Month: March 2026

Introduction

I have devoted a lot of my time and energy to the theme of disability inclusion in my workplace. I became involved with a newly formed disability ERG in July 2010, became its lead in November 2016 until March 2020. I remained a member until I quit my department in June 2021. From early 2019 until I left, I was also in a leading role in two key disability inclusion strategies. One was the development and implementation of my department’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan. This is something required under state legislation. The other was the voluntary participation in the Access & Inclusion Index self-assessment run by the Australian Disability Network. 

I left the department having had little opportunity to reflect on the idea of disability inclusion and have spent the subsequent near 5 years engaging in that reflection. 

Reflection on important ideas is essential if we are to refine our understanding of them – and ensure we are not just operating on feel-good assumptions. But getting the time to do so isn’t that easy.  For the most part, in our day jobs, we are fielding constant demands on our attention. After work we have personal priorities to attend to. 

I was fortunate that from May 2018 to June 2021 my job was to think about disability inclusion and come up with ways of addressing challenges. For some of that time I was the Disability ERG lead as well as having a role in my department’s Disability Inclusion team. Even so, when I quit the department, I finally had the opportunity to invest unlimited time in following up on inquiries I didn’t have time to engage with when I was working full-time. 

I had been bugged by a question – ‘Why was disability inclusion so hard?’ for ages. Why was it that what seemed like such a good idea, that everyone appeared to agree with, was so darned hard to make a reality? The standard assertion was that there was a moral failing in those who did not do what they agreed was good to do. But this didn’t gel with my experience. There was goodwill, even enthusiasm. But change didn’t happen at the pace we wanted. 

I have Masters and Masters Honours degrees majoring in Social Ecology, so I have a reflex to stand back and ask why such a behaviour would be as natural as it seemed – and so contradictory to expressed sentiment. Why, when so many of us agree that disability inclusion is a good idea, is it still so hard to make it happen?

We can choose to take a moral perspective on why we fail to live up to our ideals and good intentions, or we can take a more clinical path to understanding. I prefer the clinical approach because I am acutely aware of the degree to which I fail to meet ideals that I value. Is there another explanation?

This matters hugely because if the simple act of agreeing that something is good isn’t sufficient to change our behaviour, we do need to acknowledge this as a reality. Then we can move on to discovering how desired behavioural changes can be stimulated effectively. 

This has become an interesting theme for me. We often assert a moral imperative for change in behaviour but with no understanding how this might be achieved beyond exhortation – which typically is resisted because it seems like a criticism. Ultimately the question is whether the imperative to change is understood as a moral one or an adaptive one. Are we driven by moral values or a sense of evolutionary necessity – or both?

Your reflex may be that this is way too deep for the simple proposition that we should be more inclusive of people with disabilities. What should be a straightforward concern about social justice shouldn’t become a philosophical inquiry. I appreciate that, and I do wish it was such a simple concern. But it’s not. A history of resistance tells us this. We are, quite simply, way more complex than we care to admit.

Below I want to see if I can distil a deeply complex theme into a few pages. It is not my intent to offer a complex argument to solve a ‘problem’. The best I can do is offer an argument that might help you be more open to the degree of complexity and difficulty the aspiration toward disability inclusion really is. We are making good progress, and you need to know that. But impatience that activates moral outrage is injurious to the cause – even though it feels good. 

The moral argument

Disability inclusion had to be fought for through activism. In Australia the same was true of Aboriginal rights, gay rights and women’s rights. These were all campaigns I participated in in the 1960s and 1970s. The outcomes were legislation and policies that shifted the nature of supportive action from one of assertion of a moral right to seeking compliance with agreed principles and values expressed in legislation and policies. This compliance could be obtained by enforcement or by persuasion. In Australia we are not strong on enforcement. We prefer persuasion. But this has a host of difficulties. 

Persuasion is an art that has a science base. The science can be learned and its practice refined into an art. This means shifting gear from the much easier practice of asserting a moral right. This, however, is something not a lot of people want to do. It requires new effort in reskilling. The result has been that a lot of the work of what should be persuasion has been heavily underlined by moral argument – to the detriment of the goal. 

