Introduction

It started with a text conversation.

Me: I am getting into the Brokenwood Mysteries -2nd time around. I can’t help but notice that the police station is accessible – ramp and handrails. This is so unlike Death in Paradise – steep narrow steps up to the police station and no handrails. Amazing what you notice and value with a certain lived experience bias.

She: Hah, I notice that too now. I endlessly tut-tut about it.

Me: Oh dear! We are both suffering from EIS – Exclusion Intolerance Syndrome.

She: I wonder if it’s contagious? If only …

Me: I fear you need to develop a vulnerability first. 😵‍💫

She: Ah, if only a solid dose of empathy was enough to get you there. That would get the community going.

Discovering empathy

An upshot from this interchange was that I decided to explore what was available on empathy via Google. I was mildly alarmed by the high number of academic articles that came up in response to the search term ‘empathic communication’.

I gathered a selection of essays, abstracts, blogs and guides from a 15-minute search:

• Extending the empathic communication model of burnout. A search for alternative ways to reduce caregiver burnout (Abstract only)
• 4 Ways to Communicate with More Empathy
• 10 ways to communicate with empathy and authority in times of crisis
• Conceptualising Empathy Competence: A Professional Communication Perspective
• Empathic Communication: Why it is Important at Work
• Empathy and Communication: A Model of Empathy Development (Abstract only)
• How Leaders Develop an Empathic Communication Style
• The Power of Empathy and Communication Symmetry

I found a definition of empathy from Wikipedia: Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another’s perspective, to understand, feel and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more (sometimes conflicting) definitions of empathy that include but is not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy. 

Empathy is still a topic of research. The major areas of research include the development of empathy, the genetics and neuroscience of empathy, cross-species empathy, and the impairment of empathy. Some researchers have made efforts to quantify empathy through different methods, such as from questionnaires where participants can fill out and then be scored on their answers. Some other research discusses the effects of empathy, benefits and issues caused by a lack of or an abundance of empathy.

Discussions of empathy are common in the fields of ethics, politics, business, medicine, culture, and fiction.

But all this is head stuff

My phone has the Oxford Dictionary, which defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” However, I am not so sure I agree it has anything to do with “understanding”.  I try to understand empathy to be about resonating with another’s emotional state – feeling what they are feeling as best we can.

There is, in the above, material, a clear acknowledgement that empathy is a vital capacity that is often absent when its presence would have made things much better for one party in a transaction. This is the thing that has changed – how the other party feels matters. It once didn’t.

Traditions of unequal relations of power and authority have made disinterest in the feelings of the weaker party the norm. Now we are acting to change that, but we are starting from a disadvantage.

Empathy is what we mostly reserve for our in-group, and more usually an intimate inner group. But even then, it can be impaired by traumatic life experiences. Men, for example, have long been dissuaded from being empathic in general. 

Some of us naturally strive to be universally empathic – and do a decent job of living their ideals. Most of us are selective, and others have an impaired capacity to even meet our personal needs for empathic connection.

Time to change

Thomas Kuhn famously observed that science progresses one funeral at a time. He was noting how beliefs are changed often only when ardent adherents die. This is true of values and attitudes – as each younger generation knows. Hence empathy is better known to younger members of our community than those much older.

Empathy has been a problem for those in power for a few decades now – as the less powerful members of organisations are accorded more dignity and rights. This applies to people with disability and members of other minority/diversity groups. You can’t have equity without empathy. And equity is a problematic thing for people accustomed to believing that power and authority bring with them unequal entitlements – to which they aspire.

In past decades staff members were often regarded as the ‘wetware’ in the organisational machinery – somewhat more flexible, and valued for that, but also dispensable. As our cultural values have evolved that attitude has been challenged in legislation, policy and, to a growing degree, in practice.

But so long as organisational leadership is dominated by masculine culture and expectations of privilege, empathy will continue to be confined largely to defined groups that attract personal interest.

We also portion empathy out according to who we feel merits it. Some members of our community are embraced by a spirit of compassion expressed by service providers. Others are not. They feel chastened, and even oppressed by the ‘service’ visited upon them. In the human services field, the absence of empathy in engaging with service recipients can be considered morally just.

Power disparities exist between service providers and service recipients in the same way as between leaders and subordinates. Cultural values that have become part of the organisation’s culture will foster or impede the expression of empathy – depending on what motivates those cultural values.

How do we change this?

We need to think of power structures, cultures, and individuals as a triad in which empathy can be weak or strong, and fostered or impeded in each element.

Individuals are the critical element. Their ability to be empathic varies widely. Empathy isn’t a capability assessed in recruitment. It’s a random factor. Depending on life experiences, beliefs, and community of origin, individuals may exhibit empathy on a spectrum toward the people they work with and customers/service users. That spectrum goes from loving inclusion to abusive exclusion.

Work cultures are not just how individual work together. They are also beliefs and values that influence how the work done is understood in economic, social, or moral terms.

Organisational power structures are comprised of leadership cultures which determine how governance policies, procedures, and practices are complied with, enforced, or celebrated.

The potential for greater empathy in each element is undoubted, but nothing can substantially evolve without individual commitment to personal change.

Conclusion

I came across an article by Priya Nalkur in Psychology Today titled Love and Inclusion: Intersecting Pathways to Fulfillment – Love and inclusion meet in leadership to build empathy, belonging, and equity.

My immediate response was, “Wow! Psychology has been evolving well away from its heady roots and into engaging with emotions.” It is possible to engage with empathy on an authentic heart level and remain within an intellectual discipline. This is where we have to get before we can have shared conversations about how to be more empathic at work. The articles I noted at the beginning see empathy as a problem to be solved intellectually. That isn’t enough.

I checked out Psychology Today and found it a potential great source for what I see as properly integrated psychological insight. I wanted to subscribe, but that’s only for 3D publications which don’t suit my accessibility needs.

I was reminded that I have seen the same evolution reflected in The Psychology Podcast, which I get through my Apple podcast app.

We are not going to confidently grow empathy unless we can talk about it freely, authentically, and competently. It helps, then, if we can learn contemporary ideas about empathy grounded in sound psychological research.

I have had to learn that being empathic isn’t easy for everyone. Some of us must work at expressing what we feel with comfort and confidence. That takes intention and commitment and a degree of courage to be awkward at first. I am getting there – slower than I’d like, but I am making progress.

Introduction

This will seem like an odd question to ask. What inspired it was a discussion about a diversity group’s celebratory plans even though there were several pain points that were not being addressed.

It wasn’t that I was thinking that the celebratory themes had no value, only that In a hierarchy of priorities for attention and effort they were placed higher than issues that were causing real distress.

Did this also apply to disability? I needed to reflect on this.

What happened to activism?

Activism, as I understand it, is action taken to address pain points – hazards that have psychological, social, or physical harmful consequences. For example, exclusion of a person with a mobility disability from a work or social venue because of the absence of a ramp or other safe means of access can have multiple adverse consequences. An activist might take action to ensure safe access as a matter of some urgency.

There are other legitimate themes for disability inclusion advocates which require persistent and long-term action. These may be characterised as attitudinal, procedural, and practice changes which are accepted as a change willingly undertaken by the organisation – but which then become bogged down. For example, when I joined my DEN as a founding member in July 2010, I agitated for a workplace adjustment policy for people with disabilities not caused by workplace accidents. The idea was taken up by the department and it was absorbed into HR business activity. When I became DEN chair in November 2016 we had no policy yet, though it was being developed.

A sense of urgency that is typical of activism fades when a proposed change is accepted by the organisation, and it becomes part of business-as-usual. 

Urgency v bureaucratic process

Most business-as-usual processes are not driven by a sense of urgency. There are legitimate reasons why some changes in procedure or practice can’t happen quickly. But often it’s about resources – personnel and funding. This is about managing ‘competing priorities’ – the bane of so many mangers.

Because disability inclusion isn’t seen as a work health and safety (WHS) concern the risk of harm (psychological or physical) that arises from any form of exclusion or inaccessibility isn’t given the same weight as regular WHS issues. And even so, psychological health remains under-valued – probably because physical harm is seen as more real than psychical harm.

There are legitimate concerns about how risk of harm is categorised, and this isn’t a discussion for here. What I want to emphasise is that what is initiated via activism loses the urgency momentum when the demand for change is accepted by the organisation. The importance of real pain and harm of exclusion is recalibrated with tacit acknowledgement that an organisation ‘must do better’. How it ‘will do better’ is rarely monitored with the same passion that drove the initial alert.

