WHAT IS THE RELATIONAL APPROACH?

The relational approach is transversal in our lives. Each person experiences it in relation to their uniqueness (singularity), and each field incorporates it based on its objectives. In this new phase, we wanted to know how professionals in health, education, the social sector, and business apply the relational approach in their workplaces. This is what they answered:

YOLANDA AGUILAR - Nursing Supervisor. Quality and Patient Safety at Clínica Corachán.​

I have been a nurse for 24 years. I have rotated through all floors of a hospital, with my final destination in Special Services, and I have been a Nursing Supervisor for 18 years now. In my professional and personal career, I am clear about the importance and positive impact of interpersonal relationships. The quality of care we provide to the patient largely depends on the capacity to strengthen and foster quality relationships in our environment. Recognition, visibility, respect, and acceptance, especially of the person behind each professional, is essential. And it is essential so that the patient receives excellent care for their person and a swift recovery of their health.

This quality in the way we relate, communicate, recognize ourselves, and give each other visibility is key to avoiding interferences with prejudices towards the patient, colleagues, or oneself, derived from our personal perceptions. In this COVID-19 pandemic, we have all been exposed. We have changed our perspective. Fragility, vulnerability, fears, uncertainty, fighting for life, facing death—all of this has been perceived on our skin. However, it was in this tsunami of emotions, in the middle of the battle, that we naturally recognized each other. Every single professional: doctors, nurses, patients… we realized that it is necessary to care for ourselves internally to be and give the best externally. 2020 shook our entire present and makes us wish that 2021 will be the relational year on a professional level, and of course, on a personal level.

BELÉN BLANCO - Head of Pedagogy of the Marianist Schools Network of Spain.

Education is, in essence, relationship. A bond between human beings with the purpose of understanding the world and learning to coexist with others. It is a relational act in which one soul with another soul becomes the best pedagogical formula to become what each person is called to be in this life. Relationship is, at the same time, community, and all the relationships established between the people who are part of that community, united by the common task of educating children. Relationships between people and educational agents.

Since March, the physical distance required by the current situation is re-evaluating the importance of the relationship in education. It has made us aware that without this relationship, it is very difficult to guarantee learning. That is why we must, more than ever, prioritize the care of the other and the relationships established in the school among all educational agents. Educators, students, families... all the people who are part of the school.

It is essential, more than ever, to prioritize listening, dialogue, recognition of the other, and to seek a balance between affectivity and effectiveness. As educators, we must work to establish a curriculum in which knowledge contributes to the development of the relational competencies necessary for a new humanism where the common good, so necessary to face this situation and to regenerate a better world, prevails.

Technology has strongly entered the educational world. We must also take advantage of it to put it at the service of these relationships. To humanize it. Let it help us free up time and space and focus on the only thing that technology cannot replace: generating the bond, generating the relational act that, in turn, triggers the emotion that guarantees learning.

More than ever, we are called to put relationships at the center of our educational communities so that, together, we can emerge from this situation.

ISMAEL LARA - Responsible for Culture, Innovation, and Talent at SEAT.

The quality of our relationships is not just important at this time, but essential. In this time of pandemic, more than ever. We know that the absence of relationships means the negation of a person. And we also know that a key to happiness for any person is to feel part of a group, of a network, to have support, to share, to feel loved, and to be able to care and feel cared for. Well, in these moments, this is vital, in my opinion, to reduce the level of alert and danger we may feel from having discovered that we are more vulnerable than we thought, and that our well-being and comfort are decreasing, if not almost disappearing.

JULIÁN CARRANZA - Director of Organizational Development at Greenpeace Spain.

We find ourselves at a social moment where the media and politicians have perverted the system of communication and recognition among us. What is valued more is what is nearby, what confirms us, what we think, rather than what is different or what we disagree with. And at that moment, the possibility of encounter, recognition, closeness, or negotiation disappears. The basis of human relationships lies in the recognition of the other, in integration. The tribe is built upon the contribution of everyone. It is not feasible from sectarianism or from the abandonment of ideas and values. If we do not achieve a social, community construction, it will be difficult for us to advance as a society.

