The Power in Helping

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One of the profound lessons from my time working in mental health and suicide prevention is that helping is never just an act of kindness or support. Helping is also an exchange of power, sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious, but always present. Whether we are the one offering help or the one seeking it, we step into a relational space shaped by influence, vulnerability, expectation, and meaning. Helping is not simply something we do; it is something we enact with another person, and in doing so, power moves between us.

Being helped can feel comforting, relieving, and deeply human. It can also feel exposing, disorienting, or even shame‑inducing. Offering help can feel purposeful and generous, but if we are not attentive, it can slip into rescuing, directing, or controlling. Helping is everywhere in our lives, yet we rarely pause to consider the power differential that sits quietly beneath it.

Edgar Schein’s work has been foundational in supporting my understanding of this dynamic. In his book Helping (2011), Schein writes:

“Helping situations are intrinsically unbalanced and role ambiguous. Emotionally and socially, when you ask for help you are putting yourself ‘one down’.” (p. 31)

Anyone who has ever reached out in a moment of struggle knows this feeling. Asking for help can be an act of vulnerability; a step into a space where the other person’s response can either restore dignity or unintentionally diminish it.

Schein also names the corresponding “one upness” of the helper:

“Being thrust into the role of helper is immediately a gain in status and power – literally if I help someone who has fallen, or symbolically if I am a counsellor, consultant, or coach who is being asked to provide wisdom and expertise to solve a problem.” (p. 32)

Have you ever felt “one up” when offering help?

Can you recognise the power that exists when you are the one with something to give?

Schein’s reflections remind us that every helping relationship begins in a state of imbalance:

“…at the beginning, every helping relationship is a state of imbalance. The client is one down and therefore vulnerable; the helper is one up and therefore powerful.” (p. 35)

This imbalance is not inherently negative; it is simply real. The question is whether we recognise it and how we choose to work within it. When we ignore the power we hold, helping can easily become directive or paternalistic. When we acknowledge it, helping becomes a shared act of humanity, a space where dignity and agency are protected.

In counselling and community work, the ethical use of power is not about providing answers or solutions. It is about creating space for the other person’s voice, meaning, and agency to emerge. Helping becomes less about doing and more about being with. It is about stepping into relationship, recognising the power we hold, and choosing to use it with humility, curiosity, and grace. It is about resisting the seductive pull of certainty and instead honouring the other person’s capacity to make sense of their own world.

Helping is one of the most ordinary things we do, yet one of the most profound. When we approach it with awareness of power; how it moves, how it shapes, how it can heal or harm, helping becomes a quiet act of leadership. The kind that strengthens relationships, builds trust, and reminds us that we are all, at different moments, both the helper and the helped.

Reflective Questions:

  • What are your experiences of the power in helping?
  • Can you think of some ways that you can be more mindful of the power that you might have, and what this might do in your relationships when offering help?
  • How does this play out in your world?

Author: Robert Sams Website: www.dolphyn.com.au Email: robert@dolphyn.com.au Phone: 0424 037 112

Dolphyn… the Y that calls us into community.

Coming Together: Why Community Matters in Mental Health and Recovery

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In every community, there are people quietly navigating challenges with mental health, addiction, and the complex emotions that accompany them – shame, isolation, fear, and hope.

What often makes the difference is not a single intervention or program, but the presence of community: people coming together, listening, sharing stories, and reminding one another that recovery is not a solitary act.

At Dolphyn, we believe that the best way to support people through life’s challenges is to create spaces where meaning is made with others, not for them. This is the essence of social sensemaking: understanding risk, wellbeing, and life itself through relationship and dialogue.

When it comes to alcohol addiction and mental health, this communal approach is not just helpful, it’s transformative.

Who are some of the community organisations that are there to support people in our communities in these moments?

Hello Sunday Morning: Changing the Conversation About Alcohol

Founded in Australia in 2010, Hello Sunday Morning began as a personal experiment by Chris Raine to take a break from drinking and share the experience online. What started as one person’s story has grown into a global movement that helps thousands of people rethink their relationship with alcohol.

