Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (The Humble Leadership Series Book 1)

by Edgar H. Schein

We must begin with the proposition that all human relationships are about status positioning and what sociologists call “situational proprieties.” It is human to want to be granted the status and position that we feel we deserve, no matter how high or low it might be, and we want to do what is situationally appropriate. We are either trying to get ahead or stay even, and we measure all interactions by how much we have lost or gained. A successful interaction, one that leaves us with a feeling of accomplishment, results when we have acted appropriately in terms of our goals. Ideally those goals involve some gain for everyone in the situation.

All human relationships are about status positioning and situational proprieties

the key to understanding a relationship such as helping is to look at it from a cultural and sociological view.

The key to understanding helping is not temperament or personality but rather culture and sociology

There are few cultural universals, but anthropologists agree that all societies are stratified and that all social behavior is reciprocal.

All societies are stratified and all social behaviour is reciprocal

We do not typically think of an effective team as being a group of people who really know how to help each other in the performance of a task, yet that is precisely what good teamwork is—successful reciprocal help.

Good teamwork is successful reciprocal help

The first and most important of these is that all communication between two parties is a reciprocal process that must be, or at least must seem to be, fair and equitable. We must all learn the rules of social economics if we are to survive and be comfortable in the social world.

The second fundamental cultural principle is that all relationships in human cultures are to a large degree based on scripted roles that we learn to play early in life and which become so automatic that we are often not even conscious of them.

We do not want to lose face; or to put it more generally, our self-esteem is based on continual acknowledgment through reciprocation that what we have claimed for ourselves has been accepted and confirmed.

Self-esteem is generally based on continual acknowledgement through reciprocation

Trusting another person means, in this context, that no matter what we choose to reveal about our thoughts, feelings, or intentions, the other person will not belittle us, make us look bad, or take advantage of what we have said in confidence.

Trusting another person means that 1) whatever value I claim for myself in interactions with that person will be understood and accepted, and 2) the other person will not take advantage of me or use my revealed information to my disadvantage.

Trusting someone means 1) My claims are understood and accepted 2) They won't take advantage

One may wonder whether helping—true deliberate helping—is optimally an adult-to-adult activity in that this relationship is equilibrated a priori, even though formal rank or status differences between adults may be present. When we help in either the parent or child role, we are already taking a superior or inferior position, which might distort the process in unknown ways.

True deliberate helping is an adult-to-adult activity

In general, if the helper acts parental, the client may feel patronized; if the helper takes on the role of the child, the client is confused and wonders if the roles need to be reversed.

Helping situations are intrinsically unbalanced and role-ambiguous. Emotionally and socially, when you ask for help you are putting yourself “one down.” It is a temporary loss of status and self-esteem not to know what to do next or to be unable to do it. It is a loss of independence to have someone else advise you, heal you, minister to you, help you up, support you, even serve you.

"Emotionally and socially, when you ask for help you are putting yourself 'one down'"

Being thrust into the role of helper is immediately a gain in status and power—literally if I help someone up who has fallen, or symbolically if I am a counselor, consultant, or coach who is being asked to provide my wisdom and expertise to solve a problem. In terms of our face-work analysis, the person who asks for help is defining the situation as one in which power and value has been bestowed on the potential helper, whether or not that person can actually help. It is this bestowing of power that creates an imbalance in the relationship.

The person who asks for help bestows power on the potential helper

at the beginning, every helping relationship is in a state of imbalance. The client is one down and therefore vulnerable; the helper is one up and therefore powerful. Much of what goes wrong in the helping process is the failure to acknowledge this initial imbalance and deal with it.

Much of what goes wrong in the helping process is the failure to acknowledge power imbalance

The only thing that is clear when help is asked for or offered is that initially the client is one down and the helper is one up and, though they may not consciously feel it, both parties are anxious about how the situation will work out. If they are to form a successful helping relationship, they must deal with that imbalance by accessing their areas of ignorance and gradually removing them

When help is asked for or offered, initially the client is one down and the helper is one up

If the helper does all the diagnosing while the client waits passively for a prescription, it is predictable that a communication gulf will arise that will make the diagnosis and prescription seem irrelevant, unpalatable, or unable to be implemented.

If the helper diagnoses while the client just waits passively, this creates a communication gulf

Any helping situation must begin with the helper adopting the process consultant role in order to do the following: 1. Remove the ignorance inherent in the situation 2. Lessen the initial status differential 3. Identify what further role may be most suitable to the problem identified

what is crucial is not the content of the client’s problem or the helper’s expertise, but the communication process that will enable both to figure out what is actually needed.

What is crucial is not the problem content or the helper's expertise but the communication process

I have found it very helpful to differentiate four fundamentally different kinds of inquiry: • pure inquiry • diagnostic inquiry • confrontational inquiry • process-oriented inquiry

the underlying process that is triggered by a request for help is the same whether the stakes are a cup of tea, mental health, or organizational effectiveness. Anyone who is ever asked for help must understand the social dynamics put into play by the request itself. How the would-be helper then intervenes has immediate consequences for the relationship.

