Everyone working in Aged Care provides invaluable assistance to residents and patients. Working together, Clinical Care Coordinators, Clinical Care Managers, Registered Nurses, Residential and Facility Managers, ACFI Specialists and Personal Care workers ensure that the best care possible is
provided, when and where needed.
Delivering high-quality person-centred care requires excellent communication and relationship building skills, responsiveness, accuracy, problem-solving, empathy, self-motivation and collaboration with team members.
These are the skills of Emotional Intelligence, which include: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill.
In this 5 part HPG educational series we will discuss each of the components of Emotional Intelligence.
Part 5: Social Skill
Social skill is the culmination of the other dimensions of emotional intelligence. People tend to be very effective at managing relationships when they can understand and control their own emotions and can empathize with the feelings of others.
Socially skilled people tend to have a wide circle of acquaintances and they find common ground with people of all kinds. It doesn’t mean that they socialize continually but it does mean that they work according to the assumption that nothing important gets done alone. Such people have a network in place when the time for action comes.
Socially skilled people are adept at working in teams. They are expert persuaders – a manifestation of self-awareness, self-regulation and empathy combined. Good persuaders know when to make an emotional plea and when an appeal to reason will work better. Motivation makes such people excellent collaborators – their passion for the work spreads to others and they are driven to find solutions.
Socially skilled people may at times appear not to be working at work. They are chatting in the corridors with colleagues or joking around with people who are not even connected to their ‘real jobs’ Socially skilled people don’t think that it makes sense to arbitrarily limit the scope of their relationships. They build bonds widely because they know that in these fluid times they may need help someday from people they are just getting to know today.
The following are interview questions focusing on Social skill
As a candidate, think through specific examples from your Aged Care experience and highlight your successes during your interview.
As an interviewer use these questions, and the responses you hear, to determine a candidate’s strengths.
Interview questions:
1. Tell me about other people you interact with at work, outside of your current team?
2. What discussions do you have with them?
3. How would you describe your relationship with them?
4. What do you do to make work relationships successful?
5. When you start a new job how do you build relationships?
As a candidate, be prepared to offer in-depth examples when further questioned by your interviewer.
As the interviewer, listen to the answers given and probe further for additional insight.