Fall 2026 Week 06 - Communication Skills Day 02 - Lab Day

The focus of week six for SOWK 486 is continuing our growth and engagement with communication skills. Last week we went deeper on empathy and authenticity. We also started some focus on empathic responding. I share an article Stepien and Baernstein (2006), that provides an overview of how we can teach empathy to clients. Week six is described as a lab day, because the intention is focusing on activities to help develop skills. The activities we will be doing this week include:

Check in about learning so far
Teaching empathy to clients
Following skills and practice implementing them
Sharing following skills

Learning Objectives this week

Reflect on personal experiences with empathic communication
Develop strategies for teaching empathy to clients in diverse practice settings
Apply verbal following skills in a dynamic practice exercise
Deepen your connection with the skills associated with following skills
Review how substance use dependence practitioners consider the topics of individual counseling and education (client, family, and community).

What We Have Been Learning: Checking In.

I wanted to spend a little bit of time checking in with people and how things are going. for this program/class.

[Whole Group Activity] Review restorative circles and norms

Respect the talking piece: everyone listens, everyone has a turn
Speak from the heart: your truth, your perspectives, your experiences
Listen from the heart: Let go of stories that make it hard to hear each other
Trust that you know what to say: no need to rehearse
Say just enough: without feeling rushed, be concise and considerate of the time of others

[Whole Group Activity] Circle Group Activity - First Semester Check-In

What are some things that you feel like you can take away from this class so far?
What are ways that you are implementing or incorporating things you have been learning in any of your classes into your life?
What do you need to be a better social worker as you progress through your education?

Reference

Clifford, A. (2013). Teaching restorative practices with classroom circles. Center for Restorative Process. https://www.cta.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Teaching-Restorative-Practices-in-the-Classroom-7-lesson-Curriculum-1.pdf

Observation of Your Conversations Last Week

I want to check in about how your personal experiment went last week.

Prompts from last week:

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.
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.

[Small Group Activity] Personal Life Empathy Experiment Partner Share

Share with a partner about engaging in this activity.

[Whole Group Activity] Personal Life Empathy Experiment Group Share

Have a couple of people share their experience with the whole group.

Practice with Empathic Communication (1 of 3) Example 1

[Small Group Activity] Crafting Empathetic Response Partner Share

Adult:

It’s not that I have to drink all the time. It’s that I am so tired of people telling me that I have a drinking problem and telling me what to do about it. They don’t control me.

[Small Group Activity] Crafting Empathetic Response Whole Group Share

After people share, show the three levels from the textbook:

Surface empathy: “Your message seems to be that you are in control.”
Reciprocal empathy: “It sounds like you are feeling criticized or maybe insulted or controlled, by people who are talking about how you should change your drinking habits.”
Self-involving statement: “I believe that only you are in control of yourself. Can you tell me more about the pressure that you feel from others?”

Notice that none of these argues with him about whether he has a drinking problem.

We are going to be talking some about SUD and Individual Couseling. I pulled this example to think about this topic some.

(Hepworth et al., 2023, pp. 102-103)

[Content Note] ✅ SUD (k)

Practice with Empathic Communication (2 of 3) Example 2

[Small Group Activity] Crafting Empathetic Response Partner Share

Single woman, age 80 [to social worker concerning her request to move to an independent living complex provided for ambulatory older persons] :

Goodness, I know that I need more help, but the more I think of moving, the more scared I get. I have neighbors here who look after me, and I won’t know a soul there. I’m afraid I’ll be all alone.

[Small Group Activity] Crafting Empathetic Response Whole Group Share

After people share, show the textbook’s example of a reciprocal empathy response:

Reciprocal empathy: “It sounds as though you have some mixed feelings about moving. Part of you wants to go because you could live more comfortably, but another part of you is afraid you’ll feel alone and lost and wants to cling to people you know care about you.”

Notice that the social worker introduced feeling words the client did not use herself, and used more than one to capture how complicated her feelings are.

