Core Practice Values

Harms (2007) mentions five core practice values to consider when working with others in a change process. These values are respecting the human person, promoting social justice and people’s right to a good life, empowerment and autonomy,valuing people’s strengths and resilience; and being authentic. In regards to respecting the human person, Harms describes four dimensions of respect these are “to regard, consider,taking into account, pay attention to; second, treat or regard with deferential esteem; third, prize or value and fourth, to refrain from injuring,harming,insulting”. When first approaching my friend, I first had to take into account the fact that he was from a completely different country and that he would definitely be feeling nervous and “lost”. As a result I and to treat him
By respecting and asking his abilities and skills I would have been able to relate to him more if he had told me. I was however able to refrain form insulting him and was mindful of his difficulty in holding conversations in his second language. In regards to autonomy, there have been multiple debates surrounding the right to “experience a transitional dependence at times, rather than a continual valuing of independence and self-determination”. This can range in terms of cultural differences and the values that the society the individual lives in holds. Normally, these values will stick with the individual depending on what society he/she grows up in. In my case, my friend could have grown up in a society where they were taught to be independent and self determined. This could have been his thinking when first coming to New Zealand however the fact that I only acted after majority of the year had passed got rid of this suspicion. Had I not approached him after that period of time, he could have never been able to experience what he did