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Identify Job Candidates Who Will Thrive in Your Corporate Culture

YOU’VE NOW PUT IN PLACE RECRUITMENT techniques that will enable you to locate and appeal to individuals with disabilities. If all goes well, you should start having job candidates with disabilities responding to your recruitment efforts. Now you must determine who the best job candidates with disabilities are for your company, those who will do well in your corporate culture. How will you identify the right candidates with disabilities? Are there certain traits you should look for? This chapter provides guidelines to help you recognize the best job candidates with disabilities.

Job Candidates Who Approach Employment from an Entrepreneurial Perspective

One of your best bets is to look for a job candidate with a disability who may have been looking for the right job for some time, has the right focus, but is carrying out her job-marketing plan and hasn’t given up hope that she’ll eventually find her dream job.

That type of individual is approaching employment from an entrepreneurial perspective. From her vantage point, a meaningful job is not an automatic right. It’s something she knows she must earn by proactively accumulating the knowledge and skills required by that job. And she also realizes that she then has to go out and convince others that she’s right for that job.

In on-the-job terms, she is passionate about her work, thinks in terms of possibilities instead of pitfalls, is adaptable in difficult circumstances, is a motivator for those who are around her, and is determined to succeed in what counts. That’s the entrepreneurial spirit you want in a job candidate.

This entrepreneurial approach is something she may have developed by learning how to put on her shoes in her own unique, sequential way with hands that don’t always obey her command or using adaptive software in a certain way to compensate for her lack of manual dexterity.

As a result, she has developed the tenacity, based on a sense of personal dignity, to achieve personal goals. The key question is this: Has she learned to transfer that personal tenacity to a business setting for achieving bottom-line results? If she has, that’s an added value other job candidates (new college graduates without a disability, for instance) may not yet be able to offer you as a hiring manager. Her competitors for your job opening may have experience, but have they truly been tested?

Of course, all of us have experienced difficult situations and a perceived loss of dignity at one time or another—particularly during times of workplace transition: Plants close; jobs go overseas; a particular job sector is flooded with job applicants; new jobs require a whole new skill set; and so on.

But not individuals with a disability who approach life’s challenges with persistence. They may have learned how to focus on achieving a goal that was difficult to reach. They may have learned to do it by pacing themselves and savoring what is going well with their lives while also plugging away at the drudge work needed to accomplish a specific personal feat—such as landing a meaningful job.

Achieving such a focused yet balanced life in today’s world is not easy for anyone. But focusing on one or more special needs with a steadfastness that is not normally required of nondisabled folks and still achieving that balance can give someone who is disabled the sense of entrepreneurial confidence you need in an employee at your workplace.

How can a job candidate’s apparent personal resolve be transferred to achieving bottom-line results in your business? Look for revealing personal stories from those you interview that show those job candidates have made that leap (or have the potential for doing so).

Entrepreneurial spirit and business success, however, sometimes don’t follow each other. Keep that in mind as you assess a job candidate who may tout her small-business experience.

Job Seekers Who Are Successfully Operating Small Businesses

U.S. society emphasizes work as part of individual meaning and value. It can be tempting to avoid criticism for not working by inventing a fictitious business. Here’s how to tell if your job candidate is operating a bona fide business.

Not too long ago, few people expected individuals with a disability to work. In fact, people generally could not imagine how those with disabilities could possibly work. At worst, they were dependent on families or on begging. At best, they might have some sort of half-ersatz job, such as stuffing envelopes, stringing beads, or selling pencils outside the subway station. A very small number of people with disabilities had meaningful work.

But expectations have changed. For several decades, rehabilitation has included vocational training. Now there are laws not only allowing people with disabilities to work but requiring employers to consider them equally in filling jobs for which those without disabilities are qualified. The implication is quickly becoming that not only can they work, they should work.

The dilemma for many people with disabilities today is that the world of work is still largely off limits. They are probably decades away from full enfranchisement. Yet, they are starting to face judgment from others around them if they don’t work. The pressure to satisfy these others is powerful. How does a person handle the pressure to prove his worth through work in an environment where access to work is limited?

Faking It as a Small-Business Owner

One “coping strategy,” as social workers refer to it, is simply to “fake it.” This strategy is not peculiar to people with disabilities, by any means. The character who has lots of plans but rarely follows up on them is commonplace in American popular culture.

You may be familiar with McGill, the character actor George Clooney plays in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? McGill is a talented and intelligent good-for-nothing who loses his family, his friends, his home, and his freedom—and yet persists in developing, pursuing, and even roping others into grandiose schemes. In true life, our society is replete with get-rich-quick schemes and bogus businesses (and plenty of people who fall for them).

People with disabilities in the United States have a bit of an edge over those in lesser-developed countries because they generally have access to a steady, if not overgenerous, means of living from disability income through the Social Security Administration. Such a “safety net” makes it easier to get away with inventing a phantom business. With the pressure to prove worth not only to others but to themselves, it is relatively easy for them to fall back on a fictitious business to avoid unkind scrutiny and criticism.

This doesn’t mean, however, that those people who do hide behind insubstantial work are doing it to be deliberately deceptive. It is far more likely that an individual really wants to develop a viable small business but doesn’t know how to go about it or is not successful in launching it.

Most of those who have questionable businesses are sincere in their desire to have meaningful and gainful work. Those with a disability who really want to have jobs or businesses but simply cannot achieve them would perhaps be wise to look into simply doing work they love—via volunteering or as a hobby. In fact, if we, as a society, really valued work as work and did not, in fact, require the validation of pay, we’d probably all be happier and healthier.

However, a large number of people, nondisabled and disabled, just don’t know what a real “going” business constitutes. Perhaps they don’t have the knowledge, the tools, the discipline, or the work habits to create something substantial.

How to Tell if a Job Candidate’s Small-Business Experience Is “For Real”

There are both tangible and intangible indicators of whether a business is “for real.” Here are questions to ask yourself as you consider job candidates who cite their small business as a source of relevant experience:

Can they explain, in a more or less succinct matter, what product they sell or what service they provide? A lot of people, when asked what they do for a living, give a kind of vague “I’m self-employed.” Self-employed at what?

How did they start their business? Did they spend time planning, doing research, growing start-up capital, and obtaining the tools of their trade? Do they have a business plan? Do they have a business license? Did they register a trade name, or are they at least familiar with trademark law?

Do they have specific business goals? What steps are they taking to achieve them? What measurements are they using to assess their achievements?

Where is their place of business? A business has to be somewhere. It can be a storefront, a home office, a workshop—or even a closet or file cabinet where they keep inventory, records, tools, and so forth.

Are they actively keeping records on their work and their finances as well as the administrative and legal side of their business? Or are they at least making sure those records are kept?

If they consider themselves in a full-time business, are they actually spending at least thirty-five hours a week directly involved in some aspect of it?

Are they making contacts with others in their line of business? Are they networking or actively inviting scrutiny from others who know the signs of a serious business?

Do they have customers or clients? Having customers or clients is a sure sign that they are actually producing and are serious.

