Tips for Charting a Deliberate Career Path When You Have a Disability

Summary:
Guideposts from my largely-unplanned career path during the last 40 years may offer you some ideas about how to use a more deliberate approach in chartering your own career path when you have a disability.

A Strategic Time and Place

Uncharted Territory

Time to Move On

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A Strategic Time and Place

In the mid 60s, I started my career in a place (rural Wisconsin) where most my classmates, new college graduates in journalism, would not work.

As a person with cerebral palsy (sometimes called "severe" by not very knowledgeable people but more commonly termed "functional" by professionals), I started my job as an assistant newsletter editor for a small, local dairy cooperative. I was only the second person within the central office staff to have a college degree. My pay was $60 a week.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had landed in a strategic job in a strategic company which would grow from $30 million a year in sales to $3 billion in sales in less than three decades to become part of the Fortune 500.

I was at the edge of a massive transformation within the Midwest dairy industry. Technology from the farm to the plant floor to the central office was putting a premium on size of scale. As a result, local cooperative were becoming regional and national organizations through consolidation and merger.

During that process, I transformed myself from a traditional journalist to a corporate communicator and positioned myself as an advisor to three different CEOs (a new one about every 10 years).

I managed my own professional development and deliberately sought training in management, strategic planning, marketing, human resources, organizational development etc. -- skills I knew my colleagues in this production-oriented company were not widely acquiring.

I also developed my hands-on skills. I taught myself photography, using my camera's tripod as one of my crutches.

As a result, I grew with the company -- from an assistant for the marketing director to communication specialist to communication coordinator to communication director to vice president of communication to organizational development officer.

Those promotions came after much hard work and networking but mostly because I had very little competition from others for what I was contributing to the company.


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Uncharted Territory

For years, we had no HR department -- in fact, I helped gain a consensus among the top staff to form one. So, my earlier promotions came with no "official" corporate announcement.

I sometimes got the feeling the CEOs I served hesitated to give me full-blown coverage of the promotions I received (comparable to what others in like situations were given) -- maybe because they wanted to avoid having to justify the promotion to other employees in the light of my disability. Looking back, I can understand that.

So, national awards and recognition for our department's work were important to me because they served to justify my position in the company.

Instead of spending most of my time in the central office, I also developed contacts with production workers, truck drivers, sales people, field reps and the farmers who supplied the milk for the plants -- a network which showed my colleagues at the vice presidential level as well as the CEO that I was receiving valuable feedback from all corners of the company. It was feedback I could use in counseling the senior staff and the CEO in making sound decisions which would be supported by the various stakeholders involved, especially during consolidations and mergers.

My network also worked because the employees knew I could help a deserving person get noticed by developing a well-placed story and picture about him or her in one of our corporate publications.

At one point, I was managing a staff of five full-time people plus a college student intern and an operating budget of $1 million. I required very few accommodations but made a point of delegating tasks (with extra measures of recognition) to individuals on my staff who could perform them better than I could.

In later years, I focused my energies on counseling senior management and coaching my staff -- and delegating the hands-on work.

My staff people were involved in some highly visible projects and learning experiences due to that delegation. They had multiple opportunities to personally brand themselves within and outside the organization. It was a trade-off for doing some of the work I could not do because of my disability.


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Time to Move On

Finally, after 28 consolidations and mergers, I could see the writing on the wall. I had a star performer on my staff who, for her career development, needed to take my position as vice president, which I had held for 10 years. There was also a mega-merger on the horizon which involved at least two "misplaced" CEOs who needed jobs in the newly formed organization.

As the only employee with a disability in the organization, I decided to retire and start my own business because I needed a change and I recognized I couldn't compete with the incoming people for those few, newly reorganized top jobs.

I learned a couple of things from this experience, which, I know, is highly unusual and probably couldn't be repeated in today's job market and in an urban setting. But, there may be some things here that can still work in positioning yourself for promotion when you have a disability:

• Select an industry, a company and a job sector with growth potential.
  
  
• Get your foot in the door, even if it involves volunteer work or grunt work.
  
  
• Assess what the organization needs and purposely train yourself on a continuing basis to meet those needs (preferably in areas where there is a minimum of competition from others).
  
  
• Develop your hand-on skills within your particular job sector but also seek training in supervision and management so you're prepared to go beyond entry-level, hands-on work.
  
  
• Establish mutually beneficial internal and external networks wherever you work and use them to help you as well as your immediate supervisor to ease a pain or attain a gain.
  
  
• Make your mark (through intentional, personal branding) within your job sector so you can move up within one company or make a move to another company which will allow you to grow.
  
  
• Know when to make a side move or quit corporate life altogether (because competition
  for the few, higher-level jobs is becoming too intense for you).
  
  
• Consider, at some point, starting your own business which makes use of the skills you've learned and the networks you've formed in the corporate world.

Debra L. Angel and Elizabeth E. Harney, authors of "No One is Unemployable: Creative Solutions for Overcoming Barriers to Employment, have this to say about career paths for people with disabilities:

"As the candidate moves up the corporate ladder, she will find that fewer positions exist and the competition has become increasingly fierce. To succeed, her focus must shift from merely distinguishing herself from her peers to proving that she is similar to those in positions above her. Often, a candidate who has been a corporate executive may decide that it is easier to use her expertise to start her own company rather than vie for these limited positionsￂ"

- "No one is Unemployable: Encyclopedia of Barriers," page 181

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