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Introduction

DEI is taking a hammering and people are asking questions about the role and value of ERGs. Should they be discarded? I think they have a critical role to play provided that certain conditions are met. Below I will discuss why I think this and what those conditions are.

I am a former New South Wales public servant. I have worked in 4 departments, the last one for 19.5 years in roles related to disability to June 2021. In 2008 I contracted GBS and acquired a major mobility disability and a lesser manual disability. In July 2010 I became a founding member of my department’s Disability Employee Network (DEN). In November 2016 I became DEN Chair, a position I held for 3.25 years. In late 2016 the DEN’s membership was severely depleted because of a restructure, and the remaining members were frustrated and dispirited. I took the DEN in a radically different, and highly successful, direction.

On the strength of that success, in June 2023, I was invited to support the leads of the other ERGs in my former department. Over the next 2 years I had to figure out why I had been successful, what ERGs were about, and what they could achieve. I was useful to some ERG leads and of no use to others. 

You really don’t know why you are good at something until you try to help others to get good at doing the same thing. You can’t replicate your success in another person. Success isn’t just about one person. It has multiple elements that must come together. And how that happens is way more complex than is imagined.

An effective ERG can be invaluable as a part of an organisational ecosystem. But for it to become that there must be an agreement on what an ERG’s purpose is and how it is going to deliver on it. As a rule, organizations do not understand what ERGs are or what they can do.

Below I offer a theory of an effective ERG based on my experience with my department’s DEN, my subsequent work with some of the department’s ERGs and four years of research into DEI, ERGs and why disability inclusion is so hard to make happen to the extent we desire. This research took me into evolutionary anthropology and psychology, social psychology, organisational behaviour, leadership & theories and neuroscience.

Essential context

My experience of ERGs is confined to the New South Wales public sector. Hence what I say isn’t to be read as being descriptive of a universal situation. However, I do think that the principles and issues I discuss here will be familiar.

My focus is entirely on problem-solving. During my term I neglected celebratory events until the IDPWD in 2019. I had to manage my time and influence, and there were enough unmet needs to keep my attention.

I am aware some ERGs are primarily about celebratory and promotional activities. The same principles I discuss here are relevant to them. 

Some essential personal background

This is important because being an effective ERG lead requires a person to be aware of their strengths as well as areas where support or mentoring are necessary.

My lived experience of disability has had an impact on how I see disability inclusion. I have listened to speakers who say they are comfortable living with their disability. I envy that. I acquired my disabilities as a mature adult. They are a pain in the arse. I spent 15 months doing physiotherapy after 3 months in an ICU paralysed from the neck down. That was a sobering time that forced me to face how much my life had changed. I know what I have surrendered. There are so many things that I could no longer do. Hence, I have a focus on problem solving and getting outcomes. 

I know others have had way more catastrophic events that have left them with a greater level of disability. How people respond to such life events varies. In the 10 months I was in hospital nobody asked me how I was coping. Rehabilitation didn’t include consideration of my psychological state. So, I came to the DEN lead role with little tolerance for half baked responses and not caring about how DEN members were suffering physically and psychologically.

My work history includes times of intense engagement with disability – in psychiatric hospitals, in Veterans’ Affairs and as an employment officer. My other roles were mostly about engaging with external stakeholders in the private, public and community sectors as a service provider and working in compliance monitoring and contract management. This background developed my skills in negotiation, conflict resolution and relationship building.

I had some experience in management and as a team leader, but I didn’t like it and preferred frontline roles. I liked the challenges of making good stuff happen for people. This turned out to be a critical part of my development as the DEN lead. DEN members were suffering abuse, bullying, discrimination and neglect and I was focused on delivering outcomes that ameliorated their situation. 

What an ERG is not

In the NSW public sector ERGs are modelled on staff associations or social clubs. They were assumed to be separate amateur bodies run by volunteers. 

The DEN I joined met quarterly for full day meetings. Members from out of town had travel and accommodation costs met. The meetings were well catered as well. 

HR provided an excellent secretariat service and HR staff attended the meetings with genuine interest. All the members had to do was elect a chair for the meetings every couple of years, come to the meetings and participate in occasional consultations and research. Disability inclusion was finally on the agenda and stuff was happening, albeit slowly. This was where things went bad from the perspective of DEN members.

There were several problem areas:

• Even though there was a significant backlog of unmet access, inclusion and equity needs, disability inclusion was now competing with other priorities for a share of a constrained resource pie.
• There was no mechanism through which a staff member with disability could seek redress for discriminatory or abusive behaviour against them and there was an unwillingness for such a mechanism to be set up. The DEN terms of reference specifically prohibited agitating on behalf of a member.
• Even though staff with disability experience actual physical and psychological injury because of inaccessible workplaces, dangerous or unsuited working conditions or behaviours (mostly by team leaders, managers or directors) against them that cause distress and stress, issues were not treated as work health and safety concerns.

Promises of inclusion were not delivered because the culture had not changed to any significant degree and the initial prioritization of disability had backed off after 3 years as it became just another theme to add to a wish list.

The early DEN was a passive advisory body and was effective in that capacity. But nobody knew how to evolve it into a useful body representing the interests of its members.

A DEN isn’t like a social club where volunteer amateurs donate their time doing things in favour of staff with disability. The present chair of my former department’s DEN struggles to get the time away from their formal role to attend to DEN related tasks.

What an ERG is

I was leading the DEN in the old ineffectual way, although I was making some progress because I had a Deputy Secretary as the DEN Champion who was committed to disability. As well, I had the department’s Secretary’s full and active support. In May 2018 I attended the Australian Network on Disability’s (AND) annual national conference where the keynote speaker was Kate Nash, founder and CEO of PurpleSpace. Kate ran a workshop on Networkology the next day.

To say that I walked away from that experience radicalised feels mild. I took away two lessons. Disability inclusion isn’t just 4 times a year, and there’s a methodology, a theory. At the same time, I had been transferred to the DEN Champion’s division where I was left free to put as much time into redeveloping the DEN as I needed. This was up to 3 days a week. This extraordinary opportunity lasted 19 months.

In September 2018 I called for volunteers to join the Guidance and Action Team (GAT) – an idea I had just come up with. Things were happening quickly and I needed help and lived experience insights. I got 15 responses from metro and regional offices. Together they represented a spectrum of disabilities, and they were uniformly very unhappy with how they were treated as employees. I required GAT members to be strictly professional. In fact, I said we were a quasi-business unit whose role was to consult with the department on the needs of staff with disabilities and to collaborate on having those needs met.

At the end of February 2019, I presented to the board with 6 colleagues from the GAT with the worst stories of discrimination and abuse. The board was shocked. The GAT speakers felt heard for the first time. Things then really started happening. 

In August the GAT was funded to run a 2-day facilitated planning workshop. The resultant plan was put on a spreadsheet and presented to the Board in November, along with good news stories about staff whose work lives had been transformed in the meantime, and a selection of problem areas that needed executive attention.

At the end of 2019 I was invited to join the Disability Inclusion Team and given responsibility for the department’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP) and the department’s participation in AND’s Access & Inclusion Index (A&I Index). Neither of these two activities had a single person actively engaged in working on them. I ensured the DEN was embedded in both the DIAP and the A&I Index, so we had an integrated strategy to evolve policies, systems, practices and culture.

My successor DEN chair was offered this role as a full-time role in September 2020, and after I quit the Department in June 2021 they took up responsibility for the DIAP and the A&I Index.

That’s a great story and I am proud of what I achieved. But more importantly we can see the essential elements of an effective ERG:

• An engagement with senior leadership earning their trust and support as a partner.
• A team of subject matter experts acting in a professional manner.
• A clear contract with the organisation and an accountable plan of action.

The things that made this a successful approach are critical:

• The government had a policy of ensuring that the composition of all agencies’ staff reflected the community they served.
• The department had legal and policy obligations to ensure staff with disability had assured access to what they needed to perform their roles, and to ensure they were free from discrimination, bullying and abuse.
• Responsibility for disability inclusion sat wholly with the department. It could not pass it on to amateur volunteers, but it could work with staff with disability prepared to offer additional professional subject matter expertise while juggling their primary role responsibilities.
• Senior leadership wanted to honour those obligations and was prepared to be adventurous and innovative to make it happen.
• The DEN and senior leadership had a strong, open, honest and trusting relationship. They worked together.

The DEN had only one function – to support the department in meeting its legal obligations to its members. It did this through professional and collaborative action.

On the matter of not intervening in individual issues I developed a strategy of identifying system, procedural and responsibility failures which I drew to the attention of the organisation’s leadership, using an individual’s situation as an instance. I could then work with key managers and executives to sort the situation. This worked very well. There was one instance when the secretary rang a recalcitrant line manager and ‘had a chat’.

Employee leadership

ERGs are described as ‘employee led’ and this has created major problems. It suggests that the interests that the employees have are not in tune with their employers. But if we see that the interest is in ensuring the employer has capacity to meet its legal obligations this puts a very different light on the matter. 

I was a union delegate many years back. The union and my employer had a relationship that was mutually antagonistic, reflexively so. I went to a union training session on negotiation techniques, and it actually taught escalation to conflict as a first step – as if the only option was to threaten. This was nuts. I started reading the Harvard Business Review from the department’s library to get a better understanding of management. I wasn’t aspiring – just trying to understand. The union’s approach was ignorant, reprehensible and incompetent. I quit being a delegate. I also later quit my membership of the NSW public sector union for similar reasons. 

In 2025 employee leadership isn’t about challenging or threatening hierarchical management but about taking the lead on addressing concerns an employer may not be aware of and may not have been able to act quickly on. Managers and executives often misrepresent realities under their responsibility. As a result, the most senior levels of organisational leadership have not a clue about what goes on – especially when it comes to discrimination and abuse. Staff who are subject to such misconduct have nowhere to turn and if they lodge formal complaints, they are frequently victimised and punished. The more determined resort to legal action – and suddenly the organisation pays a lot of attention – but this time to defend the perpetrators. This is in-group bias at its worst.

I have heard remarks that some organisations, disappointed with what’s happened with DEI and ERGs, want to do away with both and leave it up to the organisation’s staff to ‘do the right thing’. In most cases that is either naïve, intellectually lazy or morally repellent. Going back to how things were is no answer. DEI must be fixed and ERGs must be rethought.

In the context of Disability ERGs, the nature of disability must be reviewed and rethought. My personal view is that I deal only with disabilities that are relevant to the workplace and which are actual disabilities requiring adjustments and accommodations. In the current climate of identity politics there are questions around ND that must be resolved on the basis of clear and credible evidence and not popular political passion. This is the organisation’s responsibility and not something a disability ERG has any business getting involved in. The ERG’s function is in assisting an organisation to meet its legal obligations, not to define them.

Two areas where Disability ERGs go astray

Leadership

There is a myth that an ERG lead must have a disability. Obviously, it would be preferable, but what is the sense of sacrificing capability for a lived experience that can represent only a small number of people.

As the DEN lead I got an education about the lived experience in the workplace of staff members who were deaf, blind, autistic, had degenerative diseases and wheelchair users. Having a disability myself meant I could resonate with stories of existential loss and concern, but not the specifics of lived experience – which I needed to know. People who were sensitive, empathic and compassionate could represent the needs of people better if they also possessed the capabilities I discuss below. Among the disability leads I know these capabilities are scarcely encountered. Before I acquired my disabilities, I had worked in 4 roles that gave me frontline connection with people with disabilities. I was good at defending their needs and rights then. Disability is so complex that no one person with a disability can ‘represent’ all.

It is by far preferable to have a disability ERG lead who has the requisite capabilities, and possessing those capabilities must be not negotiable – unless a candidate for a leadership role is assessed as capable of developing them under a genuine mentoring program.

A constant problem in the public sector is that ERGs are elected, and this commonly results in junior staff with none of the critical capabilities and a reflexive deference to senior officers becoming leads. These elections are a legacy of thinking an ERG is like a social club. Usually there is no capability requirement, and no selection criteria. Candidates write pitches to members and members vote with no critical sense of who they are preferring. I was surprised to discover how few ERG members vote – often less than 10%.

When I became DEN chair it was because the incumbent chair had quit the department and I was the deputy chair. The first time I sought election I didn’t get anywhere at all. I am not having a gripe – just making a point. But, to be fair, back then being DEN Chair wasn’t much more than chairing a meeting 4 times a year.

A few years back I watched a webinar featuring ERG representatives from the HSBC Bank in Australia. They described how the ERG lead roles were subject to competitive recruitment. The webinar was disappointing in that the host, who had no evident ERG experience, didn’t draw out critical insights. But we did learn that the lead roles were high status and that the ERGs were well resourced. Evidently the bank’s leadership took the groups seriously and they delivered benefits to staff members and the bank.

I think that who leads an ERG matters hugely to members and the organisation. So, leadership roles must be filled by a competitive recruitment process in which decisions are made by an equal number of ERG and organisational representatives. Of course, this means that being an ERG lead is seen as a high-status role that contributes to career progression. This might entice executives with disability out from behind their camouflage.  

Being an ERG lead is a very hard job, and the better you are at it the more skilled you will be. So, if you want a very effective ERG, you need a skilled and sophisticated operator.

What is critical here is that the organisation is as invested in the effectiveness of the ERG as its members are. And this is a problem for both the ERG and the organisation. This was a weakness in my situation. I had strong relations with the Secretary, 2 Deputy Secretaries and a key Executive Director. But we were in an innovation phase, and we didn’t get the opportunity to lock in an understanding of what we had created. In fact, it took me several years after leaving the department to make sense of what we had achieved and why the advances we made were vulnerable to the decline that followed on.

What we had created wasn’t a system, process or an assured part of the culture. While the benefits persist to this day, the methodology has not. It is only over the past 12 months that this has become apparent to me.

What we failed to do was develop a theory of the ERG’s relationship to the organisation’s legal responsibilities, how the ERG worked with the organisation and how it should function. We had all this in our heads; we just didn’t formalise it.

