2. Objective
This chapter examines different approaches
to helping and facilitating. It also presents
the main stages of one approach to helping
and facilitation that has been found to be
effective in a wide range of different
circumstances and identifies some of the
most important helping skills.
3. Number One
The Helping Style Profile has been
designed to help you think about your
typical approach to helping and facilitating.
It will enable you to audit your typical
approach and provide a point of reference
when thinking about how you can improve
the effectiveness of your helping
interventions.
Helping styles
4. Different approaches to helping
Theorising
Supporting
Information
gathering
Advising
Challenging
5. The five approaches to helping
presented in the Helping Style Profile
represent some of the ways in which we
might attempt to help others.
Blake and Mouton (1986) describe the essence
of helping as cycle breaking endeavour. They
argue that behaviour tends to be cyclical in
character; that is, sequences of behaviour are
repeated within specific time periods or within
particular contexts or settings.
Different
approaches to
helping
6. The theorising approach involves us in
identifying theories and conceptual
models that are pertinent to the clients’
problem situation, presenting these to
clients and helping them to learn to use
them to facilitate a better understanding
of their situation in an analytical cause-
and-effect fashion.
Theorising
Theorising
7. Advising
The advising approach involves us in telling clients what they should do to rectify problems in a given situation. The
advice we offer is often based upon our own direct or indirect experience. It can involve either recommending
action that we believe will work or a warning to avoid behaving in ways that we
believe will fail to deliver desired outcomes. One danger with this approach is that clients become dependent on
others.
8. Supporting
The supporting style of helping
involves us in working with clients to
help them express any feelings and
emotions that impede clear and
objective thinking about a problem.
The helper listens empathetically,
withholding any judgement, and
helps clients develop for themselves
a more objective view of the situation.
9. This is an approach which involves
us in confronting the foundations of
the client’s thinking in an attempt to
identify beliefs and values that may
be distorting the way situations are
viewed. An assumption underlying
this approach is that effective action
can be undermined by the clients’
inability or unwillingness to face up to
reality.
Challenging
Challenging/confronting interventions are designed to call attention to
contradictions in action and attitude or to challenge precedents or practices
that seem inappropriate. The aim of this approach is to identify alternative
values and assumptions that may lead to the development of more
effective solutions to problems.
10. I n f o r m a t i o n
g a t h e r i n g
malfunctioning. The helpers’
objectives are to assist clients in
arriving at a better level of
awareness of the underlying
causes of a problem and to help
them identify what action is
required to resolve it.
This approach to helping involves us
assisting the client in collecting data
that can be used to evaluate and
reinterpret the problem situation.
11. Stages in the helping process
SECOND
Stage 2: Goal setting:
developing a more
desirable scenario
THIRD
Stage 3: Helping clients
act
Egan (1998)
He argues that it will help us understand the
nature of our relationship with the client and
provide us with a sense of direction.
FIRST
Stage 1: Identifying and
clarifying problem
situations and unused
opportunities
12. Helping skills
The focus of attention, so far, has been on
helping style and the stages of the helping
relationship.
Helping skills are not a special set of skills
reserved exclusively for the helping
relationship. Helping involves the
appropriate use of a wide range of
‘everyday and commonly used’
interpersonal skills. Hayes (1996) identifies
some of the most important as:
13. Helping skills
Probing for information
Giving feedback
Challenging assumptions.
Self-awareness
Establishing rapport and
building relationships
Empathy
Listening to facts and
feelings
Identifying themes and
seeing the bigger picture
14. Egan (1998) offers six suggestions for the use of probes:
Remember that probing is a
communication skill that is only
effective to the degree that it helps
the client.
Use whatever mixture of empathy and
probing is needed to help clients clarify
problems, identify blind spots, develop new
scenarios, search for action strategies,
formulate plans and review outcomes of
action.
Keep in mind the purpose of probing, which is to
help clients tell their stories, to help them focus on
relevant and important issues and to help them
identify experiences, behaviours and feelings that
give a fuller picture of the problem.
Use a mix of directive and non-
directive probes.
If a probe helps a client reveal
relevant information, follow it
up with an empathetic response
rather than another probe.
Avoid question-and-answer
sessions
Text Here
15. Summary
The first stage of the model is concerned with identifying and
clarifying problems and unused opportunities, the second
with goal setting and the third with action planning.
Four skills that are particularly relevant in the context of helping
relationships. These are empathy, probing, feedback and
challenging. The importance of two core values, respect and
genuineness, have also been discussed in the context of their
impact on the helping relationship.
Different approaches
to helping have been
reviewed and some of
the factors
that can affect the
efficacy of different
helping styles have
been considered.
A three-stage model
of helping has been
discussed.
