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Author Archives: Christina Ryan

  1. Launches and more launches

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    A rocket launching into space

    By Christina Ryan DLI CEO

    Endlessly starting but never finishing

     

    Most of us enjoy a nice morning tea. The chance to catch up with colleagues, move away from our desks, and celebrate something over tea and cupcakes.

     

    For the disability community many of these morning teas are centred on launching Disability Action Plans in one form or another. Months, even years, of work can go into developing a good action plan and celebrating that with a launch is a great thing to do. Acknowledging all the consultation and codesign work, the contributions of many people, and the beginning of a new era for organisations as they turn towards a more inclusive future.

     

    What we don’t see, though, are morning teas to celebrate the outcomes of those plans. What happens at the end of 3 or 5 years when the plan expires? Where are the morning teas that acknowledge the work that has gone into implementing the plan and making the gains that it aspired to?

     

    Sometimes organisations don’t achieve the aspirational goals they have set. Like all plans and goals, this happens. Rather than admitting that the plan was ambitious and using the lessons learned as a way of doing better in the future, some organisations quietly forget that they made a big fuss and stop talking about their plans. Organisations that once proudly and publicly declared their intentions suddenly go quiet. Some remove their plans from their websites or cease reporting gains in their annual reports. There was a period a few years ago when it was almost impossible to find any mention of Disability Action Plans or their outcomes on government websites. Fortunately, those days seem to be over.

     

    Where are the morning teas to acknowledge the end of a plan? A celebration of the lessons that were learned, and ownership of any mistakes made. Why are organisations embarrassed by not achieving lofty goals, or by not exactly hitting a target?

     

    It’s time to start planning end of plan morning teas! While it’s lovely to have a launch and to get excited by what the future might hold, we should also be unafraid of small gains, of not quite reaching big aspirational goals, and of learning from our mistakes. The outcomes that have been achieved should be celebrated. Every small step represents a gain for the disability community, and often gains are few and far between.

     

    Next time you attend a launch morning tea, ask what the plan is for the outcomes celebration. Whatever those outcomes are they are worth it.

     

    Sign up for regular updates from the Disability Leadership Institute. 

    Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person

     

  2. DLI members in the news – August 2024

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    Jane Britt – For a deafblind woman like me, the NDIS changes are a blow. I fear for my future.

    Cat Walker – ‘Last-minute homework vibes’: Inside Shorten’s NDIS reforms

    Megan Spindler Smith – An NDIS reform bill has passed through parliament, but disability advocates want it scrapped

    Mark Pietsch – SBS News

    Megan Spindler Smith – PWDA Devastated by NDIS Amendment Bill Passage

    Carol Taylor – Quadriplegic fashion designer axed from company she thought she ‘co-owned’

    Katie Kelly – The path to the Paralympics

    Disability Leadership Institute – Why employers need more data about disability in their workplace

    Debbie Heron – Appointments to the Administrative Review Tribunal and Administrative Appeals Tribunal

    Caroline Bowditch – Roadmap to Success – Learning Module 1, Finding Your Mentor

    Katie Kelly – Aspiring Olympians get help to access top level coaching

    Sarah Langston – The Deep Dive, Helping out Neurodivergent Parents through The ANPA.

    Katie Kelly – New England athletes on path to Olympics

    Lisa Stafford – Griffith awarded more than third of Future Fellowships

    Christina Ryan – The disability royal commission demanded extensive change. Are the government responses big enough?

    Megan Spindler Smith – PWDA Responds to Gov’s Disability Royal Commission Reply

    Lisa Cox – ABC, Netflix, Screen NSW and Unilever partner with Bus Stop Films for the Inaugural Driving Change Summit in November

    Shane Hryhorec – Travel blogger Shane Hryhorec helps wheelchair users to explore the world, but not without ‘challenges’

    Christina Ryan – Government reveals response to disability RC

    Akii Ngo – ‘My existence is a resistance’: Akii Ngo on non-tokenistic representation and intersectionality

    Yasmine Gray – Breaking barriers: Yasmine’s journey to revolutionise accessible tourism

  3. DLI members in the news – July 2024

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    Katie Kelly – Is this the year you enter the Casino Fun Run?

