This article from Proactive Coaching, written by Tim Driver, addresses dealing effectively with at-risk personalities in your environment, whether you are a teacher, coach, business owner or parent. Drawing on more than 20 years of work with at-risk populations, it explains the "outside thinker" mindset of at-risk personalities and offers strategies for connecting outcomes to specific actions and efforts. It is from the Intentional Coaching #2 Proactive Coaching collection.
Introduction
Regardless of whether you're a teacher, coach, business owner or parent, all of us have encountered "at risk" personalities at some point. How we handle these interactions can greatly affect the success of teams, companies, schools, and individuals we care about. Having developed and run an at-risk program for 12 years, and working closely with that population for over 20 years, there are some definite strategies that prove themselves more successful with these personality types. Here is one example:
Outside Thinkers
At-Risk personalities tend to be "outside thinkers", meaning they have a mindset that things "just happen to them." The reasons for this approach are quite revealing. First, they see no direct correlation between their actions or level of effort, and results. This is why when things go poorly, they blame or make excuses, and when things go well they often say things like, "I got lucky." According to studies, children of poverty have developed the belief that nothing they do can influence outcomes, by the age of 5 years old. Wow. So, if you don't interact with these ARP's (At-Risk Personalities) until they are in their teens or later, they have had many years to become entrenched in this belief system.