— RECOMMENDATIONS —

We learned a lot of valuable information in this course. In only eight weeks it was super intense and very condensed – but that’s just the way the program is.  I think a beneficial way to strengthen the leadership content in Professional Development 7500 is to include speakers. The videos of presenters throughout the coursework was a nice touch, but having class time with actual leaders of our field could really strengthen the content of our course. You can’t ask a video questions. I personally enjoy free training and seminars, but I recognize that isn’t for everyone. So maybe having some leadership trainings or seminars that are optional for students to attend. Maybe we write a reflection about the experience or chat about it in class or a Zoom.

Growing up, I didn’t fit in. I went to a private Catholic school. I’ve always had a friendly and outgoing personality. I was loud and outspoken. I was really the only girl in my class like that. But it was who I was raised to be. My mom raised me and my sister to be the nice kids, but to also be leaders and do what is right even if it isn’t the popular thing to do. Being a leader has always come natural to me. To me it is just second nature and what I do. After taking time to learn leadership concepts and principles, now I know the why behind what I’m doing and why it works.

I know not everyone is as comfortable being leader as I am, so it’s important to introduce various leadership concepts and principles at the beginning of their Master’s of Social Work program so that when they have to take the lead they will know how to and what to do to take the lead. And hopefully people will follow! Goleman’s articles about the qualities of leaders is a great place to start so they are familiar with the characteristics that people respond well to. Being a leader can be a scary thing! It can be exhausting and overwhelming – but at the end of the day someone has to do it. Having resources to fall back on when the time comes can be comforting. They won’t be totally lost if they need to take the lead. They will be familiar and hopefully comfortable to some extent with taking the lead. Unfortunately, they won’t know until they try. Reading about leadership is one thing, but practicing it is a whole other thing. You’ll never know until you try!

Daniel Goleman did an extensive study on qualities of effective leaders.  He was able to identify five over lapping characteristics or quality that effective leaders share and they are: Self-awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. If you would’ve asked me three and half years ago which one of these is the biggest challenge for me to practice – it would without a doubt have been empathy. This was a concept I was reading about in my Positive Psychology course. (One of the best classes I’ve ever taken!) I remember coming across in a book – The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirksy-  we were reading and I had to circle it and put a question mark next to it and ask about it in office hours. You see, three and half years ago, Feb 2018 was the worst month of my life. My grandpa had past away. My boyfriend had gotten kicked out. Two kids I went to high school with died in a car crash. I couldn’t understand empathy at that point in my life because it involved understanding “the emotional make up of other people” but how was I supposed to do that when I didn’t even understand my own emotional make up? (Goleman 95). After a lot of soul searching and educating myself on how to practice empathy – I think it is one of my better qualities. I love the way this video explain empathy — Empathy vs Sympathy.

In 2021 I would like to think I have all of these mastered, but I think it is a continuum of progress. Somedays you do better then others  depending on the quality you are talking about. Right now I think my biggest challenge is self-regulation. I like a schedule and a plan and I do not like when it changes. I have a routine I like to follow. I’m well aware of the saying that goes something like “people plan and God laughs.” So I know things can change! But that doesn’t mean that I like it. I can get really frustrated and upset when plans change – especially at the last minute – and my emotions can get the best of me.

My plan to practice self regulation to get better at it include redirecting my disruptive moods and allow myself to take some deep breaths and remind myself it will be ok. I also need to get better at suspending my judgements and think before I speak. When I’m upset I can go totally off cuff and will sometimes say thing that I know are hurtful. I need to work on identifying when I find myself slipping into these negative emotional states and allow myself to take deep breaths and utilize positive affirmations that I can handle the change and that change can be good and it will be ok.

• http://theoblack.com/Resources/Leadership%20Style%20Matrix%202013_TWB.pdf

I think a good place to start with understanding what kind of leader you are is with a Behavioral Style Assessment, so if you follow the link provided it will take you to a self scoring leadership behavioral assessment. It’s only 20 questions so it does not take very long. To get your leadership style, you’ll take your highest letter score, and your highest number score and plot on the matrix below

My highest letter was B, and my highest number 4 – so I got the promoting leadership style. This assessment confirms I am stimulating, goal-driven, enthusiastic, innovative and a risk taker. The assessment also lets you know the weaknesses that accompany that style. So some weakness of my promoting style include inattention to planning, ego driven, undisciplined and inadequate follow up. I would say for the most part the strengths are spot on, however the only weakness I can agree with is inadequate follow up. It is just not my strong suite unfortunately. I can incorporate this assessment into my practice by sharing my results with my supervisor during supervising. The assessment might help explain why I do things a certain way.  Or if I am ever a supervisor or ever have to over see staff, I think this would be a good assessment to do with my staff to help identify their strengths/weaknesses.

Another resource I would want to incorporate  if I were a supervisor with my staff is some basic documentation guidelines. Like I’ve mentioned in other posts,  proper documentation is essential to ethical social work practice. Because this is something I firmly believe in, I took a totally elective course in my last semester of undergrad which covered documentation all semester and it didn’t do anything for my degree whatsoever – it was totally optional. That’s how passionately I feel about proper documentation. Below you will find a link that will take you to a Google Doc with a few documentation guidelines put out by The Ohio State University’s College of Social Work.

