Category: Uncategorized

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.

Introduction

I was just listening to The Brain by David Eagleman. We humans are profoundly interdependent. We are wired for inclusion. In a YouTube video Anthropologist Michael Button reports on evidence of a left below-knee amputation that happened 31,000 years ago.  The young man lived a further 6-9 years. Evidently his community not only cared enough to perform the operation but to care for, and support, him afterwards.

It seems we have always taken care of our own. There’s an account of footprints laid down 20,000 years ago found in Willandra, Australia showing a one-footed man moving with a group. Only his right footprint is visible. The group is thought to have been running, so that’s an impressive act of inclusion – and capability. 

I subscribe to Disability Debrief. It’s a great site that has a global take on disability, including from places that have no government programs or policies or funding. Often, too, the community infrastructure in very unkind to people with a range of disabilities. This reality is driven home to me when I get the newsletter from YPK Bali, a service I support with a monthly donation. 

It is easy to be seduced into the conceit that Disability Inclusion is mostly a ‘first world problem’. Our problems are real in context, but does our caring stop there?

The latest Debrief post concerns the struggle to survive and thrive in the current political climate.  It’s a regular theme. Funding for disability support is being reduced and support is being withdrawn. But while this seems a pervasive situation there seems to be a sea change in the past 18 months which heralds a tougher position on disability. 

Here’s an excerpt from Disability Debrief’s latest – Weathering the Storm:

The last year has been tough for making an independent media project on international disability rights. There are severe funding cuts on disability work, a rising backlash against diversity issues, and it’s steadily harder to get attention online.

I have signed up to be a Zoom fly-on-the-wall at an upcoming brief seminar entitled Allies and Obstacles: Parent Activism and Institutional Harm. My attention was drawn to a passage in the promotional email:

“Rather than a coherent social movement, parent activism tends to be deeply embedded within the politics of specific impairment groups, and their relationship with disabled activists varies by time, impairment, and issue. An intersectional lens adds further complexity to this picture, as families from marginalized communities confront disability systems that too often penalize and harm them and activist circles overlook their perspectives and needs.”

It’s easy to dwell in one’s own comfort zone with no broader appreciation of the wider environment. I had a conversation with a very active Disability Inclusion activist who reminded me that they are all volunteers with fulltime jobs and families. I understand that. I was in the same position. Now I have the time to explore Disability Inclusion in depth.

Below I want to reflect on what I am seeing as red flags for Disability Inclusion advocates and emergent risks. As well as being wired for inclusion we also have reflexes for exclusion. So, what is happening to trigger exclusionary responses when we are seeking inclusion? Has something gone wrong?

Disability is a complex thing.

The present political concerns seem to be reflected in a withdrawal of intellectual, moral and financial support for disability. There is a harsh reality that some activists seem to be oblivious to – support for Disability Inclusion isn’t about what side of the political spectrum one is on. It’s a right, in some countries, that places obligations on organizations and communities regardless of political perspectives. 

Many corporations, which we tend to see as inherently politically conservative, have responded with strong Disability Inclusion programs. In my former role, as an employee of the NSW government, I preferred working with conservative governments on disability matters, despite my personal center-left leanings. The conservatives were more receptive to ideas. Progressives tended to think they already knew what was what, and weren’t as open to ideas that challenged what they believed.

I have been arguing for some time about the need to shift gears in the Disability Inclusion field to take a more professional approach. The political argument that was initiated back in the 1960s has been won. Now we must be involved in helping the desired changes happen. This requires skills that aren’t always present, or evident, amongst activists. 

We fought to get disability on the agenda and succeeded. But now the challenge is securing the attention, commitment and funding to make desired changes in competition with other priorities. This requires political sensitivity, good negotiation and advocacy skills and a rational understanding of the underpinning mechanisms and processes. These capabilities are in scant supply among most of the Disability Inclusion advocates I know.

I am on my local government’s Access Reference Group (ARG). There is a genuine deep commitment to ensuring our community is as accessible as it can be. There are significant challenges about how doable a desired solution might be – and how it will be funded.  The ARG remains outcome-focused, blended with patience. We get to see the tangible improvements to the accessibility of our public places. But we also learn that some solutions are not available because of technical, practical or financial constraints.

The ARG is a very good example of skilled collaboration.  It has council staff, council members and community members and its approach is 100% professional. It is an example of what a Disability ERG could be but rarely is.  

The email about the seminar noted a political bent in activism related to particular disability advocacy groups. It is very easy for people concerned about a particular disability to become laser focused on issues that concern them and have no idea of where they fit within the disability ecosystem. By that I mean that within the spectrum of disabilities the demand for support will always exceed supply. Hence competition might seem sensible, but it isn’t. This is especially the case if competition becomes political and intemperate. Eventually just saying “No!” to everyone seems the safest and fairest response.

The area that most concerns me is a fusion of identity politics and brash enthusiasm of younger inclusion advocates who seem to have decided there’s nothing to learn from what has gone before. 

The trouble with this approach is that it is unsubtle, moralistic and impatient. These are the attributes of youth – as I well remember.  They were never great attributes for winning support and credibility in the long run. And that’s the reason why we mostly grow out of them. 

The most complex matter these days is identity politics. There has been a growing trend for people to assert identities and expect their assertions to be taken at face value.  This is a far wider cultural phenomenon than disability and my concern is not to criticize the trend but to observe that Disability Inclusion is being injured by proximity to a movement that has no impact on the Disability Inclusion needs of the vast majority of people with disability and who have a need for an adjustment or an accommodation.

My argument is that as the wider movement for inclusion and identity continues to generate friction, there is a reaction against all members of the class of persons protected by anti-discrimination legislation and policy.  People with disability are being swept up in a reaction against an intemperate expression of identity politics. 

The reaction against ‘wokeness’ is illustrative. What was once was rational caution has become a pejorative label applied nearly all people favoring inclusion, regardless of the manner and nature of their advocacy.

Style concerns

Some people with disability who engage in political or activist action are unpleasant, intemperate and impolitic. This doesn’t make their cause less legitimate, but it can test one’s commitment to inclusivity.

A person with a disability isn’t just a neural presence of that disability. We are all complex. As are the people without disability that we engage with. There is a bunch of reasons why a desired outcome doesn’t happen and none of them may relate to intentional discrimination against a person because of their disability – or because of their manner of engagement. 

The blunt force of moral excitation via political activism is more likely to not lead to no good outcomes, and to engender bias against other people with disability who are mild mannered and civil.

Activation of empathic responses isn’t triggered by overly assertive or militant behaviour.

Where are we now?

We are in an age when new political passions are being aroused. The natural thing to do is to attach them to what has gone before. So, we are seeing new Disability Inclusion passions attaching themselves to what has already been won. This is novel – and unfortunate. The raw energy of the new is adversely impinging, in ways that are injurious to, what has been settled, albeit imperfectly.

I go back to my assertion that Disability Inclusion activism and advocacy must become professional. It’s no longer fringe and optional. In many places it is law and policy. There is an important role for staff-led ERGs as sources of insight, intelligence and subject matter expertise but the business of changing organizational culture and behaviour isn’t the job of volunteers and amateurs.

What’s happening globally is a warning signal to us all. If we don’t lift our game Disability Inclusion risks being relegated to being an unwelcome irritation in organizational cultures that have enough survival challenges on their hands as it is. Organizations may be looking for an excuse to eliminate or tokenize and control DEI activism. And creating another distraction isn’t going help.

Disability Inclusion is 60 years old. But you wouldn’t know it, looking at it. In so many ways it is still immature. It really hasn’t grown up. The same can be said of other ‘protected persons’ movements. They are stuck in the activism phase as if what isn’t working now is still about moral failure and not the cultural and psychological evolution that is required for the desired and agreed upon changes to happen to the extent, and at the pace, desired.

I see that where we need to be is in a marriage between Disability Inclusion activists and organizations. It’s a relationship both parties need to work on for it to be mutually beneficial. The courtship phase was passionate and energetic, and then ‘the knot was tied’. But then, when things aren’t working out as hoped, the smart move is to get into relationship counselling. Instead, I see Disability Inclusion activists reverting to courtship mode and organizations just going through the motions of tolerance and support. Add a new energetic player from the identity politics movement and what we end up with is a confused mess.

Conclusion

Disability is complex. Lived experience comes in so many different expressions that even the idea of disability is problematic.  I sense that those inclined to see disability as a critical part of their personal identity are compensating for other personal stuff they haven’t resolved. Either that or they are exploiting what they see as an opportunity to influence the Disability Inclusion movement that presently doesn’t fully understand what is happening. 

I have seen a trend of Disability Inclusion activists who have achieved their needs for adjustments and accommodations moving on to focusing on career enhancement while other staff with disability, whose adjustments and accommodations needs haven’t been, met languish ignored and unsupported. This split in the Disability Inclusion movement is causing a problem because the different needs require different insights and skillsets. And if the split isn’t understood or acknowledged, Disability ERGs can seem to be ineffectual and maybe even irrelevant. Hence they can be ignored or marginalized.

