Category: Uncategorized

Introduction

I have been having lots of conversations about leadership among family and friends lately. There’s been a lot of disappointment as well as a few reasons to celebrate. 

These blog essays have focused a lot on the impact of leaders and managers on Disability Inclusion. And a recent essay looked at Champions. 

It’s worthwhile looking at DEN leadership again, to see if my views have changed from 12 months ago – and earlier. 

A reflection on leadership

Management and leadership are not the same thing. Not all managers are leaders, and not all leaders are managers. That is a pity, but that’s what we must live with.

Each function has its own difficulties – both are hard and to be done well must be worked at. 

In saying both are hard, each has a set of capabilities that must be refined through learning, reflecting and mentorship. 

In any contemporary setting we shouldn’t expect anything less – and yet such an approach is so often lacking. 

A bit of history

I joined the DEN when it started in ADHC in July 2010. We elected as Chair Michael Evans, a regional Home Care manager from Albury.  Michael quickly became much beloved of the membership. 

After Michael we had a run of Chairs who were fairly junior – the last one was a grade 5/6. These Chairs lacked Michael’s skills and they were comparatively ineffectual. 

Michael didn’t have just status on his side. As a regional manager he had supervision responsibilities and participated in regional and statewide management meetings. He was also at ease in talking with executives. He had insight into how the department worked and was able to offer good advice to the members. 

When I became DEN Chair in November 2016, I lacked many of Michael’s qualities. I had some to lesser degrees. I had been a manager. I had some insight into how the department worked. I had enough comfort with working with senior staff to form good alliances. 

In late 2019, as I was thinking through who should follow me, I became convinced that DEN Chairs should have management experience and be at grade 9/10 at least. Status, management experience, and ability to confidently engage with seniors are not assurances of success. But they seemed to me to be the essential foundation. 

The disappointments of leaders and managers

Leaders and managers are humans doing difficult jobs to their best ability. Few are likely to win our enduring affection and respect. For the most part we should be grateful that they are not awful. That might seem like a harsh observation, but the reality is that the norm is tolerable and the exceptionally awful and the exceptionally good are rare. Avoiding the exceptionally awful is most important – where possible. 

My point is that very good to great leadership and management is less common than we’d like. It is therefore important to have minimal requirements that can, at the very worst, deliver tolerable results. 

The better the leader/manager the better the chances of getting good outcomes. 

Picking leaders

Most people will have experiences that convince them that recruitment of managers must be fundamentally flawed, given the number of barely tolerable to awful ones who are recruited. 

When it comes to electing leaders, politicians remind us that, once again, the system must be flawed. 

Of course, there’s always the matter of ambition. A lot of folks who aspire to leadership roles are not good leaders in any functional way. Not even the laying out of selection criteria will convince them they do not have the needed skills, experience, and maybe not the developed personal attributes. The outcomes of recruitment processes also demonstrate that selection panels don’t have that insight either. 

Elections exacerbate the problem because voters don’t necessarily have the skills to access candidates, even when voting in their own interests. 

When I came to the DEN chair role I didn’t get there because I was elected. I had been vice Chair and the incumbent Chair had resigned suddenly. I found myself in the job. I wasn’t even given a heads up by the Chair he was about to quit.

At the time the membership had dwindled, and members were frustrated and dispirited because little worthwhile had happened for 4 years. I had the challenge of rebuilding the membership numbers and the DEN’s standing in the department. 

I was elected as Chair in early 2018. I had earned that. That was a rare instance of being able to demonstrate on the job that I could be worthy of being elected to the role.

The reality is that we collectively guess whether a person is up to the job. The good thing about elections is that after a time we can change our mind or affirm our choice. The unfortunate thing about recruitment is that we are often stuck with bad choices for a while.

Conclusion

Leading and managing are two hard jobs that can be performed alone or together – but we can’t assume they go together. 

People-leading skills are developed through experience and in the public sector that usually means having a supervisory role as a manager or team leader. 

The ability to have insight into how a department works is usually associated with exposure to decision-making processes and decision-makers and this generally comes with relative seniority. Having a sense of internal culture and politics also helps a great deal. Hence status and grade become important. 

This is not to say that there are people with great leadership potential at junior grades. But potential is not the same thing as established capability. 

A key role should not be a learn-on-the-job opportunity for a person with potential – unless there is great mentoring and coaching available. That rarely happens. Mostly such a role refines existing proven capacity. 

One of my absolute rules as DEN chair was a relentless commitment to professionalism. That meant putting in the hard yards of personal development, listening to sage advice from allies and champions and getting feedback from members. 

When I set up the DEN’s Guidance and Action Team in 2018, I had a bunch of people who kept me grounded, told me off, and provided a constant stream of insight and inspiration. 

Management is about keeping resources aligned to purpose using knowledge, insight, and influence. Leadership is about building relationships of trust and respect to bring people on a shared journey. A leader is often a way finder and a diplomat.

We always do the best we can, but we always must ask whether our best is sufficient at any time – and take action to address the situation when it is not. 

What I have read in the past year’s research, and what I have gleaned from conversations with friends and family affirms my belief that important management and leadership roles must be grounded in assured capabilities, proven personal attributes, experience and wisdom. So often these attributes are not clearly sought for or sufficiently assessed. This serves nobody.

Introduction

Late last year I wrote of a former colleague’s experience of a job interview that went terribly wrong. In the essay I reflected on just how inaccessible and non-inclusive the interview process can be for people who live with anxiety, or who may have a cognitive disability that means they process information at a slower rate than most. Under severe stress conditions their ability to process data can become radically impaired.

I noted that giving an applicant a scant 10 minutes to review questions that can be complex seemed to be an unnecessary thing at the best of times – and catastrophic for some. As my former colleague observed, no equivalent workplace scenario would ever arise – so what was being tested? Worse, questions may be poorly crafted, so that the information sought is neither clear nor straightforward. 

The way things are and why they are nuts

The usual NSW public sector job interview has around 5 questions intended to expose insight and understanding – capability rather than experience, though experience may be used to demonstrate capability. This is neither understood widely, nor adhered to in many cases because the interview panel members are not necessarily competent in using the Capability Index.

Each question is supposed to assess a specific capability. Sometimes one question is made to assess two capabilities, in which case the question can be complex. However, in any case, the questions can be convoluted, elaborate, vague, or merely hard to interpret. There is an art to crafting interview questions.

Let us be kind and suppose a question is clear and concerns only one capability. The standard practice is to allow an applicant around 10 minutes to review the questions – around 2 minutes per question. Is that a reasonable time to review a question concerning at least 6 behavioural indicators? That’s assuming that the candidate has remembered them. 

In most instances it doesn’t matter because the panel hasn’t bothered either. It has been told what the capabilities to be assessed are, but it hasn’t acquainted itself with capability framework. It has, as a result, no method to assess by behavioural indicators. It’s hardly worth noting the capabilities to be assessed if they are not to be applied down to the behavioural level.

At present it usually seems that neither candidate nor panel are using the capability framework in the manner intended. At best this creates inconsistency since either may apply the framework to a greater or lesser degree. A worst-case scenario might be the panel employing the capability framework as intended, but the candidate has no idea that level of rigor is being employed. However, this is unlikely to ever arise.

Even so, what benefit is derived from asking a candidate to engage in a time trial in preparation for an interview? Why not give them 24 hours, or longer? There appears to be an assumption that there is an opportunity to cheat. This is apparent in the requirement for a candidate to surrender their notes made while previewing the questions. Obviously, nobody has thought that through with any care. Most notes are particular to the individual and may also be illegible. 

One would think that at a job interview you’d want a candidate to be at their best, not coming into an interview after a frantic ten minutes of scrawling notes on a page or more. Two minutes per question is ridiculous.

There does appear to be an untested assumption that having 24 hours to review questions will give opportunity to cheat. I am not exactly clear on why this may be the case. It would be a rare instance of an individual seamlessly delivering smooth newly researched responses with only 24 hours’ notice. That’s a lot of work. And maybe a candidate capable of such a feat might be the best person for the job.

Between the CV, the psych assessment, the usual 2 questions and any other requirement for a role there’s plenty of opportunity to detect liars. In sum, I can see no sensible reason why having questions 24 hours or longer in advance of an interview should not be the standard practice in any agency.

This has been the way candidates have been treated for decades. It hasn’t been challenged until inclusion sensitivity has become a focus, and until an adverse experience has been reported.

My previous essay does seem to have been a trigger for some sensitive rethinking about how un-inclusive the usual interview process can be.

Why does this matter?

People with psychological and cognitive disabilities don’t do the 10- or 15-minutes interview question preview session well. In fact, a lot of people don’t, and most would not identify as having a disability. Many people who experience unwanted anxiety do not see what they experience is a disability. To them it’s just part of who they are.

So that means that people who acknowledge a psychological or cognitive disability can ask for a ‘reasonable adjustment’ to get the question 24 hours ahead of the interview. That’s fair and reasonable for them. In my view it’s not fair on others who have an impaired reaction to the speed test but don’t identify as having a disability and so don’t seek a ‘reasonable adjustment’.

A truly inclusive recruitment process would remove the need for a ‘reasonable adjustment’ by making interview questions available 24 hours in advance for everyone.  

Would this increase the risk of cheating? I can’t think of a compelling argument, and I can’t find one. I am open to evidence that such exists. In terms of risk assessment, at present there is no evidence I am aware of that suggests there is an increased risk. In short, I can see no downside to an action that will create a level playing field for candidates with and without declared disabilities

And then there’s the panel

One thing my earlier essay did not cover was the panel. The candidate’s experience might have helpfully included a reflection on encountering the panel. The candidate was not welcomed or helped to relax. Its bad enough that the interview triggered a strong anxiety reaction without the panel failing to attempt to establish rapport and thereby increasing ‘exclusion stress’. A panel’s failure to act inclusively in a warm or welcoming fashion is bad enough under normal circumstances, but it can ramp up anxiety to a catastrophic degree.

The problem here is multi-faceted. First, is the practice of the manager of the team with the vacancy convening the panel. This is problematic for several reasons, the chief one being a natural bias to select people like them (we all do this). The other members of the panel tend to be subservient to the convenor – even the independent. Being an ‘independent’ can simply mean you don’t work in the same team. Its not a role that is clear or delineated, and that can exacerbate pressures for candidates with disability.

The second part of the problem is a lack of expertise in recruitment. Anti-bias training does not work (there is abundant evidence this is the case), so any requirement to complete an online ‘course’ is likely to have zero benefit. And if the panel convenor lacks the interpersonal polish to put a candidate at ease and establish rapport with them, the experience for the candidate can be all downhill from the moment they sit down. So, if they come in stressed, it’s a case of going from bad to worse.

