• THE SKILLED HELPER emphasizes the collaborative nature by focusing on the client and the counselor in the relationship, with vivid examples that show helping skills in action in a vast array of possible relationships and settings, from correctional institutes and hospitals to private practice.
• The authors introduce Egan's practical three-stage framework, which outlines the nature and goals of helping, the helping model and the values that drive helping.
• Skill-building and progressive exercises provide students with the opportunity to apply the concepts they learn. For additional study help, you may offer your students the companion book, EXERCISES IN HELPING SKILLS, which is aligned with the text chapters and includes self-development items.
• Egan and Reese integrate the most relevant aspects of different theoretical orientations (humanistic, cognitive, cognitive-behavioral and solution-focused) into a pragmatic approach to helping.
• THE SKILLED HELPER focuses on "positive psychology" and includes material on problems as opportunities, an emphasis on hope and optimism, a self-healing approach to client-helper collaboration, discussion of the place of "motivational interviewing" and encouragement in helping as well as a section on client resilience.
• A Professional Rather Than an Academic Focus: The text focuses less on the helping industry and more on the helper-to-be. It encourages future helpers to concentrate on what's important for clients rather than on issues considered important in academia. It also emphasizes translating research into practical methods that can benefit clients as opposed to doing research.
• Decision-Making Skills: The authors highlight the importance of decision-making skills, one of the basic ingredients of successful therapy. Students learn how counselors help their clients remake poorly made decisions and make new ones.
• Helpers and Clients as Entrepreneurs: Helpers at their best are entrepreneurs in that they constantly look for better ways to deliver therapy and and to make the helping industry more inventive. To emphasize this idea, the authors outline essential characteristics of an entrepreneur and ways in which helpers can use entrepreneurship to support their clients. They also present ways in which helpers can assist clients in becoming more entrepreneurial in managing problems and exploiting opportunities.
• Doing Rather Than Just Learning: This edition goes beyond focusing on planning to highlight what helpers-in-training need to do and what clients need to do to manage the problem situations and the unused opportunities of life.
• The Power of Examples: Updated examples throughout the book illustrate varied relationships and settings. Because social realities often cause or exacerbate personal problems and stand in the way of exploiting opportunities, many of the examples incorporate a social context.
• Problem Management: THE SKILLED HELPER maintains that problem management is at the heart, directly or indirectly, of all approaches to helping. It also maintains that all helping deals with clients' experiences, thoughts, behaviors and emotions--that is, the whole person.
• Improved Chapter Organization: Chapters are significantly reorganized, with several chapters moved and in some cases combined. This consolidation makes the text's framework easier for students to grasp.

Part I: THE POWER OF BASICS.

1. The Power of Basics: Explore the Ingredients of Successful Helping.

2. Review the Problem-Management and Opportunity-Development Process.

3. Commit Yourself to the Helping Relationship and the Values That Drive It.

Part II: THE THERAPEUTIC DIALOGUE: MASTER COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING SKILLS.

4. Therapeutic Presence: Tune in to Clients and Listen Carefully.

5. Empathic Responding: Work at Mutual Understanding.

6. Master the Art of Probing and Summarizing.

7. Help Clients Challenge Themselves: From New Perspectives to New Behavior.

Part III: THE STAGES AND TASKS OF THE PROBLEM-MANAGEMENT AND OPPORTUNITY-DEVELOPMENT MODEL.

8. The Action Arrow That Permeates the Entire Helping Process: Right from the Beginning Help Clients Turn Talk into Life-Enhancing Action.

9. The Three Tasks of Stage I: Help Clients Tell the Story, the Real Story, and the Right Story.

10. Stage II: Help Clients Design and Set Problem-Managing Goals.

11. Stage III: Help Clients Design the Way Forward.

Gerard Egan

Gerard Egan, Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Organizational Studies at Loyola University of Chicago. He has written over a dozen books and currently writes in the areas of communication, counseling, business and organization effectiveness, management development, the management of innovation and change, leadership and organization politics and culture. He also conducts workshops in these areas both in the United States and abroad and is a consultant at a variety of companies and institutions worldwide.

Robert J. Reese

Robert J. Reese, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology at the University of Kentucky. He teaches in the American Psychological Association accredited Counseling Psychology doctoral program and is directly involved with counselor training at the master's and doctoral levels. He is a licensed psychologist. His research is focused in the areas of psychotherapy process/outcome, psychotherapy training and supervision and the use of telehealth technologies to increase the availability of mental health services for underserved populations. Dr. Reese has several publications in top counseling and psychotherapy professional journals.