This effort has been ineffectual because persuasion involves a commitment to change beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that requires a very different form of cognitive effort than agreeing that a desired change is morally good. Having agreed something is good, how do we change our behaviour? Accepting something is good doesn’t mean we then adapt with ease with new behaviors. Otherwise, we’d have no unhealthy habits, not be overweight and not be in debt.

Change in organizations is inherently difficult for this reason. If we understand change as having two stages, we can better appreciate why this difficulty exists. In the first stage we need to determine whether a desired change is good or not. If we don’t think it is, we will resist it in any case. But even if we think it is good we will still resist if the effort required to change competes with other priorities – professional and personal. We need to appreciate that change takes cognitive effort and sustained attention – and we may not have capacity to accommodate all the demands on our ability to adapt. 

Sound persuasive efforts at change will assist to re-order priorities and employ methods that bring about changes that are most efficient and effective. Making disability inclusion real is a long-term strategy even when the moral argument has been fully accepted. 

Often advocates for disability inclusion do little more than re-assert and re-affirm the moral argument on the mistaken grounds that acceptance of it alone is sufficient to drive change. It isn’t – save in exceptional cases. It is tempting to think that this should be sufficient and to decline to develop an effective change strategy. In fact, it often happens.

I recall being intensely frustrated in my time as a union delegate by the approach of militantly asserting a moral right and then self-righteously declining any negotiation at progressive implementation of the desired changes. This led to pointless and futile conflict. It was often petty and unprofessional and served no value beyond making my colleagues feel justified in their righteous militancy. 

I spent some time in a role that gave me the right to enforce compliance with licensing requirements. When I started in that job I found an audiocassette-based course in conflict resolution. I had over 130 services of which 6 had been licensed by my predecessors – and none were fully compliant. Over several months I listened to the course repeatedly and practiced its exercises when I stopped to visit a service. After 18 months I had all services licensed with a compliance rate over 90%. There were only three services whose intransigence defeated me. They had partially compiled and I had hoped to get them all the way, but a legislation change left me with no job. My next job was in contract management where my new conflict resolution skills were very handy. 

Long before these roles I spent a week doing a residential course on sales run by a now defunct insurance company. I was hopeless at selling insurance because the method was manipulative in a way I found morally problematic. But I did learn that persuasion was a genuine skill that could be learned. It was just that in this case there was a moral element I could not overlook.

These experiences showed me that there was a gulf of difference between an enthusiastic amateur and a skilled professional. And, as in the case of selling insurance, while being a skilled professional wasn’t always a good thing, it was far more effective in achieving objectives than any kind of unskilled enthusiasm.

The power of persuasion

The insurance sales course helped me see that there is a necessary distinction between manipulation and persuasion – but it is not always clear. These days we are awash with advertising and the problematic popularity of ‘Influencers’. There is a huge amount of effort invested in ‘influencing’ us but with little effort devoted to the ethics of the methods employed.

The art of changing behaviour in oneself or in another comes down to a question of ‘who benefits?’ Manipulation is when the goal of changing behaviour primarily serves the interests of the advocate and which may be to the detriment of the subject. It is a negative form of influencing behaviour. But persuasion as a positive effort to change behaviour isn’t guaranteed to deliver positive outcomes. The purpose of pushing for change may be well-intentioned but ultimately ill-advised. The morality of persuasion is apart from whether it is done skillfully or not.

The temptation that I saw with my fellow union delegates was to rely on manipulation rather than skilled persuasion. This satisfied a moral desire that often had more to do with the delegates satisfying their own needs than serving the needs of the people they represented. This seems to me to be also common among politicians, various salespeople, and religious proselytizers. In short, it’s a common enough thing. It’s also common among advocates for disability inclusion and DEI in general. If something stays political, the appeal of the moral message can sustain enthusiasm for a cause, even in the face of persistent failure to achieve agreed objectives. Failure can be accepted as routine because the cause is noble.

