Youth worker competences
Collaborating successfully in teams

Means that the youth worker contributes to team work and maintains good working relations with everyone involved with the project. The youth worker motivates and supports colleagues in achieving given objectives. This competence area also includes systemic cooperation and responsibility in an international context

Behaviours
  • promote communication and collaboration amongst the team members to nurture qualities and deal with resistance

  • identify diversity, strengths and weaknesses in the team

  • request and offers support where needed

  • ensure that knowledge, skills, styles and preferences in the team are shared and communicated

  • deepen knowledge of particular topics/issues

  • coach colleagues – where possible and requested – based on the approach of non-formal learning

  • help build team spirit and trust

  • demonstrate empathy

  • self-reflect on own values, beliefs and attitudes

  • act authentically

  • apply feedback techniques

  • allocate adequate resources and time to team building

  • steer collective and individual emotions in a positive direction, including towards action where relevant

  • receive and expresse criticism in an open, respectful and constructive way

  • deal with frustration in a constructive manner

  • use own privilege and power for the benefit of others

Knowledge
  • knowledge about team work mechanisms in different contexts and of the possible outcomes of different approaches

  • knowledge about one’s personal limitations and how to overcome them

  • knowledge about coaching methods

  • knowledge how to deal with emotions

  • knowledge about conflict prevention and transformation

  • knowledge about feedback techniques (how to give feedback, how to receive it, etc.)

  • knowledge regarding individual and collective interests and focuses

Skills
  • mastering methods and techniques that support a clear and fair division of roles and responsibilities

  • ability to contextualise and conceptualise team work practices with the principles of non-formal learning

  • ability to match team members’ competences to the objectives of the activity and to the young peoples’ profiles

  • ability to foster collaboration among the team members

  • ability to deal well with crisis/conflicts in the team

  • ability to work with various approaches, e.g. co-vision, supervision, collegial feedback, and cooperation

  • ability to develop a continued learning plan for oneself

  • ability to deal with emotions

  • abilty to feel and show solidarity with people with different values, beliefs and worldviews

Attitudes
  • willingness to take on tasks that are not normally a part of one’s role but that will ensure safety for the team and the group

  • openness to and ready for new challenges

  • readiness for continued learning

  • openness to different sources of learning

  • awareness of one’s own competences

  • awareness of how much others can teach you and of the principles of ‘to get and to give’

  • readiness to reflect upon and rethink one’s own role

  • readiness to ask for support and to admit personal limitations in the context of the activity/group

  • readiness to support colleagues’ learning needs

  • awareness that one is a role model, both as an individual and as a team

  • willingness to cooperate and learn from others who might hold different values

  • readiness to collaborate and teamwork online

With the support and the contribution of:

With the support and the contribution of:

© Steered and implemented 2024 by SALTO Training & Cooperation Resource Centre