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You are here: Experts > Jobs/Careers > Job Searching: Canada > Interviewing Tips > Establish positive relationships
Interviewing Tips - Establish positive relationships
Expert: Denise Anne Taylor - 11/3/2009
Question
Hi Denise,
I'm emma and I'm doing children's services
Thanks for your help to my previous question
Please, how to establish and maintain professional relationships and effective communication with parents and other family members of our children
The Question is as following:
Task 1: Establish positive relationships with family members
The Singhs have recently moved to Summerville. They wish to enrol their son, James who is four years old in our centre. Mr Singh has made an appointment to visit our centre next week and find out more about our services. I will be away and I want you to meet him and answer his queries.
In preparation for this meeting with him, I want you to jot down strategies and ideas to ensure that we establish a positive relationship with him and lay a good foundation for future interactions.
Here are some questions:
1. What will you do to ensure that a welcoming atmosphere is created for Mr Singh’s visit?
2. How would you introduce yourself to Mr Singh and outline your role at our centre? How will you show him our facilities?
3. What strategies would you adopt to develop his confidence in our service and enable him and his family to actively participate in his child’s experiences after he has enrolled at our centre?
Task 2: Share information about children with family members and other interested parties
You need to be clear about how you will share information about children’s progress with their family. Please answer the following questions:
1. How will Mr Singh be informed about his child’s participation in your centre’s programs and how often will this happen?
2. What is a centre’s policy regarding collecting and recording information relating to children’s progress at the centre and communicating this to parents?
Task 3: Respond to family members’ concerns
Mr Singh makes the following requests:
His family are vegetarians and James does not eat meat
The family are concerned about sun exposure
He does not want his child to play in a group which has girls
He does not want his child to participate in “Girly” activities
He would like consistency with home and wants the service to smack James when he misbehaves
How would you listen and respond to each of the points raised by Mr. Singh
Task 4: Support a diverse range of families
Let us revisit task 3.
In that task you indicated how you would respond to a range of requests from Mr Singh.
For this task indicate how you would ensure that you have demonstrated the following skills in your interaction with Mr Singh. You could cover each question in 5 to 10 lines.
1. Communicating information in a appropriate way.
2. Ensuring that your communication is appropriate to the age, linguistic background of the individual/group.
3. Using verbal and non-verbal communication styles, as appropriate.
4. Communicating the final decision clearly to all involved.
Please, you can answer promptly, I can wait, take your time
Thank you for your help Denise
Regard Emma
Email:
Answer
Emma,
First, what is your company policy for many of the requests. This atmosphere may not be the appropriate choice based on his unique and specific requests which may require Mr. Singh to go to a more private setting to meet all the needs he has for his son.
Does your company provide custom meals? If not, is there an extra charge for requests outside to the normal fees for food service? If so, you would communicate this to him.
A welcoming atmosphere should already be established at the centre. You want to represent the daily setting that would be expected. The offer of a beverage, water or coffee is always welcomed, a tour of the facility, covering the daily and weekly expectations of the centre would be expected.
Introductions are made by simply stating "Hello and welcome to __________centre, my name is ___________ and I am the centre's _______________." Always address him by his last name unless he states otherwise.
All of the questions asked, really should have policies and procedures in place well before Mr. Singh's visit, there should already be many of these protocols in place at the centre and if not they should be established to develop continuity for all of the centre's families.
Regarding sun exposure, does your centre have policies on sunscreen provided by families that is applied prior to outdoor activities? If not, is the centre open to such a request?
These requests by Mr. Singh are quite out of the ordinary and if interaction with girls is a daily part of socialization then he may have to look elsewhere for care. Usually socialization is an important part of a centre's role to prepare children for the real world and coping with gender, culture, etc. This centre may not find if financially viable to take on all of his special requests, and unless this is an exclusive setting he may have to look elsewhere.
You may want to be very careful in committing to the use of corporal punishment (smacking) of a child in many cultures this may be a huge legal liability for the centre and in some cultures is a form of child abuse and the centre may not want to commit to such a request for fear of other families noting such behaviors by centre employees.
Take notes, listen carefully, respond directly and that can be done by adhering to centre policy.
The centre should have a file system in place for each child to log their progress and any outstanding concerns should be documented for purpose of reference and if any legal liability were to arise.
You may want to ask you manager these questions and how they are handled per centre policy and this should alleviate a good deal of your concern.
Thank you,
Denise Anne Taylor
This question is quite detailed and this forum does not allow for such a response, however, there are many good books on communication at the library or bookstore that may be worth purchasing for such a unique situation.
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