Griffin – Discovering Personal Genius Griffin Part #2 Note: This transcript has been edited for readability. These edits do not alter the content of the original presentation. What you have found out probably, if you did this correctly and you didn't ask any questions, is that it’s very difficult to have a conversation with somebody that you don't know if you don't ask questions. The reason I had you do this is not that I don't want you asking people questions. I had you do it, because in the traditional way that we worked with folks with disabilities and their families is that we fired questions from a checklist at them. For example, "Do you like to work indoors? Do you like to work outdoors? Do you like to work with people? Do you like to work alone?" These are all great questions, but folks without communication capacity, verbal language, or limited life experiences, have a very hard time answering those questions. What we try to do is to have a conversation and not an interrogation. Also, if I asked the wrong question, I am done. For example, if I ask, “Did you watch the baseball game last night?” And you say, “No.” We're done. But if I approach it by saying, “Hey, I watched that baseball game last night,” and give room for silence, I allow the person to contemplate what was asked. What I am after is simply something about a baseball game. But, it allows them to consider that and to think; well maybe this is an opportunity just to have a chat. Maybe they would feel comfortable enough over time to say, “You know, I don't really like baseball and don't watch baseball. Here is what I did last night.” Questions need to be open-ended. Yes or no questions tend to be the direction that we go or their first choice. We may ask, "Do you want to work outside or inside? You know, I'd like to work both places. It is hard to score that response. Also, the information changes over time and with the circumstance. "I like to work alone as opposed to working with people that I don't. I love to work with people who I like." Again, stay away from questions and lead into the answers through experience and getting to know somebody is a better way to go about this. Truly having a conversation and not having an interrogation is what discovery is about; it's the foundation. It's also best to let the environment guide discovery. People are different people in different environments. We have to access environments that make sense for the person and go to meet them where they are. If they have family connections then we want to go to the family. If that's where they are living, that is especially important. Even if they are in a residential program, we want to go to that area of the community and look around the neighborhood. Just from a functional standpoint, if transportation is going to be an issue, which it is so often in job development or owning a business and being able to get your products to market, then let’s look for resources that are close to home. Because that just makes it easier. Are there businesses close to home? One of the things that we talk about a lot in our work is the proliferation of small businesses that aren't necessarily identified or that we drive by everyday in our rush to work. We don't ever see them until we need them. By getting out and looking around the neighborhood more closely, we pick up cues from the kinds of homes that people are living in and the cars parked out in their driveway. By looking at people working in their garages and what they are doing in there, we get a sense for who lives in the neighborhood. We find out who might be able to help later, and who might be able to guide our directions. We want to know about that local environment. We want to stop occasionally and ask a neighbor where they drive to work in case we are trying to create a carpool of some kind. Be in a variety of environments. Try to figure out where this person does the best. Where are they during the day that makes sense for them? What other environments do we need to explore that are critical? If we listen to John O'Brien when he talks about the fact that sometimes we have to live into the answers with people, that's what discovery does. We put people in enough situations so that we're starting to find out about who they are. Who they are often is much more complex than we've thought they are. We find out that people have an insatiable desire to learn. We find that they are very competent in diverse areas. We have been really limited by our own abilities to dream big and to teach people complex tasks. We don't want to put limits on this. But, we also need to know how long discovery takes. How much money and time is this going to take? There's a couple different ways to look at that. What Mike Callahan and his colleagues are reporting is that discovery generally occurs over a 1 to 5 week period, and it takes 10 to 25 hours. Those are fairly broad ranges, but certainly understandable. If you think about somebody who is in a community health center, somebody who is in a developmental disability day program or sheltered workshop, the likelihood that they are going to spend the next 20 or 30 years there is astronomically high. If we spent 3, 4, or 5 weeks trying to figure out who somebody is and how that would lead to a job for them, then I don't think that has taken very much time. When you compare that to the 20 or 30 years that they are going to wait and not get a job, I think we need to refocus our priorities on that. Where did discovery come from? I think it came from a variety of places. For us in our work, it came out of a technique that we've sort of jokingly called Hanging Out With Intent (HOWI). This came out of some work that we were privileged to do with Steve Hall and Patty Cassidy when they were still in Indiana. We were working to close their workshops at the time. We were meeting people who we didn't know. They didn't have a lot of social history. They may or may not have had families. The whole idea was hanging out with intent, going downtown to try and find what this person liked and what they didn't like. It was a very loose process 15 years ago. But, what we found and what we