Category: Uncategorized

Introduction
I have been recently looking at some NSW government programs and policies and was dismayed to see affirmations of zero tolerance of unkind and exclusive conduct expressed in a passive sentimental tone with vague, emotionally remote affirmations of what will be done.

These were written and approved by people engaging in an intellectual exercise calculated to win approval for saying a good thing. It’s good to disapprove of bullying, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and the exclusion of people with disabilities etc.

The sentiment is genuine in its general orientation and people are responding in various ways – sometimes with a passion – but often weakly and ineffectually.

I have had a few recent conversations with people who think I am being too harsh in my assessment. But I am not criticizing a moral failure, rather a cultural one and this is of vital importance because I argue that the next stage in our efforts to secure Disability Inclusion is a transition from the familiar social model to a novel cultural model.

The social model of disability has required the building of physical and system infrastructures. This is an ongoing action area. I have been a member of my local government’s Access Reference Group since July 2021 and have been impressed by the council’s commitment to Disability Inclusion. I have also discovered how much work is to be done to make our LGA more inclusive and accessible and the cost of getting it done. I am grateful that I live in a community in a nation where this matters enough to put real money and effort into making things happen.

A shift to a cultural model will require an investment in a different kind of infrastructure – a psychological one. This is also pertinent to a wide range of trends in our communities and organizations. Fortunately, there’s a lot of well-funded research being done. But we are largely lagging behind on the job of implementing the fruits of this research.

The situation is complex and the work to be done is challenging. We are making progress, but we would make more if we didn’t under-estimate the level of complexity and difficulty we face.

Below I want to explore some key themes.

Why is it so complex and difficult?
In sum, it’s because we are a bunch of humans trying to do stuff we haven’t done before. Complex, diverse, pluralistic and inclusive communities are novel. They are an evolutionary novelty thanks to the strength of humanist values that influence our culture for a few centuries. They are aspirational, and an aspiration.

We are still guided by psychological and neurological reflexes that were developed a very long time ago – and which suited us well to ways we lived tens of millennia ago. So, we have a tension between reflex and aspiration.

We have a reflex to be inclusive toward members of our in-group, and now we are expected to be inclusive of everyone. That’s an aspiration, and it’s hard to do without intentional effort.

We have a bias toward people who are like us or with whom we identify, and now we are expected not to be biased when we make decisions. That’s an aspiration, and it’s very hard to do without intentional effort.

The humanist values we have adopted put a burden of responsibility upon us. We must change our reflexive habits of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors so that we make those values a living reality in our communities and organizations.

To make such changes we must exert significant cognitive effort. Here’s a paradox of sorts. We are innately averse to cognitive effort – unless it is in response to a threat. We prefer an easy life. We are hardwired for it. Our brains are suited to minimal cognitive effort. This explains why, for 10s, even 100s of millennia, humans didn’t do an awful of ‘progressing’.

The ‘paradox’ is that now we benefit from the minority who not only don’t see cognitive effort as a threat response but positively get off on such effort. Next time you pick up your smart phone give thanks to them and capitalism – which brings the fruits of their strange behavior to all of us – and which makes exerting cognitive effort even less necessary.

But the cognitive downside is that we have now hit a point where our reflexive behaviors and the humanist values we have come to treasure have come to a tipping-point.

We need to transition into a different reflex mode if we want to continue to benefit from modes of belief, attitude and behaviour that guide the good things about our civilization.

Okay, so I have just identified a ‘threat’. Why so? Anti-woke sentiments that have been stirred up, increasingly on a global scale, expose a serious weakness in ‘progressive’ politics. This is a reliance on sentiment and moral argument which renders advocates for ‘wokeism’ inarticulate when defending their position against frustrated opponents who have been rehearsing and refining their counterargument for decades.

It is cognitively and emotionally easier to advocate from an emotional and moral position. That way you get the status you desire and the job you want. But it also entrenches failure to achieve compelling changes and leaves us with a trickle of successes – because doing better than that is impossible because we are facing a moral brick wall of denial.

The alternative is to ‘call a spade a spade’ in clear no BS terms that remain civil, respectful and professional. But this triggers a real problem for Disability Inclusion advocates and activists. It is generated by the power imbalance in organizations and communities, and the absence of a culture of genuine accountability at the top of many organizations and governments.

Saying you don’t tolerate discrimination or unkindness is like reciting a magical incantation with no actual magical powers. You can recite all you like – but in the end you must make the change yourself if you really mean what you say.

Change is hard
Organizational change so hard there are books on the subject, and admissions that most organizational change initiatives fail. My beef with Disability Inclusion efforts in organizations is that organizations and Disability ERGs imagine they can do what highly paid consultants and academic experts routinely fail to do – and with no particular insights or skills.

We don’t like change at the best of times, unless it promises less cognitive effort and more pleasure or reward. Not all desired changes are easy – especially aspirational ones. This is why we don’t talk about New Year’s resolutions anymore. This why, if we are serious about an aspirational change, we will seek out coaches or mentors or communities of like-minded devotees. We understand that these changes must demand our attention, and hence our cognitive and emotional effort.

There still must be a recognizable sense of threat to focus our attention and effort. The rights campaigns of the 1960s were responding to powerful sense of threat – the denial of equal rights. The outcome was a range of laws and policies upon which we now rely. But that was at least 56 years ago. The rights are secured (though some have been eroded), but the freedom and support to realise them has not been won by everyone. A right must be honoured and protected in deed, not just in word.

Conclusion
For very good and understandable reasons we are locked into beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that innately resist our efforts to transform good intentions into aspirational and beneficial actions.

There’s a reason why governments continue to spew passive avowals of intolerance for what is actually tolerated pretty well and make declarations of accountability for behaviors that are never held to account.

It isn’t a moral failing in the sense of supporting what is actually wrong so much as a failing in not staying up to date with what we really do know about behaviour in organizations and communities. We know why discrimination and bias occur. And we do know what to do in response.

And yet those paid by the public purse appear to believe that they have no duty to engage in greater intellectual effort and explore what contemporary science and philosophy can add to strengthening their assertions that they are honouring shared values and bringing about conforming changes.

This is a quote from a very current anti-racism post from the NSW government:
We all have a role to play in eradicating racism in our workplaces and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment. Everyone should have the resources and confidence to report instances of racism if they witness it and support colleagues who might experience it.

Pay attention to the language – disengaged, remote and passive:
• We all have a role – not play a role
• should have the resources – not must have
• if they witness – not when they witness
• who might experience – not who do experience.

