Introduction
I came across this podcast recently and felt so relieved that ‘sensible’ folks were having a conversation about the dire state that inclusion has fallen into. By ‘sensible’ I mean informed, calm, thoughtful, open and non-political.
After the invective from the ‘right’ and the passion from the ‘left’ it was refreshing to encounter a conversation that was of a tone that communicated calm concern.
I have said previously that my focus with disability is entirely functional. I have no interest in the politics as an advocate. But as an individual I do care that our efforts at inclusiveness are effective.
Just a few days ago I joined a meeting set up by my local council to report on progress on its Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). It was totally outcomes focused. Community consultation had identified priorities for greater disability inclusion. A plan to respond to these priorities had been developed and implemented. The people with disability who participated in the meeting acknowledged that the council was genuinely committed to inclusion. We are seeing the results of a real culture of inclusion.
The This isn’t Working podcast is about workplace cultures and why they can be problematic, so I was interested in what it had to say from the perspective of a former employee of a large government department and as a rate payer and member of an advisory group to my local council.
My role with my former employer of around 25,000 staff was unique. I had worked in disability related roles for over 19 years. I had acquired a significantly mobility disability and was a founding member of the department’s Disability Employee Network (DEN), which I subsequently led for 3.25 years – after 6 years of its operation. I designed and led the implementation of a 4-year DIAP, and I coordinated the conducting of an Access and Inclusion Index (A&I) assessment. I was able to integrate the DEN, the DIAP and the A&I assessment into a coherent strategy for positive change.
Even so there were things I wasn’t able to do simply because the department’s culture was not uniform and individual divisions had strong and particular attributes – cultures and histories – that hadn’t fused into a single culture.
The podcast begins with an observation about Elon Musk’s assertion that DEI must die. This is not because it is inherently problematic in its intent but because it has become an ‘industry’ – and industries become self-referential and self-preservative.
The goal of DEI should be to cease to because its success has made it redundant. But it hasn’t succeeded and it has become despised – on either side of the political spectrum – though for different reasons.
The thing about workplace cultures is that they are the sum of the individuals that constitute them. There will always be individuals whose influence is beneficent or malign but the culture, the community, exerts the definitive influence eventually.
The original objective of DEI was to make workforces more equitable, and this has happened to various degrees – influenced by leadership on an individual level, and by the workforce as a whole. There are good reasons to doubt whether DEI has met its original mission objectives.
Changing behaviour is hard
What makes a workplace more equitable is the behaviour of staff members. It’s that simple. But influencing that behaviour is far from being a simple matter.
The DEI industry seems to me to be built on a fallacy – that information and admonition is sufficient to influence behaviour in a desired direction. It isn’t.
The social commentator Andrew Doyle recently observed that (and here I will paraphrase him) organizational leaders hire DEI ‘educators’ because they are responding to pressure to conform to DEI values but neither the organizational leaders nor the DEI ‘educators’ really care about the outcomes of this ‘education’. I can see his point, but that’s not my direct experience.
In my former employer both the leadership and the DEI staff cared a great deal. But the extent to which DEI efforts succeeded was limited. I think both recognised that achieving DEI objectives was difficult and so they settled into a habit of very incremental success, if not failure.
I think this difficulty is what corrupted DEI from the outset. When I left full-time employment in June 2021, I had time to get into some serious research. Exactly why was Disability Inclusion so damned hard? The first thing I did was read a bunch of books by people who styled themselves as experts in diversity and inclusion training. What soon alarmed me was that none ever discussed evaluation of their efforts. And then I read Iris Bohnet’s What Works: Gender Equality by Design. She made some observations about how senior executives behaved – and that set me off on a quest to develop a deeper insight into individual and organizational behaviour. That was, and continues to be, an education.
DEI practice tends to work marginally well or not at all – and when it works marginally well that’s probably just plucking the low hanging fruit.
As I saw in my former department, there was an abundance of goodwill that could be activated – so long as it was treated with respect and sensitivity.
One way not to do that is by ‘training’ people by information and admonition.
On training
I want to pause here for a quick digression triggered by something David Rock from the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) said – you train for insight, not information. It’s insight that triggers behavioural change, not information.
But more importantly what we call training isn’t anything of the sort. We really should stop using that term. Training is focused, intentional and repeated. You can’t train a person in anything in one session no matter how long it is. The best you can do is inform in a way that triggers insight which then leads to a desire for more information and insight. That’s what learning is. It is the stimulation of desire for knowledge, insight and experience.