I see a role for disability inclusion advocates as conveyors of civil impatience about the progress of agreed and accepted changes to policy, procedure, and practice. The sense of urgency that drove the initial activism should not be relaxed. Instead, there should be a steady reminder that the issue is about the safety and welfare of staff and real people are suffering while the agreed change is developed and implemented.

Capture of the activist’s passion

There is not a huge difference between an organisation refusing to make changes and agreeing to act but not doing so in a timely manner. What starts off as good news fades when the proposed action is simply added to the business-as-usual menu. 

This is not to suggest any intentional or cynical intent. Business-as-usual has its own hazards – lack of resources, loss of attention, cause champions move on, and the progressive devaluing of the need for change in the general politics of getting stuff done. 

Add to that the need for work unit managers who are given the task of introducing the change to maintain a good relationship with their executive leaders.  That relationship is key to getting things done. But these executive leaders may have no understanding of, or commitment to, the issue as originally expressed – and may be under pressure to address ‘higher’ priorities.

It is also easy for an activist to become dependent on maintaining the peace within their workplace hierarchy and culture in terms of their own career – but also be seen still loyal to the cause.

This isn’t a moral observation – just a reflection of a reality – and hence the need for higher order skills in driving change.

Recovery of civil impatience

Disability inclusion has the goal of ending suffering. Neuroscience has allowed us to understand that exclusion from a group triggers responses that are not unrelated to physical pain. ‘Ending suffering’ can seem to be rhetorical overkill until we understand that Complex Post Traumatic Stress can be precipitated by psychological crises. Bullying, isolation, or exclusion can all do it. Promising change and not acting in a timely manner adds insult to injury – and that insult causes harm too.

So, acceptance of an issue by an organisation isn’t ‘job done’. It simply shifts the nature of activism into a different phase. The urgency wasn’t just about an issue being accepted as a need for changes to policy, procedure, or practice. The urgency was/is about ending the suffering.

This new kind of activism requires different skills and insights relative to the passion to have the issue acknowledged. As DEN Chair I ensured the DEN’s Guidance and Action Team (GAT) behaved as a de facto business unit – professional, knowledgeable, and diplomatic. We consulted with business areas to apply steady pressure to drive desired change. Some things still took a long time. 

Organisations are change resistant and nothing about an organisation’s culture or processes is conducive to rapid change. But change moves faster when senior executives ‘get it’. Managing up is a critical skill that all activists must acquire and master. So too is influencing workplace cultures in a way that skilfully keeps the sense of civil impatience alive but without degenerating into militancy and deficit finding. Seeking to activate positive potential is the only way to progress.

The appeal of inertia

Inertia is attractive to both sides. Gentle wheel spinning indicates effort is being applied. Organisational resistance isn’t denial. Those who are on side may be sincere allies but the reality they are working with isn’t conducive to change happening at a decent pace.

And inertia can take the heat off on both sides. This isn’t a criticism, just a reflection of reality. The human reality of ‘managing competing demands’ tells us that if things are ‘progressing’ that may have to ‘good enough’ for the time being. We have done enough within our means. Pushing for things to change faster can seem rude and impolitic. It can get supporters off-side.

Activists also have other dimensions to their lives that will ‘compete’ with their cause. Okay, that said, there are activists who will want to reach through their screens and grab me by the throat. But they are in the minority.

Here there must be a distinction between activists who persist in one mode and those who shift modes to adapt to the new environment in which to exert influence of a different order. This transition isn’t something every activist will find easy or even desirable. So, having done a job within a capability range, it is fair to imagine ‘job done’.

This is part of the cognitive fallacy that suggests that the effort to convince an organisation to make changes is done when that demand is accepted. It’s as though the momentum from the initiating activism is transferred and perpetuated in the organisation’s business-as-usual environment.

This isn’t reality. 

The holistic perspective

Success in getting an issue on the agenda for change is only the first step. Its an important part of the process of driving change, but it is not, of itself, sufficient.

Effective activism doesn’t assert ‘mission accomplished’ until the cause of suffering has been acknowledged and addressed – and the suffering has ceased.

It is tempting to see activism as just a form of moral combat struggling against unjust resistance. However, the moral momentum can be crudely expressed and expended long before the cause of suffering has been resolved.

A holistic perspective on a cause will see how multiple factors play out to create the suffering that triggers the activism. We can delve into evolutionary psychology to understand the impulses that drive individuals and groups to act as they do. We can explore organisational psychology to understand why workplace cultures act as they do. We can interrogate social psychology to appreciate how evolving values change our expectations, but not always our conduct. And we can look at ourselves to see what excites our concern and compassion – and what gives us permission to back off from what was once urgent.

Conclusion

Activism is hard. We are driven to a desire to end suffering and then reality hits us with a wall of resistance. Drawing attention to suffering does not mean that everyone will jump to end it. It would be wonderful if that is all it takes. 

Many will express sincere intent that it ends. But intent dies without will. And the will to change is often snarled in a thicket of existential complexities. It is easy and tempting to craft a story that celebrates moral virtue battling against ‘evil’ resistors.

I paused before writing of suffering because it could be mistaken for manipulative hyperbole. But then I thought it might be useful to remind activists that this is what they responded to in the first place – and the efforts to drive change that remain not done.

I don’t know when Diversity and Inclusion teams became a thing. But I remember when they were not even imagined, and any suggestion they might be good idea was laughed at.

Disability activism became a thing in the 1960s (along with a lot of other themes). My former department created a Disability Employee Network in July 2010 even though it had been engaged in disability matters for at least the preceding 30 years.

As a culture we continue to evolve toward greater inclusion. There are arguments about when this became a passion – the ending of slavery, women’s suffrage? In any case its being going on for a few centuries, and the scope of our inclusive embrace has been getting wider. We have been doing this precisely to end the suffering that arises from exclusion from our sense of shared humanity. That task becomes more complex and challenging as we seek to make changes at societal, communal, and organisational levels. The activist must evolve with the challenge.

In an organisational context, the low hanging fruit has been harvested over the past few decades. Its time to stand tall and go after the rest. That means acquiring deeper understanding and developing more refined skills – if we care enough to do so..

Introduction

This has been stimulated by recent conversations and is based on the NSW public sector’s current practices. The state has an expressed commitment to employing more people with disability, which I do not doubt is sincere. However, experience doesn’t necessarily match.

There is a widespread belief that bias can be mitigated by brief training efforts – in disability awareness, in inclusion and diversity and in combatting bias. There is no evidence I am aware of that confirms such efforts do any good. Indeed, there is evidence the outcome is contrary to the intent. Brief training doesn’t stick as a rule and must be backed up by revisiting and active reflection on the training. This doesn’t usually happen, so participants in such training can be misled that they have been ‘trained’ in bias mitigation.

Under that error many will assume that this brief cognitive input has made them sufficiently aware of bias to ensure they will not be swayed by it. If only it were that simple!

Effective bias mitigation requires two key things – intentional and conscious awareness in company of at least one other person engaged in the same endeavour to mitigate bias and specific practices designed to reduce the risk of bias. 

Here I want to focus on the second factor via 3 elements of the selection process – initial assessment of applications, adjustments at interview and the composition of the assessment panel. 

The elimination of disadvantage and bias in recruitment isn’t simple, but a more systemised approach will go a long way to reducing risk.  Recruitment is often undertaken by people with limited or no experience in selection processes. It’s common for the manager of the work unit to convene the selection panel and determine its members. This is a huge risk area that could be significantly reduced by ensuring all recruitment is undertaken by recruitment professionals. This is, however, not about to happen, so mitigating the consequent risk must become a priority.

I am not entirely disparaging training efforts. In fact, I do think that effective training in bias mitigation has benefits wider than recruitment. However, we must understand the limits of well-intentioned training and ensure its not the only strategy employed.

Initial assessment of applications

Depending on roles applications may comprise different phases. Research into ‘decision-making hygiene’ provides good arguments for each step being assessed separately, and candidates rated for that step. This approach will produce an aggregate score which will rank applicants.

An advertisement for a Senior Project Officer that I saw recently had only 4 stages – a cover letter (a page), responses to 2 questions (a page per question), the CV, and the interview. Assessment is theoretically based on identified core capabilities from the Capability Framework. There can 4-6 capabilities which must be addressed. However, asking a candidate to demonstrate they meet these capabilities required and assessing them against them is a hit and miss affair.

