There is no understanding without acting! Simply stated, life is a continuous learning process. The source of this learning is feedback from the environment. Most frequently, we see helpees who have received negative feedback from their environments: they are not living, learning or working effectively. We work with them in helping: exploring their experiences and understanding their goals. If they do not act upon their understanding, they have terminated the learning process and attenuated their growth. Moreover, if we do not initiate to facilitate their acting, the helpees take our behavior as the model for their lives—lives of inaction and deterioration!

NON-INITIATING INACTION

Helping initiates a life-long learning process. The feedback from acting is the source of continuous stimulation of that learning process. The helper initiative, which facilitates acting, is central to the effectiveness of acting. Just as the personalized understanding defined new goals, personalized initiatives achieve these goals. Again, the entire helping process is developmental and cumulative, with each phase building upon the skills of the previous phase. When we initiate as helpers, the helpees assume our behavior as the model for their lives—lives of acting and growing!

INITIATING ACTING

At the most basic level, acting means behaving in some overt way. It is not enough to develop a plan. We must implement the plan behaviorally in order to impact our environments. It is as if the helper is working with the helpee to test hypotheses in the helpee’s life. The impact issue is this: together, can they “load up” the independent or intervening variables in such powerful ways as to impact the dependent variables in the helpee’s world. In other words, can they “stack the cards” to enable the helpee to be successful.

ACTING IMPACTING

One way to impact the helpee’s world is to enable the helpee to manage that world. We call this empowering. Basically, we pass on our own “powers” to the helpees. Usually, these “powers” are in the form of the skills, knowledge and attitudes that we impart to them. We call this psychological education or training as treatment. We “empower” the helpees to impact their environments in productive ways. Thus, we break the cycle of negativity and introduce the cycle of productivity.

IMPACTING PRODUCTIVITY

Initiating is the culminating phase of helping. Initiating emphasizes facilitating the helpees’ efforts to act to achieve their goals. In other words, the helpees act to change or gain in their functioning. This action is based upon their personalized understanding of their goals. It is facilitated by the helper’s initiative.

Initiating involves defining goals, developing programs, and designing schedules and reinforcements. Initiating also includes preparing to implement steps and planning check steps.

Defining the goals emphasizes the operations that describe the goals. Developing programs emphasizes determining the steps needed to achieve the goals and insuring that the steps are related to the helpee’s frame of reference. Designing schedules emphasizes attaching time to steps while designing reinforcements emphasizes attaching reinforcements to steps. Preparing to implement the steps involves reviewing, rehearsing and revising. Then the helpees will check their progress by using “before, during and after check steps.”

INITIATING FACILITATES HELPEE ACTING