Provocare Coaching

Community work gives you a unique opportunity to have a meaningful impact that shape life’s individual’s families and communities.   You can help people and groups reach their potential, overcome barriers, and reduce inequality, poverty and isolation.

If you are considering a career in the community sector because you have the drive to make a difference and keen sense of social justice and want to have a meaningful career, community work may be for you.  However, if your drive is a Career with status and high-income aspirations and of an easy life, I would suggest you give this sector a miss.

As a community worker, don’t expect regular affirmation, handholding, positive encouragement, or ego stroking because it is not going to happin.   

If you have visions of lots of great social functions, and harmony where there is going to be unity and agreement and hunger to change and keenness to get on with the work and expectation that people will be grateful for your hard toil, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  

People you will engage can be self-centred, hypocritical, egotistic, erratic, and angry.

You spend much time in meetings about meetings, constant feeling of groundhog day, low pay and face daily frustrations.

You might think that this is overly negative; I prefer to call it realistic. The flip side is when you wittiness individuals grow, policies and practice change for the better, and see crisis adverted the rewards are unmatched, and there is not a more rewarding career to be had.

Community workers

Are the unappreciated yet expected miracle workers and called upon to be all things to all people.  You might have a clear job description; however, you can bet your bottom dollar everyone will have a different view and what your job is supposed to be.  Managing expectations and priorities will be one of the most challenging aspects of the work.

Some will see your role as a police officer enforcing the rules, responding to their definition of an emergency and ensuring the rules are followed and enforced.

Some will see your role as a Teacher, to build capacity, from anything from how to use a computer to run an event, to how can you support someone facing a mental health crisis.

Some will see your role as entertainment master, to ensure their week is filled with meaningful social activities from bingo, to art classes, to free outings.

Some will see your role to be a marketer and making sure everyone knows (even those that will never be interested) what going on when and how they can be involved.

Some will see as your role to be the accidental counsellor to be there when they need to offload, regardless if your qualified, busy, or even interested.

Some will expect you to be the change maker making sure the latest government screw up or inaction is challenged and or overturned.

Some will ask you to be the firefighter putting out the latest storms and feuds and or be the hero for a bureaucrats client because, despite their vast resources, their risk-averse employer doesn’t allow them to. 

Some will want you to be the surrogate family member because they have no one else to turn to.

Others will expect you to be one of the crowd, and others the all-seeing oracle and or the director of all things.

Understanding expectations

There the client expectations which will be based on their own current challenges, their previous dealings with previous workers, their aspirations and or their cynicism (justified or not)  

Funder expectations which will be based on their preconceived ideas on how you should achieve the work plan goals, how it aligns with their cooperate goals, what they believe will and won’t work and how much the grant officer is personally invested in the program’s success.

Your management boards expectations will depend on the culture of the organisation you work for. Do they interfere in operational matters? Are they connected with the people you are servicing, or are they more closely aligned with chasing the next grant income stream? Have they professional experience l themselves and have a lot of expertise and commentary to offer? Or will they be there when you need their support?

Government Official’s expectations can make or break your project idea. Issues such as insurance, risk assessments, multiple approvals and multiple reporting lines, both internal and external, licensing, copyright, the list are endless.  However, as a good friend said to me, it often easier to ask for forgiveness than it is permission.

You are going have to be a meditator, a consensus builder and an advocate working through Conflicting views and opinions needing to ensure you represent the diversity views even when it conflicts with your own.

You are going have to be specialist in dealing with children’s, youth, family, ageing, cultures, substance abuse, mental health, disabilities, sexually diversity, social housing, poverty and every possible marginalised demographic you can think of.

If you work for NGO you can pretty much be guaranteed that over above your community work skills you are going have to be ready to for administration, cleaning, furniture removalist, accounting, risk manager, funding application, acquittals, data collecting, disaster management and really just be an expert in all and a master of none.  

How you manage these expectations, including your own, will be pivotal to your success as a community worker.  It usually works well for the first couple of weeks until those expectations conflict with each other. 

The community worker who tries to be all thing to all people is likely to end up being nothing to no one. 

The key is setting up clear goals and clear boundaries, and sticking to them come hail rain or shine, even if that means letting certain parties down.

Forget trying to be the hero, the one who rescues all and take over the client’s problem for them.  There nothing wrong with trying to be the hero, the problem is, in the long run, it never works and often leads to the burn out of you as a worker and issues your attempting to address being trapped in cycle of recurrence.