How I Use Psychology in IT, Another Installment

To carry on with my previous post, I described the idea that you, as a person who is trying to help, the situation, and the person you are trying to help are three separate things. If you work for a company or a corporation, there is a "fourth voice" in the conversation.

In graduate school, I went through an exercise in which I roleplayed a therapist dealing with a client who what dealing with a particular situation, only there was another person providing a dialogue that was going on during the counseling situation. This fourth voice was very critical, and was actively attempting to block the work I was doing. Although this may be present in some or many situations, the tenacity and degree to which this voice was present made it impossible, as a novice counselor, to make any progress with the client.

It has become very apparent to me through these years of experience, that the fourth voice in IT consulting is often the Account Manager or some other agent of the company that the IT consultant is employed by. This voice can be either positive and empowering, or critical and defeating. Far too often it is the latter. This is, of course, due to the fact that in IT there is little to no formal training in management, much less how to deal with people. As a result, many of the managers own "internal critics" become the voice that they use to work with their staff, and as a result, serve to only reduce their staff's effectiveness when dealing with clients. I belive the intention is to improve, but like much of human endeavor, the full picture is not realized, resulting in the failure of the single procedure.

So, as a technician or a helper how does this help you? First, you need to identify if there is there a "fourth voice" present? Is it your employer or manager? You need to be able to separate out this voice, just as you did with the client's process, in order to complete the task at hand. You may be in a situation where the situation has been dealt with satisfactorally, the client is happy, yet your manager is unhappy for some reason, or - and this is the worst case - dislikes you as a person because you did not approach the situation the way that they would have wanted you to. Dealing with an intense negative personalization by a direct superior is hard, especially when they are emotionally invested in blaming their subordinates rather than leading them. This happens very often, and if you have the means, make use of your benefits for counseling, because you will need an objective third party to bounce your experiences off of until the economy picks up enough to the point where you are able to secure a position with an employer who will appreciate and support your contribution, rather than work to negate it.