Developing Practice Competencies E-Book

D. Mark Ragg

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1043

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Designed for the generalist practice course, this book uses students' own experiences rather than abstract discussion to build competency and professional identity. Full of rich case examples and exercises, the book lets students visualize and carry out skills in an applied, experimental way. It breaks down each practice skill into subcomponents, allowing students to consciously build up their capabilities as part of a lifelong learning process. Social work students will benefit from this presentation of the core knowledge, techniques, and values essential to the effective practice of social work.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

Generalist Practice

Section I: Building the Professional Self

Chapter 1: Professional Self-Awareness

Importance of Self-Awareness

Socialization, Self-Awareness, and Initial Skill Sets

Knowing Your Socialized Background

From Socialization to Professional Development

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 2: Conscious Self-Control and Ethical Behavior

Toward a Professional Code of Behavior

Professional Values

Importance of Professional Ethics

Ethical Principles

Legally Mandated Assumptions and Duties

Resolving Ethical Dilemmas

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 3: Professional Thinking and Knowledge

Developing Our Professional Thinking

Professional Knowledge Base

Toward Evidence-Based Practice

Toward Applied Thinking

Building Professional Thinking Skills

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 4: Assessment and Service Contracting

Professional Affiliation and the Assessment Focus

Assessment Process

Developing the Service Contract

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Section II: Developing the Helping Relationship

Chapter 5: Tuning In and Empathic Engagement

Tuning In and the Empathic Connection

Tuning In: The Relational Foundation

Interactive Engagement

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Readings

Chapter 6: Questioning Skills

Power of Questions: Socialization and Culture

Toward a Professional Use of Questions

Building Professional Questioning Skills

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Readings

Chapter 7: Reflective Responding Skills

Use of Reflection in Professional Practice

Components of Reflection

Culture, Socialization, and Reflection

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Readings

Chapter 8: Observing and Describing Skills

Challenges to Nonverbal Communication

Using Observation in Professional Practice

Describing Observations

Using Description to Promote Client Work

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 9: Providing Direction

Need for Direction

Activity-Based Intervention

Toward Developing Directive Skills

Critical Chapter Concepts

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Section III: Using the Working Alliance to Promote Change

Chapter 10: Integrating Direction Through Transitional Responding

Power and Influence in the Helping Relationship

Transitional Responding Process

Transitional Responding With Larger Client Systems

Cultural and Social Considerations

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Readings

Chapter 11: Motivating Change Within an Empathic Working Alliance

Toward a Change Focus

Motivation in the Working Alliance

Toward Understanding Motivation

Accessing Motivating Emotion

Enhancing Motivation through the Working Alliance

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 12: Building Multisystemic Working Alliances

Collaborative Models, Evidence-Based Practice, and Community Partners

Multisystemic Alliances and Informal Supports

Multisystemic Alliances With Formal Supports

Skills of Multisystemic Alliances

Organizational Challenges in Multisystemic Alliances

Professional Ethics and Multisystemic Work

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 13: Managing Threats to the Working Alliance

From Resistance to Alliance Considerations

Identifying Threats to the Alliance

Practitioner-Related Alliance Threats

Collaborator Threats

Larger Client System Alliances

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

Chapter 14: Ending the Working Alliance

Socialization Challenges to Endings

Experience of Ending

Impact of Ending the Working Alliance

Managing the Ending Process

Managing Relational Histories

Processing Present Endings

Developing the Future Orientation

Critical Considerations

Critical Chapter Themes

Online Resources

Recommended Reading

References

Author Index

Subject Index

About the DVD

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Ragg, D. Mark.

Developing practice competencies: a foundation for generalist practice/D. Mark Ragg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-55170-7 (paper/cd-rom); 978-1-118-01855-2 (ebk); 978-1-118-01856-9 (ebk); 978-1-118-01857-6 (ebk)

1. Social work education. 2. Social service–Practice. 3. Social workers–Training of. I. Title.

HV11.R312 2011

361.3'2–dc22

2010026663

To Lisa Gebo

Your bright light guided me toward this project.

As I conclude the writing, your light is gone.

This book will keep your energy alive as it guides the paths of new

professionals spreading your influence through their work.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to these colleagues, who reviewed this book and provided feedback:

Mary Fran Davis, LCSW, Austin Peay State University, TN

Art Frankel, PhD, MSW, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Chrys Ramirez Barranti, PhD, MSW, California State University, Sacramento

Michaela Rinkel, MSW, PhD, University of Wisconsin, River Falls

Diana Rowan, PhD, MSW, LCSW, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Lyn K. Slater, LMSW, PhD, Fordham University, NY

Layne K. Stromwall, MSSW, PhD, Arizona State University

About the Author

Mark Ragg has been a generalist social worker for more than 30 years. After beginning his career in children's services, Dr. Ragg has worked in the fields of developmental disabilities, domestic violence, forensic social work, child welfare, child and family therapy, and mental health. Within this generalist practice career, Dr. Ragg has consistently worked with community groups concurrent with clients and families to provide intervention at multiple contextual levels. This breadth of practice extends to individual, family, group, organizational and communities levels. These 30 years of practice are integrated with research to provide a foundation for this textbook.

For the past 14 years, Dr. Ragg has taught and researched the development of social work practice competencies with BSW and MSW students. As an educator, Dr. Ragg consistently integrates the realities of practice with the rigors of academic teaching. Such integration begins with integrating practice supervision methods with practice education. This hands-on teaching approach enhances student competency acquisition and has become a critical element in all practice courses. In this newest publication, the integration has come full circle. After viewing thousands of student practice tapes, Dr. Ragg has identified concepts and patterns of competency development. These concepts are now integrated with Dr. Ragg's practice background and research evidence to provide methods for developing critical competencies for generalist practice.

