Month: July 2024

Introduction

I have been listening to podcasts on training and DEI from the Neuroleadership Instituterecently. Both made the critical point about building habits – learning habits and inclusion habits. As a rule, you build habits through repetition and reinforcement. And you get neither from doing a one-off course.

I am not a fan of e-learning. It has some use when conveying specific skills – so long as you quickly practice them and continue to do so. I did a lot of ‘courses’ when I was working fulltime, including a pilot disability awareness course, which I failed. This pilot required participants to read a section and then get a passing grade on a quiz before they could progress to the next section. One early section had a quiz statement you had to agree or disagree with. The ‘correct’ response was to agree. The statement said something like People with disability are not limited in what they can do because of their disability. I disagreed. I could not progress.

There was no way I was going to agree because this was a bs statement. There are so many jobs I can’t do because of my disabilities. It had no place in any disability awareness training in my view. And I have huge issues about the idea you can ‘train’ anybody to be inclusive. You ‘train’ yourself through intentional repetition and reinforcement, so long as you are motivated to do so. 

Organisations can make available opportunities to engage with the theme of disability awareness and encourage staff to take them up. But nothing like that can be sensibly called training. Sure, you can ‘educate’ – as in providing information and creating opportunities for ‘action learning’. But that’s not training in any sense.

Below I want to reflect on my own efforts to develop a decent degree of disability awareness.

Having a disability isn’t an assurance of inclusivity

I have mobility and manual dexterity disabilities, so I am inclined to be empathic toward people likewise blighted (yes, having a disability can be a blight – something that has a “severely detrimental affect” [OED]). But the idea that having one disability somehow makes you magically sensitive to all is just silly. 

When I became Chair of the DCJ Disability Employee Network (DEN) I was swiftly informed by my blind and deaf colleagues that I had not a clue about what I needed to do to ensure they were effectively included in what the DEN did. We hadn’t even gotten to their workplace experiences. They were trying to be fully included in the ERG set up to support them.

I had to break my exclusive habits, and that took close on 18 months of repetition and reinforcement. I was highly motivated to learn, and as I did learn the scenarios that I encountered became more varied and complex – and this made the depth of my ignorance ever more apparent.

The idea that a manager, no matter how well-motivated, can be ‘trained’ into being inclusive of people with disability with one course is a fantasy we must dispel. The best an e-learning course can do is introduce some basic ideas which then must be employed and developed into a practice via repetition and reinforcement.

I do so wish we can all move on from the fantasy that learning is about only cognitive input (the information silver bullet fallacy). We must engage emotions and excite commitment via a desire for repetition and reinforcement if learning is to stick and evolve as a changed behaviour. 

To become more disability aware, I think you also need engaged empathy. That is, you need to be motivated to be empathic. That’s a personal choice. An organisation can encourage and facilitate the development of empathic response, but it cannot ‘train’ it into being. You can’t mandate empathy.

Some lessons

Toward the end of 2018 I was playing around with ideas that led to the development of the DEN’s Roundtables (structured and facilitated presentations by around 4 staff with disability on their lived experience of having a disability in the workplace to groups up to 20). I asked 4 DEN members to sit down with half a dozen managers for an unstructured chat about being a person with disability in the department. Three managers later told me that they had recently attended a disability awareness training session provided by the NSW Public Sector Commission but found our exercise immensely more rewarding.

Disability awareness isn’t about information, but awareness which triggers a desire to know more and to be more empathically responsive. You can’t ‘train’ for that. It is a personal growth ‘journey’ and not about information harvesting. You can stimulate an empathic response through exposure to lived experience stories. You can encourage staff to be more empathic by modelling behaviour which is inclusive and kind. Workplace cultures are essentially influenced by how leaders behave. They can set an empathic person-centred culture – or they can impede it and even discourage such a culture from emerging.

In 2019 I participated in a presentation on disability awareness to a group of Directors and Executive Directors from my department’s Corporate Services division. I was one of 3 speakers, apart from our Executive Champion. We spoke of our experiences of living and working with disability. Later 10 members of the audience volunteered to be Disability Champions. 