In short, while the focus here is on the interview question review, I must remind the reader that sorting this issue is no assurance that genuine inclusion and accessibility will be an imperative.

How do you seek an adjustment?

Most people dislike the interview process. Those with disabilities they may not want to ‘disclose’ will likely think that the near universal dislike of interviews invalidates their aversion as worthy of consideration.

For this reason, I have argued that interview questions should be provided to all candidates well in advance. This may, however, not solve the problem for people for whom an interview triggers deep anxiety, or for whom verbal communication in such an artificial setting is not a strong point. 

It is difficult to justify why a recruitment process should have pressure points that are artificially created, and which have no relationship to the role. As my former colleague observed, in what part of a role is a person expected to review 4-6 questions in 10 minutes and then deliver a detailed and thoughtful response to each?

In the ‘old days’ job applications got you the interview, and the interview got you the job. That was it. Now there are multiple measures – CV, cover letter, written task, referee reports, as well as the interview. However, the interview is still seen as the clincher – old, bad, habits die hard.

Unless you know you don’t do interviews well and you have the confidence to ask for an adjustment, most people are inclined to equate adjustments to sensory or physical needs. The issue of psychological or cognitive needs is delicate, and maybe worse for an outsider who has no established relationships or reputation – and no idea of the culture.

A structured approach that scores all elements of an application process by a sensible logic should be able to ensure that a poor interview performance is not a deal breaker. But this is rarely employed.

In short, a recruitment process that is inclusively designed should have no need of ‘adjustments’ concerning cognitive or behavioural needs. It will produce better results as well. This has been well argued in research on decision hygiene.

The good news

My former colleague recently applied for a role that would be an important promotion and a validation of their performance over the past 3 years on temporary assignment. They were successful.

The conversation with the panel convenor, their current line manager, was open and respectful around the reason an adjustment was sought for the interview. There was no sense of shame in asking.

The upshot was that an opportunity to review the questions without the artificial stress of a pointless time limit meant the triggering of anxiety didn’t happen to anywhere near the same extent. They confessed a self-generated anxiety triggered by past experiences. This made the initial review of the questions somewhat harrowing. But advantage of time gave them the opportunity to manage their response. By the time of the interview, they were relaxed and confident – something of a surprise to them.

Every candidate deserves the same opportunity to compose themselves.  

The candidate’s thoughts

In a professional setting the high anxiety I experience is actually an asset. It drives me to focus on details, on quality, looking at situations or tasks with a thorough 360-degree assessment. Anxiety pushes me to meet deadlines and heightens my perceptions toward others’ feelings and reactions. With this condition, however, there are a couple of trigger points where in the worst situations it results in overthinking, and loss of composure. 

One of those trigger points is the traditional interview process, where one is placed in an unfamiliar setting with an uncommon level of pressure. The interview process involves a communication process that is not usual in the workspace. And it is run by a senior one barely knows, if at all. The first stage of the interview involves receiving the interview questions which the interviewee must decipher and make notes on in ten minutes. And then, after often a curt introduction, the interviewee is required to give a professional response to each question. This is where I come undone. I overthink the questions, the answers, and my delivery, while attempting to establish rapport, trying to read the panel’s responses, and struggling to maintain the composure I otherwise naturally demonstrate in the workplace.  

At my last interview I requested, and was granted, a reasonable adjustment, a relatively simple one. I was given the questions a day before. The result was extraordinary. It alleviated the pressure on me. It gave me the opportunity to dissect and reflect on the different layers of the questions, and it  enabled me to formulate quality responses. I was then able to present myself at my best, the same natural manner I express on a daily basis. This adjustment was a recognition of me. It was an acknowledgement that as an employee, as a human being, I mattered.

Conclusion

Last Thursday I enjoyed a webinar by the Neuroleadership Foundation on cognitive capacity. As stress/threat levels rise, our ability to process information and formulate effective actions decreases. Under such conditions information complexity and time constraints decrease cognitive capacity. 

In this context an artificial time limit to review interview questions is a condition of high threat. How is that useful when the objective is to assess a candidate’s capabilities? Cognitive control decreases as threat increases.

By putting a candidate under pressure to review questions, which may also be complex or unclear, in a very short time the impact can be cognitive overload. In fact, a more experienced candidate may have an extra struggle to select which of many instances should be used to illustrate their response to an interview question.

It is true that a candidate may have to work with competing priorities and under time pressure in a role. However, the best candidate is going to be the one who demonstrates that they meet the capability requirements, not those who do well in time trials. Capability and knowledge are the foundation of demonstrating the ability to work under pressure with competing priorities.

Interviews are still used as the final filter of a recruitment process. This unfortunate misguided reliance on only one element of a recruitment process means that the element most vulnerable to disruption by disability is also the most vital. There is no time limit to prepare a CV or respond to the focus questions. There are, of course, necessary time constraints on the psychological assessment and the interview – both more than 10-15 minutes. But they are not designed to create a time stress in response.

The review of interview questions is uniquely constrained by a very short time for which no apparent rational explanation has been crafted – beyond “That’s how we have always done it.”

Advanced opportunity to review the questions disadvantages nobody and puts candidates with psychological and cognitive disabilities on the same level as other candidates.

Selection is supposed to be based on merit. Unless a cogent argument affirming that 10 minutes to review interview questions contributes to demonstration of merit can be effectively asserted the practice must cease. Evidence that it impedes demonstration of merit is plain by the fact an adjustment can be sought and can be granted.

There’s a lot wrong with current recruitment methods in terms of assuring inclusivity, in my view. Here’s one thing that is an easy fix, and which can make recruitment considerably more inclusive for people with declared disabilities, and those who do not identity as having a disability, but who still struggle at the interview stage. 

Adjustments are necessary only when a setting is not inclusive. Recruitment methods must aim to be inclusive and accommodate adjustment requests only when inclusivity is not possible.

On a wider scope there is a great need to review the inclusivity of recruitment practices. This includes moving away from unsupervised DIY recruitment by team or unit managers and ensuring that there are genuine and skilled independents. I am aware of the counter arguments – which are resource based. Inclusivity is a learned skill, and you can’t use a resource-based argument to side-step or off-load responsibility for actual inclusivity.

Even providing (well thought through and effective) training to DEN members as a pool of skilled independents for panels when candidates with disability are participating would be a good first, but small, step.

Research into decision making hygiene suggests that a standard scoring and assessment method should be employed by all panels. This would include ranking all candidates by each element of the selection process separately. Such an approach would ensure that the interview is not the deal maker/breaker. It would require all panels to be accountable for their assessments and scoring and ensure that there is an accountable and transparent record of decision making.

There’s a lot of work to do.

Introduction

Over the past week I have had some fascinating and sometimes challenging conversations. They were not all about disability or inclusion. But they were all about personal authenticity, the presumption of knowledge and rectitude, and the creation of psychological safety.

Some conversations concerned the failure of ostensibly supported actions to manifest as outcome focused activity. Two things seemed to be happening. One is that people were saying things expected of them but acted as if they personally believed a contrary thing. The other is people in positions of power and influence were interpreting the lived experience of others in ways not shared by the experiencer.

These apparent contradictions have become baked into the way things are done. The personally held belief may be shared by colleagues, as is the reinterpretation of the lived experience. The result is that inauthentic words and actions are afforded a gloss of acceptability because there is an appearance of conformity with required sentiment.

In the politics of inclusion this situation is often experienced by those seeking inclusion. They hear the words, which sound good. They see initial actions, which appear to be heading in the right direction – and then nothing meaningful happens.

Not everybody really agrees

One of the things that has been intriguing me over the past year or so, as I immersed myself in the field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), is that it should be really apparent that beyond the pressure to be PC a lot of people really do not agree that DEI merits the level of commitment that its proponents demand. But they can’t say that openly. So, they act as if they do agree – and then undermine efforts at change.

This is okay. At least that’s honest. But why not say so up front? That would be suicidal for a person’s career. The demand for good DEI outcomes has created a kind of paradoxical tyranny which forces dissent underground. That’s a problem – because this dissent is so often expressed by people in power positions.

The reader might be puzzled by this assertion. But here’s the reality. There is a surface appearance of pro DEI sentiment – which may be thoroughly genuine in the majority. But if that’s the case, how do we account for the apparent ineptitude in turning that goodwill into powerful and positive outcomes?

I have argued that Inclusion is complex and difficult – but not so much that it takes year after year of things not happening despite efforts to bring about positive changes. I have argued that there are people in power positions who elect to exempt themselves from agreed standards of behaviour – bullying is the best/worst example.

The reality is that some folk, for whatever reasons, do not agree with the full spectrum of DEI goals. They will not say so openly, but their actions tell the real story.

How can you make a situation psychologically safe for a dissenter – and should you?

A few years ago, I was in a meeting on figuring out ways to increase the representation of people with disability in roles within the department. I suggested identified roles. The response was not enthusiastic. In fact, I detected a sense of alarm. I wanted to discuss, but nobody else did and the matter was closed out.

I understood the concerns and objections, and I wanted to explore them. It was an option we had to explore. What was interesting was that I could not get a conversation going, beyond a few vague expressions of doubt. 

What was the problem? It was saying no to identified positions looked like saying no to people with disability – and nobody wanted to be seen to be doing that. The answer was to make the problem go away by pretending it wasn’t there – and by promising to ‘look into’the matter and not getting around to it. This is a popular tactic. It works very well. Nobody has said “No.” But they have deftly ensured that “Yes.” won’t happen.

Here’s my position now, as a person with disability. If I want to claim the right to psychological safety to tell my story and bring my whole self to work, why would I want to create an environment in which another person cannot have the same right?

I have a personal commitment to DEI. But I have to acknowledge that I have self-righteously excluded people I disagree with. Diversity must include dissenters. Disagreeing is one thing. Refusing to have a conversation is another. Making conversations or meetings not psychologically safe for them to express their dissent is not inclusive. It is not equitable. It is not just.

Cultures, communities, and organisations have a duty to set the standards of conduct and values by which they function. We have done this by declaring the DEI principles are esteemed. But we may not declare that there is only one standard, a line drawn in the sand, by which all responses are assessed.

Getting to where we want to be

We are a diverse and uneven lot. Even if we are in favour of something our response will not be uniform. I was in favour of not smoking, but I couldn’t quit. There were times when even cutting down was hard.

In the spectrum of diversity there are many reasons why not everybody is equally supportive of every proposition. Should we not allow those who might favour a proposition to some extent express their reservations, doubts, fears? To insist that dissenters have no valid voice is to do exactly what we have objected to. We do not gain our voice by denying others theirs.