Are they making money? Do they report their income and pay taxes on it? Could they sell their business for money? These financial indicators are probably the most important proof that they indeed are in business.

Think unconventionally. Gear your recruitment efforts to tap talented individuals who have a disability and relevant experience as a successful small-business owner. But make sure that experience stems from a legitimate enterprise in the “mainstream” marketplace where they’ve functioned as fully engaged members of society.

People Who Have Moved Beyond Self-Absorption to Become Fully Engaged Members of Society

An ideal job candidate has learned how to go beyond self-absorption and can interact effectively with others—disabled or not. Those interpersonal skills will prove valuable in any employment situation and will affect the teamwork, the morale, and the tone of your work unit.

The key considerations in selecting such a job candidate are the answers to these two questions:

1. Has the person learned to manage his disability so that it’s no longer the center of his life?

2. Does he have the time, inclination, and skill to effectively reach out to others and be a productive member of a corporate effort?

Many times job candidates with disabilities have devoted a considerable amount of personal time to:

Developing daily living skills

Obtaining an education

Getting accessible living arrangements

Forming primary relationships

Gaining accessible transportation options

Prime job candidates (disabled or not) have addressed these issues and are ready to contribute to your company’s further success.

Finding such individuals among those with disabilities may not be as challenging as you may first think. Such balance may be found, for instance, in job candidates who have a big-picture perspective. They realize that relating well to other people and dealing with issues outside of their immediate concerns are paths to independent living.

They garden. They cook. They raise kids. They enjoy pets.

They let their coworkers know that they can count on them to get tasks done on the job.

This doesn’t mean they pretend that systematic discrimination doesn’t exist in some segments of our society. It does, and, at one time or another, it affects their lives. They advocate for themselves.

In Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (New Society Publishers, 2004), Robert W. Fuller expresses the need for self-advocacy this way:

Social justice is never handed to those who lack it. Only when the victims of unfairness are aroused and demand dignity and equity (dignity being a central tenet in most religions) for themselves does the status quo change. … What primarily marks people for mistreatment today is not race or gender, but low rank and the powerlessness it signifies. In plain language, what matters is: Are you a “Somebody” or a “Nobody”?

These attitudes affect the kinds of jobs people get, where they live, and their social experiences. The Civil Rights movement taught us that laws alone don’t change attitudes. Awareness must be raised and assumptions challenged.

Your prime job candidates know how to use their interpersonal skills to effectively raise awareness and challenge assumptions as fully engaged members of society. For example, consider the six attributes that emerge in the following discussion among members of eSight Careers Network:

1. Holding your own in fair competition

2. Integrating with the nondisabled population

3. Taking charge of confusing situations

4. Responding appropriately

5. Networking with others

6. Foreshadowing what to expect from those who follow you

Holding Your Own

Daniel M. Berry III:

To build effective interpersonal relationships with the sighted world, people who are blind must stop acting victimized or inferior. We have to stop creating the impression that we believe the rest of the world is out to get us, and we have to stop assuming that we can’t hold our own in a fair competition.

We’ve got to spend time with sighted people and not just withdraw into our own little world.

Integrating

Anthony R. Candela:

If we aspire to effective interpersonal relationships with all people (disabled and nondisabled), perhaps the psychological divide that sometimes separates us from nondisabled people will not be so wide. I have found that spending as much time as possible with nondisabled people helps “normalize” me in their minds and they in mine.

Taking Charge

Jeremiah Taylor:

If a person is uncomfortable around a disabled person, there is little the disabled person can do but be friendly, personal, outgoing, and reassure the other that the disability is “just the way it is.” Now please pass the salt.

Since losing my sight years ago, I’ve made several new friends, changed jobs, got promoted, and never found it difficult when dealing with new acquaintances or situations.

The more “take charge” the disabled person appears, the more at ease the other person will become. I think problems arise when a person feels he is supposed to act or do something different when dealing with a disabled person.

The disabled person needs to take charge so the other person learns that, if something special is needed, the disabled person will tell them. It is the unknown that causes the problem.

Responding

Liz Seger:

Each of us chooses how we will respond to a remark or a given situation or even a feeling.

Today, while shopping, I was packing my groceries a little too slow for the people behind me, and one man said, “Can’t you move any faster; what are you blind or something?”

The checker, who only knows me from shopping at that particular store, gave him and another old lady “hell” for being nasty.

I just said, “I’m sorry. I shop for a month, and I’m working as fast as I can. And I’m sorry, too, that you woke up in such an ugly mood. I hope your day goes better.”

There was dead silence with the rest of the line. No one said a word, except, “Oh, excuse me, please” and “May I get the door for you?”

I could have stormed out and made an ugly scene, but what for? Those two people looked more foolish than I ever could. And everyone in that line knew it.

Networking

Barney Mayse:

I concentrate on working well with whomever I am assigned to work with. I try to be inclusive when I have the opportunity. I network with coworkers and others with whom I interface. It is a process and requires constant diligence, perseverance, and patience.

Foreshadowing

Mike:

I feel strongly that folks who have a disability can make excellent workers, and, if they do their best, then they help other disabled workers who might want a chance to work in that field. We are judged by our abilities, but, often, we are also judged because of those who preceded us. The experiences employers have had with disabled folks have a direct bearing on how they perceive other disabled people, rightly or wrongly.

Notice how these people have moved beyond themselves—and their disabilities. They’ll advocate for themselves and others when appropriate, but their focus is on integrating with the nondisabled population.

Let’s further explore how an employee with a disability can use effective interpersonal communication to enhance the teamwork, morale, and tone of your particular work unit.

Individuals Who Take Personal Responsibility When They Become “Easy Marks” While at Work

In the film North Country, crusty Glory (played by Frances McDormand) is shown as the first woman to be hired by a mining company in northern Minnesota.

She has learned how to survive in the corporate environment, which is hobbled by blatant sexual harassment—partly because the male employees generally believe the women are taking away much-needed jobs from the men in the community.

Glory survives by being assertive, expressing her wishes in terms understood by her fellow employees, using her sense of humor when appropriate, and becoming part of the union leadership. She personally stands her ground.

Still, the job of exposing and combating sexual harassment within the company falls on newcomer Josey Aimes (played by Charlize Theron), who eventually realizes that accommodating to the charged atmosphere, working through channels, and even going to the CEO does not resolve the situation.

Josey seeks a solution (a class-action suit) that the other women employees, such as Big Betty (Rusty Schwimmer), do not wish to pursue because they are afraid they will lose their jobs by raising the sexual harassment issue with management.

In work environments (and in situations) much less charged than the one in North Country, managers often find themselves leading teams that have a Glory, a Josey, and a Big Betty and are locked in conflict over a vulnerability issue.

That vulnerability could involve sexual harassment, but it could just as well stem from another difficulty: One team member recognizes another as an “easy mark” because that employee has a disability—and it’s disrupting the team’s performance.

Here’s an example from an anonymous member (let’s call her Lisa) of eSight Careers Network:

Lisa:

I have had jobs where I cashiered. It’s not hard for people to tell that I can’t see well, so it made me a target. When it first happened to me, I almost lost the job. I was so angry at myself and angry at the man who short-changed me. I could have chewed nails! I swore I would never let it happen again, but no matter how careful you are, there is always some slick person out there with no morals who can pull one over on you.