The other speakers were a deaf member of staff and a blind staff member. Both spoke of how they struggled to give their best effort because of exclusionary barriers, and their desire to feel included as a staff member with a sense of rightful belonging and an equal opportunity perform at their best.

That experience demonstrated how it was possible to have a potent impact through talking about lived experience of exclusion in an open and non-blaming way. When I left the Chair role in 2020 the DEN had over 30 executives and regional managers as Champions. In 2024 that number stands at 47. That is an impressive number of senior staff who have expressed a willingness to be more engage disability awareness and equity issues. It is a potential yet to be fully explored. I think we have needed to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced appreciation of how influential champions can be. I have explored this in past posts and will be looking more deeply in coming posts.

Attention, effort, and motivation 

These days organisations are squeezed by pressures from all sides. The mantra ‘Do more with less’ is heroically repeated and staff volunteering their time to run ERGs are under especially pressure. They must be genuinely deeply committed to the cause. So, it is important to understand how best to support them. Training isn’t the answer. Improving levels of disability awareness takes a lot more.

Some for-profit enterprises take their DEI commitments seriously because it makes good business sense. DEI is a sophisticated and nuanced aspect of a business model, where seeking and retaining talent is an imperative. In the public sector, where there is no clearly accountable bottom-line, DEI is more often about compliance with law and government policy mandates. It is rarely resourced adequately and even more rarely understood as a legitimate workforce issue. WHS, retention of skilled staff, public sector social obligation to ensure representation of the community in its workforce profile are all relevant to staff with disability.

Development of disability awareness demands attention and commitment. And to have those you also need motivation. Compliance with law and policy excites only minimal and tokenistic responses. The actual benefit of inclusion isn’t usually assessed from the perspective of principles and moral imperatives – but in terms of compliance with law and government priorities. From a public sector position the impact of failing to be inclusive is rendered obscure because there is no accountable bottom line other than reporting in ways that can conceal the realities about failures to meet targets or standards. The resources needed to meet legal, policy and moral obligations are constrained by the constant squeezing of the public purse.

The motive for managers and leaders in a position to influence how disability awareness and disability inclusion efforts are realised comes down to a personal commitment. The effort required to become disability aware is significant. It is unlikely, often, that normal working hours are sufficient to do the work needed.

It is an extra burden to be taken on. Some managers and executives are highly motivated because of their personal experiences (having friends or family with disability, being a carer, or past work experience) to become disability aware in their workplace. For others without that close contact to the reality of disability the transition to disability awareness is more demanding. Something has to substitute for the motivational energy that comes from direct intimate connection with the human reality of disability – and that is sustained intentional effort.

Conclusion

Disability awareness is developed over time and only through repeated exposure at regular intervals. Its not the same thing as having information about disability. Being aware of something is not the same thing as having a relationship with it. The empathy and respect needed to ensure staff with disability have what they need requires ‘awareness’ in the widest meaning we can apply. Having an empathic relationship with them is essential. It acknowledges their lived experience, not just living with disability, but of inaccessibility and exclusion. It is the latter that is the most compelling, but often it’s the former that triggers awareness of how just how damaging the latter is to an individual’s wellbeing. 

What we can do is:

• Create opportunities for authentic conversations between staff with disability and executives, managers, and peers in a way that encourages repetition of empathic responses and reinforcement of insights.
• Stop seeing disability as a separate category that requires special handling and start seeing it one aspect of the spectrum of being human which requires sometimes singular responses to address an inequity.
• Encourage a sense of universal diversity which dignifies every person with an expectation of respectful and empathic response when they need a non-ordinary response to address a short-term or long-term need to ensure their access to equal opportunity to do their best work.
• Discard the myth that we can train for empathy and respect and replace it with active engagement in the creation of an empathic and respectful work culture. This must be expressed at the top of any organisational hierarchy as a model to be followed. Executive leaders must understand that leadership includes intentionally setting cultural norms – as opposed to accidentally doing so.

It isn’t difficult to develop disability awareness, just demanding. Repetition and reinforcement are essential elements. However, it is far easier to achieve this when diversity awareness and inclusion are universal goals. That way you don’t have to believe a person with disability needs something different, or more, than anybody else. Equity isn’t about treating people as the same, but in the same way – with empathy and respect, acknowledging their individual attributes and needs.

