Styles of Support
Understanding Helping Attitudes
Helping Attitudes refer to the various roles or approaches a person can adopt when assisting someone in solving a problem. These roles range from simply providing a listening presence to diagnosing and prescribing solutions. Each role requires a different level of involvement and responsibility, and helpers often move between these roles as the situation evolves.
Helping relationships consist of various dynamics where the helper must decide how much involvement and guidance is appropriate. There are two parties involved in a helping relationship: the helper and the person seeking help. The helper can adopt different attitudes (or roles) to provide assistance, depending on the situation and the needs of the person being helped (also known as ’the client’ ). The flexibility to shift between different Helping Attitudes ensures that the help provided is relevant and adaptive to the client’s needs.
Effective helping relationships require humility and an understanding of power dynamics. The person offering help should recognize that the person being helped might feel vulnerable or defensive, which can affect how the help is received. It is important to build trust and create a collaborative atmosphere where both parties are aligned in their goals.
The helper must be aware of their own biases, assumptions, and limitations, as these can influence the quality of the help provided. Often, the helper’s role is to empower the person seeking help, rather than imposing their own solutions or ideas. This requires a delicate balance between offering support and guidance while allowing the person being helped to maintain autonomy and ownership over the problem-solving process.
The four primary attitudes a helper can adopt are:
The helper can use different types of inquiry to guide the conversation and help the person seeking assistance explore their problem:
One of the core ideas behind effective helping relationships is the helper’s ability to switch between roles based on the dynamics of the situation. The helper must continuously assess whether their involvement is appropriate and make adjustments as necessary. A critical part of this flexibility is regularly reverting to the Process Consultant role. This role allows the helper to clarify the situation, check for misunderstandings, or verify their involvement when the context is unclear or progress has stalled.
The Process Consultant stance is crucial because it serves as the fallback role in cases of uncertainty or lack of progress. Whether the helper has been acting as the Doctor, Crafter, or Rubber Duck, they may revert to the Process Consultant role to ensure they are still aligned with the needs of the person they are helping. This re-engagement helps realign the situation, ensuring that any future assistance provided is relevant and helpful.
The cyclical nature of helping relationships requires the helper to continually adjust their approach. Moving between roles – whether from Doctor to Crafter, or from Rubber Duck to Process Consultant – allows the helper to respond to changing dynamics and the evolving understanding of the problem. The flexibility to shift between these attitudes ensures that the helper remains engaged in a way that is most useful for the person being assisted.
The Rubber Duck role is the least intrusive helping attitude. The helper offers minimal guidance, simply providing a presence and a listening ear. This role is effective for individuals who benefit from articulating their problems out loud. By allowing the individual to speak freely, they often arrive at solutions on their own, without active involvement from the helper.
This role is particularly useful when the person seeking help already has the knowledge and skills they need to solve their problem but feels stuck or overwhelmed. By having a “safe” and non-judgmental listener, they can process their emotions, vent frustrations, or explore ideas without interference or guidance. The helper serves as a passive, non-judgmental presence, just being there for the person without imposing expertise, advice, or facilitation.
The Process Consultant serves as a guide, asking questions to clarify the problem and the individual’s thought process. This role requires more involvement than the Rubber Duck but maintains a focus on helping the individual arrive at their own conclusions. It’s a reflective stance that involves listening, questioning, and exploring options without directly solving the problem.
In the Crafter role, the helper takes on an active role in executing a solution, but the control over what to do is still with the person being helped. The Crafter is hands-on, following instructions or implementing agreed-upon actions. The helper’s involvement is high in terms of effort, but the control over decision-making remains low.
The Doctor role represents the highest level of control and involvement. The helper diagnoses the problem, prescribes a solution, and often takes responsibility for its implementation. This role is suitable when the individual lacks the expertise to understand or solve the problem themselves. The helper’s knowledge and authority are central to solving the issue.
There a generally four distinct types of inquiry that can be used in helping relationships, each with a different purpose and level of influence on the conversation. These types of inquiry allow the helper to guide the process while adjusting their level of involvement based on the client’s needs and the situation. The four types are:
This type of inquiry is characterized by non-directive, open-ended questions. The helper remains neutral and allows the client to share their thoughts, experiences, and perspectives without any influence or guidance from the helper. Pure inquiry is aimed at understanding the client’s viewpoint and encouraging them to express themselves freely.
Purpose: To explore the client’s situation and allow them to reflect and think deeply without interruption or redirection.
Examples: “Can you tell me more about what happened?”, “How do you feel about the current situation?”
In diagnostic inquiry, the helper begins to steer the conversation by focusing on specific areas of the client’s experience or problem. While still listening actively, the helper asks more targeted questions to gather specific information or explore certain aspects in more depth. This helps the helper better understand the underlying dynamics or causes of the problem.
Purpose: To gather more detailed information and focus on areas that seem relevant to the issue at hand.
Examples: “What were the key challenges in that situation?”, “How did the team respond to the feedback you gave?”
Confrontational inquiry goes a step further by challenging the client’s assumptions, beliefs, or actions. The helper poses questions that introduce new perspectives or raise contradictions in the client’s story, encouraging them to re-evaluate their thinking. This form of inquiry is more directive and can lead to moments of insight or realization for the client.
Purpose: To encourage the client to reflect on discrepancies or challenges in their thinking, helping them to see the issue from a different angle.
Examples: “You mentioned that communication was clear, but you also said the team was confused—how do you reconcile that?”, “Do you think your approach might be contributing to the resistance you’re facing?”