I question the value of the first 2 steps because the requested excessive brevity seemed to me to diminish the value of what was asked for relative to what is being assessed. There are, I believe fundamental problems in asking for elements in a selection process that can’t be usefully assessed toward ranking an applicant.

This example can hence only be used as a thinking model rather than an instance of a workable approach.

Nevertheless, ideally this situation would lead to 4 assessment steps, each rated only against other candidates’ same submissions. For example, all cover letters would be assessed together and ranked. This would be ideally done with names masked.

The advantage of this approach is that the interview tends to be the determining assessment step. This is where applicants with disability are most vulnerable, and where bias can really kick in. A strong candidate may have 3 high scores from the other steps which could off-set a weaker interview performance.

The disadvantage is that it takes discipline and more time to make this approach work and will not be preferred by busy hiring managers, regardless of their obligation to minimise bias. It would have to be a mandatory approach.

Culling applications

The NSW public sector theoretically uses the Capability Framework to identify usually 4-6 focus capabilities which a role is considered to require. This would be a great idea if the intended rationale was uniformly employed.

It would be sensible to cull applications depending on the quality of demonstrated fit against the focus capabilities. These capabilities are skills, not experiences, so a CV isn’t a fair source – unless the applicant has been advised to write a CV highlighting capabilities. This, so far as I am aware does not happen. Ads for roles do not direct applicants to the capability framework or how to prepare a CV. This might disadvantage external applicants if assessment against capabilities was uniformly practised. 

Absent the CV in the example considered here the assessment panel is left with the cover letter and the targeted questions. If these are not designed to elicit responses related to the focus capabilities, there is a serious question to be asked about what logic is employed to cull applications.

This question matters because the default rationale for culling may be the CV. CVs are not easy to interpret. For example, a long-term public sector employee may have no awareness of a private sector role, especially in relation to capabilities. In essence, a CV should not be used to cull applications where the focus is on capability rather than experience.

This matters to an applicant with disability because their disability may have disrupted work experience.

What is needed is a standard focus capability based initial written element of sufficient word length to give an applicant with disability a fair shot at making it to interview.

This could be as basic as saying “Here are the focus capabilities for this role. In no more than xxx words please tell us how you meet them. Your response will be used to assess whether you are one of the xx applicants to progress to interview.” This could replace both the cover letter and the 2 questions. A word limit per capability should be set.

Assessment by capability rather than experience is a good approach in my view, but it must be governed by a strong methodology which breaks the habits of past practices.

Adjustments for interviews

The opportunity to ask for an adjustment at the interview stage is universal these days. But this mostly relates to physical accessibility. Requests for adjustments for other reasons are not yet common. Physical or sensory accessibility requests are usually easy to accommodate. In addition, such disabilities tend to be evident.

There is, however, a wider variety of disabilities which are ‘invisible’, which may not be something a candidate feels comfortable disclosing, or which may not be thought to be a disability.

The standard practice is to give candidates around 20 minutes to preview 4-6 interview questions shortly before the interview. We have been doing this for decades. I can remember when getting the questions in advance was an innovation – and thought be some as going soft on candidates. 

It’s a silly practice as it is. At best it’s a quiz under an unnecessary time pressure. It measures nothing useful and significantly disadvantages a wide range of people with disability. This includes people who are neuroatypical, people with anxiety, and people with sensory or motor impairments. 

This spectrum of people also includes many who do consider themselves as a person with disability. Some anxiety states are situationally triggered for a variety of reasons. For example, anxiety can be induced by public speaking, singing in public, disclosing personal information in a new group, sitting exams, and job interviews. Impaired performance under a state of anxiety is not indicative of performance in general.

Interview questions serve a purpose in asking candidates to express ideas clearly to show understanding of a role’s dimensions and requirements. They are not intended to be quizzes, as they once were. When we understand that history, we can appreciate that current practices are not only out of date they can be seriously discriminatory.

The solution is to eliminate the pointless hothouse pressure of having a scant 20 minutes to review 4-6 questions and prepare responses. There are 2 further problems with this practice.

Questions should be designed to elicit responses related to the identified capabilities and some questions have 2 elements in them. I reviewed 4 questions from a panel in 2022 and 3 had 2 elements, making a total of 7 questions to be considered in the limited time made available. It was also not clear how the questions related to the capabilities.

I have proposed giving all candidates the questions 3 days in advance. Others, with more experience in contemporary recruitment, think 5 days is better.

I proposed 3 days for all candidates after an applicant was given the questions several days in advance because of their disability. It was the right thing to do. But it also gave them and unintended advantage. The only way to meet their adjustment need and be fair to all is to ensure everyone has the same opportunity. The disadvantage and the unintended advantage are both eliminated. It is a truly inclusive step.

The panel members

I have been an independent on panels that have been skilfully run, and it was a pleasure to have been part of such a high-quality exercise. I have no doubt that well-run panels that reduce the bias risk are real, but they are not as common as we’d like.

As well as being a person with disability and a former DEN Chair I have an extensive background in recruitment. Because of this I feel comfortable taking my role as the ‘independent’ literally. The independent may be the key to ensuring that the bias risk is reduced – if that status is recognised in a more formal way.

The most important change to recruitment practices would be to develop a pool of formally recognised and independent panel members (Inclusion Independents) who are trained in recruitment practice and bias mitigation. Each selection panel would be randomly assigned a pool member who would certify that the recruitment exercise met minimal standards for bias mitigation. 

The independent would have standing in the human resources team, so if clear bias was encountered the recruitment could be suspended until a solution was developed.

Identified roles

This is a vexed area that stirs strong emotions that are vented in advocacy, but rarely in opposition. Arguments against are rarely plainly stated or defended. It merits a more substantial consideration than I can accommodate here.

I will simply observe that in sympathy with the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’, where roles concern disability they should be filled only by people with the experience of living with disability – unless specialised qualifications are required.

The theme of identified roles attracts a lot of heat and little honest debate. It is an argument that must be had. But when it comes to roles directly related to disability, I think there is no legitimate argument to be had.

Conclusion

Eradication of bias is a nice target, but likely unattainable. But very significant reduction is realistic. I have addressed only 3 elements of the recruitment process to demonstrate that bias reduction isn’t a serious challenge in itself – so long as a disciplined methodology is developed and implemented. But there are challenges in establishing disciplined uniform methods. These require a commitment by senior management to ensure bias mitigation methods are consistently implemented.

Effective bias mitigation in recruitment benefits everyone, not just people with disability.

I have had over 6 years’ experience in recruitment as a job and many times since as a member of selection panels. My success rate as an applicant is about 50:50. 

Effective recruitment is difficult. It is a far more skilled affair than most appreciate. Sometimes the choice is a standout no brainer. But it often comes down to finding reasons to exclude an applicant on a fine point. After all you can offer a role to only one person.

You can exclude applicants through the initial coarse sieve of culling. Here obvious acts of discrimination can eliminate an applicant on grounds of gender, race or assumed religion – to mention a few common excluders.

The finer sieve of assessment through interview is where applicants with disability are at greatest risk. This is where the strongest protections must be located. The most potent is, I believe, the genuine accredited independent. That said, this isn’t a substitute for other bias mitigation efforts, just a bulwark against their ineffectuality until things substantially evolve.

Introduction

I have noticed with concern over the past few years in the NSW public sector the requirements for new or upgraded policies when the real problem is how existing policies are implemented, or not. This is like the enduring dark joke about governments setting up committees to avoid doing things. 

There is a fundamental fallacy at work – that making a policy clearer will contribute to its implementation and adherence to it. It won’t. If conduct at work causes injury it is concern for the injured person that triggers a response, not the fact that there is a policy prohibiting the conduct. When that concern is seemingly absent no amount of policy writing will bring it back. But its not absent, just dormant.

Historically our organisational cultures have not been built on concern for the welfare of individual staff members – unless they are members of a powerful in-group. Concern for the welfare of individuals as an element of organisational culture has been evolving slowly, but steadily, over the past 5 or 6 decades. 

Holding a team leader, manager or executive responsible for conduct that causes injury – by exclusion, or discrimination or bullying – isn’t yet an integral part of organisational culture. It is in an aspirational stage.

I have recently been reading a couple of books on leadership by 2 US Navy Seals – Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Kate Nash of PurpleSpace really triggered my curiosity when she noted that Jocko was one of her favourite authors. Now I know why. The 2 books I have read are Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership.

Towards personal ownership

Efforts to refine policies are misguided, though well-intentioned, when ‘the problem’ about why policies are not followed is believed to be that the policy isn’t clear enough. 

