From a mother feeding her infant to a friend or spouse helping to make something happen, to a group member playing his or her role to help the group to succeed, to a therapist helping a patient, to an organizational consultant or coach helping to improve individual, group or organizational functioning, helping is the basic relationship that moves things forward. Yet, paradoxically, we know relatively little about the social and psychological dynamics of that relationship.

In this seminal book on the topic, corporate culture and organizational development guru Ed Schein analyzes the dynamics of helping relationships, explains why help is often not helpful, and shows what any would-be-helper must do to insure that help is actually provided.

Many different words are used for helping assisting, aiding, advising, coaching, consulting, counseling, guiding, mentoring, supporting, teaching, and many more but they all have common dynamics and processes. Schein exposes and shows how to resolve the inequities and role ambiguities of helping relationships, describes the different roles that helpers can take once the relationship is balanced, and explains how to build a balanced relationship and how to intervene as that relationship develops, In this short but profound book Schein examines the social dynamics that are at play in helping relationships in order to better understand why offers of help are sometimes refused or resented, and how to make help more useful and effective.