Building Relationships

A group ‘selfie’ from the Team Ethan Christmas party (minus Shannon, sorry!). Each team member is wearing a red and white Santa hat, looking very happy with big smiles (pictured from left to right Ruby, Lucy, Elliot, Maureen, Ethan and Keith)

Building healthy and professional relationships with my team is highly important to me. In order to get the best out of your support workers you have to take the time to know them on both a professional and personal level. Taking time to build relationships can mean that better support is provided for me and also my support workers.

This relationship process starts by having an initial meeting with the support worker before they start working to make sure they’re going to be a good match. I can usually tell within the first 5 minutes if I think they’re going to work well with me and my team. After that I try to make a conscious effort to get to know their interests, how long they’ve been in disability and what works well to get the best out of their skill set. For example, if they’re a bit of character I find using banter and humour is a good method to make them feel comfortable and welcomed into the team. However, not all support workers are so confident and can be a bit more reserved at first. It’s very important to let them build their confidence and come out of their shell at their own pace.

As the client you can’t always assume that support workers will know how to do everything or the way you like. So, this is where you need people management skills as the client. A lot of my management skills have come from my love of sports and listening to lots of different coaches and leaders over the years. However, another big part of people management is being compassionate and patient. Sometimes you have to see the lighter side of things even when things don’t get exactly to plan. Not every day is going to be perfect and sometimes I have to adapt to the needs of my support workers around me. It can sometimes be overwhelming working with new clients especially if you haven’t worked with a client in a wheelchair so as important as it is for support workers to support me and my needs it's equally as important that myself and the rest of the team support one another to achieve the common goal.

The reality is, for a healthy relationship to form it has to be a two-way street this is the best way to build respect and trust between own another.

Cheers, Ethan.