Faking it
This was the week that I took the chance to take a leap out of my comfort zone, and dip my toe in a new world. A week of work experience at Hive could possibly be seen as a random option for a Probation Officer. At a glance, there are no obvious overlaps – how can you reconcile working with high risk offenders with healthcare advertising? My week has shown me that there are actually a few more commonalities than I had first thought, and really interesting ones at that.
As with advertising, my job involves trying to effect changes in behaviour. I work with people to improve their resilience to negative influences (drugs, peers etc) and promote them making positive life choices. Techniques like motivational interviewing are key, using the change cycle, and identifying where things went astray last time, in order to prevent the same mistakes in the future. What is clear from the time I have spent in probation is that just telling people what to do certainly doesn’t work; much more effective is empowering them to want to make changes, and enabling them to put in place the strategies to make sure it happens.
It has occurred to me this week that whilst the end user is different in advertising, the aim of changing behaviour is common to both. If you can work out how to do that, you are on to a winner in commercial terms, but also in terms of improving life quality for all sorts of people – patients and offenders being the tip of the iceberg. Influencing and changing behaviour in others is a really difficult business. Supporting people to make decisions strikes me as the key, in whatever shape that takes – information, support, communication…
I’ve had a fascinating week at Hive – been made to feel very welcome, and learned plenty about the advertising process. It may have been the first time I’ve been on work experience since I did my GCSE’s, but I now know I’ve been missing out. Thank you all.
