HS 325 ~ Interviewing for Human Services
March 12, 2003
Synthesis Paper
Communicating with others for the most part is a very natural part of me. I am very comfortable interacting with others. My career goals at present, does not include interviewing in a clinical setting. I was puzzled that Interview for Human Services was a required course and it seemed like such a waste of time. I soon found out how wrong I was.
The first week of school I started an internship that required me to do intake interviews. At the time I didn’t know they were intake interviews, to me they were a lot of questions for the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse. I was sure I would get some formal training and get to sit in on a few interviews prior to doing my first one. Wrong again! I got a fifteen-minute review of the form that was seven pages long. I was handed files, shown a room and told to start. After that first night I couldn’t wait to learn from this class.
One of the first techniques I was able to implement was the importance of understanding multiculturalism. “Consider how you will deliver your questions. Consider the multi-cultural issues involved in word choice, tone, physical space, physical behavior, etc. Are you doing what is comfortable for you alone? For the interviewee? (Kristi, 2003, Lecture 2).” It is important to the interview process to understand my own beliefs and heritage as well as gaining knowledge of other cultures and customs. I learned quick that by changing my reflection, tone or the words made a big difference in how each women would open up to me. I didn’t get the hang of this concept with my class interviews until the last one. I observed in my first interview I “read” the questions in a generic way. My second interview I could tell I was more comfortable by the reflection in voice when asking the questions. I made the same mistake in both interviews; I had the questions in front of me. If I could do it again I would lose the comfort of the paper.
The next technique was the use of an opening line. In the beginning of the interview process I was reserved with all the women. Within a short period of time I realized the questions were generic not the women. I started to expand on my opening line, explaining that I am an intern with WWU majoring in Human Services. I would go into more detail about the purpose of the questions, what the results would be used for and approximately how long it would take. This also aided in the women being more open with me. As Murphy & Dillon (2003) stated …opening lines convey a tone that can have lasting effects on the relationship (p. 52). I did use this skill with both of my interviews prior to turning on the video camera. I wasn’t extremely impressed with my opening in either interview that was video taped. I see now that is because I more or less started the interview prior to the recording.
Psychological attending was easier for me than physical attending. I was so focused on the interviews that I wasn’t able to think about anything else. I would think that as interview became apart of your daily routine this could be difficult. Gerard Egan (1994) describes the components of physical attending using the acronym SOLER. I will use the same component to critique my focused attention in my interviews.
S – sit squarely; my first interview was difficult
because we were on a couch.
Hindsight I should have had us sit at the dining room table as
O – open posture; I feel that in both of my interviews I demonstrated open posture. I was free with my hands and body language.
L – lean forward; in my first interview I didn’t apply this technique. I did in my second interview lean forward to show my interest in what she was saying. I do feel I moved my position too many times, indicating I was uncomfortable.
E – eye contact; I had good eye contact in both of my interviews. Eye contact is a skill I am very comfortable with. Getting rid of my security blank (the piece of paper) in both interviews would have enhanced my eye contact.
R – relax; I wasn’t relaxed in my first interview. During my second interview I feel I was relaxed. It showed with my body language that I was comfortable in expressing myself (Murphy & Dillon, 2003, p. 57).
As I moved along in the interview process I came to what I feel is the one of the most important components of an interview, listening. Not much can be accomplished if this is not mastered. “It is through listening that the relationship develops and the story unfolds (Murphy & Dillon, 2003, p. 76)”. There is so many ways in which the story unfolds verbally and non-verbally. One that I found intriguing was silence. “Silence is a form of communication, not just a blank space between communications (p. 38)”. I have a hard time with this concept. It makes me feel uncomfortable, yet I know it is as important as the verbal communication. A few minutes of silence can feel like hours. I am an analytical type of person, so to listen and observe is essential for me. I feel that I demonstrated this through strength-base perspective and accurate perception.
In the textbook, video and lecture it was reinforced to be genuine with your clients. This is something I try to practice in my daily life. I feel this is a very important element in relationships; being genuine, warm and caring leads to being empathic. In Lecture 3 Kristi (2003) stated, “We cannot pretend to have empathy. Like intuition, empathy is not an automatic skill—it is only developed after much experience working, living, playing, and being with diverse people” I think this is so important to understand. To try not to force empathy that it will happen naturally. In my taped interviews the opportunity to show empathy didn’t arise, but during my internship each interview gave away to show empathy. As you get to know more about the client’s life and the burdens they deal with, you will be able to experiences what it would feel like as them (Murphy & Dillon, 2003, p. 88).
