Why is Social Emotional Learning Important for Professional Success?
We’ve all been there. After a long day, you decide you don’t have it in you to cook dinner tonight. You grab your car keys and head to your favorite fast-food spot and join the drive-through line. You know exactly what you’re going to order and can already imagine how good it will taste. You place your order, pull forward, pay, and are on your way with your food. You arrive home, excitedly open the bag, … and realize your order is wrong. Do you get mad? Cry? Resign yourself to whatever’s in the bag?
CWEE participants experience this scenario every week, not at a drive-through, but in a CWEE classroom! The “drive-through” game is one of Renee’s favorites. As CWEE’s Social Emotional Learning Facilitator (SELF), Renee uses this game as a teaching tool to help participants understand different conflict styles. Renee plays the role of the employee who gets the order wrong, and the participants roleplay as customers who must decide how they’re going to handle the situation. They practice being passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive, and assertive to compare how each feels. The game helps participants recognize when they’re using a specific conflict style, and helps participants practice being assertive, which is the goal of the game. The drive-through game is a fun way to make the vulnerable experience of engaging with social emotional learning feel safe and accessible during CWEE participants’ first week of the Career Readiness program.
Renee Kleck leads the important work of helping participants expand their social emotional skillsets in order to thrive at work and home. The SELF role joins our Director of Organizational Wellness and our Mental Health Therapist in providing new resources and services as part of our expanded Wellness Team. A fourth member of the team, a Family Focused Mental Health Therapist, will be joining us very soon!
Renee joined CWEE in this new position in August 2024. She first became interested in social emotional learning when she adopted her son. He has unique needs, which inspired her to learn more about teaching special education. This learning led Renee to a therapist who introduced her to the practice of mindfulness. Initially she thought, “this isn’t going to work for me.” Renee was struggling with parenting her son. She felt hopeless and helpless. The therapist helped Renee see that it wasn’t that Renee was the wrong person for the job, but that she just didn’t have the right tools to use. The therapist worked with Renee to unlearn patterns of parenting learned from her upbringing and introduced Renee to a new set of tools to use with her son.
Introducing social emotional learning (SEL) created a major, positive shift in her family. Recognizing the possibilities SEL unlocked within her own family, she wanted to help other families learn about and use these tools too. Renee began teaching SEL curriculums in school and worked with parents to navigate special education for their children. She loved teaching SEL and working with parents, so she knew the SELF role at CWEE would be the perfect opportunity to combine both of her passions.
Renee facilitates the social-emotional learning that takes place during CWEE’s Career Readiness Program (CRP). The CRP is a four-week long program that prepares participants for the job search process and future employment. In the first week of the program, participants learn with Renee, covering a wide variety of SEL topics that help the cohort members build community and express the vulnerability needed for growth. After participants get to know one another, Renee begins teaching about emotional regulation and anger management, helping participants understand where their emotions come from and how to manage them. “That first day, I’m sharing a lot of different tools and skills, with a big emphasis on the fact that when you’re experiencing emotions, you’re not doing anything wrong, and there’s a whole set of tools you’re not aware of yet that can help you successfully manage them.”
On the second day, Renee works with participants to help them understand their time management skills, their choices and their goals. “We look at how participants actually spend their time, which is quite eye-opening when you put it all down on paper. We also talk about personal values and their personal goals. Participants have the opportunity to do a lot of learning about their professional values and goals in the following three weeks of the program. During the first week, we spend time understanding who we are as people, so in later weeks we can then understand who we are as employees.”
On the final day of the SEL week, Renee teaches participants about communication, conflict and “I” messages. “I” messages seek to remove the word “you” from difficult conversations. For example, one would say “I feel x” rather than saying “You made me feel x”. As a group, participants help each other form “I” messages so they can learn how to express their own needs without hurting the other person in the conversation. Renee shared that throughout the week, the classroom is full of laughter and participants really enjoy being in each other’s company.
Renee says, “Our participants are very forthcoming, open and vulnerable during the week because they feel very safe at CWEE, which allows us to dig a little deeper, beyond just the surface. The participants are so welcoming of me, the program, the skills they’re learning, and they’re very joyful.”
When looking at traditional models of workforce development, you might be hard-pressed to find many that include social emotional learning as such an important element of programming. At CWEE, recognize that when we clock in, we do not leave ourselves behind. Instead, we bring our whole selves to work each day, so we’ve created a program model that serves the entire person, not just the employee.
Social emotional learning is critical to success in the workplace because it can help participants address hesitancies, manage anxieties, and learn techniques that allow participants to communicate issues or difficulties within the workplace in a way that maintains their integrity and prevents them from saying something they may later regret.
SEL increases confidence in career seekers, helping them understand their emotions and the purpose those emotions serve. Social emotional learning also helps participants recognize that change is possible, and it provides the tools needed to make that change. When thinking about employment, participants may initially approach it with a more fixed mindset of “These are things I’m not capable of”, but social emotional learning shows participants that they can get there with practice. SEL leaves participants feeling hopeful that they can succeed in the rest of the Career Readiness Program and future employment.
A beautiful bonus of the cohort model of the Career Readiness Program is the real-life relationships that form between participants. Even during just the first week, participants make connections with one another, exchange phone numbers, and become a part of each other’s circles of support. Participants can continue to build community with one another outside of the classroom during one of the peer support lunches that Renee facilitates. Every other Wednesday, participants come together in community to talk about things that are relevant to the group and offer their own personal experiences. These lunches also result in a lot of resource sharing, with participants sharing everything from where to get used tires all the way to childcare and school recommendations.