Roman Ružbacký
August 24, 2020
Years ago, I met the inspirational Liz Wright from Leadership Café, and participated in a five-month leadership program with leaders and aspiring leaders. I remember four things clearly i) she looked after a herd of donkeys back in the UK, ii) we had a common interest in film music iii) we developed a leadership blueprint which I still use to this day, and iv) we had a heart to heart conversation about my career (which I now call vocation), values and purpose. And, for anyone working in the human rights, talking about your needs often comes second. That’s one of the reasons I have been heavily invested in my volunteer work at EEON for almost five years. It helps me gives back to the community and is good for the soul.
For years, prior to staring the leadership program, I had a re-occurring dream. Call it serendipity, but looking up the interpretation of the dream, I found the following passage.
“The message may be that your old self needs to be left behind. This may mean you must stop carrying around with you the crippling burden of your past (irrational guilt, feelings and martyrdom complex or any other negative self programming); and instead you must open yourself to what the present self is offering. Alternatively the old self may be old attachments, habits, ambitions, values, goals; in which case the dream is telling you that the only way forward for you lays through giving these up and looking deeper within yourself for better values, etc. (where better means more in tune with your real self).”
The message was central to my transformational leadership journey and I keep coming back to this message and my blueprint to make sure I stay centered.
In 1997, I pursued a career in what was then called, Equal Employment Opportunity, now called Diversity & Inclusion (D&I). I recently wondered if empathy was in my DNA? I only found out recently that my grandmother ran a halfway house in my mother’s village, nursing people back to health. And being called the ‘keeper of values’ in a previous organisation, or the conscience of the organisation, didn’t sit well with me, as it’s not my burden to carry.
For me, seeking fairness and a just world meant that through my work my purpose is:
“To ensure all people are treated with dignity and respect, have equitable access to employment opportunities and outcomes have the ability to participate in all aspects of work and public life”
Is this what some people call their ‘why’? I say respectfully that this is personal and different for everyone. Did my ‘why’ strengthen with life experience and adversity? Managing complaints of discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying for close to twenty years also gave me incredible insight into people’s experiences.
What has made me stay so long in the world of D&I? I remember the long seven years it took me to be able to work and get paid for doing this work that I was passionate about. During that time, I often worked for free, reading countless works, articles, acts, case studies, rewriting my own work 15-20 times before I was happy with it. I am a bit of a D&I nerd too. I started to think about whether it was grit, tenacity, care or resilience are hallmarks of people who choose a career in human rights?
And this is where I might find my second ‘why’. Why do we stay committed to the work. I keep coming back to…. the glory of the climb.
“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb”. Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
So, let’s fast forward to 2020 and state my obvious.
Is D&I work business and usual during C….19?
(Note: I promised myself, as in the Harry Potter series, that I would not mention its name)
Can it be done in our current climate? Can it be done effectively and how?
Do D&I practitioners need to re-examine their ‘why’ and ‘how’ in our current climate? I have been hearing a reoccurring theme in D&I forums: Should we pear back D&I programs and focus on core business? Is D&I work still a priority? Do non-D&I folk see D&I as important? Is there the same intensity of effort in this work during our current time? What’s changed?
I always believed that:
Those who truly invest in the work see the benefits of Diversity and Inclusion.
The business case for diversity remains strong according to the 2020 McKinsey Report (Diversity Wins). The relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. Multiple perspectives are critical in solving complex problems. Diversity in leadership is seen as a business imperative.
However, the report also shows that most of the 1000 organisations they studied are stalling or even slipping backwards in their diversity and inclusion efforts to achieve diversity in leadership and gender parity at Executive level. They are not fully understanding the return on investment. This is no different in the Australian context, where achieving gender parity or cultural diversity at CEO and Executive level seems decades away according to the WGEA Census Report and AHRC research.
We have taken some significant steps forward during C….19. We are possibly surprised of the level of productivity that can be achieved working from home. There has been an increase in flexibility. We have a heightened awareness of people’s needs and circumstances during this challenging time, including parental and carer responsibilities, greater isolation, mental health issues, increased anxiety levels, domestic and family violence, feeling flat or tired and restriction of movement.
Through the introduction of Zoom and other on-line platforms in our working lives, we have now ‘invited‘ work colleagues to our homes. My dining room has become my workplace. My son’s school is now in my dining room. Parents and carers have had to also be sensitive to what others in their home are going through and pay attention to their emotional needs. And, like many, I can tend to get oversaturated with screen time. Sometimes the lines can get blurred between your work and personal life.
Based on many conversations with my peers, staying focused and forging ahead has been most people modus operandi. And they have been doing this with dedication and optimism mindful of the ever-present heaviness of our reality. Our work is multilayered, complex and full of emotion. Our sensitivity is heightened as we think about the vulnerable in our community. Creating a safe virtual space feels new.
We have leapt into a new area of practice that we haven’t really planned for. We have just adapted and hacked our way through it!
D&I practitioners may be asking, “How do we go about our work during C…19?” Here are some questions I have been unpacking.
· What are our challenges and what approaches are working?
· How do we have impact at scale?
· In what ways are we being more or less inclusive in a virtual world? What processes result in more or less equitable outcomes?
· How do we drive change without face to face human interaction? Without touch? Without a greeting or handshake? Without sharing a coffee or meal together?
· How do we build trust and respectful relationships virtually?
· How do we read and create a safe room? How do we welcome discomfort?
· How do we run shorter seminars without comprising content? How do we become polished facilitators without a podium or stage?
· How do we drive cultural change from behind a laptop screen, without face to face interaction? Have we done this before?
· How do we celebrate diversity and build social cohesion and harmony, when we used to do it through food, fashion and festival?
· Do we fully understand the impact of our current environment on D&I work? How are the vulnerable coping? How are they empowered?
· What is the longer-term impact of current virtual initiatives? Can it last?
Over time we will see the full impact of our work. But maybe a plan that sees us through the next stage of our D&I work will give us the road map to accelerate the rate of progress towards equity, fairness, inclusion and opportunity, something my fellow volunteers want to see in their lifetimes.
With thousands of well-intentioned articles on the future post C….19, I have honestly clocked out and have let them amass in my promotions folder, never to be read. I almost fear reading anything with the C…19 word in it. It reminds me of the saying, “no-one has ever calmed down by being asked to calm down”.
On the flip side, there has been some incredible work and activism lately (that has not mentioned) the C…19 word and I feel will change the D&I and human rights landscape forever. There has been increased urgency and intensity effort in our work, backed with some momentum and a promise not to snap back to old ways. As practitioners, we are good at turning ‘challenge’ to ‘opportunity’. We have an ever-increasing global reach and we are seeing increasing opportunities to engage in opportunities to sharpen our practice without leaving home.
My long-term D&I colleague Jill Sears recently said,
“There is no more important time than now to be working in diversity and inclusion. Diversity is everywhere and inclusion being identified by everyone”
D&I practitioners have known for a very long time that if you approach D&I work through a compliance approach and punitive messaging you push people away and don’t get anywhere.
We have evolved in our work by understanding that we need to bring people together. Wellness, compassion, connectedness are all traits intrinsically tied to equity and inclusion. Our mission is to bring these qualities to life.
Our D&I evolution should capture the spirit and imagination of our community, to heal and bring communities together with the intelligence and action the moment truly calls for. Now is the time to lead and create a world fit for the 21st Century with clarity, momentum and optimism.