Members of eSight Careers Network generated some insight about taking personal responsibility to nip the problem in the bud before it becomes a teamwide issue. On the “Swimming in the Mainstream” (SiM) blog, the SiM participants discussed this question: “What’s the best way to handle a work situation in which a person is taking advantage of you due to your apparent vulnerability?”

The SiM participants generated four tips about how to live well in a rough-and-tumble world with a sense of personal integrity, how to fashion a life beyond being an “easy mark,” and how to take personal responsibility when an “easy mark” situation comes into play at work.

Why are these tips important to you? By hiring people with disabilities who have this kind of insight and experience, you, as a manager, can save time, money, and effort because you won’t be handling issues that employees with a disability can often personally resolve themselves. And that expertise comes in handy in resolving issues that have nothing to do with disability as well.

The four tips eSight members (all with disabilities) generated among themselves for handling “easy mark” situations are question, prepare, communicate, and act.

Question

Melissa:

First, make sure you are being taken advantage of before you go any further. You have to take responsibility for your own actions.

Take a look at the situation from the other person’s perspective. What has made you vulnerable besides your disability? Make sure you are not doing anything careless. Be on your P’s and Q’s, as they say. Are you doing or not doing something that leaves the door open for this other person to walk right through?

The temptation can be strong to assume the other person’s attitude has to do with your disability. That is a mistake. If I’ve learned anything in my life as a visually impaired person, it’s that the other person (probably) isn’t even thinking about me at all—and my disability is not a consideration!

Nan:

As a group, people with disabilities are far too sensitive to what others are thinking about us. We assume any slight, or any perceived slight, is against us personally and caused by the other person’s bias. This really is giving others too much credit for awareness. It is virtually always safer to assume disability has nothing to do with the bad behavior until something concrete is said or done to convince an observer. …

More often than not, the difficult person is acting out of some type of fear: fear of losing her job, fear of the unknown, or fear of a perceived threat.

We often think of the person as difficult because of a simple misunderstanding or a bit of poor communication. And, yes, sometimes people can be just plain perverse out of selfishness, ambition, immaturity, meanness, or stupidity.

Prepare

Jake:

Do whatever it takes to be less vulnerable. For instance, in addition to folding my bills differently, a former skills tutor (for people with visual impairments) labeled all the sections of my wallet in Braille, using my Braille label maker. So I can now either fold or keep every bill straight and in the appropriate compartments.

Nan:

In general, the best strategy you can take is to tap into your own self-esteem and assertiveness. If you are clear about your own role and rights in a situation, you will be far more likely to understand where the conflict is coming from—and what is (and is not) your responsibility.

You are only responsible for your own behavior. You are not there to “fix” difficult coworkers. Part of your behavior must display respect and courtesy. This can be difficult, but it is the one area you control absolutely in interpersonal situations. You may not like the way the other person is acting toward you or others, but keeping a consistently civil tongue keeps you from simply becoming part of the problem.

Liz:

Documenting everything is a great idea (dates, times, places, incidents). If you can, make copies and give them to a superior.

Communicate

Len:

Address the person straight on who is taking advantage of your vulnerability and ask that person to please stop. Express to him or her that you wish to be treated with dignity and understanding.

Melissa:

When you have your facts in order, you may need to confront the person. That depends on the situation. When I say confront, I do not mean get confrontational because that will be counterproductive.

Talk to the person in private, and do not use a bunch of “you” sentences. Tell him what you have observed happening and your role. Tell him your perspective and what you believe the facts to be. Maybe you can work out the problem between the two of you.

Document your conversation. Take mental notes and write them down later. It might make the person defensive if he sees you writing during your exchange.

If you are uncomfortable with the idea of addressing the issue on your own, or if the problem threatens your employment, then go to your immediate supervisor or human resources with your documentation.

Act

Melissa:

If it is feasible, make every effort to actively work out the problem. Be assertive and stand up for yourself. If you do not, the problem will continue and likely get worse. You deserve just as much respect as anyone else, disabled or not.

It is obvious that the coworker is not team-oriented and is inconsiderate and disrespectful if he is intentionally taking advantage of you. If he is doing it unknowingly, he may appreciate the fact that you want to address the problem in a civil way privately.

If he happens to be an uncooperative jerk, then someone in authority definitely needs to know what is going on and what kind of person is working for the company.

If I had an employee who was taking advantage of another employee, I would like to see them work it out like adults (if it is a relatively minor infraction). If the person did not change his behavior or was not willing to listen, then I would want to take formal disciplinary action against that employee. His behavior is not only unacceptable and inappropriate; it is also likely to lead to bigger problems.

Do any of these people sound like they would be the type of employee who could help bring the morale within your work group to a little higher level? They show they have “emotional intelligence.” As you interview your job candidates, look for individuals who have the emotional intelligence to hold their own in “easy mark” situations.

Remember, during job interviews the ADA prohibits you from directly asking questions about an individual’s approach to disability. You can describe the essential functions of the job for which she is interviewing, and then you can ask if she can do the work and how she would do it for your company.

Your most savvy job candidates will volunteer to speak openly with you about how they intend to perform the job in spite of their obvious disabilities. Within that opening, you may then ask for follow-up examples of what they have achieved in the past under similar circumstances.

How to Identify Individuals with Emotional Intelligence

There are a handful of vulnerability issues that, taken together, can be windows to what is now commonly called a job candidate’s “emotional intelligence.” Following are some of those issues, distilled into hypothetical questions that cannot be asked of job candidates but that you can ask yourself as you evaluate your conversations with job candidates, whether they’re disabled or not. Once a job candidate has first brought up the topic of her disability, it is hoped that she will voluntarily provide enough insight during your conversations—through either formal interviews or follow-up chats—so you can have a good hunch about what she would say in such a hypothetical dialogue.

In highlighting these questions, we introduce you to a few of the people who are dealing effectively with their personal vulnerabilities and who provide the type of anecdotes you might voluntarily receive during your own interviews.

Does she accept who she is?

This is the central question you need to answer in your own mind for each job candidate you interview. All of the others we discuss flow from it.

Katrina, another eSight blogger, recalls that as a child and as an adolescent she always felt inferior to sighted people. “I thought that acting sighted as much as possible was what I should aspire to because I thought sighted people were so much better, even personality-wise, than myself.”

But, at about age 17, Katrina started feeling a lot better about herself as a person and realized the biggest compliment someone could give her was not this statement: “Oh, I didn’t know you were blind; you can’t tell.”

Katrina writes, “Now I feel that my blindness is just part of my identity. And I am happy to be able to say that, at the age of 31, I fully accept this and love myself for what I am.”

Here’s another example. In learning how to scuba dive, David discovered something unexpected: “I learned I don’t need to try to pretend any more to be a sighted person living in a blind person’s body.”

And then there’s Kim, a teacher who writes about his hesitancy to use a wheelchair at an elementary school where he taught: “I learned from [my students] what no book could have taught me: that my disabilities don’t make me less of a man—no matter what anyone might say. I don’t need fixin’. I’m OK just the way I am.”

