Confessions of a Facilitator

Last week I got to facilitate a 2-day job search workshop for older workers.

This is the third time that I’ve had the opportunity to lead such a workshop.

In the 1st workshop I asked the group about the word “older” and there was a general consensus that they preferred to be referred to as “mature” workers.

The issue about the words we use came up again in the 3rd workshop when I used the word “older.” One of the participants took issue when I used the word “older” and so I said what if I used the phrase “mature worker”, and that phrase was preferred over “older worker”

No matter which phrase is used “older worker” or “mature worker”, we older folks aren’t nearly as different from younger generations than we are made out to be.

Take me for example.

I would describe myself as positive, collaborative, curious and having a servant’s mentality. (With a servant’s mentality, we don’t think we are above anyone else and we will do “menial” tasks like mopping the floor if that will serve a greater good. In my case, when I volunteered in the Employment Resource and Information (drop-in) Centre at Neighbourhood Link, sometimes the floor got wet when clients came in from the snow and I mopped up so that other clients wouldn’t fall and hurt themselves.)

I use the word “collaborative” to describe myself.

I read in articles about Millennials being collaborative, but this quality isn’t attributable to just one age group, because members of other age groups will have this quality as well.

Stereotypes about age (or along any other lines for that matter) just don’t work.  

In this past workshop, my mind was quite fretful, as I prepared to go to the workshop in the morning. I worried about the littlest things. It’s like the feeling when you leave the house and you worry if you turned off the stove or not. By the end of the 2-day workshop I was feeling quite nostalgic when I knew that my time with the participants was over and that I was unlikely to see many of them ever again.

As I do more and more workshops I become more confident. I know what to expect of myself. I know that before every workshop I will become fretful and that when the workshop is over I become nostalgic, and those feelings won’t be new to me.

I mentioned in the last workshop that I am a positive person.

I am able to to turn a “negative” situation into a “positive.”

Ironic to say but losing my job (at Combined Insurance) was the best thing that could have happened to me. 

I’ve now realized that I was a “walking zombie” at the time in the sense that I was really set in my routine where everything revolved around work. I thought about work all the time and brought work home with me to do over the weekend.

At this stage in my life, as well as work, I want to pursue other interests that are meaningful to me like spending time with family and friends and doing things that I haven’t tried before like taking improv classes and setting up a blog web site!

I think to myself that for those of us who have struggled in some way (like in a job transition), we are in a sense “lucky” that we have been forced to evaluate ourselves (who we are, what are our strengths, what are our vulnerabilities) and we in the process become stronger and more resilient.

Also published on LinkedIn on January 29, 2017

Image Credit:  Pixabay