Category: Uncategorized

Introduction

Some months ago, I decided to look at all the agencies that responded to the 2021 People Matter Employee Survey (PMES) conducted by the NSW Public Service Commission.

I was curious to know whether the smaller agencies exhibited a ‘leadership edge’. The results were very interesting. Only two departments showed disability employment figures above the state average of 5%. They had 6%. There were 10 small entities with figures ranging from 7% to 12%.

Legal Aid NSW was the largest body, with staffing at just over 1340. It showed an impressive 10% of staff with disability, and its PMES response rate was 100%. That just had to be down to leadership. I was keen to have a chat with Brendan Thomas, who was Legal Aid’s CEO at the time.

By the time I got around to contacting him he had left Legal Aid to become Deputy Secretary, Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes at the Department of Communities and Justice.

This is a substantial essay. I have tried to keep it as trimmed as possible, but the truth is that a 3 or 4 pager on celebrating great leadership isn’t going to be all that informative or useful. What you have below is not dry theory. It is mostly Brendan talking about his experiences. I have tried to keep as close to the character of the original transcript as I could. But converting speech into prose demands modification – just to make it readable. These are rich insights into what it takes to be a genuine inclusive leader.

Who is Brendan Thomas?

There’s a Sydney Morning Herald article from 1 November 2021 that gives a useful backgrounder on Brendan, so I won’t repeat its content here.

He was CEO of Legal Aid NSW for 5 years, until late 2021. He is a Wiradjuri man, though Sydney born. He has a passion for what is just. 

What impressed me through our chat was that passion filtered through deep self-reflection and self-awareness, and a strong understanding of contemporary management/leadership methodologies. Brendan mentioned that he reads Harvard Business Review (HBR) regularly, noting that, “I went there for a little while.”

Passion, self-awareness and an educated approach to leadership and management is the perfect trifecta in my book. I first encountered HBR in 1987, when I was a lowly Employment Officer in the Commonwealth Employment Service. It is always a great thing to get to chat with HBR readers, who have never been all that numerous in the circles I participate in.

Appreciating those three attributes is the key to understanding Brendan’s approach to leadership.

Using PMES as a tool to drive positive change

We began with discussing how Brendan uses the PMES as a tool to interrogate his workforce and workplace cultures. His approach is very Harvard – It is data we can use to make things work better – for individual employees, for work units, and for the organisation.

Brendan: Following my first PMES with Legal Aid, we did a full review, engaged with staff, put the review back out to our people, and made a bunch of changes. A couple of those changes actually made the situation slightly worse. Some things didn’t really work.

The best method of dealing with that is as soon as we realized something didn’t work, we went back out to the staff and said, “Sorry. We tried this and it didn’t work. And these are the reasons why it didn’t work, and this is what we’re going to do about that.”

So, talking to staff often about what we’re doing, including the stuff that didn’t work – and what we are doing differently, builds confidence that the leadership is genuine about making positive changes.

I think the more you do that, the higher level of engagement you get from staff. The more they feel that their input is going to be valued, and the more they think that management is actually being honest with them about what’s going on, the more they will see that the PMES is something of value to them.

For each PMES we made an organization plan, and then we required each office to talk about their PMES results. Then I’d go to each office and talk about the results too. We’d have a discussion about what was good and what wasn’t so good. There were some offices that just had fantastic results, and others that needed some work.

Michael: In terms of the offices that had fantastic results to what extent did leadership play a role?

Brendan: Where staff say management listens to them, and where they report having regular meetings with their managers, they have good engagement scores. And all times where those things are lacking, the engagement scores are down. 

We developed a very collegiate leadership group. Everybody was working together, being really open and honest, and regularly engaging with staff – talking about problems. 

I’m thinking about one office which had very high level of engagement. But it also had a bunch of really wicked operational difficulties to deal with. The challenges were discussed openly and were being dealt with in a way that engaged the staff. That was the quality of local management. 

We set a benchmark for ourselves. In terms of staff engagement, we didn’t want anything below 75%. And if any office got below that, we would have an executive discussion about that location. We would talk about what we knew about that office and what we thought might improve their performance.

And then we’d have a focused discussion with the managers and have a workshop with the staff to talk about those results to see what we could do. 

You engage your staff and say, “Yeah, you said this is good and this wasn’t so good. What do you think we can do to make it better?” And if you listen to the responses and you act on them, things improve. 

I think, in Legal Aid, there was a good knowledge amongst the staff that we took that survey really seriously, that we acted on it, that we were honest about it.

Brendan’s approach can be summed up as follows: 

• High levels of engagement are the best indicator of a healthy and safe workplace.
• Use PMES data to identify threats to high engagement.
• Talk to the staff to find out what the issues are.
• Address the issues.
• Go back to staff to check that the fix worked.
• If not, try again.

The importance of effective leadership and management

Legal Aid gave Brendan a great opportunity to make key observations about managers. Lawyers were promoted to manager positions on the basis for their skills as lawyers, not on their capabilities as managers. Sometimes that caused problems.

Middle managers are the most influential – and hence key factors in the level of workplace engagement.

Brendan: You can get a really good dynamic bunch of senior executives and a bunch of committed frontline staff. But if you’ve got stale middle management, you’re in trouble. 

We had a really mixed bunch of some people who were really good, but a whole bunch of others who were not. And this isn’t just a Legal Aid problem. I think it’s a kind of specialist organization problem where people have been promoted because of their expertise rather than because they’re good managers.

So, I had a bunch of people whose management style was pretty much closing the door and sending everybody emails.

We quickly talked about what is the standard that we expect from managers, and what are the kind of competencies that we need. It was a good learning experience in Legal Aid, because it was clear people were being employed because they were good lawyers, not because they good managers. And in fact, they would actively admit it. That’s not a good way to run an organization. Let’s take a step back and say, “What do we actually need to see in terms of skills and competence in management, not legal work?”

And, therefore, we were able to enunciate those expectations, and say, “OK, this is the kind of standard that we expect of managers in terms of their capabilities and their competence. And this is the way we’re going to help people who aren’t there get there.”  We had a couple of coaching and development programs for that level of management.

The lesson that it teaches you is that you need to be very clear about what you are recruiting for.

Lawyers who were managers could elect to develop their management skills or find alternative employment – as lawyers. That’s a fortunate option for Legal Aid, and I am not sure how transferrable that option is beyond a specialist organisation. However, the point is clear – when recruiting managers, select those with management and leadership skills at the required level of competence.

Brendan: We went through a very clear process of redefining what those management positions looked like, and what we needed from them. So that was reflected in the role description, and in the recruitment process itself. 

So, you’ll be testing for what you want in terms of personal characteristics, the kind of leadership experience, and the leadership style in people for those management jobs. 

The importance of establishing trust and psychological safety in the workplace

Michael: In terms of workplace culture, how do you create the kind of environment suitable not only for staff with disability, but any of the other members of diversity groups?

Brendan: I tried to create an environment where people were encouraged to talk openly about things that they’re uncomfortable with. This included engagement with their manager, bullying in the workplace, or any kind of discrimination, if they saw it.

We had an induction process where I spent about 45 minutes talking with all new staff members. I really tried to emphasize to them kind of all the values of the organization, what we’d expect in terms of their behaviour. We also talked about what they should expect in terms of support from us, and I strongly encouraged people to directly email me if they had concerns.

If you find a workplace that has a high level of staff engagement, that engagement tends to be high across all kinds of people in that workplace.

So, if you’ve got an organisation where it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work, then it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work regardless of who they are.

But it has to be a place in which people are openly encouraged to participate and engage. It has to be a place where people can feel safe. That’s a really important thing.  

It also has to be a workplace where you are able to get some stuff wrong – because we all do that. It’s really important, I think, for leadership and management, it is essential to say that very openly. No one who works with me ever gets into trouble if they screw something up because they gave it their best shot and it didn’t work out.

So, we all screw things up. But it’s not about covering stuff up. You will end up in trouble if you do that. I don’t allow a blame culture to be created. So long as people are doing good work, and we are clear about what’s expected from people in terms of work volume and work outputs, a good work culture will be created.  It is really important to be clear about those kinds of things.

A good workplace is one that brings the best out of people and where people feel like they want to do the best they can. So, it’s a workplace that has a relatively high level of expectation of its staff.  We think you’re going do a good job and we’re going help you do it. And their expectation is you are going do good job – as a manager or a leader. There isn’t an expectation that you can, or will, do a lousy job, or that we are going to monitor or manage you really tightly. 

Brendan spoke about what constituted effective inclusive leadership and management. Here’s what I summarised:

• Be clear about your expectations and talk with staff about them.
• Support staff to meet those expectations.
• Hold them to meaningful account if they fail to honour them with support.
• Identify and address issues injurious to staff engagement.
• Staff will have expectations of the senior leadership team.
• Support your leadership team to meet them.
• Hold your managers and executives to meaningful account if they fail to honour them with support.
• Be approachable.

No tolerance for bullies

Bullying by managers and leaders is a want of relationship and communication skills as well as possibly poor workload management practices. All organisations profess zero tolerance for bullies, but not all deliver. Brendan spoke about the need to address bullying by managers.

Brendan: In Legal Aid, we did have a bullying problem when I started. This was coming from some of the ‘old school’ kind of people who were not great people managers. Their bullying had been ignored for a long time. 