We must ask, when we think about developing disability awareness, what is our goal? If it is to comply with law and policy providing training will create the illusion of compliance. If it is to engage with equity and access needs in a respectful and real way no amount of training can deliver that. That requires helping people to be as good as they want to be through authentic stimulation to change and grow.

Disability is complex and multi-faceted. It is neither reasonable nor realistic to imagine any leader or decision-maker can be across the spectrum factors that must be grasped. In many respects the idea of disability awareness is an unreasonable impost.

What is far better is creating a culture of empathic and respectful awareness of the needs of staff. The idea that there is a particular awareness for people with disability is misguided. There is a universal need to address issues of accessibility, inclusion and equity for all staff. That’s a more useful expenditure of effort and attention. But you can’t ‘train’ for this either.

We can intentionally create workplace communities that have a culture of inclusion and respect because it honours the needs of staff and meets the pragmatic needs of organisations to retain skilled staff in a kind and healthy workplace culture. Or we can do no more than is necessary to give the appearance of complying with legal and policy obligations.

We can choose to respond to the imperatives of the heart or stay in our heads. It’s our choice. There are no training shortcuts.

Introduction

The short answer is ‘not intentionally’, but, functionally, often yes. This is because organisations generally have no more of an understanding of how ERGs function than the staff who are moved to set up and support them. 

Some organisations have an insightful, experimental, and empathic executive leadership. Others do not. I mean no criticism, because executive leaders do the best they can with good intent. However, they may be unaware that their good intent isn’t manifesting as they intend. 

There is often a lack of clarity about how the role of ERG Champions are understood. As sponsors and mentors with a brief to nurture the ERG toward success? Or as champions of the ERG cause? It’s often only the latter, and this is where major problems arise.

So much depends on the capacity of people to respond to the best of their ability. Sometimes all the players are limited. Sometimes the executive is keen, but the ERG membership isn’t up to the task. Other times the ERG membership is passionate but lacks the skill to sell its passion to the executive leadership and get them on board. Executive sponsors and champions can make a critical difference, but only if they grasp potential of an ERG, and they have a brief from the organisation’s senior executive leadership to take on a nurturing role.

I was fortunate when I became DCJ DEN Chair in November 2016. The Secretary of my department had a well-merited reputation as an exceptional leader. My executive DEN Champion was deeply principled, empathic, and energetic. Four years after she left, we remain in contact. I also had outstanding support from Managers Inclusion and Diversity. Also, I had the good fortune of a background of engaging with business and organisational leaders over 4 decades.

In my case I came to the DEN Chair role with all the stars aligned. I was able to engage with key players and build relationships of mutual trust and respect. 

Whether an ERG can be successful depends on several factors I will explore below.

What is an ERG?

An ERG is an organisationally authorised body of staff volunteers acting in the interests of a specific interest group. But there is not always an organisational strategy for supporting the ERG’s development and performance – or a clear contract about outputs and outcomes.

The intent is good, but the execution often lacks finesse. The lack of automatic support to ERGs by sponsors and champions raises the question about how an organisation understands what an ERG is. Mostly they are proposed as good ideas by advocates of an interest group, but who may not fully understand what is involved in delivering the desired outcomes. I was a very successful ERG chair for 3.25 years and it’s only been in the past couple of years that I have developed a more mature understanding of what an ERG is. I ceased fulltime work in June 2021 and subsequently spent 18 months in near full-time research. That reflects how complex the challenge is. Here is my current theory:

• An ERG has 3 primary functions:
  • To identify legal and moral imperatives and obligations in relation to diversity groups that an organisation is struggling to honour.
  • To work collaboratively with the organisation to act to meet those imperatives and obligations. This is an evolutionary approach rather than seeing deficits and assigning blame.
  • To represent the concerns of members who are adversely affected by failures to meet these legal and moral obligations. This requires tact and diplomacy and must never become adversarial.
• Some ERGs act to celebrate the diversity their membership brings to the workplace community, and through those celebratory acts increase the spirit of inclusion. Others are primarily problem-solvers. These two functions must be understood as distinct and are in response to membership wishes. It’s not okay to duck problem-solving responsibilities and substitute the celebratory role – but it does happen.

