Introduction
A few years ago, I came across a guy who was proud of the fact that he had been a Disability ERG lead for almost a decade. I was puzzled. Why? Why hold the lead role for that long? Why be proud of it?
To me this was evidence of failure, not success.
In 2023 I was engaged by my former employer as a consultant working with ERG leads. There was a perception that the ERGs had lost direction. Some didn’t have a strong sense of purpose. Others didn’t have a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve, or how to achieve anything.
There were a bunch of reasons why this was the case but here I want to focus on only one idea – we should intend that an ERG becomes redundant, no longer needed, because it had addressed the problems it was created to respond to.
Some of the ERGs I encountered were effectively redundant because they weren’t doing their jobs well. If they ceased to operate there would be no, or marginal, impact. I divided the ERGs into two types, problem-solving and celebratory. I have a strong bias toward problem-solving. If there is competition for resources and attention, I want that bias to be impactful.
I was a lead of Disability ERG for 3.25 years. I ran it as a de facto business unit. We were funded for a 2-day planning workshop. This led to an action plan which we presented to the department’s executive board. It was endorsed. We had two goals – system change and cultural change. To do this we needed a high impact presence.
A focus on outcomes
Change is a slow business. This is partly because it is difficult to do well and partly because it competes for attention and resources with a lot of other essential activities. It is also a demanding and challenging role.
Some ERGs have term limits for leads. Ours was 2 years. That was fine when being an ERG lead was largely ceremonial. But, when a leadership role is about driving change, 2 years isn’t enough. It takes 18 months to get really good at a role, so it makes sense to spend another 18 months at peak performance. Then its time to let somebody else have a go.
Leads must have a vision – a passion to achieve something. My goal was to end needless suffering caused by lack of access to what was needed, by discrimination, by injustice and by inequity. That goal had an end point – systems and culture changed. Needless suffering ended. I was deeply impacted by reading that neuroscientists had found that being excluded activates the same part of the brain that responds to physical pain. Exclusion or rejection hurts and this isn’t okay. I have seen the deep emotional harm that is inflicted upon staff with disability. So, yes, my bias is toward problem-solving and ending harmful workplace settings.
The Disability ERG had a function – an objective and whether it achieved it mattered greatly. It was created by the department’s CEO in 2010 to address the unmet needs of staff with disability. He observed that the department was charged with addressing the needs of community members with disabilities, and this was often done by staff with disabilities. But nobody had been thinking about those staff with disabilities in any systematic or consistent way. As an organization we were harming the very people who were to reduce harm to community members with disability. We had the right intent but we hadn’t thought through how we were acting sufficiently.
I recently came across a commentary from some disability inclusion activists who centred their activity on disability identity and career development for staff with disability. These are legitimate areas of interest, but they are on a different level – and it was as though the needless suffering had been addressed, and they could move on to other things.
This raised an interesting perspective for me. One of the most potent things I did as a Disability ERG lead was to create the Guidance and Action Team (GAT) which was composed of 15 very passionate and very frustrated and angry staff members with disability. Their stories of exclusion, discrimination and abuse were startling and disturbing. On 28 February 2019 I took 6 of the GAT members with the most terrible stories to a presentation before the executive board. We were allocated 2 hours. Each GAT member had 5 minutes to tell their story of being a staff member with disability in the department. I wanted to ensure there was time for questions and discussion. The stories astonished and alarmed the board. The attitude toward staff with disability held by the executive board was transformed. We had permission to be radically active in driving change – as a partner, collaborator and a constant spur to consciences.
Thinking about leadership
I acquired significant mobility and manual disabilities in 2008 at a mature age. I had been employed as a Support Manager coordinating care and support services to people with disability living in privately operated ‘boarding houses’ since late 2001. Before that I had worked in disability related roles since the early 1970s. So, by the time I joined my department’s Disability ERG as a founding member in July 2010 I had a substantial background in disability. Other founding members were professionals working with families with children with disabilities in the community. The early ERG membership had a deep insight into disability but little understanding of the challenge from the perspective of an employee with disability seeking to change an organization’s systems, processes and culture. The department was hugely and generously supportive but also naive about the process of driving systemic and cultural change.
By the time I became ERG lead in November 2016 our membership had been depleted through restructuring and the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and it had become dispirited. This was partly because of the critical restructuring which radically depleted membership and changes in key people in HR, so that those who were part of the original energy had moved on. There was little of the early enthusiasm and commitment to be passed on.
What I became the leader of was a weakened and depleted ERG. I was aware that getting disability inclusion on the agenda was an important step in the right direction. But the subsequent struggle to assert priority for our cause and the resources to drive the changes we needed had lost traction.