What do we do about it? Continuing as we have been doing is patently courting disaster.  My question to people who style themselves as Disability Inclusion advocates or practitioners is simple, “Do you care enough about the people you purport to represent to lift your game?”

I confess my bias for functional disability issues and know that I may offend some, but I do not do so intentionally. I just have a different take on the situation, based on my lived experience. I am happy to engage in respectful dialogue with those who have a different take on things. Maybe we can find common ground?

Introduction

I recently responded to a post on Linkedin, something I rarely do. My reaction was triggered by a sinking sense of doom. Disability Inclusion is now doing double duty – as a movement for equity and accessibility and as a component of an identity politics movement. Association with the latter risks weakening the credibility of the former. 

This was brought home to me powerfully last year when the NSW public sector’s DEN Connect held an event (Let’s Rock) celebrating “disability inclusion in the workplace” but said virtually nothing about disability in the workplace. The agenda, which commenced at 13.30 and finished at 17.30 had only one session specifically on public sector employment – NSW Government showcase – Disability Inclusion initiatives, which lasted 35 minutes. The keynote speaker was described in the agenda as a Comedian, Writer, Art Person. Their relevance to the theme of the event was lost on me, especially when there could have been a speaker from the public sector who had insight into disability inclusion in the workplace relevant to the audience. Notably, two people who could have done that job very well were relegated to bit parts only. 

The event was more about disability as a lived experience and an identity rather than about how to advance disability inclusion in the workplace. But the challenge isn’t whether staff with disability are accepted in their workplaces, but their access and equity. I wrote a post on the event, DENconnect – disconnected?, back in September 2025.

Below I want to reflect upon what we mean by disability, and why this is important to us.

The politics of who we are

The identity politics movement has embraced disability. This is seen clearly in the Disability Pride movement, something I didn’t know existed until late 2024. To me it comes across as immature and intemperate at times. Their website says, “Disability pride is about disabled people coming together, being publicly proud of who we are, celebrating ourselves, and demanding inclusion. It doesn’t just fight back against stigma, or raise awareness, or even ask for access. It REPLACES these things with joy, celebration and power.” I disagree. This isn’t about power but powerlessness.

The Scottish disabled choreographer and dancer, Clair Cunningham, said that disability is part of the spectrum of being human. She said that she didn’t want to be “fixed”. This is power. I have a bunch of friends with disabilities but only two I met through my involvement with a disability ERG. The others I met because they were good and interesting people and with whom I formed affinities that had nothing at all to do with their disabilities.

The notion that people with disabilities have to come together to celebrate themselves bothers me. When I joined a disability ERG in July 2010 we had a clear goal – access and equity in our workplace. Obviously, we had social and personal interactions, but they were incidental to our focus. The only relationships that endured from then were, for me, based on mutual regard, and none of them were with people with disability. To be clear the bulk of the members were obliged to find work elsewhere because of a radical departmental restructure.

The idea that people with disability must come together to ‘celebrate’ themselves seems more like a case of shared misery and powerlessness. My point is that a focus on disability as the basis for identity and community must be carefully interrogated. On the surface it seems like a good thing – and no doubt it is to some. But should it be the basis of a movement?

One of the things I found frustrating and disappointing during my time as a Disability ERG lead was the way in which some other Disability ERGs seemed to wallow in ineffectuality – as if failure was the norm and all that could be expected. Maybe pride was the most that could be rescued?

So, the situation is complicated. The identity politics movement is emergent and has something to say. But it’s just not what I am into, which is not to say it doesn’t have merit and relevance. It would be arrogant and insensitive of me to measure others by my expectations.

Between June 2023 and June 2025, I was engaged as a casual consultant with my former employer to help its ERG leads be more effective. I had to reflect deeply on why I was so successful, so I didn’t make the awful mistake of trying to get other ERG leads to replicate what I did by mimicking me. What were the essentials of successful advocacy for workplace inclusion? In essence, being a smart canny operator. I just happened to have the right background and skillset and the luck to get the job at the time I did. I also had the immense good fortune to have outstanding senior executives who backed me. Maybe it was just that the stars were aligned to enable good stuff to happen.

So, my point here is that I should not make any cocky remarks about powerlessness in an unkind way. But it’s still powerlessness. We can’t substitute pride and bullshit for effectiveness in getting the equity, access and inclusion needed – unless wallowing in self-pity is your jam. Getting equity, access and inclusion is tough enough as things are. This isn’t a heartless conspiracy – just a rigidly ableist mindset that is very difficult to shift. It has ruled the world for many millennia, and equity and inclusion aren’t part of its natural vision for how things work. It scarcely cares what you think your rights are, but it’s getting better at doing so as our values evolve – and we continue to make our case.. 

In an earlier post, Why I needed my Functional Disability Theory (August 2025)

 I drew a clear distinction between what I call functional disabilities (where an adjustment or an accommodation is required – and is covered by legislation) and what is to me an emergent interest in identifying as having a disability but not having any clear need for an adjustment or an accommodation. A person who said they had ADHD, which was a disability to them, made this plain to me when they wouldn’t say what accommodation or adjustment this disability required. Did they have a need for an adjustment or an accommodation or just a sense of recognition? We didn’t have the trust to discover that.

Neurodiversity is more complex than it seems

I am not dismissing the validity of the claim that ADHD is a disability off hand. I am asserting that in the absence of a clear understanding of what adjustment or accommodation is required there’s not a lot of point in making the claim -from my maybe excessively functional perspective. We all have needs for validation of who we think we are, but is identity as a person with disability the best way to satisfy them? Some think so, and it’s not my place to disabuse them of that assertion – I just don’t know how to respond at the moment.

I should observe that neurodiversity seems rampant in my family. Two nieces and a nephew have been diagnosed as autistic. A nephew is very definitely ND, as am I and at least 2 of my 4 siblings. To be clear I am ‘self-diagnosing’ based on copious research. The 2 nieces’ and the nephew’s autism have adversely impacted their young lives but does this amount to disability or just radical non-conformity? I don’t know. The ND nephew, siblings, and I share talent mixed with disruptive life experiences. Again, disability or non-conformity? We siblings talk about our and our family’s life experiences a lot. It could be that many families experience ND but have no language for it. Its just part of the normal spectrum of family life.

This of course raises a really problematic matter which I encountered when trying to encourage my employer to shift beliefs and attitudes about mental health. The problem isn’t whether mental illness is a genuine disability but how it is responded to can be inept and cruel. There is an unfortunate stigma attached to mental illness. Mental health is, to me, the big problem we struggle to deal with adequately or compassionately. Illness or disability? – or should we not care and just think that if a person is in need of kindness the reason why really isn’t our business and we should just be kind. What we call ‘mental illness’ might be no more than the spectrum of being human. Beyond severe manifestations maybe all else might be considered ‘normal’.

In this context the array of neurodiversity advocates raises a bunch of problems. One of the key ones is the number of people who are self-identifying as having a disability because of their neurodiversity – which they also self-identify. The problem isn’t whether their claim is justified but what they may seek as an adjustment or accommodation – if anything at all. 

I think this is a good problem to have because it could mean that workplace cultures may become more accommodating of diverse attitudes and behaviors. By this I don’t mean merely tolerating behaviour that grates or unsettles but being genuinely inclusive of people who are just non-conforming. We can learn to be kinder, but it does seem that we may need permission to do so from our cultures and our own habits of thought. Is classifying needs into ‘approved’ and ‘not approved’ something we should be doing? 

But this places a huge burden of effort to adjust upon a workforce as a whole, with no evidence of reciprocation from those claiming the right to be included. When we deal with behaviors rather than simple physical or sensory disabilities we enter a really vexed country. We expect self-regulation in others save in moments of real distress. We have all encountered that individual whose behaviour grates and who is disinclined to accommodate our reaction. Where do we draw the online on what it is okay to accept/tolerate?

The danger here is that we see disability and diversity as the same for some and distinct for others. My point is that neurodiversity advocates maybe don’t need to claim disability to make their case for inclusion. And some may need to work on their self-regulation with a little more urgency.

There’s more diversity than it can seem 

Generally speaking, workplaces accommodate a decent level of diversity as it is. This includes people who are unpleasant to engage with, just uninteresting or a perhaps bit ‘strange’. Aside from the normal levels of civility and conformity with codes of conduct, interactions in the workplace play out as normal – we like some people and not others. We treat people civilly enough for a workplace to work okay. Not ideal, but good enough in general. Here I must emphasise that I am talking about public sector workplaces (the only ones I know well).

People living with conditions like anxiety or depression learn to mask their authentic feelings, sometimes to their detriment – when feeling free to ask for, and get, some accommodation would be way better for them. 