Too often in this age of social media dissenters are abused by self-righteous mobbers. It is an unforgiving spirit to demand respect for one’s own position by denying any dissent as morally and intellectually deficient.

This is a problem with moral causes. Those who assert they are on firm ground insist, wrongly, that being there is virtuous, rather than fortuitous. They also insist that those not standing with them are against them. Also, not true. I stood with anti-smokers in spirit, but I could not join them in the flesh.

We are all going in the same direction, at different rates, and some walking straight while others meander or grope their way in a shared direction. A few haven’t moved much at all. Perhaps they have a disability?

The errors of passionate advocacy

Undermining agreed actions is not a good thing. But if it’s a code for not feeling psychologically safe to dissent that makes the ‘good’ the oppressors. A self-perception that one is in the right can quickly turn an advocate into a psychological bully.

People who hold nuanced views on topics they largely agree with will be silent in face of strong moral heat from an advocate. When faced with the ‘all in or all out’ option a person holding a more subtle position may be forced to an ‘all in’ posture to signal broad support. But they will push for a more nuanced response out of sight. They can be accused of betraying ‘the cause’ when all they are doing is applying insight and maybe wisdom. True, some do betray the good intent they express. But they are few.

This creates a disastrous situation. The nuanced vision may be the best way of moving forward for a range of pragmatic reasons. But there’s no way of exploring it and refining it with the critical stakeholders. The opportunity for honest conversation is shut down because an advocate is perceived to be uncompromisingly unwilling to hear a nuanced point of view.

Of course, there are other interpretations. The nuanced position may in fact be a form of dissent that is not just. But that makes the need for honest conversation more compelling.

Passionate advocates may be justly aggrieved. But the heat of their personal feelings may also blind them to the complexities of their cause. Nuanced supporters maybe misguided in reservations because they are unaware of the realities of lived experience.

It can be that nobody in a stakeholder group (power holders, decision makers, service providers or service recipients) knows enough to understand motives, means, needs, or risks, to have an overview – a shared vision. Such a group will talk internally, but only openly with those who share their positions – not as a whole. 

The opportunity for open and honest conversation cannot be grasped until there is a capacity for psychologically safe engagement. This includes the right to express grief and pain and the right to disagree or dissent.

It is harder for the advocate/service recipient/person with lived experience to be successful if their case is expressed with moral heat. Resolution of disagreement or dissent can come only from ‘giving permission’ for disagreement or dissent to be expressed safely.

Conclusion

Good intent comes in degrees and is mostly unschooled. It must be nurtured. Advocates for the dispossessed and disempowered can see themselves as ‘social justice warriors’ or as gardeners. This was brought home to me recently as I was reading Paul Callaghan’s The Dreaming Path. Paul is a Worimi man with a diverse professional background who now runs Callaghan Cultural Consultancy. Worimi country extends from Foster/Tuncurry south to Port Stephens on the New South Wales coast.

In the Dreaming Path Paul alludes to an idea I have encountered in other Indigenous cultures – that Europeans are ‘little brothers’ relative to those whose ways have been established many millennia. Youth is a dangerous period. It is the most violent period. There is a lot of energetic pride and ignorance. The best of intents can be ineffectual or even harmful. Those we oppose may be innocently causing grief – a situation not remedied by passion or anger.

When I became DEN Chair in November 2016, I committed to an approach I described as being relentlessly positive and professional. Talking truth to power was only part of the equation. Listening to power talking truth back was also essential. Getting it to talk back honestly was difficult.

Power isn’t the enemy and seeking redress for past wrongs is not the cause. We are all on the same side (aside from a very few). We have, in a sense, a common enemy – silence. That exists when there is no psychologically safe relationship that can accommodate advocacy and disagreement – real truths, not the masks we think we must wear.

I have had time these days to catch up books in my must read one day pile. One such was Waldon by Henry David Thoreau. It is an extraordinarily beautiful book by a poet philosopher of incomparable spirit. In the book Thoreau described human progress not as a battleline of soldiers advancing but more like a community streaming to church on a Sunday morning. He noted elsewhere “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

In the context of DEI, we must allow that we are going in the same direction but not at the same pace and with the same intent or understanding. For advocates of DEI, regardless of their specific cause, the challenge is to nurture that progress for each person or group we want to influence. We can do that only by enabling and fostering truth telling through personal authenticity in an atmosphere of psychological safety.

This is not easy. It takes effort, courage, and (as I continue to discover) constant rethinking of what we imagine to be so.

Introduction

Long time readers will be aware that I had an abiding curiosity about why some organisational leaders do not appear to be as keen on Disability Inclusion as their staff with disability are. It is tempting to discover and cling to an explanation that these leaders lack the moral wherewithal to back their talk with inclusive and compassionate walk. 

The importance of the role of organisational leaders in sponsoring and fostering Disability Inclusion is beyond dispute, so getting the answer to the ‘why’ question is vitally important. And that is proving to be a complex process. There simply isn’t any one discrete reason. Yes, some leaders may not be sincerely behind Disability Inclusion. But the majority appear to be genuinely supportive.

The essays in this blog are chipping away at the mystery of the slowness of inclusion in general progressively. This is one more piece in the mosaic of understanding.

On Thursday June 2^nd the Neuroleadership Institute had a webinar: Leading Effectively in a Hybrid World: Surveillance vs Outcomes. While discussing manager perspective on remote supervision there was an almost passing reference to power. My notes say “Power (even a little bit) changes brain/ behaviour – leads to objectification of people.” This merited a closer look.

Power is something we need to adapt to

There’s a fair bit of material on this theme on the internet and I was quickly able to download articles. There are two I will discuss here. Typically, the articles are short and hence focused on the more spectacular findings. These amount to asserting that power creates brain states similar to psychopathy and instances where brain damage leads to a lack of empathy. There was only brief reference to a need to ensure that managers are aware of the impact of power, and to adapt to it.

The very nature of positional or organisational power is to be less concerned with individuals and more concerned with organisational scale matters. And not all people in power positions will exhibit a lack of empathy and compassion. 

Whatever might be a power-induced disposition to be less compassionate can be overcome by a stronger natural disposition toward compassion and empathy. But here’s the rub. Suppose a senior leader retains their natural compassion and empathy (and I can think of quite a few from my own direct experience who do), how do they know that this applies down through their executives and managers? (I know instances where it does not).

Essentially, unless you are specifically aware of the risk of objectification that arises from attaining a position of power, you can’t create a culture that mitigates the risks. This is important for two reasons. 

First, people on the more toxic end of the psychopathy spectrum, and people who have unresolved emotional baggage, will find objectification and a lack of empathy a comfortable place to be. The reaction triggered by gaining power can be comforting and affirming.

Second, people in power positions who are apt to be abusive will still seem okay if the leadership group’s culture unconsciously accepts objectification and a lack of compassion as part of that leadership culture. Psychopaths frequently seek leadership/management roles – and now we can see that their lack of empathy may be less remarkable in a power position.

I have noted previously that managers and executives can form an ingroup relative to which subordinates are members of an outgroup – and vice versa. While organisational status plays a role, the brain science of power may be the defining insight that creates a hard boundary between two groups that are really playing on the same team.

To demonstrate just how reflexive and potent this potential for division can be, I was talking with a friend who had attended a leadership development program for Aboriginal people run by the NSW Public Service Commission. He described how the grade 9/10 and above participants were placed in a separate grouping from the Grade 7/8s. He perceived that the privileged group was given better quality facilities. There was, in effect, a division between those already seen to have power, and those who did not. That separation was assumed to be the right, and best, thing to do.

On the assumption that the brain science research on the impact of power is valid, we must have a shared discourse on the theme. It is not just power position holders who must be aware of how their brains are operating. The comparatively powerless must also understand that the unconscious behaviours of their managers and executives might be causing conduct that’s just not okay. It’s just not intentional. A shared understanding may be a first step in finding a solution to the problem.

Using power for good

This is something psychologically healthy people want to do. But they will be limited by the degree to which they are aware of how their brains respond to power. Ideally, they will have the capacity to make self-aware adjustments to their engagement with subordinate staff.

There is abundant research that shows that merely being aware of an issue can convince some that they have mastered it – when they have not. Anti-bias training has made participants more aware of bias, but not less biased. In fact, some end up more biased. There is a fundamental difference between intellectual awareness and self-awareness.

The majority of people who aspire to positions of power desire to do good. But that does not mean that aspiration will always manifest to the same measure of the intent. It does take a fair degree of self-awareness to ensure that aspiration and actuality coincide.

Selected quotes

Power Causes Brain Damage 

Jerry Useem

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/

“Historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, when he described power as “a sort of tumour that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.” But that’s not far from where Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, ended up after years of lab and field experiments. Subjects under the influence of power, he found in study spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury- becoming more impulsive, less risk averse, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people‘s point of view.”

“Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University, in Ontario, recently described something similar. Unlike Keltner, who studies behaviours, Obhi studies brains. And when he put the heads of the powerful and not-so-powerful under a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine, he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring”, that may be a cornerstone of empathy. Which gives a neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the “power paradox”: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacity as we needed to gain it in the first place.”

“But more importantly, Kelton says, is fact that the powerful stop mimicking others. Laughing when others laugh or tensing when others tense does more than ingratiate. It helps trigger the same feelings those others are experiencing and provides a window into where they’re coming from. Powerful people “stop simulating the experience of others,” Keltner says, which leads to what he calls an “empathy deficit.”

Mirroring is a subtle kind of mimicry that goes on entirely within their heads, and without our awareness. When we watch someone perform an action, the part of the brain we would use to do that same thing lights up in sympathetic response. It might be best understood as vicarious experience. It’s what Obhi and his team were trying to activate when they had their subjects watch a video of someone’s hand squeezing a rubber ball.

For nonpowerful participants, mirroring works fine: The neural pathway they would use to squeeze the ball themselves fires strongly. But for the powerful groups? Less so. 

Was the mirroring response broken? More like anaesthetized. None of the participants possessed permanent power. They were college graduates who had been “primed” to feel potent by recounting an experience in which they had been in charge. The anesthetic would presumably wear off when the feeling did – their brains weren’t structurally damaged after an afternoon in the lab. But if the effect had been long-lasting say, by dint of having Wall Street analysts whispering their greatness quarter after quarter, board members offering them extra helpings of pay, and Forbes praising them for “doing well while doing good” they may have what in medicine is known as “functional” changes to the brain.”