Also in lecture 3 Kristi stated, “As human service workers we need to deliberately stretch ourselves. We can’t learn if we stay in our comfort zones. Everybody’s comfort zones are different. As we deliberately stretch we will learn and as we learn our empathy for others will grow. Life experiences help us to be empathic to others that are experience similar situations”
The text helped teach me how to validate a person and their feelings or situation through strength perspective, supportive sounds, empathy echo, and body language. I demonstrated these skills much better in my last interview verses my first. I do feel that I validated both of the people that I interviewed through strength-based perspective.
The gathering of information through questions is fascinating to me. The interview process is very delicate but done in a very causal atmosphere. I, by nature, am a very inquisitive person. I work hard not to come across rude when I asking questions. I am genuinely interested in what they have to say. I listen intently in order to understand their perspective. I will usually play off of what they say to me by asking more questions. I feel I accomplished this in my interviews. I found the hardest thing for me was to form the questions properly. I caught myself in both interviews stumbling over the question I wanted to ask. I need to allow myself to be flexible. I have some growing to do in this area.
One skill we didn’t talk
much about in our forum was developing hunches, which I found very
interesting. Murphy & Dillon
(2003) stated that intuition, hunches, and feelings provide rich data for
supervision and the enhancement of clinical listening and responding abilities
(p. 163). In the video, clip 7.1
“People often find that
when they do things differently, they see and feel things differently (Murphy
& Dillon, 2003, p. 177).”
I facilitate a class called Living
healthy with a chronic condition. This class is all about helping a person
change their perspective. This is done in a group setting. It helps them to
understand they’re not alone in how they are feeling. Even though their
condition may be different the feelings are the same. The course is based as
stated by Jo, "breaking down the process into small, manageable steps (Jo
Hatcher,
I find that setting boundaries for me in self-disclosure is hard. I am a very open person, which is not always good thing. I have a tendency to share too much information about my personal life. In doing the intake interviews through my internship I have caught myself exposing too much. I feel it is important to share enough to show a certain level of empathy. I don’t do it with every woman that I interview but I do get caught up in the moment and then realize later that I said too much. My field supervisor did express that I am above average in my ability to get the women in the treatment center to open up. I just think that a few times I went a little too far in self-disclosure. There is definitely a line and I am glad that I have noticed when I have crossed it.
In a
clinician/client relationship the ultimate goal is to find resolve and end the
relationship. I think there would
be mixed emotions when the time arrived to say goodbye to a client. It is exciting to watch the client go
and reach their goals but yet letting go is hard even when it is time. I think
about the time that my children left home to go to college. I knew it was time,
they were ready and so was I, but that didn't stop the tears. I
think a positive transition is the most important part of the counseling
dyad. It is the peak of all that
you have worked for and doing it correctly will help the experience stay with a
person a lifetime. As Murphy and
Dillon (2003) stated, “Regardless of the reason, we try to undertake a
formal process of ending to assist the client in summarizing and integrating
the work with the clinician and to assist the client in summarizing and
integrating the work with the clinician and to assist in planning for the
future (p. 274).”
In Lecture 1 Kristi stated, “A practitioner must have mastery of these skills and concepts to be an effective interviewer as well as an effective counselor. Our goal is to increase your mastery of skills for the purpose of being effective interviewers in a variety of settings (Slette, 2003, Lecture 1).” Although I haven’t mastered all the skills I am on way to being an effective interviewer. I now realize that interviewing is “a different kind of talking” (Murphy & Dillon, 2003, p. 1).
HS 406 ~ HS Professionals and Societal and Global Systems
May 4, 2004
Theory Paper
The topic of Economic Globalization is rich with information. It is like a spider web that touches so many facets and affects our life in so many ways within our local communities throughout the world. When I first began to read and digest the information in our textbooks and websites the lyrics from “New Beginning” by Tracy Chapman kept going through my head…
“The world is broken into fragments and pieces that once were joined together in a unified whole. But now too many stand alone, there’s too much separation. We can resolve to come together in the new beginning, start all over….” (Chapman, 1994).
At this point her song was the one premise that made sense to me…but how?
The birth of the new centralized global economic system in Bretton Woods in 1944 portrayed a vision of “global economic development…that would prevent wars, reduce poverty, and help the world rebuild” (Cavanagh, et al., 2002, p.18). Over the past decades we have watched the opposite transpire. Looking further into the theories of economic globalization can help develop an understanding of how our forefathers’ vision fell short.
