Heron’s Six Categories of Intervention
Understanding How to Help People More Effectively
At work, in whatever role or industry, most people deal daily with others who need their help, support, advice or expertise. Precisely how they deliver that "help" determines its success and also has an impact on the relationship they build with the person they are helping.
John Heron's framework provides a model for analyzing how you deliver help. His model identifies six primary categories or styles of helping intervention.
Based on studies in counseling, his categories became widely used to study and train health and education professionals. However, more recently, business professionals – managers, supervisors, coaches, consultants, sales people – have used the model to learn and improve how they interact when helping their employees, team members, clients, and customers.
This article helps you understand Heron's model, so that you can use it to improve your business and management communication skills and so improve the outcome of the help you offer.
Understanding the Model
Heron's model has two basic categories or styles – "authoritative" and "facilitative." Those two categories further break down into a total of six categories to describe how people intervene when helping.
There are some technical words used to describe the categories. Don't be put off by them – they are necessary to describe this model and we define them fully below.
If a helping intervention is "authoritative," it means that the person "helping" (often a manager or supervisor) is giving information, challenging the other person, or suggesting what the other person should do.
If a helping intervention is "facilitative," it means that the person "helping" is drawing out ideas, solutions, self-confidence, and so on, from the other person, helping him or her to reach his or her own solutions or decisions.
- Prescriptive – You explicitly direct the person you are helping by giving advice and direction.
- Informative – You provide information to instruct and guide the other person.
- Confronting – You challenge the other person's behavior or attitude. Not to be confused with aggressive confrontation, "confronting" is positive and constructive. It helps the other person consider behavior and attitudes of which they would otherwise be unaware.
- Cathartic – You help the other person to express and overcome thoughts or emotions that they have not previously confronted.
- Catalytic – You help the other person reflect, discover and learn for him or herself. This helps him or her become more self-directed in making decisions, solving problems and so on.
- Supportive – You build up the confidence of the other person by focusing on their competences, qualities and achievements.
How to Use the Model
You can use the model to look at the way you communicate in different "help" settings at work. If you habitually one or two styles, the model will help you learn and use more of the styles, and so improve your impact and the outcome of the help you give. Use figure 1 below to analyze the styles you use in given work settings.
If you are helping someone to solve a specific problem or issue, use the model to plan your intervention so that you help your team member or client in the best possible way. Use figure 1 to select appropriate styles and plan what to say and ask the other person.
A great way to understand your helping styles is to ask your colleagues and team members directly for feedback.
The examples below show how, by changing or varying the style of help offered, you can achieve a better outcome.
Example 1: Production line supervisor Bob is naturally "prescriptive" with his supervisees. He has found that some team members are bringing more and more problems to him. He realizes that his natural communication style may be partly to blame.
Using Heron's categories as a framework, he concludes that a more "supportive" style may help the team members gain confidence and so solve more of the problems for themselves. He schedules a meeting and plans what he will say and questions he will ask to be more "supportive", using the example "what to say or ask" below.
Example 2: HR consultant John has a long-term business client who is the HR director of a large national organization. He meets with his client monthly and helps her as a "sounding board" for strategic planning and decision-making. John is usually "facilitative" and uses a "catalytic" style of helping his client.
However, he currently is concerned that his client, in one policy-related area, may be making uninformed decisions. He provides some information and tries to help his client understand the issue ("informative" help), in the hope she will change her plans. She fails to act on the new information. Frustrated, and with the Heron model in mind, John concludes that a "confronting" style is now appropriate to achieve a better outcome for his client, and help her avoid making a big mistake. He sets up another meeting with her, and prepares what to say and ask, to "confront" the issues.
Figure 1: Heron Model: What to Say and Ask
The following table helps you analyze or plan your communication skills for helping by indicating what you say and what you ask when using each one of the six categories of the Heron model.
Heron's Six Categories of Intervention can be used as a framework to help you understand and improve your business communication skills.
Whether you are helping a team member, employee, client or customer, the model can help you develop greater awareness of your own "helping" style and its impact, and can help you adapt the way you help to improve the outcome and your "helping" relationships.
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