I have had a long background in dealing with mental illness in several professional roles. So, I feel comfortable engaging with a person whose behaviour might be thought challenging. I know that not a lot of folks have this level of confidence, so it is unsurprising to me that many executives, managers, team leaders and team members have sometimes zero confidence or competence when dealing with challenging or odd behaviour. Sometimes the use of the term ‘challenging’ has more to do with how behaviour is responded to than the behaviour itself.

There is a chance that the identity politics movement might herald a new workplace culture. But if so, it’s a long way off being agreed upon and resolved. It may be that people who identity as having a mental illness will eventually feel safely able to ‘disclose’ in their workplace. To be clear I detest the term ‘mental illness’. Most people experience emotional or psychological injuries in my view. It’s not their minds that are the problem. Serious psychiatric disorders are rare in workplaces. 

In certain respects, the identity politics movement may herald vital changes in workplace cultures that will make them genuinely more inclusive. But this is like going back to the 1960s and 1970s when key rights issues were contested – and the reformers won. It is important that we don’t confuse old victories with contemporary expectations – not because there is a moral gulf between them but because we haven’t yet adapted culturally to emerging values – and neither have we necessarily accepted them. 

This brings me to the complex issue of people identifying with existing accepted categories of ‘protected persons’. A Pew research report I read last year observed that people were identifying as being gay or lesbian, transgender, having a disability or being an indigenous person when there was no substantive evidence to back up their claims. False claims of being an indigenous person have led to the emergence of the term Pretendian and significant mechanisms to prevent fraudulent claims.

There’s a political pressure to allow that self-identification is all that is required. The objections to it will be evident to many, but affection for that take on things is strong among some, who can also be intemperate in their advocacy for their view.  

Identity fluidity seems to have grown with the expansion of the influence of social media. Self-diagnosis as being neurodiverse is commonplace now. As is claiming being neurodiverse means one has a disability. This doesn’t mean that the diagnosis is not valid. But there is a risk that claims to have a disability are efforts to claim an identity that is not warranted – but even making such a claim itself could be indicative of a disability of some kind. 

It’s a novel, complex and messy situation that is in need of careful and respectful inquiry. 

We don’t like messy complex situations

Organizations and their workplace cultures do not like messy complexities. The reflex is to shut down and make them go away – unless there are energetic advocates who sway office politics in sometimes problematic ways. There are signs already that organizations are weakening their DEI teams and making them less responsive to the established and legitimate needs of staff with unambiguous disabilities.

DEI teams and some HR departments, with good intent, have mingled political concerns with compliance with legal and policy obligations. Emergent demands for inclusion must be distinct from existing legal obligations. And an asserted moral obligation is not the same thing as an established one. It is still subject to inquiry and disagreement. It is not okay for political activists in an organization to blur this distinction. In fact, as the evidence seems to indicate, it serves no good purpose. It comes across as intemperate, politically naïve and inept in terms of getting the desired changes. It seems to be increasingly working against the very people they claim to support.

I don’t understand this identity-based sense of disability. But it’s critical to observe that those who do don’t appear to understand physical or sensory disability. I am close to my trans brother who also has a significant acquired physical disability that affects his mobility. We talk a lot. He has links into the identity politics I don’t, so I do my best to get an education. 

Disability itself isn’t a monolithic category in which all members understand each other – but there’s a contrary logic which evidently appeals to fans of disability pride. Having a disability is a bond. It may be to some, but not to the people I know. Sure, there’s a sense of empathy when you come across a person with a disability you can relate to. But beyond that do we look at each other with ‘visible disabilities’ and feel a necessary and meaningful bond? I don’t, because I can have other stronger bonds with many people who share my life experiences, ideas and values. I watched a video in which Tom Shakespeare observed that you can have a disability and a good life. His remarks would maybe horrify and offend members of Disability Pride.

Disability is very individual – as I learned when I became a Disability ERG lead and had to represent the interests of my workmates. I was severely schooled by blind and deaf members in particular. It took over a year of repeated education by them before my ability to not overlook elements of sensory disabilities was at an adequate level. And still I was surprised and humbled by stories told with physical disabilities.

What disability is

An inability to do something isn’t a disability. A disability is, in my view, a lack of capability to perform an action in an unaided or unmodified way that is expected to be performed by a ‘normal’ person, and which results in a disadvantage or inequity that is generally accepted as unfair, unreasonable or unjust. 

I can’t safely climb stairs that do not have handrails. Handrails are commonplace on stairs so there is a general acceptance that such an aid is normal and expected. I am, because of the handrails, not disabled in this context. 

A lot is made of the social model of disability – often too reflexively and rhetorically in my view. However, it is a useful guide in many cases. I am a member of my local government’s Disability Reference Group and courtesy of the social model of disability we engage in effective conversations aimed at making our shared spaces as inclusive as possible. This experience is useful in engaging with the limits of practicality and cost. 

Making something as ‘accessible’ as possible within available means isn’t the same thing as demanding inclusion as an absolute right. 

When it comes to identity-based ideas of disability we can enter a whole different area of complexity. This arises when the adjustment or accommodation sought is not physical, procedural or systemic but the response by individuals. 

The issue of mental illness has already demonstrated difficulties here. Personal capacity to feel comfortable dealing with a person with a mental illness varies widely. And because it’s personal for some it’s also private. 

There is training available to help staff engage with service users whose behaviour might be considered challenging. But how effective it is depends very much on the individual participating in the training. 

The point to be made here is that this is very tricky territory if, for example, a person with ADHD declares they have a disability and seeks an accommodation that requires another person to adapt their emotional responses and behaviour – as an expected obligation rather than by consent and assent.

Our culture has made being different tough. Kids get bullied at school for differences in appearance, capability and behaviour. I was for all three. As adults we tend to be less overt but frequently no less cruel. Non-conformity isn’t something we are inherently cool about. In fact, being intolerant of it is hardwired into our psyches. Conformity is safety.

It would be so much nicer to live in a kinder, more accepting culture in which the diversity of our differences can be comfortably accommodated. But that demands that we do something radical with our psychological natures – and not everyone might be happy about that. Contemporary complex pluralistic cultures are very different from our tribal roots. Risks and rewards are very different – but we don’t consciously know that for the most part. 

Thinking about ADHD as a disability has forced me to rethink mental illness because it falls within the expectation that we need to be kinder to include those who do not behave, see the world, or feel as we do – but who still sit within our sense of community.

I go back often to Claire Cunningham’s remarks and now add that there’s a whole variety of differences in how we see the world and respond to it that are just part of the spectrum of being human. 

Conclusion

Here I am thinking out loud because I do believe this is something we need to work through as a culture. 

The need for greater kindness and inclusivity is, I hope, not up for dispute. 

But I want disability to remain as a simpler more concrete affair rather than entering the complex and maybe contentious area of seeing neurological conditions as necessarily a disability. 

Under the social model we have responded to disability by making our environment less ‘disabling’ for many. We have made our workplaces more accessible and more equitable. But even so we struggle when it comes to adjustments and accommodations that require that we as individuals change our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. To be sure, this struggle isn’t necessarily about a lack of will or concern but about competing for the mental and emotional focus and energy such changes require. 

We have the option of extending our definition of disability endlessly or ruling a line under what we have now and reframing future discussions to be about kindness. 

At some stage the social and the personal merge. Our anti-discrimination legislation stops short of describing thought and behaviour crimes on a personal level. We feel okay about mandating inclusivity at an organizational or government level. But no further. We can’t mandate kindness, but we might be able to mandate the inauthentic performance of it. But at the cost of stoking the fires of resentment. 

The reaction to ‘woke’ identity politics over the past few years should be a wakeup call to many advocates for inclusion. Any scent of compelling or mandating thought or action against personal feeling will trigger a reaction. Often the very people the activists say they are supporting end up being victims of the backlash they trigger. My trans brother feels this acutely. We must rethink a lot of things if we are to maintain progress towards greater inclusion and kindness. 

We need to have a conversation as a community. Mutual respect is essential. The tactics of intemperate activism work no better than bold assertions of moral authority or an intellectual theory supposed to prove that another way of thinking is flagrantly inferior. 

True there are those for whom greater kindness will grate against their beliefs in Social Darwinism which favors competition. They will not be persuaded by passions hued with moral righteousness and frustration – which only reinforce their beliefs. They may not be persuaded by appeals to kindness either. But they may be worn down by it, if we persist. They might just be assholes we need to tolerate and whose toxicity we defuse through kindness.

Those who are impatient for change misunderstand those who seem to resist it. Many are already dealing with enough demands on a personal level such that their cognitive capacity to accommodate more is exhausted. You don’t persuade such folks to do more by berating them. 

You don’t ‘fight’ for greater kindness and inclusion. You can’t be kind to, or inclusive of, people you fight with. 

There is a good reason people are not compelled to be kinder and more inclusive. Persuasion alone is the means we have through which to achieve our goals. And that starts with living the ideals and values we espouse and champion.

