30 tweets from “Helping. How to offer, give, and receive help” (by Edgar H. Schein)

1. Helping is at the heart of all social life (…) If we can be more effective as helpers, it will improve life for all of us (p. 157)
2. Help is an important but complicated human process (p. 4)
3. Learning when and how to show respect is one of the most important areas of social learning (p. 23)
4. If we understand the dynamics of building any relationship, we can build a more effective helping relationship (p. 10)
5. Sometimes we are overhelped (p. 147)
6. Never assume that you know what specific form of help is needed without checking first (p. 148)
7. It is psychologically hard to say with humility: ‘I don’t know if I can help or not’ or ‘I cannot really help you’ (p. 34)
8. Effective help occurs when both giver and receiver are ready (p. 147)
9. The trap for the helper is to move too rapidly to solutions (p. 37)
10. Giving advice too soon puts the client down (p. 40)
11. The need to feel in control is especially strong in those cultures in which growing up means becoming independent (p. 32)
12. To build a successful helping relationship requires interventions on the part of the helper that build up the client’s status (p. 47)
13. The helper’s dilemma is to find the right mix of objectivity and involvement (p. 44)
14. Only the client knows what will work for him in the culture in which he lives (p. 62)
15. It is absolutely essential in organizational consulting to keep the client involved in planning next steps (p. 155)
16. What is crucial [in the helping relationship] is the communication process that will enable both –the helper and the client- to figure out what is actually needed (p. 66)
17. If a client insists on getting a recommendation from you, always give him at least two alternatives so that he still has to make choice (p. 156)
18. Effective helping starts with pure inquire (p. 153)
19. Especially in deciding when to switch from the pure inquiry into the diagnostic or confrontational mode, time is crucial (p. 80)
20. One of the key roles of leadership is to create the conditions for teamwork (p. 128)
21. The essence of teamwork is the development and maintenance of reciprocal helping relationship among all the members (p. 107)
22. Feedback is generally not helpful if it is not asked for (p. 118)
23. Feedback not only needs to be solicited, but it needs to be specific and concrete (p. 118)
24. Feedback works best if it is descriptive rather than evaluative (p. 121)
25. By making a judgment on what you should have done, the helper is taking on the expert or doctor role (p. 121)
26. By making a descriptive observation, the helper stays in the inquiring process consultant role, which allows elaboration and explanation on the client’s part (p. 121)
27. [In order] to create a learning situation that will facilitate feedback, humble leadership is required (p. 127)
28. [A crucial point is] deciding what can be fixed at the level of the department and what needs to be passed up to the CEO (p. 137)
29. Leadership is both a process of setting goals and helping others (subordinates) to achieve those goals (p. 143)
30. Every client or situation produces new dilemmas for which I am not prepared (p. 156)

Edgar H. Schein, “Helping. How to offer, give, and receive help”, Berret-Koehler, San Francisco 2009, 167 pp.