ON COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE FEATURES OF SOCIAL SPHERE SPECIALISTS

Purpose of the study: To study the ways to increase the communicative competence of social sphere specialists, aimed at the formation of professional and personal qualities, communicative skills, and development of professional interest and success. Methodology: Some theoretical and empirical research methods are used: analysis of publications in social work, normative documentation on the research issue; diagnostic methods: questioning, testing, interviews; experimental methods: ascertaining, forming, and control stages of the experiment; stating, forming and control stages of the experiment; methods of statistical processing of research results. Main Findings: The main results of the study showed that the modern practice of successful organization of social service activities requires a thoughtful approach. The head, together with the full-time psychologist, should monitor the communicative competence of the specialists working at this service and timely organize the work to overcome the manifestations of professional burnout of specialists and prevent their professional deformation. The significance of the influence of active teaching methods on interpersonal communication has allowed us to develop and test several practically effective teaching methods that increase the effectiveness of interaction with others in professional communication. Applications of this study: This study reveals the possibilities of improving the communicative competence of the specialists working at social service departments in modern conditions of systematic emotional overload when performing their professional duties. This theme is quite relevant for the activities of any service within “person to person” interaction, especially a social one, having its specifics and directed at helping a person facing a social problem. Novelty/Originality of this study: The novelty of this study is in justifying the need for organizing activities to improve the communicative competence of social service specialists using modern socio-psychological developments. In the modern practice of holding social work, this component is often overlooked, which subsequently leads to frequent conflicts among social service employees and recipients of social services, a gradual loss of interest in the work performed, and, as a result, its indifferent fulfilment.