Can we leave disability as it is and start a new conversation about kindness? 

Afterthought

I just found a thought-provoking essay on neurodiversity on Substack – What if Neurodivergence Isn’t The Deviation. It argues that neurodiversity is enabling rather than disabling – and has been so along the path of human evolution. What we see as ‘normal’ is the dulling of senses suited to a world of conformity in which ableism is a toxic norm. 

If we can create a culture which is kinder to those who diverge from that psychologically toxic norm (and render it no longer toxic), we won’t need labels to define our identity and our validity. We can create a climate of mutual respectful regard and fair reciprocity. 

But that would be tough to create because it would mean surrendering beliefs, attitudes and behaviors we sincerely hold to be justified and just. 

A sense of authentic meaningful identity is essential to our wellbeing. So, for me identity politics is an important phenomenon. Something isn’t right for a lot of people – and that’s no trivial matter. But defining diversity in terms of disability doesn’t serve anyone’s needs well. 

We need to talk about this, especially in a time when forming armed camps in defense of a belief has become commonplace and reflexive.  

Introduction

AI is scaring a lot of people, and for good reason. It seems certain that familiar jobs will go. And while new ones will be created, we don’t know what skills may be required. David Rock from the Neuroleadership Institute argues that meta-cognition will be a critical future skillset, but only around 5% of any workforce have an innate interest in it. 

The risk for staff with disabilities is that they may find themselves in a very different competitive environment in which the old ableist biases are revived and intensified. 

There are global reports of workplaces becoming more demanding, with greater pressures on time and attention. There are several reasons for this – lower staffing numbers, managers under more pressure and less able to ‘manage’ effectively and, in the public sector especially, an increase in pointless politically orientated work.

A newly coined term, workslop, reflects the explosion of unproductive work, and AI is adding to this as more organizations are demanding staff take it up. The problem seems to be that AI output might be fast but it’s often garbage that must be checked and amended. This may be an early-stage problem, but it is impacting current workplaces.

For staff with disabilities there are two risks. The first is a less civil work environment in which support for Disability Inclusion is performed as part of a cultural expression but not actually delivered. Workplaces under stress will have a bias toward staff who appear more able. This isn’t intentional – just an ingrained reflex. The situation will be more complex because those who appear to be more ‘able’ may not necessarily have the meta-cognitive capabilities that are actually required.

The other risk is that the nature of competition may change in ways that are not fully understood and, as a result, making a case for Disability Inclusion may not be received with any enthusiasm or just misunderstood in the emerging environment. Advocacy for Disability Inclusion must evolve to meet the current and emerging organizational environments.

People with disabilities will take a hit in the future workforce, like everyone else. But we must also ensure that we are clear-eyed about what is happening and that ableist impediments are not reintroduced under the guise of the need for heightened efficiency – not said out loud, just felt and agreed upon quietly. 

AI can help

As with any leap in technological development, AI will bring many benefits to people with disabilities. For this reason, embracing AI as just another technology is important. But the hype around AI is overblown and poorly understood by many who advocate for it. 

The greatest risk is that organizational leaders will be persuaded by the promise of lower staffing costs and favour rapid introduction, as urged by those who have their own motives – like earning fees and commissions. Introduction of AI fueled by ill-advised enthusiasm is a genuine threat.

So while AI can be a boon to staff with disabilities that can transform how they work, it has a sting in its tail.

AI can make us dumb if we are not smart

Any kind of assistive technology has potential downsides. I use AI very sparingly at the moment. I prefer to do my own internet searches because I discover sites that I didn’t know existed. The AI ‘search assistant’ is handy when my inquiry is basic and quick. And I love using Siri too.

For me using tech is always a balance between benefits and risks. When I write I love the process of thinking about what to say. So, there’s no chance I will use generative AI to write stuff for me. That said, I absolutely understand that others do not find writing anything other than a chore they would avoid if they could.

But when AI is used for writing it presents all kinds of problems. The most important is that the person responsible has no real connection with the piece written. Without thinking about and composing something it doesn’t register in our minds in the same way as non-AI ways of doings do. And reading what AI has written hastily won’t work either. We might produce output that meets a demand but, because we were not engaged with it, we have no depth of insight – we won’t be able to speak about what the content means. Then there is the additional problem of not knowing whether what was produced is accurate.

Discussion among experts on AI raises a distinction between process tasks and work that requires human insight and connection. AI may evolve to the extent that this distinction will be harder to make. But for now, this is a critical consideration. 

This is the value of meta-cognition – an unsatisfactory expression really. In plainer terms it is about self-awareness and capacity for insight and empathy. Essentially those very human attributes we value. 

If work is just about delivering output to meet task requirements, then there is little need for a human to be in the process of production. Humans have been largely removed from manufacturing because machines do the jobs humans used to do better, faster and cheaper.

While AI might save us from drudge process work it can also help us to be more self-aware, self-reflective and better informed – if we turn the time saved into productive effort. This is especially so in organizations which deliver services that are intended to meet human needs. In the public sector there is a huge potential to markedly improve the quality of human services.

But we will have to put that time we save into enhancing our capabilities to ensure that we have a place in a possible future workplace. This is a trend that has been growing for decades but is little remarked upon. Entry-level education standards have been increasing. Psychological assessments are being employed during recruitment processes. It is entirely possible that well-developed meta-cognitive skills will be essential in the future.

In effect, smarter technology’s pay-off should be smarter, or more effective, humans and not just better educated button pushers.

So as technologies that overcome accessibility challenges become commonplace our workplaces and job roles may become more accessible to people with disabilities. That’s how we’d like it to be. But there’s a downside we must confront. 

The AI risks

It is widely acknowledged that the introduction of AI will lead to fewer jobs in currently known fields. There may be a growth in other types of high-status work, but this isn’t known at this early stage. This is still at least a decade away in my view.

As things stand now, university graduates are finding entry level roles in preferred fields harder to come across. The trend seems to be toward tighter competition. For those in work, advancement will be harder to attain. 

People with disability have always faced the ‘people like us’ bias. Those in control who do have a disability reflexively prefer ‘people like us’ – and they dominate our organizations. So, if there is the threat of job scarcity, that bias will become more active. Disability Inclusion has been ticking along while the labor market has been okay. But the moment a sense of threat becomes entrenched a ‘survival of the fittest (ableist)’ mentality will be activated to a higher degree than is currently the case.

Regardless of how hard it is for a person with disability to get and keep a job now, it is going to get harder.

What can be done?

Increased competition means developing and maintaining a competitive edge. Enhancing one’s meta-cognitive skills will be critical. This is true regardless of whether one has a disability or not.

Actively working with organizations to ensure asserted commitment to Disability Inclusion is actual rather than rhetorical is essential. HR departments are undergoing significant changes. Some are being depleted and weakened. A backlash against perceived ‘woke’ extremism and identity politics risks making Disability Inclusion more lip service than genuine action. 

Many HR functions can be transferred to AI, with the result that biases against people with disability can be designed in – inadvertently or through intent. 

Advocacy for Disability Inclusion must be active and effective – employing enhanced meta-cognitive skills. Otherwise, the tide that has been flowing toward Disability Inclusion may begin to ebb. 

Conclusion

It’s early days with AI yet. There are a bunch of unknowns. The only reasonable certainty is that AI will continue to evolve and affect our workplaces and will have an impact on recruitment – in terms of levels and preferred capabilities. This means that AI will impact the employment prospects of people with disability.

Talk of developing one’s meta-cognitive skills is unpopular. We have a natural bias against thinking – unless a threat obliges us to adapt our behaviour. AI is a threat. We can calculate the risks AI poses to our employment future and assess our need to adapt. This our personal responsibility. We cannot use the fact we have a disability as a ploy to evade that responsibility.

I recommend keeping an eye on developments and participate in discussions with trusted sources. My regular go to sources are, for the moment, the Neuroleadership Institute (podcasts and website) and whatever free content I can access from the Harvard Business Review (articles and podcasts) as well as other random resources. 

Critically, Disability ERGs must develop a clear approach to engaging with their organizations about AI soon, so there is an established relationship with a mature dialogue that can be communicated back to members.

Many critical observers says that AI is over-hyped. There are good reasons to think so. The danger is that these risks may not be appreciated by decision-makers. So, it is important that you have a clear understanding of the perspective that urge a cautious approach.

CBC’s Ideas has a useful show that was broadcast on 15 April 2026 entitled Literature vs the AI Industry. You can get the podcast on your regular provider or from the show’s website.

The show mentions three books. I have read two and have started on the third. They are:

• The AI Con by Emily Bender (a computational linguist) and Alex Hanna (a sociologists who has worked in the tech industry)
• Empire of AI by Karen Hao (a journalist specializing in AI – described as an ‘AI insider’)  
• More Everything Forever by Adam Becker (a physicist and a journalist)

Please note that I use Amazon hyperlinks for the above books in the interest of inclusion for people with disabilities who rely on ebooks and audiobooks. If you buy 3D books please support your local independent book seller.