(Hepworth et al., 2023, p. 86)

Practice with Empathic Communication (3 of 3) Example 3

[Small Group Activity] Crafting Empathetic Response Partner Share

Male, age 16 [in weekly visit to social work probation officer]:

I don’t see the sense in having to come here every [expletive] week. I haven’t been in any trouble now since I went to court a month ago. You should know by now you can trust me.

[Small Group Activity] Crafting Empathetic Response Whole Group Share

After people share, show the textbook’s example of additive empathy, which reflects both the surface and the underlying feelings:

Social worker: “Having to come here each week irritates you, and I gather you may be pissed off that I keep encouraging you to follow the judge’s order.”
Client: “It’s because I don’t need it!”
Social worker: “You don’t need it.”
Client: “No!”
Social worker: “I get the sense that you value this about yourself, that you know what your needs are, and that you are tired of people telling you what to do. (pause) It would be such a relief to be left alone to make these decisions for yourself.”

(Hepworth et al., 2023, p. 87)

Teaching Empathy (1 of 2) Didactic

We oftentimes think about empathy as being able to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes. Still, we must also consider how we can teach our clients to put themselves in somebody else’s shoes.

Example of a fellow learning student doing family sessions with me at the CRC and always drawing red shoes as an example with clients.

An important task for the social worker involves teaching clients to respond empathically. Concerning this role, social workers should consider taking the following actions:

Teach clients the paradigm for empathic responding.
Introduce clients to the list of affective words and phrases and to the Leads for Empathic Responses list.
Intervene in sessions when clients ignore or fail to validate messages.
Give positive feedback when clients listen to each other.

(Hepworth et al., 2017, pp. 116-117)

Reference

Hepworth, D. H., Rooney, R. H., Rooney, G. D., & Strom-Gottfried, K. (2017). Empowerment series: Direct social work practice: Theory and skills (10th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Teaching Empathy (2 of 2) Practice Implementation - What Would You Teach?

[Small Group Activity] Plan Ideas for Teaching Empathy

Work in teams of three or four to design a planned intervention for teaching empathy. What population would you work with? How would you teach them empathy? What would some of the sessions look like? You will have approximately 15 minutes to generate ideas, and then you will share them with the group.

[Whole Group Activity] Debrief Planned Ideas for Teaching Empathy

-> Click

[Small Group Activity] Consider Educating Individuals, Families and Communities Related to SUD Treatment

If you were to consider that you were educating individuals, families, or communities connected with SUD treatment, how might that change what you do to meet them where they are at?

[Small Group Activity] Debrief SUD and Education Discussion

Teaching communication skills is a form of client and family education. Consider social workers lead educational groups that help members “learn about and cope with a specific topic that impacts them,” including “a psychoeducational group for relatives of people with major mental illnesses” (Hepworth et al., 2023, ch. 11). Family education groups in SUD treatment work the same way.

[Content Note] ✅ SUD (n)

Furthering responses

Minimal prompts signal the social worker’s attentiveness and encourage the client to continue verbalizing.
- Nonverbal minimal prompts consist of nodding the head, using facial expressions, or employing gestures that convey receptivity, interest, and commitment to understanding. They implicitly convey the message, “I am with you; please continue.”
- Verbal minimal prompts consist of brief messages that convey interest and encourage or request expanded verbalizations along the lines of the client’s previous expressions.
Accent responses (Hackney & Cormier, 2005) involve repeating, in a questioning tone of voice or with emphasis, a word or a short phrase. Suppose a client says, “I’ve really had it with the way my supervisor at work is treating me.” The social worker might reply, “Had it?”