INTRODUCTION
One of the main components of the professional competence of a social work specialist is his/her success in professional and personal communication. As a rule, clients of social workers are citizens who are in an unstable social situation. As a result, they are not always emotionally balanced and are unlikely to maintain and establish positive social contacts.
The specifics of social work, according to E. I. Kholostovoy and L. I. Kononova (2019), consists in the fact that "when solving the problems that people are facing doing it, it directly or indirectly affects all forms and types of social relations and people's activities, all aspects of social life. The identification and solution of these problems are carried out, first of all, by establishing and maintaining contacts with the representatives of state services, public organizations and associations, citizens and social groups (clients) who need help, protection, support, which requires, in turn, high development social workers' communicative abilities" (p. 43).
Therefore, the specialist assumes both the emotional burden and responsibility for building positive social contacts with the client himself/herself and his/her closest people. This style of behavior inevitably leads to emotional burnout and the professional deformation of specialists.
The study of the communicative competence features of social specialists is an essential aim of organizing their successful social communication. In the modern practice of socio-psychological training for the formation of professional competence of specialists in the social sphere, the developments of Russian psychologists should be actively used. G. P. Medvedeva (2018), in her textbook "Philosophy of Social Work", showed that "a person is the main element of social work, its object, and subject, goal, and result. At the same time, human studies in various scientific disciplines of social work are limited only to the study of man as an object and subject in the system of professional social work. The fact that a person is simultaneously a member of the society, various groups and communities are practically not taken into account, just as the role of a person who does not take part in the professional social work is not taken into account" (p. 88).
Z. P. Zamaraeva and L. I. Starovojtova (2019) noted that "in the process of forming professional competence, sociallyoriented professional subjectivity is of great importance. Its content and technological support imply, on the one hand, targeted professional activity with social protection facilities that have different levels of resource potentials (low, medium, high) to restore lost, partially lost or not acquired during socialization skills and abilities to perform social functions and roles in the modern society, on the other hand, the updating of special knowledge and skills to conduct a level assessment of resource potentials and the selection of adequate resource technologies, the formation of the necessary conditions for their implementation". K. D. Zanina and A. G. Akhtyan (2018) emphasizes that the modern world is in continuous innovative development, covering all spheres of society, including socio-cultural. The study of personality typology in this context is becoming increasingly relevant in connection with the ability to predict the formation of innovative thinking. Every modern person every day repeatedly interacts with both individuals and groups of people, inevitably encountering various types of human character and behavior. There is a noticeable jump in the interest to the problems of social interactions considered in the field of personality typology and peculiarities of social work (van den Heuvel et al., 1989; Firsov&Studenova, 2016; Santos et al., 2020; Straussner&Senreich, 2020).
The analysis of scientific literature showed that the study of the communicative competence features of specialists in the social sphere is an essential and actively researched area of modern science.
• Psychological department that provides advisory and educational assistance to the citizens of different ages and social status as well as correctional and developmental work with children having developmental disabilities; • Correctional department, carrying out correctional and rehabilitation work with various categories of citizens; • Medical department that implements medical support for the educational, correctional, and rehabilitation work of the center.
Each of the departments took part in the study.
At the first stage, psychological testing was conducted to identify employees who were dissatisfied with their relationships with people and experienced particular difficulties in communication.
In the second stage, based on the test results, a group of employees experiencing communicative difficulties in their professional activities was selected to participate in the social and psychological training (SPT).
In the third stage, the evaluation of the effectiveness of the SPT program was carried out.
The article aims to study the ways to increase the communicative competence of social specialists, aimed at the formation of professional and personal qualities, communication skills of the specialist, development of the interest in the chosen profession, and success in professional activity. This study reveals the possibilities for improving the communicative competence of social service specialists in modern conditions of systematic emotional overload within the performance of their professional duties. Timely organization of diagnostics and correction of the emotional and mental mood of specialists gives a positive result, increases the success in fulfilling professional tasks, and brings satisfaction from work performed.
The following research tasks were identified: • To analyze theoretical approaches to the study of communicativeness as a professionally significant quality of a social worker; • To find out the essence of social work as a professional activity; • To study socio-psychological characteristics of the social worker personality; • To explore socio-psychological features of the communicative activities of social workers; • To develop a program of social and psychological training (SPT) on improving the communicative activity of social workers allowing to improve the quality of social services for citizens; • To analyze the results obtained after the SPT.
To solve the assigned tasks, several theoretical and empirical research methods were used: • Analysis of philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, acmeological, sociological, methodical literature, some publications in social work, normative documentation on the research issue; • Diagnostic methods: questioning, testing, interviews; • Experimental methods: ascertaining, forming, and control stages of the experiment; • Stating, forming and control stages of the experiment; • Methods of statistical processing of research results.

Research base
Communicative competence is one of the fundamental characteristics of professional competence and professional training of specialists in social work. The difficult current socio-economic situation in the country, the specifics of the Russian system of social protection, and remuneration, the desire of service recipients to quickly and effectively solve their problems results in the increasing emotional burden on the social specialist. In this regard, one of the main tasks of the heads of social services is to monitor the socio-psychological state of their employees. Thus, regular, systematic work on the protection of the socio-psychological state of the employees guarantees a successful professional solution of all the production tasks of this service.
In this regard, the experience of studying the ways to improve the professional competence of employees at the "Center for Medical and Sociological Research" in Saratov in November 2018 is of great interest. It should be noted that the staff includes 30 people, 26 of who are women, and 4 are men aged 32-51 years. All employees, except for the head of the center and security and accounting personnel, were involved in the study. To study socio-psychological characteristics of the communicative activities of social workers, as well as the ways to improve its quality, the "Center for Medical and Sociological Research" conducted the research focused on the socio-psychological characteristics of the communicative activities of workers in their center.

