Many individuals demonstrate natural abilities and gifts in relating to other people. They’re interested in others, listen well, and converse easily. Others have to work harder to build and maintain healthy connections.

Helping relationships pose additional challenges. Helpees may come to the relationships with wounds from previous interactions. Hurting individuals may be particularly vulnerable and wary of opening up to someone else. Natural abilities can make the relationship-building process easier; however, we can also learn and/or improve skills that will enhance our performance in this area.

Persons who develop and manage effective Christ-centered helping partnerships demonstrate a number of specific, learnable skills or competencies that enable positive change to take place. We define a skill as an observable behavior you perform that indicates to an observer how well you can do something. If a helper and helpee possess these skills to an adequate quality level—and if they use them as frequently as called for—their chances of having mutually satisfying and productive helping relationships will be greatly enhanced.

Many of us struggle in trusting others. When someone says, “Trust me,” few of us do. Most of us even think: “Oh yeah? You’ll have to show me!” We want verifiable evidence that causes our trust thermometers to rise. Trust building can be a major challenge.

Other individuals are willing to trust without much prior or concurrent evidence. You should be skilled in knowing ways to increase the trust factor in your relationships. To become trust-able, you must:

• build your credibility so others will respect you;
  
  
• keep confidences shared within your helping relationships;
  
  
• spend appropriate time together so your helpees know you’re committed to the relationships;
  
  
• follow through on your promises;
  
  
• refrain from criticizing your helpees to others;
  
  
• respect their boundaries;
  
  
• admit your errors and take responsibility for correcting them; and
  
  
• tactfully tell your helpees if and why you disagree or are dissatisfied with something, so they’ll know you’re honest with them.

Particularly in “cross-difference” (e.g., cross-gender, cross-cultural, cross-age) helping relationships, trust-building is crucial and has to be constructed over time.

For more ideas on increasing your skills as a helper, see our Archive and What We Offer. E-mail your questions to our response team at info@faithmentoringandmore.com.