(Hepworth et al. 2023)

In the LaGravenese (2007) the Freedom Writers this character shares an intense story from his journal. We are going to watch this short video clip and then talk about reflective responding as an activity. I want to use this clip as a way of considering responding

[Whole Class Activity] Watch the video clip. The clip can be found at Freedom Writers (4/9) Movie CLIP - I Am Home (2007) HD

We will often have clients that just share really difficult things such as this. Often there is no best response… and our best response might vary depending. It might be as simple as “thank you for sharing…”

Reference

LaGravenese, R. (2007, January 5). Freedom Writers [Drama]. Paramount Pictures.

Reflection responses (3 of 3) Strategies

One way of responding to a difficult story, such as the Freedom Writers clip we watched, is through reflective responding. Let’s talk about what each of these is:

In thinking about the video clip, we might choose to reflect back what was shared. Hepworth et al. (2023) describe two forms of reflections, and complex reflections can also be used to reframe:

Simple reflections restate what clients have said using the same or similar language. When reflecting emotions, simple reflections are the same as surface-level empathic responses.

Showing up at school that first day sounds like you were very anxious.

Complex reflections go beyond what the client has directly stated or implied, adding substantial meaning or emphasis to convey a more complex picture. They add content that focuses on meanings or feelings that the client did not directly express (Moyers et al., 2003).

Showing up at school that first day it sounds like you were very anxious, but that you had a lot of determination to go regardless.

Reframing: complex reflections that suggest new ways of thinking about problems and problem solving can be used to reframe the client’s understanding in terms of strengths or possibilities.

When you connected people in your support system, it sounds like it helped you feel more comfortable.

(Hepworth et al., 2023)

Seeking concreteness

Seeking concreteness is an important aspect of drawing out information from a client. Hepworth et al. (2023) describe five circumstances in which social workers commonly seek concreteness:

Check perceptions: making sure we accurately heard the client’s message (e.g., “Do you mean…” or “Are you saying…”)
Clarify vague or unfamiliar terms: clients often use words with multiple meanings or use them in their own way. What does this actually mean to them?
Elicit specific feelings: general feeling words like “upset” don’t tell us the precise feeling
Focus on the here and now: shifting the focus from the past to the present, where messages are usually more concrete
Elicit sequence of events: pinpointing what actually happened in an interaction, including what came before, what people said and did, what the client thought and felt, and what followed

Hepworth et al. (2023) also note that social workers need to be concrete themselves, describing their own experience in language that is precise and descriptive.

(Hepworth et al., 2023)

Dynamic Practice with Following Skills (1 of 5) Set-Up

We are going to do some dynamic practice with verbal following skills.

You will be in groups of 2 or three. one person will be the social worker, one the client, and if you have three an observer.

I’m going to supply you with some scenarios. For each one, you will have about a total of about seven minutes. That means about a minute or so prep. Consider:

Before: Brainstorm what potential information would you want to know about for this scenario or what are some common experiences for people in this situation

During I have a form, the initial session checklist for the observer to keep track of what they saw.

After: You will debrief

How did it feel as the interviewer to use the techniques?
How did it feel as the interviewee?
What did the observer notice? Share feedback from form

Dynamic Practice with Following Skills (3 of 5) - Scenario 1

[Small Group Activity] Engage in dynamic practice activity.

Make sure to consider the beginning, middle, and end activities.

Scenario: You are a freshman college student. You went to a student health clinic because you were having difficulty sleeping and were experiencing anxiety. They have referred you to the counseling clinic for an assessment. You are anxious about this referral, wondering if it means that you are going crazy. You are homesick and miss the people back home. You sometimes wonder if you are ready for this. You have begun to drink with people in the dorm; it makes you feel less lonely.

In the freshman scenario, the student has begun drinking with people in the dorm because it makes them feel less lonely. Practitioners, add these to your plan:

Explore the substance use with open-ended questions, without judgment
Seek concreteness: when, how much, and the sequence of events around drinking
Reflect the ambivalence: drinking helps with the loneliness, and they are worried about it
Observers: add to the checklist, “Did the practitioner explore substance use without judgment?”

[Content Note] ✅ SUD (k)