3.5 – Manage Abusive Client Behaviour
Purpose & Context
Career Development Professionals (CDPs) address abusive behavior when it arises to establish boundaries with clients, prevent escalation, and ensure others are not adversely impacted.
Effective Performance
Competent career development professionals must be able to:
- P1. Identify forms of threatening and abusive behaviour to self and others, including:
- Physical violence
- Emotional abuse
- Verbal abuse
- Sexual harassment
- Bullying, including cyberbullying
- Stalking
- P2. Maintain composure in abusive situations:
- Remain calm
- Speak clearly and firmly with the client
- Avoid taking clients’ words or attitude personally
- P3. Ensure safety of self, client, and others:
- Separate client with abusive behaviours from others, if necessary
- Ask for assistance from colleagues based on proximity, skill set and their relationship with the client, if
necessary
- P4. Inform client that abusive behaviour is unacceptable and must stop:
- Discuss consequences of continuation of behavior, e.g. termination of services
- Ask client to leave if the behaviour continues
- P5. Discuss behaviour with client
- Acknowledge distress
- Suggest resolutions
- P6. Assess whether services can continue:
- If yes, handle client concern or complaint
- If no, call for assistance, e.g. supervisor, security, police
- P7. Record details of incident in accordance with organization’s policies
Knowledge & Understanding
Competent career development professionals must know and understand:
- K1. Types of abusive behaviour
- K2. Conflict resolution techniques
- K3. Support resources
- K4. Relevant organizational policies
Contextual Variables
Competent career development professionals must be able to perform this competency in the following range of contexts:
Competent career development professionals must be able to perform this competency in the following range of contexts:
Glossary & Key References
Terms
Industry-specific terms contained in the standard defined here, where applicable.
Information Sources and Resources for Consideration
Context Rating Scales
Criticality
Q: What is the consequence of a professional being unable to perform this skill according to the standard?
Frequency
Q: How frequent and under what conditions is this skill performed?
Level of Difficulty
Q: Under routine circumstances, how would you rate the level of difficulty in performing this skill?
Time Required to Gain Proficiency
Q: What is the average length of time or number of repeated events that are minimally necessary for an individual to become proficient in performing the skill to the standard?
To become fully proficient in this competency, a career development professional requires a minimum of 5 instances of addressing abusive behaviour.
Autonomy
Practitioners typically perform this competency with and/or without supervision, and as part of a team and/or alone.
Automation
It is unlikely that this competency will automate.