Co‐operacy: A Consensus Approach to Work

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (1999), "Co‐operacy: A Consensus Approach to Work", Library Management, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 85-85. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1999.20.4.85.2

Counselling approaches in the workplace are getting more attention. Writers and managers want to build emotional competence in themselves and their teams and organisations, and increasingly believe that learning organisations are based on effective relationships and decision‐making between “whole′′ employees. Psychologist and counsellor MacLennan has produced a thorough and timely book in Counselling for Managers. Debunking exclusive myths about counselling, he says it is a process any experienced manager should be able to handle. He goes straight at a familiar dilemma ‐‐ that person‐centred Rogerian counselling is non‐directive but at work managers are looking for performance and competence among their staff. So how can managers be counsellors?

MacLennan demonstrates how they can succeed at this by using their experience and knowledge, using eight principles (e.g. rapport, support, reflection, listening), knowing counselling stages (from awareness through understanding and reframing to solutions and endings), and building in a skills training model into their daily work. The skills of the STM bring practical and professional competence together with emotional management (beliefs, being realistic, coping with failure, being flexible). He takes us through the process of counselling, focusing on the client in making problems more manageable, using a repertoire of counselling skills in a self‐aware sensitive way, and throughout links this with the work situation, pressures to deliver, authority roles, issues of confidentiality, conflicts of interest. It is not often we find an approach which convincingly balances the two approaches.

This is a book for busy managers and trainers to “use, dip into, and pick things out of′′. It is full of bullet points, thoughtful issues useful in pragmatic training and development situations. It assumes readers can do what it says. One aspect could be stronger more worked through examples: we have got to put it all together in a practical way at the end, and some readers will require more help. The value of counselling sources like Rogers and Nelson‐Jones lie in showing as well as telling, and in this area trial and error carry risks. However, so much people management places blind faith in mere rationalism that MacLennan′s book will open eyes and change practice for managers who read it carefully.

Dale Hunter and her colleagues have produced two well‐known books about group dynamics and decision‐making, The Zen of Groups (Gower, 1992) and The Facilitation of Groups (Gower, 1994). Co‐operacy is about collective decision‐making using consensus, and this is a book for practical trainers as well as people who want to examine deeper issues of personal wholeness, “being present′′, handling conflict and diversity. This is the thinking style of the learning organisation, predicated on people of equal worth, authentic sharing and emotional competence, and a belief in the effectiveness of teams to solve problems. It weaves issues of integrity into practical decision‐making so that the business of meetings and projects actually gets done but intuitive and alignment issues do not get forgotten.

There are 61 case studies/training examples putting the principles into action, life‐like, clear and useable for teams and facilitators. Even though Hunter′s consultancy, Zenergy, is in New Zealand. Examples and advice are universal. Co‐operacy takes counselling into a team situation, and pushes it outwards into issues of belief and life‐style. Both works reviewed here argue that effective managers take account of work and life in their own lives and those of their employees. Both recommend styles of management which seek to empower individuals and groups, make work more effective and rewarding. Good for personal and personnel training resource collections.