The Helping Conversation

If you don't want to study counseling formally but do want to understand the basics thoroughly enough to be an effective everyday counselor, this is where you start. Step by step, we show you how to become a skilled helper in all the roles you play in life, personal and professional. The book draws on the work of Professor Gerard Egan, whose approach has been followed by trained counselors and therapists around the world for well over 40 years. We've distilled these time-tested principles and practices to their essence but without compromising on their authenticity. Simplified, yes, but never simplistic. The book introduces a fresh and easy-to-follow way of looking at the helping process, breaking it down into a series of nine conversations that each represent a critical step on a logical journey from problem to some life-enhancing outcome. This flexible, all-purpose approach is independent of any psychological theory and makes sense to everyone, regardless of background. In short, it feels natural, and with practice becomes second nature, providing you with a framework for helping yourself as well as others deal with the challenges of living. We describe the seven essential communication skills you need to have at your command when helping people to make beneficial decisions about their problems, issues and opportunities. Throughout, key concepts are supported with examples and structured exercises.

Tools For Hard Conversations will help professionals who routinely have hard conversations in the course of their work. It is a guide for how to have these types of conversations, while avoiding the compassion-fatigue and burnout that often comes with these roles. It goes into depth about the philosophies, approaches and practical tools that enable workers to help people more effectively without sacrificing their own well-being. Often helping professionals, unduly influenced by the medical-model approach to mental health, which sees them as the expert who needs to fix their clients’ problems, are just looking for tangible tools to guide their practice and to help people find their own solutions. The co-authors have developed and road tested a conversational map that can assist workers to enable change with the people they work with, positioning each client as the expert of their own life. With the help of extensive case studies, Tools For Hard Conversations enables workers and clients to walk away stronger from each therapeutic conversation.

Using bright colours and fun illustrations, this book will show children with Autism Spectrum Disorder aged 7 and above how to identify common interests in conversation, and how to go on to talk about them successfully. The photocopiable worksheets and activities encourage children to engage with this visual model and reinforce the method.

A former Senior Partner and Global Managing Director at the legendary design firm IDEO shows how to design conversations and meetings that are creative and impactful. Conversations are one of the most fundamental means of communicating we have as humans. At their best, conversations are unconstrained, authentic and open—two or more people sharing thoughts and ideas in a way that bridges our individual experiences, achieves a common goal. At their worst, they foster misunderstanding, frustration and obscure our real intentions. How often do you walk away from a conversation feeling really heard? That it moved the people in it forward in some important way? You’re not alone. In his practice as a designer, Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to a way to design the art of conversation itself with intention and purpose, but still artful and playful. Making Conversation codifies what he learned and outlines the seven elements essential to successful exchanges: Commitment, Creative Listening, Clarity, Context, Constraints, Change, and Create. Taken together, these seven elements form a set of resources anyone can use to be more deliberate and purposeful in making conversations work.

This accessible guide to Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), an effective therapeutic approach which focuses on strengths and achievements, provides a practical introduction to what SFBT is and how to use it with clients. Barry Winbolt leads the reader through the principles, techniques and steps involved in the approach, including forming a productive working relationship with the client, using questions creatively, the effective use of language, and working collaboratively with the client in finding solutions. Case studies are included to demonstrate the ideas and techniques presented. This book will be invaluable to all those in the helping professions who are either already familiar with SFBT and want to improve their knowledge, or are looking for new and effective ways to communicate with and help the people they work with.

The best 'how-to' for encouraging consensus in firms and organizations. Communication within many organizations has been reduced to email, electronic file transfer, and hasty sound bytes at hurried meetings. More and more, people appear to have forgotten the value of wisdom gained by ordinary conversations. The Art of Focused Conversation convincingly restores this most human of attributes to prime place within businesses and organizations, and demonstrates what can be accomplished through the medium of focused conversation. Developed, tested, and extensively used by professionals in the field of organizational development, The Art of Focused Conversation is an invaluable resource for all those working to improve communications in firms and organizations.

Internationally recognised for its successful problem-management approach to effective helping, this book offers a step-by-step guide to the counselling process.

This inventive colour picture book uses the metaphor of a train to teach basic conventions of conversation to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Engines are like greetings; they get the train going. Freight wagons are like different speakers' turns; it is good to have at least a few when you are in conversation. A set of points guiding a train from one track to another is like a tactful change in the topic of conversation. When a conversation veers off-topic it is like a derailed train. As well as attractive colour photographs of trains, the book contains engaging photocopiable worksheets and colouring pages to help promote skill generalisation. This highly visual approach to conversation is ideally suited to children with ASDs aged approximately 5-13.