I have no tolerance for that, and I deal with it straight away, and pretty harshly, to be frank. 

Now that we were dealing with this sort of stuff, we had some discussions about what staff needed, without breaching confidentiality. And we worked out a way to do it. About every six months we talked to people and said, “Well, this is the type of things that we’ve dealt with, the volume of them, and the outcomes that have followed.” It was a delicate balance to be able to communicate that to the organization in a way that people would say, “Alright, some people have behaved badly, and I could see something happened.”

So, I really try to feedback to the staff to say, “We don’t tolerate this kind of behaviour, and here’s the examples of where we’ve taken action. And if you’ve got something to say, you should always be able to say it.” But that’s not to say that that always happened. 

I can give you this example where we had a senior executive who managed up very well. Very intelligent, articulate person, but was a micro-manager – and it came out the PMES survey. Issues were coming up, but not directly. We could see there was a problem and when the initial inquiries weren’t really bringing out the problem, we looked at it in another way. 

I spoke to a couple of staff in the division off the record; and said, “I see that you’ve got some issues.” I encouraged them to tell others to raise their concerns directly with me. And a whole bunch of them did. We then did an independent review of that division. Everybody was anonymously spoken to by the reviewer and what came out of that review was it was a really bad workplace where people felt really collegiate to one another, but almost universally bullied by the boss. I’ve never seen a review that was so one-sided.

Everybody had exactly the same view that “We really like our job. Everyone is really nice, except that person. And here’s the examples of what’s happening with that person.” I ended up just dismissing that executive. Now you’re got a good division. That was an example of where people weren’t comfortable and felt frightened, and I needed to act to restore trust in our culture.

Support for staff with disability

The 2021 PMES report for Legal Aid show staff with disability at 10%, twice the state’s average, Brendan recalled that Legal Aid’s internal diversity data for people with disability was around 8%, but he wasn’t completely sure. Usually there is a very significant gap between PMES figures and an agency’s internal diversity data. This is a ‘trust gap’ that hasn’t been closed for years, despite efforts to do so across the sector.

Michael: Let’s talk about disability and to the extent to which staff disclosed any psychological disability. I don’t like using the term mental illness. It has a stigma. Saying that you have a mental illness often implies disordered thinking processes, which would be a problem for a lawyer. The majority of people with ‘mental illness’ are diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression, which doesn’t impact on their intellectual processes.

Brendan: I can give an example of where it came to a head for us, and where it caused us to think very differently. I had very strong focus on Aboriginal employment in Legal Aid. We had a couple of Aboriginal staff and we set some targets for increasing the number. There’s one staff member who sent me an email saying. “I’ve got a mental illness and it’s not being managed in the workplace.” She was a relatively young woman in an administrative role. She had pretty acute anxiety and depression. And she was experiencing times when she was getting pressured in the workplace, and her response to that would be to not come into work the next day because her anxiety level was high.

Then that workplace started to say, “Well, this employee is not showing up and her work is falling on somebody else.” She was on a temporary engagement at the time, like a traineeship, a kind of an entry level employment arrangement. Her manager wanted to terminate her because of repeated non-attendance at the workplace. HR was supporting the proposed termination. It came to me, and I said “No.”

And then she sent me an email saying, “I’ve got a mental illness and people in the workplace were giving me a hard time.” The incident caused us to have a frank discussion about how people who have those issues are dealing with them. Sometimes that comes out in people not attending workplace; or having some kind of performance issue. We need to deal with that. 

I had a discussion with the management group who wanted to get rid of her.  I said, “Well, if she broke her leg and she couldn’t attend the office, what would you do about that?” They said, “We’d say she’s sick.” I said, “I see. But she’s kind of got a broken leg and can’t come into work. But you’re not treating her like she’s sick, you’re treating her like she’s a bad performer.” That’s particularly bad from an Aboriginal point of view. A large proportion of the Aboriginal population have these issues.

Michael:  I’m guessing that given the nature of law, there’s a certain number of people with disabilities studying law.  There would be a fairly ready marketplace, and a chance to drive a recruitment campaign. 

Brendan: Oh yeah, absolutely, and not just legal jobs. We went out and specifically recruited people with disability in some of the other areas as well. I employed people with autism specifically. We went to a firm called Specialisterne and talked to them about the types of jobs they might have people for. We ended up filling a couple of data and analytical roles.

The importance of a self-reflective personal philosophy

Contemporary leadership research recognises the importance of emotional intelligence, and I have noticed that the executives I have the highest regard for have had either an academic grounding in psychology, or they are very well read in individual and organisational psychology (especially in leadership and people management)

Michael: To what extent does what you’re saying come from your own personal insight or have you done a lot of training and or reading in contemporary management and leadership practices?

Brendan: I’ve been a senior executive since 2007. I’ve had a lot of good successes as well as a few experiences that haven’t gone well. That’s why I think you learn more from the things that don’t go well. 

I’ve focused pretty heavily on trying to develop my own knowledge and experience around executive management. I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review which comes out every month. Mostly, I read stuff that’s locked into the Harvard Business School. 

I really try to pay attention to other executives and engage in discussions around executive management. In my last couple of roles, I really tried to foster an environment with the executive leadership group where you do have discussions about what it is to manage an organization, what do you need to know.

Michael: Was your executive leadership group as keen on reading as you were. Was that something that you’re able to foster in the leadership group?

Brendan: Yeah, I was lucky. I think by the time I finished in Legal Aid we had a leadership group that were very interested in their own development. We really tried to foster an environment where the group was interested in doing that together. So, people were looking at how they could develop as a group, not just as individuals, or individual members of a group. How does that group develop if it understands its own strengths and weaknesses?

I had things like the 360 feedback exercises. I always say to people, it doesn’t matter what your score is. What is in my mind, having done a lot of those over 15 years, is that it helps you see how people perceive you. When I get 360 feedback that’s OK because it’s me. I’ve got some areas that I’m not good at that I need to cater for, but I know now about them.

We’ve all got them, right? It’s whether you’re conscious of them that matters. If you’re cognizant of them, you can do something about it. You can either, as an executive, build your skill and understanding, or you can structure yourself so that you are mitigating the things that you’re not great at. So, I know for myself, my natural inclination is not to have open communication with people. I do it much more now because I’ve done it for 15 years, but it’s not my natural inclination.

So, I know I need to have a very strong communications function that works with me. I’m always thinking about how I’m communicating with people because I know it’s something I need to be aware of.

And I know I’ve got a tendency to be a little perfectionistic and expect too much of people and or expect things to get done a little too quickly. And I mitigate that by usually having a PMO function that can manage things and keep them on track and on time – so, I’m not hassling people saying “Where’s this? Where’s that?” It’s being managed by somebody else. 

You know where you’re strong, and you know where you’ve got weaknesses. You’re going have a weakness somewhere around. And you either develop those weaknesses or you develop strategies to mitigate them. 

And as I always say to people, when they do those 360 degrees surveys, it doesn’t matter what your score is. It matters how aware you are of your own strengths and weaknesses.

Conclusion

By now the reader will have formed an opinion about whether Brendan is the kind of executive leader they would want to work to, and you probably don’t care too much about what I am going to say next.

Leadership is not easy, and it doesn’t suit everyone. But it must be done well if we are to have high performing public sector agencies. I don’t know what the upper limit is in terms of the number of people who can be led by an individual. Even in Legal Aid, with just over 1300 people Brendan had a leadership team. But the influence one individual can have is very clear in his story.

It is clear that effective Inclusive Leadership must be:

• Grounded in a personal commitment, 
• Informed by contemporary organisational psychology research on inclusion and leadership, 
• Practised in a self-reflective manner that expresses openness, honesty, and emotional intelligence, and
• Committed to sustained engagement between the senior leadership team and all staff through:
  • Anyone-to-anyone accessibility, 
  • Shared challenge identification and resolution, and 
  • Transparent decision-making. 

Inclusive leaders must be at every level in an organisation – from the very top down through all levels of influence to every manager’s, team leader’s and supervisor’ role.

Introduction

On 7 April 2022, Sharon Bennett, Deputy Chair Comms, NSW Department of Communities and Justice’s Disability Employee Network (DCJ DEN) sent me an email. It said in part, “Like all of us we come with our amazing points as well our baggage that’s why the DEN is such a great safe place.  I’ve been getting so many people reach out with their stories and they’re all saying they finally feel heard and safe.  Some of whom are actually advising they’re ready to speak up about their stories so others can feel safe.  You started that and you should be very proud.”

That is great news. It has taken a few years for it to be possible to write such an email because the DEN had to develop the ability to have such influence, and then work within, and with, the Department to generate the change desired. It’s a work in progress, and it will continue to be so for a few years yet. 

I have noted in an earlier essay that having time to engage in research has opened my eyes and mind to the complexity of the challenge of achieving real Disability Inclusion.

In this essay I want to focus on psychological safety; but get there via the terms intersectionality and microaggression (also called Subtle Acts of Exclusion).

Intersectionality

I am reflexively wary of terms coming from academia into popular use because they are invariably politicised (which may be the right thing for the users) and frequently misinterpreted and misrepresented. Intersectionality is one such word. It has a powerful and universal application.