Through its digital platform Daybreak, Hello Sunday Morning connects people who want to change their drinking habits with a supportive online community. Members share reflections, challenges, and encouragement, creating a space where change happens through conversation and connection, not judgment.

The organisation’s philosophy is simple but powerful:

“We believe that changing your relationship with alcohol starts with understanding yourself and connecting with others.”

This is community in action, people learning from one another, finding meaning in shared experience, and supporting each other through the ups and downs of change.

SMART Recovery Australia: Practical Tools, Shared Strength

SMART Recovery Australia takes a similar community‑based approach, offering mutual‑aid meetings and programs where people support one another in managing addictive behaviours, including alcohol, drugs, gambling, and more.

SMART stands for Self‑Management and Recovery Training, and its model is grounded in evidence‑based psychology. But what makes it powerful is not just the tools: it’s the people.

Each meeting is a space where participants share experiences, learn practical strategies, and build confidence together. Facilitators guide the process, but the wisdom comes from the group itself.

SMART Recovery’s approach recognises that recovery is not about perfection or heroism; it’s about collective learning and shared accountability.
It’s about people discovering that they are not alone, that others have walked similar paths and are willing to walk beside them.

Community as a Protective Factor

Both Hello Sunday Morning and SMART Recovery Australia show that community is not a backdrop to recovery, it is the method.

When people come together, they create conditions that support healing that no policy alone can replicate.

They build trust, reduce stigma, and remind one another that change is possible.

In the language of Social Sensemaking, this is how we make sense of risk and life, socially, collectively, and compassionately.

Recovery is not a technical process; it’s a relational one. It happens in the spaces between people – in conversation, in shared vulnerability, and in the courage to be seen.

The Work Ahead

As we continue to face rising rates of anxiety, depression, and addiction across Australia, the challenge is not just to expand services but to strengthen communities. To create environments where people feel safe to speak, to listen, and to belong.

Organisations like Hello Sunday Morning and SMART Recovery Australia remind us that the most powerful form of support is often the simplest: being together.

At Dolphyn, this is the heart of our work, helping people and organisations rediscover the Y that calls us into community. Because when we come together, we don’t just manage risk.

We make sense of life – together.

Just Hanging Out

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Just Hangin’ Out…

One of the privileges of working in a community-led, service-oriented organisation, is that I come across some remarkable people. Remarkable, not because they are heroes who save the day, not because they perform magical acts that miraculously take away the pain and grief that many people we connect with experience, and not because they have a super power that transforms darkness into light.

Life’s just not like that.

It’s more complex, multifaceted and ‘messier’, and we’d be wise to respond cautiously when we hear about remarkable people in our western populist and simplistic media. I think there are other meanings for extraordinary than those anchored to the myth of the hero.

So, what does make these people remarkable?

In what might seem counter-intuitive for those who think that to be remarkable means to be; herculean, superhuman and gallant, paradoxically what makes such people remarkable, is often their ordinariness. That is, their real ‘remarkableness’ is that they resist the need to be extraordinary. One way that I know some people do this is by; “just hangin’ out” with others.

Maybe this sounds too simplistic and not considerate enough of the vast skills and much experience of professionals who work in community services (and it is!), so allow me to explain what I mean.

I was recently talking with Barbara*, someone who understands, values and is energised by being in community with others.

Our conversation caused me to reflect and contemplate, that perhaps if we just allowed ourselves moments of ‘ordinariness’, that we (without even trying) could create a better connection with others by; “just hangin out” with them?

What do I mean?

Barbara attends her fair share of meetings and tells me that she could spend all day, every day in them. Although, mostly these are meetings, in which not much real meeting or connection take place. Instead, they’re usually full with agendas that drive discussion to a place where people are focused on outcomes and achievements, rather than learning about and being with, others.

Perhaps this is what happens when we are seduced by busyness, efficacy and results; rather than connection, compassion and being present, in our relationships with others?