Introduction

The social work profession has existed for about one century. While the profession's development was influenced by the social upheaval during industrialization, the profession has survived the social and economic changes over the past century because social workers respond to society's needs by attending to portions of the population that are discarded and ignored by the powerful and elite. Because of this history, the profession has developed at the interface between people and society. This is a unique position for a helping profession because we consistently confront and mediate the impact of powerful social forces.

Given this unique professional position, social work has developed a broad focus. Social work practitioners occupy many roles in society. Professional functions range from distributing resources to those in need, protecting vulnerable populations, advocating for responsive social systems, and helping people to master life's challenges. Consequently, you will find social workers operating in multiple roles. Some roles overlap with other professions, such as psychologists, nurses, and counselors. Other roles do not overlap with professional groups because social work often fills in societal gaps where other professions fear to tread.

The social work niche in society is to help people who are most compromised by social events and forces. As such, we work with many diverse systems. Some social workers provide clinical counseling services with individuals, families, and groups. For that reason, social workers must become competent in roles that require clinical assessment and intervention. However, social work competencies extend far beyond a clinical perspective. Social work practitioners work diligently at the community and societal levels to advocate on behalf of underserved and socially compromised people.

Generalist Practice

The unique domain of social work practice demands a broad range of generalist practice competencies. These competencies prepare you to work in multiple settings and roles. You must be able to work competently with diverse client groups. The discussions and exercises in this textbook are designed to help you achieve these competencies. You will develop a full range of generalist practice competencies that will allow you to work with client systems of all sizes. You will learn how to engage individuals and larger client systems in focused work toward client-specific goals.

Identification With Client-Level Work

Inherent in generalist practice is the need to work with our clients competently. Most social work positions pay us to help specific people. Whether these people are homeless, addicted, traumatized refugees, similar to us or very different, we must competently engage them in service and help them master their situation. Many generalist practice skills help us achieve these job requirements. These skills often are conceptualized as stages of helping, beginning with helping clients entering professional services and then proceeding through assessment, intervention, and ending.

This textbook is organized to help you understand the skills involved with each stage of helping. You will empathically understand the client experience at each stage and learn the skills that can help clients to increase their mastery. Successfully managing the nuances of the helping relationship and the challenges of each stage promotes practice competence. To help with this development, the textbook uses examples and exercises to help you identify the challenges and prepare helpful responses.

Client Context

As we approach direct client work, it is important to identify the cultural and social context of the client situation. This is an important generalist competency because often we must work with the context of client problems as we help the client. This requires skills associated with family-, group-, and community-level intervention concurrent with the skills associated with direct client work.

Throughout this textbook you will develop an appreciation of the contextual elements of client problems. Examples provided in the chapters will begin this sensitization. Discussions will also explore how each skill can be applied in various contexts. As you finish with the foundation skills, the later chapters will build on the earlier discussions to help develop skills associated with working with larger client systems and intervening in the larger contextual realm.

Skill Foundation

Generalist practice competencies are built on a skill foundation. This textbook is designed to help you establish a solid skill foundation for professional practice. It is understood that you already have some very well developed skills. It is unlikely that you would enter a helping profession without already experiencing yourself as a helper. The textbook will focus on establishing a professional level of control over your natural skills to provide a foundation that you can access and use within a professional role.

Skill Development Observations

In the past 15 years I taught multiple sections of introductory and advanced practice classes each and every year. In each class I observed students develop their skills through a series of three to seven videotaped role-plays. This has yielded thousands of observations providing a unique learning experience about sequences of student skill development.

Skill development tends to progress through identifiable sequences because most of us have similar socialization experiences. While our socialization varies across cultures and ethnic groups, every group learns how to interact appropriately with others. Rules of politeness, turn-taking, and expressiveness occur within every culture. Thus, we all have a default set of interactive skills that emerge through socialization. It is our need to expand our socialized skill sets into professional skills that sets up identifiable skill development sequences.

In our fast-paced digital society, new elements of socialization are entering into our interactions. Texting and Facebooking are now part of socialization. Many of us have developed skills of fast communication using digital media. Inherent in these skills, we can now engage in three or four simultaneous discussions. These skills were unknown when most textbooks were written and even now are largely unexplored. While we have not yet learned how to harness these new interactive capacities, we are beginning to understand some of the challenges in the transition into professional-level skills.

Socialized Skill Expansion

The observations of developmental sequences and the nuances of digital communication require a slightly different approach to teaching professional practice skills. This altered approach involves expanding our socialized skill sets to create a set of professional skills that build onto our current interactive habits. To achieve this expansion, we must first understand our current skills so we can consciously adjust and expand. Consequently, the first step in our skill development sequence is to learn about our socialized skills and subsequent expansion challenges.

To assist in this learning, every chapter in this text explores socialization influences including challenges for digital communicators. As each chapter explores skill development, you will begin with an exploration of the socialization influences inherent in our default skills. As we understand these influences, we can begin to identify specific areas of expansion that can build onto our current skills to enhance our professional competence. Early chapters explore the foundation skills. As we approach later chapters we will begin combining skills in application to more challenging client situations.

Cultural Context

We all have a unique cultural context that informed our initial skill development. As we explore our socialized influences, we inherently explore our cultural influences. As we understand our culture and subsequent interaction skills, we learn how culture and environment shapes how we interact and respond to others. We also learn that everyone has similar experiences based on their culture. In effect, everyone establishes normal default settings based on cultural and family experiences.

As we begin working with clients, it is important to understand that our default settings and our client's default settings are inherently different. Consequently, each set of skills in this textbook is provided with cautions and nuances relating to cultural differences. Rather than having a separate chapter discussing the importance of culture, you will find constant reminders of the role that socialization and culture play in the interactive processes that form practice. Try to never speed-read through these discussions; their seeds must take root to help you develop a well grounded professional identity.

