The profession of social work is challenging and extremely meaningful, as its subjects are humans and their minds, the most complex and complicated of all existing phenomena. The ability to be a successful social worker requires particular personal and professional qualities. They are necessary not only for fulfilling the professional duties but also for the adequate reaction to the critic, which often appears from the side of the social work supervisor.
In this essay, I will analyze my own social worker’s experience of the interaction with the supervisor, where I had to encounter the situation of seemingly wrong assessment of my work. In my view, my professional skills were undervalued, and the proper credit has not been given. In this case, I observed that some personal characteristics helped me to overcome the difficulties, while the other qualities appeared to be less helpful or even harmful. I am going to discuss the result of my observations further.
First of all, I realized that the qualities, helpful in the professional issues I am dealing with, appeared to be so in the described situation. The most important of them are critical thinking skills, tolerance, and the ability to set boundaries. Critical thinking implies the approach where intelligence prevails over emotions, helping to observe the problem more logically and impartially. In my situation, indulging the negative emotions might prevent my understanding of which part of the critique was adequate, and which seemed to be inappropriate.
Further, tolerance helped me to understand the possibility of diverse opinion; so, the excessive criticism of the supervisor might have been a result of his misunderstanding of alternative professional decisions. Ultimately, the supervision in social work is extra-challenging as it makes to think about things that do not have easy answers (Heslop and Meredith). Finally, the ability to set boundaries prevented me from attributing the negative judgment to my personal characteristics, in addition to the professional, and, thus, eliminated overly emotional reactions.
However, such a quality as sensitivity made the situation more dramatic. The ability to respond to the situation and take it close to heart, being highly beneficial in the professional issues, becomes harmful in the described matter of personal concern. In any case, I must conclude that the mentioned case of the supervision provided for me a possibility not only to evaluate my professional skills but to reconsider the ways of interaction with the people and withstand the challenges of life.
Work Cited
Heslop, Philip, and Cathryn Meredith. Social Work: From Assessment to Intervention. SAGE, 2018.