There is abundant material on developing one’s persuasive skills. It’s a skillset that must be developed over time through research and practice. It’s a great skill to have in any leadership role. It’s a pity it’s not routinely taught as part of a suite of professional development skills.

When it comes to disability inclusion the challenge is not whether it’s a good idea but how to work within an organization to help it prioritize actions and then see them through to a fruitful outcome. And then starting on the next concern on what might a long list. In November 2019 I led a delegation of Disability ERG members in a presentation before our department’s executive leadership board. We had been funded to have a two-day facilitated planning workshop several months before. Even making that happen was extraordinary.

We presented a plan with 13 action points, which was endorsed by the board. We then began to work through those action points with determination and a lot of support. We were ambitious with our 12 months deadline, but my goal wasn’t to have things sorted by then – just underway. Looking back from the perspective of 6 years, 6 of the goals have been achieved, 2 seem to have been forgotten and the other 5 seem to be struggling. We ran into COVID and since the plan was developed there have been 2 leads with different skillsets and priorities.

Efforts at organizational change often fail because the instigators fail to employ effective persuasion methods. The standard formula goes a bit like – this is a good/necessary thing that the organization wants, and these are the steps to make the change happen. The psychological needs of the staff are often ignored, misinterpreted or under-estimated.

If organizations struggle to implement the changes they want, how much harder is it for advocates of disability inclusion to succeed in what they want? It should be a level playing field because the difficulties are essentially the same. So, learning how to be more effectively persuasive will make a great difference.

The Neuroleadership Institute has the motto, “Change in weeks, not years.” Its work is based on neuroscience. Whether its work lives up to this claim I can’t say. But its public facing content is coherent and engaging. It’s worth exploring. I don’t have anything to do with the institute. I participated in several online webinars which were very helpful. Its podcast, Your Brain at Work, is one of regulars.

Conclusion

I came into the role as Disability ERG lead with the huge advantage of having a substantial background in effective persuasion in frontline roles where I was in a lower status role relative to the people I engaged with.

In 1995, as a Project Officer, I persuaded my department to allow me to negotiate with another department to ensure the transfer of several million dollars of funding for Business Enterprise Centers which was about to be canceled. I was successful and the centers kept their funding for a few more years.

Even now, looking back, it was a ridiculous thing to have attempted, let alone pull off. But by then I had almost a decade of developing and refining my approach to effective and ethical persuasion. By the time I became Disability ERG lead I had a very sound body of skills. It wasn’t until I was working with my former employer’s ERG leads that I came to fully appreciate what skills we bring into roles and how we can harness them. Skills in persuasion don’t tend to be in selection criteria, so it’s easy not to be conscious of them. 

If I had been asked, back in November 2016, what skills made be ideal for the role of ERG lead I would have had no good answer. I got the job only because I was the deputy lead and the lead had suddenly quit the department. It was only when I had a job of mentoring other ERG leads that I had to do a deep dive into understanding why I was so successful. 

I suspect we often have capabilities and skills that critical to why we are successful, but which aren’t on selection criteria and are never thought about or argued for. I think we need to look at leadership differently, and think about skills, like persuasion, empathy and strategic insight in a new light.

In my experience ERG leads are often drawn from ranks below manager grades (as I was). There’s not only a lack of leadership experience in the organizational context but also a reflex to be deferential to more senior leaders at times when doing so is problematic. This is a common situation with union delegates as well – which is why so many are poorly regarded. 

So often it is the disparity in one’s status and standing in an organization and with its executive leadership that can impede confident use of these skills. Add to this the complexity of organizational cultures and internal politics and the challenge can seem daunting. I can think of no more compelling argument for the need for possessing/developing persuasion skills and having a determination to work collaboratively with the organization.

In 2026 the politics around DEI make it more imperative for advocates of disability inclusion in workplaces to be effective in meeting the inclusion needs of staff with disability. That means taking a more challenging skills-based approach rather than an emotionally gratifying moral path is imperative – if the interests of the people we represent are genuinely paramount. It’s our choice.