Evidence Foundation

As professionals, we are expected to be competent in how we use our knowledge. This competency area requires us to apply research findings in our practice. This competency also requires us to generate new knowledge through evidence emerging from our practice. To generate knowledge, first we must become highly competent in how we use our skills so they are applied with precision in every application. This textbook uses two areas of evidence to help you understand and develop this area of competence.

Practice-Related Evidence

A large body of research helps identify critical practice skills. This research has been amassed over the past 50 years, providing us with clear indications of the skill sets needed for professional practice. This textbook integrates findings from this body of research into skill selection and the discussions of critical practice skills. As you explore the skill sets within each chapter, you will benefit from the conclusions drawn from multiple research studies.

While the chapters draw heavily on research, the presentation of knowledge begins with the practitioner-client interface. As such, there will be no discussions of sampling and statistical analysis; rather you will explore how the research can be applied in your work with clients. As you explore the different skill sets, pay attention to the citations so you can explore the research underlying each skill set.

Evidence-Based Practice

Along with the skill-focused research, the profession has started to amass evidence focused on clusters of skills that can be applied to specific client problems. Evidence-based practice explores research focused on these applications. Frequently, evidence-based practice studies focus on very specific client problems and develop tightly controlled packages of skills that are applied to help clients resolve their problems. Each practice is narrowly focused and narrowly applied.

The evidence-based practices build on specific practice competencies and rely on practitioners to have a skill foundation that can be applied to client situations. This textbook has identified the skills foundations necessary for multiple evidence-based practices. Each chapter will provide you with an understanding of specific skills that when combined can be used in evidence-based models. Many chapters will discuss the models that employ specific skills to help you understand how the skill sets explored throughout the textbook relate to evidence-based practice.

Textbook Organization

This textbook has three sections. The first section focuses on you as a professional. The chapters in this section begin with an exploration of your motivation and values so these can become the foundation for your professional identity. Subsequent chapters integrate professional values and ethics into the foundation so you can begin to identify as a social work professional. The final chapters explore how the knowledge you are gaining in theory and research classes can build onto the foundation to promote professional-level thinking. By the end of the first section, you will be applying your knowledge to understand complex client situations and use professional knowledge to plan change-focused intervention.

The second section expands on your cognitive competencies into the realm of the helping relationship. The early chapters explore the development of an empathic working alliance with clients and larger client systems. You will learn how to apply your knowledge to understand client experiences and system dynamics. You will also learn how to use this knowledge to engage people in goal-directed change efforts. The content from this section integrates with the first section to prepare you for learning interactive skills that can be used with client systems of all sizes.

Throughout this section of the textbook, you begin to learn the core skills of generalist practice. Each skill is explored so you can use it for assessment and change-directed action with client systems of all sizes. There are four core skills in this section. Some skills, such as questioning and reflecting, will be familiar. You will learn how you habitually use these skills and then learn how to use them with increased precision in your professional roles. The concluding chapters develop competencies in using observation skills and providing direction so you can engage in multiple practice roles. These skills become the skill foundation for the final section.

The last section of the textbook explores how to use interactive skills to accomplish client goals. You will begin by learning how to influence people without telling them what to do. This is accomplished by integrating the interactive skills with the empathic working alliance skills developed in the second section. This becomes your foundation for motivating clients and working within a focused alliance. Later chapters explore how to include other professionals and community support people in the working alliance. This leads to understanding collaborative practice with multiple agency and community systems. In conclusion, you will learn how to finish change-focused intervention and help clients to succeed in the future.

The competencies developed throughout the textbook are the foundation of generalist practice. You will learn competencies that can be applied in all social work roles from clinical to advocacy functions. The foundation competencies will prepare you for the full range of professional roles, including many evidence-based practices. The competencies can be expanded in later courses to include unique skills used with specific client groups and types of client system.

Section I

Building the Professional Self

The first section of the book focuses on the core skill sets that help practitioners develop a professional identity. This involves how you identify with our professions, how you maintain self-awareness and control, how you use knowledge, and how you make ethical practice decisions. The section concludes with an exploration of how these elements emerge when you conduct client assessments and establish the goals of intervention.

When reading the chapters of this section, you have the opportunity to use chapter exercises to develop skills in each of these areas. Written material and exercises are provided to maximize your professional development. This book is quite different from texts and materials used in other courses. The difference is associated with the focus on you, the reader. When reading the contents of these chapters, you will be encouraged to reflect on past experiences, feelings, thoughts, and motivations. You will then be assisted in building onto your current skills to develop professional competencies.

By the end of this section, you should be aware of typical patterns of thinking and responding to situations. You should also have a clear sense of the traits that must be monitored and controlled to assure they do not interfere with professional practice. This is critical to the professional use of self. If there are areas that seem particularly challenging, it is important to explore these with faculty advisors because this section provides a foundation for building the skill sets in subsequent sections of the text.

Chapter 1

Professional Self-Awareness

Effective helping professionals tend to be very self-aware and maintain an ability to control how they respond to situations (Jennings & Skovholt, 1999; Jennings et al., 2008). Self-awareness and self-control dovetail with each other to create interpersonal effectiveness. The term “self-awareness” refers to the ability to tune in to yourself, maintaining an ongoing knowledge of your emotional and cognitive responses to external events. “Self-control” refers to the ability to control how you express your feelings and thoughts in interaction with others. Such control keeps your traits, emotional reactions, and personal issues from interfering with ethically grounded professional practice (Brabender, 2007).

