I’ve always prided myself on taking strengths-based approaches (toward myself and others) and finding creative solutions that allow people to move forward. Strengths-based approaches focus on what a person can do, rather than what they cannot do, emphasising a shift away from deficit models.
Yet, something I often hear in conversations with disabled and neurodivergent LIS professionals is the harm of barriers and challenges being neglected entirely. What tends to be forgotten is that disabled and neurodivergent people are the experts in their own lives, and that includes when it comes to any barriers and challenges they experience.
It’s possible, under the guise of being positive and strengths-based in leadership, we can abandon people by:
- Refusing to acknowledge legitimate barriers
- Reframing barriers in a way that allows us to pretend they don’t exist
- Leaving people to cope alone with challenges we’ve decided not to explicitly recognise
- Allowing people to think that barriers are a failure to leverage their strengths ‘properly’
If strengths-based approaches don’t acknowledge barriers and challenges, they risk becoming avoidance mechanisms. Being strengths-based ends up being a justification for inaction while still being cloaked in progressive language.
Earlier in the year, I presented in a leadership space about accommodations for staff. Some of what I shared was about making inclusion and accommodations part of an ongoing dialogue, rather than a single conversation. I recommended:
- Understanding different ways of working and the needs of everyone, so as not to place the onus entirely on the individual.
- Not waiting for a concern, problem, or performance issue to have a single conversation; rather, ensuring an ongoing dialogue from the start.
- Engaging in ‘Ways of working’ conversations at all levels and not creating a false dichotomy by separating accommodations or different needs from leadership.
I also described a ‘proactive, relational, and adaptive’ approach. This included:
- Designing and providing accommodations around needs, not diagnosis, and exploring different ways of working with everyone.
- Considering dynamic disabilities and circumstances, and being open to changes and fluctuations.
- Understanding when individual resilience narratives can be harmful and recognising boundaries in leading people. Misguided attempts at exposure or tolerance building can cause harm or be inappropriate.
- Discussing available options and being willing to explore. This avoids a blank slate and placing the burden entirely on the individual.
The alternative is colleagues spending excessive time and energy finding ways to ‘self-accommodate’ and manage the risk and emotional labour of self-advocacy. It’s one reason why structural approaches, as Ebe Ganon outlines, are so important.
In an excellent article titled EDI is meritocracy – why is that hard to understand?, Brooke Szücs describes how engaging people’s expertise isn’t about lowering the bar but understanding different types of excellence. The article touches on the difference that adjustments can make, such as allowing people to present ideas in a different way, providing different formats, or supporting other accommodations.
Since the systems people work in are not neutral, an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens helps to level dominant narratives, especially with how we define merit.
Understandably, we put a lot of trust in strengths-based approaches as the best or right way to support someone. And there is value in this.
The risk, however, is that we like strengths-based conversations because they’re comfortable and palatable.
Being confident, effective, and strengths-based in leadership doesn’t mean we choose not to acknowledge barriers. It means maintaining an ongoing dialogue that doesn’t prioritise the palatability of strengths and resilience over the challenge of acknowledging systemic and structural barriers.