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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 you deliver that "help" determines its success and also impacts the relationship you build with the person you 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 six-category model to learn and improve how they interact when helping their employees, team members, clients and customers... (Sign in to read more.)

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Key points:

Heron's Six Client 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.

In the next article, learn about Active Listening, an essential technique if you're to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication. To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath.

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