Some years ago, I did a training session on touch typing. It was a series of exercises which I quit doing out of a lack of discipline and impatience. I completed the exercises. But I can’t touch type of course.
I also did training courses on using spreadsheets. I certainly remember doing 3 that were around an hour long each. But I had no need to use the knowledge I had imbibed and soon forgot. If you forget how to do something you haven’t been trained in it.
You can’t ‘train’ people to become more inclusive.
What can you do?
This is where I get to be unpopular. It takes intentional cognitive effort to be more inclusive. This must be self-motivated.
I go back to something Ernesto Sirolli said decades ago. Ernesto is into enterprise development “as if people really mattered”. He said that we can’t motivate people, only inspire them. Of course this isn’t strictly true. We can threaten people and give them good reason to change their behaviour. At work you can be threatened with dismissal if you don’t perform. This works sometimes.
But when the relationship is voluntary that’s not going to work. This raises an important question about whether being inclusive is part of a contract – like a code of conduct – and the problems of enforcement. Managers are notoriously really bad at ‘difficult conversations’ and are also open to counterclaims of discrimination or bias.
So essentially enforcement and compliance are not workable options when it comes to inclusion. This leaves encouragement and persuasion. And here we know that moral admonition doesn’t work. We also know that compulsory ‘training’ in DEI themes can lead to contrary outcomes and even make matters worse.
So, we are left with triggering insight and inspiration. And this comes down to being able to set an example – in terms of what has sadly become something of a cliche – be the change you want to see. And this is in no way an easy thing to do.
For example, you can’t effectively campaign for inclusion if you exclude the people who disagree with you.
Leadership books talk of leading by example and of ‘servant leadership’. Inclusion advocates may say they are not leaders and see themselves as ‘warriors’ fighting discrimination and exclusion. But that’s just an act of discrimination and exclusion seasoned with self-serving moral fervor. It’s more about the ‘warrior’ and less about the person they say they are defending. This isn’t a moral argument. It is straight psychology. This will be an unpopular message to those who feel comfortable behind a bulwark of moral righteousness.
Contemporary leadership thinking, based on copious research, confirms the value of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and personal accountability for effective leadership.
There’s a distinction between hierarchical and situational leadership. One is position-dependent and the other is not. Regardless, the attributes of effective leadership are the same.
In Disability Inclusion or DEI generally any practitioner whose goal is to influence behaviour puts themselves into a leadership role. And being an effective leader is hard work. It takes skill and at least some theory of leadership to be effective.
Conclusion
At the time of writing, I am on episode 8 of This Isn’t Working. I started binge listening about 24 hours ago. The podcast has thrown up a bunch of themes I would love to be able to discuss with people I have worked with. But these days that’s hard because too few of them take the time to listen to podcasts or read/listen to books.
I get that between work demands and personal life challenges the opportunity upgrade one’s professional knowledge can be a scant thing. I am an information junkie so there’s no way I judge others. But the fact is, nevertheless, anybody involved in DEI related work must be able to get up to date with current research. I have worked with ERG leads who struggle to get the time to lead their ERG, let alone find the time to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Running an ERG well is hard work. It should be a professional role, but its more often seen as a role undertaken by an amateur volunteer. That’s so wrong.
I have worked with DEI team members who feel they are awash in bullshit work that leaves them little time to do their ‘real jobs’ effectively. They aren’t going to spend their personal time doing professional development while working in organizations that don’t respect their roles, or them.
I was fortunate. As a disability ERG lead, I had ready access to my department’s secretary and two deputy secretaries as well as other key executives. My role was structured to enable me to spend 2-3 days a week on developing the ERG. Eventually that transformed into a role solely focused developing the organization’s capability to meet the inclusion needs of staff with disability. I was able to achieve a lot, but the job was a long way from being done when I left.
One of the advantages I had was a capability to discuss the challenges of disability inclusion with senior leaders in a frank and an informed way. I was taken seriously even though I wasn’t in the hierarchical leadership group. But I had been reading in organizational behaviour, management and leadership out of personal interest for a couple of decades.
This Isn’t Working is the only podcast I know of that discusses real contemporary issues in an insightful way. If you are committed to Disability Inclusion, or DEI, get into the podcast and start from episode 1.