Flexibility Begets Creativity

Hello All,

Hope you had a good holiday weekend. Our server at work has yet to be replaced.

Anyway, what does this value of SEN's mean?

Let's look at flexibilty first. Whenever I interview a volunteer, intern or staff member for work with teens in our emergency shelter in our crisis services program, I make sure that they know flexibility is a must. Things are not going to go according to schedule a lot of the time. So what does flexibilty really mean?

Responsive to change; adaptable Okay, so we need to change to meet the needs or situations around us. Working with people is not like mathematics. There are no given answers as to what will help a troubled youth even if something specific that you did helped a youth yesterday. Ours is not an exact science. We have to be able to bend and try new things.

And thus the creativity part. If we are open to doing things differently, we will. We will think of ideas that might work. We will be open to picking up signals from the youth. We will listen. We will research new ways to lead group or explain rules or resolve conflict.

It takes courage to be flexible and creative. We don't know what the results will be. But we will be less stressed out!

An example....a few years ago, we had a social work undergrad intern in the shelter who was an older student. She had been a helicopter mechanic in the army. Well if there is a career that is very exact and rigid, it would be mechanics. And if I were the pilot of a helicopter, I would not want my mechanic to be flexible (hmmmm, maybe I could substitute this part instead...) or creative (let's see if this thing can fly without that part). See what I mean?

So she had a very hard time with her learning plan. This is the plan from her school with her goals on it. Social work learning plans are very vague. For example...."Use the ecological perspective in your work with families". She struggled and struggled. And then she decided to rewrite her plan in terms she could understand. She was a lot happier after that.

So be flexible and creative! It is more fun, too. (Of course don't do that with the rules, policies or procedures!!!)

See ya,

LA