applied in many other occasions when we were especially working with people coming right out of institutions into the community was that this was a process that really taught us a lot about how people learned. What they liked and what they didn't like. How to accommodate their needs, learning styles, and the clues around employment likes and dislikes. So this has evolved. It took Mike Callahan, Ellen Condon, and Norciva Schumbert to really put the bones together on this and to really make it a more formal process then what we used for many years. It is focused all of our work on the idea of assistance and not assessment. we spend much too much money testing people and assuming that things like vocational evaluation and psychometrics lead to a predictive outcome. We are looking for ecological validity, which is a fit in a particular environment versus the predictive validity of most vocational evaluation. Is formal evaluation important? Absolutely. Once you know who this person is, where they are going, and if the person happens to have a traumatic brain injury, then some neuropsychological testing can really help with figuring out adaptations for learning, memory, and teaching strategies. Those sorts of things are very important. It's not the first thing. For many people, we will probably never need a standardized test or vocational evaluation again. Unfortunately, that testing has been used over and over again to screen people out of programs. We want to screen people in. We want to be inclusive. We want to do this inventory work in real environments. We want to certainly take some cautions from rehabilitation environments. But really, we don't want that to guide our thinking. Let's say we were in a transition age classroom, but we didn't have augmentative communication to help us talk. Certainly, there are a lot of children today who do not have a speaking voice because of a lack of augmentative communication. I can't imagine being a teenager and not being allowed to talk or not being able to talk. I would be throwing chairs around the room. I am always sort of amazed of the tolerance and the patience that these students show us. I don't want to take information about behavior that has been produced by the inability of the system to accommodate their disability. I don't want to take data on somebody who’s been sitting in a day program with 30 other people coloring or putting together puzzles or even doing some contract work that's meaningful to them. That environment is still not terribly real in this world, so I want to go outside. I want to have one person, not a group of people. I want to try to see how it is that they get by in a variety of environments leading to these clues about who is this person. What kinds of things are they interested in? I am not looking for the one thing. I am looking for the many things. It has been said that 80% of Americans with college degrees work in a field for which they didn't prepare. We are very adaptable as human beings. We have a multitude of interests and to think that somebody with a serious disability has fewer interests would be very difficult at this point for me to believe. I think it has to do with exposure and with the ability to entertain ourselves. For instance, to say, "I think I want to try disassembling a car for a change." Those of us who have some cash and some independence get to make those choices everyday. We have the ability to have hobbies and to have friends of diverse thought and background. Many people with disabilities live a life of isolation and loneliness and don't have those opportunities. I am going in thinking that there are unlimited job and business opportunities in the world. There are unlimited kinds of ways to make a living and if we've only got one idea for a person then we haven't done our work. We really want to get into as many environments that make sense for the person. That is why we are going downtown. That's why we're going into the family home. That's why we're going into these environments to see what works and what doesn't work. What supports do people need? Are there particularly bad days or good days? What seems to happen when particular kinds of people are around? Again, we're not out there doing this for six months. We're really doing this in a strategic understandable fashion. We don't want to take those old tests and behavior reports from the segregated environments unless there is a strong history of some kind of violence or predation. Even then we want to be very cautious about how we proceed and certainly pay attention to warning signs. We don't want to endanger anybody in this process obviously. What we find though is that once we get downtown, in the community, into a variety of different environments, one place leads to another. Then we get a clue. If the person is really into birds, we notice because we have gone to the park with the person. Then, we could go to other places, maybe a mountain trail. We can walk that mountain trail and look at a variety of different kinds of wild life and find out that it is not just about birds. Maybe it’s about being outdoors. It might be about music or a thousand other things. We don't know yet. All we are doing is following those clues. We ought to know that we liked birds. Where are the ten other environments that we can access easily that involve birds? What we will probably find is that the things that show up on the surface are not actually the motivator. Just because somebody likes popcorn doesn't mean that they want to make popcorn. Generally, what it means is that popcorn is something that has been restricted. Or, "I like popcorn because it means going to a movie. I like the person who makes the popcorn." Again, digging deeper is what I am suggesting. If you are doing discovery properly, you're finding that there are a multitude of layers to every individual. The other piece is to avoid the idea that just because somebody likes something it’s what he or she ought to do for a living. I like lots of things. I have a lot of hobbies. I have a lot of interests. But, I don't do any of those things for a living. I am not particularly excited about