It was one particular conversation with Barbara that took my attention. She told the story of her work in a region where it is not uncommon for people to experience daily challenges. Various people have advised Barbara on the best ‘technique’ on how to connect with and ‘help’ these people.

Such advice she tells me, is usually focused on factors like; ensuring appropriate preparation, setting agendas, allowing enough time, being clear on what she wants to ‘get from the conversation’ and Barbara’s all-time favourite; ‘stakeholder management’.

It’s all about organising, with very little focus on relationships and very little focus on others.

What is it about our modern day living that sees us so drawn into the privitisation of self?

Thankfully, this isn’t the way that Barbara attends to her relationships with others. She isn’t driven by a focus on technique, she’s not seduced into seeing conversations as only about ‘achieving results’ and she isn’t enthused about agendas when it comes to real ‘meetings’ with others.

Instead and ironically, it is the lack of agenda that often mean her conversations are filled with real ‘meeting’, ‘living’ and ‘being’; with others. Further still, they often end up achieving something, even though that was not the intention.

If you’re easily lost in a world of paradox, you may be lost in this story by now too? It takes some deep reflection and thinking critically outside of our modern way of ‘being’ with others to make sense of what being in community really means.

Back to my chat with Barbara  So, I asked her what was important to her when developing relationships with others?

“I just hang out with people”.

Knowing Barbara, this needed no further explanation to me, although there is more to it if you’d like to know…

When you get to know Barbara, you soon realise that while her method may be “just hangin’ out”, it’s her ‘her reason for being’ (ontology), that is the key to understanding her connection with others. This is grounded in relationships and communality, rather than individuality and self. Barbara seems to really grasp what Buber (1969) calls i-thou. Barbara told me that the most remarkable things can happen in these most ordinary of moments, simply by; “just hangin out” with others.

The conversation with Barbara had me reflecting and wondering:

  • How much could we learn about each other, if we were to turn our focus to others in conversation, rather than what we want to achieve?
  • Also, what  might we learn from each other if we suspended our own agendas?
  • How often do we find ourselves in ‘meetings’ where no real ‘meeting’ takes place? 

Perhaps ironically, it is the most ordinary of things; connecting with others, that creates the most extraordinary moments in life?

*name changed

If you or someone you know is feeling lonely or seeking connection, you can contact Lifeline (in Australia) on 13 11 14 or www.lifeline.org.au. Similar support and crisis lines exist in other countries – for a full list, click HERE.

Author:      Robert Sams

Email:         robert@dolphyn.com.au

Web:            www.dolphyn.com.au

Book:           Social Sensemaking – Click HERE to Order

Models From Social Sensemaking

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Social Sensemaking

In this piece I introduce you to two of the semiotic models developed in my first book Social Sensemaking. Firstly, The Decision Tree and then The Trade-offs Model.

The Decision Tree

Why is it challenging to accept that many of our ideas and thoughts originate in our unconscious? What is it that seduces us into believing that all of our decisions are clear ‘choices’; made rationally and logically? Finally, what do our social arrangements, our organising and our being in the world with others, have to do with the decisions we make?

These questions are explored in the Decision Tree which in the book I describe as:

 “…The model is meant to firstly symbolically differentiate between the factors relating to our decisions and judgments that occur in our non-conscious (non-exposed or symbolically ‘under the ground’) and then to highlight the things that we do as we make decisions (the branches) and then afterwards as we reflect and learn (open to view or ‘above the ground’ as in the exposed structure of the tree). The roots of the tree include the factors that relate to us as individuals and they are surrounded by the earth (soil) which is meant to symbolise the more social factors that impact on our decisions. They are depicted in the ‘messiness’ of the soil as a way to demonstrate that, not only are they often hidden from us (under the ground), but may be challenging to understanding being in the mix of the soil (dirt, rocks, humus, worms and subterranean bugs etc.) and the entanglement of the roots.”