Has she gone beyond condescension and overcompensation?

Here you’re looking for discernment and assertiveness (not aggression) with the ability to project oneself as an adult.

“At one time,” Carolyn Tyjewski writes, “accepting responsibility for this societal psychosis made sense. It made sense to accept responsibility for not fitting in, for not playing the game right. It made sense in the same way that taking the comment, ‘I forgot you’re blind’ as a compliment seemed appropriate. I’d flinch or suddenly become queasy from the comment but shake it off as nothing, an apparition, my imagination. After all, there was no harm intended. …”

Carolyn has grown since then: “I don’t accept responsibility for other people’s psychoses anymore.”

Can she join others in laughing about herself?

You’re not looking for belly laughs. And we’re not talking about humor that devalues anyone. What you’re looking for is the ability to not take oneself too seriously and to let others know that it’s okay to enjoy the amusing things that often happen because of disability.

When Brenda reentered the workforce in 1996, she worked as a volunteer for a congressional candidate. She folded, stuffed, and labeled envelopes for mailings and answered the phones.

“I had been around the campaign for several weeks before the candidate realized I did not see just like everyone else,” Brenda writes. “He won his race hands down and asked if I would consider working for him in the Congressional District Office. I was delighted! I started out answering the switchboard (what a hoot!), but I mastered that and moved on to data entry with the help of a Magnisight 60X, receiving enlargement through the computer system.”

Has she been able to put personal pride in perspective?

Putting pride in perspective is closely tied to the ability to laugh at oneself.

Marti operates her own business and is visually impaired. “I wear glasses sometimes,” she writes. “They help a little, but I think they’ve become a habit.”

Marti tells about purchasing several new pairs of glasses as spares because she sits or steps on them a lot. She remembers that one time at a meeting where she was presenting a proposal to a prospective client she slipped on a pair of her new glasses to study a passage in the proposal he was questioning. “I didn’t notice the odd looks I got,” she says, “but my partner later pointed out that the left lens of the glasses still had the factory sticker in the middle.”

Does she know how to get beyond feelings of inferiority?

This probably all leads back to self-esteem and self-confidence. Does your job candidate establish eye contact, project confidence, and make people feel comfortable?

Ann Dyer projects that self-confidence. Ann was a practicing nurse. Then she suddenly had surgery to remove large tumors from her brain. After being on Social Security for twenty-five years because of her disability, she now has her master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation and has been working in a meaningful job with benefits.

Does she disavow being a victim?

Look for a job candidate who does not identify with “being the victim”—no matter how severe the disability or how unfair life has been.

Listen to Liz Seger: “I am a person first, who has low vision, wears an ostomy, wears glasses, is blond, middle aged, has blue eyes, a wicked wit, a curious nature, is educated and becoming a wise woman as she matures. I’m nobody’s victim of anything!”

Does she swim in the “mainstream”?

The ideal job candidate with a disability has experience working in the so-called mainstream workplace, despite setbacks and difficulties.

Check this story. Nancy was 31, an aerospace engineer working on a very exciting defense contract. One morning on her way to work, a van struck the vehicle in which she was riding. She instantaneously became a quadriplegic.

Nancy’s advice: “Let time carry you to a new place, a new reality.”

At the time Nancy wrote her posting, she was back working full-time—for another aerospace company.

Does she understand the truths as well as the falsehoods within the nondisabled and disabled worlds?

Similarly, each candidate with a disability you interview may have not yet addressed, on a personal level, all of the vulnerability issues we have discussed. And that’s okay. Even those that a person has considered may not be fully resolved in that individual’s mind. And that’s okay. We’re all in the process of “becoming”—especially in terms of emotional intelligence.

According to Steven J. Stein and Howard E. Book in The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success (Jossey-Bass, 2006), emotional intelligence is an individual’s ability to form optimal relationships with other people through the attributes of hope, empathy, trust, integrity, honesty, creativity, resiliency, consequence-thinking, and optimism so he can build stronger social networks and manage difficult situations.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to “unlearn” helplessness and hopelessness when faced with adversity—an attribute every one of us (nondisabled and disabled) has acquired since birth through personal struggle and discovery.

The main skill in emotional intelligence is delaying gratification in pursuit of long-range goals. Learning how to live well with vulnerability can reinforce that skill in anyone, regardless of one’s intelligence quotient (which cannot be changed through study and practice).

Emotional intelligence has a surprising relationship to success in a business setting. MetLife, for instance, has found that its sales associates who score high in one aspect of emotional intelligence, specifically “learned optimism,” outsell those with low emotional intelligence by an average of 37 percent during their first two years of work (see http://www.centerforappliedei.com/#benefitsofEI).

How important is a person’s level of emotional intelligence about disability to you? It depends on several factors. Are you interviewing for a high-profile position, which will involve dealing with customers or suppliers? Does it require refined teamwork skills? Is it a supervisory or management position? If so, how you think a candidate addresses personal vulnerability can be critical.

For inclusive recruiting, one thing is clear: To accurately assess a job candidate’s emotional intelligence about personal vulnerability, you need to have a basic understanding of both worlds: the prevailing attitudes about disability in the “mainstream” workplace as well as the current snapshot of the evolving disability rights movement. By doing so, you too can become a bridge builder—for your organization and society at large—between those two worlds.

That’s no small task. But it’s not time-intensive. It’s a matter of gradually cultivating your discernment about disability over time. That will yield benefits for your organization because you’ll be in a better position to hire the people with disabilities who also tend to be bridge builders between our mainstream culture and the disability rights movement. You’ll attract individuals who have found a way to develop emotional intelligence about their own personal vulnerabilities and about personal differences in others. And you’ll build a team at work that consists of effective networkers.

Those networkers will help set the tone for your work group and your company. And that will help your company prepare for an older yet still involved workforce in which disability is more prevalent—and make your job as an executive, a manager, or a team leader easier and more rewarding.

Job Candidates Who Can Gracefully Accept and Decline Help

A job candidate’s level of emotional intelligence is sometimes difficult to access. But check how he or she has learned to live with ambiguity and risk (essentially “uncertainty”) every day because of his or her vulnerabilities. Reactions to ambiguity and risk are sometimes more evident for candidates with disabilities.

For instance, one way to measure how people (disabled or not) deal with uncertainty is to watch how and when they ask for help. The key question is: Have they learned how to gracefully interact with others when they truly need help—or when it appears that they do but really don’t?

Ernest Hemingway may have thought “grace under pressure” was courage, but perhaps personal courage has more to do with a sense of dignity and self-worth because it denotes self-control and a sense of how to deal calmly with unexpected situations. If that’s the case, then handling vulnerability, asking for help, and declining unsolicited assistance in a graceful manner are not only marks of courage but also attributes of a leader.

Questions You Might Ask a Job Candidate

To identify job candidates who can gracefully handle vulnerability, you might ask all of them (disabled or not) these questions (with no reference to disability) during a job interview:

When have you needed to ask for help on a work project from one of your coworkers?

