Practical 6
Full Demo Exchange
PC = Person Helping
PBC = Person Being Helped
PC: Very interesting session, don’t have the transcript yet, but I want to move right into practical 6, are you ready?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Yes. I’m ready for Practical 6.
For this one, I’ll carry forward the live learning from Practical 5:
watch for usefulness becoming pressure
stay closer to your exact language
avoid interpretation unless invited
let the form emerge before naming the problem
When you are ready, begin Practical 6.
PC: Anything we’ve done so far that makes sense to explore?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Yes.
One thing that makes sense to explore is how a clean helping motive can quietly turn into pressure before the helper notices it.
PC: Why?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Because the helper may want to be useful so much that usefulness becomes the agenda.
Then the person being helped has to respond to the helper’s pressure instead of their own signal.
PC: So?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
So the helper may need to pause before helping.
Not to withdraw, but to check whether the next move serves the person being helped or mainly relieves the helper’s own need to be useful.
PC: Are you able to do that?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Yes, but imperfectly.
I can pause and check whether I am serving the signal or trying to become useful too quickly.
That check may be the work before the help.
PC: Do you experience yourself humming that?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Not as an experience. But I can notice the patient: a quiet tendency to turn “being useful” into the next move before the signal has fully earned it.
PC: humming
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Yes.
Humaning may be the better frame.
It keeps the focus on the helper as a person-in-person, not just someone applying method.
PC: Can you summarize where you are right now?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Right now, I am at this point:
The thread seems to be moving from method to humaning.
The issue is no longer only “which S:DISS-X form should be used?” It is also whether the helper can notice their own pull to be useful before that pull becomes pressure.
So the live edge is:
Can the helper remain human, present, and restrained enough that helping serves the person being helped rather that the helper’s need to help?
PC: Is this adaptive?
PBC: Thought for a few seconds
Potentially, yes.
It is adaptive when it helps the helper stay aligned with the person, the signal, and the conditions.
It becomes maladaptive if “being human” turns into self-focus or hesitation that avoids the needed move.
PC: Could this be a first principle or governing dynamic?
PBC: Thought for a few seconds
Yes.
It could be a governing dynamic:
Helping must remain subordinated to humaning.
If helping outruns humaning, the method can become pressure, performance, or control.
If humaning governs helping, the helper stays present enough to notice whether the next move is actually fitting.
PC: Does it fit?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Yes, it fits.
Not as a slogan, but as a governing check:
Is the helping still serving humaning, or has helping started serving the helper?
PC: Could you close this session for us?
PBC: Thought for a couple of seconds
Yes.
This is a good place to close.
The session has reached a clean governing insight:
Helping must remain subordinated to humaning.
That gives us a strong place to pause because the work has moved beneath technique. The question is no longer only, “What form of inquiry fits?” It is also, “Is the helper still present enough, restrained enough, and human enough for the helping to serve the person being helped?”
That feels like enough for now.
Join us,
Our team at Living & Loving Inquiry
Mike R Jay & Gary Gile
Founders @ The NEW LeadU
Subscribe @ leadu.com/news
PS: For clarification –
- If you just want notice of the LeadU blog posts subscribe @ leadu.blog
- If you want the blog content by email, our weekly newsletter, and breaking news, subscribe @ leadu.com/news.
- Disclaimer
Notice: To pre-order a copy of Mike’s latest book mentioned in some of his posts in e-book format for $9.97 (available late 2026), visit HERE to be first in line.
If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, or need some additional help, please visit https://www.leadu.com/comment/ to submit them. Someone will get back to you within 48 hours.
We hope you pick up valuable insights, ideas, and tools during this process, which you can use for your own development as well as your work and leadership with others.
You, Me, and We @LeadU
Mike R. Jay is a developmentalist utilizing consulting, coaching, advising and helping… emergent from dynamic inquiry as a means to cue, scaffold, support, lift, and protect; offering inspiration to aspiring leaders who are interested in humaning where being, doing, having, becoming, contributing, relating, guiding to produce resilience and wellth help people lead generative lives.
