Whenever the same question comes up more than once in a short period of time, it gets my attention, so when feedback from a program I did for an agency which helps women in transition mirrored a recent comment on my blog from a career coach who works with low income people, I accepted the invitation to re-examine my thinking.
Both comments expressed the concern that people at the lower end of the employment spectrum would not be capable of grasping and utilizing an entrepreneurial approach to work-search, nor would they be likely to benefit from it if they did. They suggested that my thinking about the entrepreneurial mindset was all very well and good for some people but not for those with very few resources and a lot going on in their lives.
We don’t know yet whether doing these things will result in my client finding work, but I do know that by putting something constructive, positive and self-renewing into the void, she has taken the first steps on the path of learning how to generate her own work instead of depending on others for it.
These are valid questions coming from people who work on the front lines with those who are struggling to find a job in order to survive, and yet I would ask:
- Are new ways of thinking which have the potential to empower people limited to certain economic groups?
- How can we not offer every possible concept and tool to the least advantaged among us?
- In making a decision that something is “too advanced or sophisticated” for someone are we protecting them from failure or excluding them based on our own preconceptions?
PROTECTION OR DISCRIMINATION
The movie, Stand and Deliver, tells the true story of Jaime Escalante, a gifted teacher who teaches calculus to students who initially seem unable to do even basic math in a Los Angeles high school which has already given up on them.
Of course there are those who question whether students with so much against them can succeed when challenged to a higher level of thinking.
The father of one of them believes that his daughter is better suited for waiting tables in his restaurant than going to medical school as she hopes.
Escalante’s supervisor, the head of the math department, a veteran of urban schools, tells him that the idea of teaching calculus to such kids is a “joke,” exhibiting what President George Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson called, “The soft bigotry of low expectations.”
The department head’s objections are misguided, yet they are intended to be protective. “I’m thinking about those kids,” she pleads. “What if they try and don’t succeed? You’ll shatter what little confidence they have. These are not the types that bounce back.”
It’s a statement that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think of the hardships these kids face every day, the stringent demands on their personal lives and the way they are forced to step up to the adult responsibilities of living in poor urban families.
Escalante, who sees the inner strengths and undeveloped capacities of the students, responds by saying, “The students will rise to the level of expectation,” and he is correct.
In the film—as in real life—the students, all eighteen of them, go on to prove the naysayers and the handwringers wrong by passing the Advanced Placement Examination in calculus with some of the highest scores in the state of California.
Given a chance to think and act beyond their current circumstances, they are able to use the resilience and determination they have gained from their difficult lives for their own betterment.
THE REAL WORLD
This of course is a movie, where the facts are greatly simplified for dramatic effect. Not surprisingly, there’s more to the story (although Escalante himself did claim that the film is 90% accurate). The achievements depicted are real, but the timeframe is greatly compressed.
Escalante was at Garfield High for several years before he even began teaching calculus, and it took him ten years to build the math enrichment programs in the lower grades which fed his high school AP classes. It required a lot of extra effort to develop students not as skilled in basic math as their suburban counterparts, but in the end he was able to prove that they were just as capable.
In my experience, the same is true for people who have limited business experience or have not yet been given the opportunity to develop confidence in themselves. Nothing prevents them from learning to think entrepreneurially.
A woman I have been working with for the last few months became a certified nursing assistant (CNA) after caring for her husband during a prolonged terminal illness.
She has been looking for a job through the normal channels—the unemployment office, the placement department at the school where she earned her certification, online postings at nursing homes—and getting nowhere. She has been in danger of slipping into despair.
It is at this point, when someone has been doing the traditional activities and nothing is happening that the basic principles of the entrepreneurial mindset—know your product, know your market, and match the two—have the greatest potential to empower. And, just like math, these principles can be taught step-by-step.
For my CNA client, knowing her product started with defining and articulating her credentials, her selling points—five years’ experience caring for someone with a degenerative condition, the use of specialized equipment, a caring demeanor—and putting them together in a simple bio.
Knowing her market took the form of listing places within a radius she was willing to travel where people who might need her services congregate, e.g. senior centers, assistant living facilities.
Matching the two resulted in a plan to visit senior centers to post her credentials on bulletin boards and ask that her name be placed on their resource lists.
My client is definitely an entrepreneurial beginner, and to make these activities less intimidating, we have talked about a number of basic “how to” strategies—calling ahead to make sure that postings are allowed, knowing just who to speak to, bringing along a letter in an envelope addressed to that person in case they happen not to be there when she arrives, making a follow-up call.
“Tutoring” is as just as helpful in a work-search as it is in academic studies, especially with someone who is only beginning to learn how to act in her own behalf.
We don’t know yet whether doing these things will result in my client finding work, but I do know that by putting something constructive, positive and self-renewing into the void, she has taken the first steps on the path of learning how to generate her own work instead of depending on others for it.
You are so on-target with this column. It’s when we dare to “consider the field of all possibilities” that we are energized to learn, search and develop scenarios wherein we can grow and thrive – regardless our current circumstances. Kudos!!!!!
Great question! Who are we to impose our limited belief in someone else we perceive to be less capable of growth? Who are we to “save” someone from the struggle of breaking free from their own limitations? This is a time of monumental shift from relying on anyone or anything but our own magnificent potential in constant development! Thanks for your diplomatic questioning the premise of anyone deciding for someone else how much they can evolve.
How lovely to see your words about “doing something” relate to the job search. I have been doing a lot of personal work with the Law of Attraction and often have people tell me it is worthless to attempt to create “more” for myself. My response to them is that I am using what I have to get what I want, and as such, if I am worth money then I can use my “worth” to get more of it. It is difficult at times to maintain my sense of optimism, but I find when I do, I can usually find something that I can use to provide myself (or others) more of it.
I love your newsletters! Thank you for doing them.
Sometimes it is really difficult to pick yourself up out of a difficult situation. I work in a very toxic workplace, management that is, and find at my age,61, hard to get the energy to rise above my work situation and attempt to create something better. This newsletter is one of the sources of inspiration that I use as well at your book. I will start again in the morning thanks Beverly…
Stephen