Importance of Self-Awareness

The need for practitioner self-awareness is well established in the professional literature (Borrell-Carrio & Epstein, 2004; D. W. Johnson, 1997; Spurling & Dryden, 1989). Because professional practice occurs in an interpersonal context, we must be able to monitor our responses to client situations in order to allow professional skills, rather than reactivity, to govern how we act. Self-awareness serves four critical functions for helping professionals:

1.A source of personal power. When people know what they are thinking and feeling, they stay fully informed on how they are influenced by others (Hedges, 1992; Rober, 1999; Tansey & Burke, 1989). When a person is not aware of how others influence feelings and thinking, there is a loss of control and personal power.

Case Example

A practitioner tended to be very protective of misunderstood adolescents. Other than this, she was a very effective practitioner. However, when working with parents and children together, she tended to consistently side with the child, causing angry reactions in the parents. Eventually parental complaints required some focused supervision to help her understand, and gain control of, her side-taking tendencies.

2.Source of insight into differences. When people are aware of their thoughts and feelings, they are better positioned to understand the differences between themselves and other people (Arthur, 1998; Dettlaff, Moore, & Dietz, 2006). A full awareness allows for differences to be explored without feelings of threat (Dettlaff et al., 2006; Manthei, 1997). This is particularly important when cultural or spiritual differences exist in the client situation (Daniel, Roysircar, Ables, & Boyd, 2004; Suyemoto, Liem, Kuhn, Mongillow, & Yauriac, 2007; Yan, 2005; Wiggins, 2009).

Case Example

A practitioner was meeting with a family from a Native American reservation. When the family came in for the first appointment, the father was not willing to talk with the practitioner. As the practitioner explored the reluctance, the father stated that the practitioner was asking too many questions. Even though there had been few questions in the interview, the practitioner allowed the man to express himself and learned that the questionnaires sent out as part of intake were culturally offensive. The practitioner was able to explore his feelings with him and arrange a different way to gather the information needed for the intake.

3.A source of insight and control (Hedges, 1992; Rothman, 1999). Everybody reacts to certain situations based on their feelings and beliefs. If practitioners understand their thoughts and feelings, they can separate their reactions from the client's story and proceed in a way that is most helpful to the client. However, when practitioners are not aware, they may superimpose reactive agendas and proceed based on reactivity rather than on a logical understanding of the client's needs. Concurrently, practitioners may avoid client themes, options, feelings, and issues to diminish the intensity of their own emotional reactions.

Case Example

A female practitioner was working with an elderly couple. The husband's constant criticism of the wife was very similar to the dynamics between her mother and father. As they began exploring options for supported living, the practitioner reacted to the criticisms and prompted the woman to confront her husband and state that her needs were not being met in the relationship. The woman followed the directives but was actually content in the relationship. The confrontations, however, began to alienate the husband and cause deterioration of the relationship. Eventually they stopped coming to see the practitioner and did not move into supported living.

4.A source of emotional connection with clients. Practitioners' abilities to tune in to their own strengths, vulnerabilities, sensitivities, and feelings provide a set of internal experiential hooks on which they can hang the experiences of others (Rothman, 1999). These experiential hooks are drawn on when others speak of their experiences. The practitioner listens to the other's story and draws on these hooks to imagine the full experience of the client. The hooks, coming from self-awareness, consequently provide for empathic understanding of the client and a focus on improving responses (Manthei, 1997).

Case Example

Several rebellious teens were starting service in a school-based group for high-risk youths. The youths were teacher-referred and knew that they might be expelled if they did not attend. The practitioner knew of the coercion to attend and was concerned about how it might affect the group. The practitioner then reflected on past experiences when others had made him go places and do things that he did not want to do. Issues of resentment, passive defiance, and powerlessness filled his head as he thought about these experiences. In the first meeting, he used these experiences to make sense out of the attitudes presented by the group members. This allowed him to explore their feelings about attendance.

Self-Awareness as an Element of Interactive Practice

The goal of self-awareness is to prevent practitioner attitudes and feelings from interfering with professional interactions (Williams, 2008). It is very important to be able to pay attention and respond to client statements (Bachelor, 1995). When you are in a reactive mode, your focus shifts to acting on your reactive impulses rather than attending to the client's statements. To have a good working relationship, you must understand the content of client statements and also respond to the client's emotional experience (Castonguay, Goldfried, Wiser, Raue, & Hays, 1996; Miville, Carlozzi, Gushue, Schara, & Ueda, 2006). When practitioners are able to accomplish such positive and open working relationships, creative problem-solving and a sense of playfulness can be achieved with clients (Creed & Kendall, 2005; Morgan & Wampler, 2003).

Self-Awareness Based Practice Errors

Two common types of self-awareness errors can interfere with a good working relationship: errors of omission and errors of commission. Errors of omission occur when you interact with another person but fail to pick up on important themes or information during the interaction. Errors of commission occur when you actively insert your own meaning into the situation or take actions that interfere with the helping relationship. Without an awareness of your beliefs, biases, reaction themes, and feeling patterns, you are at high risk of these types of error.

Errors of omission occur when you do not adequately understand what the other person is attempting to communicate. This can occur if your feelings, beliefs, and attitudes intrude on your listening. In such moments your focus shifts to your thinking rather than fully attending to the client communication. When you miss the details of the client experience, you have huge gaps in understanding. When such gaps develop, there is a tendency to fill them with assumptions and theories of what is occurring rather than relying on information provided by the client. Such errors are hard to identify without first understanding your communication patterns and biases.

Errors of commission occur when you impose your beliefs or feelings onto the client situation. In such situations your thoughts and feelings exert more influence on the interaction than your client's statements. When we start imposing our models onto the client, significant problems often emerge in the helping relationship (Borrell-Carrio & Epstein, 2004; Keenan, Tsang, Bogo, & George, 2005; Price & Jones, 1998; Saunders, 1999). Research on helping relationships concludes that clients relate best to nonjudgmental, positive, and responsive practitioners (Bachelor, 1995; Binder & Strupp, 1997; Hilsenroth, Peters, & Ackerman, 2004).

