This week’s survey into social mobility both surprises and depresses me.   I would have said that many of those who are leading organisations of all kinds today have brought themselves up to powerful and influential positions despite what some of them refer to as a ‘humble’ beginning.  It is depressing, however, to learn that there are still many children seemingly unable to lift themselves out of the limitations of their background.

We are good at knocking ourselves in this country – what we have not achieved, rather than what we have achieved.  We knock ourselves for our Empire despite the fact that there were and still are other nations who have wielded Empirical power over others, sometimes to worse effect.  We knock ourselves for our class system despite the fact that there are a majority of societies globally who practice a class system that is equally entrenched.   I would argue that it is the fact that we focus on the negatives and knock ourselves for our inadequacies that plays a part in holding children back from social mobility.

The media in the form of newspaper comment, advertising and television productions perpetuates our now surely outdated class and social system.  How many role models for success are there in our soap operas?  Stereotypes that are 30+ years outdated are the images that our young watch on a daily basis.  It is time that our children’s programmes and soaps gave more examples of children deciding to go for an academic or career challenge that neither their parents nor peers would expect for them.  These programmes would need to demonstrate how difficult this can be – how people, including those who love you, will try to dissuade you and hold you back.  People are sadly so often the result of the expectations of their peer group and their families rather than the reality of the breadth of opportunities that are open to them.  We need to be very careful to whom we listen.

Our educational system is not necessarily equipped to help young people see the opportunities that exist  for them.  Teachers are plagued by government targets and demanding conditions in the classroom – they do not necessarily have the time or experience to look beyond the confines of the traditional when they give advice to young people about careers.  Inevitably it is difficult to keep up with  the large numbers of careers that have come into existence only in the last 5 years due to technological development so young people are still being shortchanged on good advice as to how to develop their potential.

These young people also need to learn the art of self-promotion and social skills if they are to rise beyond the limited expectations of their community.  We live in a multi-cultural society today and yet the British love of understatement still holds strong and serves us badly in a world where young people from other cultures are able to articulate their strengths more effectively.  Recently I was given two examples of this – in meeting an artist who introduced himself as “I’m an unsuccessful artist” and conversing with a leading gastroenterologist who introduced himself as “I’m really just a plumber”.  As an English person I knew precisely that this meant that the artist was successful and selling at his current exhibition; and that the gastroenterologist spent his day managing state-of-the-art lasers and mind-blowingly precise technical equipment in order to save lives.  But would anyone else know this?  Others may have thought that it was charmingly self-deprecating in that oh-so-British way but the danger is that people who do not know the quirks of our culture will take these statements at their face value.

I am continually dismayed that whenever one suggests to anyone young or old that they need to learn to identify and articulate their strengths in order to succeed that they reject the idea as something too ‘American’.  In running coaching sessions and training courses for people of all ages the majority of them tell me that they have never been taught in any way how to make the best of themselves or identify behaviours that will help them to succeed.   We are letting our young down if we do not do this.  The young from poorer migrant backgrounds will drive their success from a sense of survival and determination.  Those from an education that is more American in style will have learnt how to use their body language, voice and personal information so as to express the specific strengths and skills that they have to offer to an academic college or work organisation. Our children deserve help in this.  We do not have to become arrogant or loud-mouthed but surely we do need to feel confident in expressing those areas in which we are skilled.

Our book FUTURE DIRECTIONS addresses these issues specifically as do our coaching sessions in schools and the workplace  (www.positiveworks.com) but we need to influence matters on a wide scale in order to help children to see beyond the doubts and limitations that others put on them.  It is challenging to break out of cultural traditions and expectations but plenty of people have done this successfully and schools , parents and social workers need to support children by opening their minds to the many possibilities that exist in this life rather than settling for the easy option. In my 50-something years I have seen real progress towards a meritocracy in our society so let’s focus on this progress and build on it further.   If this happens hopefully the next survey will demonstrate that greater social mobility is increasingly achievable in the UK.