Process-oriented inquiry focuses on the here-and-now, examining the dynamics of the interaction between the helper and the client. The helper draws attention to the immediate processes at play, such as emotions, behaviors, or reactions, both in the conversation and in the client’s situation. This type of inquiry is often used to explore relational dynamics and can be particularly useful in group settings or when addressing interpersonal issues.
Purpose: To bring awareness to the processes and dynamics at play, encouraging reflection on the interaction or the relationships involved.
Examples: “I notice you seem hesitant to talk about this issue—can we explore why that might be?”, “You looked uncomfortable when discussing your team’s feedback. What was going through your mind?”
The concept of Helping Attitudes originates from the work of Edgar Schein, who identified three key roles that helpers typically adopt: Process Consultant, Doctor, and Crafter (or “Pair of Hands”). Schein emphasized that helping relationships are dynamic and require the helper to be adaptable. The Rubber Duck role expands on Schein’s original framework by recognizing the value of passive listening as an important helping stance.
Helping Attitudes are highly relevant in fields such as coaching, consulting, therapy, and even everyday problem-solving. The key to applying these roles effectively is understanding when each is appropriate and being able to switch between them as needed. For instance, in a business setting, a manager might first adopt the Process Consultant role to clarify a team member’s challenge, then transition to the Crafter role to help implement a solution. If the problem becomes more complex, the manager might step into the Doctor role to diagnose and prescribe a solution.
In practice, helpers frequently start by asking questions (as a Process Consultant) to understand the issue at hand. Depending on the responses, they may shift to a more directive role (Doctor) or simply offer emotional support (Rubber Duck). The helper’s ability to move fluidly between these roles ensures that the assistance provided is effective and appropriately tailored to the evolving needs of the person seeking help.
Helping Attitudes can be compared to models in coaching and therapy, where different levels of intervention are used based on the client’s needs. For example:
Schein’s Original Model: Schein identified three main roles in helping relationships: Process Consultant, Doctor, and Crafter (or “Pair of Hands”). His framework emphasized that the helper must be flexible in switching between these roles depending on the situation. Schein’s Process Consultant focuses on facilitating the client’s own problem-solving process, which is the most neutral role, similar to a coach. The Doctor role involves diagnosing and prescribing solutions, akin to offering direct advice, while the Crafter role involves executing predefined solutions as directed by the client. The Rubber Duck role expands on Schein’s original framework, adding a more passive stance of simply listening and validating the client, allowing them to work through their own thoughts with minimal input from the helper.
Coaching: In coaching, the Process Consultant role mirrors the coach’s role in asking open-ended questions to guide the coachee toward their own solutions. The Doctor role in helping resembles a more directive coaching approach where advice and solutions are provided. Coaching also emphasizes the importance of knowing when to step back and allow the coachee to come to their own conclusions, which aligns with the Rubber Duck role.
Therapy: In therapy, the Rubber Duck role aligns with non-directive approaches like person-centered therapy, where the therapist offers empathy and listening without solving the problem. On the other hand, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) mirrors the Doctor role, where the therapist actively diagnoses and prescribes interventions. Therapists, like helpers, must shift between roles, from simply listening, to guiding, to providing expert advice or solutions, depending on the situation and the client’s needs.
A junior developer is struggling with a coding problem and asks their mentor for help. The mentor begins by adopting the Rubber Duck role, encouraging the developer to talk through the problem while simply listening and validating their thought process. As the developer articulates the issue, the mentor shifts into the Process Consultant role, asking open-ended questions to clarify specific aspects of the problem and guide the developer toward potential solutions.
When it becomes clear that the developer has hit a roadblock, the mentor moves into the Crafter role, offering hands-on assistance by walking through the code and making minor adjustments based on the developer’s instructions. However, upon discovering a more complex underlying issue, the mentor transitions to the Doctor role, diagnosing the root cause and prescribing a solution by demonstrating a new approach or coding technique.
After resolving the issue, the mentor reverts to the Process Consultant stance, asking reflective questions to ensure the developer understands the solution and can apply it in the future. This cycle of shifting between roles helps the developer learn effectively, while still allowing them to maintain ownership of their progress.
A colleague is feeling overwhelmed by their workload and turns to a peer for support. The helper begins by adopting the Rubber Duck role, simply listening as the colleague vents their frustrations and speaks openly about the pressure they are facing. The helper offers minimal input, allowing the colleague to express their feelings and frustrations freely. Through this empathetic, non-intrusive presence, the colleague feels heard and starts to process their thoughts aloud.
As the conversation progresses and the colleague begins to regain clarity, the helper moves into the Process Consultant role, asking gentle, open-ended questions to encourage further reflection. By prompting the colleague to explore potential solutions or next steps, the helper guides the colleague toward self-discovery without offering direct advice.
Ultimately, the helper’s encouragement and empathy alone help the colleague feel more in control, and they begin to identify their own ways to tackle the workload. By allowing the colleague space to speak, and then guiding them with subtle inquiry, the helper ensures that the colleague retains ownership of their next steps, while feeling supported and validated.
A colleague approaches their manager feeling overwhelmed by a challenging project. Without fully listening to the colleague’s concerns, the manager immediately adopts the Doctor role, diagnosing the problem based on their own assumptions. They prescribe a detailed solution, outlining specific steps for the colleague to follow. However, the colleague is frustrated because the manager’s solution doesn’t consider the unique nuances of their situation and overlooks key details that they hadn’t yet explained.
Because the manager skipped the Rubber Duck or Process Consultant roles, the colleague feels unheard and unsupported. The premature advice not only fails to address the real issues but also leaves the colleague disengaged and less likely to seek help in the future, as the prescribed solution doesn’t fit their actual context.