IN THIS SUMMARY In Helping, Edgar H. Schein draws not only on his career expertise but from personal life experiences to establish a “general theory of helping” that holds true no matter what the social dynamics of the client/ helper relationship. Helping is a fundamental part of life: parents help their children, coaches their players, nurses their patients, managers their subordinates, yet despite its constant presence in daily life, the dynamics of giving and receiving help are poorly understood. When someone asks for help, they are temporarily lowering their own status and transferring status and power to the helper, creating an imbalanced relationship. Building a helping relationship means that the first client/helper interactions must be carefully managed by the helper toward building the client’s status up from their lower position and identifying which helping role to take vis-à-vis the client. http://www.bizsum.com/summaries/helping

2. HELPING How To Offer, Give, And Receive Help Understanding Effective Dynamics In One To One, Group and Organizational Relationships AUTHOR: Edgar H. Schein PUBLISHER: Berrett-Koehler Publications Inc. DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2009 167 pages

3. FEATURES OF THE BOOK Edgar H. Schein’s theory of help outlined in Helping is applicable to virtually everyone. However, the most detailed case studies outlined in the book are of particular interest to business consultants and those in leadership positions given Schein’s personal experience in these areas.

4. THE BIG IDEA Effective help occurs when the helping relationship is perceived to be equitable. Effective help occurs when the helper chooses the appropriate role. Effective help always begins with humble inquiry. Effective help occurs when the client owns the problem.

5. INTRODUCTION In Helping , Edgar H. Schein draws not only on his career expertise but from personal life experiences to establish a “general theory of helping” that holds true no matter what the social dynamics of the client/helper relationship. Helping is a fundamental part of life: parents help their children, coaches their players, nurses their patients, managers their subordinates, yet despite its constant presence in daily life, the dynamics of giving and receiving help are poorly understood.

6. THE IMBALANCE AND AMBIGUITY OF HELPING In the helping relationship, understanding these dynamics of maintaining face and status is crucial. Both the client and helper enter the relationship with a given amount of status and face. The evolution of the relationship will then depend on how much value each grants the other, and in each case that will depend upon the amount of trust established in the relationship. Yet whether the helping relationship is one where there is significant trust established, as between spouses, or whether it is initially between two strangers, as between a consultant and business client, it is inherently an unbalanced situation.

7. THREE KINDS OF HELPING ROLES These roles can be shifted in and out of as the relationship demands, but each of the three rests on different assumptions and will have different consequences for the relationship. Role 1: The Expert Resource Role — Provide Information or Service This role is usually the first that people think of when they think of helping. The helper is presumed to have some knowledge or skill that can be applied to the client’s problem. Organizational or management consulting often begins with the helper being recruited as an expert.

8. THREE KINDS OF HELPING ROLES Role 2: The Doctor Role — Diagnose and Prescribe This role is an extension of the first, whereby the helper not only provides information but also diagnoses the problem and offers a prescription. In this role, the helper/consultant is hired to discover the problem and then, like a physician, offer a program of “therapy.” This role gives the helper even more power ; they now “diagnose, prescribe, and administer the cure.” For many consultants, this is the essence of their job, and they do not feel it is complete until they have analyzed all the data, discovered the problems, and written very specific recommendations.

9. THREE KINDS OF HELPING ROLES Role 3: The Process Consultant Role Process consultation means that the helper’s focus is entirely on the communication process at the beginning of the relationship. The goal of the process consultant is to equilibrate the status of the client and helper (bring the client out of their lower status) and create an atmosphere that will remove both parties’ areas of ignorance. Behaviorally, this means that the helper engages in “humble inquiry” and avoids being seduced by their initial position of power.

11. THREE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF HELPING 2. Leadership and Management Consulting As alluded to in the description of a successful team, a leader must be the process consultant that creates the conditions for effective teamwork. This becomes extremely complex, however, when the “team” is made up of several groups that are interdependent in performing organizational duties rather than a single surgical team. A business leader must not only be clear about what the shared goals of the organization are, but willing to help employees achieve them.

12. THREE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF HELPING 3. Helping in Organizational Change Organizational change is particularly complex because it contains all the forms of help discussed—one-on-one, teams, and leadership. Some clients are being worked with directly while others are the ultimate clients most influenced by the change but least consulted. The leader and consultant must figure out how to alter people’s behaviors and attitudes when change is non-negotiable, whether it is imposed by an outside body or due to economic necessity. Schein argues that this is best done by “reframing the process” from a change process to a helping process.

13. THREE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF HELPING The recognition that employees lose status in not being able to carry out a new behavior makes it clearer to managers and leaders that they must first be process consultants even in areas of mandated change. Through humble inquiry, they can ask what is inhibiting compliance, why old methods are being held onto, and what first steps the employee/client could take to move towards the new methods.

14. THREE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF HELPING A consultant who truly wants to help a client through a period of major organizational change, therefore, must accept the ambiguous nature of the client’s identity. The “ultimate client” is actually the organization as a whole, and for intervention to be successful, each level of the organization must be thought of as a client that has potential to help or harm other levels.

15. BusinessSummaries.com is a business book Summaries service. Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States. For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com. ABOUT BUSINESSSUMMARIES