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eubv3xEf6xj1pP9hCosDFDh-jjmrI934aAiOaon6WHs/edit?usp=sharing

I’ve been employed at a domestic violence for two and a half years. I’m no stranger to a crisis. There may be a crisis in the shelter or it might a crisis call on the hotline. I’ve dealt with a lot there and learned a lot. A concept from class that had a significant impact on me is the Seven Stage Crisis Intervention Model. It has given me a road map for my work that I can use NOW. And I plan to utilize it in my future career if I stay in the world of domestic violence, which I wouldn’t mind. I like working for such a good cause.  Below you will find an image of the seven stages of Roberts’ Crisis Intervention Model

The crisis happens at the bottom of the triangle, and then the worker works through the stages moving their way up the triangle. As a crisis hotline worker, I’m most comfortable at the bottom of the triangle. I am confident that as I advance in my career and get more practice in handling the stages towards the top of the triangle I will be able to become comfortable with those as well. I think the follow up post crisis will be the most rewarding. You will be able to see the transformation of your client from being in the middle of a crisis to having survived that crisis – that they maybe thought they wouldn’t be able to survive.

The last concept I want to discuss is the Mood Elevator. This is something I think everyone should utilize and incorporate in their personal lives as well as their careers. What is so great about the Mood Elevator is it makes you stop to reflect and ask yourself, “where am I?” Are you high or low? If you’re low and not where you want to be, why is that? What can you do to get where you want to be? Please find a copy of the Mood Elevator below 🙂

I think the Mood Elevator had such an impact on me because of how useful it is. I can incorporate it into my social work practice with client as well take it with me to supervision. It’s also useful in my personal life with my significant other. We’ve been living together less then a year and for the last three months we have been working opposite schedules so we really never get to see each other- it is HARD!  Sometimes I feel like we aren’t on the same page with things, and I feel like he isn’t helping out around the apartment as much as I am, or helping with the dog as much as I am. Being able to tell him I’m stuck between frustrated and irritated on the mood elevator let’s him physically see where I am at. He is a studying middle childhood education and is about to start his student teaching full time in the fall. He has talked about getting a poster of it for his classroom for his students to use when they do check-ins. The Mood Elevator is very a versatile tool that can benefit many professions and be used in just day-to – day living.

It is important to be an effective, competent social work leader at all the levels of social work practice – micro & macro. An effective and competent social worker uses evidence bases practices with their clients and are reading articles and attending trainings and seminars to continue to learn the best practices. They utilize proper documentation that is timely and follows the agency’s guidelines for documentation. I am firm believer that it is an ethical responsibility to have proper documentation. Specifically talking abut macro social work practice, on the other hand, an effective and competent social worker would need to identify a program, intervention, etc. that would benefit the whole community – for example- and not just one client sitting in front of them. It could take some time to learn the needs, strengths, weakness as well as resources that have already been established within the community before deciding on an appropriate and ethical intervention to utilize.

Being an effective and competent social work leader may intimate some of the other professional we encounter in our work – nurses, teachers. psychologists, counsellors. Social workers have a strong Code of Ethics. This can frustrate some of these professionals that we work with who do not understand our Code of Ethics because their profession has their own code of ethics and they’re different. On the other hand, other professionals may be inspired by our deep enthusiasm for our Code of Ethics  and this could cause them to respect what social workers have to do – even if it could make things difficult on their end. Social workers make an impact on just about everyone they meet – clients and fellow professionals. Sometimes that impact is positive and sometimes it isn’t. Social workers are just people doing their best to serve the best interest of their clients. And sometimes the clients don’t want what’s in their best interest or think they don’t need it. Social workers have a tough job to do, but it sure is rewarding.

As a social work student, leadership to me is helping other students succeed. My classmates will turn to me with their questions about assignments, scholarships, basic financial aid, field placement and other various struggles that we encounter as students. Even if I don’t have an answer to their questions, I can usually point them in the right direction. It doesn’t just end there. I took an active role as Social Work Club president for my last two years of undergraduate studies. I used this role to advocate for my cohort. An example of this is when class times were getting changed. At Ohio State Marion the social work classes were late classes – they didn’t start until after 6 PM. For the people that worked full time jobs this was ideal for them. They could work their job then still attend class in the evenings. For other students it was inconvenient how late students would have to be on campus. If class didn’t start until 6/6:30, students weren’t leaving campus until close to 9 PM. As a result of a survey done among the social work students, class times got moved up to 4:45 PM. This meant getting out of class around 7/7:30 which was a lot more convenient for some students. Other students on the other hand weren’t sure how they would be able to work their full time jobs – that pay for school – while being able to get to campus as early as 4:45. Because of my position as Social Work Club President, I had an awesome working relationship with the Social Work Program Manager who also was the advisor for Social  Work Club. I was able to take the concerns of students who were debating if they would have to drop out of school because of the new start time, to the Program Manager. Unfortunately, nothing could be done at that point, but their voices were at least heard.

As a future practitioner, I think a lot of the same characteristics apply. Leaders are their for the people they work with to answer questions. That’s important to me because, they feel comfortable enough to come to you and a working relationship has been established and fostered to an extent. Having a productive working relationship with who you work with is important for various reasons. It’s nice to have someone to turn to that is your equal and not a manager or director. Practitioners who are also strong leaders are advocates. They advocate on behalf of their clients for all the things that our clients deserve – self determination, social justice, etc. They also advocate for their fellow workers. For example, if there is unfair treatment of workers or if there are safety concerns that aren’t being addressed being able to voice concerns to those in charge is a quality of a great leader!