“As Susan Fiske, a Princeton psychology professor, has persuasively argued, power lessens the need for a nuanced read of people, since it gives us command of resources we once had to cajole from others. But of course, in a modern organization, the maintenance of that command relies on some level of organizational support. And the sheer number of examples of executive hubris that bristle from the headline suggest many leaders cross the line into counter-productive folly.”

“Is there nothing to be done? No and yes. It’s difficult to stop power’s tendency to affect your brain. What’s easier – from time to time, at least – is to stop feeling powerful.”

“Insofar as it affects the way we think, power, Keltner reminded me, is not a post or a position but a mental state. Recount a time you did not feel powerful, his experiments suggest, and your brain can commune with reality.”

The Brain Under the Influence of Power

Marwa Azab

Psychology Today

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/202006/the-brain-under-the-influence-power

“Ordinary people can get intoxicated by power or powerful roles. Just temporarily wearing a power-symbolizing uniform can re-code brain processes to create a new mindset.” 

(The infamous 1971 Stanford university experiment is perhaps the most compelling example of this)

“The brains of powerful individuals react differently to social cues in ways that resemble psychopaths or patients with frontal brain damage. Psychopaths and some patients with brain damage lack empathy and the ability to take others’ perspectives. Research has shown that power can deform the brain to act in the same ways. For example, people with high status have been shown to be less accurate in judging the emotions of people with low status.”

“Astonishingly, this “mirroring” vanishes in people under the influence of power. Just priming the participant with power (writing about an incident in which you had power) decreased the mirroring of others’ actions. This creates an asymmetry in relationships between the powerful and the powerless. In other words, the powerless are more attentive to the uniqueness of the powerful, and the powerful perceive the powerless in accordance the general stereotypes … Some researchers called this the default effect of power resulting in “reduced interpersonal sensitivity”… A myriad of research has shown that powerful people are more likely to rely on stereotypes.”

“The brain under the influence of power in individualistic societies seems to de-individuate the powerless and allow the powerful to practice full individuation. Successful leaders in such societies succeed not because they are powerful, but because they understand the importance of acknowledging the uniqueness of every person blind to their power status. Leaders should be trained on how to do disambiguate power from true leadership.”

The impact of lack of empathy

I recently watched a webinar from the Neuroleadership Institute on employee engagement. There was some data I found compelling:

• Only 25% of employees felt empathy in their organization was okay.
• 68% of CEOs feared they would lose respect if they showed empathy.
• 70% of CEOs admitted it was hard from them to show empathy when at work.

There’s a clear message in this data. People in positions of power may feel obliged to appear to be unempathic, and even act in an unempathic manner, to have respect as a leader. Power and empathy are seen not to mix. But is that what staff think? Or is it what leaders imagine to be necessary?

Conclusion

As research into our brains and our psychology advances our understanding, we are constantly reminded that we are not as aware of how we behave as we like to think.

People in positions of power in organisations are a mixed lot. Some do power well, and others handle power awfully. A nuanced understanding of how power is used and abused – and that it can be misused unconsciously to catastrophic effect – is essential in a contemporary organisation.

Changes in organisational culture are dependent on empathic leadership for success.  They can be better supported if there is insight into the mechanisms inherent in individuals and organisations that impede the desired progress.

If attaining positions of power innately leads to a reduction in empathy, knowing that this is the reality can make a huge difference in how leaders intentionally shape organisational cultures.

This also helps those who are not in positions of formal organisational power to more accurately interpret the reasons why things are not happening as desired.

For staff with disability, understanding how and why people in power positions behave in response to expressed concerns about disability inclusion can help guide how best to engage with them.

Introduction

I had a chat with Brendan Roach, Director of Strategy & Networkology with PurpleSpace recently and he followed up with a couple of documents. One was the Purple Champion Leadership Model.

One of the things I love about PurpleSpace is the idea of Networkology – a disciplined, dare one say a ‘scientific’, approach to Disability Inclusion. Enthusiastic amateurs are always welcome, but at some stage it is necessary to transition to a clear strategic approach using the best tools available.

This document is brief, but it lays out key ideas on how to build a solid foundation in an organisation from which to grow efforts at Disability Inclusion successfully – engaging Champions.

I am not going to repeat the contents of the document. I will focus on the two key themes – leadership and essential competences. The document has “Nine steps to success” – 5 of which concern leadership and 4 are about “core competencies”.

Leadership

The 5 leadership elements are:

• Champions / executive sponsors don’t just ‘like’ the role. They ‘love’ the role
• Leadership strength is at the core
• Trusted leadership
• Courageous leadership: challenges, restless, vulnerable
• Authentic leadership: whole self, listens, shares

The critical thing is that executive leaders who are Champions or sponsors must be committed to their roles as champions for staff with disability. But for this to happen the organisation’s executive leadership team must welcome and positively support being challenged to extend its thinking about, and response to Disability Inclusion challenges.

This is often a misunderstood element in an organisation’s expressed commitment to Disability Inclusion. Without the executive leadership team’s unequivocal backing of Champions as necessary change agents two things risk happening:

• Champions are forced to choose between their career-related standing in the organisation and their commitment to Disability Inclusion.
• Without the confidence of the executive leadership team the Champion will not be trusted, become less engaged and end up not being trusted by staff with disability as well. There is a fundamental difference between counselling a wiser approach by the ERG/DEN and hosing down efforts at driving change.

Organisational culture at leader/manager level is not necessarily in favour of change. Normal work demands are high, so changes outside those seen as critical and necessary may be resisted. Cultures are generally change resistant in any case. So, any Champion is going to have deal with that resistance. If they are performing their roles well as Champions, they will need their skills of persuasion and diplomacy to be finely honed.

Competencies

This is where the 4 core competences come into play:

• Attitudes – the Champion has a clear awareness of the attitudes and values they need to be effective Champions
• Skills – they have the skills to do perform the role effectively
• Knowledge – they understand the issues about Disability Inclusion and opportunities to drive essential change
• They understand the power of networks – DENs or ERGs have great potential – if fostered well.

These competences are the essence of Networkology for me. Though they apply in this context to Champions they apply to key members in ERGs/DENs as well. But the key consideration here is that executives tend to have a more sophisticated understanding of the challenges of driving change. Hence these competencies are not merely ‘nice to have’, they are essential.

The opportunities for change

When I became DEN Chair in late 2016 the then Secretary (Michael Coutts-Trotter) said he expected that the DEN Chair would be a “pain in the arse” at times. He understood that changing attitudes and practices did not come easy. It was critical to have that spirit at the very top of the organisation.

Even great champions will struggle without that. I was lucky in that Anne Skewes was later nominated as Executive DEN Champion. Anne was a Deputy Secretary, so having her presence in the most senior leadership team added a lot to her role as Champion. Her commitment to the Disability Inclusion cause was such that she fitted all 5 of PurpleSpace’s leadership attributes perfectly.

When Kate Nash, PurpleSpace’s CEO and founder, spoke at the Australian Network on Disability’s (AND) 2018 Annual National Conference I was inspired. So, there was a methodology – a network methodology – Networkology.

At that time the key elements for success were being assembled. The department’s executive leadership team was open and responsive. The executive DEN champion was ideal for the role. The Diversity and Inclusion team was actively supportive. The only thing that was lacking was the energy staff with disability were able to devote.

The DEN had been working on an old model of quarterly meetings that lasted most of a day. I quickly saw that Disability Inclusion is not something you do only 4 days a year business. You don’t get change that way.

Having a responsive senior leadership team and a great Champion doesn’t mean much if you don’t take advantage of the opportunity. Something had to change. The first change came in the form of the DEN’s Guidance and Action Team (GAT) – 14 volunteers who generated an ongoing conversation – on a daily basis. The GAT met separately, eventually for a day 4 times a year – the day ahead of the regular DEN meeting – as a consultative body engaging with the department. This was encouraging because the GAT members came from regional centres as well, so the Department had to pay for travel and accommodation – which it did.

The second change came with the setting up of roundtables – where staff with disability spoke to leadership teams about the experience of work with a disability.

The third change was the increase in the number of Champions from just the one executive champion to over 60. This led to the 4^th change – communication via newsletters and updates.

The sum total of these changes was a radical increase in the energy invested in the commitment to change. The DEN had to deliver results for the investment – that included travel and accommodation costs and a 2-day facilitated workshop for the GAT. Around 7 months after I stepped down from the DEN Chair role in March 2020 the Board offered the next Chair the opportunity to become a full time DEN Chair. That was a radical commitment to Disability Inclusion.

It is clear to me that benefitting from such a commitment requires 3 things to be in alignment:

• The Champion meets the criteria set out in the PurpleSpace document
• The senior executive leadership team of an organisation is fully and actively committed to Disability Inclusion across the organisation
• The ERG/DEN is energised to take advantage of the support provided in a strategic and dynamic way.

Conclusion

Champions are vital for the success of driving Disability Inclusion, and the PurpleSpace guide is the neatest summation of the attributes a Champion needs. I had the privilege of working with two outstanding Champions. Paul O’Reilly was the other.

But without the senior leadership team’s openness to being challenged to do more, and without staff with disability taking active advantage the opportunities provided by effective Champions their potential can be squandered.

The discovery of Networkology was a critical development for me. There is a skill and a discipline, indeed an art, that can be applied to driving Disability Inclusion. Champions sit within that methodology. Having a great Champion doesn’t mean much if none of the other elements of a coherent method are in place.

You can get your copy of the Purple Champion Leadership Model.

Introduction

In a sense one of the goals of Disability Inclusion is to create a workplace culture in which it is okay to say you are not okay.

In the past I have observed that everyone has times when a life circumstance bear down heavily for a time and we exhibit symptoms of what might be clinically described as depression and/or anxiety for a time. Added to that might be a burden of stress arising from personal circumstances, family or work, or a mix of any of them.

Generally speaking, our capacity for resilience kicks in when the circumstance has passed – but to what extent? That resilience is more than just a psychological capacity, it depends on our brains as well. In fact, nothing is just a psychological capacity. Contemporary brain research shows that a complex array of factors will influence the extent to which our capacity for resilience is activated – and at what speed.

We can’t have an idea of an optimal norm as a benchmark for everyone. In the past, in workplaces dominated by men, the ‘manly thing’ to do was to suck it up and move on. That meant repressing emotions like anxiety and grief – which later expressed in substitutional and toxic ways – like bullying.

A few years ago, a colleague struggled to cope with the demands of their role while coping with a dying parent in a nursing home that was not doing the right thing. They were the primary person responsible for monitoring the parent’s care, and their siblings were not only not supporting, but started to accuse and blame over what was happening. 