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.

Introduction

The fallout from reactions against the extremes of DEI advocacy is forcing a long overdue rethink on DEI roles and values. 

We risk missing the information in all the noise. 

DEI is an outcome not a cause

I was dimly aware of DEI in 2010. I had a strong sense of disability inclusion because that was the field I worked in. I had a strong sense of equity and rights but not that there was a profession created to further them in workplaces. 

Since July 2010 I became aware of my employer (a NSW department) being actively involved in advancing the rights of staff with disability. This was something I fostered when I became lead of the department’s Disability ERG in late 2016. 

The relationship between the department’s leadership, the DEI team and the Disability ERG was the most critical element of the success that was generated. 

The present passions are about DEI losing its way and becoming dominated by political activists whose positions are not representative of all interested parties. 

While I agree that these activists must be held accountable for impolitic extremes, organizations must be held accountable for failing to establish and retain control of DEI practice – on an intellectual, moral and operational level. 

In Australia DEI teams were created in an organization to help it meet its obligations under state and commonwealth legislation.  This reflected a societal change in valuing individuals as employees. They had rights and were entitled to expectations about how they should be treated. But this has never become part of core business – and this is the heart of the problem we now face. 

If we understand DEI as an effect and not a cause, we can go looking for the real cause – an incomplete realization by organizations of their responsibility to ensure that the rights and dignities of staff are protected and fostered. 

Who is responsible?

Historically humans have been seen as disposable components of a rational system of governance or business. They have been replaced by technologies routinely. The recognition of their fully human status began when legislation started to be enacted to address work health and safety and inclusion rights. It has been a struggle that goes back to the beginnings of trade unions – in the early 19^th century in Australia.

The rights movements of the 1960 and 1970s led to anti-discrimination legislation being enacted from the 1980s. Since then, there has been a steady change in how we, as individuals, are valued – in our communities and our workplaces.

A contemporary workplace has clear obligations concerning a staff member’s wellbeing. Those obligations are met to varying degrees. But the extent to which they are met depends on the organization’s leadership culture and the resources made available. 

DEI teams and ERGs have been created as part of a requirement to meet legal obligations. However, even with a sincere sense of goodwill this response has been flawed. It led to the unfortunate assumptions that DEI teams and ERGs knew what they were doing. They didn’t and mostly still don’t. 

DEI and BS

When I quit full-time paid employment in June 2021, I finally had the time to read up on a burning problem. Why was disability inclusion so hard? This blog has been a record of my effort to answer that question. 

I read a bunch of books and listened to a lot of podcasts by people who styled themselves as experts. Some had useful tips and insights. But I came to understand that what I was looking at was an industry built on guesswork and assumption rather than genuine knowledge and insight. 

This was familiar to me. Our natural inclination is to assume we know about other people, so we engage with our best intent. We succeed sometimes and fail other times. We rarely engage with knowledge and skill at a professional level. DEI isn’t seen as an actual profession requiring deep knowledge of psychology and organizational behaviour. It mostly operates on myths and BS about how we learn and how we change our behaviour.  

The upshot is that DEI is wildly erratic in its achievements. Generally speaking, employees tend to be people of goodwill who have a positive response to efforts to foster inclusion. The hard bits arise when there are cultural, structural and individually unconscious impediments to effective inclusion and equity. And efforts to overcome these impediments either fail routinely or are not made at all. 

I have noticed over a decade that the DEI team I once relied on as an effective ally has been steadily depleted of resources because the return on investment hasn’t been seen as warranting its maintenance. Once failure is anticipated there’s nothing stopping perceived ineffectual responses from becoming the norm. And when this happens real talent flees.

Abandoning accountability 

DEI was an appropriate response to the opportunity created by the arrival of legal responsibility – as a first step. The take up by enthusiastic advocates reflected more a moral response than a commitment to effectiveness because, typical of such an opportunity, success with ‘low hanging fruit’ convinces early advocates that more of the same was the way to go. 

This is when, in an ideal world, organizational leaders and DEI practitioners and leaders could have sat down and tried to figure out how to go after the higher fruit. This didn’t happen, of course. 

All this has been over a span of 40 years – which is no time at all in the scheme of things. I am not trying to assign blame here. What happened is normal and to be expected. Accountability is always a problem for us – as individuals and groups – but especially as organizations. There remains an opportunity to uplift DEI as a genuine methodology for responding to the real needs of staff for equity and inclusion – as a professional approach to help an organization meet its responsibilities towards its staff members. 

Beyond the political

A good deal of the problems faced by DEI now arise from the presumption that it is political in essence. It isn’t. It is legal. 

A DEI team that has been created in response to legislation it is a very different thing to one that thinks it has a mission to foster behavioural and cultural change for political reasons. The issue isn’t the merit of the cause, but what the guiding imperative for the team’s activity is. 

I am not saying that DEI should not be political, just that it is an entirely different function relative to meeting an organization’s legal obligation to address discrimination. That legal obligation will also have a moral tone to it as well – a hangover from the political passions that created it. But in so many areas of concern for human welfare we have turned good intent into skilled, knowledge-based, endeavors – but DEI has missed out on this.

I saw in my former employer how this inability to distinguish between the legal and the political led to confusion. It had created 6 ERGs of which only 3 had distinct legal/policy concerns – what I described as ‘problem-solving’.  The other 3 seemed to me to have a focus on ‘celebrating’ diversity. All 6 were treated as the same value to the organization, and the same function. 

I can’t speak for private organizations, but I do not believe that a public sector organization should be engaging in internal political activity under the guise of DEI. This is especially the case with the current passions in identity politics. I have noted previously that this isn’t part of the scope of my writing. My focus is entirely on ‘problem-solving’. Neither am I saying that staff in an organization should be forbidden participation in political activity – just not under any organizational auspice and not whilst on duty. 

There is no automatic entry

I am old enough to have campaigned for the rights now accepted via legislation. The current identity politics passions seem to me to be insisting on acceptance because they seem to be part of DEI. But the case hasn’t yet been won. This is why I come back to the distinction between what is a legal obligation (compliance with legislation) and what is a moral claim expressed through political action. The distinction is critical in the context of the obligations owed by organizations to their staff. 

There may be some delicate matters that must be addressed internally. The one that comes immediately to mind to me is in instances where a person who identifies as having a disability seeks access to adjustments. As an advocate of universal design, I favour universal access to adjustments that are necessary to ensure wellbeing. But I also recognise that this could be a problem area if the claim to disability is entirely self-asserted. 

My sense is that risks associated with such a scenario would be greatly reduced if the organization has a clear sense of the function of its DEI team as being legally based. This is not to say this might be the only basis for a response, but it must be grounded in that responsibility. 

Conclusion

Forty to fifty years ago workplaces were very different – in terms of what a staff member might expect and seek. But they are not so different in terms of attitudes and practices by executives and managers. Of course, there is some difference – it just doesn’t match the difference between what an employee could expect or seek between then and now. 

Organizational leadership is playing catch up still. The demands upon the individuals in these roles have increased to an absurd degree. In fact, in many organizations (private and public), demands on staff members seems to have been growing relentlessly – and this worse for managers and executives. 

Some private sector organizations are talking about dismantling DEI teams. Other organizations are just quietly depleting them – as if they are the problem. It may be true that some have become a problem. But they are not The Problem. 

That is that we don’t have a theory of DEI. We have notions and sentiments but no theory. I have argued in earlier posts that we don’t have a theory of ERGs and this has been disastrous.

Responsibility for DEI (or whatever we end up calling it) lies with organizational leadership, not with enthusiasts driven by sincere passions. It must be plainly seen in the context of an organization’s legal responsibility to its staff before it is anything else. 

It must also be understood as a high skill, high knowledge, function whose practitioners must be specialists. This is a very unpopular message. It means more hard work to upskill and redeployment of staff not suited to the role. 

It is possible to ignore this message and stay with the low skill, low knowledge and high BS that dominates now. But that will lead to a well-merited demise as ineffectuality and confusion persist. The people who really need the kind of help and support intended to be provided by effective DEI will continue to miss out. 

Here’s a final interesting thought. If you don’t know that within your organization there will be staff members who endure actual physical and psychological distress because of the way they are treated, in contravention of clear legal responsibilities, you really don’t understand what DEI is intended to address. 

There are wider conversations to be had about equity and inclusion, but these will be futile and counter-productive if the need for them is misunderstood. The need arises because of our natural psychological reflexes, not moral failings. If we want to achieve our ideals the conversations must be guided by our understanding of our legal accountability, not contention about political and moral beliefs. Taking a political perspective is attractive because it justifies failure, tolerates intellectual laziness and excuses a lack of genuine accountability.