How did you go about obtaining that help?

What was the outcome?

Let’s look for traces of gracefully handling vulnerability in this discussion among eSight Careers Network members (who happen to have a disability):

Liz Seger:

At some point in our lives, we usually realize that we’re going to need help from someone and that it’s not awful or weak to ask for someone’s help. In fact, it’s knowing that you can ask for help and usually receive it that makes us psychologically and emotionally mature adults.

C. Fred Stout:

Everyone requires help—some more than others.

The brightest and most capable of blind people must have continuous help.

At times, one can be offered unsolicited assistance when none is really required. The manner in how such offers are managed is important. Demonstrating and expressing appreciation holds double value. It’s often an emotional and sensitive matter. Should the person offering help feel rudely treated, unappreciated, and rejected, that individual will likely never offer such assistance again.

In my 52 years of blindness, I have enjoyed many such wonderful personal interactions, and I don’t think that I ever hurt anyone’s feelings.

Lauren Merryfield:

I usually say, “No thanks, I’m okay.” But, if I’m in trouble, I usually say, “Thanks, I guess I do need help this time, but it’s not because I can’t see—it’s because _________ (I’m having trouble with …; I need to get somewhere in a big hurry; I’m not feeling very well right now; this is above my lifting limit; I’ve done this lots of times, but today I’m just worn out; I’ll understand where it is if you go with me this one time; it’s windy out and I can’t hear the cars very well; etc.).”

Curt Woolford:

Sometimes I need to ask for help, and I choose to tough it out instead.

Debra:

What works best in an ongoing relationship is to set boundaries first about what you can and cannot do, what you would like to do yourself, and what you cannot do yourself.

Kerryann Ifill:

I smile and say, “Thank you, but I can manage.” Or I make a slight joke of it, and I assure them that I’ll do fine. Otherwise, I invite them to watch and be assured.

In this brief conversation, notice the opportunities these individuals have discovered in situations in which they apparently (or really) need help. Those opportunities include:

Demonstrating emotional maturity to friends, colleagues, and strangers

Managing ongoing relationships at work, home, and play

Making use of “teachable” moments about disability, especially when unsolicited assistance is offered

These are opportunities everyone (especially if one has a disability) has for proactively showing friends, colleagues, and strangers how one person can support another in times of uncertainty.

Those who take advantage of such opportunities show leadership. As guides, they use authenticity to help another person feel more comfortable about her apparent vulnerabilities. That builds community in families, neighborhoods, workplaces, and society.

Let’s further explore how such leaders have made the transition from feeling vulnerable to being able to carry their load as members of a team, from feeling weak to being authentic in on-the-job matters with their coworkers, and from feeling uncertain to being practical risk-takers and workplace entrepreneurs.

That process will help you discover the attributes you need to find in job candidates (disabled or not) who will perform well within your work team.

Individuals Who Can Carry Their Load as Members of Your Team

Not long ago the term “teamwork” primarily applied to sports teams. As business recognized that a work team and a baseball team interact in a similar way, the term has been more frequently applied to staff relationships. The comparison is useful: As with baseball, football, hockey, rowing, or any other team sport, the success of a work team depends on each member playing well in a unique and necessary role.

The team can succeed only when each player shares his part of the common load—just as a baseball team can expect to win a game only when the pitcher, first baseman, center fielder, lead-off man, and all the other players do their particular tasks well.

Teamwork involves:

1. Listening to each other’s ideas

2. Asking each other questions both to clarify and to challenge ideas

3. Encouraging team members to share their ideas

4. Showing respect

5. Helping each team member understand ideas

6. Sharing one’s insights and information

7. Participating fully and equally in the task at hand

An environment that does not build and foster all these skills in team members will not fully succeed. The individual who cannot (or will not) participate fully and equally in all seven behaviors can slow, block, or even sabotage a joint project.

Often, disability does not make a team member “the weakest link.” Instead, being “the weakest link” is the sum total of how an individual participates in a team. Disability, however, can be a factor in that sum total.

When an Employee with a Disability Is the Weakest Link

To examine how an employee with a disability might allow her disability (and how she, herself, views it) to weaken her connection on a team, let’s look at a few fictional cases. Please meet Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice.

Bob

Bob, a teacher with low vision, cannot even get past “listening” in his participation in the local Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). He somehow manages to bring the focus back onto him and his disability no matter what point another team member is making. He uses his disability not only to get attention but to bludgeon others into spending time on his agenda without giving them the respect to hear what issues concern them.

As a result, the PTA is wholly ineffective. Other members avoid Bob because he has set up a wall between him and them. Bob is intelligent and has a lot of insight into what matters to the community. He could be a vital part of the team, implementing not only programs related to disability but addressing many other issues in the schools.

Carol

On the other hand, Carol never says a word. She uses a wheelchair for mobility because of a spinal cord injury while on her high school’s swim team. Even though she is a marketing associate in a food company, somehow she has internalized her family’s cultural belief that people with disabilities, and women in general, should not assert themselves. In fact, in one-on-one conversations, Carol is a bright star, beaming with enthusiasm for projects that could keep the most demoralized team going.

But that skill is wasted. She simply pulls back and lets her “betters” talk in a meeting. Energy for the task, as a result, often flags. Carol’s ability to invigorate every member of the team is lost, and the team’s projects tend to bog down.

Ted

Ted is—well—needy. He has multiple sclerosis, but his disability has not in the least prevented him from being a crack salesman. He works in his father-in-law’s tire store and easily has the highest sales record.

But, although he contributes to the team’s success by identifying prospects, making an effective pitch, and closing a sale, he does not work on a par with his coworkers. Worse, he wheedles personal favors from them, such as getting them to go get coffee or give him a ride after work. He turns each and every team member into a personal assistant.

He will do the sales pitch, but he won’t follow up with the paperwork or with customers. He uses his disability to get out of work he simply does not want to do or learn to do.

Therefore, other members of the sales staff and the clerical staff have to do more than their share. Even though Ted’s sales would be merit-worthy, his coworkers resent him and believe he is actively sabotaging them, something they won’t bring up because he is, after all, the boss’s son-in-law. He blames their reluctance on their having a bad attitude toward people with disabilities. Total sales would be way up if everyone cooperated, but Ted drains cooperative spirit from the whole group.

Now let’s examine a case where a person who happens to be disabled is fully integrated into a successful team.

Alice

Hard of hearing, Alice is a reporter on a small, rural weekly newspaper. A coworker in the business office, Amy, who has cerebral palsy, has developed a whiny tone and appears to believe that no one will ever give her the tools and information she needs to do her work.

Alice had to deal with the fallout from Amy’s behavior when she first got her job. Others at the paper assumed Alice would be just as difficult to be around as Amy.

But Alice is nothing like Amy. She is a resourceful self-starter who likes her independence. She cheerfully reminds people when she needs help in hearing at a meeting and mentions her hearing condition only as a fact of her life—like anyone else might mention having kids or growing up on a farm.

She is proud of being a contributing team member. She readily offers to help the others in the office who have extra work. Her deafness is not irrelevant, but it might as well be when it comes to teamwork on the editorial staff.