It was an awful situation to be in, and my colleague eventually found the pressure too much and, after a struggle to juggle competing demands and pressures for over 6 months, they had a public melt down at work and took a month off to chill.

A dying parent can be a challenging experience if things are going well. With complexities of care and family politics such an experience can push a person to their own limits. It is worse when there is no let up at work either.

There are many situations that can push to the edge of our ability to maintain the mask of coping. Some come and go quickly, and others are drawn out over months or years.

Flexible work arrangements are essential for everyone

All this with my colleague happened before flexible working became a thing. I knew what was going on because we talked. They had to leave work early many days, and there were things that had to be done. But otherwise, nobody else knew there was a challenging life situation – until the melt down. Privacy was maintained and that melt down was attributed to another, unflattering and unkind reason that caused needless injury to reputation.

Not everyone is okay about exposing a very private drama to a manager, or to colleagues in general. Maybe a few confidantes will know, but they will likely be sworn to confidentiality. For quite a few staff, their manager would be the last person they would share details of their private lives with.

How to allow adult staff to be grown ups

I was listening to an audiobook discussing the evolution of management recently. The author observed that in the old command and control approach – still a legacy in many settings today – adults were treated like ‘children’. Their work performance was scrutinised to an extreme degree. They had to seek permission to take a toilet break. They were subject to crude reward and punishment regimes. They judgment was not respected, and their opinions never sought. Status trumped experience and expertise.

Now I didn’t like the use of the term ‘children’ here at all. But I understood the intent – to denote that an adult person was treated in a lesser manner at work. People who were social peers outside work were forced into a hierarchical structure in which those in subordinate roles were considered incapable of expressing the same level of agency. A fully responsible adult making essential and competent decisions about their private life was transformed into a less competent person the moment they signed on at work each morning.

This legacy lingers still. It still informs policies and practices. It is getting much better in some workplaces, but in others there is still a vast area of improvement needed.

The reflex at management level is to doubt the integrity of a staff member and to require revelation of private detail so the manager can determine whether they agree. This becomes apparent the moment a manager asks, “Why….?

If there is evidence that the majority of staff are disposed to exploit and abuse flexibility, there might be good reason to interrogate a staff member seeking an accommodation related to their workload or work time. But I have found no evidence this is the case. There may be a situation where a genuine workplace situation is such that accommodating a request for an adjustment, or an accommodation represents a real problem for a manager and there may be a need to determine whether the staff member’s need is of sufficient urgency to warrant wearing the adverse consequences of a favourable decision.

I would observe that in a well-managed and psychologically healthy workplace staff members seeking an accommodation usually will factor in the impact of a request on their team. The impact of poor management is rarely understood by an organisation’s leaders, with the result that they are more disposed to support a manager who asserts a right to adjudicate on a request. This is a truth that has been confirmed time and again for me.

The legacy of Taylorist management thinking is tenacious. It suits individuals who are less disposed toward empathy and insight, because it confers situational authority, rather than earned relational respect.

In a respectful, psychologically healthy, and safe workplace a staff member is treated as a responsible and honest adult until they demonstrate that such respect is not properly due them. There will be people whose psychological make up makes such respect a risky proposition. But they will be rare. This is the problem – the exceptions are treated as the rule. This is the Taylorist legacy. It may have been ‘scientific’ at one time. Its not now. Our values have changed.

What does all this matter?

Staff with diagnosed psychological disorders are subject to discrimination just because they reveal they have a ‘formal diagnosis’. There is a stigma attached to such a revelation. 

There is no inherent or essential ‘need to know’ why a staff member seeks an accommodation. A request made by a responsible adult person concerning their ability to perform their role to the best of their ability should be taken on face value.

Let’s think this through. Suppose a staff member says they have a need to end work at 14:00 on a particular day. It doesn’t matter when they say it. Imagine a list of ‘good’ reasons why that might happen. Now imagine some ‘bad’ reasons. How many of those ‘bad’ reasons might be down to an adverse emotional state, and may be part of a more complex life challenge? Who’s to judge?

Back at the beginning of 2020 I started a Change the Conversation initiative to alter the way we talked about mental health and mental illness – two terms I believe to be utterly inappropriate. I wanted to explore developing ways of talking about our inner states using normal language, and not straying into the area of psychiatric or psychological jargon. 

I did this in response to conversations with a colleague with a formally diagnosed psychological condition. There had been no progress on stigma of ‘mental illness’ over the past 18 months, despite our efforts. It remains unresolved still.

Lately I have been wondering why it is even an issue. Why should trying to ‘fix’ people with adverse and discriminatory attitudes be the only approach? Why not eliminate the need to ‘disclose’ at all?

The trend toward greater flexibility is growing. But that can seem like a trade – if you tell me why, I will grant permission – that nobody should be obliged to make. The better way, which honours adult agency is one of advising and acknowledging. And unless, and until, this becomes a genuine concern about work performance and capacity it doesn’t include disclosing a reason.

A staff member with a diagnosed psychological condition should never need to say why they need an accommodation. If work performance or capacity becomes an issue, it should be dealt with in a manner that is still respectful of a need or desire to not disclose.

The prime issue is not a question of disclosure, but of a need to know. 

Conclusion

Some readers may instantly object that there are exceptions. I agree, and it is worthwhile having a shared conversation about that. This is why I distinguish between an accommodation and an adjustment. But the context for such a conversation should not be an attempt to claw back the privileges of Taylorism, but to rather clarify what management as if people really matter looks like.

Management has always been predicated upon the assumption that the organisation has the power, which it distributes to its managers, and the staff have none (which is why unions). That’s old hat. These days an organisation should be the mechanisms and processes by which adults possessing and retaining their full agency come together to perform tasks in the service of agreed objectives for agreed rewards and penalties. The obligation to ‘sell’ one’s privacy for the right to vary how one works is no longer okay.

In a psychologically safe workplace, a staff member may feel perfectly free to say why. But even so others may not, for a variety of reasons – increasingly so a diverse workforce

The stigma some persist in applying to ‘mental illness’ may not go away, because the personal right to have such a prejudice cannot denied. But the power to exert that bias can be removed by making the right to know a rare exception – and then not even one a manager may have access to.

This is not an argument for chaos, only the retention of agency and dignity in the negotiation of a need for an accommodation. To do this the right and power of managers to demand to know why must be re-imagined – not as a right granted by holding a power position, but a privilege granted in response to respect and empathy.

Introduction

Disability can be seen as a one-dimensional experience.  For example, my reliance on Canadian crutches for mobility might suggest that I have certain accessibility needs, and if they are satisfied then the impact of my disability has been mitigated. 

I was prompted to write on this theme a few days ago. I got up from my chair with just one crutch, which is normal at home, and made to walk to the kitchen and almost fell. My left foot dragged on the carpet and that was enough to throw my balance off. I was lucky this time. I managed to grab the bookcase in time. 

I try to limit myself to 2 falls a year. I have one left for 2022. I fall for the same reason every time. I am not paying attention. Every step I take must be intentional and conscious. I have a great sense of balance, but almost no ability to prevent a fall beyond a certain point. I have fallen when I have been using 2 sticks several times.

When I walk, I need to be constantly aware of where my feet are, and how they are moving. My ankles don’t flex normally and if I don’t lift my feet, they can drag. It doesn’t take much to throw me off balance and avoiding that takes constant additional cognitive effort. 

The need for constant additional cognitive and emotional effort takes its toll over a day if I am travelling. That can impact my mood and enthusiasm. I am comparatively lucky in that things are way better when I am sitting down. When I was commuting, getting to and from work was demanding, draining and sometimes dangerous.

I remember when I could stand up and walk with no care. Now, I have that only experience in my dreams. When I wake up into my reality there is always a sense of sadness, a sense of burden in knowing what’s ahead.

Expectations of heroic conduct

In July 2010 I attended the inaugural meeting of what was then NSW Ageing Disability and Home Care’s DEN. Almost nobody then, or thereafter, spoke openly about their own experience of living with disability. A few revealed a personal dimension when they talked about the frustration of encountering discriminatory attitudes or the difficulty in getting accessible technology. We were encouraged to talk about the fact that we lived with disability, and the experience of discrimination, but not the experience of living with disability. 

As a result, we had remarkably little understanding of what our colleagues were experiencing. We were not complainers who want sympathy and didn’t want to be seen as such. So, we kept quite in public. In private there was a little sharing, but it was not much, and it was guarded – at least that was my experience.

When I became DEN Chair in 2016 and I started to advocate for members I had conversations that drew out the depth of personal experience to a far greater degree. I spoke with members with a range of disabilities, and it was a humbling experience to come to know the deeper personal side of living with a particular disability. 

Without exception the people I spoke with were of good humour, possessed great strength of character, and were compassionate. But there were times when challenge of navigating their world was such that the cognitive and emotional burden was revealed in expressions of exhaustion (physical and emotional), frustration, or pain (physical and emotional). All battled the risk of depression to some degree.

This hidden side of living disability is rarely openly expressed. I think this is a pity, because it fosters an illusion that we are all heroes who do not have an inner life that can be demanding of cognitive and emotional effort, drain our energy, cause stress, and influence our moods.

This is a legacy, I think, of the campaign that made people with disability out to be exceptional. The goal was to show we could do and be more than the soft discrimination of low expectations allowed. The people depicted in the campaign always had a visibly obvious disability. They looked determined and strong. The Paralympics added to this. We saw performance of disability, not living with disability.

How hard can it be?

In the early days of the DEN, we met at the Portside Centre in Sydney. A blind colleague arrived at the meeting one morning in a rage. They had walked maybe 700 metres past several active construction sites and had to cross 4 streets. The noise from the construction sites drowned out the alert sounds at pedestrian crossing that let them know when they would walk. They had no sound clues at all, and they had arrived stressed and distressed. The noise from the building sites was oppressive, and dangerous, depriving at least one person of vital sensory awareness.

The fact that they had persisted and had arrived was impressive. That took guts and fierce determination. But what stayed with me was the flood of emotion – the frustration and anger. I started to understand just how harrowing what was to most other folk a short walk could be. I had taken the same route myself. I had struggled on my sticks to cross streets in time, avoid being jostled by the crowd of commuters streaming to their offices, and keep myself upright on the sloping footpath. I had arrived feeling drained and need of a break and a coffee. But it was minor compared to what I witnessed.

Disability is not just the named thing. It has an experiential atmosphere – how it is lived and how others respond to it. It is the whole experience – most of which is hidden, private.

