Helping professionals are employed to facilitate change, otherwise we don’t have a job. The more straightforward version is when the person paying for the service is the person who wants the change. There may still be challenges but the basic transaction is clear.
It becomes more complicated when the funding has been provided to produce a change in a third party – someone who has been referred or mandated to attend. Some service models are softer where there is a hope, but no expectation, that change will happen.
But some roles have the expectation built in with targets workers need to achieve. Sometimes goals are set at the beginning of the work, sometimes they are set by the referrer before the person even turns up.
The irony is that if we approach this work with the expectation or need for someone else to make a change, it might be less likely to happen. People can smell an agenda a mile off and try to protect their autonomy by defending or withdrawing.
Pushing for outcomes means we take less time to discover what the person really needs and how to find a way forward together. And moving too fast towards a solution may just end up with the person arguing against a change that, under less pressured circumstances, they might even be open to.
It can feel like going to work in a unicorn factory, where the expectations are high but our confidence of success may be low. So what can we do? We can’t force change to happen. But if we can hold the hope for change more lightly and meet people with curiosity, we may be able to create a very real, shared sense of possibility together. Because that is how unicorns are really made.
Helen Mentha 