It’s an effort to move forward, but it becomes an instance of wheel spinning because there is no traction for the change effort. This is an instance of magical thinking which asserts people will do the right thing when information is presented in the right way. It’s the ‘cognitive silver bullet’ fallacy. We are not moved by information. We are moved by concern, love, fear, empathy and so on. 

In the NSW public sector staff sign a Code of Conduct, which is a kind of contract about how to behave as an employee. What is absent is guidance on how to enforce it. There isn’t, to my knowledge, a policy on how the Code of Conduct is enforced. Codes of Conduct are clear on what is expected of a staff member in their interaction with other staff members and community members. There aren’t loopholes that accidentally excuse abusive or exclusionary conduct. But the Code of Conduct is not treated as a contract and is almost never invoked when dealing with misconduct.

I mention the Code of Conduct because it is an example of a simple and clear contract governing behaviour which, despite its intent and potential, is rendered impotent because there is no cultural character or will to enforce it. Yet despite this, demands for revised policies related to misconduct covered in the Code of Conduct continue. No better instance of ‘the problem’ being misdiagnosed could be found.

When we understand that books like Extreme Ownership represent an evolution in military leadership, we start to understand that what we are seeing is a corresponding echo in other organisations. How we lead has been evolving for decades. I had touched on this in earlier posts, so I won’t repeat myself here.

Evolving higher levels of accountability isn’t a case of addressing a deficit – as I used to think – but a case of activating a positive potential.  And because this is novel the means of doing so isn’t an established aspect of organizational culture – yet. It’s an emergent potential. Tweaking policies is what you do when you haven’t thought the challenge through, and don’t understand the question. 

The question concerns how we enforce agreed standards of behaviour. But the bigger question is why this is a problem. If we don’t understand this, we haven’t a hope of seeing why personal ownership of our behaviour as change agents is fundamentally important to our cause. Any change agent, or change advocate, must be a leader.

Accountability begins with us

The challenge with any problem is to analyze it effectively. That means asking the ‘right’ questions. 

I was at a community meeting on economic development in a small town in regional NSW several decades ago. A speaker was introduced as ‘the man with all the answers’ but he corrected his host, saying that he hoped he would be the man who helped the community ask the right questions. That response has stayed with me. Too often we base our actions and how we feel upon a not well-developed analysis of the problem. We go looking for answers too quickly. We think how we have framed the problem is the only and best way. We are rarely right.

When I started this blog in 2021 I was perplexed by reluctance of public sector executives to hold line managers accountable for permitting staff with disability to suffer under them. The legislation was clear. The policies were clear. The Code of Conduct was clear. Reports on the sector’s workforce made it abundantly apparent that the sector as a whole must “do better”. But what was that thing that it had to “do”? It certainly wasn’t the writing of yet more policies. 

There was a paradox for me. I knew many of the people who were in a position to take action, and who did act to an end unjust or injurious situation. But they didn’t hold the people responsible to account. Why not?

In the first half of 2021 I participated in a DEN presentation to the DCJ Board. I spoke about a DEN member forced to lodge an official grievance about the conduct of their manager, even though that unacceptable conduct was well known to executives the next 2 levels up. Why did they not take action over the conduct of a manager they were responsible for, and whose behaviour they knew to be unacceptable?

I argued that when a team member finds it necessary to submit a grievance about the conduct of a manager, that manager has failed in their relationship with that team member. It’s an opportunity to work with the manager to develop their skills in relating and communicating, not to forget empathy and caring. 

In essence this isn’t a situation where the manager should be punished for a failure, but an opportunity to assist them to develop the needed skills. It was a case of seeing a potential and acting upon it. 

The argument didn’t go down well. Not that it was rejected, just that nobody responded in a positive way. Had I missed something? I had, and I had no idea at the time what it was. 

As I listened to Jocko and Leif in The Dichotomy of Leadership the penny was beginning to drop. It had taken close on 3 years for me to begin to see what was going on. Jocko and Leif are US Navy Seals who teach their leadership insights to non-military organisations. That extreme perspective injects a novel element that has the potential to change how leadership is imagined – as a foundation of personal ownership.

You can’t have accountability without ownership 

A Seal’s perspective on life is interesting because when you intentionally put yourself in harm’s way owning that you have done that is essential. And yet they cite instance of Seals blaming others for things that could have had catastrophic consequences. 

It’s in our nature to blame others and excuse our failings. But like everything, the extent to which we own our situation is on a spectrum. 

Executive leaders must own their responsibility to a high degree to be where they are. But they are not saints.  They grow up, like we all do, in cultures with flawed people and nobody wants you to continually police others. So, we develop a tolerance for human failings. We learn to be silent at times when speaking out will cause more grief than we figure is necessary. 

Tolerance of harmful behaviour is something we all do. We can’t demand that organisational culture differs from our shared social culture. The claim that the NSW public sector does not tolerate bullying isn’t true. That’s an aspirational statement, not a statement of fact. But acknowledging this truth forces ownership to be taken. By saying the sector must do better, it becomes somebody else’s problem, and ownership is denied.

In The Dichotomy of Leadership Jocko and Leif show how their principle of extreme ownership must be used with subtlety. It can’t be imposed upon others outside well-defined situations. A perilous combat scenario isn’t the same as working in a public sector agency or company. 

Good people routinely fail to do things they theoretically ought to do. This isn’t a deficit, it’s the norm. Leif summed it up this way: “Good leaders are rare. Bad leaders are common”…”That’s just the way of the world.” This insight applies even among Seals – men selected because they have exceptional capabilities. In non-deficit terms he means that leaders not in need of a lot of development are rare and leaders who would benefit from significant support are common. The point to remember here is that the qualities being esteemed are emergent – novel and evolving.

The situation is made more complex by the fact that in any situation the competency demands made on us are task focused. Our ability to perform tasks at a required level of competence is constantly measured. But what is not measured and scarcely trained for is our ability to work skillfully with other people. This is the emergent element. 

We have human behaviour specialists but most of us get by on psychological folklore – which routinely misinterprets other people’s behaviour – and our own. We employ psychologists when things go wrong. Their job is usually to fix what others break. Effective leadership training can teach us how to not injure or break other people.

I have noted before that intentional inclusion is a cultural evolution. It is wanted and it is resisted. It takes intentional cognitive (intellectual and emotional) effort on top of normal life challenges. That resistance is normal and universal. We all resist. Resistance is not rejection. It is how we try to stay in control. We all try to manage how we respond to change.

Even a senior executive must engage in intentional processing of their own resistance to inclusion. This may happen as a self-determined act of personal and professional development (whether formal or informal). We can’t assume from a person’s role or status that they have greater knowledge of, or insight into, what we need to do to be more inclusive. 

Jocko and Leif talk about extreme ownership as something that must permeate our lives in a personal as well as a professional sense. I think there’s a critical link that wasn’t spelled out in Extreme Ownership and which they address in The Dichotomy of Leadership. That is that you can’t have extreme ownership in your professional life and not in your personal life and expect your insight on your professional life is going to be authentic.

But, yes, higher levels of ownership in one’s professional life are highly desired – just don’t imagine there is a perfect expression. Its aspirational, not diagnostic.

The idea of ownership itself isn’t novel or radical. We mostly know that we have a decent degree of ownership as it is. What is different is the ‘extreme’ element. 

This is about pushing beyond our zone of comfortable ownership into areas that challenge us, unsettle us, and which become a kind of existential risk-taking. 

Challenging others to be accountable for their actions isn’t something we are comfortable doing. In management dealing with unsatisfactory performance is often done poorly. It’s the conversation many mangers dread and avoid. We can get a sense of moral satisfaction when standing in judgement of people remote from us. But the closer we are the harder it is – which is why we mess up such encounters so often. 

A theory of the normal and how to evolve it. 

What we have as our normal reality isn’t, as we can so easily believe, a jumble of deficits and pluses so much as situations which may or may not be harmful to some and others which benefit some disproportionally. 

Inclusion is a response to an evolving cultural reality which seeks to diminish those injured by exclusion and in which benefit is shared by all. 

This is our normal and it’s not good or bad. It just is. There are no deficits, only potentials. Whether the potentials evolve quickly or slowly depends entirely on how those seeking to influence change perform. 

We can act as if we have a moral imperative to address deficits in others – and insist the desired change isn’t happening fast enough because of them. Or we can see that we lack the skills to advance the desired changes at the rate we want – and do something about being more effective. 