Extra effort

Sometimes a disability means that significant additional physical effort is required to achieve the same outcomes ‘normal’ folk achieve quickly and with ease. This starts from waking up – getting up, getting ready, and getting to work can be the hardest part of the day. In jobs that are largely sedentary, doing the work can be the easiest bit of the day. And, going home can be just as tough as getting there.

The increased physical effort also has cognitive or emotional consequences. 

A few years ago, I spoke with a colleague who had lower arm and leg amputations. He used prostheses. He described a typical morning – from getting up to getting to work, which was daunting to me. Then he casually mentioned that the pain was what he really didn’t like. Although his daily routine was normal to him, it was still demanding. As we spoke it was also clear that it had an emotional impact as well.

It is little wonder that COVID was a blessing for many people with disability. Working from home not only reduced the physical demands of getting to work; it also eased the cognitive and emotional burdens associated with commuting. For some that also reduced risk of injury as well.

Living with disability can be hard work, and a lot of that work is associated with getting around – but by no means all. This doesn’t mean that being isolated is preferrable. It means that having a choice to exert the additional effort, accommodate the cognitive and emotional burdens, and expose oneself to risk of injury is better than having no choice.

How does it feel to…?

This is not a question we dare ask as a rule. We struggle to acknowledge life experiences that are challenging in an open way – unless we know a person closely. By social convention we guess a lot. We compassionately allow that people might be having a tough time when we know what they are going through – usually transient experiences involving grief or stress.

Our culture favours stoic determination and keeping emotions private. Saying what we are experiencing is something we may not even share with those we know intimately. This is not something we can change, or maybe even want to.

But there’s a difference between not asking and assuming that there’s no inner experience that is continually cognitively and emotionally demanding just because the superficial impression is of a simple disability.

The impact of an illusion

These days we speak of the social model of disability. The PWD website has a good definition:

The social model sees ‘disability’ is the result of the interaction between people living with impairments and an environment filled with physical, attitudinal, communication and social barriers. It therefore carries the implication that the physical, attitudinal, communication and social environment must change to enable people living with impairments to participate in society on an equal basis with others.

To me this definition risks creating an illusion that there is no existential foundation to disability – just an interactive one. The previously dominant model of disability was the medical one. Here is what the PWD website says:

According to the medical model of disability, ‘disability’ is a health condition dealt with by medical professionals. People with disability are thought to be different to ‘what is normal’ or abnormal. ‘Disability’ is seen ‘to be a problem of the individual. From the medical model, a person with disability is in need of being fixed or cured. From this point of view, disability is a tragedy and people with disability are to be pitied. The medical model of disability is all about what a person cannot do and cannot be.

There’s a lot wrong with the ‘medical model’, but this definition seems to be also politicisedand turned into a loathsome extreme that makes the social model seem like the only good thing.

There may well be a legitimate medical aspect to a person’s disability. And while it is certainly not true that “people with disability are to be pitied” it is true that some disabilities can be the source of existential pain – especially with acquired disabilities that rob a person of being able to do what they once did. I know this very well.

Likewise dismissing the notion that “ disability is all about what a person cannot do and cannot be” seems to me to be missing the point of the idea of disability. Some activities and roles are ruled out – period.

Trying to shoehorn disability into a politically agreeable definition poorly serves people who live with disability. Yes, there’s much about the social model that brings much needed changes, but to assert that disability arises because of an “interaction” with “barriers” reduces the meaning to a simplistic level. And this level is the source of illusions that can generate offensive assumptions.

The comedian, Adam Hills, has a prosthetic foot that doesn’t appear to cause him many problems in terms of barriers to activities. But he did reveal that he makes frequent trips to a physiotherapist because the prosthetic foot throws his back out. Improvements to prosthetic feet may solve this problem. Hills still sees himself as a person with disability. Essentially, if you need a prosthetic foot, you have a disability, even if that prosthesis makes it possible to do nearly everything you can do with a regular foot – wiggling toes is not yet an option.

A disability is a permanent variation from the norm to a degree where an adjustment or accommodation is necessary to ensure equity. It may have a medical foundation. But while adjustments or accommodations may address many issues about equity, there are two persistent features to keep in mind:

1. They are not universal or ideal.
2. They may mitigate the impact of a disability, but they do not negate the disability itself.

Thanks to the profound misfortune of war, advances in technological responses to physical disability has been extraordinary. But even so those solutions are not necessarily effort, angst, or pain free. Removal of barriers is a good thing – but it’s not the only thing. Somethings can’t be removed.

I want to propose an existential model of disability:

A disability is a permanent variation from the norm to a degree where an adjustment or accommodation is necessary (but not always available) to ensure equity. It is also the experience of living with that permanent variation in whatever way an individual can.

Conclusion

Disability is an experience, not just a thing. That experience often entails additional demands on the individual’s cognitive and emotional resources during normal daily life. If this demand is significant, whether episodic or ongoing, it can constitute a burden of stress that may impact mood and attention at times.

A burden of stress is something we all carry at times – generated by life circumstances. We don’t need that burden added to by avoidable situations. Exclusion, discrimination, and bullying are avoidable if we are kind, inclusive, and respectful to each other.

People with disability are not heroes whose lives may have been transformed because barriers related to their disability have been removed. The experience of the disability remains – and living with it goes on.

Introduction

I am belatedly listening to Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive Management, Revised Edition. Drucker is the god of management theory, and really stands head and shoulders above most others writing in this field.

I was struck by his assertion that “a responsibility of a manager is to not knowingly do harm.” He observed that “integrity is the one absolute requirement of managers and leaders.” Character is also an essential attribute – and if a manager is seen by subordinate staff to lack either, or both, the result is always destructive. Drucker is a firm believer that a person who fails in a management role should be assigned to an alternative role, including being restored to a previous one.

It is a near universal feature of writing on Inclusion that the role of leaders and managers in fostering a work culture conducive to Inclusion is critical. Drucker makes a vital distinction about managers and leaders. He says managers are part of a leadership team, rather than being seen as leaders themselves. Leadership to Drucker is a far rarer quality than most contemporary commentators prefer to think. People can be in leadership roles, but that doesn’t make them leaders per se.

There is a risk, I believe, that themes that are popular and trending become prone to unsophisticated hype. There are boosters making a living from selling simple versions of quite complex ideas. I have had to refine my ideas about leadership and leaders as I became aware of this. 

Here I want to reflect on this refinement in the context of Drucker’s assertion that “a responsibility of a manager is to not knowingly do harm.”

Not knowingly do harm

The focus word here is ‘knowingly’. It raises a question about what is reasonable to know in the context of doing a manager’s job. We may also ask what is meant by ‘harm’. In fact, before we get into exploring what is reasonable to know, let’s look at what we can reasonably mean by ‘harm’.

Organizations are not keen on being open about the idea of staff being harmed in other than physical ways – and this is usually covered under the heading of Work Health Safety. Psychological harm, which is far more prevalent, isn’t a comfortable topic. This includes exclusion, discrimination, and bullying. These words do describe actions that are harmful in that they can lead to an individual feeling anything on a spectrum from being mildly upset or offended to significant psychological distress. And physical illness will result from prolonged psychological stress.

Workplaces can be stressful for a variety of reasons – fewer staff and higher workload demands as wage budgets are constrained is the one that I hear most often. This isn’t a complaint so much as an observation. There is always a mismatch between demand and resources in a well-run organization. Such a situation can be exacerbated by less than stellar leadership and management.

But we can’t just think in terms of work-related stressors. We must allow that a staff member’s personal life can have its own burden of stresses. This is not to imply these are the result of any failure to self-manage. Life can just dump monumental challenges upon us without warning, or even a soft “excuse me.”

Staff with disability may also have additional stresses related to living with their disability. In short, the burden of stressors any individual staff member may be carrying could be significant – coming from multiple causes.

This applies to staff at all levels of an organization. The risk of psychological harm is always real and operating with that risk is an inherent aspect of leading and managing.

This is where the idea of knowingly causing harm becomes interesting. It includes intentional acts, and negligent acts. What should a staff member, manager, or leader reasonably be expected to know is a harmful action?

What should be known?

Exclusion, discrimination, and bullying are acts that can be perpetrated unintentionally and unconsciously – as well as being intentional and conscious. A defense offered by intentional and conscious actors is that what they did was unintentional and unconscious.

Drucker observes that knowledge workers own the means of production – knowledge. By that he means that a high percentage of staff in modern organizations are there because of their education – they are knowledge workers, whether in a highly skilled professional area, or in more general roles like policy, project, or program officers.

He observes that maintenance of the capacity to be an effective and efficient knowledge worker is the knowledge worker’s responsibility. This is very much the opposite view to what prevails in many Australian public sector organizations. Here, the organization sets the level of knowledge required, and is expected to also provide the means of its maintenance.

The impact of this situation is that there will be a gap between what a staff member ought to know and what an organization can provide. As a result, leaders and managers may plausibly claim that they have not been provided with the knowledge they need to have to prevent them from causing unintentional harm. If the organization accepts this proposition, it can claim that a lack of resources to be applied to learning and development is a plausible reason for staff being inadvertently harmed through the lack of awareness of what constitutes harmful conduct.

This is, of course, complete nonsense.

Knowing isn’t enough

The NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) has a very good page on its website setting out the details of its Code of Ethics and Conduct. I think it’s fair to say it is one of the best I have seen. So, it’s interesting to see what is and isn’t there.

Under the heading Why we need a Code, we find: “We are all responsible for our own actions. This Code identifies standards of behaviour and direction for all employees and anyone performing work for DCS no matter where or how we are working. It supports us to ask, ‘What is the right thing to do?’ and then to do it.”

Next, we find an exploration of the 4 key words that are a kind of motto for the NSW public sector – Integrity, Trust, Service, and Accountability (ITSA).

Are your actions consistent with the ethical framework? Do a quick assessment by answering these questions:

• Integrity: Would your colleagues say you have considered the views of all stakeholders and customers and acted in the right way when making decisions, even if it was to your disadvantage?
• Trust: Would your actions, if they became public, build confidence in DCS and the public sector?
• Service: Would your customers say that your actions improve the quality of the services they receive?
• Accountability: Would your Leader and the Secretary say that your actions are in the public interest and comply with the law?

This is good stuff for an organisation focused on serving the community – which should be all public sector agencies. We can go to read (and here I have sampled only a few key points):

In addition to the above responsibilities, all Leaders and SEB 1 and above level employees must also:

• model ethical, efficient and safe work practices required of all public sector employees
• be open, honest, respectful and comprehensive in your communication with all employees, including about standards of conduct and behaviour in the workplace
• ensure equity in employment and a workplace free from discrimination, harassment and bullying

I mean no criticism of the DCS when I say that while what it has produced is very good in many respects, it misses a few key elements. It’s articulation of ITSA is entirely externally focused, and for good reason. But I think it is far too often forgotten that members of staff are community members and stakeholders, so an articulation of ITSA must also have an internal focus. Below is an example I have invented for the sake of this argument.

