Developing a Helping Relationship outlines key ingredients and skills for developing effective helping relationships as a career development professional. The key ingredients include acceptance, respect, understanding, empathy, trust, and warmth. Core helping skills include active listening, reflecting, questioning, encouraging, attending behaviors like SOLER, and using silence purposefully. The document also covers intake interviews, goal setting, action planning, services provided, and the importance of self-care for professionals.

1. Developing a Helping
Relationship
William Tan

3. Key Ingredients of a Helping Relationship

Acceptance - act of relating to another person
without judging him or her

Respect - an attitude of giving dignity to each
individual, by being consistently pleasant, open and
nonjudgemental

Understanding - by listening carefully and
thoughtfully relating to client’s experience

Empathy - by puting ourselves in client’s shoes and
try to experience their lives as they experience them

Trust - make clients feel safe, and let them
understand and believe that we will not reveal to
others what they have told us (confidentiality) and
connect with them beyond the superficial level of
everyday conversation

Warmth & Genuineness - involves communicating
genuineness through eye contact and tone of voice

4. Define Helping Skills
1. Attending (SOLER)
Involves a sustained, committed effort to hear
what another persons is saying, communicated
largely by how we orient ourselves physically
toward the client

Face the client Squarely to convey interest in others
and signify respect for them

Adopt an Open posture as a sign that you are
receptive to what another person has to say

Lean toward the client to convey that you are fully
engaged in hearing what they have to say

Maintain good Eye contact to concentrate better,
and to show our interest

Try to be relatively Relaxed so that the client will find it
easier to relax

5. Define Helping Skills
2. Listening involves paying attention to

Content of the message - the
meaning of what is being said

The feeling that is conveyed along
with this content
Clients may consciously or unconsciously
communicate their feelings through body
language, facial expressions, and tone of
voice.
"seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another."
-- Alfred Adler

6. Define Helping Skills
3. Reflecting - shows that we are listening not
only to the content of the message, but also
the feeling in their messages
We reflect content by restating or summarizing
the main point of what the client has said. It is
more than just parroting what Clients say word
for word; it echoes the essence of their words
and includes our understanding of what they
may be feeling.
“ It sounds very challenging for you…”
“ Please tell me if I understand you correctly …”

7. Define Helping Skills
4. Encouraging - to let clients know
that we are listening and
encouraging them to continue
talking

“umm hmm”

Nod our heads

Ask questions:
“what do you mean?”, ” tell me more
about it”, “can you tell an example?”

8. Define Helping Skills
5. Questioning - Use both open- and closedended questions as tools in gathering
information from clients and building
relationships with them.

Closed-ended questions are those that are answered
“yes” or “no” or with another simple response, usually
ask for specific facts or opinions. Do you, would you
prefer?

Open-ended questions invite a longer response than
closed-ended questions, and often start with what,
how, or why
“how have you used computers in your work up
to this point?” “what do you think are the best
places in town for coffee?”

9. Advantages / Disadvantages
of Open-ended Questions
Advantages

Invite clients to explore their thoughts and feelings

Give clients more control of their conversation with you

Convey your interest and respect to clients by inviting
them to tell you about their experience in their own
words and in their own way

Provide information you may not have known to seek
Disadvantage

Require more time

Allow clients to wander away from a topic and lose
focus or avoid topics that are unpleasant but necessary
to discuss

Lead to a series of “I don’t know” answers

10. Define Helping Skills
6. Silence

There are times the best thing you can say is nothing
at all

An intentional tool that can move work forward

Can be used as a way to emphasize the importance
of a topic or to signal to the need for the client to be
more active or to take a greater responsibility in the
work at hand

Use silence to encourage the client to think carefully
before responding
“Silence is so freaking loud”
“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So
you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.”
-- Sarah Dessen

11. The Purpose of the Intake Interview

Develop an understanding of the
client’s history and current situations

Identify and define a client’s career
goals

Recognize barriers to and resources
for goal attainment

Match the client’s needs with
appropriate services offered by your
organization and assess whether any
referral to other agencies is necessary

12. Information to be Gathered
During Intake Interview
Purpose
To understand history + current situation + goals + barrirers + needs for services you
offer (or elsewhere)

Basic client information: age, gender, no. and ages of children, ethnicity, culture..

Work experience and job-related skills

Likes and dislikes in each job

Education/training background

Personal or professional accomplishments

Specific strengths: aptitudes, sources of support

Specific challenges: learning or other disabilities, financial or other barriers, physical or mental
health issues

Client interests, career “ideas” and career goals

13. Identify a Client’s Needs, Strengths,
and Barriers

Motivation

Education and Transferable Skills

Support System

Timing

Finances

Transportation

Child-Care & Elder Care
Concerns

Mental and Physical Health Issues

14. How Can You Help Clients Set Goals
People are more likely to meet goals that are

Conceivable - can be expressed in words

Believable - something that clients
believe they can attain

Achievable - can be attained through
the client’s time, energy and effort

Measurable - can be worked toward in
increments of time and/or
accomplishments

Desirable - something that the client
wants

15. Action Planning
An action plan should consist of the
following:

A well-defined long-term goal

Alternative goals

Specific resources needed to
accomplish the goals (tuition,
transportation, childcare, etc.)

Short-term goals

A realistic timeline

Strategies to combat anticipated
barriers to goal attainment

16. CDPs Provide Following Services
 Develop a written action plan with each client
 Administer tests and inventories, with the help of a supervisor
 Help clients find, understand, and know how to use labor market,
job, and training information
 Help clients know how to find job openings, develop effective
resumes, and participate successfully in interviews
 Help clients find and keep jobs
 Provide instructions to clients on topics related to career planning
 Identify agencies to which clients can be referred for further
assistance with related concerns

17. CDPs Provide Following Services
 Maintain secure, accurate, and confidential records about clients
 Coordinate and collaborate with others in order to provide the
best set of services for each client
 Assist supervisors in the development, delivery, and promotion of
services offered by the agency
 Seek consultation from professional counselors for help with
individual cases or for the purpose of professional growth

18. Best Practices In Terminating Work
Termination is the process during which you help
clients

Review the process they have made

Acknowledge their successes

Clarify their plans in the future

Discuss the kind of follow-up that seems appropriate

Make plans for futual problem solving if barriers arise
Three Steps Termination Model

Looking back

Looking forward

Saying goodbye

19. The Importance of Self-Care

Cultivate a large and diverse network of friends
who are positive and upbeat

Make an effort to eat healthfully whenever possible

Invest in your health by constantly getting the rest
that you need

Keep your body strong and stay alert by getting the
level of exercise that is recommended for your age
and level of wellness

Surround yourself with uplifting input, from your
favourite music to pictures of family and friends in
your workspace

Laugh whenever and wherever you can