Social Sensemaking (2016, p.53)

The Decision Tree was developed to provide a semiotic representation of ‘sensemaking’. It aims to represent what is a complex and multifaceted activity, into a format that may be easier to grasp; that is, via a model. However, as my friend Craig Ashhurst is known to suggest; “all models are wrong, but useful”. That is, a model is not intended as a ‘complete’, nor perfectly scientific explanation of how we make sense of things, rather it is a tool to prompt further thinking and hopefully discussion on the topic.

So how did we come to the representation of sensemaking?

To start, it was another model known as One Brain Three Minds, developed by Dr. Robert Long, that first caught our attention. This model introduces us to a way of appreciating the complexities of decision making, by helping us to recognise the importance, and the influence of, our unconscious (Mind 2 and 3). It also helps us to appreciate that our individual decision making is so much more than a simple ‘choice we make’.

Instead, there are many and varying factors that influence our decisions, including those associated with the way in which we organise ourselves, along with many societal or social factors. This is why in the Decision Tree model, we further explore these social influences and the many other varying and complex stimuluses that impact on decision making. If you’d like to learn more about the Decision Tree, you can watch this short video that I recently prepared.

Let’s now turn our attention to the next model, The Trade-offs Model.

The Trade-offs Model

Have you ever heard yourself suggesting emphatically that something, say for example; your health, your relationship with your child or your job, is your first priority? Why do we think like this? What is it that seduces us into such simplistic thinking? Can anything ever be our first priority, all of the time? Why might we struggle to accept that rather than having one key priority or focus, that instead we are constantly ‘trading-off’ in our decision making?

I explore these questions below as I introduce you to The Trade-Offs Model.

This model based on the work of Cameron and Quinn (2011) who, in their book Diagnosing and Changing Organisational Culture introduce us to the Competing Values Framework. It includes four quadrants, each depicting the different focuses (or values) that organisations may have. However, remember this is a model, and as such summarising complex ideas into a more simple framework comes with it’s own trade-offs and as noted above, may be ‘wrong, but useful’!

The four quadrants are; Collaborating, Creating, Controlling and Competing. The key argument put forward in the model is that while we may easily be misled into thinking that we can focus equally on all four of these areas all of the time, in reality, we are forced in many ways to choose between them. That is, in order to focus on one thing more than another, we are required to trade-off something else.

Sensemaking and ‘choices’ may also bring with them a sense of tension and unease, as we go about ‘trading-off’. We can’t be sure in knowing what is the ‘right’ or ‘correct’ choice or decision. As a way of coping with this, we ‘satisfice‘ and may develop hubris or over confidence. This may mean that we become blind to the tension of trade-offs and perhaps even deceived into thinking that our decisions are not without consequence or significance.

Maybe this is a necessary way to handle the tension in decision making, for if we were to become too consumed by this, conceivably, we would not be able to cope? Equally though, if we do not accept and be present to our often contradictory ways of sensemaking and the tension of the trade-offs, conceivably we would not learn and this would impact on how we understand and discern risk?

You can learn more about the Trade-offs model in this short video.

It is almost two years since Social Sensemaking was published. The learning, pondering and reflecting continue, as does my understanding of sensemaking.

Maybe that is because sensemaking is an ongoing activity rather than something that is done or completed. Maybe also it ought be understood dialectically, with the necessary tension and also uncertainty. Maybe we are moved too easily to believe that we ‘know’ something, rather than accept the role of faith in sensemaking? There seem many questions.

How do you make sense of risk?

Author:           Robert Sams

Email:              robert@dolphyn.com.au

Web:                www.dolphyn.com.au

Book:               Social Sensemaking – Click HERE to Order

Support and Empowerment in Helping Others

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How may our worldview influence our method when it comes to training and also helping others? If we do not acknowledge our own worldview, what impact may this have in how we support others? Also, how can we even begin to ponder what our worldview is, and so consider the above questions, if we don’t take the time to reflect and deeply contemplate on who we are and what we bring to a helping relationship?