Structure of the ERGs

An effective ERG is a novel thing – an innovation. So those involved in leadership must be capable of stepping outside the business-as-usual frame. And here I mean not just ERG members but organization’s executive leaders as well. 

The old idea of a staff association or social club supposes that being ‘employee led’ means that the organization is hands off. But if an ERG is understood as a de facto business unit which collaborates with the organisation in meeting its legal obligations, there is an implicit ‘leadership’ relationship. I don’t mean in a command-and-control sense.

Here my use of the term ‘de facto business unit’ might cause some confusion. As DEN lead I created a relationship with the department that had a professional connection with other business units. We weren’t a business unit in any formal sense, but we behaved as if we were. That gave us credibility and accountability. We had a mission the board signed off on, and our job was to deliver on it in collaboration with other business units.

Since then, I think a more formal set-up is preferable. What we had been doing was experimenting. What we did worked very nicely. But there were vulnerabilities in the model. Innovations must become established. That has risks as well. Repetition dulls the innovative spirit. This is why the spirit of an employee-led ERG must be retained. The ERG must retain the capacity to call out the organization whenever it tries to dilute or duck its obligations – which is inevitable. That’s just how organisations are.

I was recently talking with a friend who was preparing to defend his PhD thesis on whether a quality management system can improve public sector agencies. He introduced me to the quality management system ISO9000 which has 49 quality activities. One is “empower people to determine constraints to performance and to take initiatives without fear”. This is precisely what an effective ERG must reflect.

My preferred Disability ERG model is what I call peer-to-peer. It is a voluntary relationship between ERG members and organizational leaders in which the ERG members are subject matter experts in terms of lived experience of disability in the workplace and the organizational leaders bring expertise in organizational operations and governance. Together they collaborate on helping the organization meet its legal obligations toward staff with disability.

This model requires a clear shared understanding of the organization’s legal responsibilities and the creation of an accountable agreement to work toward ensuring these obligations are met. 

It should also include mutual mentoring obligations. This is critical because there is way too often an inclination to engage in entirely transactional engagements and not establish relations that develop insight and empathy.

The model is, however, primarily focused on problem solving.  The problems to be solved include:

• How to get the best insight to support effective design/redesign of policies, procedures or systems.
• How to get feedback on whether what is in place is working.
• How to identify and address unmet needs.
• How to identify and address non-compliance with established obligations, policies or procedures.
• How to effectively deliver awareness of disability inclusion obligations, policies and procedures to staff with disability, their team leaders and key decision-makers.
• How to deal with discriminatory and abusive arseholes. They are in every organisation and if they are in leadership ranks, they reliably get the in-group pass. That has to stop. 

The ERG’s leadership team might comprise 4 persons who have agreed attributes. Below are the 5 attributes I would look for in at least 2 of the members. I don’t say all 4 because this is an opportunity to develop ERG member with leadership potential:

• Negotiation and persuasion skills backed by political nous.
• Strategic analysis, planning and project management skills.
• Relationship building skills backed by effective emotional intelligence.
• Overall credible standing in the organization and a capacity to engage with junior and senior staff.
• An empathic connection with ERG members and a commitment to ensuring unmet equity, access and inclusion needs are addressed.

An essential consideration is that this leadership team must be taken seriously by the organization by recognizing it as a high-status career development role and membership of the leadership team is only via a competitive recruitment process.            

Conclusion

During my consultancy I was astonished to learn that there was no agreed vision of what the ERGs were about. Most were unable to articulate a value proposition. None could give an ‘elevator pitch’ on their value to members or the organization. And yet the leads all wanted more time. Even so, when they were asked for a strategic plan not all delivered.

What was clear was that the model the ERGs were based on was flawed, those who put their hands up be leads didn’t have the skills/experience to ‘hit the ground running’, and that there was no deep relationship between the ERGs and the organization. There was no agreed contract.

It would be unkind to put the onus for this situation on the ERGs. The department was very hands off. It didn’t have a sense of the value of ERGs to begin with. They seemed like a good thing as part of the general trend. The DEN was the prototype DEI ERG, and the other ERGs were modelled on it, but without a detailed analysis of why it had the success it did.

ERGs succeed or fail depending on the people involved. If neither the ERG leads nor the organization had an actual theory of what an ERG is, what it should do or what service it should provide, success will really be down to the random chance of the right people being in the right roles at the right time. 

When I quit the department, my focus was on the wider question of why disability inclusion was so darned hard. I had only dimly reflected on why I had been so successful – until this became an urgent need during the consultancy. I needed to know what the underpinning principles of my success were. Were they replicable?

I had been doing a lot of reading on leadership. Loretta Malandro’s Fearless Leadership was a huge inspiration. Looking back on my career I realised that I had a track record of leadership and innovation going back decades. It was modest stuff as things go for a front-line worker, but it was effective, though not always appreciated by my management.

And then I was in the right place at the right time at the 2018 AND conference. Kate Nash gave me a critical education and I ran with it. I was also blessed with having the support of the department’s Secretary, two deputy-secretaries and an executive director as well as support from the Manager Inclusion & Diversity.

When I say the 15 members of the GAT were the heart of the DEN, the responses I get suggest that I am just saying that because it’s the kind of thing one is supposed to say in a public performance of modesty. I am touched that people think this, but I do sincerely mean it. The GAT was a critical innovation, but as subsequent developments have shown, it must be employed in the right way.

I am conscious of the adverse feelings toward DEI and the wide belief that ERGs are of little or no use. The ones that do do good work are unlikely to be analyzed, but neither are the ineffectual ones. Because there is a widespread belief ERGs are ineffectual there hasn’t been any strong motive to research them. To be honest, that’s a fair assessment.

There is no theory of ERGs. When I went searching for one, I explored the NSW Public Service Commission’s pages on ERGs. The content was sensible enough but there was no guidance on context, nothing about the critical insights that are needed.

What is interesting to me is the level of resistance I meet to the idea that an ERG can be a professional and effective agent that partners with its organization to help it meet its legal obligations to its members. This resistance comes not just from organizations but also from disability ERGs. There is a lot of work involved, and a lot of skill required. 

If an organization is serious about ensuring equity, dignity and inclusion for its staff members with disability it must see that this is a complex and difficult task that requires competent professional input – from an ERG and the organization working together.

A competent ERG may be the only way an organization can meet its legal obligations.

Finally, DEI seems to me to be way more complex than many practitioners understand. The business of addressing real equity, dignity and inclusion challenges needs to be upgraded from well-intended sentiment to seriously skilled work.

A few years ago I developed the idea of a one year course – a Masters of inclusion – that could lay out the critical knowledge and skills necessary to do DEI and ERG lead jobs to the necessary professional standard to be effective.

Introduction

I came across this podcast recently and felt so relieved that ‘sensible’ folks were having a conversation about the dire state that inclusion has fallen into. By ‘sensible’ I mean informed, calm, thoughtful, open and non-political. 

After the invective from the ‘right’ and the passion from the ‘left’ it was refreshing to encounter a conversation that was of a tone that communicated calm concern. 

I have said previously that my focus with disability is entirely functional. I have no interest in the politics as an advocate. But as an individual I do care that our efforts at inclusiveness are effective.

Just a few days ago I joined a meeting set up by my local council to report on progress on its Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). It was totally outcomes focused. Community consultation had identified priorities for greater disability inclusion. A plan to respond to these priorities had been developed and implemented. The people with disability who participated in the meeting acknowledged that the council was genuinely committed to inclusion. We are seeing the results of a real culture of inclusion. 

The This isn’t Working podcast is about workplace cultures and why they can be problematic, so I was interested in what it had to say from the perspective of a former employee of a large government department and as a rate payer and member of an advisory group to my local council. 

My role with my former employer of around 25,000 staff was unique. I had worked in disability related roles for over 19 years. I had acquired a significantly mobility disability and was a founding member of the department’s Disability Employee Network (DEN), which I subsequently led for 3.25 years – after 6 years of its operation. I designed and led the implementation of a 4-year DIAP, and I coordinated the conducting of an Access and Inclusion Index (A&I) assessment. I was able to integrate the DEN, the DIAP and the A&I assessment into a coherent strategy for positive change. 

Even so there were things I wasn’t able to do simply because the department’s culture was not uniform and individual divisions had strong and particular attributes – cultures and histories – that hadn’t fused into a single culture. 

The podcast begins with an observation about Elon Musk’s assertion that DEI must die. This is not because it is inherently problematic in its intent but because it has become an ‘industry’ – and industries become self-referential and self-preservative. 

The goal of DEI should be to cease to because its success has made it redundant. But it hasn’t succeeded and it has become despised – on either side of the political spectrum – though for different reasons. 

The thing about workplace cultures is that they are the sum of the individuals that constitute them. There will always be individuals whose influence is beneficent or malign but the culture, the community, exerts the definitive influence eventually. 

The original objective of DEI was to make workforces more equitable, and this has happened to various degrees – influenced by leadership on an individual level, and by the workforce as a whole. There are good reasons to doubt whether DEI has met its original mission objectives.

Changing behaviour is hard

What makes a workplace more equitable is the behaviour of staff members. It’s that simple. But influencing that behaviour is far from being a simple matter. 

The DEI industry seems to me to be built on a fallacy – that information and admonition is sufficient to influence behaviour in a desired direction. It isn’t. 

The social commentator Andrew Doyle recently observed that (and here I will paraphrase him) organizational leaders hire DEI ‘educators’ because they are responding to pressure to conform to DEI values but neither the organizational leaders nor the DEI ‘educators’ really care about the outcomes of this ‘education’.  I can see his point, but that’s not my direct experience. 

In my former employer both the leadership and the DEI staff cared a great deal. But the extent to which DEI efforts succeeded was limited. I think both recognised that achieving DEI objectives was difficult and so they settled into a habit of very incremental success, if not failure. 

I think this difficulty is what corrupted DEI from the outset. When I left full-time employment in June 2021, I had time to get into some serious research. Exactly why was Disability Inclusion so damned hard? The first thing I did was read a bunch of books by people who styled themselves as experts in diversity and inclusion training. What soon alarmed me was that none ever discussed evaluation of their efforts. And then I read Iris Bohnet’s What Works: Gender Equality by Design. She made some observations about how senior executives behaved – and that set me off on a quest to develop a deeper insight into individual and organizational behaviour. That was, and continues to be, an education. 

DEI practice tends to work marginally well or not at all – and when it works marginally well that’s probably just plucking the low hanging fruit. 

As I saw in my former department, there was an abundance of goodwill that could be activated – so long as it was treated with respect and sensitivity. 

One way not to do that is by ‘training’ people by information and admonition. 

On training 

I want to pause here for a quick digression triggered by something David Rock from the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) said – you train for insight, not information. It’s insight that triggers behavioural change, not information. 

But more importantly what we call training isn’t anything of the sort. We really should stop using that term. Training is focused, intentional and repeated. You can’t train a person in anything in one session no matter how long it is. The best you can do is inform in a way that triggers insight which then leads to a desire for more information and insight. That’s what learning is. It is the stimulation of desire for knowledge, insight and experience. 

Some years ago, I did a training session on touch typing. It was a series of exercises which I quit doing out of a lack of discipline and impatience. I completed the exercises. But I can’t touch type of course. 

I also did training courses on using spreadsheets. I certainly remember doing 3 that were around an hour long each. But I had no need to use the knowledge I had imbibed and soon forgot. If you forget how to do something you haven’t been trained in it. 

You can’t ‘train’ people to become more inclusive. 

What can you do?

This is where I get to be unpopular. It takes intentional cognitive effort to be more inclusive. This must be self-motivated. 

I go back to something Ernesto Sirolli said decades ago. Ernesto is into enterprise development “as if people really mattered”. He said that we can’t motivate people, only inspire them. Of course this isn’t strictly true. We can threaten people and give them good reason to change their behaviour. At work you can be threatened with dismissal if you don’t perform. This works sometimes.

But when the relationship is voluntary that’s not going to work. This raises an important question about whether being inclusive is part of a contract – like a code of conduct – and the problems of enforcement. Managers are notoriously really bad at ‘difficult conversations’ and are also open to counterclaims of discrimination or bias. 

So essentially enforcement and compliance are not workable options when it comes to inclusion. This leaves encouragement and persuasion. And here we know that moral admonition doesn’t work. We also know that compulsory ‘training’ in DEI themes can lead to contrary outcomes and even make matters worse. 

So, we are left with triggering insight and inspiration. And this comes down to being able to set an example – in terms of what has sadly become something of a cliche – be the change you want to see. And this is in no way an easy thing to do. 

For example, you can’t effectively campaign for inclusion if you exclude the people who disagree with you. 

Leadership books talk of leading by example and of ‘servant leadership’. Inclusion advocates may say they are not leaders and see themselves as ‘warriors’ fighting discrimination and exclusion. But that’s just an act of discrimination and exclusion seasoned with self-serving moral fervor. It’s more about the ‘warrior’ and less about the person they say they are defending. This isn’t a moral argument. It is straight psychology. This will be an unpopular message to those who feel comfortable behind a bulwark of moral righteousness. 

Contemporary leadership thinking, based on copious research, confirms the value of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and personal accountability for effective leadership. 

There’s a distinction between hierarchical and situational leadership. One is position-dependent and the other is not. Regardless, the attributes of effective leadership are the same. 

In Disability Inclusion or DEI generally any practitioner whose goal is to influence behaviour puts themselves into a leadership role. And being an effective leader is hard work. It takes skill and at least some theory of leadership to be effective.

Conclusion

At the time of writing, I am on episode 8 of This Isn’t Working. I started binge listening about 24 hours ago. The podcast has thrown up a bunch of themes I would love to be able to discuss with people I have worked with. But these days that’s hard because too few of them take the time to listen to podcasts or read/listen to books.

I get that between work demands and personal life challenges the opportunity upgrade one’s professional knowledge can be a scant thing. I am an information junkie so there’s no way I judge others. But the fact is, nevertheless, anybody involved in DEI related work must be able to get up to date with current research. I have worked with ERG leads who struggle to get the time to lead their ERG, let alone find the time to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Running an ERG well is hard work. It should be a professional role, but its more often seen as a role undertaken by an amateur volunteer. That’s so wrong.

