing qualitative information.  Practical experience in conducting research should be emphasized, including active participation in ‘real life’ research projects, either in the classroom, on practica or – ideally – both.

Professional Issues Training - Across all domains of training, consulting psychologists need to become versed in the professional practice aspects of the discipline. These issues include but are not limited to: ethics, confidentiality, defining the nature of the client, licensure requirements and expectations, issues in interacting with other professionals, including psychologists and non-psychologists, informed consent, and legal issues. In many situations, the existing literature on ethics and professional practice issues relates more to the practice of clinical and counseling psychology rather than to the many complicated issues in consulting psychology. Therefore, consulting psychologists need to be trained in how such matters apply to, and are affected by, the practice of consulting psychology.

References

Ryan, T.A., & Zeran, F.R. (1972). Organization and administration of guidance services. Danville, IL: Interstate Printers & Publishers.

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1985). Guidelines for education and  training at the doctoral level in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Bowling Green, OH: author.

Schein, E. (1999). Process consultation revisited. Building the helping relationship. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.

¹Education & Training Committee, Division 13, APA, Rodney L. Lowman (Chair), Clayton Alderfer, Michael Atella, Andrew Garman, David Hellkamp, Richard Kilburg, Paul Lloyd, and Ann O'Roark.