Heading in the right direction

The willingness of corporations and public sector agencies to engage management consultants and trainers is clear evidence that intentional improvement to how things are done is well-accepted. 

There are inclusion consultants, books, and podcasts. There is an abundance of research on how effective inclusion strategies are – which is nowhere near as effective as hoped for. 

But as with anything, we can’t prescribe the correct remedy unless we have the best diagnosis we can create. 

I am not claiming to be ‘the man with the answers’. I am still working on the questions. 

But what I do know is that our culture is evolving toward greater inclusivity, despite the fact that its moving at nowhere near the pace we’d like to see. I have seen the changes unfold progressively over the past 5 decades. Progress has been uneven, and people who continue to experience exclusion will continue to suffer in the workplace and in the community as that evolution progresses. 

Our community is under tremendous adaptive pressure on multiple fronts (social media, technology and AI, climate change, how we work, cultural and social values, and the list can go on). The evolution of greater inclusion is just one adaptive pressure. Like any adaptive change it takes cognitive effort and energy.

Our capacity as individuals to process the adaptive demands in our community and at work is limited. We have only so much time, so much attention and so much emotional energy to expend. For many, greater inclusion can be seen as just another burden that, while good to have, has to be pushed to the back burner while more critical demands are attended to. 

An alternative way of looking at things is that greater inclusion isn’t an additional burden, but something that is ‘always on’. It’s a frame of mind that I came to understand in 2018 when I was inspired by Kate Nash to completely rethink how I was doing things. But ‘always on’ isn’t for everyone.

The fact that the majority of our community members don’t share that ‘always on’ sense is a reality that can trigger morally self-righteous frustration. It can be seen as a deficit, rather than the blameless norm.

Sometimes inclusion activists settle down to a routine of low attainment. It can be an identity that is comfortable, and even rewarding. One can stand on the moral high ground and ascribe failure to the change resistors who refuse/fail to work to the same imperative.

Conclusion

As DEN Chair I learned a priceless lesson. My workplace community was full of goodwill that, if nurtured, could be harnessed in service of the cause of greater inclusion. 

I was routinely reminded by deaf and blind colleagues how I struggled to be mindful of their inclusion needs. How could I criticize others for their failure to be inclusive?

We could plant our respective diversity flags in a workplace community in an effort to morally colonize it – or we could model the behaviour we desired from others. We must own our imperfective spirit of inclusion and behave as aspirants with all our flaws, not enlightened prophets, not missionaries, and not colonists.

We forget that resistors against inclusion are individuals who are not driven by ill-will, but by competing imperatives. Yes, there are the sociopathic, the narcissistic and the psychopathic, but they are exceptional and rare. They are problematic in many ways, but they don’t merit exclusion, just management.

I firmly believe that accountability is a universal responsibility. It is a duty owed in a professional context, and this expectation is part of our evolving culture. You can’t have inclusion without accountability. Jocko’s and Leif’s idea of extreme ownership is the bedrock of taking responsibility for your own actions.

Driving change is hard. It takes skill. If the norm is change-resistance, then the potential is greater adaptative capacity which can be skillfully mined to achieve desired levels of inclusion. 

The inclusion advocate and change agent are where accountability starts. If we remember that great leaders are rare, but leadership skills can be learned, we can pause. We can ask whether we have what it takes to become exceptional, or even just good.

Introduction

Kate Nash, the CEO of PurpleSpace mentioned in passing that Jocko Willink was one of her favourite authors. 

Jocko is a U.S. Navy seal and the author of several books on leadership informed by his military background. I have 3 of his audiobooks.

I am quite comfortable taking lessons from military settings when it comes to leadership and management because the settings are critical and methods not only must work, but they also need to be clear, uncomplicated, and highly effective. 

I responded to Kate’s comment by immediately suspending other book commitments and started listening to Extreme Ownership, which I have just finished over 3 days. 

Leadership has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s a learnable skill, but it takes personal commitment to go through the process. Encouraging Disability Inclusion advocates to develop and refine their leadership skills has become a passion for me.

I have previously listed my 2 favourite books on leadership (Fearless Leadership and Dare to Lead) – ones I relied on to straighten out my own approach. Now there’s another to add to that short list. 

The military perspective isn’t always a welcome one

The book draws on real combat experience in Iraq. I have a personal perspective on that conflict which made it difficult for me to accept the author’s accounts at first. 

But putting aside the geopolitical morality of the war, the human realities are still real. The insights and emotions are still valid. The leadership skills acquired and refined under real peril are genuine. The personal experience of critical leadership is still real, regardless of my moral qualms about the war.

The power of ownership 

The book is essentially about owning who and what you are in an organisational context – especially if you are in a leadership role. 

The authors argue that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. That’s confronting. It’s a potent assertion of a life-and-death scenario when poor leadership can lead to death or injury. But in the safer workplace of the public or private sector a leader can lay back and blame their team without any compelling consequences being accounted. The truth of poor services or products can be sufficiently remote so that poor leadership isn’t seen as a huge problem. That’s something we need to deal with. This is especially so in the Inclusion space where success is hard won.

The discussion on managing up and down reminded me of how easy it was at times to simply give up on getting through to seemingly impenetrable senior leaders. A culture of frustrated resignation is easy to fall into. In the battle space that is catastrophic. In a safer environment it can become a norm of lacklustre performance excused by mutual beliefs that it’s somebody else’s fault. 

The personal discipline of fully owning who are and how you interface with teams and organizational hierarchies can be a challenging perspective when blaming others is the cultural norm. 

Sometimes you are on a hiding to nothing but in a battle space you can’t just take your bat and ball and go home. That perspective of critical self-awareness translates into safer places because it creates awareness of potential – how things could be if ‘extreme ownership’ was the norm in our personal situations – at work and elsewhere. 

Extreme ownership gives you nowhere to hide. In a high risk environment, we’d want to be with people who own their reactions and behaviour as members of a team.  The need is less critical in safer environments. However, the authors do demonstrate that translating the positive attributes that are critical in high-risk situations into safer environments significantly improves performances of teams and individuals. 

The reality is that high performance is something we crave – in others, and ourselves.

How does this make sense for Disability Inclusion? 

Change doesn’t happen as fast as we’d like and when we encounter resistance it is usually easy to blame somebody else and take a moralising stance. Or we can continue to do what we do and hope for better results because other folks finally and magically change. 

But the answer might be that we can lead in our efforts at Disability Inclusion more effectively – by becoming the best change leader we can be. 

Conclusion

This book won’t be to everyone’s taste. Confronting self-reflection isn’t an attractive pastime. Dealing with the confronting reality of combat can be too much as a teaching source.

Kate Nash transformed the way I operated as a DEN Chair because she triggered a radical rethink of how I understood my role because of what she established (insight and method). If she thinks Jocko is worthy of being a favourite author in advancing the cause of Disability Inclusion, I’d have been a fool to myself to not find out why.

I struggled to learn how to be as effective as I became. I needed guidance and advice, and Kate was my ‘breakthrough’ inspiration. Jocko’s Extreme Leadership book had that similar ‘breakthrough’ quality for me.

Kate’s own book, Positively Purple, is a powerful story of how she came to establish PurpleSpace.

Introduction

I received a text inviting me for a chat overnight and it reminded me of how powerfully the ideas of Ernesto Sirolli’s Enterprise Facilitation methodology had influenced how I worked. The text was from Ernesto’s wife, Martha.

I met him back in 1988 when he gave a workshop as part of the opening of the Casino Regional Business Enterprise Centre that I had a lead role in establishing. 

What struck me was not just the content of his method but that he had developed a coherent method to help people grounded in psychology and philosophy. He had formed an understanding of what worked based on his experience of what did not. 

Ernesto began his work in enterprise facilitation in Western Australia. He was featured in an ABC television show called A Big Country made in 1985. I watched that episode and contacted him. 

Today the Sirolli Institute, based in Sacramento California, has a global impact. Ernesto has worked with communities under economic stress around the world to help in the creation of over 40,000 businesses. 

I was inspired by Ernesto’s approach. He had learned from failure and developed a methodology based on a coherent theory. Some 30 years later I was inspired again by Kate Nash whose PurpleSpace approach to supporting staff with disability was also grounded in theory and method. 

The foundation of methodology

There is a great fit between enterprise facilitation and disability inclusion, though this may not be immediately obvious. Both are people centred. This is crucial. 

I have fragments of Ernesto’s doctrine in my memory:

• Do economic development as if people really mattered. 
• Never initiate, never motivate – always respond.
• If people don’t ask for your help leave them alone. 
• Shut up and listen.
• Act on the principle of, “The sun of love and the water of respect.” 

