How to Coach Yourself and Others Empowering Coaching And Crisis Interventions | Page 68

This book is in B&W, not color - Print page in Grayscale for Correct view!  Empowering others means connecting to the best elements that lie within you.  Empowering others is contagious.  Empowering others means giving them the feeling that they are loved.  Empowering others is to understand that the cashier at the supermarket, the waiter at the café, the guy who pumps your gas, the doorman, the street cleaner, and the janitor are not transparent. They are people just like us.  Empowering others means smiling at these people, inquiring about their wellbeing, thanking them for the services they provide, and wishing them a good day.  Empowering others means being happy for them, and praising them on their accomplishments. Praising them in any way possible. Always.  Empowering others means identifying with them.  Empowering others is easy. It does not require any effort.  Empowering others means smiling when someone else approaches.  Empowering others also empowers us.  Empowering others makes the world a better place.  Empowering others means to be moved by the American poet and author Maya Angelou, one of the most important figures in the American Civil Rights Movement, who said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” "Empowerment suggests a sense of control over one's life in personality, cognition, and motivation. It expresses itself at the level of feelings, at the level of ideas about self worth, at the level of being able to make a difference in the world around us... We all have it as a potential." (Rappaport, J.: The power of empowerment language, Social Policy, 15, 1985. p. 15-21). Gutierrez adapted this definition and tried to clarify it by adding four necessary changes which have to be seen in a person before he/she can be described as "successfully empowered" - an increased self-sufficiency, a developed group consciousness, a reduction of self-blame in the face of problems and the ability to assume personal responsibility for change. That is, not relying on other people to help out, but trying to take matters in one's own hands and pursuing a change to the better. Another definition has been given by Solomon who has developed a very good definition of empowerment related to social work, adaptable to our focus on migrants and refugees. This is the definition that is used in this text for empowerment. Empowerment is defined as "a process whereby the social worker engages in a set of activities with the client (...) that aim to reduce the powerlessness that has been created by negative valuations based on member-ship in a stigmatised group. It involves identification of the power blocks that contribute to the problem as well as the development and implementation of specific strategies aimed at either the reduction of the effects from indirect power blocks or the reduction of the operations of direct power blocks." (Solomon, B.: Black Empowerment: Social Work in Oppressed Communities, New York 1976.) In this context, empowerment can be best described as a process which can be initiated and accompanied by advice, counsel and orientation programmes. Through this process, individuals, organisations or groups, who seem powerless or deprived of the means to reconstitute themselves in an alien society, can become 'empowered'. They can become aware of the power dynamics at work, develop skills and the capacity to gain some control over their lives, exercise this control without infringing upon the rights of others and support the empowerment of others in their community. For [email protected] Property of Bookemon, do NOT distribute 68