Fall 2025 SOWK 486w Week 05 - Communication Skills Day 01

Fall 2025 SOWK 486w Week 05 - Communication Skills Day 01

title: Fall 2025 SOWK 486w Week 05 - Communication Skills Day 01 date: 2025-09-21 22:43:11 location: Heritage University tags:

• Heritage University
• BASW Program
• SOWK 486w presentation_video: > “” description: >

The focus of week five for SOWK 486 is on communication skills. There are many that Hepworth et al. (2023) term as verbal following skills. Rogers (1957), who developed the concept of person-centered counseling, described what he called the facilitative condition. This includes empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence. He proposed that when clinicians can maintain these aspects, they can support and help promote positive changes in their clients. The plan for today is to talk about the core skills that help clinicians help their clients. The plan is as follows:

• The Facilitative Conditions
• Empathy
• Authenticity
• Praise

Learning Objectives This Week Include:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the facilitative conditions (empathy, respect, authenticity) and their application in helping relationships.
• Practice recognizing and responding to client emotions using levels of empathic communication and reciprocal empathy strategies.
• Apply principles of authenticity to build trust and connection.

Plan for Week Five

Agenda

• The Facilitative Conditions
• Empathy
• Authenticity
• Praise

Learning Objectives

• Demonstrate an understanding of the facilitative conditions (empathy, respect, authenticity) and their application in helping relationships.
• Practice recognizing and responding to client emotions using levels of empathic communication and reciprocal empathy strategies.
• Apply principles of authenticity to build trust and connection.

Treatment Outcomes

As we have talked about, relationship and client belief in the process are essential to positive outcomes.

Nearly half of the outcome relies on fundamental skills and abilities that social workers need to learn, apart from the type of treatment offered (As cited by Hepworth – Adams et al., 2008; Miller et al., 2013)

Role Clarification: Helping Clients have an idea what to expect

“Clients often have an unclear idea about what to expect from contact with a social worker, and those ideas may differ from the social worker’s expectations as well (Kadushin & Kadushin, 1997). This is most evident when the client has been referred or mandated for service. Clarifying expectations becomes a key intervention in work with clients who have not chosen to see a social worker (Rooney et al., 2009; Trotter, 2006).”

• Determine your client expectations: Ask questions to determine what their expectations are. Help them to manage unrealistic or unreasonable expectations.
• Emphasize client responsibility: What are the expectations that you or others have of them?
• Emphasize difficulties inherent in the process: Making change is hard. Extinction burst and Skinner (1933).
• Clarify your own role: What will you be doing and expectations they can have on you

[Small Group Activity] Pick a group project that you have. It could be the paper for this class or another assignment. Spend some time clarifying your own roles in that.

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Communicating about Informed Consent, Confidentiality, and Agency Policies

• Importance of
• How to do

I want to let you know about a couple of important things. First, I want you to know that the things you tell me are confidential. Do you know what that means?… There are some exceptions…

Facilitative Conditions

Carl Rogers and Person Centered Counseling give the best and most focus on basic helping attitudes.

The facilitative conditions (or core conditions) in helping relationships were denoted initially by Carl Rogers (1957) as…

• Empathy
• Unconditional positive regard
• Congruence

(I have a paper talking about it from a later date, 1979)

Much of the current research describes these as:

• Respect
• Authenticity
• Empathy

The current iteration of the textbook doesn’t describe the distinction between respect and warmth.

• Facilitative conditions are often thought to be the foundation-level skills that undergird many treatment models and help create a positive client–social worker relationship.
• Research has mainly supported the correlation of empathy with positive social work outcomes.
• The facilitative skills are instrumental in treatment situations with voluntary clients.

[Whole Class Activity] As a whole group, brainstorm antonyms of each of the facilitative conditions. Groups will have a couple of minutes to create a short role play to do in front of the class to demonstrate the skill. The rest of the class will have to guess what the team is role-playing.

(Hepworth et al., 2023)

Empathic Communication (1 of 2)

The following is a short video clip from a presentation that Brené Brown did called the “The Power of Vulnerability.”

[Activity] Watch the video clip.

[Discussion] What did you think of Theresa Wiseman (2007) concept of four parts to empathy. “Toward a holistic conceptualization of empathy for nursing practice.”

Draw out as many as people can remember.

–> Next Slide

Empathic Communication (2 of 2)

To review, that is…

1. Perspective taking and recognizing their perspective as truth
2. Staying out of judgment
3. Recognizing emotion in other people
4. Communicating emotion with people

(Wiseman, 2007)

[Whole Group Activity] Go Deeper

• What becomes challenging about implementing this?

Developing Perceptiveness to Feelings

With empathy being such an important skill, we need to discuss how we can develop perceptiveness to feelings. We also know that feelings and emotions exert a powerful influence on behavior and often play a central role in the problems of clients.