Here I focus on the problem-solving ERGs because they have the most complex and challenging function.

As DEN Chair I intentionally developed the DCJ DEN as a de facto business unit. My rationale was that an ERG had to operate as at least as sophisticated as any other business unit involved in driving change authorised by the organisation. 

Driving change from a voluntary perspective is an even more complex challenge. The ERG sits outside standard hierarchical and cultural norms. In many respects it is entrepreneurial – and that can be an issue in public sector organisations. ERG leads can be highly effective ‘wild card’ disruptors, but that’s a high skill impact that is best intentionally supported by executive leaders. Otherwise, that ‘wild card’ spirit can be mistaken as subversive.

An ERG comprised of well-intentioned amateurs cannot, in my view, achieve what its members most need – genuine equity and inclusion. The ‘amateur’ perspective assumes that good intent is sufficient, and that change is triggered by rational response to data and response to moral imperatives. That’s not how reality works. Often the best that can be achieved is a slow response to a need that can be drawn out over several years. It may not be intentional ‘slow-walking’ but it certainly isn’t prioritising reduction of harm in a timely manner.

Driving attitudinal and behavioural change is complex and difficult. It’s not for amateur efforts, no matter how noble the cause is. There’s a reason why change management is an area of professional expertise. Change is slow in any case for a variety of reasons. This is often despite the efforts of mainstream business units. There are complex structural, cultural and psychological factors to be engaged with and navigated.

We are well beyond any romantic notion of ERGs. Change resistance is fundamental to us as individuals and organisations – which are comprised of the same individuals. Change is best generated when change agents collaborate and act as partners. This assumes that the ERG and the organisation are aligned with a common vision of what to be achieved – and a shared intent to make it happen in a timely manner.

That partnership must understand that what is aspired to by staff in general and intended by executive leadership is often undone by mid-range managers and operatives. This isn’t intentional evil, or even the corruption of self-interest. It has been present in all organisations since the advent of civilisation.  In the 1980s the ‘management guru’, Tom Peters, gave me my first lightbulb moment in comprehending organisational culture. I was a union delegate at the time. He said reality was sloppy and messy. I suddenly grasped why the union and management made such a hash of addressing problems. Aside from egos blundering all over the place neither of us could analyse the problem effectively or propose an effective solution. As a result, we were in constant fruitless and unnecessary conflict.

Messy complexity is not novel or unexpected, but it must be understood. Obstruction of progress by individuals is common but it’s not necessarily malignant ill will. It may simply be that other things have precedence. We do not have unlimited cognitive and emotional capacity to treat every matter requiring our attention with the objective and dispassionate attention others expect us to give it. That’s the human reality of decision making in a complex organisation functioning under a variety of constraints.

Managers are normal people with demanding roles. Over the past few decades, we have changed how organisations are required to behave in relation to their staff. But we haven’t lessened the BAU demands [in many instances they have increased], and we have added a massive additional burden of things managers are expected to know, respond to, and be responsible for. Organisational cultures haven’t adapted sufficiently to the new requirements. Nobody is to blame, but we all have to fix it. Organisational evolution is uneven and messy.

I do not believe you can fully understand what an ERG is, or can do, without a decent grasp of organisational psychology. It’s not a field I am qualified in, but I read in it at every opportunity.

An ERG can be a wildcard with immense transformative and innovative capacity. But it needs the right leadership and the right support before it can realise its potential.

The ERG leader

Whoever leads an ERG sets tone. I was fortunate in that I came into the Chair role with a good level of leadership experience under my belt (but not a lot of management experience). I was okay about taking the responsibility of leadership on, and I had a theory about how to lead well. ERG leads may not have this background, and this creates risks that can be ameliorated by support from the organisation.

As a consultant supporting ERGs, I have worked with ERG leads who have no professional leadership experience. All have had the potential – which is why they volunteered for the role. But they have needed two things:

• The opportunity to go through the psychological adaptation to a leadership role. This is more complex than generally understood and can longer than is ideal.
• An understanding of what is required to lead well. This is where coaching and mentoring by skilled and experienced leaders can make a critical difference.