Here the issue of leadership was critical. The ERG’s founding leader, Michael Evans, was a wheelchair user and a regional Home Care manager. The next 2 leaders were not at leadership grades and were relatively junior. They had no leadership experience and were not capable of driving the changes needed or challenging the department when it weakened its early commitment.
Even though my initial role title was Support Manager I was more a team leader than a manager. But I had a strong background of working with business and service managers. I also had a background as a union delegate. So even though I had a sub-management role I had a substantial background in engaging with executive leaders. That background included building working relationships with organizational leaders. This was a fortunate background to take into the role of Disability ERG lead.
The point of this background is to assert that what we bring to a role, such as Disability ERG lead, depends on our background and our capabilities. This is a hugely important consideration for ERG members and the host organization. It is rarely understood as the critical consideration it should be.
Leadership skills and capabilities are undervalued in general, at least in the public sector, with which I am most familiar. I was reminded of this when I finished reading/listening to Kirstin Ferguson’s Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership. Ferguson is a leading Australian thinker on leadership, and she has produced a gem of a book. It is accessible because it is about people understanding their own potential to be a leader.
Leadership isn’t just about formal roles in a hierarchy. It is more fundamentally situational – life circumstances where we need to act with integrity. The old command and control mentality is no longer relevant. Now leadership is more about fostering capabilities in others.
Ferguson lays down solid evidence that this approach is where we are going. Leading global corporations are well down the path. There is, quite simply, a quiet revolution afoot. Greater self-awareness is the foundation, but, as the book’s title asserts, there is also a need to balance head and heart – theory and the human reality of practice.
The very nature of ERGs should suggest that this modern approach on how to lead should be a lifeline – to the ERGs themselves and to the organizations that encourage their formation. We need a shared theory of ERGs that is attuned to emerging values, and we need a shared theory of leadership that is understood by the ERG and its organization. An ERG is an organ within the organizational body. It is part of a system that has a common (though often incoherent) goal. The quality of leadership at ERG and organizational level is critical.
The value of redundancy as a goal
So, what has this got to do with the idea of redundancy? Something should become redundant if it is no longer fit for purpose (like command and control leadership styles) or the job it was created to do has been done.
I would like to see a time when the need for a Disability ERG would no longer exist. But what would need to be the reality for that to be something that could happen?
System change is easy. It requires a will, an intent and a commitment – as well as the necessary resources. But cultural change is way more complex and over a longer time.
My sense of system change, and cultural change, meshes well with Ferguson’s head and heart – so well that her book could become a manual for driving such change.
When I say we need a shared theory of what and ERG is and what leadership is about I don’t mean a formal theory – just an agreed understanding. The ERG and the organization must agree on what the ERG is expected to achieve or deliver – and how it will do that. The ERG and the organization must agree that leadership is a balance of hierarchical and situational imperatives and there should be no tension or clash between old and modern leadership theories.
It would be great to work in an organization that has a culture of inclusion and kindness, so no staff feel excluded or discriminated against because of their identity or attributes. That is to say that it would be great to work in a culture where an ERG hasn’t anything to do, because there are no unmet needs because systems aren’t responsive and the culture isn’t kind and inclusive.
Conclusion
If I had a time machine I would go back to the start of my consultancy with my former employer’s ERG leads and insist that the ERG leads, their champions and executive sponsors read Head & Heart, and then talk. Realistically I think compliance would be minimal, but that’s what I would want to happen.
It is hard enough for folks to claim the time to read 4 or 5 pages, let alone an entire book. I get that. I listen to audiobooks not just because my disabilities make holding a 3D book a pain, but because I can listen while doing stuff I can’t do and read at the same time. My commutes to work became my reading time. Two hours a day is ten hours a week, or forty hours a month. The average professional development text I listened to was around 8 hours. That’s 5 books a month. An Audible audiobook cost me around AUD$12, so that’s around $2 a day.
My point is that excuses to not read because of time constraints aren’t real. I am entirely sympathetic to the proposition that cognitive stress is bad enough without adding another demand. But here’s a question. What will bring that excessive burden of cognitive stress to an end? Better leadership.
What will enable ERGs to achieve their objectives? Becoming redundant because we have achieved our goals is way better than becoming redundant because we have lost our way.
DEI is in crisis now because it has lost its focus and because those who lead DEI teams and activities don’t have a strong head & heart balance. There has been an abundance of head-driven research that demonstrates how critical heart stuff – like emotional intelligence is in a modern workplace. In my view DEI is a vital field into the future, so long as it is understood as a professional discipline and not the sentimental and political stuff it used to be – driven by idealism and good intent, rather than by insight.
Note: I have included a hyperlink to Amazon for Head & Heart because this includes access to ebook and audiobook versions, both of which increase accessibility. If you buy 3D books please support your local independent bookshop. These used to be like a second home to me. Now, sadly, they are inaccessible.