These are questions that surfaced for me as I attended a ‘train the trainer’ program for a suicide alertness program called safeTALK last week. I have previously shared a short introduction to the program (https://safetyrisk.net/safetalk-suicide-alertness-program/) and as noted in that piece, I would further explore its methodology. This is what I intend to do here.

Read the full post first published HERE.

I was Offloaded!

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Why is it that even with ample information, and despite ‘knowing‘ differently, that sometimes our ‘feeling of risk’ may override, or at least heavily influence, our response to it? Also, how could someone who has studied and reflected on it in a rather intimate way for the last six years, not control or change their feelings about risk?

What do I mean? If you can bear with me, I’ll explain by sharing a short personal story about a recent overseas trip.

Read the full article which was first published HERE.

Do we Need a Different Way of Being in Safety?

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There are many people working in Safety who seek a ‘different’ way of engaging with others, and rightly so. The current policing and patrolling approaches adopted by many, seem to be doing little to support people in how they tackle the challenges of risk. Some even suggest that rather than being a problem, people are the solution; a creditable idea, but what might this mean in practice?

There are a few questions that come to mind when considering this ‘new view’ in Safety, including:

· How can we adopt an approach focused more on people if we don’t also broaden our ‘way of being’ from the deep-seated STEM focus that currently dominates Safety’s discourse?

· If we are to see people as a ‘solution’[1], how do we then resist also viewing them as objects to be studied and corrected, and instead see them as subjects (people) to be ‘met’?

· How do we deal with the often unrecognised and unconscious social forces in our modern world, that drive us toward individualistic thinking and steer us toward being an expert in others?

Counter intuitively, perhaps the answers to these questions may lie outside of Safety’s traditional literature, studies and references? Conceivably we also require a different ‘way of being’ if Safety is really going to be ‘different’? So where else can we look for guidance on this?

Read the full article first published HERE.

The Mystery and Paradox of Being an Individual in a Social World

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I had the privilege today to meet up with a friend, one who I’ve known for a while, yet up until today we’d not had the opportunity to meet in person, so we both made the time and effort to catch up.

We shared in a wholesome conversation, one where we wrestled with the tension and paradoxical challenges that we all experience in a life of; ‘being an individual in a social world’[1]. More on this theme soon, first though I’d like to share a little about the conversation itself.

It was a mostly unexpected discussion, not planned other than the time and venue. Much emerged as we sat with each other and there were moments that felt like ‘meeting’ (Buber); where it was just the two of us. This, despite being in a place with many other people. There was little in terms of agenda, so the conversation just flowed.

We found ourselves conversing on many personal topics including; addiction, pain and suicide. I accept these are not topics ordinarily discussed amongst friends, as for many, they are taboo. But this didn’t stop us. Our conversation was more meaningful, honest and deeper than most, while also uplifting, stimulating and enriching.

Afterwards as I reflected on how easy the conversation seemed, I pondered on what made it feel easy. It certainly wasn’t the topics; although ironically maybe it was? One thing I did recognise though was that having little agenda, meant that there were also minimal expectations. Maybe that created a greater chance of just ‘being’ with each other?

This caused me to think back to times where I previously thought I was having similar conversations while working in Safety. Although, comparing the type of conversation I shared in today with those while working in Safety isn’t really possible, because those conversations are typically full (even overflowing) with agenda; around control, fixing, and correcting behaviour.

Thankfully, my conversations have changed in recent years; they are now more regularly focused on the other person, especially when they are the ones who seek out the conversation. It has not always been like this though, as ‘telling’ is a hard habit to, firstly acknowledge, and then break. I regularly fall back into the trap of telling, but thankfully not during this conversation.

This point reminds me of something that Carl Rogers, the founder of ‘person centred therapy’, wrote during a reflection of his own practice in his book On Becoming a Person (1961):

“One brief way of describing the change which has taken place in me is to say that in my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change the person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?” (p. 32)

This resonates strongly with me; how about you?

Read the full post, first published HERE.

Social Sensemaking – Auckland Workshop – 14 May 2018

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So What is Social Sensemaking?

