We were working with a new client to create a training program that would develop the consulting skills of the staff whose role was that of advisor. The advisor’s role was to support the staff development of employees of centers over which they had no formal managerial authority. The program we designed began with a training workshop to introduce an OD perspective and the key concepts and skills of the consultant’s role. The workshop was to be followed up by support groups in which advisors meet twice a month to review and reflect on their work through analysis of case material on current projects.

A manager in the organization challenged the idea of the support groups because they would take time, and proposed instead that they would pull a group together whenever an advisor had a problem. Her challenge stimulated us to think through why regular group meetings where so important to the success of the training.

The support groups are designed to bring about long term change in the professional practice of the advisors. They provide a place where the advisors could integrate the new concepts and skills into the way they work. To do this it is important to create the conditions that foster this type of learning and change. On the surface the groups seem a simple device but, in fact, they are a forceful intervention designed to overcome resistance to change.

First, it requires members commit themselves to the group, which is to acknowledge that the work of the group is important both for them and their colleagues. An expression of that commitment is regular and punctual attendance at the group meetings. The commitment is to their own continuing development. It appreciates that their present level of competence can be improved and that they are aiming to become a master in their profession. It recognizes that taking time to stand apart from their work for critical reflection can help them achieve this. Together with their colleagues they aim to develop a deeper insight into the events they are part of in order to exercise a greater influence in the situation. All this adds up to a significant shift in their attitude towards their work.

The group meetings also express the commitment of management. Through sanctioning the supervision group, management is expressly endorsing an approach to professional development by which advisors continuously develop their competence. Management gives permission for people to take time to think about what they do, rather than always be doing.

This commitment contributes to the psychological conditions for learning and change. Within the culture the individual can open him/herself to the possibility of change. Personal change invariably requires effort, and it is more likely to happen if that individual experiences the committed support of his group members and also sees them model change in their own work.

By introducing the regular review, cultural change occurs at different levels. At the level of values the organization supports critical reflection. At the cognitive level people learn a well-articulated theory and key concepts which fairly reliably predicts outcomes in the work situation. At the inter-personal level, members are committed to each other, they are interested in what is happening and put their effort into helping each other. At the intra-personal level the individual has a map to chart the course of their professional development.

All this concerted effort is necessary to exercise the level of force in the system to overcome the institutional resistance to change. Organizations are dynamic systems in equilibrium. Whenever change is required, work and effort are necessary to disturb the present equilibrium and move the system to a new point of balance.

So for instance, the manager was not happy with regular meetings because they did not have time in their busy schedules. He asked could they not just bring a group together when an advisor had a specific problem? Why not do this? Ad hoc meetings would not create conditions that foster the safety to explore one’s own role in the advisor/client relationship. They would make it hard for the advisor to ask for help. A crisis, however minor, would be necessary for bringing people together - not a good time for to reflect critically on one’s contribution to the problem. Ad hoc meetings would keep people working within the same systemic framework, and as such would maintain the status quo.

A number of factors work against instituting regular supervision group meetings. For example, the meetings are going to affect everybody’s work schedule; somebody will be inconvenienced. The groups will have an impact on the work group supervisor. He may regard himself as the experienced professional that knows how the job gets done, and the group meetings may challenge what he regards as his special contribution to the work. Admitting to not knowing or even worse - to be contributing to the problem - is difficult on anyone’s part.

The simple discipline and structure involved in introducing a peer group supervision process with its fixed meeting time, request for regular and punctual attendance, and the character of the discussion is designed to communicate the culture of supervision with its values and methods to ensure the transfer of training from the initial training program into work place performance.