Interpersonal Communication Skills in Gang-Impacted Environments

Day 2

EU Gangs Project

Training the Trainers

Learning Outcome:

• To facilitate exploration of effective intervention and communication in a gang-related environment

Maslow’s (1954) Hierarchy of Needs:

• Self-Actualisation – innovation, creativity, learning and creating at a higher level

• Ego (Esteem) – recognition from others, prestige and status

• Belonging - acceptance, be part of a group, identification with a successful team

• Physical Safety – economic security, freedom from threats

• Physiological Needs – survival – water, food, sleep, warmth etc

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Self-actualisation

Ego (esteem)

Social (belonging)

Safety / security

Physiological (bodily needs)

Task 1

• In small groups of (3-4), think about the relevance/application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Feedback and whole group discussion

Emotional Intelligence – A ‘Recap’

• In ‘Working with Emotional Intelligence’, Goleman (1998, p. 317) writes that …

• “Emotional Intelligence refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves, and in our relationships.”

The 2 Dimensions of EI:

• Intrapersonal intelligence is defined as, “being intelligent in identifying our own thoughts and feelings (self- awareness) and being effective at dealing with those thoughts and feelings (self-management).” (Palethorpe, 2006, p13)

• Interpersonal intelligence is about “being intelligent in identifying the thoughts and feelings of others and between others (other awareness) and being effective in how we tailor our actions to work with others most appropriately (relationship management).” (ibid)

The 5 Main Components of EI:

• Self-Awareness

• Self-Management

• Motivation

• Empathy and

• Social Skills

Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Competencies Model

Task 2• Role Plays –

• Individually note down

• - your reflections on the behaviour displayed, - the Practitioners’ Behaviour

•

• Discuss your reflections in small groups – think about the practitioners’ interventions – what worked and what didn’t work and why?

Whole Group Reflection on the Role Plays in Relation to:

• Age and ‘size’ of those involved

• Gender

• Race and Religion

• Culture

A Note on the Amygdala Attack or Emotional Hijacking

• Emotional hijacking is the opposite of Emotional Intelligence and occurs when we respond out of measure with the actual threat because it has triggered a much more significant emotional response or threat.

SO, WHAT IS EMOTIONAL OR AMYGDALA HIJACKING?

• The amygdala is based at the centre of the brain and controls responses to fear and empathy, when it feels threatened, it responds not just irrationally but, destructively.

• The amygdala attacks the neo cortext, the thinking part of the brain. There is little or no ability to rely on intelligence reasoning when this happens.

- Lunch….

Introducing Transactional Analysis:

• At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviours, thoughts and feelings. TA involves 3 Ego States

Transactional Analysis

• Transactional Analysis focuses on interpersonal relationships and seeks to explain how we may continue to replay childhood strategies in grown-up life, even when these produce results that are self-defeating or painful.

• This model is based upon the belief that the way in which we respond is a reflection of our childhood experiences, and argues that problem behaviours are linked to previous experiences, a theory also advocated by Freud’s idea of psychoanalysis (Nelson-Jones, 2000).

• Berne (1968) suggests that every time a transaction, or communication, occurs between two or more individuals, those individuals will respond from a particular ego state: Parent, Adult or Child.

The 3 Ego States

The 3 Ego States

Parent: Critical - controlling, directing, persecuting

Or

Nurturing - Caring, supporting, rescuing

Adult: thinking, listening, remembering, planning

Child: Natural – creative, spontaneous

Or

Adapted – conforming or rebelling

The Adult ego state is applied when an individual is "…stating these thought-processes, or the problems you perceive, or the conclusions you have come to, in a non-prejudicial manner."

(Berne, 1968, pp.23-24)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKNyFSLJy6o

Transactional Analysis OK Modes

The OK Corral Model

•What has all this got to do with Gangs?

And to ‘Storying’

• The basis of ‘storying’ is the ability to encourage others (clients) to tell their story.

• This process is cathartic for the ‘teller’ but also reflects on the nature of the practitioner’s relationship with the ‘client’.

• The balance between listening to someone’s story and how much you share of yourself is a difficult one

Trust and Respect

• The basis of being told one’s story (or of telling your own) is trust and respect between those involved.

• The negotiation of ‘trust’ is often at the heart of the process of acceptance in the presence of others.

• “It is through the nurturing of trusting relationships that we begin to understand and learn about others because trusting relationships are an inevitable consequence of meaningful experience of the other and therefore fundamental for dispelling our fears and pre-conceived notions and judgements of those that are different from us.”

(Soni, 2011, pp. 40-41)

And to ‘Storying’…

“It is important to recognise that our experiences, the ways we express them and the meanings we derive from them are not an objective account of facts. They happen in a political context where social and cultural practices are produced and reproduced. While exploring individual life stories we also need to consider the ‘social world’ people inhabit and distinguish between what could be termed biographical ‘facts’ and which elements are socially constructed.”

(Bowler 2010, p.45)

Here’s a Model for Categorising Stories (Roberts, 1994, p. 13)

• INTERTWINED - One story resonates with another; time is not bounded

• Focus is on the parallels between situations/lives/life events or on making/defining the story as the opposite of a previous story

• Meaning is passed on unchanged from the first story in time to the second

• DISTINCT/SEPARATED - Similar dilemmas, issues not linked

• Focus is on each individual story

• No access to meaning-making across different contexts

• MINIMAL/INTERRUPTED - Little access to historical time

• Few details to flesh out the stories

• Hard to make meaning from multiple perspectives

• SILENCED/SECRET - Hidden or subterranean text

• Story cannot be told

• Meaning is unclear, confusing; may contain hidden alliances or coalitions

• RIGID - Time is “frozen”

• Text is unknown – others can tell the story

• Set interpretation of the meaning

• EVOLVING - Recognition that the story is different at different times of life

• The details and points that are emphasized change

• Places provided to keep making new meaning