Put simply, a person may possess several attributes which might be, each by itself, a cause for discrimination and exclusion to some degree. In fact, it is probably safe to say that a minority of people with disability in any given workforce have only the attribute of their disability as a potential trigger for discrimination and exclusion.

I have a cluster of physical disabilities and I am also over age 55, so age discrimination creeps in. A friend has the same 2 attributes; but adds Aboriginality. Other people I know are ‘diversity’ quadruple and even quintuple ‘threats’. But instead of making them valuable, it can make them miserable. We laugh about having a high ‘diversity score’, but it’s not funny, not really.

The other side of this is the reality that a person who feels discriminated against because of some aspect of their identity may choose not to seek a workplace adjustment for a non-visible disability. That discrimination need only be excessive recognition of an identity attribute; and may not be intentionally hurtful. But it can be enough. A person who feels uncomfortable about an identity attribute is treated at work is not going to always be okay about asking for a disability related accommodation.

Intersectionality is an important idea. It can remind us that disability may not be the only, or even the main, cause of discriminatory conduct.

The Victorian government has a webpage devoted to ‘Understanding Intersectionality’. I urge you to read it, share it, and use the downloads to help make intersectionality an important insight.

Microaggressions

This is another term that is misinterpreted, misrepresented, and can be misunderstood. Our speech is something we think we control, but, depending on our cultural and family upbringing, and our own life experiences, there may be elements of how we talk that can injure others. That can be intentional, of course, but here I want only to focus on the unintentional.

This isn’t about walking on eggshells every time you open your mouth. The fact is that we can cause unintended harm, and send signals of exclusion, by what we say.

There’s a useful primer on microaggressions on the NPR website (NPR is the US National Public Radio). The related podcast is available through your podcast app – NPR Life Kit 6 June 2020. 

As I have observed before, so much material on discrimination and exclusion has a USA focus, and this can leave us thinking it’s not as bad here in Australia. But that’s not a safe assumption. The US has researched, written, and talked on the theme way more than anybody else.

I have just started a book, Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify and Stop Microaggressions by Tiffany Jana and Michael Baran.  I will come back with an essay on this theme when I am finished. The authors don’t particularly like the term microaggression, and they have come up with subtle acts of exclusion. At first encounter, I like this approach. But microaggression is in widespread use, so it’s good to know what it is about.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is a vitally important concept, as you can see in what the Western Australian government has put together. The Harvard Business Review has a good articleon the subject. And then there’s agreatplacetowork.com.au.

In NSW the government has a much dryer approach. Safe Work NSW has a Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work and another page on Mental Health.

Here’s a quote from a recent interview with Brendan Thomas, former CEO of Legal Aid NSW and now Deputy Secretary, Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes, Department of Communities and Justice:

If you find a workplace that has a high level of staff engagement, that engagement tends to be high across all kinds of people in that workplace.

So, if you’ve got an organisation where it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work, then it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work regardless of who they are.

But it has to be a place in which people are openly encouraged to participate and engage. It has to be a place where people can feel safe. That’s a really important thing. 

Brendan has summed up the importance of creating a safe and inclusive workplace neatly. Psychological safety means “it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work regardless of who they are.”

Conclusion

Psychological safety in the workplace is a right of all employees, regardless of who they are. Ensuring that is what they experience is a duty incumbent on all employers. 

The issue is not just whether the harm caused by a psychologically unsafe workplace is compensable, and hence has an impact on WorkCover premiums. The issue is whether we want genuinely inclusive, happy, and highly productive workplaces. Everyone benefits. There is no downside.

Safe, inclusive, and diverse workplaces are more productive, effective, and innovative. They generate lower costs because staff turnover is lower, and unplanned absences are also reduced.

As with everything to do with being inclusive, psychological safety is a complex theme that requires intentional effort to attain it. Intersectionality reminds us that we are multi-dimensional – and some of us have multiple identity attributes that may generate intentional and unintentional exclusion and discrimination. We can be included for one attribute while being excluded for another.

Learning about microaggressions (Subtle Acts of Exclusion) can help us see that we can unintentionally signal exclusion in the act of being inclusive, and then be bewildered by the reaction we have precipitated – sometimes leading to an act of intentional exclusion in response. 

Psychological safety in our workplaces is an essential, and it is an attainable goal – with the investment of effort.

Introduction

In 2020 the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) participated in the Australian Network on Disability’s (AND) Access and Inclusion Index (the Index). This is a self-assessment tool designed to interrogate an organisation’s self-perception of how it treats staff and customers/service users with disability.

DCJ is a complex entity which engages with the community at problematic stages of the life of individuals and families via corrective services, courts and tribunals, public housing, child protection, as well as other support services. It was formed in 2019 through the merging of the former departments of Justice and Family and Community Services. 

The Index has ten focus areas, seven of which sit squarely with the Corporate Services Division (Premises, Workplace Adjustments, Communication & Marketing, ICT, Recruitment & Selection, Career Development, Suppliers & Partners). The division was undergoing a huge upheaval as Corporate Services teams from the two departments were being merged. We decided to participate in the Index at this difficult time so we could quickly get a clear idea of where the new department needed to develop. Between September and November of 2019, the data came in.

What happened next

Part of the assessment included an independent ‘Benchmark’ report that provides feedback on self-assessment judgements, usually at a less generous level. The report also has suggestions/recommendations about where to focus efforts at improvement. The report arrived in April 2020. It is a valuable tool for keeping self-assessors honest and realistic (we tend to over-rate ourselves).

Getting a response to the report’s critiques, and action recommendations, can be a problem for people in work units already under the pump. They have priorities and adding another isn’t always welcome.

The Deputy Secretary for Corporate Services at the time was John Hubby. 

The report went to the DCJ Board. I wrote the briefing paper for that. I also ensured that John got a separate briefing. John’s response was to have his office liaise with my unit in getting the attention of the various Corporate Services business units to go through parts of the report relevant to their business area and come up with actions to respond to the recommendations.

Corporate Services also took on responsibility for coordinating action in preparation for participating in the Index in 2021.

Nothing is at all remarkable about this. It is what should happen. But there’s a subtle dimension. The level of enthusiasm and commitment that came from John’s office and the leaders of most of the business units was gratifying. 

I’d been around long enough to understand that when a senior leader indicates their interest in something happening, it does happen. But it does need an expression of interest that permeates the business areas – and conveys that level of interest. When that happens, it gives permission to managers who share that interest to prioritise actions. Those managers who are maybe not as enthusiastic, come on board as well. Even the more reluctant can get drawn in as well. Inclusion is not everyone’s priority.

I had an email exchange with John, who was a little bemused by the expressions of gratitude for his support for Disability Inclusion – and Inclusion more generally. He noted that Inclusion was recognised as a priority by the board, and it aligned with his values as well. So far as he was concerned, he was “just doing my job.”

Which he was. But here’s the point. There is critical value in senior executives letting their staff know that Inclusion is something that aligns with their personal values, as well as the values of the organisation. There is critical value in making their commitment manifestly evident. The support from John’s office was energetic and enthusiastic – and that was seen as a reflection of his values and commitment.

In some ways he didn’t do much at a personal level – but the value is in the quality of the act, not the quantum. That is great leadership. And, sure, it was John just doing his job.

Conclusion

I do not imply that other senior executives are not committed to, and supportive of, Inclusion. But there’s the difference of having a visible signal that can be seen and responded to by their staff. Inclusion must be modelled by senior leaders, either directly or via indirect means – but visibly so.

If Inclusion is valued and meaningful, the extent of that commitment must be made clear and unambiguous. It is better if personal commitment to, and enthusiasm for, the objective is also conveyed. Modelling desired change is important – being the change you want to see happen is critical at the top. More people can see you; and will know what to emulate. That is part of doing one’s job, surely.

I have since learned that John was very outcome focused. He not only supported Inclusion; he wanted to know what was happening, and what the outcomes were. That adds the dimension of accountability to commitment. It gives business area leaders something to aim at.

I am looking forward to learning how participation in the 2021 Access and Inclusion Index changed things in Communities and Justice. Maybe sometime in the next month I can find out the extent to which John’s notion of ‘just doing his job’ has paid off.

Introduction

When we get reports on the People Matter Employee Survey (PMES) results, the NSW Public Sector understandably pays attention to the good news. That’s fair enough. Celebrating what is getting better is a good thing. But it also directs our attention away from the magnitude of the negatives. I don’t want to dwell on the negatives in some morbid way. But if we convert percentages into people numbers, we can become more aware of the human story the negatives tell us.

Below I look at negative ratings from the PMES at 15% and higher. I don’t like dealing in parts of people, so let’s say 15% is 3 people in 20. Imagine a room with 20 people in it and then imagine that 3 of them flat out say their experience is negative. To assist, 20% is one person in 5 (4 in 20) and 25% or higher is at least one person in 4 (5 in 20).

The document I rely upon is 2021 NSW Public Sector report.

Scoping the problem

What we have to ask ourselves, from an inclusion perspective, is how many negative assessments are okay? Women make up 59% of the NSW public sector. We have no idea what that means in terms of the level of sex discrimination. What I can tell you is that sex discrimination is alive and well and living in our organisations in some regard.