An organisation can ensure that all ERG leads automatically are assured of leadership mentoring and coaching by ERG Champions and Executive Sponsors. The fact that this doesn’t automatically happen reflects the degree to which organisations don’t fully understand what an ERG is, how it fits with their objectives, and how to best help it be effective.

ERGs typically elect their leaders. This is often a bad idea. The ERG leadership role is a demanding one and a popularity contest doesn’t give us assured good outcomes. Membership elections deliver erratic results – very hit or miss. Given the vital role of ERGs that potential for random results isn’t the best option. A superior alternative may be a formal competitive selection process.

If ERG leads lack leadership experience and standing two problems can arise. The first is deferential reflexes will kick in when they are engaging with more senior staff. The second is that they are not confident in engaging with executive staff in discussions or negotiations. ERG leads must see themselves as legitimate leaders with equal standing when they represent their ERG members, and the organisation must support this. But if ERGs are elected with no pre-requisites on experience and standing (which is often the case) they can become ineffectual and intimidated.

Recently I attended a webinar at which representatives from the HSBC Bank spoke of how ERGs in their organisation operated. Leads were selected by a highly competitive interview process. This is an excellent idea. It acknowledges that being an ERG lead is a skilled role and getting the best person for the job is paramount. The crucial insight for me was that the ERGs had high standing in the organisation and being an ERG lead carried status and credibility – enhancing one’s professional profile.

Who gets to be ERG lead and how they are selected matters. So too does how an organisation supports the leaders to do the best job they can.

How organisations can avoid failure of their ERGs.

ERGs are composed of volunteers on a mission. They are not, however, necessarily run by skilled or experienced staff. Not all organisations set minimum criteria for ERG leaders (standing, seniority, relevant experience or skills). Arguably an organisation has a responsibility to support an ERG to be as effective as it can be, rather than leave things to chance.

Its one thing to assent to the establishment of an ERG, and another to actively ensure that the ERG understands that it is accountable to its members and to the organisation. It’s not unreasonable that an organisation should impose upon an ERG and require it to be accountable and meet an acceptable professional standard. In this way an organisation honours its obligation to ensure that staff members seeking to improve equity and inclusion outcomes are competently represented.

I have encountered push back against this attitude from some disability ERG leads. I think the best response is a comparison between the outcomes my recommended approach has delivered compared to what outcomes those who have pushed back can boast of. This isn’t the place to make a detailed comparison, but I am sure the reader will understand my intended meaning. ERGs must be professional and must be integrated into the organisation’s operational culture if they want the evolutionary changes that benefit their members to manifest sooner rather than later – if at all.

Here are some things an organisation can do to reduce the risk of ERG failures:

1. Ensure the ERG and the organisation have a shared vision for the ERG’s purpose, what outcomes are desired and what outputs are required.
2. Require an ERG to develop a compelling value argument which justifies why its demand for resources [time, funds, attention etc] makes good sense as an investment. 
3. Understand that an ERG, although run by volunteers, is still performing a professional and an accountable role. That role is advocating for, and seeking to assure, the welfare and wellbeing of a sub-set of staff members.
4. Understand that this role is complex and difficult. The calibre of ERG leadership is a critical factor for success. So is the nature and level of support the organisation provides. Training, mentoring, and coaching must be available to ERG leads as a matter of course.
5. Formally recognise ERG leadership roles as high-status skilled roles and require them to be competed for like any other formal role. These roles must also be acknowledged as valid professional roles – and celebrated as such.
6. Celebrate ERGs as valued bodies delivering professional standard services to their membership.

