5 Important Skills for Self-Advocates to Learn
Why Learning New Skills (Skillbuilding) is Important for Self-Advocates
While learning new skills is beneficial for everyone it is essential for self-advocates. Being an advocate means that you need to learn quite a few skills to be able to do your job effectively.
While it is okay to not know all of these skills right away, you do need to begin learning them right away.
Here are 5 solid skills that every self-advocate needs to learn to best advocate for themselves and others.
Number 1: Communication Skills
Communication skills are vitally important for self-advocates. Think about it, how else do you advocate except through words?
If you cannot communicate effectively, then you will not be able to advocate effectively. It is as simple as that.
However, "communication skills" is quite broad, so let's narrow that down a little bit. Here are a few specific areas you should focus on:
Civil Communication (Talking to people respectfully).
Body Language (Communicating with how you move your body).
Tone of Voice (How you say things/ what your voice sounds like).
Those are a few specific parts of communication that can be tricky to master, so it is a great idea to start learning those as soon as possible. There are a few more communication skills that you should focus on learning as well, but those fall under the umbrella of our next skill.
Number 2: Professionalism
Professionalism is simply acting like a professional or acting like you would if you were working at a job.
You should always be professional when working as an advocate. Think about it: would you want to listen to somebody if they were being rude or mean to you? Of course not, neither does anybody else!
Professionalism helps us make sure that we are being kind and polite to others and helps us be able to work with others even if we don't always agree with them.
As an advocate, you might sometimes need to talk with people in uncomfortable situations or with people you disagree with to achieve your advocacy goals. Professionalism will give you the tools you need to handle these interactions smoothly and with grace.
Here are some of the things about professionalism that you should learn:
Staying on topic and avoiding inappropriate topics & language (bad words).
Dressing well and being clean.
People will take you more seriously if you dress professionally and take care of yourself.
Commitments (Follow through on what you say you will do).
Punctuality (Being on time to where you said you would be).
Politeness (Being respectful to others).
Professionalism is what shows others that we are serious about advocacy and making positive change in our community and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
If we don't practice professionalism, people won't take us seriously and might think that we are just there to complain and cause drama. That is not the case!
Number 3: Emotional Stability
Emotional stability is a hard skill to learn and is only really obtained through practice. It is the ability to stay calm in difficult situations.
Not a lot of people have emotional stability, but it is a very important skill for self-advocates to learn.
During your self-advocacy journey, you might come across others who did not learn the important skill of professionalism like you and might communicate in a way that is not respectful or kind, emotional stability will allow you to remain calm and level-headed.
Another thing that might happen is that you hear about legislation that is being passed that you really disagree with or a piece of legislation that you really supported doesn't pass. This can be very upsetting, but it is important that you are able to stay calm during these situations so you can best help those around you. (Emotional stability is also a core part of a really advanced self-advocacy skill called leadership).
The best way to learn emotional stability is through practice. Whenever you feel yourself starting to become upset, stop and think about how you should remain calm. This is incredibly difficult at first but gets much easier with practice.
However, it is also important to mention that another critical self-advocacy skill is compassion. There are going to be some situations where it is impossible to remain completely calm and the last thing we'd want is to become robots!
The idea is not to cut off your emotions, it is to acknowledge them, understand that you feel that way, but not let yourself lose control of your emotions. Emotions can be an incredibly valuable advocacy tool!
Remember what I said about compassion? Compassion is when you use your emotions in a controlled manner to better understand other people in their situations. Compassion is one of the strongest emotions that human beings can feel and is an incredible motivator to drive positive social change. Nearly every, if not every, positive social change has had compassion as a cornerstone.
An advocate armed with compassion is a powerful force, indeed.
Number 4: Problem-Solving Skills
If there were no problems, there would be no advocates.
We only exist because of the fact that we do not live in a perfect world. The whole point of advocacy is trying to make the world a better place one advocated for social change at a time. So, it makes sense that we should learn problem-solving skills, as it is literally part of our job!
Unlike some of the other skills on this list, problem-solving skills are incredibly simple, they are just skills that help you "solve problems." It is exactly what it says on the tin!
One of the best problem-solving skills that you can develop is observation. To solve a problem you first have to know of it. Observation helps you both recognize problems and identify the areas that are causing the problem, which enables you to fix them. You can train your observation skills by reminding yourself to pay attention to the things around you.
Another, really good problem-solving skill is your creativity! Creativity allows you to come up with solutions to problems that other people haven't thought of. When the standard methods of problem-solving don't work, that is when the creative person can come forward with an idea that makes everything else fall into place. The best way to grow your creativity is to practice it by using your imagination.
Number 5: Research
As a self-advocate, you need to know a lot of information about the topics that you advocate for. Disability rights advocacy is a very complicated field and there are a lot of moving parts.
It is important for you to stay informed on the problems people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are facing. The only way you can do that is by researching these topics.
Developing great research skills will allow you to keep up with the issues you care about and find reliable information for yourself and others. Skilled researchers can even find this information really quickly, making them a great resource for other people.
There are a few areas that you should focus on to become a better researcher:
Learning how to determine whether or not a source is reliable.
Learning how to cite your sources.
Learning how to find information on the internet using Google & academic sources.
Learning how to use the information you find to support your argument.
Research is one of the most valuable skills that you have as an advocate because it allows you to support the changes you are trying to make. Instead of just saying that you want something to change, you can say that you want something to change and provide real data to prove the importance of what you are trying to change.
Beyond Advocacy
So, I've been a little sneaky...
While all of these skills are still incredibly useful for advocacy, they are also much more than that!
All of these skills can help you both in your advocacy efforts and in your daily lives!
Communication skills will help you interact better with other people.
Professionalism will allow you to make meaningful connections in your community and find employment.
Emotional stability will allow you to better handle difficult situations whenever they occur.
Problem-solving skills will help you solve the problems that come up in life.
Research will help you learn and explore the things you are curious & passionate about.
These are just a few of the skills that are valuable for self-advocates to learn. There are countless more and nearly every skill you learn could be applied to self-advocacy in some way or another. So, get learning.