Based on the 2021 PMES scores we know what a breakdown of the workforce across the sector looks like:

Gender:

• Female 59%
• Non-Binary 0% (However responses from non-binary staff are shown – p. 38)
• Prefer Not to Say 9%

Age:

• 55+ 18%
• Prefer Not to Say 15%

Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander:

• Yes 3%
• Prefer Not to Say 6%

Disability:

• Yes 5%
• Prefer Not to Say 5%

LGBTQI+:

• Yes 5%
• Prefer Not to Say 6%

Language Other Than English spoken at home:

• Yes 21%
• Prefer Not to Say 6%

When we allow for intersectionalities (when 2 or more of these ‘diversity’ attributes are shared by an individual) we can see that we cannot assume that a staff member with disability is experiencing discrimination because of their disability alone. It is therefore essential to consider the range of people who may be vulnerable to discrimination as a whole, rather than try to isolate specific disability related discrimination. We cannot know whether discrimination is disability specific when other ‘diversity’ attributes also apply.

How do we know whether a woman aged 55+ with a disability, or an Aboriginal man aged 55+ with a disability, both of whom have reported discrimination and bullying, have been targeted solely because of their disability?

What the PMES does not tell us

We do not know whether the people who record negative assessments when they respond to the PMES questionnaire belong to the ‘diversity’ groups who most frequently experience discrimination. But we cannot assume they do not.

For this reason, celebrating a ‘good’ score of 85% still might mean that the 15% who gave a negative assessment were members of a ‘diversity’ group. While it is a good thing that improving indicators show progress in addressing issues, those indicators have a natural ‘spongey ceiling’ – when discrimination kicks in and things improve not at all, or very slowly, for members of ‘diversity’ groups. 

Celebrating improvements when a significant proportion of a workforce remains discontent can seem pretty insensitive. Admissions that ‘there is more work to be done’ or ‘we must try harder’ don’t really cut it; if there is no demonstrable commitment to try harder and do that extra work. We have to ask ourselves what that looks like. Public sector agencies are capable of strategic planning – in fact it is essential – so some clear, measurable, and accountable plans that are time limited would be great.

The PMES crunches raw numbers. It does not tell us whether an agency has a plan that is accountable. This is despite the fact that all NSW agencies must have a Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). But these do not have to have staff-related accountable objectives. Inclusion plans are common across the sector – but no plan has intrinsic merit. It must be implemented, monitored, and have accountability built in.

The politics and economics of inclusion

Public sector agencies face real budget restraints, which mean they must work smarter and harder – and that puts real cognitive pressure on staff. This means that staff can be time poor and attention poor – and among the many things that must be done, or should be done, some things fall off the crowded table. Inclusion tends to be one of those things.

Agencies have an obligation to meet the ‘inherent rights’ of those who experience exclusion and discrimination, and this requires an application of effort that is able to deliver the ‘best bang for the bucks’ – value for money essentially.  

That isn’t an easy thing to do. It requires knowledge, coordination and collaboration, planning, prioritisation, and accountability. In short, it must be intentional and prioritised, rather than set aside as something that must contest for available resources.

This is the problem with the notion of an inherent right, especially one backed by legislation and policy. As I have noted in my earlier posts on bias, there is a risk that some will see, in their efforts to manage demands and limited resources, that an inherent right to inclusion is still subject to the risk of being thought something that can be delayed, or deferred, on resource grounds. This flips the inherent right claim into the granting of a gift by those who control access to resources.

This is not a criticism. It is a tension inherent between an organisation and its staff. The PMES provides regular evidence that what is delivered by an organisation and what is experienced by staff doesn’t always accord as okay. The point here is that an inherent rightshouldn’t be part of that tension, but it seems to be.

All organisations operate with a certain level of risk. A reasonable appetite for risk is better than being risk averse. However, when that translates as an appetite for the denial of inherent rights it’s time to rethink priorities. I don’t think this issue has been engaged with to a sufficient degree of transparency. The fact that the rights to inclusion, and freedom from discrimination are enshrined in law and policy have not been instantly acknowledged can suggest that these things are ‘works in progress’. The problem with such an attitude is that it translates as a ‘granting’ of a right as if it is a gift to be bestowed, rather than an inherent and inalienable entitlement.

The private sector is doing better because it has a measurable bottom line and an imperative to grow profits. For example, in the US an aversion to being sued in discrimination cases and the recognition that inclusion is good for business by several measures motivates business to be more actively engaged in inclusion action. Much more is being invested in developing senior leaders’ capacity to drive inclusion across their companies and their business areas.

The solution for the public sector is for an informed conversation with those impacted, and a commitment to some innovative solutions, with a sense of urgency injected.

Which response is from a staff member who experiences discrimination?

Below is a table of PMES responses where 15% or more of respondents have given a flat-out negative response – saying the statement is not true. There are 24 of them. I am not saying all the negative responses are from a diversity group. The anonymity of the survey means we cannot know.

If most of the 15% of respondents who gave a negative rating to the statement “I have the tools and technology to do my job well” were people with disability, we would have to interpret the result very differently. A result showing 85% of staff are happy with their tools and equipment is great news, but if we knew who the other 15% were any celebrating might be restrained.

STATEMENT	NEGATIVE
I have confidence in the way recruitment decisions are made	29%
Change is managed well in my organisation	28%
I have the time to do my job well	26%
I am confident my organisation will act on the results of this survey	26%
I am satisfied with the opportunities available for career development in my organisation	25%
I am paid fairly for the work I do	24%
Senior managers listen to employees	23%
I have confidence in the ways my organisation handles grievances	22%
My organisation generally selects capable people to do the job	21%
I receive adequate recognition for my contributions from my organisation	21%
People in my organisation take responsibility for their own actions	21%
I can keep my work stress at an acceptable level	20%
Senior managers keep employees informed about what’s going on	20%
There is good co-operation between teams across my organisation	19%
My organisation is committed to developing its employees	19%
My manager appropriately deals with employees who perform poorly	19%
Senior managers provide clear direction for the future of the organisation	19%
I get the support I need to do my job well	17%
My performance is assessed against clear criteria	16%
In the last 12 months, I have received feedback to help me improve my work	16%
Senior managers model the values of my organisation	16%
My organisation motivates me to help it achieve its goals	15%
My organisation inspires me to do the best in my job	15%
I have the tools and technology to do my job well	15%

Conclusion

The above table tells us that, on average the negative feedback relates to 3 people in 20 7 times, 4 people in 20 12 times and 5 people in 20 5 times

Inclusion is for everybody, not the majority. The reason inclusion is an issue is that it means the end of exclusion from the majority. The PMES is a fantastic tool – if we use it the right way – and do not bias our interpretation in favour of the majority. Good numbers are great, but the smaller negative numbers must be interrogated with a sensitive awareness that exclusion and discrimination apply most frequently to members of minority groups.

Introduction

Inclusive Leadership is an important aspect of the job leading and managing staff, but little acknowledged as a genuine challenge that requires intentional effort from the leader and real support by the organisation.

This means that a leader or manager who has an interest in developing greater awareness of Inclusive Leadership may not be aware of what is available to them. There are articles that can be found through an online search. These offer a condensed summation of related ideas; but cannot provide the essential ‘how to’ guidance.

I scanned available books on Inclusive Leadership and selected two audiobooks which were well rated, and relatively short.

Diversity in the Work Place: How to be an Inclusive Leader, Manage Diversity in the Work Place, Tackle Unconscious Bias, and Foster Inclusive Conversations

 by Erika Nielsen Brown is just under 3 ½ hours.

How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Creating Trust, Cooperation, and Community Across Differences by Jennifer Brown is just over 4 hours.

Good, but different, resources

Both books serve useful purposes, with distinctly different approaches. Erika Nielsen Brown provides a solid discussion on what Inclusive Leadership is, whereas Jennifer Brown sets out a methodology based on her own consultancy work. 

How to Be an Inclusive Leader assumes the reader already has a commitment to becoming an Inclusive Leader and is okay with embarking on a process of change immediately. The book is essentially a full on ‘how to’ guide.

Diversity in the Work Place takes a different approach. It lays out an argument that would suit a reader who wants to feel that there is no presumption that they are totally on board and ready to get into developing or refining their approach to Inclusive Leadership.

I found them sufficiently different as to be of combined value. I listened to them back-to-back over a couple of days and didn’t feel like there was a lot of repetition. Obviously, the key ideas are the same in essence, but the approaches were sufficiently different to make the individual angles interesting and valuable. 

Some key observations

Based on my notes as I listened to book books.

Diversity in the Work Place

• A very good discussion on how bias is hardwired into us.
• Explores elements of social psychology that indicate how unconscious behaviour that was survival oriented remains active – and can be misapplied. 
• As we evolved, our behaviour was energy efficient – of necessity. We have an aversion to expending energy needlessly – responding to change, which is often unwelcome, is energy demanding. It can trigger aversion to the unfamiliar – individuals and cultural settings.
• Biases are not only hardwired in us, we are also inclined to resist changing them.
• Explaining the reason for biases does not mean ‘excusing’ them. 
• Very good discussion on – “As leaders, it is important to understand where our own, and our employees, biases originate, so we can begin the process of dismantling them.“
• The language is unfortunate – a case of a very good diagnosis but not the best framing of the ‘cure’. Mentions ‘correcting’ biases – an unfortunate terminology because it suggests something is wrong. I prefer to think in terms of evolving. That said, the author is not judgmental or blaming.
• A diverse workplace is where “everyone feels part of an us even with their differences and no one is pushed out as a them.”
• Bias can be conscious and unconscious. This is important. It means those who believe they are inclusive can still be influenced by unconscious biases
• Our ability to be aware of our biases and manage them can be a mixture of unconscious and conscious responses. Figuring out what drives us to respond, or act, is not always an easy thing to do.
• Not too many workshops – give support in a way that gives employees time to focus on engaging with their biases. Don’t overload. Remember that change resistance is not always recalcitrance. 

