KCSpeaks

I have decided that the cause of aggravation, stress, burn out, and all the other maladies that seem to come with living another day is that the problem with people is other people. The reason that people cause each other grief is that the most important thing they need to do is not done well, clear, and concise. People cannot communicate. If you are a living creature, you communicate. I have seen enough nature documentaries to know that communication is not only essential to humans, but to all the creatures- big and small. Why do people seem to screw it up so much?   Much like a contagious illness, poor communication is easily spread to the people we love at home and the people we love, hate, and everything in between at work. Since, this is a blog and not a 10,000 page book, I am going to limit my comments on communication to the world of workforce development. In workforce development, we need to think about how our poor communication affects us as professionals and ou...

  I have been a case manager, supervised case managers, and I have trained my fair share of them. My heart goes out to the case manager because for many workforce development programs and other human service programs, they are the front line of service.   The job title of case manager should say it all.   There is a person, the “manager,” that manages another person, or the “case.” Right? Wrong! Many rookie case managers find that the “case” is actually managing the “manager.” Forget program or demographics of the cases they are managing, all first time case managers run into the same thing. Usually within the first week of performing case management, they meet someone on the case load that “schools” them. This person is a professional case. He is demanding, and although, he has never been a case manager, he knows more about the job than the case manager does. Not only does he know the job, he is going to tell the rookie what to do, what he wants, and what to g...