    Shane Hryhorec – Meet the leaders in this year’s 40 Under 40

    Akii Ngo – Wheelchair user calls for accessibility standards after Jetstar apology for ‘unfortunate accident’

    Akii Ngo – Jetstar apologises to wheelchair user who fell at Adelaide Airport while being pushed by a staff member

    Shane Hryhorec – Aussie traveller’s 2.5 hour airport ‘trauma’ leaves him ‘worried’ about flying again

    Shane Hryhorec – Changing the game for people with disabilities

    Colleen Furlanetto – AV Community Advocates Visit Kyneton And Bendigo

    Tricia Malowney – Equity in cervical screening webinar

    Lisa Cox – How a chance meeting with Birdsnest’s Jane Cay in a shopping centre car park sparked this founder’s mission to make advertising more inclusive

    Carly Findlay – Carly Findlay reveals she is battling cancer after hysterectomy: ‘Taking it one day at a time’

    Yenn Purkis – Step Up Step down mental health facility birthday

    Caroline Bowditch – Queering the Collection through pride and prejudice

    Megan Spindler Smith – Reflections on my first week as Deputy CEO

    Vaughn Bennison – Disability Voices Tasmania losing all employees as funding ends

    Akii Ngo – New Advisory Council members to strengthen independent advice on Australia’s Disability Strategy

  4. From the room next door (revisited)

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    A row of several white doors in a corridor

    By Christina Ryan DLI CEO

     

    Disabled people are consigned to the room next door.

     

    Disability leadership happens in the rooms next door.

    Few disabled people are in positions of power and decision making; we rarely sit on the boards, in the parliaments, or on the executive teams, even when disability is the central issue being discussed. Disability leaders are consigned to advisory groups and must tap politely on the door to be heard, waiting for the moment when it suits those inside.

    Recently, Disability Leadership Institute members have been discussing anger and being angry. It seems many of us are angry a lot of the time. Being angry is a natural consequence of being constantly marginalised and told you do not belong, you don’t fit. Anger is also what happens when we see injustice all around us.

    We tap politely on the door and ask to be remembered:

    – when pandemic plans are being formulated;

    – when vaccination is being rolled out;

    – when we require adjustments at work;

    – we tap politely so that we can participate equally in meetings; and,

    – when policy about our services is being designed.

    Yet we are consistently ignored, told others know best, or just forgotten.

    Disability leaders consistently see non-disabled people speaking for us; we notice the issues we raise are not listened to; and we see disabled people being harmed or dying because of gaps in policy and action. DLI members have talked about becoming angry, and then being told to be polite, to be nice when raising critical issues, otherwise we will not be listened to.

    Denying the anger of someone is a way of shutting them down. It is a form of silencing. It has become a tool of the privileged inside the room, used to marginalise those who are outside. Rather than show leadership by listening to anger, and understand the causes of that anger, those in power and authority close inward and suggest we are emotional or hysterical. Our anger is turned back upon us as a weakness that proves we are incapable of leadership or clarity.

    Anger is not aggression, nor is being angry rude. We are told we should not be angry, yet it is only when we become angry that our experience of discrimination and marginalisation becomes clear to others. Our anger is rejected and silenced by those who have marginalised our voices and our expertise. The privilege of rejecting anger belongs to those who get to decide what is listened to and what is not. These are unlikely to be disabled people because disabled people are rarely in positions of power and authority. Disabled people are consigned to the room next door.

    Why should disability leaders be silent about the levels of violence we see, or about being forgotten in pandemic policy, or being deprioritised in the vaccination rollout, or when poor government policy is imposed upon us, or when we are overlooked for senior appointments yet again?

    Being angry does not mean being rude, although it is sometimes interpreted this way. Being angry does not mean being aggressive, although it is often interpreted this way by those we are raising issues with. Being angry does not mean being destructive, although we are often trying to deconstruct systems of oppression when expressing anger.

    Disability leaders are highly constructive about being angry about violence, marginalisation, oppression, and the deaths of members of our community through poor policy or inaction. We are experts in using our anger to make a difference; recognising its impact and making it count. We are experts in being polite about being in the room next door, left out of decision making with our expertise unrecognised. Anger has become a necessary part of how we do leadership.

    Our anger can make others uncomfortable, but it is through our anger that those in positions of power and authority (the people inside the room) realise that we do not accept what they are saying, or the consequences of leaving us in the room next door. We do not accept their discrimination. Our anger threatens their power and authority, it reminds them that their decisions are poor, and their expertise is lacking.

    This anger will not subside until we no longer need to tap politely on the door, until we are part of decision making and policy development, until we sit inside the rooms of power and authority. Until we are equal.

    (This article is revisited, it was first published by the DLI in 2021).

     

    Sign up for regular updates from the Disability Leadership Institute. 

    Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person

  5. DLI Members in the news – June 2024

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    Jane Britt – Flowers in the desert: DSS and the death of Deafblind Australia

    Megan Spindler Smith – PWDA announces Megan Spindler Smith as Deputy CEO

    Christina Ryan – How diversity can impact your leadership effectiveness

    Carolyn McKay – Deepfake Sexual Material Bill introduced

    Mark Pietsch – Hansard, NDIS legislation debate

    Tanya Hicks – Gold Award Winner, Beam Awards 2024

    Claire Pullen – AI, digital transparency on the agenda as AWG president joins cultural leaders in Canada

    Shane Hryhorec – Closures: 10 Adelaide Venues That Called It Quits in 2024

    Robert Altamore – Blind cricket

    Vaughn Bennison – On board wheelchair did not fit down Virgin plane aisle, quadriplegic teenager’s mum says

    Cat Walker – Shorten revives the Coalition’s failed NDIS reforms

    Yasmine Grey – Australia’s annual primary event for the accessible tourism sector comes to Melbourne/Naarm

    Emma Olivier – Unlocking the superpower of people with a disability

  6. Embracing Discomfort

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    Half lemons and limes sit on a bed of ice cubes.

    by Christina Ryan DLI CEO

     

    Many government agencies in Australia now use external recruitment companies to fill high level statutory appointments. They pride themselves on recruitment happening at arms length from decision makers. Unfortunately, most of these recruitment companies have little experience in disability leadership and even less understanding of the career paths of successful disability leaders.

     

    Even when disability leaders are shortlisted for senior positions, recruitment panels and processes continue to use outdated “merit” based recruitment strategies which frequently overlook highly qualified and competent disability leaders in favour of those with no background in disability and no competence in the nuances and political sensitivities that have become vital to delivering the high pressure big budget outcomes now dominating disability policy and program areas.

     

    When governments choose to do so, they seem able to find highly competent and qualified disabled people to fill positions, but they rarely choose to do so. They are not really seeking people who understand disability and the delicate politics of disability. Rather, they prefer to perpetuate the status quo of plodding ableism which misses the importance of consultation and codesign and imposes convenient solutions on the disability community. Solutions which keep the existing power structures in place and ensure the discomfort levels of those inside those power structures are minimised.

     

    Change is often uncomfortable, and allowing disabled people into the rooms of power and decision making seems particularly discomfiting. Disability leaders often operate differently, and that difference causes discomfort. Disability leaders also know disability through lived experience, and that experience remains awkward, even threatening, to non-disabled people who have worked their way to the top through traditional means. Those inside the rooms of power deny access by suggesting that disabled people do not “fit” into the existing culture. What they mean is “the change you bring makes us too uncomfortable, so we are keeping you out to avoid that discomfort.” They have even changed the meaning of lived experience to include non-disabled people who have relationships to disabled people in an attempt to address this discomfort.

     

    Culture comes from the top. Not having disability leaders in decision making rooms, means culture change isn’t happening, and the status quo is perpetuated. Non-disabled people continue to succeed in these “merit” based recruitment processes, poor policy and programs continue to be rolled out, and discomforting culture change is avoided. The Disability Leadership Institute continues to see eminently qualified disability leaders overlooked for positions, including disability related positions which require substantial disability expertise – many are not even shortlisted. Why? Because they do not have the same career paths as non-disabled candidates, and/or their expertise in disability is not valued and its certainly not welcome.

     

    To succeed would be to confront the ableist power structures and create a culture change that governments say they support but continually fail to prove through implementation. So, disability leaders are kept out and the comfortable status quo remains.

     

    Historically, disabled people have been seen as less than, as not as intelligent or competent, unable to face pressure or be resilient. In some cultures, kings who became disabled became ineligible to rule. Only the strongest and fittest were accepted as leaders. While these outdated ways of thinking rankle today, they still form the core of most of the cultural assumptions about disability and about what disabled people can do. They still form the core of the ableist power structures that dominate our society.

     

    Leaders create and hold the culture of organisations. This is why it is crucial that governments and others actively appoint disability leadership to their senior ranks. Without a deliberate proactive campaign appointments will not result, and the culture of organisations will remain exclusive of disability. For organisations centred on disability policy and programs this has resulted in a catastrophic shortfall which perpetuates bad policy and delivery.

     

    The continuing lack of disabled people in senior positions proves that existing recruitment processes are unable to produce an outcome that will change the status quo; a critical mass of disability leaders. The concrete ceiling will remain firmly in place unless specific deliberate directives are made by governments, ministers and agencies that disabled people will be the result of any process. Without such commitment, nothing will change.

     

    Sign up for regular updates from the Disability Leadership Institute. 

    Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person.