Introduction

Effective advocacy is difficult. It requires subtle skills that few disability inclusion advocates possess. Effective advocacy is about getting enduring positive outcomes for a person with disability, not just getting an audience with a decision maker who may or may not act in response to the case put to them. 

Below I want to reflect on the advocacy challenges that shaped my approach to disability inclusion. 

The no advocacy rule

When I became chair of my department’s disability ERG there were terms of reference that prohibited advocacy on behalf of members who had notified that they were having issues with the department on an inclusion matter. I immediately thought this was an absurd constraint. We couldn’t act in support of our members? 

I changed that. The department had policies and systems in place to address inclusion issues. But if they were not working there was no constraint against identifying them and then working with the department to discover what wasn’t working and fixing it. I worked with the Manager Inclusion & Diversity (M I&D) to identify and implement remedies to a range of policy and system failures. I also spoke with Executive Directors, Deputy Secretaries and the Secretary to address other instances of policy and process failures. I was mostly successful. There was one persistent failure which illustrated the entrenched problem of managers and executives who were not only not empathic but also stubbornly cruel. 

Of parking and toilets

One ERG member with a significant mobility disability reported that the few accessible parking spots available to them were taken up by managers with no disability but a sense of hierarchical entitlement to more convenient parking or by visitors directed to the parking spots by staff who viewed them as fair game for visitors in need of a place to park. 

I spoke with the relevant Executive Director who was not happy about the culture that had developed. I was invited to a subsequent meeting of 3 managers and the Executive Director. I was only a witness. The facts of the matter had been shared in writing. The meeting re-affirmed that accessible parking spots were for staff who needed them – and nobody else. The managers were put on notice that they must ensure the policy remained active. The problem went away. 

But the same staff member had another issue that the subsequent Executive Director had little motive to address. The one accessible toilet was routinely used by staff with no need for its accessible features. It was just closer. People disappeared into it for 20-30 minutes (with their phones). The ERG member was not able to use a normal toilet stall. One day, in desperation, after waiting over 20 minutes, they banged on the accessible toilet door and pleaded for access. The staff member who emerged had no evident disability and they complained to their manager that they had been ‘harassed’ while in the toilet. The ERG member was strongly chastised by their manager for ‘harassment’. 

In this instance the Executive Director declined to take any action, declaring that this was a local matter that could be sorted out within the team. But how?

Rescued from an oppressive management culture

A staff member with a physical disability had been subject to persistent discrimination by their business area’s management team to the extent that significant psychological distress was evident. Approaching the relevant Executive Director was not an option. They had a reputation for being supportive of the management team. An approach was made instead to the then Deputy Secretary with the result that the ERG member was transferred on an interim basis to another division. This was subsequently made a permanent move. 

Working from home

An ERG member with a degenerative disease found it increasingly difficult to work in an air-conditioned office. The work they were doing could be done remotely with no problems, so they asked to be allowed to work from home. Their manager declined the request instantly. 

After I had a conversation with M I&D the decision was reversed subject to review. On the day of the review the ERG member was in hospital. Sick leave had been applied for and approved but, because they had not directly told their manager they would not be able to attend the review meeting the work from home approval was withdrawn with no right to review. After a few ‘back channel’ conversations that determination was overturned and the right to work from home was approved at senior executive level. 

A moral problem gone wrong

An ERG member advised me they were being subject to disciplinary action they thought unjust. I was asked to be a support person. I agreed. Their management team approached me to discuss the situation ahead of a meeting. This was unusual.

The ERG member was seeking redeployment because of a moral concern about their current role. This was a personal issue rather than a genuine moral concern that alleged the department was acting unethically. It wasn’t. 

There was an evident psychological health concern that the department couldn’t ignore and its perceived threat to dismiss the ERG member for non-compliance was problematic. 

I discussed the situation with the ERG member, and they agreed that finding alternative employment might be the best option. Within a few weeks they found a role in a NGO where they stayed for over 5 years. They were able to resign from the department with no adverse record being made. 

Good will and openness made it possible to escalate a situation and find an outcome that satisfied all. 

This was only the second time that I interacted directly with an ERG member’s management team directly and it came about only because they requested it. My chief contribution was to identify a psychological health concern they hadn’t been aware of. I asked only for time to talk with the ERG member about the implications of the position they had taken. 

One day in a week

An ERG member contacted me. They were off work with a serious health condition and as part of their recovery they were working one day a week. For their manager this was an issue because they didn’t have access to the other 4 days a week and they needed those hours. They were talking medical retirement. The ERG member was distressed. 

I spoke with the Deputy Secretary. That one day a week was important for the ERG member’s sense of wellbeing – and it was unlikely to be more than that, given the nature of the condition. The Deputy Secretary spoke with the ERG member who agreed that their role would become part-time thus releasing the 4 days a week to be used. The part-time role would be reviewed regularly and restored to full-time when possible. 

The solution was compassionate. An ERG member with a serious medical condition was able to continue working without the additional stress of the threat of forced medical retirement and the department recovered 4 days a week it could then use. 

The failed advocacy 

An ERG member with a significant sensory disability was persistently subject to discriminatory conduct by their manager and director. This had been going on for years, long before I became ERG lead. Both the Executive Director and Deputy Secretary were unresponsive. The M I&D was unable to make any enduring progress in reducing what seemed to be entrenched and persistent discrimination. 

There was some success, however. Through the influence of a senior executive disability champion the ERG member was able to have their workplace changed as a permanent adjustment. This significantly reduced travel stress and safety risks.

What’s going on?

The stories above are necessarily short and non-specific but they convey two vital themes. One is the persistence of harmful attitudes toward staff with disabilities that tend to be most exhibited in managers – and not addressed by executives. The other is the potential for sensitive and compassionate responses by decision-makers. 

In any workplace community a proportion will lack empathy and even be cruel. Another small proportion will be actively responsive to the needs of colleagues with disabilities. The rest will generally have good will but may not be highly responsive. They won’t engage in intentional acts of discrimination but neither will they go out of their way to challenge discriminatory acts. 

People who behave in cruel and discriminatory ways will continue to do so until obliged to desist – and even then, they may continue in surreptitious ways. And, if these people are in leadership roles, they have the advantage of having a disproportionate level of influence upon senior leaders, plus the ‘in-group’ pass. 

Without an effective advocate a staff member with disability has little chance of ensuring that policies and procedures designed to protect them will work out without effective advocacy. 

In most organizations that advocacy role does not exist. 

I agree that ERGs should never directly engage with a member’s immediate line management. The responsibility for ensuring that it acts consistent with law and policy lies with executives. An ERG has a duty to its members in advising executive leaders that violations of policy and legal responsibility are known, and to support the organization to address the concerns raised. 

This isn’t mimicking a union because an ERG is a partner with an organization in assuring policy and legal compliance concerns are effectively addressed. Unions exist independently from the organization. An ERG is reliant on the organization – it is a part of the organization. Hence its advocacy function is a critical feedback function.

Conclusion

In September 2009 I returned to work after 18 months. I was experiencing residual problems in the aftermath of contracting GBS. Getting back to work was a challenge. My colleagues were fantastic. My team leader and managers not so much. They weren’t intentionally awful. They just didn’t know what to do and chose hard options most of the time. But one manager was so discriminatory and offensive I had to lodge a formal complaint and ask to be assigned to a different team. 

I felt comfortable advocating for myself. I had endured 10 months in hospital. The last 7 months was in a rehab ward so badly run it was at times totally Pythonesque. I survived because I insisted on getting adequate physiotherapy. My future depended upon it – so it wasn’t negotiable. Even so, my hands remain permanently impaired because that was one area I had zero ability to influence. 

Having a disability can be disempowering in hierarchical organizations where there is no active commitment to advocacy for the most vulnerable. Advocacy works well when it is understood as a critical part of a culture of accountability. Senior leaders want to ensure that vulnerable staff are neither abused nor excluded, and they welcome feedback.

Unfortunately, such advocacy isn’t inherently popular. It takes a certain culture to favour it – and that’s far rarer than we should be okay with. 

Effective advocacy is a skilled art because it isn’t adversarial or about assigning blame. It is about helping an organizational culture evolve in line with its most beneficent spirit and intent. 

There’s a saying that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It is true to say that the cost of inclusion, compassion and fairness is the enduring capacity for effective advocacy.

Introduction

This year began with DEI being dumped on with some passion. I tried to formulate a defense over the subsequent months, but I found myself agreeing that DEI was in dire need of being rethought. It just wasn’t professional enough. This applies especially to disability inclusion. 

Disability inclusion has become more of a cultural movement with a focus on identity. That’s not a space I want to play in. I spent a good deal of the year getting clarity on my position. I just don’t share any passion for disability as an identity. I don’t have any issue about those who do, but it is essential that advocacy in the workplace be clearly delineated between those things that are the legal responsibility of an employer and those which are not – and may be subject to negotiation. 