Working for the realization of disability inclusion goals does require self-reflection and a willingness to look at how we work. Its is so often seen as the realm of passionate amateurs whose dedication to the cause is enough to ask for. It is as if the moral right of the cause is sufficient. It isn’t, regardless of the cause. Failure is normalized and success isn’t sought in an intelligent and strategic way. 

Effective agents for behavioural and attitudinal change are either already capable because of aptitude and experience, or they are educated and mentored in developing the necessary level of competence. We can be as persuasive as we really want to be.

Introduction

I have been having conversations with ERG leaders that have been leaving me perplexed and troubled. 

The importance of establishing strong and effective relationships with an organization’s executive leaders cannot be under-valued. But also having effective relationships with members and one’s organization’s staff at all levels is essential. 

Below I want to reflect on the value and importance of relationship building and maintenance for an ERG leader and why this makes a critical difference to how effective an ERG might be. 

The importance of knowing what you are doing 

In recent posts I have argued that an ERG’s primary function is to assist an organization to meet its legal obligations in relation to inclusion and equity. That definition is related to contemporary concerns about ERGs engaging in political action. My position is that an ERG should have only one clear focus, and this is understood by the organization and the ERG members. 

This makes it possible to develop clear understandings on the nature and status of all relationships. You can negotiate your standing in relation to other people as an ERG representative with clarity. 

As a Disability ERG leader, I saw myself with a clear and simple mission – to end exclusion and discrimination of staff with disability. I made several assumptions based on an understanding that the organization had a duty to do so (which it agreed with). They were that for the most part discrimination was unintentional and that there was a spirit of goodwill which favored change in behaviors to end discrimination. 

I also knew this was a long-term project that would take years to complete (if ever).  Hence my relationship building was based on establishing a clear understanding of the goal, a sense of patience and respect for the difficulty of achieving the goal. 

Negotiating change

Organizational change is notoriously difficult. There are many books written on the subject and many people claiming to be expert. Few really are. Individual humans are also incredibly change resistant – even with a willing spirit to change beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. 

Leading any kind of ERG without understanding the essential difficulty of the task is perilous because it creates the opportunity to misinterpret resistance to change as a moral failing. This then can lead to an assumption that difficulties in any relationship are because of a moral failing in the other person. 

Change is slow in organizations. The Neuroleadership Institute is one of the few organizations I know of that take a systematic and neuroscience based approach to how organizational change can be made more efficient. Having a sound theory of how change happens is invaluable. If an ERG leader isn’t aware of how hard driving change can be, their efforts at building and maintaining relationships may be impaired and relationships created may be strained. 

Selling a position and a vision

Effective ERG leaders must be able to ‘sell’ their position and their vision to members and to the organization. There is no point in having the ERG members on board, but not the organization’s leadership. 

This means negotiating with the organization’s executive leadership to get its active buy-in on an agreed course of action and then developing a shared understanding of the role of the ERG in supporting that action. 

What is most important here is that the ERG’s position must never be seen as adversarial. Of course, this may present a problem if the executive leadership isn’t enthusiastic about directing change or is not committed to meeting its legal obligations. 

When faced with a lack of enthusiasm the ERG must patiently develop relationships with executive leaders and ‘sell’ the idea of positive change. The temptation to short cut such a necessity and resorting to taking the moral high ground should be avoided unless there is no other alternative. There is a significant distinction between there being no alternative and the willingness of ERGs leaders to take that position because they lack the skills to be effectively persuasive. 

Why bother having an ERG?

ERGs are created either because the organization recognises it has a responsibility to ensure equity and inclusion as a legal or strategic necessity or because its HR team has persuaded it that it’s a good idea. 

Only the legal obligation should be non-negotiable. Anything to do with strategy or a good idea in HR’s eyes is subject to the beliefs and values of the organization’s leadership and hence active support cannot be assumed or assured. 

The Disability ERG that I came to lead was established at the behest of my department’s CEO. When I became the lead, I had the good fortune to work with senior executives who shared that initial commitment. But my successors had new executives to work with and didn’t ensure the new CEO (now Secretary) was aware of the history or was as actively committed to disability inclusion. 