• To respond to the broad spectrum of emotions and feeling states presented by clients, the social worker must be fully aware of the diversity of human emotions.
  • Position of not knowing…
  • They also need to take a “not knowing” position of learning what emotional expression means for the particular client in front of them.
• It is essential to realize that high-level empathic responding has two parts:
  • Self-Awareness and Emotional Regulation
  • Empathetic Action

Applicants or voluntary clients often enter into the helping relationship with openness, hoping to explore both their concerns and their related feelings.

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Levels of Empathetic Responding

There are three levels of empathetic responding…

Surface empathy: A direct reflection of the feelings and concerns that the clients express, usually using the same vocabulary

You are feeling down.

Reciprocal empathy: Focus on the direct feelings that clients express to you, but extends perspective taking and speculate about feelings and emotions.

You sound like you are feeling depressed and like you don’t have much control.

Additive empathy: The process of reflecting the full range and intensity of the surface and underlying feelings that a client conveys through verbal and nonverbal communication

Includes high levels of intimate sharing from the client and a developed assessment by the social worker

(Hepworth et al., 2023)

Responding with Reciprocal Empathy

You feel __ about __ because __ accurately identifies or describes feelings. You feel __, yet you also feel __

• Consider the list of affective words and phrases on page 84
• Consider the sentence frames above, or the leads for empathetic responding on page 89.

[Partner Group Activity] With a partner, take turns sharing respectively for about five minutes, about an experience that they experienced an emotional response (any emotion, happiness, sadness, excitement, nervousness, etc. - does not need to be an overly personal story). The person not telling the story’s job is to draw out the details of the event and find opportunities to respond empathetically.

(Hepworth et al., 2023)

Observation Your Conversations this Week

A. As you interact with others and observe others’ interactions during the week, notice how frequently or infrequently people send empathic messages. Also, observe the types of messages that are sent and how these messages influence the course of conversations.

B. As you interact with your spouse, parents, children, friends, and fellow students, practice listening carefully and responding with empathic messages when appropriate. Be alert to how empathic messages influence interactions and to the feeling tones that these responses create.

Authenticity

[Whole Class Activity] What is authenticity, and why is it important?

Authenticity is defined as the sharing of self by relating in a natural, sincere, spontaneous, open, and genuine manner.

(Hepworth et al., 2023)

Types of Self-Disclosure: Encouraging to reciprocate with trust & openness

“Viewed from a therapeutic perspective, self-disclosure encourages clients to reciprocate with trust and openness. Lee (2014) has identified two types of self-disclosure: self-involving statements and personal self-disclosure” (Hepworth, et al., 2017)

• Self-involving statements include messages that express the social worker’s personal reaction to the client during the course of a session.
• Personal self-disclosure messages, by contrast, center on struggles or problems the social worker is currently experiencing or has experienced that are similar to the client’s problems.

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Personal self-disclosure messages

The use of self-disclosure can be a meaningful and valuable tool that we use as social workers. I also want to provide caution to you. First, let me tell you about my experience, and then a couple of things I have found that you should consider.

• Tell the story of my dad
• Tell the story of starting our work in social work and self-disclosure
• Talk about the three essential things.

• Done for the client, purposefully
• Enough details to provide connection and understanding, but limited
• Focus on other forms to demonstrate authenticity, use sparingly

Authenticity: Four Elements of an Authentic Message

As social workers practice authentic responding and teach clients to respond authentically in their encounters with others, they should keep in mind the following guidelines related to the four elements of an authentic message:

• Personalize messages with the pronoun “I.”
• Share feelings that lie at varying depths.
• Describe the situation or targeted behavior in neutral or descriptive terms.
• Identify the specific impact of the problem situation or the behavior of others.

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

[Whole Class Activity] Watch the video. [Whole Class Activity] Go Deeper

• How does this impact us as social workers
• How do we give specific praise

Popcorn Positives: An Opportunity for Praise

Watch “it’s corn”

Discuss popcorn positives in the classroom. Have the group review and offer positive feedback for each person.

Cues for Authentic Responding

As social workers, we sometimes have to authentically respond when the client makes requests or when we believe it is in the best interest of the client.

Clients’ Request for Self-Disclosure

• Request for personal information
• Request for social worker’s opinions, views, and feelings

Social Workers’ Decision to Share Perceptions and Reactions They Believe Will Be Helpful

• Requests for social workers’ opinions, views, and feelings
• Disclosing personal past experiences
• Providing Feedback
• Experiencing discomfort in session
• Shareing feelings of frustration, anger, and hurt
• Responding to positive feedback
• Giving positive feedback
• Saying no and setting limits