Let me revise this a little:
We all play a role in eradicating racism in our workplaces and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment. Everyone will have the resources and confidence to report instances of racism when they witness it and support colleagues who experience it. See the difference?

My point is that here is a government website promoting anti-racism while undermining it in the same breath. This the most recent example of a mindset that has been undermining Disability Inclusion for years.

This kind of pretend caring is everywhere. It explains why changes haven’t moved at the pace desired. Governments serve their own interests (which is to look like they give a damn) and ‘advocates’ and ‘activists’ routinely fail to move the dial.

It isn’t that we don’t care, just that we don’t know how to do so in a genuinely effective way – and some want the status of being an advocate or an activist without bothering to put the effort into being good at the role.

Finally, I will rework that paragraph just a little more:
We all play a role in eradicating discrimination against staff with disabilities in our workplaces and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment. Everyone will have the resources and confidence to report instances of discrimination against staff with disabilities when they witness it and support colleagues who experience it. We have clear and accountable strategies and actions that will ensure that this happens.

You do deserve to understand why ‘Caring is more than saying that you do.’ Please do think deeply about this – and then do something.

Introduction
In answer to the title question, I think not – as we now understand them – and this may not be a bad thing. But that’s not to say that transitioning to a new way of advancing inclusion will be easy – or even doable.

I have recently had some despairing conversations with some ERG leads who are at the end of their terms or who are considering quitting. They do not paint a pretty picture. I hope this is only a local phenomenon, but, looking at trends and comments, I fear not.

Organizations are withdrawing support from ERGs – mostly for justifiable reasons, to be fair – but also for misguided motives. This is part of what I see as a general confusion that I first encountered back in June 2023 when I accepted a consultancy role with my former employer, mentoring its ERG leads. That was a disappointing and frustrating experience stretched over 2 years. The consultancy ended in June 2025. I was unaware of how bad the situation was – far worse than those who engaged me realized. I had to do a heap of research in a hurry and completely rethink how I could help.

Twelve months later and things are worse – but not for only bad reasons. By that I mean I think we are going through a necessary evolutionary crisis in thinking and behaving. My fear is that staff with disabilities who need effective and skilled advocacy will be ‘collateral damage’ in a larger philosophical and political shakeout.

Below I want to think through my reaction to the conversations I have been having.

Maybe ERGs just aren’t the right tool for the job?
Withdrawal of organizational support from ERGs reflects an inability of ERGs to make a compelling case for the support they say they need. When I began my consultancy the first thing I asked for was an ‘elevator pitch’ business case. Tell me in a minute why your ERG should be supported in the way you want. But there was neither clarity nor passion in answer that challenge. In fact, no ERG could answer without prompting and support – and even then, what I heard was hardly encouraging.

ERGs were seen as a good idea by everyone – the ERG leaders, the DEI team and the organization’s executive. But they weren’t talking to each other. There was no shared vision, no agreed passion or mission. When I asked what was the worst thing that would happen if an ERG ceased to exist the responses weren’t electrifying – not much, really. And this was despite the reality that members of some of the ERGs were experiencing real discrimination, disadvantage and harm.

For example, the NSW government has found it necessary to run an anti-racism campaign in the public sector. Why is this necessary in well-paid sophisticated organizations that deliver human services? How has this become an issue in organizations that have executive leaders aware of what is going on beneath them, DEI teams and ERGs? Why fund DEI teams or ERGs if you need to run an anti-racism campaign?

I still hear stories of discrimination and abuse that shouldn’t be happening. And the ERGs seem incapable of mounting an effective defence of their members in dire straits at work. Let me put this into perspective.

When I became lead of my Disability ERG in November 2016, I felt obliged, finally, to read its terms of reference – which were imposed, not negotiated. Once rule was that the ERG was not to engage in advocacy for individual members. Well, that was bullshit. What was the point of an ERG if it was rendered powerless to respond to a member’s plea for help against abusive and discriminatory conduct from managers or other staff?

I fully understood that there should be an injunction against direct intervention. But the fact of a plea for help demonstrated that whatever systems or processes were in place weren’t working. I could initiate inquiry into system/process failure. It wasn’t the ERG’s job to directly police individual inappropriate conduct, but we could red-flag it and demand it be addressed.

That approach takes a bit of canny, a lot of political nous and considerable determination. I got very good results. So, the first context for consideration is the capability of the ERG lead – and here we tear open a complex tangled can of worms. Below I identify the major worms we need to look at:
• What is the function of an ERG?
• What skills/capabilities are needed to ensure that that function can be realised – the ERGs leaders, the DEI team and the organization’s executive?

What is the function of an ERG?
ERGs presumably have a function everyone agrees on. Not actually. This was one thing that struck me about my consultancy. Neither the DEI team, which supported the establishment of ERGs on behalf of the organization, nor the ERGs had a defined and agreed idea of the ERG’s function beyond the vaguest terms – support, promote, facilitate – you know this foggy language that has no action-rooted foundation.

I was successful as a Disability ERG lead because I had three clear missions:

1. Change systems, processes and behaviours to eliminate systemic discrimination.
2. Address individual suffering by staff with disability subject to discrimination and abuse because of their disability.
3. Influence the organization’s culture to make it more inclusive.
   I met those mission intents – not as ‘job done’, but as ‘job started and underway’.

I have since refined my sense of the ERG’s function to be one of Collaborating, as a subject matter expert, with an organization to help it meet its legal responsibilities to staff with disabilities. That is intentionally a narrow definition. There is nothing political or social in it. If an organization wants to expand its definition, I have no objection. I would like to the additional of a ‘moral responsibility’, but that is subject to argument that could be fairly called political. I just want to define a minimal function rooted in law.

What are the skills/capabilities needed to achieve this?
Let’s start at the top. An organization’s executive must have a clear intellectual framework that incorporates a realistic grasp of the social/cultural environment, its legal and moral responsibilities and the practicalities of organizational governance and management to ensure its obligations are met.

It can’t/shouldn’t farm out that critical intelligence to people who are not qualified to provide advice and guide actions.

DEI teams are comprised of well-intentioned people, many of whom have a passion for equity and inclusion. But it’s rare to encounter a member of such a team who has a strong intellectual understanding – insight into organizational, social, group or individual psychology for example. Most have political and sentimental connections to the ideals and values – but on a professional level, they are frequently clueless, and sometimes obstructive of any effort to stimulate change. Being in a DEI team might be just where you landed to earn a wage and pay your mortgage. It doesn’t mean you are a devotee to the cause, even if you are genuinely in sympathy with it.