How to Be an Inclusive Leader

• It is neuro-biologically impossible to eliminate bias – but you can become more conscious of it. 
• Focus on how to become aware of biases, and not why (My note – beyond assuring that bias is not ‘wrong’, but just not appropriate. Not everyone is into the science).
• Becoming an Inclusive Leader is a “personal and emotional journey”.
• “No matter where we start as leaders, we all have a responsibility to learn how to improve our knowledge, skill and competencies to better support our colleagues, companies, and the people around us”
• Adds ‘Belonging’ to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. (My note – I like that – BIDE (bide means to remain, or stay) – so the foundation of retention?)
• Becoming an Inclusive Leader helps a leader “evolve” and become a better version of themselves in the process (author has 4 stages in a continuum of that evolution). It is “a humbling journey of discovery that’s not always easy”
• Rather than good or bad, better we think in terms of aware/unaware and conscious/unconscious
• Refers reader to Brene Brown’s TED Talk on vulnerability

Conclusion

Both books have a focus on the US (that’s the biggest marketplace for all books in English), and this might lead a reader to imagine that things are not as bad in Australia. I want to caution against that. In the US there is a far more active conversation and there is much more publicly available research and discussion. Better figure it’s just as bad here – and we just don’t know it. 

The level of exclusion and the persistence of bias and discrimination across all diversity areas, and not just disability, means that inclusiveness is a challenge for all of us. 

Jennifer Brown included a quote from Peter Drucker (the great management consultant) – “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This means that creating an inclusive culture is far better than having to come up with strategies to remedy issues that arise from exclusion.

Inclusive Leadership is critical to creating such a culture. If you can do only one book, chose carefully. Both are valuable; and reading both is recommended for readers who want a strong foundation in understanding how to be an Inclusive Leader.

I have Amazon links below to both books. I support local independent booksellers and have the Amazon links because they have audiobooks and ebooks which may be more accessible to some readers.

Diversity in the Work Place

How to Be an Inclusive Leader

Introduction

As I read through the NSW Public Service Commission’s State of the Sector reports, with a focus on disability, it seems clear that Inclusive Leadership is a concern.

Here I have to make an almost embarrassing confession. Inclusive Leadership was scarcely a thing for me – as a discrete idea. It is strange how one can go through life dimly aware of a concept. Yes, of course the principles of Inclusive Leadership were everywhere. But the actual words “Inclusive Leadership” were in none of the sources I had been engaging with deeply. Not even the State of the Sector reports used the term. I searched ‘inclusive’ in the 2020 (appears 5 times) and 2021 (appears 8 times) and it was not once associated with the word ‘leadership’. This was despite the following statements.

“Empowering public sector staff to work flexibly in ways that work for both them and their team is crucial to developing an inclusive and diverse workforce that reflects the community it serves.” (2020)

“Our people are the key to having a world class public service. The sector would not be able to deliver world class services without an inclusive and diverse workforce that is fully engaged.” (2021)

I got curious about what was available on Inclusive Leadership online. There’s quite a bit. I put a couple of audiobooks into my audible wishlist and will listen to them in the next couple of weeks and write an essay on them.

Then I got curious about what the NSW Public Service Commission had to say on the theme. Not a lot. There was a cheery page with a downloadable PDF poster.

That poster

I have copied the poster’s content below for ease of reference. The worrying thing for me is that the PSC, which surely should have a commitment to Inclusive Leadership, doesn’t seem to give it too much energy. The 2021 State of the Sector report notes that:

This year, the People Matter survey expanded its focus on wellbeing by asking employees about their experiences of discrimination and racism in the workplace. As with other negative workplace behaviours, the numbers are low. However, any level of discrimination and racism is unacceptable, and we need to work together to ensure that everyone has a positive experience at work. 

I have a concern that saying, “the numbers are low” sends the wrong signal while saying “any level of discrimination and racism is unacceptable” If any level of exclusionary conduct is unacceptable numbers do not matter. Mentioning low numbers suggest no urgency, surely.

The poster’s content is not wrong so much as unhelpful. It assumes factors not in evidence:

• The reader (leader) knows how to do what is listed.
• The reader is confident that they will be supported within their leadership culture.

There is a huge difference between ‘what to do’ and ‘how to do’ – as any novice cook or brain surgeon well knows. Providing a cheery list of whats while offering no hows suggests one, or all, of the following prevail:

• Saying what to do is considered good enough (it’s not the PSC’s role to do more than that, or that’s considered sufficient in itself).
• Inclusive leadership really isn’t as important as it’s said to be.
• There aren’t the resources to say or do more.

Please read through the poster’s contents below. As you do, imagine this has been presented to you are an action item. What thoughts and questions do you have?

Be Committed

What I say:

• I consistently share how important it is to me that others are treated with fairness and respect. 
• I speak up when I observe non- inclusive behaviour, and affirm inclusive behaviour. 

What I do:

• My actions reflect equality as a core value to me. 
• I regularly check-in with others to see what else they need to feel included. 
• I allocate resources (e.g., time, energy) to improve inclusion. 

Be Courageous

What I say:

• I understand where my weaknesses may exist and share them openly. 
• I share my own stories and personal challenges in relation to diversity and inclusion. 

What I do:

• I do not act as if I am above others. 
• I help others to learn from my own strengths and weaknesses.

Be Conscious of Bias

What I say:

• I ask for feedback from others to raise my blind spots and be more inclusive. 
• I talk about how personal biases can create a lack of equality in the workplace. 

What I do:

• I look for and correct bias in the system. 
• I assign tasks / evaluate performance fairly. 
• I intentionally put in processes to ensure my personal biases do not influence my decisions about others. 

Be Curious

What I say:

• I communicate calmly and respectfully to my team in the face of pressure. 
• I deliberately ask the quiet members of the team about their views in meetings. 

What I do:

• I am approachable and open to new ideas. 
• I listen closely and make time to better understand the diverse experiences of team members. 
• I work comfortably with ambiguity and uncertainty. 

Be Culturally Aware

What I say:

• I ask questions to learn more about others’ backgrounds. 
• I change my verbal communication style appropriately when a cross- cultural situation requires it. 

What I do:

• I seek opportunities to work with people from different backgrounds. 
• I accept that different cultural situations may require me to adapt my behaviour 

Be Collaborative

What I say:

• I communicate to team members that they should feel safe to raise any issues or concerns
• I highlight shared goals to help different team members to work together

What I do:

• I work hard to accommodate different working styles and preferences to get the best out of others. 
• I create an environment where team members feel safe to take a risk. 

Telling or suggesting a leader should be committed, courageous, conscious of bias, curious, culturally aware, and collaborative is all well and good. But some of these are attributes of character, and others are skills. They are not hats that can be popped, and off, on at will. Being committed, courageous and curious are attributes we hope leaders have, but do they? Being conscious of bias, being culturally aware, and being collaborative can be learned – when opportunity and means are provided – or taken.

Conclusion

I am perplexed that the PSC considers this contribution to promoting and stimulating Inclusive Leadership sufficient. Perhaps it believes its role is to do some rudimentary research, create a basic page and make a poster? Perhaps there is an expectation that it is up to leaders to take it from there?

The wider research and literature paints a very different story – suggesting that skills are certainly lacking, and in some cases, character attributes as well.

The Diversity Council of Australia’s study Building Inclusion: An Evidence-Based Model of Inclusive Leadership, released in 2015 produced some concerning findings, including:

• Interviewees rated the current level of inclusive leadership capability of senior leaders in their organisation relatively low. The average score out of ten was 5.8 with 26% rating it as either 5 or 6; and 17% rating it as being below 5.
• Earlier DCA research found only 11% of Australian workers strongly agree that their manager actively seeks out information and new ideas from all employees to guide their decision making – a key capability of inclusive leaders. And Australian workers from culturally diverse backgrounds are up to three times less likely to experience their workplaces as inclusive.

Inclusive leadership is important for a variety of reasons. To begin with, we are all different. It is leadership for all. Effectively practiced, it can cut through the biases that impede genuine inclusion to ensure the workplace is safe for all – a place to belong, not just endure. 

The demand for such leadership is growing. For a public sector agency to deliver, it must see that Inclusive Leadership is non-trivial and requires investment of effort and resources to be effective. The individual staff member is the ‘tool’ leaders and managers employ to make the things they are charged with doing happen.

There’s an old saying that ‘a poor workman blames his tools.’ He also neglects and abuses his tools – I learned that as a kid. My stepfather was an old school carpenter and joiner. I wasn’t allowed to touch his tools until I learned how to care for them.

In a knowledge economy people are the ‘tools’ of organisation. Neglect or abuse them, and things don’t work. To have a ‘world class public service’ you must have world class inclusive leaders. It isn’t optional.