These four examples show that simply carrying out job tasks is not enough to be a valuable team member. Whatever the source of Bob’s, Carol’s, and Ted’s failure to be effective team members, they handicap both themselves and the team. Each needs a more productive attitude to gain the respect Alice has earned (in spite of initially landing in a difficult situation).

Questions You Might Ask a Job Candidate

To identify job candidates who will work well in a team environment, you might ask one of these questions during a job interview:

When have you felt like you’ve been a productive member of a team?

What personal attributes do you believe you possess that make you an effective team member?

What work situation can you cite to show you’ve learned how to work well with your coworkers?

The Right Balance

The essence here is that effective team members balance opportunities for helping and for receiving help. Knowing when to ask for help (but not overdoing it) is a common dilemma for individuals with a disability. In some cases, for instance, Alice can manage on her own. In others, she cannot, and she tries to consider which other team member might be most appropriate to ask for help.

Other eSight members agree. Keith, Eric, Debra, and Liz, for instance, recommend candor in dealing with other team members.

“I am very honest with coworkers. When I need assistance, I simply state this need, and it appears to be well received,” says Keith, the director of student development at a small university.

Eric, who does telephone support for cable modem subscribers, also deals with problems directly. “When I run into a technical issue at work,” he says, “I present to my coworkers what the problem is and what needs to be improved. In return, they help me come up with suggestions to resolve the issue so I can work more independently.”

He has also drawn on a useful tool to deal with workload and equity issues: his mentors through the DO-IT Careers Program (http://www.washington.edu/doit/) at the University of Washington.

“I work with the mentors on helping to resolve customers’ issues,” Eric says. “When I tell the mentors what is going on, they present me with a potential resolution to the problem. My duty is to follow through on the resolution that they present to me.”

What if an employee does his best and others still resent him?

Debra, a switchboard operator who is blind, observes that being honest and forthright can help others avoid misinterpreting both her words and her actions. She recounts, “I have tried to help coworkers with things that I can do that they can’t get to. I’ve been available for them as much as possible. In spite of this, there is a lot of written material and sight-dependent material that needs to be adapted for me.”

However, no matter what she does, she believes some coworkers think, “[I am] lazy, too ‘special’ to do the work, or don’t care. Those things are the furthest from the truth.”

Liz admits, “Not everyone is going to be thrilled to have you there [in the workplace] or like you. You’re not going to like everybody there either, but that’s life: Deal with it. But deal with it in a mature, responsible manner that shows your integrity, responsibility and accountability. [If conflict arises], report it, advocate for it—but do so in a way that makes it a win-win situation for everyone.”

Liz points out, “I think … that goes without saying in any type of job. Your work habits, your accountability, and your integrity demonstrate how committed you are to your work.”

Sharing the load equally—at different times and in different ways—is the key to the success of any team. Each team member shares his own skills and abilities in different ways.

Disability need not be a detriment to that sharing. In fact, it can create an even more diverse and richer source of sharing when a person with a disability who knows how to interact effectively with others is involved.

That brings us to another attribute to consider in a job candidate: authenticity.

Job Seekers Who Possess the Authenticity Valued in the Business World

Comments among members of eSight Careers Network at several different levels often converge in a way that may be valuable for you as an employer.

That has happened with this discussion topic: the apparent vulnerability of individuals, often evident as a “disability,” and its relationship to working with authenticity in the business world.

To illustrate this relationship between vulnerability and authenticity, let’s draw from comments submitted by eSight members within the following five eSight venues.

From Curt Woolford’s “Thriving in a Larger Corporate Environment”

“I have found that visual impairment is often accompanied by humility, and I am no exception. Although I feel that humility is an admirable trait, it is not a prevalent corporate attribute,” observes Curt Woolford, who has written a series of articles for eSight Careers Network’s Career Management Resources section about thriving as an employee with a disability in larger corporate environments.

“As a visually impaired worker,” Woolford counsels his counterparts, “you must bear in mind that you are competing with colleagues who have not benefited from the character development that can accompany the rigors of living with a disability. You may be more familiar than others in your work group with the physical, emotional, and psychological vulnerability of human beings.”

Vulnerability can bring with it a healthy sense of humility and an ability to empathize with others.

From Dale Carnegie

“Dale Carnegie may seem ‘old fashioned’ today,” says Jim Hasse, “but taking Carnegie courses over the years has helped me to break out of my shell as a person with cerebral palsy. I still think his guideline to ‘express genuine appreciation to everyone you meet’ is relevant. The post-Enron buzz words for the same concept: being authentic.

“Being authentic in business relationships means an employee needs to first be comfortable with herself and be ready to build a future on positive memories,” Hasse points out.

Here’s what Carnegie in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 49) says about self-acceptance: “Be yourself! Don’t imitate others! You are an original. Be glad of it. Never before, since the dawn of time, has anybody been exactly like you; and never again, throughout all the ages to come, will there be anybody exactly like you. So make the most of your individuality.”

Through that kind of self-acceptance, people with disabilities are breaking into mainstream employment every day. Those who do make that breakthrough usually have the quiet creditability that matters in today’s business.

Those who are comfortable with themselves know, from firsthand experience, that vulnerability is a part of life that stimulates problem solving. And that skill, combined with recognition of the universality of vulnerability in people, can produce individuals who know how to reach out and create valuable business-generating networks for your company.

They are also the individuals who recognize they need to earn and create a niche for themselves in today’s competitive workplace. They don’t seek a “free lunch.”

From “Ollie” D. Cantos VII

Olegario “Ollie” D. Cantos VII has served as special assistant and then special counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice as well as associate director for domestic policy at the White House. As guest speaker for an eSight Careers Network phone conference, Cantos provided eSight members with an excellent blueprint for avoiding isolation and changing attitudes—and being authentic.

“Add value to your networking contacts through displays of genuine appreciation of another’s strengths,” Cantos, who has been blind since birth, advises. “That builds people up,” he says.

And then he adds, “Help develop partnerships by matching the strengths you discover in others with needs among the people you meet.”

But Cantos goes one step further. In an e-mail follow-up to a question from Annette, one of the participants in the eSight phone conference, he wrote: “I ask that you please do whatever you can to help others in the way that I have taken the time to help you. ‘Pay it forward’ by being of assistance to at least three people, and in return for what you do for them, ask each of them to help still three others and to make your assistance conditional upon their promise to help at least that number.”

From eSight’s “Blindstorming” Forum

Participants in an eSight Career Network Blindstorming discussion also reaffirmed Cantos’s “add value” guideline for networking.

For instance, Blindstormer John writes:

“Networking allows for the discovery of mutual interests and concerns that are important in a work setting. It is more than just making friends. It has to do with wanting to work together in a certain direction or toward a common goal.”

Roger, another Blindstormer, tells this story:

“I learned to consciously focus on ways I can be a valuable contact for those I network with. We need to control the urge to concentrate on our needs and, instead, to also be of value to the contact.

“Here’s what I learned from the past governor of Florida about securing the contact through follow-up.