Reliance on history is perilous. Each new ERG lead must establish a relationship with key executive leaders and ensure there is shared agreement on, and commitment to, the ERG’s function and purpose. 

I was dismayed, several years ago, when I worked with my former employer’s ERGs to discover how few of them had a clear sense of their own function, and little idea of what they wanted to achieve. It was unsurprising to also find that there was very little communication with senior organizational leaders. 

The ERGs not only could not answer the question, “Why should we exist?” in any compelling way they struggled to articulate what value they brought to the organization. None articulated their purpose in the context of helping the organization meet its legal anti-discrimination obligations. 

This lack of clarity reflected not only a poorly thought through sense of purpose but a paucity of communication with its sponsor and champions. It was commonplace that ERG leadership teams had never met with all their sponsor and champions at the same time. There was also resistance to doing so. 

The quality of leadership

A key reason for such resistance was the fact that ERG leads were mostly relatively junior grade employees. This had two critical detriments – a lack of strategic insight into how to manage an ERG in a complex environment and a lack of experience in confidently engaging with executives. 

While there is no doubt that junior staff who put their hands up to become ERGs leads may have the talent and potential to be highly effective leads they need mentoring. 

However, if HR doesn’t understand the role of an ERG and doesn’t understand the skills needed for effective leadership it will not see the necessity of ensuring that such mentoring is provided. 

ERG champions are mostly senior and experienced staff. But they are told their roles are outward facing – promoting the ERG to their peers. This is a difficult position to be in the ERG lacks a clear understanding of its role. The idea that ERG champions might also have a function in mentoring ERG leads seems to be novel.

The way out of this possibly complex mess is to ensure that ERG leads have the requisite level of skills in the first place. However, this idea is often resisted by the ERGs and by HR. 

In the sector with which I am most familiar ERGs were created along the lines of a staff association rather than as a staff reference group created to help the organization meet its legal obligations in relation to equity and inclusion. 

The idea of a staff association is now immature in the context of the legal requirements imposed upon an organization. It reflects a more informal and political orientation that carries no sense of obligation to meet professional skill levels that an employee reference group should have. 

Also, the idea that an ERG is staff-lead tends to be seen by executives as non-serious in a business sense. There is thus a good argument for changing the ‘R’ in ERG from Resource to Reference and doing away with members-based leadership selection in preference for a formal recruitment process for a formally recognised function. 

This is something that ERGs and an organization’s leadership and HR need to think through in the context of determining an ERG’s purpose and function. My point here is that the capacity to build the relationships that are necessary for success must be built into how an ERG operates. It should not be random or hit and miss. 

Conclusion

Effective relationship building and maintenance is a critical capability in any role involving people. If we can’t do this on a personal level our chances of doing so as an employee are low. And our chances of doing so as a leader are lower. 

There’s a reason that psychopaths often make it to leadership roles – they prioritize relationship building (usually over operational competence). Many very competent people fail in their aspirations for promotion because they have poor skills in relationship building. 

We all celebrate that happy blend in leaders who are not only great at building relationships but also highly competent in their roles. The sobering reality that both capabilities of a high order are hard to find in one person. Nevertheless, we should aspire to fill all roles with the most capable people we can find – in both respects. 

Leadership roles are vitally important in any organization. Hence, for members of an ERG, their interests are best served by ensuring those who lead them are the most capable available. This also serves the interests of the organization. 

I have focused on relationship building and maintenance here because the lack of such skills has become a matter of concern. But it isn’t something to be seen in isolation. There are many factors that lead to it being a problem. 

Effective leadership can be learned provided an individual has the underpinning capabilities. I worked with several junior staff who were ERGs leads and who had the evident potential to be highly effective -so long as they had the guidance and support to develop that potential. So, I am not completely saying don’t put junior staff in such roles. But absent a well-setup mentoring and support mechanism I am. 

The bottom line is that organizations are full of humans (still) and we get things done and make things change when we build and maintain positive and productive relationships. Settling for less than the best we can do, or can have, serves nobody’s best interests.