I have worked with DEI team members who feel they are awash in bullshit work that leaves them little time to do their ‘real jobs’ effectively. They aren’t going to spend their personal time doing professional development while working in organizations that don’t respect their roles, or them.

I was fortunate. As a disability ERG lead, I had ready access to my department’s secretary and two deputy secretaries as well as other key executives. My role was structured to enable me to spend 2-3 days a week on developing the ERG. Eventually that transformed into a role solely focused developing the organization’s capability to meet the inclusion needs of staff with disability. I was able to achieve a lot, but the job was a long way from being done when I left.

One of the advantages I had was a capability to discuss the challenges of disability inclusion with senior leaders in a frank and an informed way. I was taken seriously even though I wasn’t in the hierarchical leadership group. But I had been reading in organizational behaviour, management and leadership out of personal interest for a couple of decades. 

This Isn’t Working is the only podcast I know of that discusses real contemporary issues in an insightful way. If you are committed to Disability Inclusion, or DEI, get into the podcast and start from episode 1.

Introduction

My relatives and friends have been sending me stories about a disability advocate’s unhappy encounter with our federal Minister for Health and Ageing who is also Minister for Disability and the NDIS.

I don’t want to rehash the story in detail. In brief, the advocate in a wheelchair arrives at the minister’s electoral office. It’s an old building with nice steps. There’s a bell to be pressed for goods delivery and wheelchair access. But it doesn’t work. The advocate is annoyed, understandably. The minister then argues with the advocate about whether the bell works. He is wrong.

The story made the news, but for what I think are the wrong reasons. I entirely understand that the popular media are no place for a nuanced discussion of what is important here. Below I want to reflect on a few themes arising from this incident that I think are important.

An absence of malice

The founding chair of my former employer’s Disability ERG was a regional manager in the southwest of the state. He tells of how, soon after he took on this role, he had asked his staff to arrange a meeting in another regional town. When he arrived at the venue, he discovered it wasn’t wheelchair accessible and he couldn’t get in. 

It wasn’t that nobody knew he used a wheelchair, it was just that it hadn’t sunk in – and what was normal was what dominated choosing the venue. Telling the story demonstrated two things – a principle and good humour.

Around the same time that I heard this story, I had to go to the Sydney CBD to attend a day-long course. I got to the venue and discovered steps, which I decided to climb, using an overly thick and ornate handrail. But it ended with 4 steps to go. I descended with some difficulty. I rely on Canadian crutches to stay upright and walk.

I didn’t have the venue’s phone number, so I rang the L&D team who organised the course. It took around 35 minutes before somebody from the training venue guided me through an obscure door, along a dark corridor and up a lift. Nobody had thought to wonder whether the venue was accessible or where participants had access needs.

In the story about the minister’s office nobody had checked whether the bell worked. This was probably because it hadn’t been needed in years. The Disability Advocate observed that he was taken to the goods entrance which had a ramp that didn’t have grab rails and that at the top of the ramp there was a table which had to be moved. Inside there was no place for him to wait.

The likely reality is that he might have been the first person in a wheelchair to visit in ages, or ever. Staff would not be thinking about wheelchair access – unless doing so was the norm.

A few years ago, I dropped into a Mac Donalds off a freeway. I went to the accessible toilet and found it full of boxes, which I struggled to move out of the way. I later spoke to the manager who said nobody used the toilet and they needed storage space. Likewise, I went to an accessible toilet in a small office of a division in my department. It was being used as a storeroom and would have been inaccessible to anyone in a wheelchair. Again, the local manager said nobody had used the toilet in the time they had been there, and they needed the storage space.

We mustn’t mistake lack of awareness for disrespect – even if we might feel put out and inconvenienced. Sometimes it’s just about what is usual and normal – and hence what is in our consciousness.

Access

Building designed to ensure that people with mobility disabilities have access are now the standard. They weren’t 40 years ago. Some buildings can be retrofitted with ramps and accessible doors. Some can’t because of design integrity or heritage considerations – or cost. There are legally protected limits on what should be spent to make a building accessible.

Religious and cultural traditions have made disability shaming because we celebrated the ideal – the perfect – the unblemished. The blemished were unworthy of being sacrificed or celebrated. This heritage meant that those not capable of their own unimpeded mobility were not thought of as fit to be in public. The same was true of many forms of disability.

This wasn’t necessarily a conscious thought; it just baked into our sense of normal. We could honour disabled veterans while excluding them from public places and buildings by habituated thought. There was no malice in this exclusion – just habits of mind that began to shift in the 1960s in a general rejection of old exclusionary habits.

Angst

It is understandable that mobility disabilities that force reliance on aids like wheelchairs, rollators and crutches will lead some to frustration about the degree to which our world remains persistently inaccessible.

I do not like travelling because most of those hotels and motels which claim to be inaccessible are not. The toilets and showers are rarely accessible. My brother just yesterday told of how he arrived at a shopping centre in an outer Brisbane suburb and found no cutout so he could get his electric wheelchair from the street to the footpath. This could expand into a list many pages long and still not exhaust the supply of complaints.

Frustration of our wishes and desires for access and liberties is a shared human theme. There are many things we ‘should’ be allowed to do that we aren’t for reasons that come down to old habits of thought, old ways of doing things and traditional forms and structures.

People with mobility disabilities are not especially entitled. Our fellow citizens are not hyper alert idealists who design things based on the most inclusive set of options. Rather they design according to what is normal and usual – unless guided by standards required by law or an especially inclusive philosophy.

As a person with a significant disability who sometimes envies wheelchair users, I know the personal sense of frustration that comes when I do not have access to a place I’d like to get to. But I also know that mostly the lack of access isn’t down to malice or intransigence. It may be down to reluctance to accommodate my needs when doing so incurs a high cost or creates a significant disadvantage. 

For instance, when I was still in hospital recovering from GBS I went on an outing in a wheelchair. Among other things I wanted to buy a jacket. The only shop that was accessible was a large chain store. Inside the floor was carpeted and this made moving the wheelchair very difficult. The racks with the jackets were so close together that at wheelchair level it was like moving through dense bush. It was a difficult and unpleasant experience. The alternative was no carpet on the floor and a wider space between racks. The store might have objected that what suited me would have reduced available space to display goods and making the store’s floor wheelchair friendly would be an uneconomic cost.

There is resistance against inclusive design partly because current situations are in place and the cost of change is not insignificant. It’s also partly about perceived need. I regularly drive my housemate up to a shopping centre. I sit in the car while they head off. They are very slow, so I have time to sit in the car in an accessible parking spot and write, listen to audiobooks and watch. I am writing this at the end of October 2025. In the past 10 months I have seen maybe 6 users of accessible parking spots using mobility aids – and I am sitting there usually 4 days a week. That suggests to me that shoppers with mobility aids are scarce and that the ‘normal’ is that they hardly exist – and are certainly not worth designing a shopping experience around. Catering to their needs isn’t a reflexive option. The ‘normal’ rules dominate.

I can understand this reality while not agreeing with it. I am a fan of inclusive design – but there’s a difference between retrofitting and new works. There are some realities we just have to suck up and others we should engage with and demand different and better. Knowing the difference is very important.

The thing that struck me about the story about the disability advocate and the minister is the sense of personal affront I discerned from the advocate. While his issues were largely valid, he seemed to me to have assumed an entitlement to unimpeded access. He may have been the first ever wheelchair user to seek to enter the building. Of course it was not going to be set up for him.

He observed, on a current affairs show, that the sign on the building indicating the then dysfunctional bell mentioned deliveries before wheelchairs – suggesting that it showed that able-bodied delivery people were given precedence over people in wheelchairs. Might it be that there were simply way more people delivering stuff to the building and their health and safety needs were top of mind because they were more frequent? Hence the order on the sign signified what was top of mind of the sign maker, not any sense of priority of dignity for those who might need access. People carrying loads are at greater risk than a person in a wheelchair. 

The inaccessibility of our shared world has a personal impact. Things have changed since the 1960s and it’s now reasonable to expect accessibility in many more circumstances. But it is not a ‘right’ in itself. 

There are many instances where being denied dignified access may be an affront. When access is assured and then not delivered because of beliefs, attitudes or behaviours of people who ought to know better it might be a good reason to be cranky. 

But making matters personal can backfire. People react differently to being called to account on a perceived failing if the reaction is about the person rather than the principle. This is certainly the case if blame is assigned and personal fault is implied when the situation really calls for neither. Yes, sometimes ignorance and arrogance can be galling, but making yourself a victim distracts from the focal concern. 

It’s not how to do advocacy.

Advocacy

It is interesting to observe the number of people who style themselves as a disability advocate but who have a relatively facile understanding of disability, the world in which it is experienced and the people who are vital actors in the interests of people with disability.

A common ploy is to resort to a version of the moral theme that people with disability are victims of an uncaring world and that they are heroic. The most commonly seen ‘advocate’ is in a wheelchair. In fact, the international symbol for disability is a stylised image of a person in a wheelchair. Wheelchairs trigger empathy and sympathy for good reason. But that doesn’t magically transform the occupant into being knowledgeable and insightful. Having a disability just makes you a person with a disability.

Advocacy isn’t a performance signified by a recognised image. I want to be fair in the sense that disability is so complex that it is not reasonable that one person with the lived experience of disability can be expected to represent people with disability in general. So, a wheelchair user can be a great advocate for other wheelchair users.

Maybe the issue here is one of perception and language. If we think disability isn’t complex, we will expect that a single advocate may have universal insight. Similarly, those who style themselves as disability advocates may believe that their experience of disability qualifies them to be seen in that general capacity.

Before I acquired my disabilities in 2008, I have been involved with disability going back decades in various jobs. With my employer at the time, apart from the 18 months off work when I had to deal with my disability, at least 19 of the 19.5 years of service were related to disability (frontline and administrative). During that time, I was a founding member of a Disability ERG (2010) and its lead for 3.25 years (2011-2022). Since July 2021 I have been a member of my local government’s disability access advisory committee.

Even with that background I am cautious about being thought ‘expert’ on disability or disability inclusion. I have an informed perspective that may be of benefit to some.

Advocacy has many colours and textures, so it’s good to know who you are as an advocate, or if you are a person with disability, what the person asserting their role as an advocate is actually about – you or them?

Conclusion

Disability Inclusion is evolving as an aspiration. We now have rights that are supported by legislation and policies. The expectation of inclusion is now universal, although practice is yet to catch up. The lag is down to basic things like resources, cost, the limited power of compliance and attitudes uniformed by contemporary developments. 

We need to understand that legislation and policy have limited reach. All individuals in their private lives can ignore asserted and agreed rights. This applies in many other areas of rights as well. 

The moral argument has been won, but that doesn’t mean we can insist that all others comply – or agree. We can, of course, take action in the face of beaches of relevant laws. But that is often a distasteful, unpleasant and costly option, undertaken only as a last resort.

The better option is persuasion. An advocate is somebody who speaks, pleads or argues in favour of a cause. But an advocate doesn’t have to be skilled or even know much about the cause they are acting in favour of. Frequently they are neither skilled nor knowledgeable. This is, I believe, a chief reason that Disability Inclusion isn’t progressing as swiftly as it could.

Because of the crisis precipitated by the politicisation and commercialisation of DEI, Disability Inclusion risks becoming diminished as a genuine cause. Performative or politicised advocacy can deflect attention from the real issues of equity and dignity. Matters are made more problematic by the growth in the identity politics movement which embraces disability as a desired identity.

We must make our own choices about what we see as desirable attributes in a disability advocate. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ option realistically available. We can favour getting practical outcomes that make our lives better or outcomes that make us feel vindicated as a victim of other people’s attitudes. We won’t find both in one person.

Disability Inclusion is a deeply complex field. It is more than what most people want to know about. We want our needs met and the esoteric stuff can be left to academics. But we need to be clear about our needs well before we go looking for someone to speak on our behalf.   

Introduction

When I started this blog back in late 2021, I relished the opportunity to finally have time to catch up on a backlog of reading into Disability Inclusion and DEI generally. I was quickly disappointed. There was little in the way of insight and a great deal of stuff written by inclusion consultants who seemed to be primarily part of an industry with little capacity for self-reflection. 

In late January this year (2025) Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi published Make Work Fair in response to a politically motivated backlash against DEI in the US.  In October Andrew Doyle published a substack essay – The Death Rattles of DEI. This was a caustic polemic against something about which I had already developed a deep scepticism. 

Commenting on a well-known presenter on DEI, Doyle observes, 

“The half-hearted poeticism barely masks the anxiety of man who fears that his racket has been exposed. The predominance of the creed of DEI, and its

usurpation of meritocracy as the guiding principle in the corporate world, is a

testament to the success of culture warriors. They have made plenty of know-

nothings very wealthy by promoting ideology as though it were uncontested

truth. But now it might well be coming to an end.”

Earlier I had spent a few months delving into the toxic world of identity politics. I was surprised and dismayed by what I found. There were 5 books that shaped my response – We Have Never Been Woke, The End of Woke, Free Speech and Why It Matters, Against the New Politics of Identity and Cynical Theories.

In response I articulated my sense of a Functional Disability Theory (FDT). See Why I needed my Functional Disability Theory from August. I felt a need to review my earlier thoughts on DEI and establish a clear sense of where I stood on disability and identity.

Below I want to reflect on these ideas because I believe it is vital that Disability Inclusion advocates must develop a lucid position on what is happening. I am not saying mine is the position to be adopted, only that it is one position of many – one that dissents from most of that many. My concern is that, given the sensitivities, advocates will be best served in meeting their objectives if they are clear about what they think and believe.

Finding the calm in the storm

The emotional heat Doyle brought to his essay reminded me that critiquing beliefs and practices can seem to be fair enough but often causes collateral damage. Some DEI practitioners are deeply committed and doing good work. Some are professional and others are just passionate. But passion can be misdirected, miscommunicated and misinterpreted.

