By Rob McInnes, © Diversity World, March 2004
Sometimes I enjoy movies that have been dubbed “sappy” by
the critics. “Radio”, starring Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding
Jr. is one of them. While it may not have won accolades as a
film production, it did send me home with some (re)inspiration
and some important thoughts to reflect on. (If you haven’t
seen the movie, you might consider watching it before you
read this article. I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience
for you.) The movie is based on the true life experience of
James Robert “Radio” Kennedy from Anderson, South Carolina.
Forty years ago, as a young man with a developmental
disability (he still cannot read or write and has a limited
vocabulary), Radio could be seen hanging around the local
high school football field. An awkward and uncommunicative
young man with a fascination for radios, he was known for
habitually pushing a shopping cart up and down the streets
of Anderson.
For reasons he himself can’t explain, Coach Harold Jones
coaxed the 17 year old to become engaged in the football
team’s activities. Radio’s life was never the same.
Supported by Coach Jones’ ongoing involvement and support,
that young man eventually attended the high school.
Ultimately, Radio earned positions on the coaching teams for
the Anderson High’s football, basketball, and track teams.
Dubbed “The Heart of Anderson” by the local paper, he has
become one of that city’s most valued citizens.
Reflecting on the movie, I was particularly struck by
Radio’s vocational journey. There are elements in his
transformation that I believe hold some valuable lessons for
placement professionals (career counselors and job
developers), for employers, and for all of us, as unique
individuals on our own career paths.
I wondered what might have happened if Radio had not been
taken in by Coach Jones and, instead, had been assigned to a
job developer to help him find a vocation…
My guess is that his job developer would have done a
quick inventory on Radio that read like this; “awkward,
socially uncommunicative, no marketable skills”. Based on
that assessment, they would consider him to be unemployable
or marginally employable – perhaps recommending him to
“sheltered” employment or a group work station of some kind.
If he was lucky, Radio might have been assigned to a job
developer with a little more imagination and creativity –
someone who would have recognized his obvious interest and
aptitude in pushing a shopping cart. Likely, this job
developer would have quickly developed a position for him
with a large retailer in the area – to collect and return
carts from their parking lot. Maybe he would have been
assigned to a job developer with both imagination and
ambition – someone who would have taken a cue from Radio’s
fascination with radios. Likely this job developer would
have contacted local businesses that retailed or
manufactured audio equipment – and worked with them to carve
out a job opportunity for Radio.
Unfortunately, too many job developers are like the fist
one – really just inventory clerks. They are relatively
ineffective unless their clients have a set of clear, highly
marketable skills that are in sync with the demands of the
local job market. Fortunately, like the other two, many job
developers are visionary. Like futurists, they are capable
of taking an inventory of what is evident – and then
imagining what it could become in the future.
Interestingly, none of the attributes that made Radio so
successful in his later life were readily evident in the
young man that Coach Jones first encountered – and would not
have been evident to a job developer either. Radio had those
innate qualities and abilities; but even if they looked for
them, no one could likely have seen them at that point in
his life. It causes me to wonder how many people with
disabilities have fabulous stores of raw talent and
aptitudes that, disturbingly, can not be picked up on the
radar screens of their job developers and are therefore not
a factor in the advice, counsel and direction they are
given. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could outfit job
developers with paranormal senses that would give them
uncanny insight into the hidden skills and talents of their
clients? Sadly, I don’t think that we will see “Paranormal
Job Development and Career Counseling, Inc.” opening its
doors in the near future. In the meantime, however, perhaps
it would be enough if all job developers and career
counselors were simply humbly conscious that most of their
clients likely have reservoirs of talent and potential that
lie unseen but straining to be released.
Happily, even without the help of a normal or paranormal
job developer, Radio is now a successful and beloved sports
coach. He doesn’t possess many of the skills that a typical
“coach” requires. I assume that he has little expertise in
the strategies of the games, performance stats, even basic
management skills – yet he is literally brimming with the
skills that a coach needs to inspire, motivate and excite
their players and fans. Radio’s real job attributes seem to
be his pride and enthusiasm – and his ability to communicate
them. Although he has proven to be a gifted sports coach,
coaching is just the particular job he fell in to. His great
talent is in motivating and inspiring people to achieve
their best – a role he could have played at that
supermarket, that audio manufacturer – or any other business
that was wise enough to give him room to nurture and hone
his talents.
What lessons can employers take from this movie? The
lesson is certainly not that people with developmental
disabilities, or people who regularly push shopping carts,
make great employees for sports teams. It isn’t a lesson in
how to be a talent scout with uncanny abilities. (It wasn’t
that Harold Jones was able to look through the chain link
fence and see, in the guise of an itinerant disabled man, a
person brimming with the talent to become a stellar member
of his coaching team.) I believe that these are the three
most important lessons that employers can take from this
movie:
1) Talent can come in unexpected packages.
2) The true success of an employee can sometimes depend
as much on the contribution of the employer/supervisor as it
does on the contribution of the employee.
3) There can be great reward in stepping out of your
safety zone – as a business owner, a recruiter, or a hiring
manager.
I think this last point relates closely to last month’s
article “The Spirituality of Disability and Employment”.
Harold Jones was a good high school football coach. Yet, the
distinguishing feature of his career, his crowning
achievement as a coach, the main thing people will remember
him will not be the spectacular seasons that his teams had –
it will be his role in bringing Radio to the school’s teams.
Harold Jones had the courage to bring his humanity to his
job – and it caused him to shine.
To me, Radio’s story is inspiring because he underwent a
transformation to where his competencies and not his
inadequacies became the defining forces in his life. We all
aspire to that in our own lives. I think this movie leaves
us with four helpful questions to ask ourselves:
1) What shopping carts we are pushing? What is currently
our predominant and repetitive activity in the world? (It is
often called a “job”.)
2) What radios do we have sitting at home? What talents
and passions do we possess that aren’t being used in our
current jobs?
3) What football fields should we be hanging around? How
can we position ourselves to encounter opportunities that
will draw out our own undiscovered talents and attributes?
4) Who is that on the other side of the fence? How can we
become a “Harold Jones” to someone else?
The movie Radio is the story of two people, each of whom
have differing talents and gifts, who through their mutual
relationship, mine the gold in the hills of the other. It is
a story that begs the question “Who is more of a gift to the
other – the mentor or the protégé?” In truth, it is an
age-old story that continually repeats and recreates itself
in the lives of everyday people throughout all time and in
every land. It is also a story that each of us can choose to
play out, perhaps several times, in the course of our own
lives.
