The Value of Psychoanalytically Trained Consultants

Review of Howard F. Stein’s Listening Deeply: An Approach to Understanding and Consulting in Organizational Culture, 2^nd edition (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017), IBSN: 978-0-8262-2124-7, 280 pages, $45.00.

Howard F. Stein’s Listening Deeply arrives at a time when authoritarians are once more in place around the globe in governments, corporations, educational institutions, and churches; literally every conceivable institutional setting. Authoritarians rarely heed the advice of thoughtful persons like Dr. Stein; they assume they’re aware of all needed solutions in the settings they occupy. Think of Jong-un, Putin, Erdogan, Trump, and men, rarely women, like them, who listen to those whom they trust to support them, sycophants, and hangers-on. Listening deeply to the needs of others and advice is not their forte. Their approach to solving problems does not involve accommodations, gradual processes, and compromises that follow from listening deeply.

So, why adhere to Stein’s advice? Even as institutional settings for the most part succumb to the authoritarian approach, Listening Deeply will serve well those who find the top-down approach less productive than “working” thoughtfully with all members of a community seeking help, be it a business, university department, a medical office, or a government agency. In one of the most revealing, if not gut-wrenching, sections of this book, Stein reports on his consultation with Managed Care Affiliates (MCA). The placement of an “efficient” executive in their distant headquarters negatively affected both this small but effective outlying organization and the corporate offices (87-100). I would like to recommend that everyone who is consulting in a devastating situation like the one in which MCA found itself read this section. Stein’s revelation of his

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reaction in the context of the murder of most of his family in Europe and his deeply frustrating inability to change that and the situation at MCA tells us that a consultant can help mitigate by empathizing the most depressing and humiliating circumstances. (Similar insights, although more concerned with Understanding the Self, are on pages 101-24.)

The struggles to bring about more thoughtful and open processes are not new; they have a great deal to do with the capacity to empathize with others. The German word, Einfühlungsvermögen, indicates the capacity to feel the concerns and thoughts of others. It implies that one knows oneself and that one should attempt to understand others.

In many ways, Stein’s Listening Deeply is all about this concept, but as he elaborates, for the consultant there must be more; namely quietly learning about oneself is but one perspective. The thoughtful consultant also carefully listens to the other people who work within the organization. In doing so the consultant takes in what is said in a sensory and emotional level and is changed to a degree by this, enabling empathetic guidance. Importantly, the consultant must have sufficient inner strength not to succumb to a multiplicity of emotions and ideas, which could result in losing the inner guideposts that engender positive results.

Stein’s description of a consultation with a doctor is precise: “In a sense, I trusted my physician colleague to lead the consultation to where she needed to go. My role was to help her tell the story she did not know she had within her. Answers would not arise in me (ostensibly the ‘expert’), but between us, the fruit of the dialogue of storytelling and story listening. This is the essence of the book” (28, the italics are in the original text).

In the introduction, Stein offers five guiding principles of his approach. “First, the consultant must recognize that group structure and function are both unconsciously and consciously organized…. Political, economic, and structural ‘reasons’ are only part of an organization’s story” (13).

The second guiding principle is that while “the consultant must elicit and acknowledge the initial view points and presenting ‘problems,’ he or she must not take them at face value, as the entire reality. They are starting points” (14). He follows this recommendation with a nearly page long list of “What to do” and “What not to do” as very helpful guideposts.

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The third guiding principle is “that the consultant not only listens and watches for this story to emerge in others but also, through introspection, identification, and empathy, constantly monitors his or her own emotional responses as crucial data about the organization” (16). Here it is essential that the consultant listen inside himself or herself for reactions to the stories being told. These reactions include cramping, headaches, and heart pounding. That is, he suggests that the consultant observe her or his own reactions and inform the group about them.

Stein summarizes the fourth principle this way: “The consultant must be an exemplary historian in helping clients to reconstruct their own history” (18). That means the consultant must not only have a good understanding of a publicly told history, but must also become aware of the problem(s) he or she is encountering, how the organization solves problems, and how its leaders have tended to do so.

The fifth principle “is that the consultant acknowledges his or her mistakes” (19). This recommendation is ever so logical, and yet most of us know how difficult it is, when one is with a group, to acknowledge that one has made an error in understanding or evaluating a particular situation. It is true, mistakes may cost money; yet, to acknowledge as a consultant that one has overlooked or missed something is difficult. It is embarrassing for most individuals and thus many try not only to avoid making a mistake but to avoid owning up to one. All the same, it is important to the process to admit that one is not perfect and can or has erred.

In my own experience with leading many different sorts of groups mainly in academe, I learned rather late that I could not “fix things,” however well I prepared myself about the issues a group confronted. I would have served the groups better if I had listened more closely and, at most, nudged them to their own resolutions. This is where Stein enters. The stories he injects about particular consulting situations, be they regarding an individual or a group, usually led to relatively rapid resolutions because of his ability to listen deeply and to act quickly on what he absorbed. This is in contrast to my early experience when I naïvely applied the latest problem-solving technique that soon after led to the application of still another one because an underlying problem had not been resolved.

What I find most useful about Dr. Stein’s Listening Deeply

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are his stories or, better put, his reports from the field. They show his almost uncanny ability to put himself into the shoes of others, to empathize, and to assist an individual or a group. He has literally been in thousands of consulting situations and to hear him tell how he helped is like taking a post-graduate seminar in consulting. The theories he offers are of course important background music, but the experiences give us access to this brilliant humanitarian at work.

Because the book is about listening to individuals situated in mostly organizational contexts, Stein begins the in-depth discussion with Key Concepts (29-72). In this section, he first elaborates on Understanding Groups (31-44) and then on Understanding the Self on its own and in the context of others (44-50). The major perspective of his key concepts of Understanding Groups is that the consultant must gain insight into Metaphors, Leadership, and Organizational Change, Loss, and Grief (60-72).

In an almost rhythmic approach that resembles some of his favorite pieces of music, Stein elaborates on these topics in the second part of the book: Understanding Groups (73-100); Use of the Self (101-124); Metaphors (125-151); Leadership (153-174); and Organizational Change, Loss, and Grief (175-200).

A very complete section of references (215-29) and an Index (231-36) will be most helpful to readers/consultants who would like to dwell deeper into aspects of Dr. Stein’s Listening Deeply. The book is an absolute must for consultants, be they working in an individual or group setting.

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