The solution to errors of omission involves increased awareness of your personal traits, but avoiding of errors of commission requires you to apply this awareness to how you are operating in the here and now. Often when errors of commission occur, you will find yourself talking more than the client as you try to convince him or her to accept your point. If you ever experience an emotional pressure to “sell” your insight or solution to the client, you may be at risk of a commission type of error. The self-awareness task is to notice a shift in the interpersonal dynamics during the session. These dynamics may indicate errors of commission:

Clients become less active in the conversation as you take over the discussion.You start to believe you know more about the client situation than the client does.You start explaining the client's reality back to him or her.You believe that you know what clients need to do and start imposing your solution.

As self-awareness develops, it will be important to find a balance between observing yourself and observing your client. If you become too self-focused, you can create a new problem as you spend too much time attending to yourself and ignore the client (Williams, 2008). Indicators of errors should operate like red flags, where you notice something in the interaction that provides a clue that you need to alter your approach. To begin this process, the next sections explore the roots of your beliefs and affective reactions.

Socialization, Self-Awareness, and Initial Skill Sets

It is likely that you have already started some self-reflection in your early professional courses. Often reading theories causes us to reflect on our past experiences and current functioning. This is a common experience for people entering professional education programs. It is your personal history that provides a predisposition to care about other people. This same set of experiences develops an initial skill set for exploring situations, understanding problems, and identifying options. If you did not have such experiences and skills, it is unlikely that you would consider a helping profession.

Process of Socialization

As you enter your professional education, it is helpful to understand your predispositions and initial skill sets. These helping foundations are based largely on socialization experiences. As your skills develop, interpersonal habits form. Some habits involve our thinking and affective reactions. Other habits involve how you interact with other people. The skill foundation that you bring into a helping profession involves a convergence of your interactive habits and attitudes that promote caring. Although this skill foundation is useful as a starting place, the habitual nature of interpersonal skills leaves you at risk for errors.

To build an awareness of the beliefs and values that control your initial skill sets, it is useful to first understand how socialization forms your thinking and interactive habits. There are several sources of socialization. Figure 1.1 presents four common sources of socialization. Take a moment to consider some of your experiences with these sources and reflect on the values and beliefs that emerged through your socialization experiences.

Figure 1.1 Socialization Influences Cube

The nature of our mental socialization is shaped by two continua. The first continuum focuses on how you process events. On one end is reliance on logical processes and thinking. At the other end of the continuum are emotional processes. Although both logical and emotional processes are important, you often tend to favor one type of processing based on your past experiences. The second continuum focuses on the interactive context of socialization. Some people are prone to immediate reactions while others tend to respond slowly through a series of exchanges. Our skill foundation is very heavily influenced by these two continua.

Cognitive-Emotional Elements

The cognitive-emotional continuum ranges from highly cognitive to highly emotional socialization experiences. Emotionally intense experiences tend to stimulate affective reactions. If the experience is positive, you often seek to replicate it in future relationships. If the experience is negative, you tend to avoid similar experiences as you develop. People who have intense emotional experiences during their development may tend to process situations from an emotional position.

At the cognitive end of the continuum, high-intensity experiences promote questioning and critical thinking. This is common in socialization exchanges where experimentation, experiential learning, and negotiation were promoted. Each exchange involves thinking and rethinking situations based on new experiences and outcomes. Lower-intensity experiences may involve socialization experiences where you are told what to think and encouraged to accept rather than question. If negative emotion is linked to certain thinking styles such as feeling rejected for autonomous thinking, a tendency to accept rather than question can be strongly embedded in our socialization experience.

The variations in our socialization form affective and thinking habits as we age. Our patterns of responding to emotion and expressing feelings, beliefs, and values develop and become second nature. Some of us love thinking through complicated problems and will automatically begin analyzing situations as they emerge. Others are more attuned to affect and can easily identify with people's feelings and internal experiences. Still others react to situations with particular emotional or cognitive themes. These automatic tendencies provide the initial skill foundation for how you respond to client situations.

Interactive Elements

The second continuum focuses on relational elements in our socialization. You develop your interpersonal skills within a social context. There is a group of people you lived with, a group of people you learned with, and a group of people you played with. The nature of these groups provides a context for your interactive habits. You have all read about family systems, attachment relationships, and other theories focused on relationship influences. Consequently, you likely have a strong appreciation of the relational context of human development.

Your interactive socialization experiences form habits for conversing. You have learned to wait for your turn to talk. Consequently, many of us listen until we have a thought, then shift our focus to our thinking to remember the thought until our turn emerges. This and other interactive habits shape your initial interpersonal skills. Everyone carries around invisible rules about what is rude and what is acceptable. To promote social success, habits emerge to inhibit rude behavior.

The interactive habits you develop for managing social relationships provide a set of initial communication skills. These skills are the foundation upon which you build your professional practice skills. Your patterns of listening and exploring situations emerge from social situations in your past. Concurrently, your patterns of problem-solving, managing differences, and decision making often are well set before you enter a helping profession. Given that helping professionals all work in a relationship with clients, these habits are very important to understand and control.

Socialization Influences on Response Systems

The habits that emerge from your socialization often form patterns that influence how you respond to situations. Depending on the sources and the intensity of experiences with each continuum, some habits will be tightly held and others will be flexible. Cognitive-emotional habits form beliefs and codes for living; interpersonal habits form patterns of responding. Although these habits have been instrumental in your social successes, as a helping professional you must move beyond habitual responding by building “professional” beliefs and skills.