doing those things for a living. If I looked at all the different skills and talents that I have, I know how to do a lot of things, but that's not my chosen career. We have to look at those issues as well. I was driving through western Iowa a few months ago and came across this town. On the outskirts, it said the "Ice Cream Capital of the World." It's where the Blue Bunny Factories are. When I drove up to the factories, I discovered that probably all those people working in the ice cream factory aren't there because they like ice cream. In the computer department, all the information technology folks probably like computers a lot more than they like ice cream. The guys that are driving the trucks probably like driving the trucks more than they like ice cream. The folks that are doing the nutritional analysis probably aren't there because they like ice cream. They are probably there, because they like chemistry. Again, look beneath the surface. There are a lot people who sell cars for a living not because they like cars, but because they like selling. Or, they like being around people. So dig deeper. And again, let all of these connections, this web grow. This is a network approach. Once we find family members who share certain interests or give us particular clues about a person, we can follow those clues. Some are going to be a dead end. Some of those clues are going to lead to other places. I know of a circumstance where a dad had worked for 20 years for the state highway department. He had never thought that his son would work. Never thought that his son really even understood what he did for a living. But as we got to know Jim, he ended up going to work for the highway department. Jim was really excited about the bright orange trucks and the safety aspects that he heard his father talking about. But they never really communicated much about that. As we followed these lines of communication that opened up through the process, we found that it was a natural fit. Of course dad does the job development. Sometimes we get in the way of families helping their siblings or their children figure out their work. We look at families. We look at friends. We look at acquaintances who can tell us how the person is doing in this environment. What kind of support do you think they need? What are they really good at? This may or may not lead to anything. Sometimes those acquaintances may be as simple as the person at 7-11 on the corner who helps this young lady with her coffee in the morning. That might be an opening for a job; we don't know yet. We are not going there. It's one of those markers along the way that we can reference if we need it. The point is not to jump to the conclusion about the job yet. That's going to evolve. You are going to figure that out and discovery is going to reveal jobs rather than you having to speculate about jobs. That's sort of the magic of discovery when it’s done correctly. Obviously, we don't work professionals out of this. When I list the strangers, I mean folks that we don't know right now but that we can get to know. For most folks just starting discovery, they don't know the employers out there, but getting to know employers is part of our strategy in discovery. Even though Discovery sounds like a loose process, it is actually a pretty structured process. I describe it as a funnel. We start out really big at the top. We grab as many ideas and environments and situations as we have time to do and that makes sense to do, and we gradually bring them down into the neck and the outlet of the funnel. It narrows. As we get to know the person, we start zeroing in on particular environments, people, and attributes of a work environment that makes sense for this person based on their skills, talents, and preferences. Let me reiterate, we are not here to ask what job or business would be best. That's one of the major faults we find with person-centered planning. I do not mean that it's not a great strategy. We use it all of the time. But for the most part, we missed the assessment piece when we come into somebody's living room and we say what's your dream job? Let me emphasize that we can talk more deeply about dream jobs and how that's a set-up for a job developer and for the person wanting them, but it also limits our ability to be creative and look beyond [the dream]. Focusing on a dream job also reinforces the fact that many people with complex disabilities have been taught what we want to hear and what's available. If somebody comes in and answers that question and says, “Well, I want to be the manager of Philadelphia Phillies.” They really know that they are not going to get that. I am certainly not talented enough to get them that job, and so we are all disappointed. They also know the reality that what we're probably going to say in many situations is, “How about you start bagging groceries at Kroger’s?” So everybody is disappointed. Let's not go there. Let's let the path reveal the secrets. Let's let the path unfold all the different kinds of jobs that are available. One of the great things about customized employment is that we can throw away the idea of job descriptions for a while and create that through negotiation later. That's also an important aspect of why we would include self-employment in this mix as a vital option. Sometimes the job that we need to create, the ultimate environment for folks, is not available. Again, millions of people who are self-employed in this world have done the same thing. They have said there is no job description that does what I needed to do. There is no environment that I can find other than my own environment, so I am going to go create my business. What we are trying to do with discovery is to find that out. Does it make sense for the person to create his or her own environment either in another business, or with a business within a business, or with a freestanding business? The more folks are involved generally, with limits, the more diversity of thought, activities, and locations you are going to find that your discovery becomes richer. We don't want it to go on forever, we want it to be a process that is somewhat