Personal relationship skills are the common link between all human services workers. Though many human service workers have different strengths, weaknesses and challenges, they all use operative personal relationship skills (Mehr & Kanwischer, 2011). These relationship skills are categorized into two vague columns: being and doing. This is explained as the “Truax triad” and is defined by the attributes of “…warmth, empathy, and genuineness” (Mehr & Kanwischer, 2011, p.148). Doing is explained as a type of communication and involves reflection, paraphrasing, confrontation and interpretations along with nonverbal communication (Mehr et al., 2011). I believe I am most comfortable utilizing the ‘doing’ side of personal relationship skills.
