DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE HELPING RELATIONSHIPS IN HEALTH-EDUCATION PRACTICE

Health educators who interact directly with the people they serve must be able to establish effective relationships. Helping relationships a re effective if they facilitate clients' progress toward health-promot ing goals. Health educators are usually well versed in learning activi ties and spend a significant proportion of their time interacting with clients. However, many health educators have never received explicit training in how to establish effective formal helping relationships. R esearch on social influence processes has provided a set of empirical findings that suggest interpersonal behaviors that are likely to maxim ize the effectiveness of formal helping relationships. This literature indicates that formal helping relationships characterized by interper sonal behaviors that enhance client self-esteem and feelings of contro l are most effective in helping clients achieve specific goals, Intere stingly, enhancement of self-esteem and feelings of control are consis tent with many definitions of personal empowerment. Since the social i nfluence and empowerment literatures come from very different intellec tual roots and have different approaches to power and influence, their convergence is especially notable. These literatures combine to estab lish the bases for proposing two essential components of effective hel ping relationships: (1) providing unconditional acceptance and positiv e regard for clients, and (2) sharing power and control through partic ipatory processes.