Hypergrowth equates to faster, better, new resources and cheaper everything! Regulation on public health, environmental laws, food safety and labor laws impends corporate free trade (p. 20) and jeopardizes the environment as well as the human society. While corporations are becoming deregulated and freed through “corporate globalization” (p. 19) nation-states, and local governments are harshly regulated and constrained. It’s time for a new beginning; it’s time for our government to be accountable to communities, to individuals, and to the future generations. “Democracy flourishes when people organize to protect their communities and rights and hold their elected officials accountable” (p. 56). The key in this statement is “when people organize” change comes about, “we don’t need to defeat Goliath. We need to change the way he thinks” (Quinn, 1999, p. 100).
Economic globalization reaches beyond all walls and barriers by creating “a single, centralized supersystem – global monoculture” (Cavanagh, et al, 2002, p. 23). Global corporations are replacing local enterprise. Instead of fostering self-reliance and stable local communities they cultivate dependency by the marketing of their labor and resources at a low market rate (pp. 70-71). “Diversity may be bad for corporate profits, but it is essential for healthy, sustainable, vital communities” (p. 72). Not only does global monoculture rob counties of their culture so does “comparative advantage” (p. 24). Comparative advantage replaces diverse local economy systems with “single crops” (p.24). The switch from small-scale local farms to giant, chemical –intensive industrial production for export markets has brought destruction to lands and waters across the planet (p.29). An alternative to industrial agriculture is lead by local farmers in protest of corporate involvement. The next incentives to for farmers still working there land. The most important yet most difficult influencing the bias of the WTO, World Bank, and IMF to reverse there policies to help support and cultivate small farms (p. 179).
The main thread in all of these theories is power and money having all the control with little thought to humanity. The gap between the rich and poor keeps getting wider and middle class is slowing becoming non-existent. “Greater equity both among nations and inside them would reinforce both democracy and sustainable communities” (p. 74). How can this come about? How can democracy rein? Cavanagh, et al, suggested the precautionary principle. “That is when a practice or product raises potentially significant threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary action should be taken” (p. 76). It was also suggested that in collaboration with civil society, governments should be allowed to set policies on the development and welfare of their people. The rights of local communities to protect and use their natural resources to secure the needs of their people and finally, all international agreements should support the goal of creating sustainable societies (p. 78). “We can resolve to come together in a new beginning” (Chapman, 1994).
I believe that economical globalization has a great impact on the human service profession. Where as “corporate globalization” main focus is on hybergrowth, global monoculture, comparative advantage and overall power and control. We as human service professionals are for human rights, environmental standards, preservation of diverse cultures, and creating sustainable societies; in other words opposite ends of the spectrum. I feel as a human service professional it is important to realize it is not the people or issues that we need to focus on but the system. As Quinn (1999) states, the flaw in our civilization isn’t in the people, it’s in the system (p. 171). I feel one of the greatest challenge is to help others understand “there is no one right way for people to live” (p. 183). I also feel at times we are like the first aid in the ambulance (p.18), we have the basic tools, but not the mega support from the “hospital” in order to make a difference. Instead we are sending people back to the same situation with just a band-aid. I agree with Quinn’s perspective of programs, “if there’s no new vision for us at the end of the road, then we too are going to die, because programs (useful as they are) just don’t have the capacity to keep us alive indefinitely” (p. 18). It is time to be innovative and creative in our approach as humans service professionals. “We need to make new symbols ~ Make new signs ~ Make a new language ~ With these we’ll redefine the world And start all over Start all over Start all over Start all over…..”(Chapman, 1994).
References
Cavanagh, J. & et al. (2002). Alternatives to economic
globalization: A better world is possible.
Chapman, T. (995). New Beginnings. EMI April Music, Inc./Purple Rabbit Music, ASACP.
Quinn, D. (1999). Beyond civilization:
Humanity’s next great adventure.
References
Hatcher, Jo (2003, Feb. 10),
Murphy, Bianca Cody & Carolyn Dillon. (2003). Interviewing
in action relationship, process, and change 2nd edition.
Murphy, Bianca Cody & Carolyn Dillon. (2003).
Interviewing in action relationship, process, and change 2nd
edition. Video activities guide.
Slette, Kristi (2003), Lecture week 1, week 2, & week 3. Lectures posted to: http://webcourses.admcs.wwu.edu