Research progress and its methods
At the first stage, psychological testing was conducted to identify employees who were dissatisfied with their relationships with people and experiencing particular difficulties in communication. For these purposes, the following methods were used: 1) Standardized self-report on the features of interpersonal communication by I.E. Strelkova (1967). The self-report contains 16 questions. The technique reveals the following parameters of interpersonal communication: • Satisfaction -dissatisfaction with one's relationship with others; • With what categories of persons and to what extent this satisfaction is manifested; • Presence of difficulties of a procedural and dynamic nature in the process of communication; • Correspondence of existing relations with people in relation to others; • Ability to effectively build relationships with other people; • Attitude from others according to the criterion of understandingmisunderstanding; • Confidence -uncertainty in relationships with people; • Subjective assessment of the causes of difficulties in communication (in oneself -in a partner).
According to the results of this technique, it becomes possible to identify the qualitative characteristics of the communicative and organizational inclinations of the testees. Communicative and organizational abilities in the professions that in their content are associated with the active interaction of a person with other people act as pivotal, as their lack cannot ensure success in work. The main content of the workers` activities in such professions is associated with team leadership, training, education as well as cultural, educational, and consumer services.
3) The study of the level of empathic tendencies (Egorychev et al., 2019).
A popular methodology for studying the level of empathic tendencies developed by Kazan psychologist I. M. Yusupov was used to study such a personal quality as empathy understood as an ability to voluntary emotional responsiveness to the experiences of other people, a skill to put oneself in the place of another person (described in Sidorenko, 2008).
Empathy makes human behavior socially determined, contributing to the balance of interpersonal relationships. The ability of a person to empathy is a crucial factor for success in those activities that require living in the world of the communication partner. This is especially important when it comes to social work. This technique allows determining the level of empathy development (very high, high, normal, low, and very low).
In the second stage, based on the test results, a group of employees experiencing communicative difficulties in their professional activities was selected to participate in the SPT training.
In the third stage, the evaluation of the SPT program's effectiveness was carried out.

Analysis and interpretation of research results
The first stage of our research was to diagnose the level of development of empathic trends among the center employees (see Table 1). From Table 1, it can be seen that no employee has a very high and very low level of empathy that is why, in our sample, there are only three levels: high, normal, and low. Moreover, 63% of employees have a normal (average) level of empathy. The distribution of employees by the level of empathy development is presented below in Figure 1. Thus, we can interpret that the employees of the center try to show attention and delicacy in interpersonal relations; they tend to judge others by their actions, emotional manifestations are mostly under control.
The diagnostic results obtained by the communicative and organizational inclinations (COI) method are presented in Table 2. As can be seen from the presented results, the majority of employees have a relatively high level of communication skills, but only 6 people have organizational skills. The data obtained in the framework of the study clearly show the work capacity of this team. With competent management and rational distribution of labor duties, he is ready to successfully solve the tasks as it is evidenced in Figure 2. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews eISSN: 2395-6518, Vol 8, No 4, 2020, pp 182-191 https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2020.8419 the duties. Therefore, a skillful combination of activity and sociability of some people with patience and inner composure, aimed at the gradual implementation of the instructions of others, brings success in the teamwork.
The next stage of the study is aimed at studying the parameters of interpersonal communication. Let us turn to the results obtained by the standardized self-report on the features of interpersonal communication. The results are presented in Table 3.  • Development of the focus on socio-psychological activity; • Correction and formation of some socio-psychological communicative skills; • Development of participants' ability to empathy; • Increasing sensitivity to non-verbal forms of contact, decoding non-verbal ways of communicating with people.
As evidenced by the data of diagnostic procedures carried out after the end of the training, and the data of self-reports characterizing the changes in the self-attitude of the subjects, the level of awareness of their problems in the process of interaction with others, mastery of some tactics of behavior, communication training organized according to the developed program, gave a positive result.

CONCLUSION
Summing up the work done, it is necessary to note the identification of the problems associated with the communicative competence of service employees, which is an integral component of social activities. The primary vector of successful work of social services is to carry out preventive work to establish communication links within the team and to smooth out the consequences of communication with the recipients of social services through training courses aimed at improving the culture of mutual interaction.
In the framework of this work, trainings conducted according to the intended program gave the psychological and practical influence on the personality of people and their actual behavior. The main effect of the impact was expressed in