MAR MESTRE – Director of the Clients Area at Suara Cooperativa

I work in the personal care sector at Suara Cooperativa and lead a team of two thousand professionals, mostly women, who make up the home care service in the city of Barcelona. I am lucky to share my daily life with exceptional professionals. True superstars who have given their best to care for the elderly adults living in their homes, and also to take care of each other.

As a team, we learned a few days after the start of the pandemic that we needed to share what we were experiencing with each other. We started a voluntary initiative of sending each other videos to encourage one another. We thought that this way we could generate community, complicity, teamwork, mutual aid...

The experience was incredible. Within a few days, we had mountains of videos that they made for each other to give support. We also received videos from people who had worked with us and who also wanted to be part of that moment. From people who were sick. From the Health Service, from Primary Care services... Every day between 7 and 9 in the morning they waited for the video of the day. The first "good morning" from the team was like a shot of energy and, unexpectedly, it gave visibility to the service. They shared the videos, they listened to us, they recognized the work, we received gratitude.

The people cared for were grateful that we went to them during an exceptional moment like the one we experienced. That we called them if we couldn't go. That we reinvented ourselves by making video calls. We protected them and they protected us. We also received farewells from many of them and accompanied the families in their grief.

We have seen love up close. The love from the people we cared for, from coworkers, from family members, from fathers, mothers, friends, neighbors, acquaintances. So, an initiative arose to pay tribute to all the people who died during the pandemic, and we all went out to the streets, to the squares, and held a minute of silence. And when we finished, spontaneously, we applauded. And we also received applause from the balconies, because during those months, we lived and felt fear, pain, anger, sadness. We cried, we laughed, we were happy, proud of what we had done. We had to rest.

We learned to care for ourselves, because that's how we cared for each other, until we learned that this was the new normal. We talked about our emotions, about what was happening to us. We listened to each other and, in reality, we touched each other more than ever, because we nourished the soul without safety distances, because we knew we needed it and that we are vulnerable.

Teresa Terrades. Teacher and Pedagogical Coordinator at IES Escola Intermunicipal del Penedès.

In education, nothing is static; everything is continuously rethought. What the virus has shaken up has served to rethink ourselves from a constructive and future-oriented perspective.

We are not yet ready to abandon classrooms; we cannot substitute presence. We are risking the educational bond, equity, the construction of singularity, and the construction of the group, which is the space where the common good is learned.

If the virtual world is imposed due to COVIDs, we will have to invent a new form of presence that guarantees all these intangibles. We must make the school a space of care; health protection will enter the classrooms more strongly. And we must add a concept: caring for the physical, intellectual, and emotional state of the students. Also, very specially, that of the teaching staff.

Coral Regi. Director of the Virolai School of Barcelona.

When this pandemic began, when schools closed on March 13th, we started worrying about many things. But we quickly realized that the most important thing was not to accompany the students in learning, but to accompany them in their emotional problems. We needed to educate boys and girls so that they felt they were still close to the school, that they continued to be at the center of our attention.

It was not an easy situation, and neither was the return to school. We had many fears: us, the children, the families, the young people... we were all worried about the situation, which was absolutely different. Closed groups, complicated outings. We also faced the isolation that the mask represented for us.

All of that was not easy, especially for younger children. The boys and girls have shown great responsibility, and we have realized that the most important thing in school is not what is taught, the contents; the most important thing is to ensure that we have boys and girls with strong emotional intelligence.

This strong emotional intelligence that our children need, that all of us need, implies that the school prioritizes all accompanying activities, everything that involves understanding the other, everything that involves, above all, listening. Listening to feelings, listening to emotions. There were many days we had to tell a class group that they would return home, that they would confine themselves. And that is hard for children, especially for young people.

In this environment, we need a guarantee of accompaniment. A guarantee that this is a situation that will pass, and we will keep the best of this experience, which is that we have truly realized that the most important thing is people and that the most important thing in school is to listen to ourselves and listen to one another.