The underlying helping process is the same whether the stakes are a cup of tea or org effectiveness

if the client is in a chronic one down position, the helper must take the initiative of offering help to minimize the client’s further loss of self-esteem by having to constantly ask for things.

If the client is chronically one down, initiate the offer of help to minimise loss of self-esteem

one can define an effective team as one in which each member helps the others by performing his or her role appropriately so that equity is felt by all and mutual trust remains high even when performance pressures are great. In other words, the essence of teamwork is the development and maintenance of reciprocal helping relationships among all the members.

teams almost always work better when the higher status person in the group exhibits some humility by active listening; this acknowledges that the others are crucial to good outcomes and creates psychological space for them to develop identities and roles in the group that feel equitable and fair.

1. Who am I to be? What is my role in this group? 2. How much control/influence will I have in this group? 3. Will my goals/needs be met in this group? 4. What will be the level of intimacy in this group?

it is status-enhancing to be treated as an indispensable individual contributor rather than a replaceable resource, even if you end up having less status than some other members.

Effective teams do not have to be love-ins, but members must know each other well enough as fellow team members to be able to trust them to play their roles in the accomplishment of the group’s task.

Groups that fail usually attempt to do their jobs before role relations have been worked out to some degree.

an effective team can be characterized as having members who know their roles and who feel comfortable in those roles because they feel that what they contribute, in the way of performance, and what they get back, in the way of formal and informal rewards, is equitable. In that sense they are helping each other and the team as a whole.

In an effective team, members know what they contribute and what they get back

What destroys a team is either that the roles are unclear from the beginning or members have deviated from agreed-upon roles. Such deviation can either be the withholding of help, as when someone does not show up or does not do what is needed, or, alternatively, it can be too much help, as when one intrudes into another’s area with unwanted suggestions or actions.

What destroys teams are unclear roles (aka expectations) or deviations from shared agreements

Helpfulness is most critical in cases of simultaneous interdependence.

Feedback is generally not helpful if it is not asked for.

Feedback not only needs to be solicited, but it needs to be specific and concrete.

If feedback is to be helpful, it must occur in the context of a review of action, something the group has done together where specific behavior can be referred to and analyzed.

the potential for effective feedback would be even higher if in the after-action review the leader asked members to start with questions about their own performance in order to solicit feedback.

What if you started retrospectives with people soliciting feedback on specific situations?

feedback works best if it is descriptive rather than evaluative.

feedback works best if it is solicited rather than imposed, if it is concrete and specific, if it fits into a shared goal context, and if it is descriptive rather than evaluative.

Helping in relation to leadership has three aspects. As pointed out in the previous chapter, one of the key roles of leader-ship is to create the conditions for teamwork where individual members of a group or several groups are interdependent in the performance of organizational tasks. How do leaders create such conditions and how does helping come into play? Secondly, in relation to subordinates, does organizational leadership imply that sometimes subordinates must be helped in performing their tasks? Can and should leaders be helpers? And, thirdly, how does one help leaders?

Helping in leadership has 3 aspects: create conditions for teamwork, help subordinates, help leaders

once the motivation is there, based on the realization that change is really necessary, it becomes a learning process, which can appropriately be thought of as being helped to make the necessary changes.

one must recognize from the outset that the employee will feel one down in not being able to engage in the new behavior without some guidance and training. The helper must first equilibrate the relationship by inquiring what is inhibiting the new behavior, why the old behavior is being clung to, and what first steps the client could take.

The overarching principle is not to skip levels in the formal or status hierarchy, either upward or downward. If the contact client is the CEO, then the decision as to how to involve the next level down must be shared by the helper and the CEO. Once the helper has established a helping relationship with the head at that level, they jointly must decide how to involve the next level down. Any time a level is skipped, the potential is very high that the members of that level will feel out of the loop, will not understand what is going on, and will wittingly or unwittingly subvert the helping process.

In the end, the consultant must realize that the ultimate client is an organizational unit, or the entire organization. For everyone to benefit, the interventions at every level have to be thought through as to their potential help or harm for other levels.

A critical aspect of leadership is the ability to accept help and the ability to give help to others in the organization.

Leaders must also understand that they are part of the organization, and that any changes in the organization will inevitably involve changes in themselves.

the best way to improve the organization is to create an environment of mutual help and to demonstrate their own helping skills in their dealings with others in the organization.

Though it may seem counterintuitive to see one’s subordinates as clients who have to be helped to succeed in their job, in fact, this is the most appropriate way to lead an organization.

One way to define leadership, then, is to say that it is both a process of setting goals and helping others (subo...

PRINCIPLE 1: Effective Help Occurs When Both Giver and Receiver Are Ready

Check out your own emotions and intentions before offering, giving, or receiving help.

Get acquainted with your own desires to help and be helped.

Don’t be offended when your efforts to help are not well received.