At the time I encountered Ernesto I was working in the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) – an agency seemingly devoted to misunderstanding the nature of the problems it was trying to solve. I was living on the far north coast of NSW at the time it was a counter-cultural heartland. Newcomers were streaming in. We had an oversupply of people and an undersupply of jobs. The solution was to increase the opportunities for employment, but the CES didn’t have that as a remit, so instead it provided training for jobs that did not exist.  

We were required to devise and offer training for occupations that were already over supplied. But I did manage to sneak in an isolated community business creation course after I met Ernesto. 

Ernesto’s journey began when he was working with an Italian aid agency in Africa. Instead of listening to what a community wanted it imposed its solutions – which failed repeatedly and ludicrously. This story is covered in Ernesto’s TED Talk and in his first book, Ripples from the Zambezi.

One of the questions I wanted to answer when I ceased full time work was ‘Why is inclusion so hard?’ This was similar to Ernesto’s question about why helping people was so hard. Why well-intentioned efforts at providing aid failed so often. 

Part of Ernesto’s answer was in the realisation that the people being ‘aided’ hadn’t asked to be helped. And they weren’t asked whether they wanted the aid.

So, had the people we wanted to be more inclusive asked for help to become more inclusive? They hadn’t. Had we asked whether it was okay to help them be more inclusive? No.

Yes, greater levels of inclusiveness are desirable – for obvious reasons. Inclusion is also mandated by legislation and supported by policy. But, at the actual level of personal performance, the passion to be more inclusive is patchy and uneven. 

A methodology begins with being invited to help. It evolves into a deliberate systemic approach – a skill. Another of Ernesto’s key insights was applying the idea of facilitation to helping people achieve their objectives.

Facilitation is the art of making something easier to achieve – by removing impediments directly or helping people acquire the skills or means they need to achieve their goals. Its about doing with, not doing to.

Can we facilitate inclusion? 

Ernesto’s rule of leaving people alone if they don’t ask for help is balanced by another insight. If people are successful and prosper in their lives, others will want the same thing – and may ask for help. 

In inclusion terms flourishing in a culture of inclusion may induce the less inclusive to want to change. But the only way you create a flourishing culture of inclusion is by modelling the behaviour you want to be replicated. When you are modelling the behaviour, you really know how to remove impediments, not just guess. Skill come from authentic knowing, not just theory.

Hence my argument that being the change you want to see is the first step. How do you induce the inclusion-resistant to be more inclusive other than by modelling the desired conduct yourself?

A staff network, or employee resource group, must be capable of creating a value proposition such that their organisation’s leadership asks for its help. It can, in fact, facilitate inclusion. But here’s the key. It must work only with whomever asks for its help.

Facilitation, as a methodology, works only if the facilitator responds to the positive potential of the individual being helped. It doesn’t work if a deficit is seen and responded to.

The roundtable as a facilitation method

In February 2019, as DEN Chair I attended my department’s executive board meeting along with 5 colleagues with disability. We gave short presentations on our experiences as staff with disability and then participated in an open conversation. It was a transformative experience for everyone. It set the template for what became known as Roundtables which were subsequently conducted across the department in the subsequent years.

I have written at length on Roundtables is some of my earliest posts, so I won’t repeat myself here.

It strikes me that the Roundtable is the ideal facilitation approach. The experience is invited because change is desired. But the secret is in how skilled the facilitators are in assisting the change toward greater inclusion. What impediments can be identified and addressed?                                  

Conclusion

The idea that we should try to change behaviours of only those who ask for our help is at odds with the assumption of a moral imperative implicit in the ideal of greater inclusion. We might argue that legislation and policy plus the evidence of injustice and suffering are sufficient justification to want to impose change.

There is a foundation of coercion in any organisation or community. But it is invoked only in extremis in healthy cultures. Self-willed intentional change of behaviour is the norm. Resistance to desired change is usually not intentional or conscious. 

When I came across Ernesto’s idea of the “sun of love and water of respect” I was surprised. That was a little too open for me at first. Ernesto’s Italian character allowed his heart to be closer to his work – as if people really mattered. This was Ernesto’s formula for nurturing the people he worked with – including those whose attitudes and values might be impediments to others’ aspirations.

Mostly advocates for greater inclusion will be fuelled by sincere good intent. They do genuinely care about the people they support. But the really effective change agents who work with the complexities of organisational cultures must have a higher order skillset.

A Facilitator must be self-aware. They must have a clear value proposition and the skills to deliver on it. This is something that can be learned. 

Introduction

I am listening to Greg Satell’s Cascades: How to Create a Movement That Drives Transformational Change and I am reflecting on some key insights. One is how the ecological concept of a keystone species can be applied to a wider idea that is the critical trigger for change, rather than a particular passion. Another is how inclusive networks work better than exclusionary change movements, which tend to be hierarchical around who can be included and who is most important.

In the context of Disability Inclusion this raises a question as to whether the objectives of Disability Inclusion are best served by a focus on disability or on inclusion as a general term.

At first, I believed that focus on disability was the way to go, but my position has changed over years as my understanding about how positive change is best achieved. That early focus was a kind of foothold. Disability Inclusion was new to my department. I was new to disability as a lived experience.

But once that foothold had been achieved the triggers for positive change seemed to be more in the embrace of Inclusion in general.

The bigger picture

So much depends on one’s environment. When I joined the Disability Employee Network (DEN) set up by my department in mid 2010 there were no other networks, at least so far as I was aware. There was an Inclusion and Diversity team, which was hugely supportive to the DEN. There was also a wider spirit of inclusion across the sector – but more of a latent potential than widely expressed conduct.

The question that struck me after a decade of involvement with the DEN was, “If staff with disability are not actively inclusive of other ‘diversity groups’, how can we demand greater inclusion for ourselves?”

Among any group of staff with disability there may be members of other diversity groups, and some who are members of several or even most. This is intersectionality at work – nobody has a single strand to their cultural identity. Importantly those other strands might be triggering exclusionary reactions that exacerbate the experience of disability-related exclusion.

Disability does, however, include exclusion from work processes because of specific motor or sensory disabilities – something not experienced by other diversity groups. In a broader cultural or community context similar experiences of exclusion or discrimination can be experienced – and with intersectionality thrown in it could be argued that the cultural/community experience should be of least equal importance to equal access to work processes.

Denial of accessibility isn’t, and should never be, part of one’s identity. But there’s more to the lived experience of disability than accessibility. There are elements of our lived experience of disability that are part of our identity and cultural experience, whether we like it or not. Maybe this is the larger part of our experience.

The keystone factor

In the context of the overall environment a person with disability lives in, the idea of Inclusion is the keystone idea, not accessibility. This does not mean that accessibility is any less critical, just that it can’t be the primary driver for positive change for the whole spectrum of factors that concern a person with disability.

A strong focus on helping a community in which one lives or works be more inclusive for all makes eminent sense. Allies to a cause may be driven by empathy for the challenge to make workplaces and physical environments more accessible, or they may be motivated by a desire to ensure universal inclusion. A similar argument may be made for Champions.

We may now imagine an InclUSion Network with subgroups whose focus in Inclusion, rather than diversity interest groups who may interact and be self-supporting.

Hierarchies v networks

Cascades explores how forms of organisation can work against the interests of members. Hierarchies tend to discourage lateral extension and exercise power and influence within a determined series of connections. They are selective and exclusionary. Networks extend laterally and sometimes in ways that seem random or irrational. Their goals are loosely defined, more general, benefits that can be won by members or participants. Networks are more creative and adaptive, and because they are inclusive, they can express in gentler or even humorous ways. I recommend exploring hierarchies and networks more deeply.

An InclUSion network as a primary way of stimulating positive change

Inclusion is something everybody wants, so is Accessibility. But far fewer people have unmet Accessibility needs than unmet Inclusion needs. It makes sense, then, to stimulate positive change toward what everybody wants and needs. Accessibility needs can be met as a consequence of greater inclusivity.

An InclUSion Network is essentially a kind of ecosystem in which the keystone member is a person of goodwill who is intentionally inclusive to all.

As I have observed recently there are things that need to change before this can become a reality. Advocates for, and agents of, change (Inclusion) must surrender any temptation to think in deficit terms and work on principles of positive potential. This means refining leadership skills into the art of leading by example – demonstrating the change they want to bring about.