“I met this Florida governor on a flight from New York to Georgia. We talked for some 15 or so minutes; then he excused himself and took a tape recorder out of his briefcase and recorded my information. Later I received a letter about how he enjoyed our conversation on the flight. I, while on the flight, had no idea that he was the governor of Florida, and it was quite an experience to receive the letter from his office.

“This happened about 20 years ago, yet I will never forget it. Such is a great lesson for networking: Extend the connection through later contact.”

Blindstormer Mike offers this example about how to use networking to resolve a problem:

“Networking with your management people will help them better understand what you need to better perform your job. One way in which this helped me was the problem of getting written communication to visually impaired [workers] in a timely manner.

“After networking with a sighted coworker who read memos to the visually impaired workers, we came up with the idea of adding voice-mail boxes to the existing voice-mail system in which supervisors and other individuals could leave all important items that were normally distributed in written form.

“This has worked well and is much more cost effective than producing the information in Braille.”

Another Blindstormer, Karen, writes:

“I stopped leading with my challenge and networked based on the career interest. … [It turned out] I was the best expert on how my visual challenge might or might not impact my job choices.”

From eSight’s “Swimming in the Mainstream” Forum

Contributors to eSight Career Network’s SiM forum had a chance to tell how they surprised others by rising above the low expectations others had for them. They shared stories about not only feeling vulnerable but also being authentic in workplace situations.

Their discussion question was this: When have you surprised others in the workplace by rising above the low expectations they had for you?

Says Jake:

“My work and social involvement in Natural Ties was a very positive and rewarding experience for me. From the moment I received that call from my friend, Dan, who invited me out to lunch, I knew the experience was bound to be a good one—and it was.”

Natalie writes:

“I remember when I was 17 and a junior in high school and had the opportunity to attend a language camp in Bemidji, Minnesota, because my study emphasis was Spanish. My grades were very good in this subject, and attending this camp was an opportunity to further my education in this area and get college credit. I was the first person with a visual impairment to attend this camp and the only one at that time.

“All the campers and counselors were sighted, and they wondered in astonished silence how I could keep up with the curriculum and how I could take care of my personal needs. … I was assertive in my communication skills, practicing Spanish and demonstrating my manual typewriter, tape recorder and talking watch.

“It didn’t take but a couple days before everyone started looking at me as Natalie, not that poor, little, blind girl just being there for nothing better to do. I still keep up my Spanish practice and am quite fluent.

“I’m looking for employment in human services and [a job] in which I can use my Spanish. I like to help people, especially those with visual impairments and other disabilities.”

“Upstate,” on the other hand, admits:

“Many people have very little interest in [disabled] people. Able-bodied are having a tough time of it themselves, and this trend may continue for many years.

“This is not the same nation of 15 years ago. To ‘create opportunity’ will perhaps mean many us of with disabilities will need to establish careers as entrepreneurs outside of the business organization as [it] exists today.”

And Roger asks these probing questions for society in general:

“If we encourage people with disabilities to gain an education and apply for any job they are capable of performing because it helps them achieve their full potential, what modifications does society have to make for that kind of accessibility?

“Do we jail potential employers who refuse to hire [those with disabilities]? Do we restrict access to transportation, access to information/the Internet, and isolate them into enclaves of ‘disabled’ who survive but are considered second-class citizens with limited rights?

“Do we allow [people with disabilities] to actively participate in deciding their careers, educational pathways, lifestyles, quality of life, or do we allow government-based ‘experts’ to design their programs for the ‘poor’ disabled?

“We need, as a society, to begin to address these questions before those [with disabilities] can assume their rightful place in society as a whole.”

Attributes of Authenticity to Identify in Job Candidates

In your recruiting efforts, search for individuals with disabilities who know how to establish authentic relationships with you, their coworkers, and your customers. Perhaps that means you need to look for these attributes in a job candidate:

Honesty in assessing and working with one’s personal strengths and weaknesses

Ability to accept and work with the personal strengths and weaknesses of others

Skill in candidly and effectively expressing personal needs and wants

Ability to accept and work with the personal needs and wants of others

Ability to make decisions based on well-thought-out personal values

You’ll likely have an opportunity to identify these attributes in a job candidate you’re considering as you discuss what (if any) accommodations may be needed for the job at hand (see Chapter 5).

Terry Besenyody, human resources manager at Pitney Bowes’ Spokane office, cites this example: One of her call center workers (let’s call him John) is partially sighted as a result of diabetic retinopathy. He’s been with Pitney Bowes for more than ten years.

“At the beginning,” Besenyody points out, “he brought his own access tool, a glasses-mounted monocular.” (A monocular is like a small telescope but for close viewing.) For some time, John was able to see the text on his monitor with just the monocular. But, when John’s eyesight worsened, he needed to go to software that magnified what was on his monitor.

“He was still very easy to work with,” says Besenyody. “He knew exactly what he needed, where and how to obtain it, who would install it, and how long it would take. He even found a way for us to share the expense with Services for the Blind.”

Knowing when to gracefully accept help? Carrying his share of the load? Leveling with his supervisor? Recognizing a risk worth taking? Approaching the job as if it were his own business? You bet. Working from apparently vulnerable circumstances, John demonstrated his entrepreneurship, his authenticity, and his independence.

Targeting Candidates Who Are Willing to Take Reasonable Risks

As an employer, one of your most economical solutions to a high turnover rate is to hire and retain qualified employees with disabilities.

But, as an employer of individuals who have a disability, you’ll probably gain that advantage of lower turnover only if you heed one pitfall. Here’s how eSight Careers Network member Bonita describes that pitfall:

“The attitude is sometimes very subtly conveyed that we must stay at one job and maintain a tight grip with gratitude on what we have because someone gave us a chance. That is wrong. We should be hired because we can do the work. If it is not workable, then changes must be made. I know of cases where [disabled] employees have been taken advantage of because the employers thought they would not or could not quit. Always seek to better yourself—your whole self.”

In other words, you’ll gain the advantage of perhaps less turnover with an employee who has a disability only if you provide the same opportunities for development and advancement that you provide employees who are not disabled.

Participants in eSight’s SiM forum shared their personal experiences about when they realized they were functioning as an adult by taking a calculated risk in a career-building situation.

Specifically, the SiM participants discussed this question: When is it time to ignore advice to “play it safe” and take a risk by changing jobs?

This discussion yielded three traits you, as a potential employer, might want to consider as you seek job candidates with a disability who are right for your organization. Those traits are a sense of self, a feel for reality, and a taste of success.

Why are these traits important to hiring managers? Job candidates with disabilities who possess these three characteristics can become some of your best leaders because they know how to take appropriate risks.

Here is how the SiM bloggers revealed those traits during the discussion about their own risk-taking experiences.

A Sense of Self

Cindy:

I was a case manager—was placed with [an assistant] who had no computer skills and was going to school full-time (which left me with no help to accomplish my job tasks). I resigned my position after five months because I was set up for failure.

Debbee:

The time to ignore advice is when the voices you hear in your head and in your heart become louder than those on the outside.

Laine:

Funny, every time I “play it safe,” I find the safe way was much more trouble than I expected. Avoiding risk has kept me in relationships and on jobs far longer than was personally healthy. On the other hand, taking a risk often has unforeseen consequences.

