Helping Relationships and Saving Face

In Process Consultation Revisited, Edgar Schein explores why so many of our attempts at being helpful end with the other person not feeling helped. At the root of this phenomenon is the high value our culture places on saving face and looking good. We all want to feel respected and look competent. Being helped, even when we ask for it, threatens this.

So, when someone responds to an invitation to be helped by telling the other person what they should do the other person often shut down or becoming defensive. We seldom feel helped by others advise, especially if it comes before they have explored what is really going on. Schein suggests trying to view those asking for help as an equal and jointly exploring what might be helpful. This “mediator mindset” does not assume that others really want our answers. Rather, if we just listen, inquire and let the other person lead us, they will slowly start to trust us. Only when both parties feel safe can we really be helpful, whether help means just listening, exploring their thinking, or suggesting possible solutions.

So while we often think that being helpful means being an expert at what others should do, really being helpful means paying close attention to others need to save face and basing our response on that.

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