• Integrity: Would your colleagues say you have considered the views of all internal stakeholders and acted in the right way when making decisions, even if it was to your disadvantage?
• Trust: Would your actions, if they became known to your colleagues, managers, and leaders, build confidence in you as a person and as a staff member?
• Service: Would your colleagues, managers, and leaders say that your actions improve the quality of their experience of the workplace?
• Accountability: Would your colleagues, managers, and leaders say that your actions support the welfare of staff and comply with the law?

Now, it may be argued that the Code of Conduct generally covers behaviour toward staff. The above select example I provided suggests this is the case. Except (and without inferring any failing on behalf of DCS) that the evidence in the 2021 NSW State of the Sector Report makes it clear that managers and leaders not delivering on their obligations, and efforts to hold them to account are not successful.

Conclusion

I think Drucker’s assertion that knowledge workers are responsible for ensuring their knowledge is current is a powerful idea. However, it is one I think will be very unpopular. He noted that knowledge is constantly evolving and keeping up can be difficult. This is true.

An organization has a responsibility to ensure its staff can work as efficiently as possible by having good quality technology, systems, and policies. But whether the work done is effective depends on the knowledge worker’s skills and how well they are managed.  This includes ensuring a workplace is “free from discrimination, harassment and bullying.” That takes knowledge and skill as well as the character and integrity to follow through on the injunction “must ensure”. Saying a staff member “must ensure” leaves no room to quibble – or so you’d hope, and maybe expect.

Codes of conduct are at the heart of an organisation. At their best they can only enjoin those bound by them to do no intentional harm. They are clear on what conduct that causes harm up to a point. The point of a Code of Conduct is that it is a guide to harmless conduct. Here the harm being considered is chiefly concerned with ethical and reputational standing. Causing personal injury is understandably less of a focus. When it comes to psychological injury, we see well-intentioned injunctions. What is absent is an affirmed commitment to monitoring compliance. 

In short there seems to be a missing component – the organisation’s commitment to ensuring compliance as part of the deal. Since staff sign the Code of Conduct, which they are obliged to read it and understand it. Any breach must be intentional, inadvertent, or negligent. Ignorance can’t be a defence. Work cultures normalise behaviours, and in the absence of active engagement with ensuring compliance a complaint-based form of accountability will not, and cannot, be a substitute.

Our workplaces are changing. New values are being articulated. New obligations are being placed on staff at all levels. And those obligations are not being met to the extent desired. Exclusion, discrimination, and bullying remain unacceptably prevalent. 

The question we must ask is whether those obligations are fairly imposed. Is it fair and reasonable to say a manager or executive must ensure a workplace is free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying? If it is not, we must remove that obligation. If we think it is fair, and we think discrimination, harassment, and bullying cause harm, we must insist that there is accountability when that harm is caused.

All staff (but managers and leaders especially) should ask themselves “Would your colleagues, managers, and leaders say that your actions support the welfare of staff and comply with the law?” No? Then what? This is the singular challenge for an organisation’s culture.

Introduction

I started writing this on 10 June 2022. That’s exactly 12 months since I exited the NSW Department of Communities and Justice – Disability Inclusion team. This matters to me because I walked away from my unfinished Disability Inclusion journey, but this was not due to a lack of passion. There are just times when you know you have to go – and this was my time to go. I didn’t leave with any adverse passions, just a sense I had to do something different in how I approached Disability Inclusion.

I have several times posted essays on my progress in reframing my understanding of Disability Inclusion. I have wanted readers to understand that the blog is a journey of discovery.

Some good news

I was forwarded an email from the DCJ Secretary acknowledging DCJ’s success at the recent Australian Network on Disability (AND) Annual National Conference in Melbourne. The department was given two inaugural awards:

• Disability Confidence Award – DCJ was awarded this in consequence of its participation in the Access and Inclusion Index in 2021. To quote from the email “We were the only organisation to top the index in three different areas – commitment, career development, and workplace adjustments.”
• The DCJ DEN won the first Disability Employee Network of the Year Award.

The email went on to mention the DCJ Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP) in a positive way. 

These 3 things (the DEN, A&I Index and the DIAP) were the focus of my passion and efforts in recent years. 

The advantage of having time

I have had free time over 12 months to focus on whatever I cared to. I have listened to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts on inclusion and organisational psychology.

As well as the audiobooks and podcasts I consumed online articles and did hours of internet research. In between I talked with people who share my passion. I was on a mission to fill in gaps in my understanding about how and why Disability Inclusion works – and fails.

I was astonished at how much there was to learn. I thought I was doing okay before. In fact, Disability Inclusion, and Inclusion more generally, is an evolving science that synthesises the efforts of psychologists, brain scientists, business researchers and Inclusion advocates. Knowledge and practice are being refined continually.

The danger of comfortable niches

If we don’t continually upgrade our knowledge, we can get stuck doing stuff that was good practice some time ago, but which didn’t work as well as hoped or imagined. 

We can become comfortable with being ineffectual and believe that the struggles we face to overcome resistance are normal. While the struggle to overcome resistance is normal, being ineffectual should not be.

I have been impressed by the claims made by the Neuroleadership Institute, whose stated mission is “Deliver change in weeks not years” That’s a bold assertion to make. I haven’t been fully sold on that proposition yet, but I am feeling more comfortable with it as I discover more about its work.

The Neuroleadership Institute also introduced me to the idea of a Growth Mindset. That’s a theme of an essay I posted on May22nd.

Who is responsible?

On a sector/organisational level I want to distinguish between an individual’s capacity to research more effective methods and what should be provided to support that individual staff member’s inquiry. These days the amount of information is significant. Asking a motivated staff member to troll through available information and discern what is best and most useful is unreasonable.

In many organisations Disability Inclusion is an add-on – as if it is a free service to be provided by staff whose time and attention is already taxed. It must be part of core business for which resources are provided. But unless senior leaders are aware of this argument, they won’t support it. And how are they going to become aware if they do not have access to contemporary ideas and data?

It does take doing a research project to become aware of what is available. This is what has been made clear to me over the past 12 months.

The importance of knowledge

The famed management consultant, Peter Drucker asserted more and more contemporary employees are ‘knowledge workers’ and this includes public sector employees who are using their education and skills to design and deliver services to the community.

The extent to which knowledge is the focal factor in so many roles is profoundly under-appreciated – especially in fields where there is constant discovery and innovation. The situation is not helped by an aversion to what is called ‘Life-Long Learning’. There is a resistance to learning and responding to demands for upgraded skills that is innate in many of us. We are change resistant by nature. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a reality which is disposed to accommodate that resistance, so there is always a tension between how we behave, and how it is thought we ought to behave.

While L&D teams strive to create more effective ways of upskilling and increasing knowledge, the budgets to support them are not as strong as they could be, and the intended recipients of the learning are not necessarily enthusiastic consumers. This is the reality we live with. It’s not going to change in the foreseeable future.

On a sector level, when it comes to Disability Inclusion, and Inclusion more generally, I think there are compelling arguments for the development of

a ‘clearing house’. This can curate and disseminate contemporary thinking on the theme – books, podcasts, and articles – that will assist individuals at any level in an organisation to get up to speed with current thinking and practice.

But for this to have any value and impact there must be an accountable requirement by organisations that their staff become informed. There’s no point in setting up a service on the basis of something being ‘nice to have’ – ‘must have’ is a smarter foundation.

The I work for NSW website carries a commitment asserting, in relation to people with disability, that “We are committed to building safe and inclusive workplaces for all NSW Public Sector employees.” And it goes on to add “We are doing this by … building a culture of inclusion across our workforce.”

However, between mid 2019, when the Premier’s Priority to increase disability employment to 5.6% by 2025 was announced, and mid 2022, there was no growth. The reason why is plain. There was no planned, strategic, or coordinated effort across the sector.

Put simply, if public sector staff are required to become aware of contemporary ideas and practices in Disability Inclusion it is worthwhile the sector investing in such a service. But not unless that requirement is tracked and accountable. 

You are not going to develop inclusive workplaces without knowledge, skill, planning, coordination at the pace that is desired and necessary.

Efforts at promoting Life-Long Learning in the public sector have failed. The need is routinely testified to, but there has been no effective response – no discernible strategy at a sector level. The private sector has competitive pressures and rewards, whereas the public sector has neither. Things happen when you add incentives.

This means that without this intentional and committed effort, Disability Inclusion will evolve only by accident, dependent on individual commitment by people who are already have their time and attention taxed.

Obstructions to an accountable public sector

Over the past 12 months I have refined my ideas about why Disability Inclusion fact does not match the sentiment. It’s not that I don’t believe the sentiment is real. It is sincere, but it is also clueless – and this is down, in large part, to the want of knowledge.

The chief problem is the belief that Disability Inclusion will happen because people want it to happen. But not only is the ‘problem’ mis-identified, the ‘solutions’ are misconstrued. It isn’t that the ‘solution’ is difficult, just that the pathway to it is complex. We don’t like complexity, which is why we fail at solutions so often in the public sector.

In the private sector things are very different. Apple is the massive corporation it is now precisely because it dared to engage in crazy complexity. Watch Steve Jobs on YouTubetalking about the first iPhone in 2007. You will see vision, commitment, and determination. This is what is absent in the public sector.

The curse of complexity

Disability Inclusion is fiendishly complex. You must fuse organisational psychology with individual psychology – and then add the politics of organisational hierarchies. This blends organisational cultures with personal passions and ambitions. Then we need to understand how our instincts and brains shape our biases. 

What we believe about ourselves, and others, will determine how we frame our vision for inclusion. There is compelling evidence that we hold inflated views about our strengths overly negative assessments of others – especially those we see as members of outgroups.

We must avoid imagining that there’s a definitive simple methodology that will solve the problem and those who are not on board are intellectually and morally deficient. It’s not that simple. There is a method – and it is complex.

We are heirs to this complexity. It will not magically disappear. It’s what we must work with.

The problem of novelty

Disability Inclusion, and Inclusion more generally, is novel. Our culture is evolving in ways that can be challenging to many – and this is especially so across the Inclusion spectrum (race, gender, sexuality, religion, disability).