Introduction

Regular readers will be aware that I have been hammering away at a theme.  I am chipping away ideas that don’t deliver a satisfactory explanation as to why staff with disability are still not seeing the equity and inclusion promised. This is despite sincere affirmations of support.

It is not that there is a lack of genuine goodwill and good intent. It is that it is not translating into corrective or remedial action. Now, I have to remind myself, that while there are a lot of good things happening, it is still not enough. It’s not that there’s no good change. Rather that it is uneven. We can’t excuse a persistence of bullying and abuse in some areas because there are good things happening elsewhere.

My focus is on what is not happening, and why it is not happening. The question can be boiled down to “Why do good people let bad things happen?” The answer is “Because they don’t know they are doing that.” Why this is so is complex. This is what I want to discuss in this essay.  

Is this a right?

Across the globe there is powerful evidence of resistance to making the declared commitment to Disability Inclusion, and inclusion in general, a reality. In some cases, there is flat out refusal. In other cases, there is a leisurely process of adaptation – things are happening, but they are a ‘work in progress’. Really?

Disability Inclusion is the non-optional recognition of the rights people with disability to be accorded the same dignities as others. The 2^nd General Principle of the NSW Disability Inclusion Act 2014 says “People with disability have an inherent right to respect for their worth and dignity as individuals.”

Now here it is worth pausing a moment. What is an inherent right? It is a right that is not granted. It is not a gift to be bestowed or withheld. It is a right that is intrinsic to a person. We can, in fact, take the words “with disability” out of the above principle and restate it as “People have an inherent right to respect for their worth and dignity as individuals.” But there isn’t an Inclusion Act. There is no discerned need for one.

What is it about disability (and other attributes of ‘diversity’ groups) that renders it okay that the “inherent right to respect for their worth and dignity as individuals.” is denied to people with disability, or assented to in a leisurely or non-urgent fashion?

Denial of inherent rights happens to us all at times. Our worth and dignity as individuals can be injured through carelessness or cruelty. The injury can be catastrophic, or something we shrug off. Our natural capacity for resilience can kick in – or get overwhelmed. This is part of who we are, and mostly we walk away, sometimes staggering, but surviving. Reality is tough.

We are more likely to affirm the inherent rights of those who are similar to us, and to offend against them when we engage with people who are not like us. This is hardwired into us. There was a time when this hardwired bias played a valid role in our survival.

The famous principle of Darwin’s theory of evolution – the survival of the fittest – merits thinking about in this context. The most fit, or fittest, means the most adapted, the most suited. That bias reflex, which once served us well, is now ill-suited to our needs. We no longer live in small communities in which the members are recognisably similar in appearance, conduct and capability. We live in large complex, pluralistic and diverse communities.

Public and Private Differences

The instinctive bias to include, or exclude, functions at an individual level, and is reinforced, or modified, by family, group (social, cultural, religious, employment) and community influences. Of those influences employment is the least subject to personal control – for important reasons.

Private businesses determine their customer based by choices they make. These choices can include operating with a bias to exclude or include certain people (like the poor or the non-hip). The larger the business the more complex the choice. A technology company or a bank may seek to draw customers from all segments of the community and strive to be as unbiased as possible.

Public sector agencies are under an obligation to be unbiased; and serve all members of the community equally. This creates an interesting tension between an employee’s individual right to be biased in their private life and their duty not to be biased as a public servant.

While we see bias as not a desirable attribute, we can’t impose a demand on an individual public servant to cease to elect to be biased in their private lives. In any case that would be futile. Our instinct to be biased is hardwired. The challenge is to help public servants to not exercise biases at work. That is a huge challenge for several reasons:

• We are hardwired to be biased.
• Our biases are unconscious.
• Our biases may be reinforced by personal experiences and by influences outside work.
• Our biases are very hard to shift – anti-bias training does not work.
• We over-estimate our ability to be unbiased to a huge degree.
• We may not have any motivation to cease being biased.

In Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald talk of “outsmarting” our instinctive reflexes to be biased. They say efforts at eradication do not work. They offer role models and systems as two ways of reducing the risk of bias influencing decisions and actions.

But before we think about how to outsmart our biases, we need to think a bit more about our personal responses – living with our own biases.

This is personal

I try to be inclusive, as, I assume, each reader does. I rate my performance as okay – selectively so. I am very inclusive sometimes and not so much other times. There are some people I don’t like. There are others I am uncertain of, and don’t feel comfortable approaching. And then there are those folk I really like; and feel very comfortable with. 

My public sector background has given me the opportunity to work with a wide variety of people with disability. I have friends and family members with disability too. Over the years I have developed a strong sense of professional inclusive conduct at work because of my work with people with disability. But I can’t swear that I do not exhibit bias toward, or against, members of the community. I do make an intentional effort not to be biased. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do at any given time.

I am okay about being biased on a personal level, but I am acutely aware that it can be inappropriate and unjust at times, and then I must work harder to honour my ideals. 

When I was chair of the DCJ DEN I realised that there was a risk that people who were discriminating against staff with disability may have a disability themselves. It could be the case that a manager’s adverse conduct toward a staff member with disability may be because of psychological injury. Blaming and shaming could injure the alleged offender – who we should be helping. 

In concluding that bias is a feature of being human, and not a bug, I see the way forward as a shared journey. It is one that begins with being comfortable with our own story of bias. In what could be thought of as a paradoxical way, the best ‘anti-bias’ move you can make is to acknowledge your biases; and feel comfortable with them. You don’t have to like them; or obey them.

Then you can choose when to be vigilant and avoid the risk of being unjust and unkind. Anti-bias training does not work because biases can’t be eradicated – only managed and outsmarted. To do either, you must be prepared to put in some intentional effort.

How much effort you put in is a personal choice. It comes down to that.

Thinking about role models

In Disability Inclusion there will always be people who are leaders, and whose conduct marks them out as great allies and champions. By leaders I do not mean those in formal leadership roles, but those who are workplace culture leaders.

It is essential that in any organisation those who are in formal leadership roles are also effective allies and champions – and preferably also workplace culture leaders as well.

Inclusion leaders should be encouraged in any organisation, with the one proviso that they are also supported to be effective.

Thinking about systems

There is compelling evidence that well-intentioned decision-making in areas like recruitment and complaints resolution is derailed by bias. The answer is to develop systems, guidelines and forms of accountability that reduce the risk of bias, and which increase awareness of those risks. There are substantial researched based options available. But responding to these opportunities  requires commitment at an organisational level in a significant way. 

Conclusion

We are changing how we live together in our communities. We have collectively chosen to end discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, and disability. These changes have been finding expression slowly for the past few centuries, picking up pace in the late 1960s. But we are operating on instincts that have been around for many tens of thousands of years.

We can choose to be leaders in driving an evolutionary change – and approach the opportunities and challenges that will come with insight, skill and compassion.

What do you choose?

Michael Patterson

25.3.22

Introduction

It’s been over 9 months since I quit DCJ. I have had the leisure to do a lot more time into thinking about Disability Inclusion – a lot of listening to audiobooks and podcasts; a lot of reading articles and websites; a lot of talking; and a lot of writing.

I have expanded my focus on Disability Inclusion (DI) to look at the wider field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) because it became very obvious that what was impeding progress in DI was impacting DEI as well. Disability isn’t special, it’s a subset – a specialised subset.

One of my treasured possessions is a t-shirt given to me by the DCJ DEN’s Guidance and Action Team (GAT). On it are the words “Solve for One – Extend to Many”. Like all favourite t-shirts, it will become too tatty to keep wearing one day. But the words are eternal. They come from universal/inclusive design; and became the DEN’s/GAT’s motto. What is solved for Disability Inclusion benefits everyone – but we can’t ignore the wider field – where so much work is being done. This includes what works and what does not – and why it does not.

Dedication to Disability Inclusion is an absorbing passion, but it can’t be a fulltime role of any but a small few. However, inclusiveness itself can’t be a parttime value, attitude, or behaviour – it must become the core of who we are. So, for me, the chance to spend as much time as I want on Disability Inclusion has been a privilege. I want to share some key learnings with you.

We are Not Naturally Inclusive – and This is a Feature, Not a Bug

There is a mass of research in psychology available these days that delivers some humbling news about us. We are hardwired to be exclusive, discriminatory, and biased. This is built into our brains. It’s a feature of who we are as human beings. These instincts have been fundamental to our survival in the past. But now they are increasingly problematic as our world has changed – and our cultural and social values have morphed into a form of inclusive humanism. Our cultures have become more diverse and pluralistic – and it is no longer okay to exclude community members just because they are different.

For many, Inclusion has been a theme all of their lives. But for others there was a watershed time in the late 1960s that marked a transition to a new set of social values. If you were born around 1968, or later, you would think that Inclusion a natural part of our social discourse. But remember, Iris Bohnet’s What Works: Gender Equality By Design was published in 2018. That’s 50 years on – and we are not there yet.

But let’s be clear. Exclusion will still happen on personal levels. We can’t mandate ‘niceness’ and openness in a person’s private life. It’s just not okay in roles of public trust, and where public funds and functions are concerned. We have to demand inclusion and equity of public sector employees in their official roles.

Resistance to the change is natural. That desired inclusive spirit is a stretch from our instinctive natures – and some people will welcome the stretch while others will resist it. Such change is not easy and requires intentional effort at personal growth. Some folk will resist with serious determination.