The discussions and exercises throughout this and the subsequent chapters build on your current beliefs and interactive habits. Through reading, thinking, and applying your knowledge in the exercises, you will start building your professional “self.” The professional identity and skill sets you develop should complement, rather than conflict with, the caring habits you have already developed. You will learn to use yourself with greater precision and purpose. This ability to control your responses requires self-awareness.

Understanding Response Systems

As you start building self-awareness, it is useful to first understand your response tendencies. Four areas of experience affect how people react to any given situation. These four areas provide a framework for monitoring reactions. Such frameworks are useful because it is impossible to monitor everything. The four areas of experience can be broken down into two domains: action systems and processing systems. The term “action system” refers to the interactive and behavioral responses that occur in response to a situation. The term “processing system” refers to the internal thoughts and feelings that emerge in the situation. By concentrating on one or the other system on responding, people can scan and monitor how they react in different situations.

Action Systems

The action systems govern what people say or do within a situation. There are two elements in the action system: interaction and behaviors. The interactive response system governs what you say and how you relate to other people. The behavioral response system controls how you act within a situation. Although the two are closely related, it is worth considering each separately so unique contributions can be understood. In helping professionals, interactive people tend to explain, provide advice, or try to discuss situations. More action-oriented people seek to fix things or take over situations until problems are resolved.

To understand how socialization influences your interactive response system, think about some of the rules that govern how you speak to others. You probably have noticed how your interactions change from situation to situation. In some situations you talk more while in others you are content to be passive. Similarly, in some situations you are tentative while in others outspoken. Students learning to be helping professionals have two very common interactive habits (Piers & Ragg, 2008). The first emerges in situations where you talk more. Often talking is preceded by an impulse to say something. In such situations there is often a socialized interactive pattern.

Case example. Two adolescent females are talking. When you observe the pattern of conversation you can notice that as DiAndrea listens to Juanita, she has a thought that triggers an impulse to share the thought. DiAndrea consequently stops listening and focuses on the thought. When Juanita stops talking, DiAndrea shares the thought or story. DiAndrea's story shifts the focus of the discussion. While the thought is triggered by Juanita's story, the thoughts that are expressed shift to a somewhat related story about DiAndrea. This is common when talking among friends; someone tells a story that causes another person to want to share a similar story.

This example highlights a common socialized pattern of interaction. The pattern emerges from our politeness socialization, where authority figures have told us not to interrupt or to wait our turn. Consequently we have developed a pattern of listening and then disengaging to maintain our thoughts until our turn emerges. This pattern, while very helpful in our social relationships, can interfere with the helping relationship because you end up disengaging from the client while focused on your own thoughts. If this pattern is familiar to you, pay close attention to the tuning in and exploratory skills chapters as they will help you develop new habits. At this point, just take note that this is a habit you may want to control.

A second socialized interactive pattern includes advice giving. Most often you learn how to solve problems from parents or guardians. Reflect for a moment on the types of exchanges that occur when you approach your parent/guardian with a problem. Many parents listen for a short period of time and then provide a solution through advice giving. This pattern of problem solving becomes the template you use when friends approach you with a problem. This habit is very useful with friends and is part of being a caring person. Yet the pattern also can interfere with the helping relationship as it involves imposing our vision of the problem on clients.

Similar situations cause people to take action or express themselves behaviorally. At times, you discover this reaction through our bodies. Gestures, feelings of pressure, and muscle tightening tune us into the existence of such reactions. For example, when you hear that someone has been treated unfairly, you often experience a pressure to take some sort of action, such as calling someone or writing a letter. In such situations, it is important to identify the reaction and then assess how the reaction might influence the helping relationship.

Awareness of our reactions can help us prevent mistakes. If you feel impatient to speak or to take action on behalf of the client, this is your reaction, not a request from the client to act on his or her behalf. Awareness of the reaction allows us to identify the pressure as our desire to help. Because this is your impulse, it is up to you to control the response so you can refocus on the client situation to see what the client needs.

Processing Systems

The processing systems involve the thoughts and feelings we have regarding a situation. Awareness of the processing system involves two areas of focus: what we are thinking and what we are feeling. The thinking elements include interpretations, attributions, values, assumptions, and beliefs. The feeling elements include the immediate emotional responses to the client situation (e.g., sadness, helplessness, disgust, hopelessness) and our experience of the client during the session.

Awareness of our thinking and feeling is vital because these become the interpretive frames for understanding the client situation. Often our interpretive guides thread back to socialization messages and thinking habits. As we approach situations, these guides filter and organize our understanding of the situation. This understanding, in turn, dictates how we respond. Several systems of thinking influence the interpretation of situations. Some systems include:

Values. Your socialization provided you with values that set your code for living. Some values are tightly held while others are flexible. Although these are your values for living, they may not be the values that inform your client's decisions. Tightly held values place you at risk of imposing your codes of living on your clients. It is important to understand your values so they do not interfere with your understanding of client situations.Meaning systems. You have developed systems of assigning meaning to statements, words, events, and situations. These systems often are based on past experiences in similar situations. It is important to be aware of how you attribute meaning and responsibility to events so you can allow your clients to find their own meaning.Expectation systems. Your socialization experiences provide you with systems for predicting what might and/or should occur within different situations. These systems include expectations based on roles (family roles, social positions, etc.), events (emergencies, disappointments, dates, etc.), and demographics (racial, sexual orientation, religious, economic, gender, age groups, etc.). These socialization-based expectations are based on past information, which often is drawn on for interpreting new situations. It is important to understand your past systems of expectations so they do not control your expectations in client situations.

