Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help

I can highly recommend Helping if you are interested in ways to become a more helpful consultant, manager, person - one who is able to actually help people/organizations rather than just dispense advice/suggestions. I'm not doing a full review of the book here but there are a couple of points I found very interesting in the relation between the Helping approach and the Kanban Method, which I wanted to put out there.The key theme in the book is that in order to provide helpful help you need to be build the helping relationship - not jumping to the expert/doctor role of dispensing advise/diagnosing but first listening, understanding, working through what Schein calls Humble Inquiry which starts with Pure inquiry - understanding what is happening without trying to influence the client in any way. Only then moving to Diagnostic Inquiry which directs attention to other aspects in the story and Confrontational Inquiry which asks what-if questions thereby hinting at suggestions (which is close to the Doctor/Expert role).If we look at what we are trying to do with Kanban - it is quite similar. We start with understanding the system by visualizing it. Not trying to diagnose/probe too deeply before we understand - actually before the client/clients understand. Accessing our ignorance - we don't know HOW the system is working, we don't know how it SHOULD be working. Which is exactly what Schein is trying to do with process consulting - to build the understanding together, not be in a position to understand FOR the client but WITH the client. In Schein's perspective this not only minimizes the chance we will dispense generic advise based on our experience of similar events but will help to equilibarate the relationship between helper and helped - listening and respecting the situation helps the client/helped gain back "face" that he lost by asking for help. If we don't "bring the helped up" by doing this there is a chance he will "bring us down" by trying to be very critic and unaccepting of our suggestions by the way.So bottom line the Helping book was quite helpful.

Dr. Schein is one of the great names in organizational behavior. That said, why did he write a book on something as "obvious" as how to help people? It's because helping people is one of the trickiest things in the world to do right. You will agree with me if your attempts to help someone--or your failure to help--ever blew up in your face, or if you have tried to help people who really needed it and they turned a cold shoulder to you.Dr. Schein analyzes the ego shifts that accompany needing help, asking for help, offering help, providing help, and so on. He explains the tenderness of the ego as it navigates through all of these shifting states.He also introduced me to the notion of "social economics." For example: if I hold a door open for a stranger as we enter an office building I inwardly set an expectation of a thank you from the stranger. I think, "You owe me." It's dumb, but I see myself in that example. As the stakes get serious with co-workers, bosses, spouses, and friends it becomes increasingly important to be fluent with the social economics of the situation you are in.This book has increased my sensitivity to the dynamics that surround the art of helping. I am also much more alert to recognizing the "state" of my relationships and to accounting for the social economics that are in play. I don't want to be unaware of a debt that someone has assigned to me, and I don't want to chalk up obligations that exist only in my own imagination.This is a how-to book with wide applications, and I recommend it highly.

What should I say? I know what I will get when I pick up yet another book from Ed Schein. That is, a well-research, well-thought-over, easy-to-read book. "Helping" is not an exception. It is a relatively small book (150 pages) on just the subject of helping. We help people every day, but how well do we understand it and how can we improve it?The book consists of nine chapters. It starts with definitions and setting the context for further understanding helping. It then gradually changes towards actions and choices you have as a helper by using the frame that was created in the earlier chapters. The book ends with a summary in the form of principles and tips. These make the book very concrete.Roughly the first four chapters create the frame for the rest of the book. They define the meaning of helping, explore the language and assumptions around helping, give insights into the power differences in helping relationships, and explore different helper roles that we can take up. To me, these chapters set up the stage of the rest of the book where it applies these concepts to explore situations, which result in concrete advice for you as a helper.The next four chapters are more concrete where the author explores what you can do in a helping relationship and how you can improve your helping. This is done through the inquiry process (which is also the topic of several other books of Ed Schein). He shows different types of inquiry, how they might be perceived, what result they might lead to, and when you might use which one. This is immensely helpful for improving your own helping relationships.The book concludes with a principles and tips chapter. This chapter summarizes some of the key concepts covered in the book and also translates them into concrete tips.I do not think I have ever been disappointed by picking up an Ed Schein book. "Helping" was wonderful and insightful. Such a depth to a seemingly simple topic. I really enjoyed it and would especially recommend it for people in coaching (including Scrum Master) roles. The only reason for 4 (over 5) stars is that a lot of the content is also covered in Ed Schein's other work and some of that is more thorough than this little book. Excellent read!