My context is specifically the NSW public sector. This is important because legal responsibility for ensuring staff with disability have their rights honoured will vary from state to state or country to country. 

This distinction between responsibility to uphold rights and any other activity surprised me when I came to realise it. It hadn’t ever been explicitly raised since the time I joined a disability ERG in July 2010. 

There has been a singular level of confusion about the nature and role of a disability ERG – among ERG members and among the leaders of organizations that host them. 

Getting clarity on this has been my biggest achievement of 2025 and I want to reflect on that below. 

The impact of the absence of clarity. 

Legal responsibility for ensuring staff with disability have access, are included and are treated fairly is a novel situation, relatively speaking.  NSW’s Disability Inclusion Act was enacted in 2014, though federal legislation has been around much longer. Organizations have acknowledged their responsibility but not articulated it in a clear and consistent manner. Disability ERGs were created to participate in an organization’s efforts to meet this novel responsibility – and then things became very unclear. How much energy should be put into it?

Failure to make a great deal of progress became the norm. Driving disability inclusion in the workplace wasn’t seen as urgent. It was enough that change was underway. Slow resistance-ridden change became accepted.

Legal responsibility lurked in the background, largely unacknowledged and certainly unspoken. Organizations that are stretched in terms of staffing and resources will not bring the subject up and maybe hope it isn’t mentioned too loudly. Disability ERGs, accustomed to inertia, and generally with no enduring cultural memory, lack clarity on their primary role. 

That role is to engage with their organization to work collaboratively on helping it meet its legal obligations to staff with disability. This must be done respectfully but persistently. 

Disability ERGs may, of course, engage in other activities, but never at the cost of carrying out their primary function. This distinction is critical because it then means that a disability ERG can negotiate for the resources it needs to meet its objectives. Negotiations without clear objectives never succeed. 

It would be nice if an organization had a clear mission about meeting its legal obligations to staff with disability but the messy reality of today’s workplaces is that there are so many other things competing for attention and resources that having the cognitive bandwidth to keep a focus on a theme like disability inclusion is near impossible without allies and confederates. 

It is little wonder that disability as culture and identity has become popular. It looks like progress. It can feel emotionally rewarding and create good feelings. But the hard work of keeping one’s organization attending to its legal obligations gets lost. 

That loss is about memory. In July 2010 our newly formed disability ERG was lavished with attention and resources. The ERG was mandated by our then CEO. He left. The original HR staff who were genuinely enthusiastic supporters moved on. Most of the original ERG members departed in a radical restructuring. By the time I became ERG lead 6 years later I was the only original member left, and there were only 2 people in HR who were at that first meeting.

There was almost nobody to ferry the memories and stories to those who would be needing them.

The power of having goals and a strategy

In June 2023 I was given the opportunity to act as a consultant and coach to my former employer’s ERGs. I had left the department in June 2021. This opportunity stretched over 2 years on a casual basis. It put me in a fascinating position. I had to examine my time as a disability ERG lead to understand why I had been successful. That was quite a journey and took me way longer than I expected. I was good at what I did, but I was also very very lucky. 

My goal was to end the suffering of staff with disability. I talked with members who told me horror stories of discrimination, bullying and abuse. I developed a strategy after hearing Kate Nash’s keynote speech at the 2018 Australian Network on Disability Annual National Conference in Sydney. Kate was founder and CEO of PurpleSpace. My colleagues and friends are fed up with me talking about Kate, but her presentation was my road to Damascus moment – and I won’t downplay how transformative it was.

She introduced me to 2 vital ideas – a methodology that she called Networkology and the truth that disability inclusion was always on. In 2019 the ERG was funded to run a 2-day planning workshop. We knew what we wanted, and we created a plan. It was ambitious, almost wildly so. It was endorsed by the department executive board later that year. 

We had something to aim for, a means of gauging our success or failure and what amounted to a contract with the department. These were critical ingredients in our ability to drive change. Our organization was receptive to our efforts. We had an accountable agreement, and we had to be up to the job. That meant being committed, disciplined and professional. If we were going to dare hold our organization to account, we needed to mirror the behaviour we wanted to see. 

The vital importance of relationships

I quickly learned, as a consultant, that only one of the ERGs had strong relationships with senior leaders. That was the disability ERG. It was as if what the other ERGs did didn’t really concern the organization in any serious way. 

Part of the problem was that ERG leads were elected and mostly came from the lower echelons of the organization’s hierarchy. There are 6 grades below executives – 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10 and 11/12. The 11/12s are usually managers. The 9/10s are senior project or policy staff and may also be team leaders. The lower grades rarely have a high level of autonomy or regular contact with executives. But ERG leads were often 5/6s or 7/8s, sometimes even a 3/4. 

The issue here isn’t about the capability of the leads but their habits and reflexes when comes to interacting with executives – deference was common. 

I was a 9/10 but I had a lot of experience interacting with executives over the years – sometimes positive but often contentious. I also had a substantial background engaging with business and NGO heads. I was completely comfortable developing strong relationships with senior organizational leaders. That made a huge difference in how I went about building alliances. I had no interest in becoming a manager or an executive. I enjoyed ‘hands on’ work. But it meant that I also had to ‘sell’ ideas to decision-makers. So, it matters a great deal who gets to be an ERG lead. An ERG must have a sense of the impact it wants to create and then ensure that people in key roles can deliver. 

My background was unusual. It included contract management and license compliance visits to services and businesses. By the time I became a founding member of the disability ERG I had been restructured into an office-based role after 17 years in frontline field-based roles. 

In a sense I was the right person at the right time. No ERG or organization can rely on luck. It is critical to have a clear strategy about how to position the ERG to be most beneficial to the organization and its staff. There must be no gap between those interests. A disability ERG’s members have rights that an organization is legally obliged to ensure are honoured. The ERG is thus perfectly aligned to meet the needs of both. But it needs the capability to do its job well and the support and engagement of the organization to ensure it benefits from what the ERG does. 

Stripping things down to the bare essentials

The consultancy taught me one critical thing. Nobody had a clear theory of what an ERG is – nor its role. This finally struck me as weirdly irrational. Think about it. A disability ERG is created because its members have unmet needs – to which they are entitled under law.  Neither the ERG nor the organization sees this as a reason to collaborate in a disciplined, strategic and skilled way to address those needs. 

The ERG brings a unique perspective – lived experience of inaccessibility, discrimination, unfairness, bias, bullying and so on. It can also report on what works and what does not, and identify choke points – systems, processes, policies, cultures or individuals. 

That should be gold to an organization seeking to meet its obligations. 

The ERG must be represented by confident, insightful, mature people who have a high level of credibility within the organization, and amongst its members. 

Nothing above is obscure, esoteric or weird. Yet it is rarely found. This is because it is rarely sought – by the ERG or the organization. 

In the NSW public sector, the reason for this is that thinking about ERGs ended quite quickly after an initial flurry of seemingly sensible guidelines were created. The key idea seemed to be that an ERG is a staff association – like a social club – not a critical collaborator in assisting an agency to meet its legal and moral obligations.

The consultancy taught me the importance of reviewing habituated behaviour and thought – of going back to basics and challenging foundational assumptions. I think I got more benefit from the experience than those who paid me. 

There’s an understandable resistance to learning. We innately avoid cognitive effort unless we feel under threat. Jobs are often about maintaining rather than chucking out all your assumptions and rethinking what you thought you knew. I have done that over the past few years because I had to so I could deliver the service I had been engaged to provide to the standard I demand of myself. The receptive got that benefit.

Conclusion

I have been reading on organizational behaviour, management and leadership theories since 1987 – not in any structured way. I just wanted to try to understand why managers and executives behave the way they do. I have Masters and Masters Honors degrees in Social Ecology.

I acknowledge that my curiosity isn’t shared by all ERG leads. I am not trying to pressure anybody into nerdy behaviour. But there’s a simple compelling truth that is unavoidable. It is that a disability ERG can be a vehicle for collaborating in bringing about vital change that will end the suffering of its members. Or it can be a ‘feel good social club’. 

I say ‘suffering’ intentionally and with no hint of dramatic inflation. Some readers will know instantly what I mean. Others may not. In 2019 I took 6 disability ERG members to a presentation before our organization’s board. They were chosen because they had ‘horror stories’ to tell. They told of discrimination, abuse and harassment that should not be real in a contemporary human services organization. The board was stunned. It didn’t know. That event set in train actions that are still echoing through the organization. 

There have been remarkable changes for the better in that time. But there are still cruelties being perpetrated. This is the nature of who we are – as individuals and in organizations. 

One day we may get to the stage when nobody is being abused, and everyone is held to account – by themselves and the culture they work in.

But you have to have a passion for that. What’s yours?

Personal accountability has been the persistent theme in management and leadership texts over the past decade or so, but until that translates to an organization’s cultural value backed by action it will stay a good idea that somebody else should make real.

A disability ERG, living up to its potential can contribute to bringing that reality about. 

