When the Going Gets Tough

There are days when things get tough.  It happens to us all.  We get bogged down with all the demands placed upon us and we aren't always open to hearing what we need to do better.  But it is those that hang with us during this tough times that truly make the difference.  They are the ones that see something inside us that we may not see in ourselves.  Without them encouraging us, and pushing us at times, to do our best, we may not ever learn what our best can be.

A job coach that works for the agency recently experienced some pushback from one of the individuals she supports.  When she arrived at the worksite, the individual was nowhere to be found.  She looked all over for him and found him about ready to sit down to enjoy a drink.  The problem was that he didn't get a break at work because his shift is only a few hours long.  When she approached him about what he was doing, he said, "I"ve finished all my work and I'm taking a break."

When the job coach tried to encourage him to go back to work, and told him that she would help him find a manager to ask what else he could work on, he told her, "You're selfish!"  She told him that what she was trying to do was help him to keep his job. After a few failed attempts of negotiating with him, he told the job coach, "You're fired!"  But the job coach did not give up.  She let him have a little space and eventually he finished working his shift and was able to come back to work the next day.

It just so happened that later that day, the individual's team meeting was taking place and the job coach showed up at the meeting, along with the other members of the individual's team.  After talking everything through, by the end of the meeting, the individual told his job coach, "You're rehired," and the next day they worked together, all was back to normal.

What would have happened if the job coach would have given up on the worker she supported?  He might not have learned that he was capable of doing more.  I have always believed that people will rise to the expectation.  They may not always like the idea of having to do more, but they do it because the expectation is there that they achieve.  These are the moments that test us, but that make us a little better than we were the day before.  They may even make us a little better than we thought we could be.

This is the work that job coaches do everyday.  They encourage, support, and hold the bar a little higher.  They do this job quietly and without a lot of fanfare, but they come to work each day and do this.  Somedays the job coach may only need to encourage an individual to continue doing a good job.  Somedays they may need to discuss with the individual something that they are doing and don't understand why it is problematic.  On the most challenging days, they may need to help keep the individual from losing their job.  They are great problem solvers and most of the time, others in the work place don't even know they are there.  They focus on strengths.  The end goal is always to make the individual as independent as possible at work.

Sometimes I think all of us could use a job coach now and then.