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Solutions Driven Disability Advocate, Public Speaker & Content Creator
Marina Pinto Miller, Ph.D. is an extremely creative, visual storyteller, a strategic thinker, and a disability rich content creator. An experienced communications professional with outstanding advisory and stakeholder engagement skills, her passion for advancing self advocacy skills for people with disabilities and neurodiverse abilities, comes from her own lived experience of disability navigating through the world of work. She has presented her original material at Humber Polytechnic as part of the 2019 Transition to Work Conference and at TD Bank.
A FRAMEWORK FOR SELF ADVOCACY / preparing students with disabilities for employment
Marina Pinto Miller, Ph.D.
Reading Time: 6:00 minutes
Introduction I was invited to speak at Humber Polytechnic on Self-Advocacy in 2019. I was struck by the profound emotional response from students. They showed me the need for a tailored approach that aligned with the realities of living with disability. I realized, based on my 30 years of work experience in diverse fields; including academia, media, television, government, and corporate banking, that I could contribute. As a woman with lifelong visible disabilities and neurodivergence, I had learned to self-advocate to survive and to thrive in the workplace. It is time to pay it forward by sharing what I have learned. Definition of Terms I have used the term “self-regulation” - the ability to control our emotions; how we feel, how we think and how we act, in pursuit of long-term goals - as a key subset of “self-management.” “Self-management” is understood more broadly as the ability to maximize performance, productivity, and professionalism in the workplace, by mastering associated habits and tasks to live well, given chronic conditions or disabilities. I make these distinctions in lieu of using the oft repeated term “self-disclosure.” “Self-disclosure” carries a traumatic connotation as it is too often implicitly associated with shame or forced confession of an identity that exposes the bearer to stigma, or risk of loss. This connotation is entirely inappropriate within the context of self-advocacy for students seeking sustainable employment based on their abilities to excel within the workplace. The attitudinal shift implied by “self-management” in the workplace, based on mastering emotional well-being through “self -regulation” is simply: the ability to articulate one's own needs for accommodation, for what they are - supports that make it easier to meet and exceed expectations at any given job requirement. Self-management on the part of the employee empowers the employer to act on their duty of care by providing tools and support so that the employee with disabilities can align with desired outcomes in the workplace, just like any other employee. Here are my tips on developing self-advocacy skills for students with disabilities and career advisors who support them in post-secondary education.
What is self-advocacy and why does it matter? The journey to and through employment is built on self-advocacy: the ability to ask effectively for what you need; knowing your rights and responsibilities while helping your employer to make work a better place to be. For students with disabilities about to embark on finding their first work placement, internship or job, or building a career, self-advocacy is one of the most important employability skills, and it is rarely taught. I have built my approach with four interrelated components in mind: self-awareness, self- exploration, self-management, focused on self-regulation, and self-advocacy. Here we explore how self-advocacy may be best presented to students and career advisors, as a mindset that is inclusive of all abilities, both innate to the person - and derived from their lived experience of disability. In this view, we also explore how career advisors can best support students in developing a self-advocacy mindset that sets the student up for success in interactions with prospective employers.
Self-awareness is built on the consideration that positive attributes and challenges/disabilities are equally important in defining career paths. Tip #1: Know your strengths and challenges down to the last detail. Self-awareness for students: Strengths are what you know you can do, can learn, and can master, with ease and enjoyment. Challenges are those aspects of you/your disability that take more attention, more effort, and more time. Challenges are opportunities for growth; they are often fertile ground for innovation and problem solving. They are just as important as your strengths for without them, your story is incomplete. This is true of everyone, however, with respect to people with disabilities, the additional challenges, whether visible, invisible, chronic, or intermittent, must be considered as materially significant to cultivating your success in the workplace. Self-awareness for career advisors: your role is to assist students in articulating strengths and challenges in a balanced, forward-focused way so that everything lands as an asset rather than a liability. Strengths are what is needed and valued in the workplace. You have access to a wide range of resources and assessments to help students articulate their strengths. While these tools are valuable, it is equally important to recognize and emphasize the employability skills that students with disabilities develop through navigating and managing the challenges of their health conditions. Adaptability, resilience, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving are not only valued by employers, but also closely related to career success in a rapidly changing work environment.
Self-exploration involves exploring the physical, social, intellectual environment of the workplace, based on use of equipment or disability supports and self-management techniques that students with disabilities already use in their everyday lives. Tip #2: Know where you can thrive and strategize ahead of time, to manage your environments. Self-exploration for students: Turning your attention to your environment, look at what works for you and what does not, down to the smallest detail. How does your disability frame your choices and direct your path? The more you observe constraints, the richer your choices become – the advantage lies in learning more quickly from misdirection and wasting a lot less time in situations that do not work so well for you – in favour of those that do. Self-exploration for career advisors: your role is to observe and take note of what students may/may not be aware of/ unable to articulate due to fear about how they are perceived and treated differently because of their disabilities. Understand that these fears are real and justified. It is critical for students with disabilities to face their constraints head on. Your role includes strategizing to help the students manage these constraints within any potential work environment. Confidence can be built when students feel seen and heard. Active listening is all important.
Self-regulation, as a subset of self-management, is all about choosing how to present just the facts about yourself, without emotional attachment, in an empowering way, when necessary. It involves practice in presenting yourself professionally in as many formats as possible, including writing, speaking, performing in an interview based on specific feedback provided. Tip #3: Become an expert on your disability and the accommodations you need. Self-regulation for students: Once students understand their strengths and challenges and optimal workplace environments, it is time to delve into understanding how to speak with authority about your needs for accommodation. Self-management means: you are taking responsibility, knowing that you have the right to set boundaries on how much you want and need to say about your disability in the context of employment. Self- regulation in this context means you have examined your emotions, fears and expectations around how you present as a person with disability to others. You have begun to shift your attention to what you can control. You understand that you can learn how to project self-confidence and how to direct the conversation to focus on your abilities. You are practicing self-regulation and will eventually be able to attain mastery of your emotions no matter what situation you find yourself in. For, now, your objective is to create a Needs/Access statement, outlining the facts as per your specific accommodation needs, based on job requirements. This will help you shape the conversation with a prospective employer towards the ways you will contribute to their success. Self-management with a focus on self-regulation for career advisors: consider rehearsal and role-play in a mock interview format. Pay attention to and address students' delivery and comfort levels. Encourage students to practice and take additional time as needed, while assuring them that they will succeed. The mock interviews may include spoken, written or mind map components, to give the students choice of the learning styles they feel most comfortable with. Give specific feedback on language, style, and effective presentation of their Need’s/Access statement so that they can speak fluently about how accommodations will enable their success and that of their prospective employer.
Self-advocacy develops from the circumstance that requires it, the application of good judgement and well-practiced communication skills in addition to making a strong, fact-based business case for hiring people with disabilities. Tip #4: Present your disability as a signifier for competitive advantage for employers. Self-advocacy for students: Self-advocacy is a step beyond asking for accommodations. It is the ability to stand up as necessary, to be included, to help create the conditions for your full participation at work and to assert your value proposition, inclusive of your disability, as an employee. Self-advocacy for career advisors: your role is to support and deliver constructive feedback based on the value proposition provided by the student and to elicit from the student that their disability is in fact, a golden asset that can be leveraged at all stages of the employment process. By the time the student reaches this stage of employment preparation, they should be looking at disability as the productivity and morale boosting edge that employers are starting to realize they most need and want. This is the mindset behind successful self-advocacy!