Conclusion

Cascades has helped me clarify some themes that have been emerging in the past few months. Change isn’t easy and our culture is under evolutionary pressure to realise our Inclusive potential. We must be self-aware and avoid the self-righteous temptation to fall into the trap of seeing the change we want as combatting deficits in others.

If we are effective in modelling the changes that we want to see, we will generate an InclUSion Network whose influence will spread throughout whatever environment we are concerned about. The desired change will be organic, but it will also move at whatever pace reflects the character of the culture. 

The best way we can stimulate the speed of change begins with our own behaviour – in terms of modelling desired behaviour and developing the leaderships skills to magnify our impact.

Introduction

I have been engaged in consulting with half a dozen diversity networks, including a DEN, mentoring their leadership teams. It has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my own practice and to encourage leads to take a fresh look at their own.

The networks have retained the now well-established practice of referring to the primary leads as Chairs (man, woman, or person). This reflects the traditional committee structure – and its time to put that aside, and the titles related to it.

The committee model has done great service over the centuries, but its formality doesn’t suit the contemporary workplace cultures that many networks operate in. Leadership team members are often time poor, having to fit their network roles around their formal roles.

Functions and habits

There are critical jobs to be done in any network. But the model for how they are done isn’t fixed. The committee approach has been the standard, but now we can explore more dynamic approaches drawn from military doctrine and enterprise creation. The emphasis adaptation to need, flexibility, and innovation as well parsimony of effort. In an earlier post I explored the idea of a network lead being a ‘wild card’ in that they do not fit within the standard organisational hierarchy. For example, as DEN Chair, despite my mid-level grade and non-manager status I had direct access to the department’s Secretary.

It’s not usual to see that an enterprise and a military action are similar, but there’s an advantage in discovering how the idea of military doctrine provides a foundation for a highly effective results-oriented leadership approach. A good example is the Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual by Jocko Willink (Kate Nash, CEO of PurpleSpace is a fan of this author). I am not suggesting an aggressive approach so much as one that is highly adaptive and flexible – something our contemporary military has crafted into a high art.

In the public sector context these enterprise and military perspectives offer a contrast in thinking about how a staff network can best operate in service of the needs of its members and the organisation. The challenge is to break away from habits of thought that tend to preach conformity to the prevailing conceptions of authority.

Models that focus on how to make best use of limited resources (time and attention especially) to achieve significant outcomes are better suited to contemporary circumstances.

In May 2018 I attended the Australian Network on Disability’s (AND) annual national conference in Sydney. The keynote speaker was Kate Nash, founder of the UK based PurpleSpace – an organisation dedicated to supporting staff with disability to achieve change in their organisations. I have written extensively about that experience, so I won’t rehash the detail here. The key observation is that Kate exposed me to a way of operating that was novel and, as I adapted to it, it transformed how I operated as DEN Chair. The DEN became a highly effective instrument of positive change precisely because it changed how it behaved.

What Kate Nash did for me was open me to a way of operating that dealt with the realities experienced by staff with disability rather than conforming to past ways of doing things. Most importantly, you can’t drive change by meeting only 4 times a year. There’s an ‘always on’ mode you must find – a committee is not a good vehicle to do so.

Passion for positive change

As a person with a fulltime disability, Kate helped me see that a parttime passion for change is a bad match. But it has taken me over a decade to fully appreciate that a fulltime passion for change doesn’t have to be an extra impost of time and attention, rather a refinement of my personal approach. Always on isn’t something that has to be a burden to be shouldered, but rather a value to be lived.

The value of a name

I have been gently suggesting that ‘Coordinator’ is a better title than ‘Chair’ because it suggests active engagement better. You can chair a meeting and still not arrive at actions as the primary concern because ‘chairing’ implies sitting down and talking as a primary function. On the other hand, being a coordinator is instantly more of a doing name.

I am not asserting that coordinator has to be ‘the name’, only that ‘chair’ has to go. Also ‘coordinator’ tends to be thought of as a job, whereas ‘chair’ is an occasional role. And everybody knows what chairing a meeting is about – something you do for a short time and then go back to your ‘real job’.

I don’t like committees. I have been on many and I have chaired many. My dislike has been honed over decades of steady disappointment. That’s why, as DEN Chair I called the DEN members who offered to be more engaged the Guidance and Action Team (GAT) and not a management committee. They performed the necessary functions of managing but as guiders and action initiators.

I’d rather see those engaged with leading a network called the leadership team with no reference to management or committee.

Time and effort

Staff networks are voluntary but vital. Their role in evolving workplace culture is invaluable when they are operating at peak potential. But to enjoy that potential some things must come together in a harmonious and productive way.

These days, time and attention are scarce resources which must not be squandered. We can begin with crafting crisp understandings of what a network is for – what potential value it can add to the inclusion aspirations of staff (the workforce community), and the organisation as a whole.

If we name functions correctly, in ways that suit a network’s purpose, we can focus attention on the positive and productive nature of a role. That will help focus attention on important actions and ensure that the attention expended is crisply focused.

Conclusion

My legacy as DEN Chair is cemented and I cannot revise it. But chairing is what I did least. I negotiated, wrangled, persuaded, inspired, aspired, and envisioned. It was one of the toughest roles I have undertaken, and one of the most rewarding.

Being a member of a staff leadership team can be complex and challenging. It often propels members into challenge areas they are unfamiliar with. It’s a real and difficult job that takes personal commitment and dedication to be done well. In a very real sense, it can be as professionally demanding as any mainstream leadership role. That reality is, however, effectively camouflaged by the names we give these leadership roles. 

By choosing your role names carefully you can focus attention on core goals and values. This in turn can clarify expectations and prevent misinterpretations of the nature and purpose of the network.

Introduction

A recent post attracted some interesting feedback. In response to Take the positive potential approach a reader asked for follow up posts, which I am happy to provide, but in 3 parts.

This is the first part in which I will endeavour to offer “some concrete strategies or actionable steps for implementing these principles in practical settings” and on “how individuals in an organisation can address power dynamics which could significantly influence the pace and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives.”  

Positive potential and personal power

The moment we see things in terms of deficits which must be corrected, rather than potentials to be nurtured, we throw away our personal power. Correction requires the assent of the correctee, who must also agree that they are in need of correction.

Any manager will tell you that the hardest conversation to have is about performance standards. This is even more difficult if (a) the other person does not see there is a problem, (b) you do not have any recognised authority in relation to that person, and (c) the other person is at the same level or senior.

Identifying a problem that can be resolved chiefly by another person thinking, feeling, or behaving differently may have some rational foundation to it, but you have just handed the power to change to that other person. Yet you are the one who has identified a need for change. Your success chances are as close to zero as they can get.

The thing about seeing the positive potential for change is that you don’t have to ask permission to nurture change. We welcome nurturing behaviour reflexively. But, let’s be clear, you can’t perform nurturing behaviour while harbouring deficit sentiments. We have all experienced overt nurturing behaviour that comes across as coercive with a hint of moral blackmail.

The most important question you must ask yourself is whether your desire for greater inclusion is fuelled by grievance and frustration or driven by compassion and concern.

Being the change you want to see

Older books on management and leadership pay no attention to key ideas like emotional intelligence, psychological safety, or the importance of empathy. These days there is a wealth of contemporary research-based thinking on leadership.

If you want to be a change agent, you must be an effective and skilled leader. Leadership isn’t about positions in an organisational structure or hierarchy, it’s about influencing behaviour through your actions.

Probably the biggest impediment to the rate of uptake of desired change is that the champions of that change are sincere but not skilled. They rely on the moral power of their position. This is often reflected in the assertion of rights. But how is such a right realised? Other people must change their behaviour to permit the right to be lived. But how do they do that?

Understanding the practice of effective leadership is essential. This puts the onus on the change agent to nurture others – psychologically and morally – through modelling the desired behaviour.

There are many excellent books on leadership. Here are my two favourites:

Fearless Leadership: How to Overcome Behavioral Blindspots and Transform Your Organization by Loretta Malandro and Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown 

Another key text is The Fearless Organisation by Amy C. Edmondson. The full tile adds: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. This is a critical idea. You don’t get positive learning and growth without psychological safety. And you won’t get psychological safety if you take a deficit approach.

I have found it interesting that my favourite authors in this field are women. They bring the nurturing element in ways that male authors don’t so well. This is tough work as well, as the titles convey with ‘fearless’ and ‘dare’. Its about the courage to look at yourself as a leader/change agent and bring your own standards up where they must be for success.

