November 11, 2012
Self-Efficacy: A Key Building Block to Success
Over the past few weeks, the term of self-efficacy has been
on my mind. This has come from a
combination of media attention about kids struggling in school and a continuing
education course I am currently taking on the basics of the addiction
process. What has continually come to
light for me is the longer people are left to fail, the more likely they are to
develop an attitude that they can never succeed in life. This attitude of failure can be exacerbated
by things said or little things that are done to individuals. I wanted to take time to first define what
self-efficacy is and give my thoughts on what will increase it.
According to the
Social Work Dictionary 5th edition 2003, self-efficacy is defined as
follows:
A client’s expectations
or beliefs in his or her ability to accomplish specified tasks that are needed
to reach therapeutic goals.
This means that if a person has an expectation of success or
mastery of a given skill, the more likely they will accomplish the task given
them. The opposite would be true if the
person experienced repeated failure at a given task. The main point here is that people do not
master tasks overnight, and that success is truly a journey if I may coin a
phrase. The same can be said of failure,
that it can be a journey as well. People
who experience long-term failure can develop low self-efficacy; thus, when help
is provided, it may take longer for them to develop a sense of
accomplishment.
It is important to understand that, when dealing with people
who have experienced long-term failure, they may not respond to well-intentioned
intervention or assistance. The key is
to start where the person is at, and to help them achieve small successes and
then build on these. One other important
point to make is that people need support when they fail to try again and
again. I believe it is so important to
help people find a safe place where they are allowed learn from failure and
find small successes.
I posted last in May of 2012 on life skills 2.0 what I have
learned along the way. I mentioned in
that post of the importance of finding a safe place. I meant that whole-heartedly because a safe
place or even a person is where you can go to recharge your spirit and fight on
another day. People will and do
experience failure, but they can learn to succeed if given support to do so.
© Mike Arieta, 2012