Without an awareness of how beliefs and models of understanding influence your reactions, you cannot truly understand clients. Consequently your responses to clients will vary in usefulness. For example, if you believe that arguing is “bad” and should be avoided, when members of a client system begin to argue, you might intervene to decrease the arguing. Although this might be consistent with your beliefs about family life, it may not help achieve the family's goals. However, if you are aware of your personal injunctions about arguing, you will be able to control the impulse to stop the arguing and work with the family to bring an argument to fruition.

Concurrent with developing an awareness of patterns of thinking and interpreting situations, practitioners need to be very aware of their feelings. Feelings are automatic responses to situations that can easily communicate your reactions through nonverbal communication. When clients see your reaction, they may interpret it as disapproval. Clients consequently may begin to edit their disclosures to spare your feelings or avoid certain topics because they believe you cannot handle the content area.

The Cultural Context of Socialization

Your socialization experiences occur within a cultural context that sets the norms for your family. Although families within every culture diverge from each other, there is a tendency for families within each culture to have overlapping patterns that influence child guidance, disciplinary practices, family roles, and parental responses to children (Bross, 1982; Ragg, 2006). To help understand your cultural influences, it is helpful first to understand how cultural elements likely influenced your parents. To organize this discussion, cultural influences will be discussed in terms of four parental functions: discipline, guidance, accessibility, and nurturing.

Parents tend to perform specific functions as part of socialization. Notice in Figure 1.2 that accessibility and nurturing functions help children integrate feelings of being lovable. As a parent attends to their child, the child develops feelings of self-worth and emotional well-being. The parental functions of guidance and discipline promote limiting behavior. These socialization functions help children understand the world and behave in a manner that will promote social success.

Figure 1.2 Cultural Influences on Socialization

Cultural elements that influence parental discipline include abstract mindedness and systems of sanctioning. The term “abstract mindedness” refers to the level of concreteness in the culture. Some cultures are very concrete and operate with very clear rules, expectations, and punishments. Other cultures are very abstract and use stories and myths as part of the socialization. Closely associated with abstract mindedness, cultural norms set standards for the punishment of children. Some cultures use corporal punishment, such as spanking or other physical disciplines; other cultures, such as the dominant North American culture, endorse other methods, such as time out or loss of privileges.

The cultural elements that influence parental guidance include the experience of difference and cultural values. The phrase “experience of difference” refers to the relationship between the cultural group and the dominant culture. Some cultures feel superior to the dominant culture while others feel judged and left out. Regardless of the group's position vis-à-vis the dominant culture, parents must help children understand the differences. In many aspects, these discussions involve helping children understand the cultural values. There is great diversity in cultural values including religious influences, materialism, work ethics, artistic expression, connections to nature, and other domains that make the cultural groups distinct. There are also varying levels of privilege and influence.

Parental accessibility varies greatly across cultures based on the cultural orientation to resources and the collectivist nature of the culture. The orientation to resources again is related partly to the cultural group's position vis-à-vis the dominant group. Some cultural groups have restricted access to higher-paying jobs and monetary resources. Such groups must work in low-status and low-income positions. Often members of such cultures must work more than one job, which restricts parental availability for socializing children. Other cultures may seek to accumulate resources, which can also limit parental availability. In collective cultures, resources are shared more than in individualistic cultures. In these collective cultures, members share in socializing children.

Nurturing children is influenced by the support structures and role expectations inherent in the culture. Some cultures have rigid expectations about nurturing functions. In some cultural groups, these functions are relegated primarily to a specific gender group. It is common for a cultural group to have expectations regarding the amount or quality of nurturing. Within a culture there are also support systems to help develop the nurturing functions. For example, some cultures promote nonfamily day care by funding child care services while other cultures promote kinship approaches to child care. Such systems and expectations influence the structure of socialization.

These cultural elements combine to set a tone for family socialization. The messages and beliefs form our cultural default settings and often are unrecognized until we are confronted by cultural differences. Although racial and ethnic groups may make it easy to identify some cultural differences, not all differences are immediately evident. Cultural groups such as gays, lesbians, and conservative religious groups are often invisible until they self-identify as being different. Consequently, it is useful to build an awareness of our cultural influences prior to working with client groups that may evoke our cultural biases and presuppositions.

Exercise 1.1: Exploring Cultural Influences

This exercise explores your cultural influences using the cultural dimensions just described. All people have cultural influences. If you are a member of the dominant culture, you may be unaware of the influences because they often are embedded in the structure of society. Cultural influences include your status in society, your race, religion, and ancestry. For example, if you are Caucasian and were born in the United States, your culture is probably the dominant culture. However, if you are Asian American and were born in the United States, you will have had very different life experiences. Spend some time thinking about your life experiences, ancestry, and cultural background and identify your cultural group.

Use the next set of questions to reflect on different cultural influences. For each cultural element, think about the questions and then enter some of your observations in the cultural chart (see Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 Cultural Chart

1.Abstract mindedness. In your culture, how much do people rely on principles, symbols, and the like to convey cultural values? Can you tell a person's status by belongings or are other symbols used? How rigid and concrete are the cultural rules? Is your culture very tolerant of gray areas? Are there clear rules that people must follow? How can you tell someone is successful? Do people communicate by telling stories, or is communication more direct?

2.Experience of difference. How often do people in your culture talk about cross-cultural differences? Can you identify people from your culture? How do cultural members make sense of racism or cultural oppression? How do parents explain differences to the children? How are economic disparities explained? How are people in your culture different from others? How have people in your life made sense of the differences? Do people talk about the differences, or is this kind of discussion avoided or brushed aside as a topic of conversation? How are the resource differences between different cultures explained? How do differences influence your response to situations?

3.Values and religion. What institutions are most influential (e.g., schools, church, government)? What do people do to promote the institutions? How have the important values and institutions influenced your responses to situations?

