Relational Approach vs Transactional Approach

Foundation for Indigenous Sustainable Health works with organisations, schools, government agencies, corporates and non-government agencies from a relational approach. The first time we meet we spend time yarning, finding out who each other is on an individual level, where we come from, what our passions are, what drives us to get up in the morning to face the days challenges, why we do what we do. This yarning forms the basis of our working relationship and is critical to how we work and foundational for building a positive working relationship.

It is always interesting when we work with organisations to find out that the people from the same organisation we are meeting with do not actually know about each other, even when they have been working together for over 10 years. 

We often forget that all human beings are social. Often our work environments, government support systems, educational systems are not based on relational. The structure drives it to become transactional where the focus of workers/educators/service providers is driven towards supervision, organisation and performance.

In a transactional approach the focus for workers within government, educational and service agencies becomes compliance for the clients/students they work with. The focus then becomes both reward and punishment instead of quality service delivery in meeting the needs of clients.

The Foundation for Indigenous Sustainable Health team have been working with schools to support them to move to a relational approach to how they work with each other as educational staff, how they work with students and their families. There has correspondingly been an improvement in staff work satisfaction, in the attendance of Aboriginal students and the educational results of students.