ERG leads are a mixed bunch. In some sensible organizations they are selected via a competitive recruitment process, because the roles are esteemed. But they are often a matter of membership vote. This has to be the most stupid form of leadership selection for this kind of organization.

An ERG whose details I won’t divulge held an election for a lead. It had over 200 members. There were no selection criteria or capabilities for candidates to meet. There were just pitches from self-identified candidates. There were 16 votes cast and the margin between the candidate who won, and a disastrous choice was a single vote. Not even political parties are that reckless in candidate selection – and we all know how that turns out.

The ERG leadership choice is critical. I was a founding member of a Disability ERG in 2010. Our inaugural Chair was a regional manager who was a wheelchair user. He was appointed. He had strong effective relationships with the organization’s executive. The Chair role seemed to be just about chairing meetings. That’s what we saw, and he did a great job. But he was followed by two Chairs with low organizational standing and little relevant leadership experience. They were elected by ‘popular’ vote. I stood in both elections and was rewarded with the ‘do nothing’ role of Deputy Chair at my second attempt. I got to be Chair because the incumbent departed to another department during a restructure.

What we didn’t see, in our inaugural Chair’s role, were all the ‘behind the scenes’ conversations he had with executives with whom he had already an established relationship. There was influence there that we didn’t see. I had a chat with him one morning about how he saw his role, because I was curious. The two Chairs who followed him had no such influence and the ERG’s influence significantly waned. We had less attention and fewer resources. The standing and the competence of the lead mattered. It took me maybe 18 months as ERG lead to fully understand this.

So, my point here is that Disability Inclusion is a matter of legal responsibility in the first instance, whether this about anti-discrimination law or work health and safety. In the second instance it is about competent roll out of policy. In the third instance it’s about effective delivery of subject matter expertise and advocacy. But none of this could happen without effective leadership – within the ERG, the DEI team or the organization’s executive. I was blessed with having the latter two, which allowed my own capabilities to shine.

This isn’t about armed camps in conflict, but about aligned and mutually dependent interest groups collaborating in common cause. But how often do you see that?

The ERG isn’t fit for purpose anymore
ERGs are modelled on a voluntary staff association notion in Australia. That was a well-intentioned but hopelessly naïve thought. It may have got things moving, but the idea didn’t evolve beyond that naïve initiation in so many instances.

Many of the early unanswered questions about how effective ERGs are have been answered – not perfectly, but sufficiently, so as we need to now ask different questions. What I see in the NSW public sector is a disengagement with the real challenges and a continual regurgitation of calmative platitudes. There is an absence of critical engagement with the notion of Disability Inclusion and ERGs as a vehicle for driving genuine change in the interests of staff with disability whose inclusion and safety needs have not been met.

I now understand that when a government talks about ERGs being ‘employee led’ it means a performative and decorative role, not empowerment to demand or drive changes. I missed that memo.

My time as Disability ERG lead triggered a series of changes that eliminated many system and process impediments. We were able to change the culture and raise the profile of Disability Inclusion – a theme taken up enthusiastically by many staff. What is left to be tackled in terms of systems and processes? I don’t know, but I do believe that people of goodwill are continuing to work through the wish list. But there isn’t a clear shared picture of what legal duty and moral duty demand. Not in the organization, not in HR, and not in the ERGs.

Why hasn’t this picture been crafted in a collaborative and consultative manner between the people whose interests are served and those who have the decision-making powers and a duty-of-care responsibilities? The answers I got tended to be about lack of time and opportunity. You can make both if you have a passion and determination – and a sense of responsibility.

An early question I asked in my consultancy was, “Why support this ERG?” Beyond the answer, “It is a good thing to do.” I wasn’t convinced by what I heard. That’s not a business case. Asking for support for ERGs should require a business case that is clear, credible and compelling. My background gives me a strong bias toward problem solving. How do we end suffering, which is very real?

What I found was that a lot of ERGs wanted to focus on ‘celebrating diversity’. They weren’t able to identify a problem to be solved other than that they didn’t have time to organise the ‘celebrations’ and do the administration needed to maintain the ERG. I was surprised and dismayed by the ERG leads who wanted their role to be fulltime. What was happening in the internal conversation? Were there no problems – inequities or injustices – to be addressed?

Celebrating diversity and inclusion is good to do, but does this merit an expectation of fulltime role as ERG lead?

To put this desire into perspective it is worthwhile getting a brief history lesson. In early 2018 I was restructured out of my role and was offered a role in another division whose Deputy Secretary was the Executive Disability ERG champion at the time. I was facilitated in my Chair role through being given remarkable liberty to do that role in paid time – because I was delivering results. Following another restructure, I was invited to move to another division and became a member of a team whose Executive Director was the Disability ERG’s new Executive Champion. I then had a role where I continued to have the liberty to devote a lot of time as Disability ERG lead as well as work on two areas that related to internal disability matters that impacted staff with disability in very significant ways. I got these opportunities because I was delivering results.

Three months after I left my ERG Chair role my successor was offered the change to go fulltime as Disability ERG Chair and take up other related roles. This was an interesting experiment and commitment – and it was the foundation of the myth that one could become a fulltime ERG lead. This was attractive to the leads at the time – but never realistic – and why that was the case was never explained to them.

I tell this story because it illustrated the utter paucity of understanding and communication among critical parties. This isn’t a criticism so much as an observation about how an organization can so utterly fail at internal communication, shared vision and agreed action on a matter all parties ostensibly agree is important.

But the key observation here must be that if an ERG isn’t delivering anticipated benefits to the organization or its members, perhaps it is no longer fit for purpose? During my consultancy I found that the ERGs who saw themselves as ‘problem solvers’ were keen to talk with me. Those who saw their function as primarily celebratory were not.

A key insight for me was an observation made by an acting DEI manager during my consultancy. They observed, in response to a report I had submitted, that maybe ERG shouldn’t be understood as an Employee Resource Group but as an Employee Reference Group. I had to look up the meaning of ‘reference group’. I am amazed how often I am unaware of great ideas, and I am grateful for the education. I am now a member of an Access Reference Group run by my very inclusive local government (have been so since July 2021 but changing our name to a ‘reference group’ didn’t happen until early 2026).

