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Learned Helplessness

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If you keep a predatory fish, such as a pike, in an aquarium it will display normal healthy predator behaviours.  Put a prey fish in and a hungry pike will attack and swallow it in the blink of an eye.

If you use a glass wall to divide the aquarium in half, with the pike on one side and a prey fish on the other, then the pike will pursue the prey fish again.  But this time it just smacks into the glass and gets a painful bang on the head for its trouble.  No matter!  It regroups, attacks again and ‘crack’ the same result – a whole load of pain and no gain.

After a while the pike learns that going for the prey fish is not such a smart move.  Chasing what you want just ends in failure and pain.  You can even remove the glass wall from the tank, surround the starving pike with prey fish and it still will not attack.  It has learned helplessness.

There is a lot of learned helplessness out there.  A lot of people who used to have dreams and aspirations, but in pursuing them have just got pain and no gain.  Painful experiences and memories from school, parents and peers who do not believe in them and perhaps a history of redundancy and unemployment.  You can dangle ‘opportunities’ in front of them and still they will not grab them.  They have learned that this will only end in pain – and no gain.  Learned helplessness.

And ‘advice’ even well meaning, technically competent and powerful advice will not help.  In fact it will hinder – it will reinforce the idea that they are somehow deficient.  That if they were OK they would not be in this situation.  It reinforces the helplessness.

So what does work?  Knowing someone who believes in you – unconditionally.  Who encourages you to pick yourself up, learn the lesson and move on.  Someone who has faith in you and wants to see you become the wonderful person that you have the potential to become.  Someone who does not preach or advise but just helps you to grow – and to keep growing.  Someone who puts your well-being at the top of the agenda – and their contracted outputs much lower down.  A facilitator, a coach, a true friend who will help tackle the real barriers to progress – not just the technical challenges to be overcome but the personal ones too.

Facilitating The Power of Faith and Belief

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Imagine a client who is about to commit him/herself to a significant investment in a new business.  The market does not seem to be there.  The finance is not yet in place.  The business (from any logical rational perspective) looks like a money pit.

Yet they know they can make it work.  They can see the business in its final form.  They know that they will find a way.  They just need to commit to it.  So they make the investment.  They burn their bridges.  There is no going back.  They have to find a way.

Enterprise Based on Faith or a Plan?
Enterprise Based on Faith or a Plan?

You ask them why they are so sure that the business will work.  They answer,

“I just know it will work – I can feel it in my bones”

or perhaps

“God told me to do this – he will find a way”

or

“I know it is a risk – but it is a risk that I comfortable to take”.

Now just suppose they are the Head of Sony on the brink of launching the Walkman – even though all the business anlaysts were screaming – DON’T DO IT.  Or imagine your client is Rupert Murdoch, about to launch Sky Sports – even though the market research says that overwhelmingly people will not pay to watch football matches on satellite TV.

Now imagine it is a local person about to launch into their first enterprise – no financial reserves to fall back on.

  • How would you handle the situation?
  • What would you say?
  • What would you do?
  • Who else might you involve?

If you manage a support service – how would you want your advisers and coaches to handle it?

Provision of Neighbourhood Enterprise Talent Scouts and Neighbourhood-based Business Advisors

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Another invitation to tender appeared today.  This time a council looking for the provision of Neighbourhood Enterprise Talent Scouts and Neighbourhood-based Business Advisors to work closely together in stimulating enterprise.

Talent and Business.  Business and Talent.  Is this REALLY what it is all about?  Or is it about frustration, unfulfilled potential, anger and possibility?

One thing I do know; If you set up a system to find people with a ‘talent for business’ you will find the same people that every other agency has already found.

Set up a system to find and help  people who are angry, frustrated and wasting their potential and you will find people with the potential to do something remarkable.

However their trust is not easily won.  More than likely they gave up trying to work with the agencies a long time ago. Set yourself up as a talent scout and they will stay well clear (they have probably spent years being told they are ‘a waste of space who won’t amount to much’ and the last thing they need is another Simon Cowell type rejection).

Set yourself up as a business advisor and likewise they are likely to avoid you like the plague – images of men and women in suits talking a foreign language of equity and turnover, profit and unit costs.

Instead just provide a service  with an unremitting focus on helping people to make progress in their lives – in whatever form that takes.  Build relationships, win trust and get busy.  It won’t be long before you are working with some really interesting people on some really enterprising ideas.

Oh, and by the way, don’t try to collect reams and reams of MIS data for the funders.  Ask for an NI number or for them to fill in an equal opps monitoring survey and they are likely to drop you like a hot potato.

Reflecting for Effective Practice?

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  1. What percentage of your clients come back to you for further support?
  2. What percentage do you just see once?
  3. What percentage of your clients go on to open a business?
  4. What percentage decide that enterprise is not for them?
  5. What percentage decide that they want to run their own business – but decide that they can’t make THIS business idea work.
  6. What percentage open a business – but don’t make it through the first/second/third year?
  7. How many different clients do you meet in a month/year?
  8. How many 121 sessions do you run in a month/year with clients?
  9. What is your average percentage occupancy? ie how much of your capacity is being used (by the people that you are meant to be supporting)?
  10. Are you really contributing to the development of an enterprise culture?
  11. What is your reputation with:
  • clients and their friends and families
  • funders
  • partners
  • other regeneration and community development professionals in the community?