PERSONAL
SKILLS AT WORK
“When
my kids come and ask me for money, I can reach into my
pocket and have something to give them besides lint.”
“When you get tired of being poor, of being written
up, of not getting promoted, you will try harder to be
successfully employed.”
Today, I started to wonder if those things everyone knows
are really true. People fail at work because they are lazy,
just don’t care, aren’t tired enough of being
poor. Right? Maybe there’s more to it than that.
Twenty years ago, when I was in graduate school, one of my
fellow students became very frustrated with our professor
who never seemed to quite give a straight answer to any
question. If we asked if the size of a class made a
difference, or about the research on psychotherapy or
whatever the question, Dr. Balow always seemed to answer,
“It depends….” And then launch into a
complicated lecture. The woman seated behind me raised her
hand and asked impatiently, “Isn’t there
anything
we know
for 100% certain?”
He thought about this for a minute and answered,
“After
thirty years of research in education and psychology, I
think there is only one thing I can state as an absolute
fact – All the simple answers are wrong.”
Based
on what we know about many people’s lives on
reservations, it seems rather likely that the answer to the
problems every tribal organization has with attendance,
work habits and attitude isn't just that people are too
lazy to come to work. More likely, I think how people grew
up affects their lives at work.
As Dr. Amy Stark said our thoughts about work
come from how we grew up at home. “At home we learn
about power and authority, to trust or doubt, share or be
selfish, persevere or quit, get angry or get even. By
observing from childhood our parents’ attitudes about
going to work, we begin to develop unconscious attitudes
about the nature of working itself – whether we have
a nine-to-five parent who clocks in and out or a
career-minded parent who brings work home at night.
… The lessons we learn about life and relationships
in our family are accepted as the truth simply because they
are all that we know – we bring these
“truths” with us to the workplace.”
Need to be convinced? Click here to look at a
common experience.