This is from australia.icomos.org:
Reference Groups
Generally, we use the term ‘Reference Group’ to refer to a group of eminent professionals with expertise in a given area that can be called on for opinions or advice on issues that arise from time to time. As a general rule, we divide these small, ad hoc subcommittees of members into Reference Groups – these are intended to include a core group of members, with specialist skills in a particular area, who are available and willing to provide advise or opinions to the Executive Committee. Reference Groups are ongoing, although membership will be refreshed at least every three years through a call for Expressions of Interest from members. Members will be selected based on demonstrated expertise and experience.

In contrast this discussion of ERGs from Wikipedia is quite a contrast:
Employee resource groups (also known as ERGs, affinity groups, business network groups, or business resource groups[1]) are groups of employees who join in their workplace based on shared characteristics or life experiences.[2] ERGs are generally based on providing support, enhancing career development, and contributing to personal development in the work environment. In the past, ERGs have traditionally been focused on personality traits or characteristics for underrepresented groups, for example women, sexual orientation, gender, etc. With the resurgence of ERGs in the workplace, ERGs are expanding to “interest-based” groups gathered around particular activities. Some of these include job responsibility, environmental advocacy, community service and volunteerism, and workplace wellness. Further, as an emerging facet of human resources and employee engagement in the business world, the existence of ERGs is important for reference and understanding in the world of business. Exploring the topic of employee resource groups can provide insightful information for business employees and young professionals seeking to understand a new business.

The key distinction is between subject matter expertise and personal ‘diversity’ attributes as primary distinguishing features of group membership. This has become especially pertinent in Disability Inclusion for two important reasons.

Identifying as a person with disability isn’t the point
As the appeal of identity politics grows, the relationship between identity and disadvantage becomes crucial. The success of the social model of disability has led to there being fewer and fewer physical, systemic or procedural impediments to inclusion in workplaces and the community in general in Australia for people with disabilities. In no way is the job done though.

Yes, a person in a wheelchair may indisputably have a disability but how is that necessarily relevant in a workplace which has addressed wheelchair accessibility? One of my former colleagues has bi-lateral lower limb prosthetics but how is his work performance impacted? I am not asserting an answer to either question. I am making the point about asking the question. A disability must be relevant to one’s ability to perform in a job for it to be pertinent to the theme of Disability Inclusion in a workplace – which is what this blog is about.

Being tone deaf or having no sense of taste are both legitimate disabilities. But unless you work as a singer or a chef, they are unlikely to impact your capacity to work or require accommodations or adjustments. I have been seeing a trend toward disability identity being a stronger attribute for leadership of a Disability ERG than any experience of the need for workplace accommodations or adjustments. I am also seeing a trend toward people who identify as having a disability using that identity to assert a capacity to act as an inclusion advocate. In a broader social sense, I have no issue with that. But in the context of workplaces where the issue is the need for workplace accommodations or adjustments this identity just isn’t sufficient. Hence the reference/resource distinction becomes vital.

I have mobility and grip disabilities that impact my ability to be included in ways a wheelchair user might not appreciate. Disabilities are neither uniform nor determinative in a work context. When I became a Disability ERG lead, I was mercilessly schooled by the blind and deaf members who rightly understood I was clueless about their needs.

Being a person with a disability doesn’t mean you experience exclusion because of your disability in every instance of life experience. Neither does it mean you automatically have the slightest clue about the exclusion realities and inclusion needs of your colleagues. And arguments about exclusion in a workplace because of having a disability are way more subtle than we appreciate.

For example, I know quite a few people with disabilities who are disliked because of their reaction to the discrimination they experience rather than anything directly about their disability. I am firmly on the side of those who are cranky because of what they have had to put up with. But, if you want to be an effective Disability Inclusion advocate or activist, the extent to which you can be effective is linked to your ability to rise above your personal feelings. Stay cranky, just use it to energise your passion, not shape it.

I recently was asked to react to a document put out by a group that wanted to create shared safe spaces for staff with disability to come together to talk about career development (and other things – to be fair). I had no issue at all with the idea. But I had a huge concern about it taking over an area that was focused on concern for workplace accommodations or adjustments – as if that was all a done deal. In a way this might have been fair enough, because a lot of those concerns have been addressed. But what remains substantially unresolved are entrenched biased and discriminatory attitudes toward staff with disabilities who don’t have the power or means to defend their rights or interests.

So, what people who have disabilities that don’t require workplace accommodations or adjustments don’t understand is that those who have those needs remain subject to discrimination and abuse. This is because changing policies, systems and procedures does not change attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.

We live in communities and cultures that have genuine goodwill and changes in legislation and policies have led to organizational behaviours which foster more inclusive behaviour. There’s a social evolutionary trend towards more inclusive and kinder behaviour, notwithstanding the current glitch. But this doesn’t mean that the job of Disability Inclusion advocacy is done.

Why intentional cultural evolution is the next big thing
One thing law enforcement tells us is that there’s a gap between what the law says and how people behave. Even most law-abiding communities have a minority of egregious offenders who persist in causing strife and harm.

We are, as individuals, tolerant of a certain amount of behaviour that offends us. In organizations this is reflected in the way we allow behaviours that would be individually morally offensive to us to pass without reaction or open comment. We would not behave that way…but.

One of the biggest problems organizations have is accountability. If you start demanding it, you will be subject to the same standard. And it can seem like disloyalty to hold a member of your own ‘in group’ accountable – and a threat, because they can do the same to you. This is a real problem in management and executive in-groups in organizations who will hold lower ranking staff members to account – but not their peers, and certainly not their superiors.

I am a huge fan of the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) which uses neuroscience to help organizations to change their behaviour. One of their most recent formulations is GPA. This stands for Growth Mindset, Psychological Safety and Accountability. These are three organizational challenge areas that organizations must address if they want to be successful in this age. NLI has neuroscience and data-based strategies, methods and training to help organizations be successful.

In contrast the NSW public sector has a statement of values, one of which is ‘accountability’. In relation to this there is the statement, “Take responsibility for decisions and actions.” Aside from the fact that this is an insipid affirmation, there is nowhere any discussion of how this might happen against the innate psychological impulse we have to not do this at all.

The NSW public sector also has a Code of Conduct which articulates the required minimum standards of behaviour toward colleagues and members of the community. But violations of that Code of Conduct, which prohibits abusive or discriminatory conduct, are almost never policed. What is the point of requiring staff to sign a Code of Conduct document if those who violate it are not called to account? What is the point of declaring that ‘accountability’ is a primary value if it is never called upon except in extreme instances?