You cannot force or shame people into being more open and compassionate. This is a stretch exercise for the whole community. So, if you are the vanguard that’s great. Be there with humility and compassion. Model the change you want, don’t preach it.

It’s Doubly Hard for the Public Sector.

Research into bias and decision-making confirms that for DEI strategies to be highly effective they require committed support from an organisation’s executive leadership. This support includes: awareness of DEI issues and challenges, modelling desired behaviour, ensuring visibility of the DEI theme, supporting and participating in programs and activities, and developing and implementing an overall strategic and accountable organisational plan.

The public sector differs from the private sector in one key respect. Private sector responses to DEI are business-based, whereas the public sector has a non-optional obligation to ensure an effective response to all community members. Ensuring equitable and inclusive service provision and access to employment to all community members is a duty, not a business choice. This places a far higher onus upon public sector leaders to address the resistance to change toward more inclusive and equitable behaviour.

It’s a good thing that a state or nation’s government makes a commitment on behalf of its community that all members will be treated equally. But that’s a huge call to impose upon the public servants – and expect them to muddle through and figure out how to do it all – on top of everything else.

To be fair, we are making a decent go of it. But there are still areas where much needs to be done – something annually acknowledged.

The Need for Leadership

Public sector leaders carry a burden of obligation and expectation that can be onerous. They are the ones who must ensure the goals of DEI are realised. However, the presumption has been that the stretch change is just about being ‘nicer’. It isn’t. It requires knowledge, self-awareness, insight, and skill. It also requires resources – time, support, and learning & development.

Nobody attuned to contemporary social values will dispute importance of changing how we engage with people who are members of minority or diversity groups. But belief in those values, and faith that they can be expressed by goodwill alone, are not sufficient. So, while we should celebrate the fact our culture is changing in such a positive way, we must not believe we will make progress by some kind of magical osmosis by which ‘niceness’ will infect more and more people. There’s a bit of that going on, but it has a real limit. Learning to be inclusive can cause an existential crisis, and can require serious effort.

Effective leadership is necessary – and leaders must be skilled and supported. Within organisations in the public sector that support must include accountability. These days a manager’s role is not just to focus on the ‘operational’ demands of a work unit, but also to be skilfully supporting staff. That’s a skill area that seems to be growing constantly, demanding higher levels of self-awareness and emotional intelligence than in the past. However, it is an integral part of the job now. More (and better) effort must be put in to recruiting managers/leaders with the personal attributes, skills and knowledge needed to ensure that meeting DEI objectives is part of core business.

This is another ‘work in progress’. As workplaces are evolving and the demands on, and needs of, staff are being re-defined, the need for managers to develop new skillsets isn’t being recognised to the extent necessary. In essence, as DEI reflects an evolving set of values and expectations, so what is needed to reflect and strengthen them is also evolving. This process of adaptation is competing for attention with traditional core business. It is non-optional, so it must become core business if the DEI goals are to mean anything.

Effective leadership is essential, but so is recognising that leadership and management roles are changing and with that change there are new demands and skills which must be acknowledged, facilitated and supported.

Intentional Effort is Required at All Levels of an Organisation

What is happening at a cultural level is the equivalent of needing an upgrade to our shared Operating System (OS). It isn’t that the old one is bad, or wrong, just that it’s not fit for the new purpose we have set for ourselves. The new OS has new features, and that means unlearning old habits. That isn’t easy. I bought a new keyboard that has a few new keys where old ones used to be, and after 3 months, I am still to break the deeply ingrained muscle memory. I am making the same keying errors daily – less frequently, but still making them.

Some of us will take to adapting to an updated OS with ease. Others will not. This will apply regardless of where you are in an organisation’s hierarchy. Becoming an executive does not magically confer powers for faster adaptability – even if the role requires, or expects, it.

The problem is that adapting to an upgraded OS can’t be mandatory; but must be necessary. This is a potential dilemma for the public sector, where there isn’t an option to opt out of being inclusive. That’s pretty much a contract public servants sign on to when they sign a Code of Conduct.

An obligation for intentional effort must come with some form of accountability – and here the public sector struggles. This is because it hasn’t understood the nature of the challenge; and hasn’t devised effective responses to it. That is the most important intentional effort required at the most senior levels of public sector leadership.

What Can You Do at a Personal Level?

It can be a struggle these days to find the time to catch on a bit of reading/viewing/listening. But an hour a week can do wonders. Taking time to stretch your ability to be inclusive – including inclusive of those who resist adapting – will always pay dividends. We all have to learn how the updated OS works.

Audiobooks will not be everybody’s jam. I like them because I can listen most places – and even in 5-10 minute chunks. That way I can get through at least one audiobook a week – but, I have to remind myself, I don’t have a fulltime paid job, or a family to wrangle. The critical research from books is often summarised in podcasts or YouTube, and I will include a few links at the end.

Depending on the size of your smart phone and how good your eyes are, getting the Kindle app can be a really handy way of working through a book, or an article, in short bursts.

Always remember that stretching ourselves into an updated OS is always better as a shared experience – and routinely repeated one. Doing so as a solitary, and only now and then, is sub-optimal.

Conclusion

Inclusion is novel and it runs counter to our instinctive reflexes. That’s why it it is hard to do for some folk. We can reprogram those reflexes with choice and determination. Some will find it easy, and others will not. Building cultural change in the public sector and the community takes time supported by smart intentional effort. This requires informed and supported leadership – because key decisions about knowledge, skill and resources must be made to enable people at all levels to adapt to the upgraded OS.

Some Resources

• Melinda Briana Epler’s How to Be an Ally is my ‘must read’ at the moment.
• Melinda’s podcast Leading with Empathy and Allyship is a great source of powerful ideas. Checkout the podcast app on your phone.
• You can find plenty of content featuring Melinda on YouTube.
• The Centre for Inclusive Design has a podcast – With, Not For.
• Jackie Ferguson’s Diversity Beyond the Checkbox podcast is another good resource.
• Search YouTube for talks by these authors. They are not all on inclusion, but stuff that is part of understanding why it’s so hard at the moment:
  • Daniel Kahneman
  • Brene Brown
  • Amy C. Edmondson
  • Iris Bohnet
  • Daniel Goleman
  • Sarah Rose Cavanagh
  • Hugh van Cuylenberg
  • Dr Carol Dweck
  • Dexter Dias
  • Adam Grant
  • Pete Walker

Introduction

Author, Melinda Briana Epler, was interviewed on the Centre for Inclusive Design’s podcast, With, Not For, on 11 October 2021. I listened to the episode on 12 March 2022. I mention this to get in a plug for the podcast. I am a little annoyed with myself that I left it so long. So, please do subscribe and catch up on the 8 shows posted so far.

I downloaded Melinda’s book from Audible.com.au soon after the conversation began. The title drew me in – How to Be an Ally. Now, at 18:00 on 13 March, as I begin this draft, I am halfway through the book. (the great thing about audiobooks for me is I can listen to a book while I slowly prepare a meal or clean the kitchen)

Melinda runs a business called Change Catalyst, which she set up to further her goal of making as many people as possible allies in the broad field of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

This isn’t a review of the book. The fact that I spent a good deal of today immersed in it says it all – buy it, read it, or listen to it. I want to reflect on the idea of being an ally, as I understood it previously, and how Melinda has expanded it.

In The Beginning

Back in May 2018 I attended the Australian Network on Disability (AND) annual conference at Darling Harbour Sydney. I was with a crew from our Disability Employee Network (DEN), and this was our first AND conference. I was Chair of the DEN at the time.

The keynote speaker was Kate Nash from the UK based PurpleSpace. I’d not heard of Kate, or her organisation, before. Kate laid out the essentials of an effective Employee Resource Group (ERG) – most of which I wasn’t doing. She laid out a 3-sided model – the ERG (DEN), the organisation’s executive, and its D&I team. We were okay in that regard. That was a strong bond. But then she spoke of Allies and Champions in a way that was new to me. The idea of an Ally was completely novel.

Post conference, I figured that as well as enticing staff with disability to join the DEN, I should also open up membership to supporters – allies. Up to this point the DEN had never considered including them. A month before my term as DEN Chair ended, the membership looked like this – Staff with Disability, 53%, Champions 30%, and Allies 17%. For the most part Champions were executives, with a few exceptions – Executive Officers in the Districts. It meant that 47% of the membership were not staff with any declared disability.

As I was to learn, being an Ally also gave cover to Staff with Disability who did not want to disclose their disability. By ignoring Allies for so long, we had excluded a critical component of our colleagues – those who, perhaps, most needed the changes we were trying make happen.

Allies were also people who had direct personal experience of disability. I had a particularly moving interaction with a DEN Ally whose husband had suffered a stroke. She had not only deep personal experience with the day-to-day challenges a person with disability may encounter, but also the discrimination built into the physical environment and baked into people’s attitudes.

By the time I twigged to the power of Allies, the DEN had been around 8 years – 8 years of lost opportunity. The struggle for Disability Inclusion is not a solitary affair. Everybody can be involved – when we allow that to happen.

What the Book Adds

Melinda is concerned with people on the DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion) spectrum – all of us, really, in some respects – but attends to those on the most problematic end of the spectrum – those most vulnerable to exclusion, discrimination and inequity.

