Reply #35: We kept our organization small and supervised pretty carefully considering [View All]

[JDPriestly]

the kinds of wages we could afford to pay. We still had serious problems. Among your hirees will be ex-felons, lots and lots of recovering addicts of various kinds, outright schizophrenics . . . . There will be lots of wonderful people to. And there you are trying to make judgments. Your assessments are confused by the fact that, as I have learned over the years, ex-felons and recovering addicts are often very good at fooling the world. Recovering alcoholics that I have known were often particularly likable, congenial. Schizophrenics I have known would go through periods in which they seemed quite normal -- and then suddenly, oh brother!

The varieties of troubled personalities you are dealing with is further complicated by your own personality and values. People who work for non-profits are, in my experience, of two kinds: cynics out to make a living who may themselves be quite troubled (An executive director who is herself a recovering alcoholic or a gambler for example) or idealists whose idealism and optimism and hopes may blind them to what is going on.

It took me a long time to learn that we live in our own human ecology.