There are clear psychological insights that explain this paradox. It has a moral tinge to it, but it is psychological in nature. So, this isn’t an exercise in assigning blame. But there are also demonstrably effective strategies to break through this paradox – and the fact that they are either unknown or ignored should be a matter of concern for us all – especially in relation to the public sector.

The next stage beyond the social model of disability is the cultural model of inclusion which eliminates disabling beliefs, attitudes and behaviours from workplace cultures. But if we can’t/won’t uphold the contract we sign when we sign on to a Code of Conduct how is that going to happen? By osmosis? By some magical force of social evolution? If so, why do we need any kind of intentional change forms at all – like DEI teams, ERGs or government campaigns?

Enforcement doesn’t have to be about censure and punishment. It can be about learning (growth mindset) in a kind atmosphere (psychological safety). It does mean that you must put the cognitive effort in to behaving better. But surely that comes with the job and the culture you signed up to honour and support.

A Disability Reference Group might have a chance of being an antidote to the magical thinking of simply asserting an aspiration of accountability, as if doing so were sufficient to make it happen. But it needs serious backing by an executive leadership that believes what it says.

Conclusion
There are many reasons why ERGs don’t and can’t work as hoped. There are many reasons why organizations are weakening their support for ERGs. There are many reasons for organizations to back away from DEI. But a lack of goodwill isn’t one. Neither is a lack of good intent.

I am constantly hearing comments from former colleagues, and observations on organizational management from podcasts affirm that staff are overwhelmed by the demands on them. The observations on the quality of executive leadership and management are uniformly bleak. This isn’t an easy time to be running an organization or be working in one.

We have multiple demands on our attention and cognitive/emotional capacity from our personal lives as well as from work. Our capacity to be more aware of the needs of colleagues with disability is limited, and the last thing we want is to be accused of not caring.

This isn’t an environment for an Employee Resource Group. It’s the wrong kind of body now. An Employee Reference Group is way better suited. But an organization must be prepared to commit to the critical transformative change of holding discriminatory and abusive conduct to genuine account if the next stage of the transformation of our workplace culture is going to happen. It must commit to engaging with an Employee Reference Group as part of its core business activity to meet it legal and moral responsibilities. Without executive leadership commitment all else is futile. There is thus a business case to be put.

This is the tipping-point change that must be taken as the next stage of the ‘rights revolution’ of the 1960s. That tipping-point is the transition from ‘rights asserting’ to ‘rights honouring’. The argument is simple enough to assert, but, like the ‘rights asserting revolution’ it will take determined and skilled action to make it happen.

This includes a huge rethink about what Disability Inclusion is really about – your ego and sense of identity as a person with disability, or the welfare of the people whose interests you say you represent. Is it about disability as an identity or the unfulfilled hope of those seeking inclusion, access and freedom from bias, discrimination and abuse?

In 2026 our world is undergoing so many changes it is challenging to keep up with them. The rate of change shows no sign of abating. But this has been true for at least the past 25 years – way longer, but I am trying to be kind here. We can’t really use the rate of change or the level of demand on our need to adapt as an excuse. We make choices about how we use our waking hours. That’s not a judgement, just an observation. So, we chose between the options we have.

Commentators on the introduction of AI observe the importance of what they call ‘metacognition’, which is described as ‘thinking about thinking’. I have a less obscure way of describing it – self-reflection and self-awareness.

AI can make us stupid if we use it to do our thinking for us. Or it can make us smarter if we use it as a tool to help us think better. Personally, I have used AI in a very limited way, and I have no interest in going much beyond that. So, I am not promoting AI so much as the insight it has triggered from canny observers.

That insight is that AI is like any other functioning intelligence environment – like organizations, social media, or one’s culture and community. If we imbibe what we are fed with no reflective awareness, we can be made stupid because we absorb and accept uncritically what we are told is true. But if we engage in efforts at self-reflection and self-awareness, we have a chance of changing what we believe, imagine and how we behave.

It is a simple, but not an easy, prospect. It requires intentional focused effort. This is really why Disability Inclusion is so hard. It just requires more effort than those who identify as Disability Inclusion Advocates or Activists are apparently prepared dedicate. In reality, identifying as a Disability Inclusion Advocate or Activist matters more than actually delivering outcomes for the people who really need advocacy and activism.

In the end it comes down to this – is Disability Inclusion really the problem we think it is? To me it is because I continue to hear alarming and concerning tales of discrimination, bias and abuse in workplaces where it shouldn’t be happening. These reports are accompanied by confessions of powerlessness to defend and evidence of denial that these outrages continue to be perpetrated. It’s as if those who represent the interests of staff with disability lack the competence they need to perform their roles, or really don’t care, beyond their own identity and status as advocate or activist. Either way ERGs as we have known them are no longer fit for purpose (if they have ever been).

A transition to ERGs as Employee Reference Groups can unlock the evolutionary potential of the next stage of the ‘rights revolution’ – that of rights honouring. Are we up for it?

Introduction
I was checking my email this morning and opened one from LinkedIn because the subject line indicated it was about my former employer. It was announcing the launch of its 2026-2031 Belonging and Inclusion Strategy. I wanted to see what it said about disability. But the document wasn’t yet available to the public. I also wondered whether there was a report on its 2020-2025 strategy. Apparently not. I didn’t expect there would be.

I do not like these grand strategies because they give false expectations for, or, more realistically, they give no real hope to the people who are said to be the beneficiaries. Such strategies were routinely produced by my former employer, and the standard response was to sigh and never look at the things again.

Below I want to reflect on why these documents have no real value and why they add another level of peril to a climate of retreat from believing in the value of inclusion strategies. The ‘anti-woke’ dislike of inclusive policies could point to this strategy as something to scorn – for justifiable reasons.

Why we keep setting up targets for others to hit
I have been following the retreat for sympathy for inclusion with interest and alarm. While I don’t agree with most of the criticisms I can see why they are made. As I have argued in pasts posts I think many inclusion advocates have hit the limits of their imagination and capacity.

As inclusion has become accepted as a social value it has transformed from an edgy passion to a respectable position. The real change work done in the edgy passion stage has become more about affirming continuing ‘commitment’ to the values and ideals espoused than continuing the effort to drive change.

