Question Answering, Essay Example

Situation A

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your agency’s policy regarding the treatment of poor clients”

Encouragement:  It is always advisable to treat all clients equally despite their classification in terms of living standards.

Paraphrasing: It is worth noting that the poor clients are as important to your agency as much as the wealthy ones.

Reflective: If surprisingly we had agencies to serve the wealthy and other agencies to serve the poor, then there would be a lot of imbalance in the society.

Clarification: I tend to believe that the wealthy clients had once passed through tough moments in life, the poor clients are more of the same, and they are likely to become great people in the society in the future.

Interpretation: Treating the poor clients differently from the wealthy one would only suppress their emotions, and the agency could end up loosing clients.

Providing Information: Research has shown that many agencies have lost clients not because they lack the needed products and services, but to due to inequality in the treatment of the clients, more especially the poor ones.

Strength based:  Even the little money gotten from poor clients counts in the agency’s performance.

Summarization: the agency attendants ought to learn to treat all clients equally.

Elicit information: The poor clients have the capability of leading to the closure of an agency as they go round spreading rumors of the treatment they encounter, thus discouraging customers.

Scenario A

Nonassertive Response:  Am not going to repeat the mistake again.

Aggressive Response:  You also forget sometimes, don’t you? That is what happened.

Assertive Response:  Am sorry I forgot to work on the report on time.

Costs and benefits of each type of response:

Non-assertive responses will cost one stress and a feeling of depression. An aggressive response shows rudeness and can cost one’s job. An assertive response shows calmness and sincerity.

Scenario B

Nonassertive Response:  could you please come for meeting early enough.

Aggressive Response – Hey! Are you out of your mind? You cause disturbance in our meetings daily. Can you behave and come early enough, or stay absent for the meeting altogether?

Assertive Response: it is always right to be in meeting at the right time, or rather walk in quietly without interruptions.

Costs and benefits of each type of response:

Non-assertive responses hides the emotions, aggressive responses could lead to a quarrel, while an assertive response passes the required information gently.

The communication gap

• By talking of a video taping some sections, it means a sense of distrusting my plea, while talking to the clients would bear no fruits as they already undermine me. Probably the supervisor has earlier dealt with these clients and they are a nuisance.
• One could take the whole situation as a challenge, and try all ways to confront the clients.
• In supervision, clients who are a nuisance identified and introduced to a new staff. The staff then gets ready to find ways of approaching them.
• A supervisor is incompetent if none of his suggested approaches works, approaching co-worker who understands the clients better would work better. A moment of discussion about the behaviors of the clients with a staff who has been there for long would bear fruits in finding out the base of the problem.