Conclusion

An ERG can be a tokenistic response to pressures upon an organisation to conform to social expectations. But it can also be a canny partnership between an organisation’s executive leadership and its staff in an understanding that cultural evolution toward inclusive values is naturally slow. A reason for that slowness is the resistance by middle management which is caused by various reasons:

• Middle management can be poorly trained in contemporary management and leadership approaches and is consequently ill-equipped to deal with the more subtle issues of inclusion and equity. Some organisations are still operating on a 20^th Century model of management which saw staff as disposable ‘wetware’ in the process of producing required outputs.
• Middle management is under intense demands to respond to business as usual. Issues related to inclusion, diversity and equity concerns are not routinely encountered, and often require immediate knowledge that isn’t easily available. Staff welfare still remains a secondary consideration relative to the primary business focus. We have increased expectations about staff welfare but not yet the means to meet them in a systemic and effective way.
• Our understanding of how organisational cultures work seems to me to be universally poor. The science of management and leadership has progressed immensely in the past 3 decades. But the extent to which current managers are up to date with contemporary thinking is not high. We mostly think that management/leadership is an art. But art without the science of what is manipulated is rarely successful. This applies to ERG leads even more so. There is a distinct disadvantage in taking up a leadership role with no understanding of contemporary leadership approaches.

In essence an ERG is a critical part of a feedback loop. Policies, strategies and programs are developed and implemented in response to evolving values about staff experiences in the workplace. But they don’t necessarily work out as intended or anticipated. An ERG communicates to the organisation what must be fixed, amended or evolved. Resistance to that message is natural and normal. An ERG must overcome that resistance skilfully – and with respect and compassion.

Organisations operate under resource constraints as a matter of course. There’s often barely enough means to achieve an organisation’s core business let alone embrace the additional attention and effort to meet employee welfare and wellbeing obligations. Some large enterprises are all in on DEI because they recognise that it has a business benefit worth investing in. But for many others it’s an added compliance pressure nobody has had time to fully appreciate. Its not resourced or supported as a human-centred priority. It’s more a cost to be controlled than an investment that generates a benefit.

Its in everybody’s interests to have an ERG skilfully exerting respectful pressure on a workplace culture to evolve a little bit faster. Inclusive workplaces retain skilled and experienced staff and perform better. There is no downside to an effective ERG. But they require focused effort from an organisation’s senior leadership to ensure they can meet their potential as change agents in support of commonly agreed and valued goals.

Introduction

Attracting and retaining energetic volunteer members of an ERG leadership team can be a challenge. Members are often time poor at work and in their private lives.

As an ERG establishes itself and becomes effective leaders must ensure that they are able to call upon a pool of members to support leadership functions.

The NSW Department of Communities and Justice’s Disability Employee Network [DCJ DEN] created a Guidance and Action Team [GAT] in September 2018. The GAT was a group of 15 members who volunteered to get involved. Two years later three specialist Deputy Chair roles were created [business, projects, communications]. These innovations laid the foundation for the DEN’s ongoing success.

A broad foundation of support can be critical for success.

The benefits of a strong support team

• When the need arises, there is the ability to quickly replace any leadership team member with a person familiar with the ERG’s operations.
• The ability to ensure any project can be supported by one or more people as the need arises.
• Creates a talent pool from which new ERG chairs/coordinators can be selected. This ensures that new leaders know what they are getting themselves into, and that they are well-grounded in the ERG’s operations. The support team is also best positioned to ensure that new leaders are selected on known capability.
• The creation of a community with diverse experiences and perspectives. Depending on the size and complexity of the organisation this diversity may also be critical representation from business areas.
• The support team can work more effectively with engaged champions and executive sponsor/s.

Co-roles

An ERG can follow the DCJ DEN model and create several deputy chairs on the understanding that any may sub for the chair when necessary. Other ERGs prefer a co-chair model. This has advantages and disadvantages that an ERG should think through. 

Beyond co-chairs co-roles can be useful anytime a function or task has been identified – whether short-term or long-term. In any co-role each person should be closely matched to the other in competence and commitment. Monitoring to ensure this balance is working is critical.

An alternative to a co-role approach is to set up a small team with an identified co-ordinator. 

There are several options that are effective only if there is a pool of people who know the ERG’s culture, operations, and challenges.

Benefits from volunteering

ERG members who volunteer to join the leadership team will have to donate personal time. That time can and should be seen as a professional development opportunity as well as a willingness to participate in the ERG as a professional entity in its own right.