Well-intentioned people are doing the best they can. And sometimes this can be spectacularly inept. Nothing is uniform. DEI comes in many flavors – and some are unpalatable. Doyle’s reaction is spot on in important respects. DEI is about organizational, social and personal psychology and not about smooth talking performers spouting ineffectual bullshit for handsome fees. It is about a professional practice based on knowledge and insight.

Back in 2000 I explored the idea of personal praxis in my Social Ecology course. It took me quite some years to mature my early thoughts into a useful insight. I was helped by contracting GBS which led to me spending 18 months trying to make my body work again. I still have significant disabilities, but I am grateful things are as good as they are. It could have been so much worse. 

Regardless of the opinions (send him to a nursing home) and the expertise of physiotherapists everything came down to what I was prepared to do. I needed an attainable and workable objective, a theory of how to get there, and the determination to put in the very considerable effort necessary. Even as a patient I needed a praxis.

Praxis is an under-used term. Wikipedia describes praxis as “the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied, or put into practice.” Reflection and review are a vital part of the process. Again Wikipedia is helpful in its description of action learning – “an approach to problem solving that involves taking action and reflecting upon the results.”

The purpose of DEI is to generate and guide positive change for individuals and yet it seems often that the ideas of neither praxis nor action learning have entered the heads of its champions. This is regardless of the fact that DEI is a novel and complex endeavour. Many go no further than seeing it as a good idea that can be engaged with in a rewarding way.

It is easy to criticize others or be intimidated or offended or annoyed by them. In the swirling storm of passions about DEI, Wokeness and Identity Politics none of it now seems of any use to me. It was handy to be aware of it and try to understand what is going on. That now seems like a vastly complex task that yields practical value. I am glad I asked the questions and sought, but I am also grateful I feel no impulse to become further involved. 

My goal, with my notion of FDT, is to focus on what works to address access, inclusion and dignity needs in the most effective way. 

Exclusion is often the first thing advocates for inclusion practice. 

Back in 2019 I was invited to attend a meeting run by another agency’s Disability ERG. There were only a handful of participants present. I asked about their relationship with the agency’s executive. There was none. They had made no attempt to engage the agency’s leadership at all. I was initially stunned. Then I understood that here the ERG was modelled on a union whose primary mode was contestation rather collaboration. 

The function of a Disability ERG isn’t to solve inclusion problems itself but to work with its agency to help it meet its responsibilities. That will include insight-driven leadership. 

Our default mode is moral assertion – often assigning blame for perceived failings. We assume that the mere assertion of a moral duty is sufficient to induce action and any failure to act is a moral failing for which the other party is to blame. It is easy to see how this can escalate into conflict. We assume and assert the moral high ground and assign culpability to those who do not agree or comply. It’s the way we do politics on a global scale and often how we do relationships on a personal scale.  It’s not a functional way to achieve inclusion, however – no matter how self-satisfying we might feel.

I observed to my department’s Secretary some time ago that there was an abundance of goodwill across the agency. What we needed to figure out was how to activate it in service of our inclusion goals. Admonition was not the way to go. We needed a more subtle approach. We had to become genuinely inclusive – working with the many moods and modes of the staff to excite a common desire to be more inclusive. 

This challenge led us to be aware of when we slipped back into default mode and began applying blunt moral force.  We needed to understand the difference between the motive force of goodwill and the cognitive capacity to engage with it. 

DEI practitioners seem to often rely on the ‘low hanging fruit’ of inherent goodwill and fool themselves into believing they are responsible for initial positive responses to DEI efforts. But when the easy good outcomes dry up and the hard work begins, they can fall back on admonitions or blaming others for being resistant.

We have now dropped the idea of New Year’s Resolutions because we finally comprehend that we rarely have the capacity to engage the cognitive energy to break habits or prioritize one set of thoughts and feelings over another. 

In short, if we want to trigger inclusive action we must demonstrate it. This means being patient and forgiving of those who fail to do what they signal they want to do. 

By focusing moral imperatives, we are bringing rocks to a gunfight. Over the past 50 years research into our psychology has yielded a breathtaking amount of insight into how to influence our behaviour. This insight has been employed by those who seek profit and advantage and only by a minority of people who desire to do good. 

The art of positive persuasion – of changing behaviour for good outcomes – isn’t easy to learn because it first requires us to be honest and insightful about ourselves. It is far easier to manipulate others to our advantage than to persuade them to act to shared and mutual advantage.

My early exploration of DEI practitioners suggested that virtually none of them had developed this insight. There was a practical reason here. Delivering a training session had to be a business proposition resulting in a pay day. Developing the art of positive persuasion takes practice grounded in insight and determination. That’s unattractive to a business wanting a quick fix. Generally, the organization, its staff and the provider are on the same page here. The quick ‘fix’ works for all. Except the ‘fix’ meets only compliance needs and while it may give a warm glow to participants it doesn’t move the needle far beyond what natural good will would do.

Beyond moral

Our desire for greater inclusion is sensible. As our communities evolve to be more complex and pluralistic, so our values must change. Once, we built public buildings that made no provision for people with mobility disabilities. Now, in most places that is unthinkable.

We think these changes are moral. But I disagree. I used to think that. But I don’t think that failing to make building access is a moral lack, so much as a perceptual and conceptual one. Our perceptions change and, to ensure that those changes are reflected in our life-worlds, decisions must be made and funds allocated. There might be moral issues arising from decision-making processes though. 

Our instinct is to see anything requiring cognitive effort as a threat. With this wired into our brains we can see why learning can be so unpopular. We’d rather be having fun, taking it easy. For those for whom exclusion and inequity are threats there is a greater willingness to learn. But we still rely on moral assertion to stimulate and inform what we learn. 

We are always playing catch up with change. Our environment changes and then we react to adapt. If we misinterpret the nature of the change and misunderstand the response we should employ, we will fail to reach our goals. 

I think we also have a need to be thought of as ‘good’. But this depends on whose opinion we value – who is ‘one of us’. This might be our family, our friendship network, team members, fellow employees or members of our community. The larger that group the more idealistic and inclusive we are. 

As observed above, on the whole, our communities reflect an abundance of goodwill, which means we are increasingly more inclusive decade by decade. We respond positively to advocacy for positive change.

DEI and Disability advocates play a role in signaling that change is desired. But what they are not good at is persuading the hold outs – especially those who are in positions of influence and power. This matters because people in such positions are less likely to be empathic, compassionate and inclusive. There’s good research (in cognitive science and neuroscience) on this theme which I urge the reader to discover and explore. A Psychology Today article might be a useful starting point. I found that and other sources when I searched ‘power and the loss of empathy’.

So, precisely when insight into how to persuade those in power to be more empathic the DEI and Disability advocates run out of ideas, insight and capability to stimulate positive change.

Conclusion

On a personal level I now see DEI as a high-level set of values based on a theory rather than a basis for practice. It needs a rethink and thorough overhaul.

I take Bohnet’s and Chilazi’s point that with DEI there’s now a political dimension that is contestable and political. It didn’t need to be there and it distorts and stains what should be an unquestionably worthy objective. They argue that fairness is a better, more universal, value. I agree. 

It may be that arguing that everybody gets an equal chance will trigger some deeply entrenched biases but that’s an easier thing to deal with than asserting people of a ‘protected’ class deserve particular attention. Inclusivity must include everyone, rather than groups of identified people we see as a ‘protected’ class of persons. 

If we focus on individual attributes, we increase the risk of undesired focus of attention when people just want to be ‘one of us’. We discriminate for, rather than against. It’s as if we think this counters the adverse response. But what we often do is just paint a nicer target on people’s backs.

I am aware that the politics of identity is now embracing disability. I have no desire to engage with the arguments about it. They don’t concern me, so I have no useful opinion to express. I remain focused on disability being about what I and others can’t do in settings where we are entitled to equity of opportunity and dignity. What accommodations and adjustments are necessary to enable that equity? How then can we make those accommodations and adjustments happen? 

Here there are two considerations – the attitudinal and the functional. There isn’t yet universal agreement that this equity is to be actively and willingly brought to fruition. The means – priorities, permissions, processes, plans and funds – must also be realised, often against pragmatic or ideological opposition. 

The method to achieve functional equity is persuasion. The moral argument has been put and won. We have legislation and policy in place. Now we need action to evolve what is into what is desired. Persuasion in this context is ethical and sophisticated. It is a form of leadership. It requires self-awareness, insight and empathy. It requires knowledge and skill. Ideally it is a form of praxis sustained by action learning practices. 

It is hard work that can’t be knocked over in one-off training seminars or on-line courses. It’s more complex than self-styled disability advocates and DEI trainers can imagine or bother with. Doyle is right about one thing in particular. The performers get paid for their slick deliveries while the people who are doing the hard work at ERG levels are often expected to donate their time. 

Introduction

The human mediated environment modifies the natural world to our advantage – but not for all. We make roads, footpaths and ramps over which people with impaired mobility can travel more freely, but this isn’t universal across our public spaces. The Social Model of Disability originally argued for a more inclusive design for people with impaired physical mobility. But making our shared public spaces more accessible should be about more than just mobility disabilities.

A few weeks ago, I watched a webinar on The Social Model of Disability – 40 years on. Speakers agreed that we needed to move on from it, but there wasn’t a satisfying exploration of where we might go. The webinar is worth watching because it does demonstrate where the conversation is up to at an academic level. I also watched a few videos featuring Tom Shakespeare. Tom is a Professor of Disability Research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and was a useful thinker for me because he is refreshingly clear.

Below I reflect this on conversation and the videos. I have previously expressed my discontent with the Social Model and argued a case for where to go next.

Re-thinking the Social Model

Current Social Model proponents induce some to believe that the Medical Model of Disability isn’t valid or useful. This is nonsense. It’s just not absolute. I am ‘disabled’ because of a physical condition. My ankles don’t work well enough to allow me to walk independently. That’s true in any situation or context. It’s got nothing to do with society. I can walk with aids – Canadian crutches mostly. But then the physical environment must be conducive. The natural world isn’t a place I can go walking – unless there are human made paths that cater to my needs. And human-made environs must also be conducive. So insisting that disability is determined by social factors is a very urban perspective.

The normal human made physical environment has been designed to cater to the needs of able-bodied people. This means that those who are not able-bodied are frequently unable to access human made structures (streets and paths, parks, buildings and so on). This is what the Social Model set out to address. It has succeeded in many ways. This has made it possible for people with disabilities who were previously unable to move around freely in public to participate in public life and to be seen – and be known about to a far better degree. But it’s still not a universal reality for those living even in major urban settings.

For multiple reasons the Social Model is now clunky. It is still relevant but in need of a rethink. Among those reasons are:

1. New technologies that change the scope of accessibility and inclusion – on the physical, sensory and communal levels. 
2. New definitions of disability. 
3. New expectations about rights and dignities. 
4. New expectations about attitudes and behaviors

I don’t think we need to have a ‘model’ of disability at all. At the time the Social Model was developed the concept of a ‘model’ probably made sense, but now it does not. Now we have a swarm of theories and political passions that can end up engaged in pointless argument as they try to define disability according to their particular lights.

Disability is complex and highly individualistic. I want to suggest that we think of disability in terms of an ecology rather than a model. But let me be clear here. I mean this in terms of thinking about disability in the abstract only. Not in terms of thinking about people with disability – who belong within our communities as included members.

The term disability community is better used to denote a ‘community of interest’ rather than an actual community of people who get together for whatever purpose. This terminology risks being separative while it is intended to be the opposite. This is what happens when we fail to distinguish between abstract and concrete notions. 

Personally, I detest the term. I don’t identify as being a member of a community defined by disability. Yes, I have friends who have disabilities, but that’s not why they are my friends. We do share our disability-related experiences because, as friends, we share our experiences. Disability is a significant part of my identity – but on a superficial level only. It makes me stand out because I get about with Canadian crutches and I am limited in where I can go and what I can do. But, aside from that (as Tom Shakespeare observes) life is good. I live with my disabilities; I don’t dwell on them. I think about disability a lot because it’s been the theme of my professional life for decades. Long before I acquired disabilities of my own.

Disability is profoundly context dependent, and most people encounter disability only within specific contexts. However, when we talk about Disability Inclusion or Disability Policy we get into far more abstract realms that we feel must be made more manageable by thinking in terms of models. This is where we have gotten ourselves into bother. We can put water from a river into vessels, but we cannot contain the river itself.

By focusing our attention on disability, we have fooled ourselves into thinking it is the only primary problem. It isn’t. 

Advocates of the Social Model say that, in effect, medical impairments are not disabling, our attitude toward them is. This is bullshit. A person in a wheelchair has a better life when the physical environment isn’t full of impediments to them getting around in their wheelchair. But whatever puts them in their wheelchair is still real and still impacts their life in private. Wheelchair users don’t talk openly about their disability, probably because we have so many wheelchair heroes who are seen as disability advocates. They have an image to keep up. Besides, nobody wants to be thought of as a whiner. My brother uses a wheelchair and we talk often about our take on living with a mobility disability and what an utter pain in the arse it is.

We can quibble over the language we use. Not all impairments lead to disabilities in all contexts. Not all disabilities are the result of a physical human-made environment. The social environment is disabling in the same way the absence of a hearing loop is disabling to a person hard of hearing. It reduces potential for access and inclusion unfairly.

The Social Model has a focus on physical disability – especially mobility related. But when we widen our perspective to encompass the full spectrum of disability the Social Model becomes a blunt unwieldy instrument. How do we accommodate cognitive and behavioural disabilities which don’t necessarily require modification of our shared spaces – but of the attitudes and behaviors of those who use those shared spaces? What require modification are the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of community members. This raises some complex concerns. 

1. Organizations can require certain behaviors of members – a code of conduct of some sort. But they cannot compel beliefs or attitudes. 
2. Communities are likewise constrained but to a lesser degree. Communities are able to impose sanctions on individuals few organizations would dare.
3. Neither organizations nor communities strongly police behavioural standards. This is a practical reality. Not even authoritarian cultures are successful in this. 

Without enforcement as a primary instrument, we are left with persuasion. Here we have three options:

1. The moral argument 
2. The communal responsibility argument. 
3. Evolving our culture to be more compassionate and inclusive.