As author Rob Sams notes, the book and the idea itself of ‘sensemaking’, was born from a search for a more humanistic approach and methodology to supporting people to deal with risk. That is because to make sense of risk, we need to commune and converse with others; that is, it is a social activity.

The book is a collaboration of stories and experiences in how we make sense of decisions and judgments; particularly about risk. It questions the traditional controlling and dictating methods that can be too easily adopted by the Risk, Safety and HR fields, and offers ideas that are more ‘humanising’.

So what can you expect in this Workshop?

In this practical and interactive presentation, we take participants through a number of the tools presented in the book including ‘One Brain Three Minds’©*, the ‘Trade-offs’ model© and the ‘Decision Tree’©.

We also share some of the challenges of moving toward a more holistic understanding and application of risk in the workplace. This includes how we’ve dealt with our own cognitive dissonance after many years of practicing the traditional approach that was focused on control, rather than understanding and supporting people so that they may better discern risk for themselves.

 

Book Your Place at the Workshop Here

 

Program Outline

The presentation is broken into three sections, including:

1. Better understanding our Self in order to understand (and communicate with) others

  • Our different perceptions – how we all ‘think’ differently
  • Tools and Models to better understand ‘sensemaking’ including One Brain Three Minds©* – a model to decision making (introducing the conscious and non-conscious in decision making), the Decision Tree© and the Trade Offs Model©.
  • Personality Types – a short introduction to the Jungian Four Temperament types and why these matter in communication. This will be a very practical introduction rather than one based solely on theory.

2. The role of the non-conscious in communication.

  • Tackling a ‘Telling’ Society- the gentle art of asking more and telling less
  • Being aware of our own agenda ‘Suspending’ our own agenda
  • Understanding why this is so hard – what is it about our society that makes listening challenging and telling easy?

3. Making Sense of Risk – a Social Perspective

  • We are social beings, what role does this play in communication?
  • How we make sense of things through interacting and conversing with others

The Workshop will provide practical, interactive and hands on experiences to embed learning. This will include providing models and tools for participants to ‘take-away’ and apply in their work environment.

Take-aways and Tools

Everyone attending the Workshop will recieve a copy of Social Sensemaking along with the various tools and models noted above.

Book Your Place

Book Your Place at the Workshop Here

*used with permission Dr Robert Long

Human Being and Becoming

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I’m enjoying reading David G. Benner’s Human Being and Becoming (http://www.drdavidgbenner.ca/human-being-and-becoming/) at the moment; I’m on my third read.

Here are some quotes from the read on my flight home this afternoon:

“Ultimately, we need a meaning that will be strong enough to make suffering sufferable… But for meaning to be useful, it has to help us live a life as it actually is, not as we wish it might be” (p. 40)

“One of the worst things a psychotherapist can do is to relieve people of their suffering before they have helped them discover its meaning” (p. 41)

“Showing hospitality to suffering starts with releasing that inner constriction. Letting it go makes space for you to meet and show hospitality to the uninvited guest that has suddenly appeared in your home. Rather than trying to drive suffering out, get to know it. Listen to it – to the questions it asks of you, not the questions you want to ask of it.” (p. 42)

“What we need is not to figure out the meaning of life but to discover a meaningful way of living life. For this to happen, we must allow the meaning to emerge from life itself, not what we can get out of it. This is the essence of spirituality, which is, as its core, a way of living in relation to a self-transcendent framework of meaning and purpose”. (p.43)

“Meaningful ways of living are never found in the safety of an armchair or ivory tower. They are found in the risky, vulnerable places of real life. They are found in living, not in books, lectures or sermons. Ideas presented in books may come to form a place in a meaningful life, but if they are to help make suffering sufferable and life meaningful, they will always be rooted in an openness to and affirmation of, life as it is.” (p. 46)

I was gifted my copy and would like to reciprocate. If you would like a copy, share your thoughts on the reflections above and I’ll to pass on.

Human Being and Becoming.

Rob Sams