Griffin – Discovery Personal Genius
Griffin Part #4

Note: This transcript has been edited for readability.  These edits do 
not alter the content of the original presentation.

We've been talking about discovery. We've been in the top part of this 
funnel that we have been talking about. We want to develop a plan that 
moves the information through that funnel and guides us as we go. 
Remember that discovery should lead to a solid profile that captures the 
essence of the individual.

What we want to capture is what works and what doesn't work for this 
individual. You can collect this in a variety of ways.  There are a 
variety of vocational profiles that you can find on the web or in a 
variety of good books written by Michael Callahan or Virginia 
Commonwealth University.  We [Griffin-Hammis] have a new book coming out 
on job development that has a profile type form.  There are a variety of 
resources that you can use.  When you are trying to figure what works 
and what doesn't work, you have to try some things that may or may not 
make sense right now. You never know if you are good at something if you 
don't try it.

If there seems to be an interest in an area, let's at least go visit a 
place that does that. Let's go talk to some people who do that kind of 
thing.  Find out what are the best settings for this person. What are 
their support needs? What are their different talents, skills, and 
interests?  Don't just let skills drive the process.  A lot of us learn 
our skills by doing our job.  Long before I was a public speaker, I was 
dreadful in front of a group. But, I have done it so much now that I 
don't get anxious about it all. But, when I was young I would be tied in 
knots about going out and having to speak in public.  We get used to it; 
obviously it is something that attracted us, but it didn't necessarily 
feel good at first.  

Find out what home is like such as chores and hobby tasks.  If you are 
not finding those, talk to the people at home about adding those.  They 
are very critical. We find a lot of times that folks with disabilities 
have been excluded, because it is inconvenient to have them doing the 
chores that the other kids do. It’s very important to get tasks. 
Interests that are revealed by being at home can also give a lot of 
information about the person. I know that I have been at people's homes, 
and I've seen them in the professional light.  I've seen them in the day 
program or in the classroom. When I go to their homes, there is this 
whole other world to them that I didn't know. Just as if I'd come to 
your home, I would probably find that you are into scrap booking, or you 
have an eBay business on the side. Those interests are not instantly 
revealed in the other environments. I need to find out who you are; what 
you're like in those other environments; and see if we can't build on 
that.  

We want to see what the impact of disability is in a variety of 
settings. I used to run a program, an adult rehabilitation program in 
southern Colorado. I was astounded that when I went into homes, people 
that had very few language skills in the day program could speak fluent 
Spanish in their families, because that's what they've grown with. Their 
English sometimes wasn't so good.  Sometimes people were quite fluent 
and bilingual, something that I wasn't quite as good at.  Look at the 
impact of disability in those environments. I always found it humorous 
that people would test out with very low IQ's, but they were bilingual.  
They knew two languages, something that most Americans don't know.  We 
want to take that into account.

What other things do we need to observe and investigate both formally 
and informally?  I think that intuition plays a big part in being good 
at discovery.  I don't think that it is absolutely something that you 
have to be good at, but I think that intuition grows.  It’s kind of like 
common sense. The more you use those muscles, the better they get.  We 
use a phrase called "going to where the career makes sense", something 
that I've already touched on.

It’s that idea of using the informational interview, of going out and 
asking other people how they make their living.  It is simply making an 
appointment and saying, “Can I come talk to you about your business?”  
What I typically say is that I am a career counselor and I am working 
with somebody who is into painting.  I am not an artist, and I don't 
know much about that so I would call an artist and say, “I don't know 
much about this. I am a career counselor, but I am helping this person 
who really seems to have some talent and some drive in that area.  I am 
talking to a number of artists about how they make a living. How they 
got into it. "What are the pitfalls and the things to do to grow your 
career? Could we have 15 minutes of your time to come over to your 
studio or store to sit down with you and talk to us?”  

We almost never get told no.  People love to talk about what they do for 
a living. But, if I called that same person and say, “I have somebody 
who wants to be an artist do you have any jobs open?” They will probably 
say, “No.” That will be the end of the conversation.  
What you learned in the first part of discovery about having a 
conversation is so important.  I don't ever want to ask a yes or no 
question in job development or in discovery. I want to move on.  I want 
to keep it open ended to see what it is I am going to discover.

Again, going to where the career makes sense, as a course of action, 
evolves.  We visit others that have the same interest. We glean career 
information to find out where are the negotiables. What are the 
modifiers we need to use? How are we going to access this? What could we 
learn from this and start a different business or create a new job - 
something that's not getting done in the worksite? One of the 
interesting things about getting into the bowels of business and 
industry is that we find that a lot of work doesn't get done, because 
folks haven't figured out how to get money to pay for it to get done.  
Lots of small businesses are undercapitalized.

Those of you who know about resource ownership, also know about putting 
the means of production in the hands of people through skills, 
acquisition, and more importantly, through tools and equipment that 
allows them to be competent at doing something.  These are things that 
we have identified that there are opportunities inside of so many 
businesses doing so any different things. 

