Annual Practitioner Conference: The Many Faces of Help

This conference will look at critical helping roles in consulting, coaching, and therapy practice and in the exercise of leadership by managers and executives. We hope to bring together a diverse group to examine best practices in:

• Helping people when they have voluntarily asked for help.
  
• Helping individuals when they have asked for help from a therapist or coach.
  
• Consulting to groups or organizations.
  
• Responding to general requests from others for assistance of any kind.
  
• Helping people improve their work performance and their family relationships when they have not necessarily asked for help.
  
• Conducting a work performance review.
  
• Doing couple or family therapy where one person is the catalyst for therapy.
  
• Conducting educational programs or coaching engagements that people feel coerced to attend.

We will look at issues from the perspective of the helper and those being “helped.” We will examine in depth the question: When Is Help Helpful?

The conference will include case studies and hands-on practice. Actual helper-recipient pairs will discuss their work together. Participants have an opportunity to explore their own experiences in asking for and receiving help.

Presentations will include:

• Edgar Schein: Understanding Effective Dynamics in One-One, Group, and Organizational Relationships (based on his recent book: Helping)
  
• Michael Walsh, Fred McKosky, and Nancy Aungst: Application of the Cape Cod Model to Performance Review at Ecology & Environment Inc.
  
• Sharona Halpern: Working With Coerced Participants in Individual and Family Therapy
  
• Stuart Simon: Just Because You Have Something to Teach Doesn’t Mean They Want to Learn: Building a Collaborative Coaching Relationship
  
• Edwin Nevis: How to Be Helpful When Students Resist
  
• Mary Anne Walk & Coaching Clients: Executives & Their Coach: The Magic of the Coaching Process
  
• Andrea Kihlstedt: Mining Generosity: How to Create More Help and Helping
  

Benefits

Participants will:

• Gain new awareness in the dynamics of the relational helping process.
  
• Learn a model for competency-based developmental performance reviews.
  
• Learn and apply novel ways of helping.
  
• Learn to identify when “help is not helpful.”

Participants

The conference is open to any manager, practitioner, coach, consultant, psychotherapist, or individual interested in helping others. Registration will be limited to 50 people.

Dates and Fees:

As a result of my studies at GISC we have opened new levels of communication and
understanding in our multi-generation family business. We have replaced some fears with curiosity and have established an ability in the group to listen more completely. The outcome is a more respectful and appreciative family. GISC courses and workshops have made a big difference.”

Malcolm Poole
President
Poole Group of Companies