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.