For 2026 I hope the smoke and dust from the assaults on DEI settle and we understand that business as usual is not an option. Strong change is needed – informed by clear thinking and data and inspired by some inspirational and insightful thinking. Be a part of that.

Introduction

I seethed through the CBC’s 2025 Massey Lectures. They were on human rights. The speaker talked about the “promise” of human rights. But it’s not a promise.  The lectures are a stark and sobering reminder of the degree to which the hoped for uptake of human rights has failed to match that hope and intent. But is this about ‘broken promises’ or unrealized potential?

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, are huge steps forward for all of us. But they are not magical incantations. They are sets of values that can be used to guide our conduct toward others – if we commit to them. 

Many of us do so to a large degree because we are innately disposed to be kind. But it is unlikely we can recite either body of rights. We all know they are there, but they are not central to our thinking.

Our governments may act to confirm that these rights are endorsed on behalf of the nation. But acts of ratification do not ‘trickle down’ to individuals as guidance for conduct. 

We like to talk about what we have a right to when it serves us to do so. But it’s not like the UDHR is taught in schools to ensure it is the foundation of our civil culture. We use the term ‘rights’ in our everyday language, thanks to the UDHR, but it’s mostly in a self-serving sense. Way back in circa 1992 I walked into my workplace’s staff room. Somebody had put up a poster asking for support for a campaign to assert the rights of children to have pocket money paid from the public purse. I tore it down. Nobody complained. Neither was there any discussion about whether such a right might be granted. It was simply asserted – as if that was sufficient to make it real.

The existence of a statement of rights is an invaluable foundation, but what exactly is my responsibility in relation to it? 

As a person with a disability that places me in need of adjustments and accommodations I feel somewhat supported by the knowledge that I have rights that are asserted on my behalf and framed in legislation and policy. But how does that work for me? 

Below I want to reflect on how realistic it is to expect that a declared right has any actual value, and what we can do to strengthen it. 

The limits of influence

When I was with my former employer- a NSW government department – I signed a Code of Conduct. In one sense it was a contract. But in 19.5 years I never came across an instance of any one being held to account for breaches of the code, despite numerous instances of misconduct being known. The Code of Conduct was essentially an undertaking to honour the rights of fellow staff members and community members as well as responsibilities to the government as a public sector employee. The government has put a lot of effort into developing a model Code of Conduct as a document. But very little is done to promote it as a guide to conduct. For example, the NSW government has an annual survey of its public sector employees – the People Matter Employee Survey (PMES). It nowhere mentions the Code of Conduct. 

The whole sector data on the 2025 PMES is instructive. A key metric is “Action on survey results”. The rating is 35%, the lowest across the 22 key topics surveyed. The point of the survey is to identify areas where staff see a need for improvement. That’s not an encouraging response. But 81% staff rate ‘Ethics and Values’ positively. This is the highest score of the 22 key topics.

There are ways of interpreting these results. I will suggest one way in the context of my argument. A score of 81% looks impressive, but that’s 19%, nearly one in 5, who aren’t impressed – and they are more likely to be the more thoughtful and discerning staff members – to whom ethics and values matter a lot. And the fact that 65% don’t rate the chances of anything changing because of the survey is compelling.

My point is that when a sophisticated contemporary workforce in an ‘advanced’ country is this sceptical about whether fundamental values, rights and dignities are honoured, I’d say we have a problem. Despite all the principles and ideals espoused, despite ratification of UN generated rights statements, despite legislation and policy affirming a commitment to ensuring essential rights are honoured these scores tell us something isn’t working.

This isn’t a criticism of the NSW public sector. It isn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, it is doing a lot of things right. This reflects human nature. There are innate limits to how we behave without very specific actions to modify our behaviour. This is a way more complex situation than we generally appreciate. We want to do better, but we make a mess of making that happen.

We are naturally inclusive and exclusive

The thing about asserted rights is that they contradict some of our instincts and affirm others. It has been acutely observed that we are functioning with Stone Age minds while living in the Space Age. We are still unconsciously obedient to reflexes and instincts that are perfectly suited to a tribal setting. But they cause problems in large, complex and pluralistic community environments. We are not aware that we are unconsciously including some folk while, equally unconsciously, excluding others – all based on baked-in biases – and not the perfectly good reasons we tell ourselves.

We have a natural psychological capacity to be personally concerned about the welfare of around 150 people. That’s about the ideal size of a tribe. Beyond that we just don’t have the emotional or cognitive capacity. This isn’t a new problem. The Christian Bible’s The Parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates how old it is. The simple fact that it is a famous parable should remind us that we have an innate capacity to ignore those in need, or who have their rights violated.

Psychologists talk about in-groups and out-groups. We all have them. We privilege, and are biased toward, our in-group members. In extremis we can be quite cruel toward out-group members. There’s plenty of useful content on the internet about this idea. Here’s something from Psychology Today.

The point of the Good Samaritan story is that we must make a conscious effort to care for out-group members. The fact that they have rights declared in their favour, with which we agree (in principle), isn’t sufficient to overcome our adverse biases. We deal with this, in part, by not actively engaging with ideas that bring this tension between principles and biases to mind.

In the same way that a Code of Conduct should be the guiding principles that influence our conduct at work – but isn’t – declarations of human and disability rights should also be guiding principles – but aren’t. Neither Codes of Conduct nor declared rights are intentionally employed as guides for conduct at work, save, maybe, in a scant few instances. We do not teach the UN’s declarations on human or disability rights in schools – an unfortunate oversight, given the way our communities are evolving. Unless, of course, the omission is intentional, albeit unspoken, because actively promoting rights would cause cognitive stress and upset our comfortable habit of over-estimating how good we are at just about everything we do. That’s a handy conceit in a tribal setting because it means there’s always somebody willing to try to take down a mastodon. A dead mastodon is always worth a few dead heroes.

There is a naïve belief that the mere assertion of rights imparts ethical forces that are transmitted by some mysterious process of moral osmosis into our minds where they take up residence. They are expected to then radiate into the world and shape how we act. But if we are morally insufficient that radiation is blocked. The remedy is to repeat the attempted transmission. 

This may seem an unkind characterisation of a noble hope. But it is intended to demonstrate that the mere presence of a noble thought isn’t sufficient to transform our consciousness or conduct. We are better off seeing acknowledgement of a right as a good seed that we can nurture into a behaviour. But that act of nurturing can’t be an unconscious performance. It must be deliberate and conscious. We have no choice, if we want to honour rights, but to do so consciously and intentionally.

Rights on demand?

On the Australian Disability Pride website there’s a passage about “demanding inclusion”. This adds another dimension to our understanding of rights. Can we demand them? Maybe, if they are enshrined in legislation and an organization has a clear duty to affirm and protect those rights.

But individual citizens are a different matter. We are under obligation to respect the law, but do we want to live in a culture where we might be prosecuted or sued because we are perceived to have violated a human or disability right?

This is an interesting dilemma. Do we enforce honouring rights we collectively agree on? Even though our governments may ratify rights assertions do we have the right, as individuals, to dissent? Do we have a right to simply not honour a right because a person is a member of one of our-groups? There a clue in the language used in the UDHR.

In preamble to the UDHR we can read the following – The General Assembly, “Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.”

In Article 1 we find “…should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” In Article 2 we find “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms…” 

There is no basis for demanding inclusion or anything else. The rights are a standard to which we should strive.

Conclusion

I am a member of my local council’s Access Reference Group. I am constantly impressed by the council’s commitment to disability inclusion. I am reminded that while that commitment is unyielding the means to respond to need isn’t sufficient to meet all the access needs. That just isn’t going to happen quickly, or even in the foreseeable future. It is an ongoing commitment that requires considerable effort to assess needs, identify priorities, plan, obtain funds and execute projects. That it’s happening at all is good. It is the best we can expect – and I am grateful.

A right is a stated principle. It is not a magical incantation. It is something we value as an ideal and then aspire to realize, through willed purposeful actions. To get from where we are now to where we want to go will take shared intentional effort in building our own self-awareness about how and why we include or exclude, and act kindly or coldly. Can we bring ourselves to be Good Samaritans all the time?

I will close with a quote from a friend who has been subject to violation of his rights more frequently than should be tolerable. They wrote, “A belief or practice in standing up for one’s rights, or for the rights of community, the public, comes at a cost. Such actions can lead to being viewed as a threat, a risk, particularly by those in management who do not have that same personal or professional values.”

This is the perspective of a public sector employee. This raises the question about whether they work in a rights honouring culture – and if not, what went wrong?

There is little point in celebrating declarations of rights if we do not affirm them in demonstrable ways in our home, in our workplaces and in our relationships. Violation of rights is routine within our spheres of influence. But how often do we take a stand? How hard are we prepared to work to overcome our inherited reflexes and biases?

Rights are not a “promise”. They are a hope that we must work at to make real.