Some argue that volunteers should not be subject to obligations and standards that require them to be accountable to the ERG leadership. But no volunteer organisation can function without a requirement that all members – volunteer or otherwise – conform to standards of conduct and are held accountable.

The DCJ DEN was developed on a business unit model with a commitment to strict professionalism. This ensured GAT members understood the standards required of them. It was also the primary reason for the DEN’s subsequent success and high standing.

ERGs can and should negotiate with their organisation to ensure that their professionalism is recognised and that members of the leadership team are acknowledged as engaging in professional activity – and this is recognised in their CVs and when they are competing for roles in the organisation. This may also be backed up with a communications strategy that reinforces the professionalism of the ERG on a regular basis. Repetition of such a message is necessary to ensure that it received, understood and valued across the organisation.

It is reasonable that an ERG leadership participant seeks recognition for their professionalism as a volunteer in the complex and demanding roles required of the ERG leadership team.

How to establish a leadership team

ERGs are often set up under a traditional management committee model which does not convey contemporary values. 

The DCJ DEN GAT was established as a collaborative model of peers rather than a management committee. It is a more complex leadership approach which requires a more sophisticated chair/co-ordinator. Whoever is in that role will set a tone that will shape how the leadership team is established and operates. It isn’t necessarily the best option in all cases.

There are some critical steps in creating a leadership team comprising members who know in advance what they are getting into in advance – in terms of time, effort and expectations. These are:

1. Contact ERG members asking for expressions of interest from all who wish to participate in a larger ERG leadership team.
2. Invite all to a discussion [via Teams or Zoom if face-to-face is not practical] about what to expect and what will be required. Invite those still interested to submit a final expression of interest with a brief statement of their capabilities [an EOI form may be created].
3. Decide on who will be in the leadership team. The original DCJ DEN had 15 members, including the chair and deputy chair. This the upper limit of a manageable group.
4. Decision-making is not membership voting. Existing leaders can decide who is on an advisory body. Elections by ERG members are over-rated simply because members are not well-positioned to make choices about who is best suited. The DCJ DEN invited EOIs from members keen to be more involved – and that keenness was the critical factor. How the leadership subsequently performed was rightly subject to membership scrutiny.
5. Run relationship building events. These are important to ensure all team members can mesh as an effective team. The DCJ DEN GAT met in person quarterly for 6 hours and then shared a restaurant meal. This was the day before the quarterly DEN meeting. The GAT also was funded for a 2-day planning workshop, which was an intense experience. In between these meetings there was a high volume of emails on particular themes, and a lot of phone calls. These were pre-Teams days – before 2020 and COVID. Depending on the organisation and geographic distribution of members get-togethers can be tailored to meet needs.
6. Avoid purely transactional interactions as the dominant mode of relating – among leadership team members and champions and executive sponsors. Champions and executive sponsors are most effective when they are confident about the focus and culture of the ERG. Their open support for the ERG is a risk to their reputation and standing. They must, therefore, get to know and like the ERG’s leadership team and be able to establish a relationship which enables confident and empathic frank conversations.

Conclusion

Building an ERG’s leadership team is fundamental to its success. So much depends upon the organisation’s size and culture. DCJ, for example, is a complex public sector entity with over 20,000 staff. It has a mix of challenging front line and more routine back-office roles. This requires a variety of perspectives which can inform how the DEN is best able to focus its energy.

Some ERGS may have less of a focus on problem solving and may be more focused on celebration. It is important that ERGs understand their primary function and do not attempt to replicate the style and structure of ERGs with a different focus.

But the principles of success are shared across all ERGs. They are scaled to size, complexity, function and focus. ERG leaders must understand their own organisations to a deep degree – so they can establish empathic and insightful relations which staff and executive leaders.

Time pressures are real, and this creates a risk that interactions are reduced to functional transactional concerns. That’s not how leadership works. We see leaders engaging in transactional interactions with subordinates, but we miss the relationship building among leadership peers. 

ERG leaders are not necessarily drawn from the manager and executive ranks, so their understanding of how to build and sustain effective leadership teams is often lacking. I hope this exploration of thinking about building effective leadership teams may help strengthen your ERG and make it more effective.