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The Softest Hard Thing


There are things I write about that in this blog that are clearly business. Then there are the cross-over items to the realm of personal development. This is one of those things. It dives deep into what makes people tick. Not only is it the hardest thing for many people, it is not hard. It is soft and “mushy.”  

For many people, the hardest thing is not the mechanics of job search or the task at achieving the goal, it’s actually asking for help! I find this to be true for people I know personally and professionally. There are times in everyone’s life when we need help.

Fred was a job seeking customer with an IT background participating in the Workforce Investment Act. Part of his employment strategy was to upgrade his skills to include an in-demand IT certification. Fred was feeling pressured to find work and finish his training. Recently, Fred came to the office distressed. The pressure of being unemployed was taking a toll on him as his unemployment benefits were exhausted, his personal resources were becoming stressed, and earlier that day he failed his IT  certification examination. The training provider was going to allow him to retake this exam, but Fred felt that this was taking too much time and his frustration with being unemployed was showing. I sat in on a meeting with Fred and the case management staff that were assisting him. As we were coming up with a strategy to move him past this road block, Fred said that for him the hard part is not studying for the exam, seeking extra help assistance with preparation, or finding transitional employment to hold him over. He said that the hardest thing in his job seeking experience was actually coming to the office to ask e for help.

I have always suspected this was true for so many people. Why not use resources to get employed quickly? Why not move to the next step in a personal or career decision? Asking for help is hard for many people. It seems to get in the way of progress and growth for so many. Interestingly, if people learn to ask for help when needed, the learning to ask can be the growth.

I decided to get an opinion on this matter. I asked the most “Zen” person I know her opinion on the matter. She said that the answer is pride and for men, it is taught culturally that men do not ask for help. The picture becomes clearer. It seems so simple an answer, yet so complicated. The more I think about it, there may be some cultural thing with how men should act, but women also have this issue. How many women cannot bear to ask another for help and just smile and say that everything is alright when they need assistance? Maybe the answer is not so clear.

What does this mean for people like us in the job seeking business? It means we are either going to have to hire our very own Dr. Phil and stand him on the street corner to bring people into the centers or get creative. Do One-Stop American Job Centers need a marketing campaign for people with pride? I’m not sure what the answer is here, but it is not such an easy thing to dissect. I imagine some creative commercial with a man or woman that says, “I don’t always ask for job seeking help, but when I do I visit the American Job Center!” The other alternative is the consequence commercial showing the consequences of not visiting the American Job Center with poverty and homelessness and the big sad eyes of unemployed people on the screen with Sarah McLachlan music in the background.

As workforce development professionals how do we deal with this issue?  Although the pride thing is a “mushy” and “soft” thing, workforce development professionals are people with hard skills. Maybe we will never have a marketing campaign like men’s cologne, beer, or an animal charity, but we can view ourselves as professionals and experts with something to offer. I like to compare what workforce development professionals do to any profession or trade. If you have a fire in your house, do you call a veterinarian? No. You call the fire department. If your car breaks down, do you call the plumber? No. You call a mechanic, so why is it when a person is unemployed they do not come to a “One-Stop” American Job Center? That is the key here.  Let’s solve the soft with the hard. Maybe the actual answer to the problem of asking for help is not ours to solve. Rather we should look instead to acknowledge it and work with it.

 
So how do we fix all the people we know in our personal lives with this issue?  That question is bigger than me. All we can do is figure out how to best deal with people and how we can empower people to ask for help when they need it.

 ~Karen Cirincione- kcirincione@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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