Insights and Tips for My Fellow Introverted SLPs

As a speech-language pathologist, you talk to patients and their caregivers, to colleagues, and to collaborators, and then you talk to yourself while making notes on the all previously listed interactions. Therefore, you’d think an extrovert would be the ideal personality for the job. After all, SLPs devote their careers to promoting better communication, so they must enjoy communicating, right? Not always. As it turns out, a special and not-so-rare species of introverted SLPs quietly works in the profession. The term “introverted SLP” should not come off as an oxymoron. When talking to my peers for this piece, I discovered many fellow introverted SLPs. We bring our own superpower and make a difference in the lives of clients, patients, or students through listening. One of the most important skills SLPs learn is listening. Our clients want to communicate, and through active listening—waiting longer for responses, observing body language, focusing on the speaker—we show value to all communication attempts, verbal or nonverbal. Although I know we introverts make excellent SLPs, working in an extrovert-dominated profession poses several challenges. Here are some tips to handle them for my fellow introverted SLPs—extroverted SLPs, please also take note. Running out of social and emotional energy. A typical day in the life of an SLP requires a lot of social energy and the need to be “on.” We talk all day with verbal prompting, praise, feedback, review, debriefing,...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Academia & Research Health Care Private Practice Schools Slider Speech-Language Pathology Professional Development Source Type: blogs