It is often found that social workers enter this career path to do some good in the world. After all, it is a career that doesn't tend to be financially rewarding, and it often involves a great deal of stress.
However, for many social workers, they wouldn't want to do anything else. The sense that you are helping people who are in genuine need is often enough to carry them forward. Like all career paths, there are bound to be positive and negative elements involved and you will need certain qualities if you are going to succeed in your career.
There are plenty of ways to enter this path like an online social work degree, but once you are there, what skills do you require to thrive? Well, let's look at a few of them right here and now. If you are thinking about embarking upon this path, these are some of the qualities that you are going to need. If you are already in a social work career, here are some of the attributes that you can work on if you don't possess them already.
Empathy
If you don't have empathy for other people, it will be much more of a challenge to succeed in social work. After all, you will be working with people who are in various difficult situations in their life. While you may not have gone through these things yourself, you still need to be able to attempt to understand what they are experiencing. You should never be judgmental of people, or make assumptions of their situation based on a piece of paper that is their case file before you have even met them – there is only so much another colleague would have been able to write. Having said that, you do need to be cautious when you first meet your new cases, because a situation might be more volatile than you anticipate, and your safety has to come first.
Your initial training of an online social work degree will go some way towards helping you to be more empathetic, but you need to work on this yourself as well. By showing a caring and understanding side, you can help to empower them to improve their situation. Also, by making yourself more relatable, you make it more likely that people will feel comfortable opening up to you. However, on the opposite side of the coin, if you appear unemotional and unsympathetic, you will find it difficult to speak to people about their true feelings. Therefore it is going to prove much more challenging to help them.
Patience
The next core quality of a good social worker is patience. You often find yourself dealing with complex emotional cases, and there will not be any quick fixes. Therefore, you need to show the patience to take them through to the end. This also goes hand-in-hand with the empathy that we discussed above. It takes time to build up the strong relationships that you need to succeed with your clients. You are bound to find yourself in a situation in which people speak to you shortly or rudely. You need to be the one to rise above this by displaying a calm and patient demeanor. There may even be situations in which the people you are trying to help cannot properly express their true feelings. On these occasions, patience will prove to be even more crucial as you try to identify what is going on.
Objectiveness
As much as possible, you should enter into each situation with a sense of objectiveness and not of judgment. It would be best if you were impartial rather than letting your feelings and emotions dictate the course of action that you take. An online social work degree prepares you somewhat for some of the situations you will find yourself dealing with, but it can certainly feel different when confronting them face-to-face. There will be guidelines put in place that apply to each different situation you could face. Of course, you will become more experienced over time as you deal with a range of scenarios, so it is those first few months and years that can be particularly challenging as you advance along with your career. Take guidance from those who are senior to you and try to approach each new situation with a fresh mind and pair of eyes. Bear in mind that the tightrope between empathy and objectiveness can be a particularly challenging one to walk.
Reliability
Again, this one is so important as it is bound to be the case that people need to rely on you when you are a social worker. Firstly, the families and individuals that you are working with are bound to need your support in countless ways. It is also the case that your colleagues should have confidence in knowing how to do your job well. After all, this is a career route in which many people find themselves in highly stressful situations regularly, and you don't want to be the one adding to them. Gaining a sense of reliability starts right from the initial online social work degree, but you will develop and carry this quality with you for as long as you stay in the profession. Your clients will look to you for extra support in various areas of their lives, such as legal, professional, and personal. Hence, you need to be reliable in developing your understanding and knowledge and passing it onto them.
Organization
When you are a social worker, you are likely to juggle various clients, so you need to have a good sense of organization in determining their needs and responding to them accordingly. Social workers tend to work long hours, which means that you need to be particularly adept at managing your own time. Paperwork is also a crucial element of the job, so you need to be organized enough to ensure that everything is filed on time. You should also establish a clear filing system that you can follow easily. While it is true that much is stored online these days, you still need to be able to navigate your internet filing system effectively. Proper paperwork filing is also important from a legal perspective as you may be required to submit files as evidence. If you are sharing files between your team members, they need to understand the processes and steps that you have taken along the way.
A clear sense of organization is essential right from your initial online social work degree as this is not a job that you should attempt chaotically.
Resilience
While all jobs require a certain level of resilience, this tends to be higher in the case of social workers. When you face difficult cases daily, this is bound to take its toll on you over time. You will require the emotional strength of huge depths and draw on this in your working life. So, you are bound to need to recharge from time to time, and you can do this in your non-working life. Getting enough sleep is a great starting point as, without it, you will struggle to concentrate and make clear decisions, which are obviously so essential to a career in social work. You should also try to find activities that take your mind off work – whether this is exercise or a hobby. Another great way of recharging is simply spending time with your loved ones. There are bound to be occasions when being a social worker is particularly tough, and these are the times when having a strong support network around you is especially important.
Drive
What is it that drove you to take an online social work degree and pursue this career? Is it knowing that you are making a genuine difference in people's lives? Is it helping people to overcome some of life's most difficult obstacles? Whatever the case, you need something that gets you out of bed every morning and entering some particularly challenging households and situations.
Sometimes, it may seem that you have drifted away from the ideals that drew you to social work in the first place, so you need to hold onto the positive elements of the job and not let the negatives overwhelm you. Take joy in the small accomplishments and achievements of the job that you experience along the way. Talking to others about your experiences can also help in processing the highs and lows of the job. While speaking with friends and family is bound to be useful, speaking to those directly involved in the job can be especially helpful as you know that they have been through similar experiences.
Knowledgeable
There is a great deal to learn when you become a social worker, and you cover the initial topics with an online social work degree. However, this is the kind of career path you embark upon, knowing that you will need to learn and develop over time. After all, some of the modern social worker's challenges are not the same as the past. Technology and social media, in particular, have changed everything, so you need to be ready to keep up with these developments as they occur. You are also going to be in charge of teaching your clients valuable life skills and advising them on various areas in their personal and professional lives ranging from legal challenges and issues like finding employment. When you can answer the questions posed to you by clients, it is also more likely that you will be able to build up the strong relationships that you need to foster and nurture with the people you are helping and supporting.
Flexibility
Unlike many jobs out there where you stick to the standard nine to five hours, this is not the case with being a social worker, and you can start with an online social work degree. This sense of unpredictability means that you need to be flexible in your approach to the job role, dealing with different shift patterns and call-outs as they occur. If you find yourself getting hugely frustrated by this pattern, you will find it more challenging to stay in the job for a long time. At the same time, you also need to know your limits. You are not going to be any good to your clients if you are flat-out exhausted, which means that you will have to say no from time to time. Burnout is a common condition in social workers, but it is one that you want to keep at bay as best you can.
Perceptiveness
In many situations, you may find that people are not telling you the whole truth. This means that you need to be perceptive in picking up on indicators that all may not be well in the household that you are dealing with. Over time, you will likely start to learn to read in between the lines. Seeking out and helping those who are vulnerable is an important aspect of being a good social worker. Ultimately, it can make a significant difference to people's lives – and in more extreme situations, perhaps even save them.
If you are thinking of becoming a social worker, these are some of the core skills you need to possess to be a great one. Of course, you can start with an online social work degree, but there are things that you will learn on the job too. Some of the qualities listed above you may already possess, while others you need to work on. The same goes if you are already a social worker. This is not the kind of job role in which you should ever fully stop learning and developing. There is always going to be more that will help you grow and advance and ultimately provide a better level of service to the families and individuals you find yourself supporting. There is no doubt that this is a challenging career path and one that can provide immense rewards.
