"Swimming in the Mainstream" Insight: Avoiding Condescension

Summary:
Participants in eSight's "Swimming in the Mainstream" (SiM) blog discuss condescending behavior toward people with disabilities in organizations and offer four tips for avoiding that condescension on a corporate level.

Recognize True Commitment

Find the Right Words for Acknowledging our Experience

Treat Employees as Individuals

Recruit People With Disabilities Who Have Interpersonal Skills

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During June 2005, more than a dozen individuals on eSight's "Swimming in the Mainstream" (SiM) blog discussed how to get beyond, as employees with a disability, the condescending behavior (sometimes disguised as undue praise) they often receive in mainstream workplaces. Specifically, they discussed this question:

When have you encountered unnecessary "special treatment" at work that you considered condescending instead of an affirmation? What did you do about it?

You can review their complete discussion about this topic
on the SiM blog under the June 2005 entries.

Peter, one of the SiM blog participants, may have summed up the discussion about "Getting Beyond 'Special' in the Eyes of Others" most eloquently when he wrote:

"So, it just might be that the condescending behaviors that we all find irritating might be a symptom of an underlying organizational disease, and sometimes framing it that way might be another way to deal with the 'condescension problem.'"

Roger points out that a common symptom of the 'condescension problem' is use of this phrase in referring to an employee who is disabled: "Isn't it amazing that he can..."

Other symptoms that your organization may have a 'condescension problem' include:

• A supervisor says nothing to Dan, an employee who is blind, even though Dan is consistently 20 to 30 minutes late for work, while the other workers understand that they have to be at their desks at 8:00 sharp.



• An HR executive smiles at Barb, who walks with crutches, periodically ￂ? in the hallway or in the lunch room ￂ? and tells her how well she's doing on the job, even though she only started working at her new job six months ago. It's something the HR executive doesn't do in greeting other employees.



• Jon, who has a speech impediment, is often introduced to new business associates by his manager with this comment: "Jon is an inspiration to us all."

To say the least, the co-workers of Dan, Barb and Jon, are not happy -- precisely because these three individuals are considered "special" due to their disabilities.

It's disruptive. It impedes teamwork. It cuts productivity.

However, the mainstream experiences of SiM participants point us to four benchmarks of productive organizational behavior -- behavior that can prevent condescension from happening.

Consider the following four benchmarks and how they flow from
some of the personal experiences of June's SiM bloggers.

Recognize True Commitment

• "At the end of eighth grade when everybody signed yearbooks, I took around a mini-cassette machine, one of those very small ones. Each teacher, including my Spanish teacher, recorded a message saying what a wonderful student I was and what an inspiration I was to everyone. The message from my Spanish teacher was all in Spanish. As a matter of fact, there were numerous occasions when I failed to hand in my homework assignments. Other students did this, too. But did the teachers ever make a big deal out of it? Of course not, because they knew I was blind."
  - Jake



• "I combated being late to work (due to paratransit) by buffering my start time by an hour and telling transit that I had to be to work at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. While I often show up too early, other employees and bosses see this as an extra commitment instead of lack of commitment by always being late."
  -Bill



• "In my last job, I was always told I was an inspiration. On the one occasion when I was blatantly late, I offered to stay late. My employer stated that, since I so often worked more than my normal hours, I would not be penalized and was not expected to make up the time. I took work home to do over the weekend, stating that everyone else would be expected to make up the time, and I fully expected to do the same.
  
  "I did ask my employer not to refer to me as 'different' or an 'inspiration,' because I just did what I had to do. We did come to an understanding over time."
  ￂ? Jeanette

Find the Right Words for Acknowledging our Experience

• "I do think, though, when someone calls us inspiring or special it sometimes comes out of a place where they want to acknowledge our experience but can't find the right words so, because our culture is so 'hero' oriented anyway, they call us heroes or heroines or inspirationalￂ? Maybe one day none of us will have to endure being 'special' as Dana Carvey's Church Lady would say."
  ￂ? Liz



• "I'd love to have had a boss speak well of me and such. Well, maybe the inspiration thing is a bit much, but, boy, having someone saying something nice for a change -- wow!"
  ￂ? David



• "ￂ?As a blind person, I strongly feel that there are definite areas where I am, in fact, a better employee than the vast majority of my sighted counterparts. I'm more reliable than my sighted co-workers. I'm early at my desk more than 90 percent of the time. I'm rarely sick and, when I must take the day off, I am really sick -- not out watching Star Wars in the movie theater etc. My level of attention to detail and ability to accurately and precisely communicate and process information is far, far superior to that of most people without disabilities.
  