Each has its drawbacks if employed as a primary or singular approach. One again, simple models do not work well.

The tyranny of able normality

Accusations of ableism point to a presumption that most ‘normal’ people don’t have disabilities, and this constitutes an overwhelming portion of our community – which has the power to make decisions. This is true to a point because people who are able to work, and be in positions of power and influence aren’t necessarily aware of people with disabilities -who were mostly invisible to the general gaze. 

The able and normal looked after themselves because that’s who they saw. But when we consider disability through a wide-angle lens what is normal takes on a different meaning. Impairments caused by accident, injury, illness or since birth or by reason of advanced age aren’t necessarily disabilities in a universal sense but may be so in one or several contexts only. Either people with such impairments are not often encountered or, unless an impairment is visible, it is rarely spoken of. And when it comes to older persons experiencing impairments because of advanced age, they mostly don’t see themselves as having a disability. 

This can be specific government policy too. In Australia eligibility for the National Disability Insurance Scheme cuts off at age 65. At that age one is entitled only to the relatively poorly funded aged care system – even if the disability is not age-related.

Not all impairments become disabilities in contexts where they attract public awareness or require public accommodations or adjustments. What goes on in private isn’t reported. We miss a huge portion of the reality of living with a disability in consequence.

We have efforts at estimating the level of disability in a community but how reliable are they? It is estimated that 18% of the Australian population had a disability in 2018. This is from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare so the data will reflect a strong methodology. But does that reflect reality or the constraints of a formal methodology?

How we deal with disability

So much depends on the size of a community – and hence the degree of connection with individuals. Families, tribes, villages, towns have different types of bonds compared with large cities. 

What might be a personal sense of responsibility in one setting isn’t in another. If we belong to a large community in which anonymity is the norm our response to people with disability may be different simply because no sense of personal responsibility is triggered. 

In communities or in organizations we cannot assume that non-responsiveness to disability is because the person doesn’t care. It could be that they already have care responsibilities and their capacity to do more is limited.

Not only is disability complex but so is normality and so is community. We are complicated beings who can’t be understood in simple ways – like models. 

What is the problem?

When it comes to disability my focus is on problem solving. On a personal level it’s – “How do I achieve what I want to achieve?” When I was involved in service provision it was about the person with disability and their need to have a safe, dignified and fulfilled life – and how the organization and its people were going to do that. As a disability ERG lead it was about working with my employer to address the access, equity and inclusion issues of staff with disability. 

The very theme of dis-ability is about not being able to do stuff – not having the ability to meet a need or satisfy a want or need. For an employee with a disability legislation and policy impose upon an employer a duty to assure access, equity and inclusion. But ensuring that duty is fulfilled in a compassionate or  sensitive manner isn’t something that happens.

Disability has other dimensions. It can be the cause of pain, psychological distress, make relationships (social and intimate) difficult or impossible. It exists in these dimensions because there is a need unmet through inability caused by an organic condition that is not ‘normal’. Disability can manifest on a spectrum that progresses from mild and highly context specific to profound and global. How we respond as a community is important. But is this a social responsibility or something deeper?

The personal perspective

My recent foray into thinking on disability left me feeling as if academics and political activists have taken over and the business of addressing personal needs is being largely ignored. The situation is exacerbated by the dominant role of government bureaucracies in framing policies, strategies and doling out funds. 

How do academic or political theories about disability help individuals in need of concrete solutions to real problems about access, equity and support? They don’t. 

In the past 6 months the ‘disability advocates’ that I have encountered have mostly been privileged in some way. They are employed. They have visible disabilities which are often their trademarks – confirming they have a disability – but their insight into disability as a lived experience of disadvantage and exclusion is either limited or non-existent. Some are brashly political as if their performance is going to persuade others to change and become more compassionate and inclusive. It won’t. 

Disability is changing as a thing in our communities for good and ill. There are good things happening in some areas and there are unresolved concerns that are harder to address in other areas because decision-makers are remote from the realities of lived experiences that have real existential edges to them – where people are actually suffering. 

So, we can theorize about disability or we can act to address suffering. But here’s the problem. It is not only people with disability who may be suffering. 

The Social Model holds that people are disabled by their society and that the resolution to this question is for society to create more inclusive environments. That’s sensible enough – to a point – dealing with physical, technological, policy, procedural and systemic issues. These can be discretely disability focused in ways that do not exclude others and may even help them. 

But beyond that changes in beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that blend inclusivity into a culture cannot be disability focused. Empathy and compassion can’t be quarantined to disability alone. We cannot make a culture more inclusive of people with disability without making inclusivity a universal goal. It is true that some elements of our community think otherwise. But they are not representative. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be inclusive of people with disability unless you include everyone. That’s not true at a personal level. You can. But it’s not how things work in a complex, diverse and pluralist culture. 

The Medical Model and the Social Model have roles to fill still – as elements of an overall response. Both models relate to a privileged state where such solutions are accessible. But in many parts of the world all there is is community and culture – and some external aid. I have written before about YPK in Bali. They are selling t-shirts and seeking donations to raise funds to buy a mini bus. It has been remarkable how few people in places privileged enough to think in terms of Medical and Social models have been persuaded to contribute to that cause.

Conclusion

How we think about disability is evolving. It is becoming part of our social discourse on identity in ways that weren’t apparent 15 years got when I got seriously into Disability Inclusion. I retain my focus on disability as a problem to be solved to address access, inclusion and equity concerns for employees and community members.

It’s not that I mean to dismiss or diminish the social discourse on identity, it’s just that it’s not an aspect that triggers my passion. It’s hard to do problem-solving well. So, it needs focused attention. This is especially so if, as I argue, we need to move to a post-model way of understanding disability and see it as a complex context-sensitive ecological way. Yes, this is a Social Ecology perspective. It embraces culture and community and the difficult business of inspiring people to disability as free agents who are not browbeaten by clumsy moral arguments. 

It is not a linear model-based approach, but one which doesn’t try to craft hard definitions, set thinking rules, or make moral demands as if there is only one acceptable standard. In the complexity of disability there are some who need our help to participate in our shared lives to the best extent we can enable. It comes down to caring for others as an individual through whatever motivating means we elect.

Here’s an excerpt from the webinar – from Prof Scott Avery:

“Out in western New South Wales in Lake Mungo there’s an archaeological site and it’s got all these footprints in the clay. And amongst those footprints is a single right line of footprints, so it goes right footprint, right footprint, right footprint, no corresponding left footprint….. We tell this story of inclusion… the Mungo man story, the one-legged Mungo man, to say everyone has a place and purpose.” 

Inclusion is an ancient impulse.

Introduction

Following some comments about On getting to being okay I decided to do a deeper dive into the Getting Above the Line (GATL) pilot project, which was subsequently delivered in my former department by the Global Leadership Foundation (GLF) twice since 2020.

GATL was intended to deliver a relatively simple model of thinking about our emotions with an emphasis on personal responsibility and self-awareness. Neither of these things are easy to master and GATL certainly wasn’t going to deliver mastery in 4 1-hour long sessions, plus some homework. The goal was to offer a simple model that could then be the foundation for self-directed efforts.

The prompt for thinking about GATL was a reflection on the national RUOK day and how it is that so few of us are comfortable talking about our own emotional states, or even thinking about them, with any comfort or ease. Since 2020 there really has been no let up in psychological pressure, so the need for a simple ‘starter kit’ may have grown.

Originally, I was reacting to what colleagues with diagnosed depression were telling about how ‘disclosure’ of that diagnosis slammed back on them as a kind of stigma. I wanted to ‘change the conversation’ but quickly realised that if that was going happen, we needed to become more emotionally ‘literate’ ourselves.

Below I want to reflect more on GATL, its benefits and potential.

Why try?

Quite apart from the fact that I have needed to confront and address my own emotional responses to acquiring a significant disability, and learn how to be more emotionally intelligent, my work background has exposed me to psychiatric disorders in many settings. I am comfortable with ‘mental illness’ as a way of understanding how and why we fail to, or are unable to, respond to experiential trauma in an effective way. I have read widely on psychiatry and psychology as well. I am not asserting I am an expert in these fields, only that I feel comfortable. This matters because the alternative is to feel uncomfortable and to be unable to confidently confront a concern about psychological distress.

I deliberately avoid using the term ‘mental illness’ because it is laden with dogmatic assumptions. There are people who experience levels of psychological distress that are extreme. But the chances of encountering them in the workplace are remote. Mental illnessisn’t a term that is useful when we are mostly considering psychological or emotional injuries. We are most dealing with concerns about emotional health. I don’t like ‘emotional illness’ as a term. I prefer ‘emotional injury’. Experiencing anxiety or depression is natural and normal but not being able to flick the ‘off switch’ and return to ‘normal’ afflicts some of us.

Why this might be the case may be subject to clinical speculation but it’s no stranger than finding you can’t recover from any other injury because of some unanticipated physical condition. This is no better demonstrated, in my view, by the way that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has evolved as a concept. It has evolved from being thought of as something confined only to a response to the risk of physical death to a response to existential harm. This is a much more sophisticated understanding that deep trauma can be triggered by experiences that cause serious emotional harm. This can include emotional abuse, rejection and isolation, sustained bullying and other experiences that cause deep existential distress.

There are those who will disagree with me, maybe even vehemently. But this isn’t an area where there is common agreement. There are people with entrenched dogmatic beliefs, some of whom practise as clinical professionals. My point is that even if you don’t want to explore the field yourself, do understand there is no indisputable authority.

I am firmly in the camp of those who think that the experience of being human isn’t innately the realm of those who have degrees in psychiatry or psychology. We have a rich heritage of wisdom and compassion of our own to draw upon to help us respond effectively to most of our woes.

Most of us don’t have the time or inclination to read so there is great value in having a simple and actionable guide to greater awareness of our own emotional states.

Centres of emotional intelligence

We naturally talk about our head, our heart and our gut when we describe our responses to life circumstances. It is interesting that we also have neurons in our gut and our heart. I like the way the GLF builds on this natural reflex to craft a model of understanding our emotional responses. On their website we can read:

“If you were asked by someone to describe what you ‘think’ with, you’d probably look at them strangely and respond with ‘My brain, of course’. Interestingly, it is not as simple as that. In fact, when we are thinking effectively, we are doing so not just with our brain but with our whole body.

‘Whole body thinking’, or presence, is thinking the balances three centres. ‘Head thinking’ is more rational and logical and provides great insight. ‘Heart thinking’ connects us with our feelings and emotions and brings intuition. And ‘body thinking’ uses our senses and brings ‘gut feel’ or instinct. Each of us is capable of thinking in all three of these ways. However, in the process of developing a personality, we tend to lean more strongly towards one of the

three, which then becomes our primary filter for perceiving what we think is reality. Higher levels of emotional health are characterised by the ability to give close to equal weight to each type of these centres.

Emotional health

The idea of emotional health is at the core of GLF’s approach. This is from their website:

“A person with a high level of emotional health takes personal responsibility for the way in which they relate to and engage with others and the world around them. Emotionally healthy people have a well-tuned inner observer: they are conscious of themselves – their thoughts, their emotions and their behaviours – and the impact they have on others. They are able to recognise and overcome the various influences and constraints they experience (either from others or themselves) through the choices they make and the practices they use.“

Vertical development

Another key way of thinking about emotional health is seeing our acquisition of skills and knowledge as a ‘horizontal’ development that must be balanced by ‘vertical’ development – which I see as gaining depth of insight. GLF’s website sums this up:

‘Vertical development’ is about building our ability to distinguish and let go

of our own limited thinking and perceptions. As this occurs we are more

able to genuinely relate to and engage with others and the world around us.

The Neuroleadership Institute backs this up when it says that we should ‘train’ for insight, not just deliver information. Triggering insight is critical if we want to stimulate our motivation to learn and to change our behaviours. Even having the technical capability to perform a task may not be sufficient to achieve a desired or intended outcome. Without insight and self-awareness we may lack that ‘secret sauce’ that enables us to resonate with others.

Conclusion

“Gaining a full understanding of emotional health is an ongoing journey, even for those of us who have worked with it for a long time.” (GLF website)

We have to start somewhere. The GLF model is simple but sophisticated. The critical ideas can be represented in visual form. The idea of a ‘line of responsibility’ (above which one should strive to stay) is almost ridiculously simple as an idea, though staying above it might be a challenge. But it is better to face that challenge with a method that isn’t going to demand complex ideas and language.

I made myself a graphic which depicted degrees of self-centredness versus degrees of behavioural freedom. They are inversely related. As one grows the other shrinks. I used to have it printed out and visible. Writing this has prompted me to put up a new one. It’s been a while.

At the most basic level, immediately above the ‘line of responsibility’ is ‘Recognition’ (self-awareness) and immediately below it is ‘Automated Response’ (reflex). A simple idea but it is so hard to shift from self-centred reflex to freer self-aware behaviour.

GATL was an effort to bring profound and powerful ideas to people quickly and effectively. Doing so in four one-hour online sessions, plus a bit of homework could only ever be an intro – a starter kit.

Below is some feedback from some participants in the 2020 pilot.

Participant 1

What empowered me from the training was that I learnt to: 

• pause and become aware my own and others’ reactions – understanding why I/they react as I/they do. 
• identify and manage my own emotions.  
• think before acting and manage impulses.
• understand motivations of other people and have empathy.
• initiate strategies to effectively manage relationships and build teams.
• think with my head, heart and gut and that a neat trick is to touch that area to remind myself to stay present in that zone.

Participant 2

I found all of the content useful. I have been trying to implement the strategies/models into my day-to-day life since we started. Once more employees across DCJ have completed the sessions it will be easier to apply these learnings into team practices and truly integrate into DCJ culture.

I think it was also exceptionally positive having participated in the training with a diverse group of people who are not all from the same team. I think that allowed us all to share our honest thoughts and feelings without fear of judgement or retribution. I can see it would be useful to have mixed groups with managers/employees as it will further enhance empathy and understanding of lived experiences.

I felt refreshed after each session. It was somewhat draining because that degree of self-reflection is not natural for me, but it was a wonderfully positive experience and I’d happily recommend participating to anyone.