I arrived on this planet with no material things and will leave the same way. So, I have decided that the collection of stuff isn’t anywhere near as important as my growth as a human being. I have discovered that risk aversion is another term for fear of the unknown, and, frankly, no one really knows what is around the corner, anyway.

A Feel for Reality

Paul:

Good jobs are not easy to find for those with visual impairments. I say have your ducks in a row before you even think of quitting.

Fred:

Sometimes you have to learn how to be nonconfrontational, and, at the same time, you can’t take “no” for an answer.

So, balance and persist at whatever you are doing. If the job is too much trouble, find another one before you leap into the unemployment percentages.

People may expect you to jump through flaming hoops, but you can put the heat on if you need to when it comes right down to it. I wouldn’t give up the security of my job unless it was intolerable—and, before I gave up, I’d fight.

Most jobs that I left I was adept enough to have secured another job equal or better prior to resigning. Proper notice and effective resignation are very important.

No matter how well you have prepared for an occupation, overcoming the disability barrier is a major event. Once the job has been secured, be observant, plan, strategize, know if you are fitting in, and either plan to advance in that environment or begin laying the groundwork for the next job. Every job should be the platform for a higher level.

Peter:

I have made a career of changing jobs when the costs of a given job significantly exceeded the benefits. By and large, I am happy with all of these decisions, but it is worth remembering that it is harder for us [with disabilities] to find work than it is for those who are [not] impaired.

Kate:

Countering inappropriate workplace practices is not easy. If you are prepared to risk putting out a call for help, then you may find you don’t have to do it alone. This has been my personal experience.

A Taste of Success

LuRetta:

The day when I stood up and defended my personal, strength-based career goals [refusing to simply take the first job that came along] was the day I embarked on my adult career journey. The result was a very beneficial and largely satisfying two decades in information technology and management.

Liz:

I moved 2,000 miles away from my friends and family to a small town in Alberta that wasn’t exactly welcoming in 1982 for someone who was from Ontario and who had a disability. I lived independently, ran a household, shopped, cooked, cleaned, and taught.

I did the best job as a special education teacher that I could. I did it so well that I taught myself out of a job the next year, but I learned that I could live on my own and function as a mature individual when a lot of the “professionals” around me didn’t. I built my self-confidence and self-worth.

The students’ parents said I was the first of twelve previous special education teachers in that school who actually gave a damn about the kids and worked on their behalf, rather than sucking up to the administration.

I knew I had done a good job placing them in schools and classes where they would get the best teachers and education—which is what they deserved. My kids knew they were capable, wonderful human beings and not “space cadets” (the label the administration used to describe them).

This to me is a fully functioning adult: looking out toward the community and doing the best you can with what you have to make a difference.

Natalie:

I’ve been lucky to have good family support and good friends. They have encouraged me to do the best I can and then some. I really started to believe it this last semester, when I finally realized the truth in what they are saying—that I can do a lot better and need to believe in myself.

I am now in a much better position to reach out to the community and use what I have to make a difference. I know I’m a lot better than I give myself credit for.

In another comment on the SiM blog, Liz gave her fellow participants a new context for an individual’s willingness to take risks on the job and within a career. She wrote:

All life is a risk to those of us with disabilities, be they physical, emotional, or cognitive. We take risks from the time we acquire our disabilities or are born with them, and we get so used to it that we don’t even realize it. We’ve been risking things all our lives; we just may not have recognized it.

Look for job candidates with disabilities who know how to take appropriate career risks, who are entrepreneurs at heart, and who know how to function effectively in the nondisabled world.

QUICK TIPS FROM THIS CHAPTER

Identify Those Who Approach Employment as Entrepreneurs

Achieving a balanced life in today’s world is not easy for anyone. But focusing on one or more special needs not normally required of nondisabled folks and still achieving that balance can give someone who is disabled the entrepreneurial spirit you need in an employee at your workplace. For more information, see “Guest Post: What Gen Y Wants from Work” at http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/07/16/
guest-post-what-gen-y-wants-from-work/.

Identify Those with Successful Small-Business Experience

Look for both tangible and intangible indicators of whether a job candidate’s small business is “for real” and is a source of relevant experience. For more information, see “Small Business Startups: Statistics Show Realities” at http://www.esight.org/view.cfm?x=215.

Identify Those Who Have Moved Beyond Self-Absorption

Prime job candidates with a disability know how to use their interpersonal skills to effectively raise awareness and challenge assumptions about personal vulnerabilities as fully engaged members of society. They know the difference between being aggressive and assertive. They are not self-absorbed. For more information, see “Strategies for Dealing with Self-Absorbed People” at http://www.lib.sk.ca/booksinfo/
DailyHerald/Dh2003/dh030112.html.

Identify Those Who Assume Personal Responsibility

Recruit job candidates who know how to take responsibility when they become “easy marks” at work. They’ll probably have the inclination to resolve these issues for themselves. Having such proactive individuals on your staff can boost your work unit’s morale. For more information, see “Work Bullies: Bad for the Victim and the Bottom Line” at http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4546375.

Identify Those Who Have Well-Developed Emotional Intelligence

Consider job candidates who take the initiative to address the unasked questions about how they’ve learned to handle their disabilities. They could help you set the right tone for your work unit. For more information, see “We Make All Our Decision Based on Feelings” at http://www.emotionalintelligenceatwork.com/
cms.php?show=decisions.

Identify Those Who Can Gracefully Accept and Decline Help

The ability to handle vulnerability gracefully is an attribute of leadership. For more information, see “How to Accept Help and Generosity in Your Life” at http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-
Accept-Help-and-Generosity-in-Your-Life&id=2082106&opt=print.

Identify Those Who Can Carry Their Own Load

Effective team members balance opportunities for helping and for receiving help. Disability need not be a detriment to that sharing. In fact, it can create an even more diverse and richer source of sharing when a person with a disability who knows how to interact effectively with others is involved. For more information, see “Examples of Good and Bad Interpersonal Skills at Work” at http://courts.michigan.gov/mji/curricula_guide/
Examples_of_Good_and_Bad_Interpersonal_Skills.pdf.

Identify Those Who Are Authentic

Effective employees know how to build authentic relationships with you, their coworkers, and your customers. To detect authenticity, look for these attributes in a job candidate: honesty in assessing and working with one’s personal strengths and weaknesses, ability to accept and work with the personal strengths and weaknesses of others, skill in candidly and effectively expressing personal needs and wants, ability to accept and work with the personal needs and wants of others, and ability to make decisions based on well-thought-out personal values. For more information, see “Authenticity at Work” at http://www.allbusiness.com/management/
change-management/3875604-1.html.

Identify Those Who Are Willing to Take Reasonable Risks

As an employer, you’ll gain the advantage of perhaps less turnover with employees who have a disability only if you provide the same opportunities for development and advancement that you provide employees who are not disabled. Here’s why: You want individuals on your team who will take risks in building their careers. For more information, see “Disability Confidence” at http://www.realising-potential.org/
disability-confidence/.