This isn’t a criticism. It’s just how things happen. An edgy passion is risky and challenging of authority – which is usually resisting the desired and just change. A respectable ‘commitment’ to the values and ideals is a safer conformist position held by people with zero interest in putting their situation at risk.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker reminded me how fundamentally transformative the ‘rights revolution’ of the 1960s was. We won the right to be included, as a person with disability, in our community in ways not hitherto allowed or facilitated. But having a right acknowledged and having that right honoured are two very different things. We had a ‘rights acknowledgement’ revolution, but we haven’t had a ‘rights honouring’ revolution. That’s because the next stage is not a revolution, but an evolution. This requires a very different mindset and skillset.

But what has been happening has been wheel spinning as many inclusion advocates are stuck in the rights acknowledgement phase – relitigating and reaffirming. Inclusion plans are often the worst manifestation of this. They are a target for scorn and derision. And justly so.

Strategies are accountable action plans, not magical thinking
Public sector organisations are fond of writing strategies and plans but not following them. This is mostly because they are exercises in compliance with government policy – where the production of the strategy is the output and the outcome of the activity. In this case a government has affirmed its commitment to values, ideals and principles. This is a large return for a small investment (writing the strategy).

The 2020-2025 Strategy has a section early on that articulates “Our commitment to inclusion”. It says “Our leaders will”
• build their own and team inclusive leadership capability in order to value and actively sponsor inclusion and diversity in the workplace
• recognise the business need behind this commitment and its contribution to building stronger communities
• drive progress towards our inclusion and diversity goals in their workforce and across (the organisation) and develop performance goals and measures to track their team’s progress
• hold themselves and each other accountable for their inclusion and diversity progress and performance.

But there’s nothing about these ‘statements of will’ being accountable KPIs in employment contracts. And this is in a sector that proudly proclaims values which include:
Trust – We value the quality of our relationships and do what we say we will do
Accountability – We take responsibility for our decisions and actions
Integrity – Ethics are at the heart of all we do and we show courage by acting honestly, consistently and impartially.

Here I am not slamming my former employer, just pointing up the inherent contradictions in the gulf of difference between what is asserted and what is actual. The absence of accountability of statements of will as KPIs in contracts speaks volumes.

The rest of the strategy is likewise devoid of credible affirmations of accountability, so I won’t belabour the point. Musa Ai-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke makes the bigger point. The purpose of these strategies is only superficially intended to convey benefits to the people who are described as the intended recipients of their positive outcomes. The real beneficiaries are those who commission them, those who write them and those who approve of them.

What is absent from the strategies is any ‘how to’ that shows how progress on implementation and evaluations of outcomes will be measured in terms of stages of implementation. The 2020-2025 Strategy had “Our success measures” but these were presumed outcomes. For example, the action – “using workforce diversity information to make evidence-based decisions about our people and initiatives“ has the related success measure – “our people feel safe to share diversity information” with no indication how that might be achieved. This has been an issue across the sector for many years and nobody I am aware of has come up with an effective strategy for dealing with the issue. It isn’t difficult. It needs a real commitment to action and actually doing something.

In the 2020-2025 Strategy there’s a section under the heading: Leading an inclusive culture that says, “We will focus on engaging and developing all leaders to role model values of service, trust, accountability, integrity and respect.” It goes on to say, “We will do this by:

1. embedding inclusive leadership across all levels of management to achieve improved long-term outcomes
2. promoting an inclusive, safe and harassment-free organisational culture where our people feel valued, respected and empowered to contribute, and there are safe, inclusive practices where complaints arise
3. developing a sustainable pipeline of diverse talent for senior leadership role”
   The problems with these statements should be obvious:
4. You can’t talk about “embedding inclusive leadership” without saying very clearly how that will happen. That’s a big job that would require focused, coordinated and planned action and monitoring over a sustained period.
5. Promoting anything isn’t a strategy. It leaves open non-compliance as a non-accountable option. You could say ‘implementing’ but then you’d have to say how and what measures you will put in place to monitor and evaluate.
6. The third statement is meaningless. How would you ‘develop’ such a ‘sustainable’ ‘pipeline’? How would it work? How long would it take? This is another case of something that would be demanding to create and develop in real life.

There’s little wonder there’s no ‘How’d we do on the 2020 – 2025 Strategy?’ report.

So why bother?
An anti-DEI critic might justly call the Strategy woke nonsense and argue that it’s a waste of time and money to produce such a document since it is full of language intent on seducing the mind into a hypnotised state of believing what is being read is meaningful.

When we ask ourselves why the Strategy was written we struggle with the notion that it was to ensure that those who are said to be its beneficiaries will actually experience a greater sense of belonging and a stronger sense of inclusion.

The most compelling argument is that the sense of ‘job done’ ends with the document being crafted, published and promoted. This is why we cannot find the kind of details about implementation and accountability a real strategy would have.

So, we must acknowledge that, even given this, the document has a value because if it wasn’t crafted the signal that the ideals and values it contains are good things would be absent.

Conclusion
This isn’t a useless or pointless document. But we must not mistake it for being what it is not – a blueprint for action. We are better off feeling good about belonging and inclusion than feeling nothing or feeling averse.

But here’s the hazard. Because the document is called a strategy, it appears to be. But it’s not. It is an affirmation of positive sentiments shared by the politicians, the executives and the managers (well most of them at least).

What it isn’t is a genuine ‘call to action’. This must be understood by the ‘woke’ who will mistake it for such a call and the ‘anti-woke’ who not only make the same mistake but also find the affirmation offensive.

The biggest danger with such a document is that might be substituted for a genuine ‘call to action’ by those who style themselves as Disability Inclusion activists or advocates who are trapped in affirmation of sentiment – the affirmation of rights – phase and who cannot transition to the ‘rights honouring’ evolutionary phase.

It does nothing to further the cause of Disability Inclusion in any concrete sense because it addresses none enduring impediments to genuine inclusion – predominantly the reluctance of senior leaders to genuinely hold managers and staff accountable for entrenched discriminatory and abusive attitudes. The kind of behavioural, attitudinal and cultural changes that are necessary are difficult to implement. They require sustained committed leadership over time. And they require sustained committed advocacy.

There’s a reason Disability ERGs were created in the first place. Organisations can’t make these changes unassisted. But that insight requires a genuine commitment to change from all parties. Instead, we are seeing performative affirmations of values and aspirations that are not a conduit for action, only ‘feel good’ sentiment. This weakens the spirit of Disability Inclusion and pins a target on our backs for the ‘anti-woke’ and other critics to aim at.