The idea that being an Ally is a principled act in general, rather in support of a particular group, was, for me, startling and a bit challenging at first. This was especially so when Melinda identified ‘micro-aggressions’ – those small and subtle acts of rejection and isolation that are built into our cultural discourse, and our behaviours. It is normal to ‘other’ those who have been isolated, or rejected, by our culture. So, even when we do not intend to injure an individual or group, we have the legacy of doing so in the habit of casual language.

Melinda also asserts a principle of ‘Do no harm.’ There’s a lot on this theme you can Google. I came across the idea many years ago and wrestled with the issue of knowing whether you did, or did not, cause harm – in the context of a community of thought I was involved in. Back then, actions asserted to be in line with the ideal of ‘harm none’ turned out to be harmful – because we did not understand the impact of our acts and thoughts. Then it dropped off my radar as something to think about.

The book is a handy reminder for me to revive consideration of that principle. An Ally should aspire to do no harm. There’s a certain moral mindfulness in the proposition that I find appealing, and challenging.

Of course, the big ‘flip’ for me is the notion that Allyship is omni-directional and not just targeted at a particular group of concern. A member of a ‘group of concern’ can be also an Ally – and not just a ‘victim’. This thought was implicit in the DEN’s adoption of the Universal Design principle – Solve for One, Extend to Many. But that was disability focused. Melinda has encouraged me to see that sense of universality in a wider context. The sense of moral alliance that arises from an intent to do no harm – by action or inaction – is especially powerful and transformative.

But How Long Must It Take?

As I noted in my last essay, I was struck by Melinda’s comment on the podcast that “We are getting better, but not very fast.” My sense, developed in recent times, is that this is because what we are aspiring to do isn’t at all easy – and we don’t have an established methodology for driving the kind of change we are eager to see.

As I have noted elsewhere, inclusion is a relatively novel (in evolutionary terms) adaptive mechanism. We haven’t yet developed it into it being a thing we can expect without resistance and difficulty. It has been a growing part of our social discourse for the past 50 or so years – which isn’t long. This is important. Not being inclusive isn’t a bug. It’s a feature – but one we must now surrender as no longer being useful or desirable.

Melinda’s approach to being an Ally is a model for intentional personal change. If adapted and applied, it will add energy to that evolutionary imperative. But there’s a deeper perspective here. Beyond the personal, there is an organizational and cultural potential to adopt and support the idea of being an Ally. This requires leaders to be open and responsive to the idea, and the ideal. And here we seem to have a sticking point I’d like to explore with her at some point.

Conclusion

How to Be an Ally has instantly become a ‘must read’ book for anybody open to stretching their ability to be an effective agent in ‘making a difference.’ I am very mindful that not everybody has the opportunity and the means to be a leader in ‘making a difference’; and we must not be explicitly, or implicitly, critical of those who are not as energised as others.

So, I will speak here to those who are so energised; and say that the ideas and principles in How to Be an Ally are powerful tools for stimulating change at individual, workplace, and organisational levels. That they are also personally demanding speaks directly to that challenge of intentionally driving the evolution of our attitudes and values.

Link to How to Be an Ally on Amazon – for ebook and audiobook versions.

Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leading-with-empathy-allyship/id1509326364

Introduction

In the course of researching a couple of themes for blog essays yesterday, I came across a Harvard Business Review page which had a few tiles that intrigued me. They were:

• LEADERSHIP: It takes a lifetime of courage and practice.
• MANAGING PEOPLE: It’s harder than it looks.
• DECISION MAKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING: Balancing data, experience, and intuition.

These 3 themes summed up what I have been writing about for some time. But they were about organisational life as a decision-maker, leader, or manager in general. They were not about Disability Inclusion – and yet nothing of those words did not apply.

Nothing about Disability Inclusion is different from any other objective in a public sector organisation. Disability Inclusion magnifies the challenges. It is harder to do than other business-as-usual by a considerable margin because it engages human reflexes in need of intentional evolution. There are no guides of any real use. What there is is about what to do. But the vital ‘how’ and ‘why’ bits are missing. This is because the folk who write the ‘what to do’ guides do not generally know anything beyond that.

A recipe is a great guide to those who have the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of cooking under their belts. But it’s a trap to those who don’t. I have a Woman’s Weekly book with the title ‘How to Cook’. I am an okay cook, and this book taught me a lot of stuff I didn’t know, and, more importantly, disabused me of a bunch of wrong ideas.

The HBR tiles spoke to me because, in a few words, they distilled essential attributes of the main themes. I have persistently argued that Disability Inclusion is a professional affair. We all start off as passionate amateurs, inspired by a cause. I did. Then I became frustrated by the slow progress. I have confessed that I did not figure out how to do things better myself. I needed Kate Nash, CEO of PurpleSpace, to give me a wake-up kick in the pants via her keynote address at the 2018 Australian Network on Disability Annual Conference. I was immensely grateful. I was snapped out of a trance.

In this essay I want to reflect on the 3 themes on the tiles in the context of Disability Inclusion and accountability.

But first…

In my last essay on Accountability, I listed 6 books that have been deeply influential. Authors like Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, and John List and Iris Bohnet, both economists, have convinced me that we have fully entered an age when science should drive how we understand organisations.

Disability Inclusion is not just an organisational concern. It concerns the whole community. An organisation is a specific subset of a community. What applies at an organisational level has also relevance in the community.

If we can see it as a pursuit informed by a moral duty and shaped by science, we can perform it much better.

Leadership

I sought chairpersonship of the DEN several times from 2012. In early 2016 I finally got to be deputy chair. That turned out to be nothing more than ineffectual status. I wanted to be chair because I was frustrated by the leadership I had been experiencing; and thought I could do better. I had leader/manager experiences in the past. But I had also deliberately chosen not to seek advancement from the grade 9/10 level I had when I joined the department in December 2001 as a Support Manager. I didn’t enjoy the management component of the role. I loved the front-line aspects of the job – getting my hands dirty, so to speak. But at the same time, I had been reading in management and organisational psychology for around 15 years. 

Leadership is an entirely different affair to management. Not all managers are leaders, and not all leaders are managers. We mash the two together because, relatively speaking, leadership in the public sector was a comparatively novel notion. It was just assumed that managers could, and would, be leaders.

Leadership is not position dependent. It is character driven. Loretta Malandro, writing in Fearless Leadership, makes this abundantly clear.

Managing People

In essence, we all try to manage people in some way – through influencing; or avoiding being influenced. It is a difficult and sometimes messy business in an organisational context. For those in formal people manager roles there is the rational dimension, which can be challenging enough. And then there’s the realm where personalities interact, and the personal dimension intersects with professional.

Back in the 1980s I came across the ‘management guru’, Tom Peters. One enduring lesson I took from his books was that we live in a ‘sloppy, messy’ world. He meant that reality does not conform to our neat categorizations, and things don’t play out as if life was a chess game. Human beings are dynamic and fluid states that can change slowly, if at all, and then suddenly do something unexpected. 

We can develop people management skills for the rational elements of our roles – but beyond that, things depend upon our levels of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and skills in influence, persuasion and communication. These are all things we can learn to do better. We can’t manage people if we can’t manage our reaction to them.

Decision Making and Problem Solving

My recent readings have been particularly revelatory in the area of how we problem solve and make decisions. 

We are not only disposed to think we are far better at problem solving than we really are; we are also naturally biased to favour some solutions over others.

The book Noise introduced me to the idea of Decision Hygiene.  It’s easy, and natural, to make poor decisions. I used to think that the need for greater self-awareness principally concerned our ability to engage more authentically and effectively with people. Now I see it is just as important in problem solving and decision making. Data is important, but how we interpret and process it is even more so.

And when that problem solving and decision making concerns other people’s welfare and wellbeing, the degree to which we understand how accountable to ourselves we really are is emphasised.

How we ‘balance’ “data, experience, and intuition” depends on how well we understand what balancing means.

At the moment I am listening to an audiobook by Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow. It came out in 2011 and is now something of a classic. Here’s a summary from Wikipedia – The book’s main thesis is that of a dichotomy between two modes of thought: “System 1” is fast, instinctive and emotional; “System 2” is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

Kahneman won Nobel Prize for economics in 2002. That’s an impressive achievement for a psychologist.

How we think matters. How we understand how we think matters too, perhaps more so. Not everything we think is a rational thought is. If we believe we are making what we think is a rational thought, it would be good to be able to have the tools to determine whether it is that. It could be an articulate justification for a bias, or an inaccurate ‘intuition’. When other people’s welfare depends on the decisions we make, a capacity for effective self-accountability is essential.

Conclusion

I am not suggesting for one moment that anybody who wants to be involved in Disability Inclusion must rush off and get an education in psychology or economics. But I am suggesting that the insight and the wisdom from the human sciences should be abundantly informing how leaders at all levels act and communicate within their organisations. By leaders I mean executives, line managers, active members of staff resource groups, and any other staff member prepared to model values and conduct consistent with inclusion objectives.

The innate goodwill of staff can be magnified or impaired by how leaders act. That positive energy and its potential for change can be squandered if leaders are not being informed by the new knowledge that is available. The good intent the majority of leaders exhibit is likewise squandered if it is not expressed through clearer understanding.

This is, in effect, the summation of my accountability challenge.