4.Individualistic versus collective. Is your culture more socialist or capitalist? Are common rights or individual rights more protected? Do people have obligations to the larger group (e.g., public service)? Does the tax structure benefit individuals or the public good?

5.Roles and expectations. What roles are most important in your culture? What family roles are most respected? What are the expectations for the different family roles? How valued are nonfamily roles that socialize children? What is the ideal family structure in your culture?

6.Available resources. Do most people in your cultural group have enough resources to achieve their goals? How important are possessions in your culture? How much energy do people invest in acquiring resources? Do people share resources freely within the culture or withhold?

7.Support structures. Whom do people typically approach for support? What sources of support do people avoid approaching (e.g., social practitioners)? What sources of support bring stigma? Is it okay to need support, or is that a sign of failure?

8.Systems of sanctioning. How are children punished in your culture? Is physical punishment okay? How do people hold each other accountable? Do people use lawyers or deal with each other to work out problems? What are the most severe social punishments? How are people rewarded?

After you have reflected on all of these questions, review the cultural chart to identify some of the strongest cultural influences. Try to identify some areas where cross-cultural conflicts may emerge, and develop an initial plan for identifying problems in the helping relationship.

Knowing Your Socialized Background

As you develop your awareness of how you react to different situations, it is useful to explore the influences that underlie your response systems. Most of the events that influence your models of understanding come from socialization experiences and the cognitive constructions you use to make sense out of life. To understand how your family helped to socialize you within the cultural systems, you need to understand family influences. Doing this often involves exploring how you have responded to and made sense of critical events and family history. Such exploration greatly increases your self-awareness.

The next section provides an opportunity to explore your own life so you can begin to identify themes and patterns to monitor in your professional work. The exploration in this book is very brief and serves only as a beginning for your ongoing development. As you proceed with your professional career, it will be important to continue this work as new areas for understanding will emerge frequently in response to new client situations.

In guiding you through the brief self-exploration, exercises are used to help you highlight patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, and interacting. As you use each of the tools, make note of your own experience of exploration. This experience likely will be somewhat similar to your clients' experience during the assessment phase of intervention.

The first exploration begins with family life. In your most formative years, your life experience is dependent on family and neighborhood. As you age, you integrate broader ranges of experience, but much of your response is still inherited from our families. To build self-awareness, you must concurrently develop understanding of how you have adapted to your family-based experiences. Consequently, the self-exploration begins with a genogram.

Family Genograms

A genogram is the first tool that you will use to make sense of your family experiences. The genogram was developed by Murray Bowen and has been broadly used in family-based practice (Marlin, 1989; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Shellenberger, 1999). Many books outline the use of genograms in practice. The next exercise will not provide a full exploration on how to use the genogram but will introduce you to the basics. In performing this exercise, first follow the instructions for constructing the basic genogram. After you have drawn your genogram, read the instructions for the family dynamics and reflect on how they influenced your socialization.

In the family genogram, circles represent females and squares represent males with their current age noted within the circle or square. Generational differences are indicated by vertical position with the parents (or even grandparents) on the top and offspring on lower lines. The lowest line in the genogram is the youngest generation in the family system you are assessing. Typically, the eldest sibling is drawn on the left with younger siblings ordered according to birth order drawn to the right. The current family is always in the middle of the genogram with a dotted line around the family members who live together.

Multiple marriages or relationships are possible to draw. To depict such relationships, draw lines between the adult and first partner. Then break the line and connect the next partner. Although this may sound complicated, the principles of drawing a genogram are fairly simple once you see how it is done. In the genogram depicted in Figure 1.4, you can see that both the current father and mother had prior marriages. One mother died (shown by an X) and the other mother had been divorced (shown by the slash breaking the line between the parent figures). The father in the current family had a son, who is now 18, with the female parent who died. The mother in the current family had, with her first husband, twin girls who are 13. These girls are living in the current family, as shown by their inclusion in the dotted line. Children born from the current relationship (ages 9 and 6) are drawn with a line descending from the union line (the line connecting the two parents).

Figure 1.4 Family Genogram

Figure 1.4 shows a two-generational genogram depicting parents and children. Often practitioners want to assess families using three-generational genograms, such as the one shown in Figure 1.5. Using the same principles, the three-generational genogram places the eldest family members on the top and the youngest on the bottom. The first (eldest) generation is represented by a third-generational line above the parents. This presents a bit of a challenge because the parents forming the current family system are also members of a sibling line. Typically, the children of the first generation who marry to form the next generation are indicated by drawing them lower than the other siblings. A line can then be used to form the parent level of the next generation.

Figure 1.5 Three-Generational Genogram

There can be many challenges when working with genograms. For example, if a person is adopted or unsure of his or her parents, or if a person is born from an incestuous relationship, it is hard to map the family. Similarly, some cultural groups have experienced significant traumas, such as the use of boarding schools, lynching, ethnic cleansing, and disasters that will impact the genogram. In such situations, it is possible to place a question mark (?) in the genogram and make notes to identify the background information. If clients appear distraught when mapping the family background, it is best to stop the exercise and explore their reactions.

The relationships among the family members also can be depicted on the genogram using different types of lines, as shown in Figure 1.5. Typical relationship types included on a genogram are conflicted, close, distant or tenuous, and cut-off relationships (no longer talk to each other). Although many more types of relationships exist, these four are enough for the purposes of this example. If you want to include more, add more types of lines to the legend and use them in the genogram.

When using lines to show types of relationships, the direction of energy in the relationship is shown with arrowheads. If the feeling is mutual in the relationship, usually there are arrowheads on both ends of the line. If the feeling flows in only one direction, there is only one arrowhead (which points to the family member who receives the emotion). For example, if Person A was always angry with Person B but the feeling was not reciprocal, the arrowhead would point from Person A to Person B.

In Figure 1.5