If the trend toward defunding and closing staff networks/ERGs continues and organizations decide to just leave things up to such as internal belonging and inclusion strategies, the evolution toward more inclusive work culture will continue its glacial pace. This will leave many staff with disabilities without real support or representation. We must remember that Disability ERGs were created for a sound reason. But they then often fell afoul of the same preference for affirmation of values that has no genuine operational intent behind it.

Disability Inclusion is a real ‘struggle’ to ensure affirmed rights are honoured and realised. This requires an operational strategy with teeth backed by an active assurance of accountability. The most critical insight is that a Disability ERG is performing a role that is part of an organization’s core business – ensuring that the organization can meet its legal responsibilities toward its staff. It is one thing to have a policy of increasing the diversity of staff to reflect the community being served. It is another thing entirely to ensure that good intent is backed up by active accountable measures to ensure staff safety. These measures are not optional and don’t need strategies. They need effective governance.

But things like Belonging and Inclusion Strategies blur this distinction completely. Organizations prefer to maintain the confusion – because it’s easier and cheaper. I learned this back in 2011 when, at a Disability ERG meeting, I asked HR staff whether Disability Inclusion might be covered under work health and safety responsibilities. There was an immediate chill in the room. I was assured it could not. But all my efforts to discover why this was thought to be true were met by immediate deflections to another subject.

The whole point of having a Belonging and Inclusion Strategy is that there is an evident need for one. This is because belonging and inclusion don’t come naturally or easy in all workplace situations. The result is people of ‘diverse attributes’ suffer – are harmed. There’s a reason that people who are covered by DEI policies are sometimes called ‘protected groups’. They are vulnerable to real harm – mostly psychological, but sometimes physical.

Whether organizations like it or not, this is a genuine work health safety concern. A substantial number of staff in the NSW public sector go off on workers compensation because of the psychological stress caused by discriminatory conduct.

As ERGs and DEI team are defunded, diminished or disbanded in favour of organizations addressing inclusion needs of their staff through their own culture the worst-case scenario is reliance on the likes of Belonging and Inclusion Strategies as an organization’s idea of a credible and effective solution to the problem they know they have.

We must surrender the seduction of the safe fog of affirmation that can make us feel so good – and the self-induced confusion that envelopes us. And we must remember those who aren’t feeling as good as we ‘encourage’, ‘promote’, ‘develop’, ‘improve’ and ‘strive’. But not actually do anything.

Reading We Have Never Been Woke will help. You can get it as a 3D book, an audiobook or an ebook. At the very least do read my earlier blog post – The limits of caring.

Introduction
I found a poster on LinkedIn today that argued for a shift in thinking about disability – from ‘fixing people’ to ‘fixing systems’. The sentiment is familiar but this rigid binary that distinguishes between the medical model [bad] and the social model [good] reveals a perspective I would be concerned to find in a person representing themselves as a disability inclusion expert today.

To me this is ‘old hat’ thinking that isn’t helpful now. Below I want to reflect on why the medical/social model of disability is dated and no longer useful. It is still asserted by people who have limited exposure to the spectrum of disabilities and who haven’t updated their ideas.

Why the medical model is so unfairly disliked
There was a time when disability was seen as a kind of offence against the normal, the ideal. If you had lost the capability to walk up stairs it was on you to find a way to get up the stairs, not on the community to create an alternative – like a ramp.

I have observed previously that even after World War One there was no motivation to include veterans by making public spaces more accessible. They may have risked or given their lives or body parts in service of the nation, but there would be no accommodation of impaired mobility until the 1960s when the disability rights movement changed public policy.

In a sense the medical model of disability is a red herring that attracts an emotional response to a complex set of issues. For example, one of my former colleagues, who is an ardent advocate for disability inclusion, has bilateral below-knee amputations. He is remarkably active, holding records for ascending stairways the height of tall buildings, precisely because he has prosthetics – a ‘medical’ solution.

My brother has relied on an electric wheelchair for about 8 years following a diagnosis for a rare genetic condition that makes it very hard for him to recover from physical exertion [a medical insight]. The wheelchair was effectively prescribed as a solution to a medical problem. Where he can get to in his wheelchair is, however, a social issue.

I rely on Canadian crutches to make it possible for me to walk. I contracted GBS in 2008 and it took 18 months of medical care and rehab to be able to walk again. My health fund significantly covers the cost of replacement crutches. But how accessible public spaces are to me is another matter. That’s why I volunteer as a member of my local council’s Access Reference Group – so we can mesh essential ‘medical’ solutions with ‘social’ solutions.

So, my point is that ‘medical’ responses to disability are still vital, and with advances in technology even more important now than they were 50 years ago.

I love medical responses to disability. They are essential and, in many cases, make it unnecessary to rely on the social model. My former colleague with his prosthetic feet doesn’t need the accommodations I need with my original feet and crutches.

Talking about the medical model of disability in such a negative way in 2026 strikes me as either anachronistic or manipulative.

We need to re-imagine the social model
The poster is right in asserting that there is a need to change laws and rules. Legislation is in place. It is fair enough to ask whether it should be updated. There are policies in place too. They should be reviewed as well.

But in Australia I don’t think the issue is the adequacy of law or policy but how they are interpreted and implemented. This is an entirely different matter.

The social model of disability has been serving us well in the sense that it has required changes to policy, practice and funding, and those changes have resulted in significant improvements to the level of accessibility and inclusivity for many people with disabilities in our communities. But by no means has this resulted in universal accessibility and inclusivity.

The social model must continue to evolve, and it must do so in concert with the medical model. That terminology is now out of date, so let me suggest that we think in terms of personal and communal – what the individual needs and must be responsible for getting, and how the community must adapt away from universal ablism as the template for design and toward universal capability and need.

Cochlear implants are ‘medical’ interventions that transform people’s lives. I have seen videos on YouTube showing a person using a prosthetic robotic hand controlled by ‘thinking’. In fact, considerable funding has gone into high tech ‘medical’. It is nothing to dismiss as a response in isolation. These more sophisticated technologies exist because there has been a profound change in the way we think and feel about disability as a community, and as a culture.

So, we can understand that disability has a personal dimension and a communal dimension. In the past the communal dimension hasn’t been as responsive as it could have been. But now both dimensions have grown and are closer to a balance. Still so much more to be done, though.