finite. It ought to be driven by a plan. (First, I am going to do this, then I am going to do that, and then I am going to do this). We want activities built into this process. We want a variety of locations that are driven by the person. We also have to do one of those really difficult things; we have to think about. If there are really good environments, then there are probably not so good environments. We have to go experiment with a couple of those too, just to see if the person's going to work. Chances are, most of us in our jobs are in environments or in situations or assigned work tasks that we don't particularly like. Sometimes we can negotiate those out. The more power we have for instance and the more an employer wants us, the more likelihood that we can carve those out and not have to work with those. But, there's also the idea that I can tolerate things when I am getting paid for them and when I am getting respect and appreciation for doing those things. I can tolerate some things I don't like to do, because I am for the most part getting to do the bulk of my job, which is something I do enjoy doing. In my own job, I don't particularly like sitting in airports for 10 hours some nights. But, I do it, because I love the rest of my work. I think that if we can give people more in their plus column than in the minus column, people are pretty adaptable. But we want to know if we can, and this is the hard thing, figure out what we don't know. If we can set off some alarm bells to say these are not particularly great environments or work tasks for this person to have to engage in, then we can maybe minimize or mitigate those (negatives) through adding more in the plus column. The more good things that I like to do or better pay or whatever it is, or better yet, carve those out. Get rid of those things, especially those things that might make me look incompetent. There's a reason why I don't do [certain jobs]. I don't file legal papers for our firm, because I am not a lawyer and that would make me look very incompetent. So, I don't do that. I hire somebody to do that for us. Think that way and you have to have an abundance mind set to do this. You can't think the world is made up of this really small labor market. The labor market is ever expanding, and it's based on your ideas. If somebody will buy it, you have created a labor market. You have to think beyond the bounds of traditional job development and entrepreneurship to do this. The best way to get a great idea is to get lots of ideas. I can't state that enough. When we are working on teams, job development teams, discovery teams, person-centered planning teams, the idea is that everybody has to be a contributor. Everybody has to come to the table with a variety of ideas. Now, I am going to have you do another exercise. You will go away and work on this and then come back. These questions were prompted by Mike Callahan, Norciva Schumbert, and Ellen Condon. These are great questions to get the conversation going. These are not questions you fire at somebody. These are the questions that guide part of your discovery. You're trying to figure these things out with your activities. I'd like for you to go out and do this with somebody over the next couple days. Try to at least get some clues. Obviously, I don't want you to do all of discovery yet. We haven't been through the entire presentation yet. But, I want you to go practice a little bit. This is something good to practice on yourself. Get with a colleague, a friend, or your partner and sit down and answer these questions, or look at yourself in a variety of environments. See how you would answer these questions when you were in the work environment, when you were at church, when you were out on Friday night, when you were with your friends watching a football game. Think about how it is you might answer these questions. First, focus on two things that people don't know about you, those are important. Many of you know me, but you don't really know who I am. You see the professional me, but you don't see the at home me. You don't see the slothful me. You don't see the mechanic me. You don't see the fisherman me. You don't see whatever it is. I have lots of interests. You don't know that part of me. That's pretty darn critical, I think, to developing a new job for me. Where and when are you at your best? Are there a variety of places? When and where do you have your highest support needs? For instance, I am lousy at taking verbal directions from people. If somebody is going to tell me how to do something, they have already lost me. I have to read about it. I have to sit down and draw it out. I have to do it. I think a lot of people are like that, but we all get into situations where we are on the computer tech line and some computer wiz is telling you how to do something. They've lost me at press the escape button. I have to do it. I have to read about it. I have to see it. Other then your immediate family, who knows you best? Who do you share your deepest, darkest intimate secrets with? Think about the kinds of things you share with other friends, with coworkers that you may or may not have shared with your immediate family, and think about why that it is. Think about if you had no close friends or nobody to share things with. One of the reasons why we share information with others is to get their response, guidance, advice, and sometimes permission to move forward. Those are important social relationships that we are really getting at here. What gets you out of bed in the morning? What really gets you to move forward to engage in the day? I am always kind of amazed that folks will get out of bed everyday at the group home and go to a day program that they have been going to for 15 years, where they know that every day is going to be pretty much the same as it was yesterday. I think about the drive and the desire to achieve that person has and then a lot of times they get labeled as unmotivated to work. I can't imagine a person more motivated. I'd have given up years ago if that was what I had to face everyday. Go work on that and come back, and we will do the next section. Thanks!