Understanding that workplace cultures evolve

When I left full-time work, I had the leisure to research and reflect. I put a lot of energy into grappling with the problem of change resistance and a seeming aversion to accountability. These had been perplexing me for the whole time I had been DEN Chair. Change resistance had been described in quite a few books but no explanation as to why was offered. I had to delve into organisational and evolutionary psychology to get a few clues.

Organisations must be change averse, as must individuals. We must have a bias toward stability. As a result, we adapt more slowly than is ideal when change is necessary for survival. There’s a reason that change management is a thing requiring considerable skill. And when it comes to individuals thinking of the field of psychotherapy. Change isn’t easy, even when we want it.

Organisations operate in a complex environment with political, economic, cultural, technological, and now climatic forces demanding responses constantly. Organisations are run by people having a go a running the show as best they can – and not always doing a great job. Organisations are staffed by people doing the best they can to handle work demands and personal demands as best they can – and not always doing a great job either.

This is the reality upon which a change agent wants to impose different ways of thinking, feeling an acting. Neuroscience tells us that changes to our behaviour require considerable cognitive effort. How does the change agent work with that?

There have been powerful currents of evolving values that have changed workplace cultures over the past 60 odd years. The significant themes of inclusion and diversity are efforts to influence how those values are expressed in the workplace cultures.

How effective have those efforts at influence been? The positive changes made indicate some degree of success has been achieved, but evidence of ongoing resistance to responding to the evolving values means more work must be done.

While the impetus for positive change persists what also must evolve is the way change advocates and agents do their bit. This is what seems to be missing when we envision formulas for success. We can contribute to the trend toward better human-centred values by adding our nurturing good intent to the steady but slow stream of change, and we can add skilled interventions to strategically address roadblocks we encounter.

Conclusion

How can individual change advocates in an organisation “address power dynamics which could significantly influence the pace and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives”?

The short answer is that they can become more skilled at what they do. Well-intentioned but unskilled efforts will harvest the ‘low hanging fruit’. But what works the first time won’t next time when all the low hanging fruit are gone. The next phase of stimulating positive change requires more skill.

This isn’t surprising. Virtually every job working with people has become more complex, demanding higher levels of skill. What is surprising is that it has taken so long to understand that this complex and challenging role of change advocate/agent is worthy of being seen as a professional level function.

Personal power to drive positive change is derived from two key factors:

• Understanding the nature of the challenge, and
• Developing the skills needed to be an effective change advocate/agent for greater inclusion.

On a personal level, it was the opportunity to step away from deep engagement with the problem of change resistance and a chance for almost fulltime research for 18 months that helped me look at my own practice with fresh eyes. A feature of my time as DEN Chair was a commitment to professionalism and to a relentlessly positive approach. I hadn’t formulated that as a theory at the time.

“Concrete strategies or actionable steps” are of value only if you have the skill to execute them. At the risk of straying from the theme of nurturing leadership I did discover the following book while looking up the details of those above. Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual by Jocko Willink takes a military perspective. Sometimes we need this. Below is part of the blurb from Amazon:

Leadership Strategy and Tactics takes the guesswork out of leadership by translating theory into practical skills and manoeuvers that leaders at all levels can apply, practice and execute.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Extreme Ownership, this book is a powerful and pragmatic step-by-step guide to leading any team, in any situation, to victory.

It’s partly about understanding the problem and developing the skills to address it. It is also partly about understanding that sometimes the challenge is to support evolving values and behaviours through nurturing behaviour and other times about problem solving in a more direct and strategic way.

Ultimately, we have to be the change we want to see. That’s where our power to create positive change resides.

Note: I use Amazon information on books because it is the only source I know of that covers the range of accessible options [ebooks and audiobooks]. If you are into 3D books, do please support your local independent bookshop.

 

Introduction

One of the many joys that escaped my grasp when I was hits by GBS was that of reading books – at least the 3D variety. I have been a reader all my life and holding a book has been something I have delighted in. 

In the aftermath of GBS my ability to pick up, carry, hold, and read a book made from paper radically diminished. What was once a sensuous delight became a struggle, a chore, and finally a something to be avoided. I felt the sense of loss keenly. 

But as I was recovering, I bought one of the first iPhones. I had a Nokia 3310 which was a nice little phone, but with my now incompetent hands it was a struggle to use it. It took me a week of many hours of practice each day just to be able to pick it up and hold it to my ear. It took longer to dial numbers. 

The iPhone was not only far easier to use it introduced me to the world of podcasts and then audiobooks. I then bought an iPad as well and discovered ebooks. 

Now well over a decade later I have become a devotee of audiobooks in particular and ebooks to a lesser degree. If I can’t get an audio version of a book, there’s usually an ebook version available. Sadly though, few non-fiction books produced before ebooks and audiobooks became popular can be found in other than their legacy 3D format. 

These days there are still many books aren’t published in ebook or audiobook formats. They can be had only in paper between hard or soft covers. Often they are intended for academic libraries.

Below I will argue this is not only an out-of-date attitude, but also deeply non-inclusive. It isn’t just about people with disability. People who are time poor or whose lifestyles make lugging 3D books around problematic also benefit from higher degrees of inclusivity brought by ebook and audiobook formats. 

Inclusion and the evolution of technology

In the past 15 years or so technology has evolved in ways that make life far easier for people with disability.  AI has the potential to revolutionise accessibility in ways we can scarcely yet imagine. 

Books have been transformed into sources of information that can be accessed by people with disabilities using technologies of their own choice. They are no longer confined to the print format that has been standard since the invention of the printing press. 

I am ignoring braille here intentionally because it has limited utility and I want to focus on the wider utility of technologies beyond the needs of people with disability. 

My notion of inclusion here is wider than disability.  Reading has traditionally been an activity undertaken as a single focus while usually sitting down whilst in the possession of a substantial item resting on a table or held. 

Ebooks and audiobooks have transformed this picture. 

I have the Kindle app on my phone and my computer. I frequently go out with just my iPhone. Now I can read any of maybe 10 books at any time on my phone. I can adjust the font size to meet my needs. 

So, on a device smaller than any one book I can access multiple books to read with ease. 

The phone also is my primary source of audiobooks. Paired with a Bluetooth headset (I prefer Shokz) I can listen to audiobooks as I drive, walk, exercise or do chores, as well as sitting or lying down. 

Between ebooks and audiobooks the opportunity to ‘read’ has expanded massively. Whether the desire has matched the expanded potential I can’t say. But it is the opportunity I want to focus on, because it applies to people with disability as well as anybody who might benefit from greater opportunity. 

Reading has been transformed because now we can be read to as well as reading on our own account. This isn’t new. Our parents read to us, and public broadcasting services had daily book readings. What is new is that this experience can now be on demand and personalized.

Conclusion

I loved holding books. I loved collecting them. I have a wall in my home which, apart from a door into a room, has a large built-in bookshelf. It is still substantially full of books. But is more décor and memory than a resource.

The only books I have bought in the past decade are ebooks and audiobooks – and I mostly access them on my phone. Between my iPhone, my computer and my audiobook and ebook providers my new library takes up no additional space.  It has no additional weight. The books, a source of ideas and information, have become information. 

The old format of 3D books occupying space and having weight is actually legacy technology which has served the world wonderfully well for centuries. But we are in the digital age now with means of storing, distributing, and accessing the content of books in new ways that make books and the ideas they contain far more universally accessible. 

Publishers still put books out in 3D form as a first, habitual reflex. Sometimes, often in fact, that’s as far as things get. 

I think we must come to see 3D books as legacy technology that panders to nostalgic hankerings for how things used to be. I am sympathetic to that sentiment, but not supportive. 

There are questions about whether audio input sticks as well as print. I think this is a question of habit rather than anything essential to our nature or our brains. We, after all, developed an audio-based culture long before print. 

When writing was developed the sages of the day feared it would reduce the powers of memory, and they were right. Digital technology is doing the same thing. How many critical phone numbers do you now remember? Your partner’s? Your parents? 

Technological evolution creates and destroys. It mostly advances inclusion, but it helps if we are intentional about it and employ the principles of Inclusive Design from the outset.

There are economic factors that make human spoken word audiobooks not a viable option for every published book. But AI may change that in the coming years.

The ebook should be the automatic inclusive format for all published books, with the 3D variety an indulgent nostalgic non-inclusive legacy format.

Maybe not too far into the future we can instruct our personal versions of Siri to read to us from our chosen ebook when we don’t have the chance to sit down and read it ourselves.