The critical consideration of culture
Having laws, rules and policies is one thing. Creating a culture of enthusiastic compliance and conformity that includes prioritisation of resources and attention is something else entirely. And this is where a lot of advocates for inclusion fall down. Movement away from moral admonition and re-litigating battles already won is vital. But the Disability Inclusion movement is addicted to the emotionally appealing role of being an advocate rather than being a skilled guide on how to make changes happen – and then stick.

This is what struck me about the poster. It seemed like a call to action but offered no guidance on how to make any action effective and successful. For instance, there’s a speech bubble that says, “Create Equitable Opportunities”. Fair enough, but how?

This is a fundamental problem with Disability Inclusion advocacy. It stops at the ‘good idea’ stage that has a strong moral valency but does not progress into offering genuine skill and insight into how ‘good ideas’ can become sustainable realities. This suggests to me a perpetuation of a ‘victim mentality’ which allows people with disability come up with the problem and leave it to others to find the solution.

That’s so old hat. It is so unempowered. There is a lot of sentimental blather about people with disabilities not standing for being excluded and ‘demanding’ their rights to be included. It’s like the only ‘empowerment’ is a right to demand inclusion. Victim status is locked in.

True inclusivity, in our cultural context, is a stretch, an evolution. It is where we are headed and nobody has a playbook on how to make it happen – yet. The critical insights on how to make it happen are available in our understanding of evolutionary, social and organisational psychology. They are available also in texts on leadership, management, communication and relationship building.

Empowerment is a good feeling word, but it is something earned rather than granted. We can ‘grant’ a right, but it still has to be exercised competently. The alternative is to fall back onto notions of victimhood and powerlessness with nothing to do but demand rights.

There are many people with disability who are powerless and who rely on effective advocates to speak and act for them. My focus is on workplace access and inclusion. My passion for effective Disability ERGs is grounded in my experience of effective advocacy.

I am not going to intentionally shame the source of the poster that set off this piece. But I will say that it is a disservice to many when the primary qualifying attribute of an advocate for Disability Inclusion is thought to be the experience of living with a disability. That makes as much sense as insisting your defence lawyer has committed a similar offence.

Conclusion
Our world is changing/has changed in fundamental ways. The old politics of moral persuasion are gone. They did the job that got us the legislation and policy changes that we now rely on. But the next step is a shared need to become more self-aware and self-responsible – mutually evolving our culture toward intentional inclusion.

The idea that a Disability Inclusion advocate can think that moral guilt tripping is still going to work is sad. The person with a disability with unmet inclusion needs isn’t a child and their organisation or community isn’t a parent. We are peers. It’s just that some are more able than others to make things happen.

There is a tendency to imagine that effective advocates for Disability Inclusion must have a disability themselves. This is nonsense. Many of the people with disability who style themselves as advocates are not any good at that role at all in my experience. It has often been the parents, siblings, friends, allies, carers and champions of people with disability who have driven the essential changes.

This isn’t a ‘them without disability versus an us with disability’ affair. It is a shared concern about problems we need to tackle together. I have been a member of my local government’s Access Reference Group for 5 years. It is an extraordinary demonstration of a shared community commitment to inclusion. I led a Disability ERG for 3.25 years and we were able to drive significant changes. This is peer-to-peer, not victim to controller.

Effective advocacy takes skill as well as passion. It takes a sophisticated capacity for insight, for communicating and for working with others to create a momentum for steady progress. Passion without skill has ruined so many things – art, food, sex etc.

Dragging up the old medical model versus social model binary seems to me to reflect a disconnect with the reality of now.

Contemporary research into the roll out of AI tells us something vital. Those who engage with AI with high metacognition capabilities benefit far more than those who use AI as a shortcut to getting stuff done. The clue is in understanding what metacognition is and how to employ it.

This applies to any system or environment. An organisation or a community is a form of intelligence. If we want to influence its behaviour and have it act to our benefit, we must develop metacognitive skills. If we don’t, we will be disempowered and without influence. This isn’t a novel insight. But summing it up so succinctly is novel, thanks to AI research.

This is the transitional insight that effective Disability Inclusion advocates need to be successful now. No posters reliving the medical versus social model.

Now and then living with a disability and having the competence to be an effective Disability Inclusion advocate coincide in one person. But not often.
My transformation into a highly effective ERG lead was because of Kate Nash, founding CEO of PurpleSpace. I may have gotten there eventually, but Kate’s influence supercharged me. Kate lives with disability, as I do. But disability didn’t make Kate great, it was the avenue of the expression of her considerable capability for insight and action.

I have seen on LinkedIn, and elsewhere, people parlaying their lived experience of disability into a qualification to be a paid Disability Advocate. I understand the impulse to make the best of your situation, and I do not criticise those who do this. But I do caution those who might employ them to be aware of what you are purchasing. Lived experience of disability does not equal competence in Disability Inclusion advocacy any more than liking cakes makes you competent to cook them.

I have worked in disability related roles for over 30 years in everything from hands on personal care, monitoring compliance with care standards, coordinating delivery of support services, monitoring compliance with service delivery contract requirements, addressing more complex care services and coordinating responses to emergency accommodation and care needs. I also had extensive paid time to run a Disability ERG as well as coordinate my employer’s other action to address Disability Inclusion in the workplace as an overall fulltime job.

In addition, I have Masters and Masters Honours degrees with majors in Social Ecology. I have been reading in management, leadership and organizational behaviour for around 30 years. And I have a modest Associate Certificate of Applied Management which apparently cost my employer around $10k.

The point I am making here is that while I acquired significant mobility and grip disabilities [I can now type only with one finger] those disabilities are the least of the attributes that made me very good in my role as Disability ERG lead.

So, I want to close here making two key points:
• While they said once that “Clothes maketh the man.” disability does not.
• If you are serious about fostering Disability Inclusion in your organisation, demand advocates who actually do know what they are talking about.

Disability Inclusion advocacy is not what it seems. Organisations have lazily indulged in magical thinking as well. It’s not just the advocates who are at fault. If organisations better understood how complex and difficult Disability Inclusion can be, they’d be way more discerning about who they hire to assist or advise them.

I have noted previously that Disability ERGs should be professional grade collaborators and partners with their organisations as peers helping them meet their legal and moral responsibilities. They are not voluntary ‘staff-led’ amateur versions of a social club. They are part of an organisation’s core business. That means everyone involved has a professional responsibility to ensure effectiveness and success. That way staff with disability have their access, equity and inclusion needs met competently and promptly. How is there any other way to do this?

Seeing awful posters like the one that started me off is a sign of how much we still have to do to get it right.

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.