Participant 4

This is not just a work training opportunity; it is a valuable and enjoyable personal growth and awareness experience!

The Global Leadership Foundation (GLF) training workshops can be influential to our organisation, as they reinforce DCJ values and can help bring us closer to creating respectful workplaces. The training concepts embed a foundational understanding and a ‘shared language’ – for us as individuals, colleagues, and for managers alike. Enhancing the way we work together, engage with one another, our stakeholders and clients. Participants will come to better understand their own and others Emotional Health (EH) levels, ‘position’ and responses. The training also promotes conscious awareness of Emotional Health levels on any given day. 

Participant 5

I thoroughly appreciated Global Leadership Emotional intelligence workshop.

This course encourages a person’s capability to moderate and control one’s emotions as well as the ability to manage the emotions of others.

This course provided me with a direct insight and awareness into:

• Self-regulation: the ability to manage one’s negative or disruptive emotions, and to adapt to changes in circumstance. Those who are skilled in self-regulation excel in managing conflict, adapt well to change and are more likely to take responsibility.
• Motivation: the ability to self-motivate, with a focus on achieving internal or self-gratification as opposed to external praise or reward. Individuals who are able to motivate themselves in this way have a tendency to be more committed and goal focused.
• Empathy: the ability to recognize and understand how others are feeling and consider those feelings before responding in social situations. Empathy also allows an individual to understand the dynamics that influence relationships, both personal and in the workplace.
• Social skills: the ability to manage the emotions of others through emotional understanding and using this to build rapport and connect with people through skills such as active listening, verbal and nonverbal communication.

Introduction

I have been reading some interesting material lately on how people think about Disability Inclusion and what motivates their actions. Some are born with their disability. Some acquire it while they are young. Others acquire their disabilities at various stages of adulthood. I was on the more mature side of the adult spectrum when I acquired my disabilities. 

One of the things about acquiring a significant disability later in life is that there’s a chance you might have some life experiences to draw on for the process of adapting and responding. 

In 2008 I contracted GBS and acquired mobility and grip disabilities. My ankles ceased functioning as they used to, and I required Canadian crutches to get around. I started off with a rollator – essentially a tray mobile with a seat but that was a nightmare on the train during my daily commute when I returned to work. 

I loved walking, reading and real-life problem solving. My past work experience was almost exclusively in the public sector (4 federal and 6 state agencies) – and most of that was about engaging with the public or the community. My roles were very people oriented (from intimate personal care to problem solving interviews to conflict resolution) Also a substantial portion of my work was disability related in some way. In my last agency I was initially employed as a Support Manager – coordinating health and community access services for residents of privately run accommodation services for people with disabilities. 

When I acquired my disability, I was developing and running tendering processes mostly to acquire disability accommodation services. A lot of what I had done previously involved monitoring and assessing performance of service providers and negotiating compliance or developing solutions. 

Walking used to be enjoyable but now is slow and perilous. I could still read but, because of my accompanying grip disabilities, I switched to ebooks and audiobooks. 

When I became a founding member of my department’s Disability Employee Network in July 2010 I was interested to discover that the majority of members were from the community disability support teams. These were people with disabilities whose jobs were working with people with disabilities in the community. They were engaged in practical problem solving. The advent of the NDIS saw the end of those jobs. By the time I became DEN Chair in November 2016 none of these members were left. 

In June 2023 I commenced a consultancy, working with staff network leads with my former employer. This was a novel experience, and I had to discover what made me a successful lead. While there are leadership skills that can be learned we all have a foundation of experiences and attitudes upon which we construct later philosophies and skills. It wasn’t a case of trying to make other people lead the way I did. I had experience as an effective leader but that didn’t necessarily mean I knew how to help others be effective leaders because of that experience. I had to quickly develop insight into myself and the leads I worked with. That was hard work. It was also deeply rewarding. 

I especially had to remember that other people didn’t necessarily see the world through my eyes – and hence while my hammer led me to see nails everywhere not everyone had the same tool. 

One great lesson for me came by accident in around 1991. I was Advisor Disability Licensing cover northern NSW with a brief to inspect and license over 130 aged and disability residential and employment services.  I had no previous experience in this area. Because I sometimes spent all week in the field, I had a lot of time to listen to radio shows and audiocassettes. I didn’t listen to music because I was on paid time and figured I should be educating myself. I came across an audio course on conflict resolution in my department’s library. There were 6 audio cassettes which I played repeatedly over about 3 months. When I stopped at a service, I practiced what I had been listening to. I got to be very good at conflict resolution – a skillset that has served me well since. 

I brought those conflict resolution skills into my role as DEN lead. As my consultancy progressed, I became more aware of other experiences and skills I had brought into that role. I became more able to talk with ERG leads about tapping into life experiences that could inform their sense of leadership.

Diverse leadership inspiration

A few recent experiences, including my consultancy, have made it clear to me that being effective leader for any ERG is vital, and that allowing one person to dominate can be a problem. There are, of course, individuals who are great leaders.  When I was an ERG lead, I realised I needed more eyes and minds than just mine on the job. That was an attitude I developed when I was contract managing employment programs and Business Enterprise Centres – develop collective leadership commitment to identify and address issues of concern. I created regional coalitions of services to enhance service delivery, share insights and imagine potentials. 

This experience inspired me to create the DEN’s Guidance and Action Team (GAT) – 15 members who volunteered to be more involved in helping the DEN address inclusion and equity issues.

Another useful experience was my time in 1997 as a Community Recovery Coordinator on the Tasman Peninsula after the 1996 shootings at Port Arthur. I learned just how important it was to listen to multiple voices and back off if you are the wrong solution for the problem. My employer had developed an idea of unmet need through talking to community ‘leaders’ but didn’t talk to the community itself. It needed some gentle support but not some clown running around organising meetings they didn’t want. Mostly they wanted to be left alone. There was a need to be met, but it was the one articulated, not the one imagined.

This taught me to not assume my take was the best one, and to listen with care and respect to what others were saying.

The leader as hero isn’t a good idea

Leadership isn’t about control, though it might be about being in control of oneself. It is more about influence. This is a modern development arising because the old hierarchies no longer exist. Now we may be leading people who are older, more experienced, better qualified or who have greater expertise – people who are our equals.

My predecessor on the Tasman Peninsula spoke only to the community and government leaders. They assumed the existence of a need but did not check it out. Only a few people thought there was a need to ‘lead’ community recovery. This was old hierarchical thinking.

There is an abundance of very good books on leadership available. They reflect a contemporary data-driven approach which is grounded in psychology at an individual and organizational level.

My favourite is Loretta Malandro’s Fearless Leadership because it was ideal for me as an ERG lead getting my head around being in a leadership role that really had no formal status. Malandro introduced me to the idea of situational leadership. Brené Brown’s Dare to Leadwas also inspirational. I was keenly aware that both had the theme of courage in their titles. But this wasn’t about being heroic so much as overcoming one’s own doubts and committing to influencing – being bold enough to share one’s vision (sourced, of course, from many people).

I think the GAT was an ideal manifestation of this new way of thinking. In September 2018 I called for volunteers from the DEN membership. Fifteen responded. They were smart, passionate and hurting. They were cranky too. It took 12 months to persuade them to be a disciplined and professional force for good. I have since repeatedly referred to the GAT as the heart of the DEN and I was surprised when one of the original members said I was just saying that. I wasn’t. The DEN’s success would not have been possible without them.

Culturally we have moved out of hierarchies into communities of equals. Our organizational structures are slow to reflect this, but we know it as individuals. We see this in the language of teams, and we know it from our direct experiences. We respect competence and capability, not position.

Organizations demonstrate the degree to which they are slow to catch up with this reality by the fact that narcissists and psychopaths are disproportionately represented amongst the ranks of executives. Similarly, people who are psychologically ill-equipped to work well in teams aspire to leadership and management roles – and often succeed.

Effective leadership in ERGs

ERGs are modern phenomena that reflect our contemporary values of representation by peers. When I became a founding member of my department’s DEN in 2010 there was still a hierarchical spirit around. But that was 15 years ago when some ideas and values were still in the early stage of definition and transition. 

ERG leadership is still seen by some as a heroic individual or two co-chairs or co-leads. The term ‘chair’ reflects the legacy of an ERG being seen as a staff association of amateurs and volunteers rather than a vital employee-led group of competent and professional peers. I now prefer the term ‘coordinator’. The need for effective leadership is still there but the term reflects less reliance on hierarchical status and more reliance on functional skills like inspiration and persuasion. I am constantly reminded of Ernesto Sirolli’s advice – “You cannot motivate, only inspire!” 

ERGs operate outside the normal organizational hierarchy. As DEN lead I had direct access to my department’s Secretary and three Deputy Secretaries. This was something neither my manager nor Director felt comfortable about. These were also relationships I had to manage with great care.

This makes situational leadership a challenging role to perform. If done well it can be transformative. If done poorly an ERG will languish in ineffectuality.

Conclusion

The opportunity to work with ERG leads obliged me to delve deeper into the theories of what an ERG is than I had done before – and I found that there weren’t any that were of much use. There were assumptions and habits lingering from a transitional phase that should have ended a few years back. Part of the problem has been that ERGs haven’t been studied. They are widely perceived to be ineffectual and hence not worth inquiring into. The other part of the problem is the lack of self-reflection by ERGs themselves. Organizations maintain them as a good idea – in a vague sentimental manner. Nobody has done a value for money assessment.

However, well-led companies do support effective ERGs, probably because there is a culture of accountability and a theory of what the ERGs are for. Public sector ERGs are a manifestation of intent to comply with legislation and policy, and that is often enough for an agency. This leaves many a public sector ERG with untapped potential that can be realised through effective leadership – from the organization as well as the ERG. A key task for such leadership is negotiating a theory of the function and benefits of an ERG within an agency/sector and securing the resources to deliver those benefits.

The attention given to leadership these days reflects a critical trend. It’s not that there is a greater demand for leadership per se, but for far better leadership. This is probably no better demonstrated in the works of two former navy seals – Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Their book, The Dichotomy of Leadership has a 4.8 star rating on Amazon, with 87% of the 6.9k reviewers giving 5 stars. That’s extraordinary, and it reflects a desire for greater self-awareness and personal accountability among current leaders. It’s a great read.

The theme of leadership has attracted a huge level of serious research and scholarship for the past few decades. This reflects the growing recognition and importance of effective leaders in our non-hierarchical age. They can make or break organizations and teams. In the contemporary business environment that is a critical element in survival and success.

For ERGs, DENs or staff networks (call them what you will) leadership is under-estimated and under-valued. There’s a lot of work to be done if we want these groups to deliver on the unique potential they hold. 

As usual, I want to promote the work of PurpleSpace. It is still the only organization I know that is dedicated to creating effective Disability ERGs.

Introduction

RUOK Day is on Thursday 11 September this year (2025). Each year it triggers the same concern in me. The idea of the day is powerful but those who are asked to be prepared to ask whether a workmate, friend or family member is feeling okay may not have a comfortable sense of what psychological stress or distress might be. 

This dimension of our wellbeing has long been dominated by the idea of ‘mental’ health or ‘mental’ illness. While there is a persistent dogma that insists that being human is something only psychiatrists understand, there is a strong and growing self-care, self-awareness, self-management movement. 

I grew up at a time when emotions were dismissed as signs of weakness – fit only for children and women. It really wasn’t until the late 1960s that this mindset began to change. But it still took a few more decades before thinking about emotions became popular. I read Daniel Goldman’s Emotional Intelligence shortly after it was published in 1995. Now, a quick search of Amazon throws up over 50 offerings on the theme of emotional intelligence. 

Research into organizational behaviour and leadership has produced a rich source of content that emphasises the critical value of self-awareness and personal accountability. 

There are over 50 podcasts on psychology, as well as YouTube videos and who knows how much else on other social media (which I don’t use). 

However, it doesn’t matter how much content is around if people don’t engage with it and don’t become comfortable enough to reach out to somebody in need. 

The line

Toward the end of my time as a disability ERG lead, I became concerned about what members with diagnoses of depression were telling me about the stigma they felt. I wanted to do something to ‘change the conversation’.  In early 2020 I started working with the Global Leadership Foundation (GLF) on what became a pilot program we called Getting Above the Line (GATL). It had promise as a means of helping people become more aware of their emotional reactions by giving them a simple tool rather than a psychological theory. 

The GATL program consisted of 4 1-hour sessions held over Teams or Zoom. It introduced the Personal Responsibility model and then explored how to use it.

The line refers to an idea that there are states of emotion where we feel in control and states where we are not. It’s called ‘the line of choice’. Above it we accept personal responsibility for our behaviour. Below it we blame, defend, deny and justify.  Below are the elements of a scale, with my rephasing). So, above the line, in ascending order there are – recognition(awareness and ownership), social value (positive constructive response), wisdom (insight) and presence (above it all). Below the line, in descending order, are – automated responses (negative and reflexive), exaggeration (blowing things out of proportion), survival (just hanging in), preoccupation (can’t let it go) and delusion (self-justification and denial of any responsibility).

Rephrasing is a useful exercise because it’s a measure of the extent to which you acknowledge that these are the stages we go through.

I like the GLF’s essential themes, and I especially like the idea of emotionally healthy leadership. There has been a lot of research into leadership in the past decade or so emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and personal accountability. Leadership is a useful theme because it applies to situational leadership rather than just formal roles. Leadership includes a capacity for empathy and the need to create psychologically safe settings for others. 

In fact, the failed NSW government’s Age of Inclusion campaign from 2020 had a manifesto which envisioned that leaders would “inspire with self-awareness and empathy”. Unfortunately, nobody thought to add those capabilities to  team leaders’ and managers’ role requirements – which was a great pity. 

In the context of Disability Inclusion, I prefer organizational leadership texts because they are a well-structured, data driven, and actionable guide to relational and situational self-awareness and personal accountability.  Others may prefer guidance of the self-help or spiritual variety. The point is that there are essential insights that are the foundation of self-managing one’s emotions. It really isn’t effective to reach out to others if you haven’t that vital insight into your own capacity to be aware of and regulate emotions. 