People respond to novelty in a wide range of ways. We are naturally change resistant, so often the reflex response is to resist. If we are in crisis, we will champion novelty if it offers relief (which is why Disability Inclusion advocates push for new ways of doing things). But in terms of how we may react to others in crisis, there is a spectrum of responses that is dependent upon our individual attributes. This includes our personal capacity (cognitive and emotional capacity, time and attention) to be as empathic and inclusive as we like to think we are and want to be.

The challenge for Disability Inclusion advocates is, I now believe, how to make inclusiveness accessible, so it can be adopted with greater ease. This can be done by working smarter – better informed and more strategic.

Conclusion

In 2018 my approach to being DEN Chair was radically transformed by Kate Nash, CEO and founder of PurpleSpace – a UK-based organisation dedicated to Disability Inclusion. Kate gave the keynote address at the Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conference in Sydney.

Kate introduced me to the idea of Networkology and set out an approach to Disability Inclusion that was far more strategic and coherent than anything I had been doing. I changed how I did things radically. Success was fast in coming. What I did was to listen to people who know and try out their method. That worked.

In What Works, Iris Bohnet argued for a more systematic approach to attaining gender equity goals. Despite years of engagement with gender equity campaigns Bohnet saw persistent failure. Gender equity is the ground level inclusion challenge that started in the 1960s. If anything is emblematic of how complex inclusion is, it is gender equity.

PurpleSpace, the Neuroleadership Institute and Bohnet share one thing in common – a recognition of the importance of informed, updated, systematic, and disciplined practice in driving positive and inclusive change.

Since encountering Networkology in 2018 I have been persuaded that a strategic, professional, knowledge-based approach to Disability Inclusion is the only pathway to success. Everything I have read, watched, and listened to in the past 12 months has confirmed that.

Public sector agencies must develop expertise in their leaders and Disability Inclusion advocates by investing in, and supporting, such an approach if the inclusion goals of the sector are to be realised within a reasonable time. Disability Inclusion must become a priority that is backed by the resources needed (vision, knowledge, time, attention, method, and strategy). If its not, no assurance of commitment is worth anything.

Introduction

I was listening to the podcast Leading with Empathy & Allyship, show #83 How to Hurry History: Moving DEI Forward Faster, with Laura Liswood. It turns out that Laura has a new book out, The Elephant and the Mouse: Moving Beyond the Illusion of Inclusion to Develop a Truly Diverse and Equitable Workplace.

Liswood has the kind of background I find intensely interesting. She’s a deep thinker and the driving force behind the establishment of the Council of Women World Leaders. That’s impressive!

The premise of the title is that dominant group (the elephant) knows very little about the minority groups (the mouse). But the mouse, for its own survival, most know a great deal about the elephant. 

In a way, the illusion of Inclusion arises because while the elephant (organisational leadership) may think kindly upon mouse (members of diversity groups), it knows very little about what it’s like to be a mouse. Without that insight, the elephant cannot moderate its behaviour to match intent. The consequence is squashed mice. Nobody wants to be elephant-kill.

Liswood is emphatic:

• Effort doesn’t always equal outcome
• Intent doesn’t always equal impact.

A great amount of effort has been expended on boosting inclusion, but the results have been poor. In short, the effort expended, and the intent applied have delivered disappointing outcomes and have had a far lower impact than intended.

The vast majority of people in our culture (this is an important caveat) agree that Inclusion is a good thing. But there’s now a thriving industry of DEI speakers and trainers who are tapping into the good intent, but who are reporting resistance. This resistance is mostly unintentional (and institutional), but there’s an influential minority that is intentionally resistant.

Here are 3 key ideas from Liswood.

Discrimination is a wide and messy field

We tend to think that discrimination is confined to the usual diversity group members (gender, sexuality, race, disability, religion), But not so. You can be subject to discrimination because of height, weight, looks, introversion, personal style and taste, and class – the list can go on. In fact, you can be discriminated against for pretty much any reason other people can come up with.

Why does this matter? In terms of Disability Inclusion, it’s going to be struggle if you have a bunch of other attributes that can give elephant (and other mice) cause to not see you; or want to know about you. 

It is important to remind the reader that ‘discrimination’ used to be a virtue. It meant “having or showing refined taste or good judgement” (Oxford Dictionary). Being thought a discriminating person was desirable. But, almost in a paradoxical sense, we have developed a bias against the word’s original meaning, so that it now has a negative connotation. We have created a short cut from inappropriate discrimination to just discrimination. Inappropriate discrimination is unjust, unkind, and, in some cases, illegal. 

But, because of the way our brains and language work, it’s easier for us to work with the biased idea. Its handy to keep this in mind because when it comes to discussion about reframing how we think, this example will be helpful.

Staff with disability report being subject to being bullied more than any other group. Bullies target people they perceive to be vulnerable. If you have a constellation of other attributes that also trigger biases, getting a workplace adjustment in place might become a lot more problematic. Feeling as though you are fully included is going to be much harder as well.

I have previously observed that intersectionality is an important idea in Disability Inclusion. Now I believe it is critical. Disability may be the prominent identified personal attribute, but that does not make it the only attribute that triggers exclusion. Likewise, if people with invisible disability possess other attributes that may have already triggered discriminatory conduct, saying anything about an invisible disability may be a step too far.

Bias is a limiting notion

Liswood doesn’t like the word ‘bias’. For her it carries negative and even blaming connotations. This happens when a word is employed to convey negative messages with a moral overtone. A person can be ‘accused’ of bias – and thus its technical or neutral value is lost.

But Liswood opens the concept out beyond its limiting character. Rather than bias, she asserts that we have a cluster of largely unconscious beliefs, perspectives, perceptions, associations, actions, roles, and archetypes that influence our choices and behaviours. I’d add to that list instincts – behavioural reflexes hardwired into our brains. Liswood’s cluster opens up culture, nurture and experience (beyond nurture) to be understood as the constituents of biases.

The Neuroleadership Institute is clear that “if you have a brain, you have a bias.” Our experiences trigger the development of patterns in the brain, which then express in response to cues. Our instinct to not waste energy on consciously processing responses (a high energy consuming process) means that a lot of our ‘thinking’ is condensed into brain energy saving ‘biases’.

A bias is a tool. Using the right tool for the job makes sense. Nobody would want to use a hammer when a drill is needed. These days the relational jobs we have to do are different from the old ones. Now we need to develop new tools.

Using bias in a pejorative way – implying a moral failing – doesn’t help. We are good at seeing biases in other people, and bad at seeing them in ourselves. We are psychologically constructed that way. As they say, ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’ 

I think Liswood’s argument for unpacking biases is sound. It helps us understand the constellation of factors that constitute a bias. This is the first step to reframing our biases. Getting rid of them is impossible. But we can reshape them by reforming the input. This is something we do all the time, but hardly notice. Information helps, so does ideas about social values. If we expose ourselves to new information and new social values with sufficient intensity and frequency, we can develop new biases (shortcuts) that better match the values we aspire to.

Part of this concerns having sufficient self-awareness to know when an inappropriate bias is kicking in, or to not be self-defensive when an ally lets us know we are in the thrall of a bias.

The science of human behaviour employs another elephant metaphor – the elephant and the rider. Here the elephant is what is below our conscious awareness, and the rider is what is conscious. The social and moral psychologist, Johnathan Haidt, has described the rider at times as little more than a PR agent for the elephant. By that he means that what we think is reasoned thought is actually no more than rationalization to justify what the elephant feels is true. Hence, we will justify a bias and believe we are providing a rational defence of a belief or action.

My favourite illustration of this is a 1960s magazine cartoon depicting a guy caught in the act in a motel room. The door has been burst open by a Private Eye with a camera and the outraged wife. The guy blurts out, “But honey! I can explain!” Okay, that may have passed for humour 55 years ago, but it illustrates Haidt’s point perfectly.

The uncertain value of knowledge

Liswood describes research that shows that men are happy to know that a policy favouring DEI is in place. They seem content that having a policy is sufficient. Women, apparently, are less likely to end their concern at this point and want to know whether it is effective. I have reservations about such research as a purely gender-based distinction. This may be the case when the policy relates to women. To me it’s more a power group (elephant) thing – though dominated by men. 

The fact a policy has been developed and implemented can seem like a job done. But where does the responsibility for knowing end? The fact that policies are often reviewed only long after they are promulgated in an effort to determine whether they are working as intended suggests that there is no active critical monitoring. A policy promoting gender equity in promotions isn’t working after 3 years? This couldn’t be monitored in real time?

Liswood observes that “the presence of knowledge about others does not guarantee success, but the absence of knowledge guarantees failure.” How the elephant gets to know about the mouse (mice) is another question. The will to know is what I am interested in. A will to know is an expression of active engagement. If something isn’t working, let me know when you know, and let’s do something to sort that.

The disparity between developing and approving policy and monitoring it in practice is well known. I want to use a gardening analogy here to tease it out. If a policy is an action seed, simply throwing it on the garden bed (workplace) and expecting it to grow isn’t enough. For that see to bear good fruit, a lot of gardening is needed. A valued seed is nurtured into fruition.

There is a passage in the Christian Bible that illustrates this point perfectly:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. (Matthew 13 3-4)

If there is a will to know, a way to know will be found. If there is a will to change, a way to change will be found.

Conclusion

The Elephant and the Mouse is a 4 hour and 23 mins audiobook full of deep insights from a veteran DEI advocate. Liswood has a passion to give history a bit of a hurry up. She is prepared to look at the DEI landscape and add her take on things. 

There’s a lot of DEI content that can be regurgitated rote. But it doesn’t deliver any bang for the bucks expended. It assumes the ‘magic bullet’ approach – input rational content and behaviour will change. Research demonstrates, for example, that anti-bias training can often have the reverse impact. The only impact ‘awareness training’ may provide is to make the participants more aware of their own awareness. They may think they are more inclusive, but nothing else changes.

When organisations have limited funds to spend on supporting DEI, the magic bullet approach is the most effective way of getting ineffectual L&D experiences to the most people. That’s true equity, at least, but it doesn’t lead to true inclusion.

In line with the biblical quote above, the solution is to become a constant gardener. Gardeners have a passion to nurture their environment. Resetting your biases can only be a personal commitment reflecting personal insight. For a Disability Inclusion advocate, this is something that allows the person you want to enlist as a DEI ally to frame the challenge in a way that strongly connects to their heart. 

I find the story of Liswood going off to interview women presidents, prime ministers, and heads of government and ending up being the co-founder of the Council of Women World Leaders inspiring. A small act of inquiry generated an unexpected outcome. It shows what one mouse can do – give birth to an elephant.

Her deep experience tells her that “the Illusion of Inclusion” does not have to remain as a mirage forever on the horizon of our aspirations. We can make it a reality faster if we act with knowledge, insight and passion.