  "I am quite confident in my abilities. I 'know what I am doing' most of the time. I don't mind receiving acknowledgement and praise when these strengths result in benefits to my employerￂ?"
  
  "ￂ?In a largely inaccessible world, where I must suffer the negative consequences of my disability as imposed by others, I'll take all the praise and special treatment I can get -- so long as it is within reasonable limits. When a severe issue does arise, I'll privately approach the offender, then escalate the matter to that employee's direct supervisor if the behavior doesn't change over the next two weeks to a month.
  
  "I think we do need to be very careful to recognize those who do care about what happens to us but whom are simply ignorant, and avoid unnecessarily offending such understanding people."
  ￂ? Darrell

Treat Employees as Individuals

• "I do think, though, when someone calls us inspiring or special it sometimes comes out of a place where they want to acknowledge our experience but can't find the right words so, because our culture is so 'hero' oriented anyway, they call us heroes or heroines or inspirationalￂ? Maybe one day none of us will have to endure being 'special' as Dana Carvey's Church Lady would say."
  ￂ? Liz



• "I'd love to have had a boss speak well of me and such. Well, maybe the inspiration thing is a bit much, but, boy, having someone saying something nice for a change -- wow!"
  ￂ? David



• "ￂ?As a blind person, I strongly feel that there are definite areas where I am, in fact, a better employee than the vast majority of my sighted counterparts. I'm more reliable than my sighted co-workers. I'm early at my desk more than 90 percent of the time. I'm rarely sick and, when I must take the day off, I am really sick -- not out watching Star Wars in the movie theater etc. My level of attention to detail and ability to accurately and precisely communicate and process information is far, far superior to that of most people without disabilities.
  
  "I am quite confident in my abilities. I 'know what I am doing' most of the time. I don't mind receiving acknowledgement and praise when these strengths result in benefits to my employerￂ?"
  
  "ￂ?In a largely inaccessible world, where I must suffer the negative consequences of my disability as imposed by others, I'll take all the praise and special treatment I can get -- so long as it is within reasonable limits. When a severe issue does arise, I'll privately approach the offender, then escalate the matter to that employee's direct supervisor if the behavior doesn't change over the next two weeks to a month.
  
  "I think we do need to be very careful to recognize those who do care about what happens to us but whom are simply ignorant, and avoid unnecessarily offending such understanding people."
  ￂ? Darrell

Recruit People With Disabilities Who Have Interpersonal Skills

• "ￂ?I am well aware that there are many of you reading this comment who are thinking, 'This guy has grown up with his disability. He has no idea what it's like to have just lost ...' Let me simply say to you that you have come into your disability from the world you are now wanting to re-enter. Whoever you were coming in, you still are. I know your fears, and I know that they are real. I have worked in and around rehab all of my adult life, but please, please, please, don't forget where you came from! It's the only way back!
  
  "ￂ?Learn to be comfortable with who you are. 'know thy self.' Then, lighten up, get off (your) butt, join the human race, and take part instead of being a disabled counterpart in the real world. Out here, you've got to learn to be an adaptable, social, likeable, individual before you can ever expect to become an employable professional at any level. Learn to golf, laugh and make friendsￂ?"
  ￂ? Roger



• "ￂ?I am always trying to get my clients to reach out and engage the world. I have several blind and visually impaired mentors who are people who generally never needed the help of an employment organization or only minimal help because they developed the personal interaction skills to pursue life and careers of their own."
  - Mari-Cay

Be sure to view the offering statements of each of these SiM blog participants.

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Made possible by a grant from the American Express Foundation.

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