The GLF has a nice little free booklet, Emotional Health and Leadership. You can download it here.

My hope with GATL was to have facilitators trained so the program could be run across my department. But 2020 wasn’t a great time for innovation, even though the need for help to stay above the line was urgent.

What the data tells us

In Australia 23% of people with disability say their primary disability is psychological. Anxiety and depression are by far the most common diagnoses. Aside from those with formal diagnoses there are many people whose lives are influenced by stress and worry – whether at work or in one’s private life. 

In the 12 months prior to the Australian Mental Health and Wellbeing study (2020-2022), the most common mental illnesses in Australia were:

• Anxiety disorders (3.4 million people, or 17% of the population)
• Affective disorders (1.5 million, or 8%) (depression etc)
• Substance Use disorders (650,000, or 3%) 

Psychotic disorders are found in only .5% of the population. So, the most common ‘mental illness’ we encounter is anxiety – something we all know at various times. Depression seems to be the next most common – also something most of us have encountered.

The lived experience

I have no doubt that some people do get into situations where they can’t switch off an emotional response and clinical intervention is the best option. But we so mistrust our emotions that we are prepared to surrender normal emotional responses to clinicians who need to make a living. Some years back I read an article lamenting the way that normal and natural grief was being treated as a disorder by doctors. Not everyone acts in our best interests.

We need to remember that we are heirs to a wide spectrum of emotions, and sometimes our natural capacity for resilience is overwhelmed or impaired. We need help. But this is help that should come from friends and family – and would, if they hadn’t been disempowered by being convinced being human isn’t something we can’t figure out for ourselves.

People with clinically diagnosed conditions are put in a bind. What starts out as an act of self-care can end up being a source of shame. I have been told how the fact of having been given a diagnosis becomes a stigma. One person told me that they disclosed they had a diagnosis of depression to their manager because they did need some accommodation because of a significant personal event. Prior to the disclosure they were trusted to work with little close supervision. But afterwards not only did supervision suddenly increase but their judgement was questioned as never before. Efforts to discuss these changes with the manager were futile.

Back in the 1970s I worked in several psychiatric hospitals. I later worked in Veterans Affairs, where, in the process of preparing summaries of clinical evidence for tribunal hearings, I read and summarised countless psychiatric reports. In subsequent years I worked with accommodation services whose residents were former psychiatric hospital patients. I have long felt comfortable with the idea of mental illness, and this is why I don’t think the term suits people who have experienced emotional distress.

I understand how mental illness has been represented in our community and why any suggestion of it might make a manager, indeed anybody, might react badly. We need to reclaim our right to our experience of the lows as well as the highs of being human without ‘expert’ intervention (unless we ask for it or it is deemed really necessary).

Conclusion

My concern about RUOK day is that it is one day of the year. That’s okay for birthdays, Christmas and Fathers’ Day (I got a very nice highland single malt). But RUOK should only be a reminder that we need to be developing our capability to be open and empathic as a fundamental capacity.

Almost 25% of people who say they have a disability have one relating to their psychological wellbeing.

But there’s more to that than just this. Disability can be traumatic. I spent 10 months in hospital after contracting GBS. I left with serious disabilities. I contracted GBS in April 2008 and come September 2025 I cannot recall anybody asking me how I was coping with such a catastrophic loss of ability. I am doing fine. Thanks for imagining that you have asked me.😊

I am a fan of the ‘Special Olympics’ but I do wish they’d change the name. I remember how ‘special needs’ decayed into the insult of being ‘special’.  The performances are riveting to me because I know a little of where the athlete has had to come from. I am not inclined to emulate them because I am a nerd and sport isn’t my passion.

That said, I fear there is an unintentional misdirect going on. Olympic heroes with disabilities can create an illusion that all people with disabilities must be heroic. This isn’t a conscious thing, but it’s the kind of stereotyping that kicks in without us knowing. 

For example, the 2020 Age of Inclusion campaign included a good reason for employing people with disabilities that was that they were good at problem solving because their disability meant they were good at navigating impediments in the world. No. Stop laughing. I am serious. This was real. It took me near 18 months to get it removed from the Public Service Commission website.

I suspect that some Olympians with disabilities process the trauma of the cause of their disability through dedication to their sport. If you get your lower leg blown off by an IED, becoming an Olympic level athlete makes sense. I write blogs on Disability Inclusion as a way of processing my trauma.

So, my point is that disability can carry its own sense of the visitation of an outage on one’s sense of personhood and cause grief, depression or anxiety. The heroic response is not appropriate for everyone. That’s a myth from a different time. We must be accepting of, and gentle to, ourselves and open, and inclusive of, the pain others experience in whatever hurts them.

To me RUOK day is a reminder for me to ask myself how okay I am to reach out and be a good friend to somebody in need of emotional succour.

And you?

Introduction

A former colleague sent me a newsletter from a body called DENconnect. I read it with great interest and finished it puzzled. It stimulated me to refresh my understanding of DENconnect.

DENconnect’s formation was initiated by the NSW Public Service Commission a few years ago. The original intent was to network Disability Employee Networks (DENs) across the sector. That would have been a useful development but that wasn’t how things panned out. DENconnect is now a separate body with no specific connection with any DENs, despite what its Terms of Reference says. 

To my mind this is a deeply confused development supported by people with more interest in disability as an identity than addressing the inclusion needs of staff with disabilities. It is more performative than solution finding. It is more about feeling good than doing good. 

As I noted in my earlier post on my Functional Disability Theory, I have little sympathy for performative identity politics when there are staff with disabilities with access, equity and inclusion needs that are unmet. DENconnect asserts its primary objective to be Provide an accessible, safe and engaged space where employees with disability, their ally’s (error in original) and champions can all meet and advocate for an accessible and inclusive NSW Government not only for its customers but for employees with disability, executives, and Ministers (from the Terms of Reference 12 April 2024).

Why and how this differs from agency DENs isn’t clear at all. What is the unmet need that DENconnect sees it is filling?

DENconnect imagines an “accessible and inclusive NSW Government”. That might be a noble vision, but it makes a problematic assumption. It says “…not only for its customers but for employees with disability” as if the primary concern for DENconnect is for the government’s “customers”. That, by the way, is an absurd terminology and reflects the disproportionate influence of the Department of Customer Service on the framing of DENconnect. “Customers” includes inmates of prisons, the ill, the homeless and many more who would not regard their contact with the various arms of the public sector as a ‘customer experience’. Some have observed that the police arresting and locking up their ‘customers’ hardly constitutes good customer service. Here language matters because it reflects an unconscious orientation. 

The Customer Service portfolio has 13,390 staff (2024) compared with Communities and Justice which has over 56,000 and which includes corrective services, police, state emergency services, fire and rescue, public housing and child protection. Terminology like “customers” not only reflects an insular perspective but also a lack of consultation across the sector. This matters because agencies dealing with problematic engagement with the community have ‘frontline’ work environments that are less conducive to staff with disability than ‘nicer’ ‘back room’ work environments.

DENconnect’s mission seems ‘relaxed and comfortable’ with the time to deal with non-critical concerns. The reference to “feel safe to disclose their disability”, “raise awareness”, “advocate for” and “talk about” is in stark contrast to a professional DEN networker. Contrast this language with a comment on PurpleSpace’swebsite from a member – “We needed to bring people together to ask some big questions. Did our strategy have focus? Were we executing it adequately? Were we rewarding our volunteers correctly? Did our executive sponsor have our backs? Ultimately, how would we know we were doing well as a network?”DENconnect’s language is very general where the PurpleSpace comment reflects a focused, dynamic and self-reflective orientation.

This more passive and somewhat distracted orientation struck me around the launch of DENconnect. I was at a meeting along with other DEN leads and representatives when the subject of recruiting more staff with disability came up. There was surprising enthusiasm for DENs being involved. This was not something I supported. A DEN, I believed, had one primary focus – assuring existing staff with disabilities were able to do their jobs with dignity, without fear, and with assured access to what they needed.  Of course, a DEN also has a role of ensuring inclusive recruitment practices for existing staff with disabilities and so might offer insight and advice on external recruitment, but as subject matter experts rather than as DEN representatives.

The DENconnect Charter includes this puzzling statement – “We will build and support each other via networks formed in DENconnect. We will actively support career progression or development opportunities for our colleagues with disability and talk about how we can achieve thriving careers in the NSW public sector.” The first thing that struck me is the absence of any reference to other DENs, or addressing unmet inclusion needs of current staff with disability. DENconnect seems to be unrelated to the concern about unmet inclusion needs – and an entirely separate entity in competition with agency DENs.

In one part of the Terms of Reference we find “The different departmental DENs across the sector come together through DENconnect.” The Introduction boldly asserts that “DENconnect is a hub for all existing NSW Government Disability Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) or Disability Employee Networks (DENs) to connect.” But its not, and this is reflected in its structure. It has a committee with 8 members – Co-Executive Sponsor, Co-Chairs, Co Secretary’s (error in original), Treasurer, Comms Lead, Events Lead, Member Inclusion Lead, Co-Advisory Leads.

There is no reference to DENconnect being a representative body for the sector’s DENs other than the brief presumptive assertions above. Nothing in the Terms of Reference demonstrates any regard for any DEN. For example, one might expect that the committee might constitute formal representatives from other DENs, but there is no such provision. 

What, then, might its purpose be? Under the heading More Information we find “DENconnect is a sector-wide network which operates out of the Department of Customer Service (DCS)” This is odd. Why would it need to operate out of any agency? Was anything about DENconnect assented to by any other DEN? (not to my knowledge). Was any part of the Terms of Reference assented to by other DENs? (not to my knowledge). Or is DENconnect essentially a project of the Department of Customer Services? (it seems so).

What identified need is being filled by DENconnect? There was a perceived benefit in individual DENs connecting and sharing experiences. I was part of an early effort. It didn’t go anywhere because DENs were in various states of development and support, and their leads had widely disparate beliefs about what they were doing. There was no strategic guidance at that early stage – which may explain why we have what is there now.

I am struggling to find any justification for DENconnect as it is. As things are across the sector, running any kind of staff network is challenging. Time to run a network is scarce, so the effort put into operating a DEN has to be as effective as possible. Splitting time and effort across two bodies – one’s own agency’s DEN and DENconnect would be problematic for many.

To complicate matters, membership of DENconnect is independent of agency DEN membership. It is possible to be a member of DENconnect only – which effectively makes DENconnect a parallel and competing body, rather than a complementary and uniting one.

What’s with Let’s Rock NSW?

DENconnect has been a major force behind Let’s Rock NSW. I don’t know how to describe this phenomenon. I first heard of it when there was a day out at Luna Park, North Sydney in 2023. I was stunned. I could not imagine a more self-indulgent, self-congratulatory thing to do at public expense. I spoke with a few people who attended, but they were unable to persuade me that they ‘deserved’ that day out. 

The most recent event (June 2025) had an agenda, accompanied by an image of a finger (I can think of only one thing) and a blurb – “At the heart of Let’s Rock NSW is the carefully curated program which promises to rock the foundations when it comes to disability in the workplace.” Let’s look at the main part of it:

• 2:10pm Keynote speaker Hannah Gadsby – Comedian, Writer, Art Person
• 2:40pm Rockin’ it out – audience participation
• 3:00pm In conversation with… Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM – Doctor, Lawyer, Disability Advocate, Researcher – facilitated by Sarah Rose – Paralympian, Author, Disability Advocate, Podcaster, NSW Government Employee
• 3:35pm NSW Government showcase – Disability Inclusion initiatives
• 4:10pm Closing remarks – 4:20pm 

Here’s what I saw in the agenda, remembering that this was an event for public servants with disability held under the auspice of the NSW government. Neither Hannah nor Dinesh are expert in disability in public sector workplaces. There was 35 minutes allocated to showcasing Disability Inclusion initiatives – about which nothing was subsequently reported, not even at 2025 Let’s Rock NSW event highlights. There were no speakers who had expertise in the NSW public sector. There were no presentations by anyone from the NSW public sector other than introductory remarks. No DENs were given the opportunity to talk about challenges, successes and solutions. In sum, the event ducked the hard issues and was more about having a good time. There was that 35-minute nod to Disability Inclusion initiatives of course. But surely that should have been the focus of the event?

This was a “carefully curated program” designed to “rock the foundations when it comes to disability in the workplace.”? The Department of Communities and Justice was strongly represented at the Australian Disability Network’s (AusDN) Awards Night following its Annual National Conference in May 2025. It would not have been unreasonable to expect, given the theme of the event, that the department would have been invited to speak at the event – and maybe even given the opportunity to deliver the keynote address.

The department has participated in the AusDN’s Access and Inclusion Index assessment since 2019 and was awarded: 

• 2024 Access and Inclusion Index: Best in Class – Candidate Experience
• 2024 Access and Inclusion Index: Best in Class – Workplace Adjustments

It also had its Disability Confident Recruiter status renewed for 2024-2025. These achievements would, one might think, be of interest to the whole sector, and especially at an event touted as rocking the foundationswhen it comes to disability in the workplace.

In addition, the DCJDEN was nominated as the winner of the inaugural DEN of the Year award by AusDN, in 2022.

But let’s put this into a wider perspective. DCJ is one of around 25 NSW government agencies which are members of AusDN. DCJ joined PurpleSpace in 2018. The DCJDEN, in company with executive sponsors, presented on its innovative work at the AusDN annual national conferences in 2019 and 2020. In 2020 the DCJDEN chair was offered a fulltime disability specialist role – including DEN Chair as a substantial component (2 days a week, I think). The role was also involved in the Access and Inclusion Index and the Disability Inclusion Action Plan. So, the 2025 awards reflect an ongoing commitment to Disability Inclusion by DCJ that is, I believe, unparalleled in the sector. 

Despite this track record, DENconnect, remains oddly incurious about DCJ’s work on Disability Inclusion. I should observe that I am not excluding other agencies who are doing good work. DCJ is just a glaring example. 