Most of us, when we go home on Friday night from our jobs, our work is 
still undone. There is more work waiting on Monday. It is the same in 
business and industry.  Why is it that we don't get that work done? 
Because we probably can't afford right now to hire somebody, or we don't 
have somebody who can do that. Maybe that's where our opportunity is.  
Maybe we can create another market, another customer to pay to get that 
work done.  

You'll never have enough information. Discovery could on forever. That's 
what we are trying to tell you not to do. Again, this is that intuitive 
piece.  When we've laid out a plan of significant questions that we need 
to be answered so that we've got a good picture of who this person is, 
and not before that, then we start to ask about possible businesses or 
wage job ideas.  

When we are out doing the investigation as the career counselor doing 
the informational interviews, we really truly are seeking information 
about what it's like to own that business or to be employed in that kind 
of business. We're not asking for a job. 

Now we're moving into formal job development. We want to create a job 
development plan. That is where we’re going to investigate.  We might 
still use some of those techniques of informational interviewing. But, 
now we've narrowed the focus. We generally have a pretty good idea of 
who this person is, where those proper environments are, and how we're 
going to negotiate this.  We certainly want to design a personal 
portfolio or resume. 

We want to create a job seekers map if we haven't done this already.  A 
lot of this stuff may have happened earlier in this process, but 
figuring out who it is we need to talk to whether we know them or not is 
important. These are known relationships or relationships that we need 
to have.  If somebody is interested in dry cleaning, then we need to 
have that local dry cleaners name on that list, and we need to be 
contacting them. That becomes part of this plan.  

We develop a list of potential employers, products, and services for a 
small business the person might own.  We use what we call the rule of 
three, which comes out of the Marine Corps, which says that if you come 
to a meeting to solve a problem you better have three good ideas.

In the way that we do it is that we throw your first idea out. That's 
because the first idea almost always follows the path of least 
resistance.  Generally when we come into a team, the majority of the 
people of the team already have that same idea that was the most easy 
and obvious idea. It’s not that it’s a bad idea. It’s dig deeper. Let's 
not stop there. Let's move deeper into the conversation with each team 
member coming with a couple different unique ideas.  We will probably be 
able to synthesis something that's pretty vital and creative, and it's 
very doable at the same time.  

We want to avoid those stereotypical jobs or businesses for people with 
disabilities.  We want to get deeper. We want to get more creative. We 
want to challenge ourselves a little bit.  Those entry-level jobs are 
not bad jobs. But so often, they have very meager natural support 
capabilities, because the other people around you are also in high 
turnover jobs. In those jobs, peers are turning over really fast. 
Employers expect you to leave. And, the jobs don't have a career path 
hooked to them.  
They are expendable kinds of jobs. So, we want to try and stay away from 
those if possible or take them on a time-limited basis, knowing that it 
is not the end, that it's the beginning of the rehabilitation process. 
Develop a prospecting list and a schedule for getting this done. There 
ought to be a done time put on this, so we don't go on forever.

And remember, this PowerPoint slide is "Forget, Saskatchewan one mile, 
or forget one". I was driving across Saskatchewan, having been working 
there. There isn't much in Saskatchewan. I was thinking about this 
presentation. How I would put this together? How I would make the point 
about forgetting one? What we find over and over again, and this is the 
importance of the plan and the importance of discovery.  Once we know 
what we are looking for, it makes it so much easier to find it.  I knew 
that I was looking for graphic representation of "forget one thing, drop 
one thing out," and I drive right by this sign. 

It happens over and over again. It’s similar to what women tell me when 
they get pregnant, that they've never noticed so many pregnant women 
before that.  Now they're looking for that, and when you are looking for 
something you kind of find it. 

We still understand that best practice has some pretty significant 
pieces to it that quality job or business development happens with the 
person.  It is still a crucial element in customized employment or 
supported employment that we still need job analyses and discrete task 
analysis.  If you don't know how to do that, and if you don't know how 
to systematically train somebody and to help the natural trainer and to 
recognize the natural trainers in a work site and provide them with more 
powerful training strategies for people who learn differently, then we 
are not going to get into the kind of complexity that guarantees higher 
wages and more job stability.  We need training plans for people. We 
need to know how to do this stuff, or we're constantly going to be stuck 
in minimum wage jobs.  

We need to be able to identify natural supports, not just talk about 
them, but identify them and facilitate them in a work site and know how 
to negotiate those kinds of things.  We also need to be studied in a 
consultative approach, how to do negotiation. These are the kinds of 
skills that are going to take us into better jobs.

I want to stop there and wish you good luck in doing discovery.  It is 
not an open-ended process.  It is a process that is guided by the 
person. It is a formal process that involves intuition, a lot of shoe 
leather, and doing things differently and avoiding that trap of testing 
and evaluating people in standardized ways.

Good luck, thanks.