The NSW Public Service Commission’s Linked In account carried this: Let’s Rock NSW – Rethink Disability – Last week, hundreds of NSW public servants attended Let’s Rock NSW, a groundbreaking event on challenging perceptions of disability and driving meaningful change in the NSW public sector. It’s difficult to understand what was “groundbreaking” about it, given the serious work done by agencies that are members of AusDN or PurpleSpace – or both.

It is noteworthy that even the website carried the ‘highlights’ of the event and nothing on the NSW Government showcase – Disability Inclusion initiatives. These seem nowhere recorded or available for review or exploration.

The hype and hyperbole about the event haven’t been backed up by any apparent report of outcomes. What was groundbreaking? What has changed? What is the benefit delivered? 

The ground of confusion

I don’t have a personal beef with DENconnect. It is symptomatic of how a wider social movement can distort the environment in which it intends to be a positive influence – but isn’t. This is what concerns me.

As I noted in an earlier post, I am not a fan of the disability identity trend. My approach to disability is entirely functional. It’s not that I want to ignore the diversity of people with disabilities. I do get that having a sense of being a person with disability can bring meaning to life experiences that might otherwise be perplexing or even distressing. 

But not all disabilities are relevant to all situations. There is a great distinction between being a person with a disability and a person whose disability adversely impacts their work experience. Hence my focus on functional issues concerning disability and my assertion that if your disability doesn’t require an adjustment or an accommodation, it’s not really relevant beyond being a statistic that adds to the spectrum of diversity in the sector, relative to the community it serves. 

The NSW public sector has a responsibility to ensure the workforce reflects the community. That means that it should be working toward having, and being able to measure and report on, a percentage of its workforce with disabilities that is similar to the community. 

The generally accepted figure in Australia is that 18% of the population lives with a disability. At present the target for people with disability employed in the NSW public sector is a modest 5.6% by 2025. This figure was set back around 2018 and seems not to have been revised. It is based upon internal agency diversity data, which is different from the People Matter Employee Survey (PMES) reports. Fewer people declare disability on internal diversity systems than those who report disability on the anonymous PMES survey. The mismatch is due to fear that the internal system does not preserve anonymity.

The NSW Public Sector Report of 2024 notes on page 25 that “In 2024, 2.7% of our workforce reported having a disability…” Considering that some agencies, including Customer Service, showed 10% or higher staff with disability on their 2024 PMES reports, that disparity should be a huge signal for DENconnect – that an invaluable service would be to encourage staff with disability to register on their agency’s diversity records and to address the root of fear.

The visibility of people with disability in the sector is a good thing in terms of understanding the extent to which the community is reflected in the workforce. But without there being an assurance of genuine inclusion within workplaces, there is no way of knowing how many staff with disability are suffering exclusion, disempowered in silence. 

There’s a spectrum of disabilities that are termed ‘invisible’. We know that people who don’t have an apparent disability are disinclined to ‘disclose’ if they see that people with ‘visible’ disabilities are not treated well. 

Our natural bias is ‘ableist’. That is to say that we assume that, in the absence of obvious signs of disability, none exist. This is nowhere better demonstrated by the reactions experienced by hearing impaired people when they ‘disclose’ their disability and ask for an accommodation – like for someone to speak slower and more clearly. Such a request can often trigger an angry response.

Mental illness is another major problem area. It is poorly understood and subject to quite cruel stigmas. Even though anxiety and depression are the most commonly diagnosed conditions and hint at no gross disordered behaviour, we struggle to talk about ‘mental health’.  In 2018, 23% of people with disability said their “main health condition was mental or behavioural”. We won’t talk about ‘mental illness’ directly and struggle with vague expressions like ‘mental health issues’ and even desperately declare that somebody is “suffering from mental health”. I heard senior government representatives use that exact phrase several times. 

There is a lot for a serious DENconnect to work on in a deliberate, constructive and representative way. But it must be clear about its mission. The DENs were originally created to address unmet access and inclusion needs of staff with disability. But now DENconnect has interpreted that mission to be about celebrating the diversity of staff with disability and supporting their career enhancement desires. That’s not an illegitimate mission. My argument is that it’s just not an appropriate mission at public expense while there are staff with disability in the sector whose access and inclusion needs remain unaddressed.

It could have used the Let’s Rock NSW (needs a less juvenile name) event at Randwick Racecourse in 2025 to explore why some agencies have high rates of PMES disability disclosure (e.g. Customer Service and DCJ both have 10% and Legal Aid NSW 14% – others, like the NSW Police Force, are as low as 4%). There is, in fact, a considerable body of data that creates a foundation for an analysis of what works and what doesn’t. You’d hope that the sector has the intellectual chops to undertake such research. But, as I noted, there is a stark absence of effective analysis and insight – as well as curiosity. 

DENconnect is really just a symptom of a much larger problem – a lack of insight into disability inclusion at all levels of government. While there is professed support – because it is mandated by law and policy – there is little moral and intellectual effort applied in a coherent and coordinated manner. DENconnect has a far greater level of government funding and support than agency DENs because it performs a service of ‘caringabout’ without actually delivering any discernible benefit to those who most need its support.

The trend toward disability identity has confused the landscape. Staff with disability who continue to experience exclusion and even abuse are, in effect, collateral damage caused by a movement which hardly acknowledges their presence. 

This is what happens when disability becomes performative. Those who can’t/won’t perform are rendered invisible and irrelevant.

Conclusion

DENconnect strikes me as a well-intentioned but confused entity. It is doubtful whether the members experience much discrimination. This certainly seems to be the case in Customer Service, which appears to be a genuinely caring organization. It is one I deal with more than any other NSW agency, and I have been routinely impressed by the quality of service provided. 

It should not, however, be running DENconnect. The Public Service Commission lists 13 DENs across the sector. Two of them are in the Communities and Justice portfolio – where work environments are very different and challenging (police, corrective services, child protection for example). Two of the other DENs are in fields of service that involve a high level of public contact and where work environments can be challenging (education and health). 

These public contact services have very different cultures and associated risks for staff with disability. These service outlets are scattered across the state in small work teams where bullying is reported more frequently than in the city-based agencies with little direct public contact. The 2024 NSW Public Sector Report notes that: Frontline employees experience higher rates of bullying compared to non-frontline employees. In this year’s People Matter survey, 15.4% of frontline employees reported experiencing bullying, compared to 11.6% of non-frontline employees. (Page 38)

The report also says that: …bullying disproportionately affects individuals with certain demographic characteristics. Non-binary employees reported the highest rate of bullying at 25.4%. Additionally, 24.5% of respondents with disability reported experiencing bullying. 

Customer Service does have public facing services around the state, and there will be members of the public who misbehave. But that’s not equivalent to what police, community services or health deal with.

There is no strategic or intellectual oversight on Disability Inclusion in the sector. DENconnect could provide oversight but it would need to be self-critical, curious, strategic and more representative. The sector, as a whole, can’t provide it because Disability Inclusion is controlled by people with neither lived experience nor insight into disability, in my opinion. The Department of Communities and Justice has primary responsibility for commentary on disability and is uninterested in saying how many staff with disability work in that business area.

There is no doubt great work being done on Disability Inclusion in the NSW public sector, but those doing it are not being celebrated or given a platform to discuss the challenges and strategies to overcome them or celebrate successes. In fact, they seem to be studiously ignored. But maybe, in fact, they are simply not known.

The sector has no theory of Disability Inclusion. In DENconnect’s case it has a vague set of sentiments and no sense of urgency – as befits its environment inside Customer Service. Its ‘nice’ and ‘comfortable’ with no sense of the raw end of trauma experienced by some staff with disability. 

During my time as DEN lead, I was involved in quite a few cases where a staff member was subject to what can only be described as inept and cruel treatment at the hands of managers and, sometimes, colleagues. There is no point in giving staff with disability ‘a voice’ if no one will listen. And there is no point in claiming to be a representative if those who need help can’t/won’t be heard.

The NSW public sector has a wide range of agencies ranging from under 50 staff to over 25,000. Depending on the type of work done and the size of the workforce, staff with disability could be in small teams with responsive managers or in teams in high stress roles with problematic management.  An effective DENconnect would be across these issues and orientated to address them. But, because it has set itself up in effective competition with agency DENs, it has no access to this critical insight.

When a person with disability gets to where they can indulge themselves and trade off the fact that they have a disability, talking about career enhancement rather than psychological safety that is a sign that they have the adjustments and accommodations they need. If that’s their perspective on the sector, that is what they will convey.

I made the point in my The limits of caring post that caring about and caring for are very different things. The former is self-serving – feeling good about one’s identity and fitting into a culture of like-minded folks.

The sad thing about DENconnect is that the people involved are ‘good people’ who seem to me to have invested a lot in their sense of identity as a person with disability. But this is far from being able to meet the needs of staff with disability across the sector who are still experiencing discrimination and abuse. There is no sense of urgency or determination. There is no evidence of an intellectual overview, a strategic insight or a sense of mission. There is certainly no thought of holding the government to account – at agency or ministerial level. There is no activism of the kind that will drive real and enduring change.

I do not understand how a body purporting to represent staff with disability across the sector can behave this way. DENconnect’s statement of purpose asserts: “DENconnect is proud to be building an inclusive culture where people with disability, their colleagues, and allies, support each other to build strong successful careers.” But that ‘culture’ is inclusive only of those who want, or are able, to join it.

There’s a vital distinction between an ‘inclusive culture’ that can be selective about its members and an ‘inclusive workplace culture’ which cannot. The original mission of DENs in the NSW public sector was to create inclusive workplaces – including cultures. That takes skills that must be developed and refined. This is why agencies who are serious about Disability Inclusion align their efforts with organisations like AusDNand PurpleSpace.

It is interesting that DENconnect doesn’t appear to want to be part of this more serious effort.

Introduction

I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Seb Ducarme, Membership Engagement Manager, PurpleSpace by phone. Seb is based on the east coast of Australia but has a global reach. The great thing about him being here is that he will be able to run the kind of events that PurpleSpace runs in the UK and Europe.

Before I go on, I should make it clear that this isn’t an ad for PurpleSpace. It’s more an ongoing affection that stretches back to May 2018 when PurpleSpace’s founder and CEO, Kate Nash, gave the keynote address at the Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conference in Sydney. The next day she ran a workshop on Networkology at the Westpac Bank’s HO. 

At the time I had been a Disability ERG lead for 17 months. I had spent that time rebuilding numbers and the ERG’s profile after a prolonged period of restructure and doing the conventional stuff – 4 meetings a year and not a great deal in between.

Kate Nash ‘radicalised’ me and in turn I transformed the ERG into a potent force for change in favour of staff with disability. I won’t retell the story. Suffice to say that in September 2020 my successor was offered the ERG lead role as fulltime. It included a few other jobs as well, which put the ERG lead in the driver’s seat for energising change in favour of staff with disability. That was an extraordinary commitment to an experiment in employee-led positive change. It began with Kate’s keynote speech.

In 2019 and 2020 I was invited to present at the Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conferences on the innovative work the ERG had been doing.

Below I want to reflect on how and why I was ‘radicalised’ to become a highly effective Disability ERG lead.

Networkology

Kate introduced me to the idea of Networkology in company with the notion that data was important when it came to Disability Inclusion. The idea that Disability Inclusion was a rational discipline wasn’t a shock to me other than it hadn’t entered my head that it could be applied in this case. I had been reading in management theory for decades and completed an applied management program. But I hadn’t imagined this applied to Disability Inclusion – the realm of volunteers and amateurs.

I had been involved in the Disability ERG since its founding in July 2010 and had never thought of it as more than a passive staff association mostly providing lived experience insight for policy and program reform.

With the advent of the idea of Networkology the ERG became an energised agency for advocacy and a driver of change. I eventually envisioned it as a de facto business unit – a professional partner with the department creating the changes we all wanted to see happen.

I comprehended Networkology as a discipline, a science and this utterly transformed how I operated. Thank you, Kate!

The life of a Disability ERG without Networkology

Our original Disability ERG was set up as a kind of staff association. This was novel to everyone, and our first job was to educate HR on the reality of being a staff member with a disability in the department. This was a good and productive process for awhile and then things went slow. We had gotten disability onto the agenda. This was a priority, but now we had made it, we were competing for attention and resources like everything else on the agenda. 

We had neither the culture nor the means to grab and hold attention, so after the initial success we lost ground. It was now okay that unresolved issues of accessibility, fairness and bullying could be put on the backburner until there were funding and attention available to address those needs. That was not a good thing, but what to do?

I was aware that other Disability ERGs had adopted a union-flavoured approach which developed a contentious sentiment toward executive leaders. That hardly helped. I wanted collaboration and partnership. Networkology gave me the theoretical model and then, when we joined PurpleSpace, there were practice guides to make it happen as well.

Conclusion

PurpleSpace is the only organisation I am aware of that has a professional commitment to supporting Disability ERGs and their organisations. I was very fortunate that my department’s executive leadership fully understood that commitment from the top was crucial if the Disability ERG was going to be an effective partner in helping the organisation meet its obligations concerning Disability Inclusion.

However, I more often saw that organisations assumed that their staff association-based Disability ERGs were responsible for leading implementation of the vital changes that ensured accessibility, equity and fairness. They are not. They are critical partners in delivering those changes that the organization is responsible for ensuring happen. Maybe Disability ERGs also have a role in reminding the organisation of its duty and priority – but as an equal partner, not as an amateur and volunteer body.

Driving any kind of change in an organisation is a complex and challenging role. Disability ERGs should be playing a vital part as an equal partner in bringing those change efforts to fruition. But to do so skills must be developed, relationships must be established, and insights must be distilled and shared.

Neither Disability ERGs nor their organisations will usually have the necessary insights and skills to make this happen unassisted.

It is no exaggeration to say that my success as a Disability ERG lead was grounded in PurpleSpace’s insights and methods. Their critical insights into leadership capabilities and strategies made the difference for me. One word sums it up – Networkology. There’s a science behind success that can be learned. The art of being successful is up to us – and belonging to a community of practitioners can help that a lot.

Seb said its okay for me to include his email address: [email protected]