Managing humans with disabilities

A few reflection points and a couple tools to stop getting in the way of your people.

One of every 10 people in the world lives with a disability: 470 million individuals of working age -and the numbers are increasing.

For a long time, the line of thinking has focused on the benefits for employers upon hiring people with disabilities: higher retention rate, tax benefits, more diverse thinking, you name it.

How about we turn the narrative around? Can your company afford to miss a piece of the talent available in the market just because you aren't able to hire -or keep- those living with disabilities? As a manager, what's your excuse to exclude a full segment of the population?

Today, being a high-performing manager implies being able to attract any type of talent, and providing the right environment to make it thrive. Managers should be able to lead, coach and support any type of individual, at any stage of their professional life. Yet so many times we dismiss both our influence and the environmental factor. Having a disability is not a predictor of professional competency, however, the working environment and the attitude of the manager are.

Here are some key principles you can rely on to work on a management style that works best for professionals with disabilities:

• You are biased. The sooner you embrace the truth, the sooner you can shake that bias off. Most prejudices fall somewhere in the response amplification spectrum, and this is especially true for performance management. Both overstating and understating an employee's performance will hinder their professional development.

• The intersectionality factor. When disability overlaps with gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic factors, every added intersection is not a sum, but a multiplier. For some disabilities, there's a certain chance that your employee is also a caregiver for an ascendant or descendant with similar challenges.

• Some environments can be disabling. Look at the tools, practices, habits, schedules and communication in your team. Are you favoring a specific communication style, is the timing flexible enough, is it physically accessible?

• You are accountable for educating yourself. Adopt best-practices such as the use of person-first or identity-first language, operate with the assumption that you have zero knowledge on the particular disability's workplace implication, so you can stay humble and curious when asking your employee about the accommodations needed (actually, you don’t need or are entitled to know about their condition, only about their particular needs in the workplace”!).

• Disability is a lived experience. Beware of stereotypes: some disabilities will remain invisible to you, others can be dynamic -their impact will vary along the way-, and even for the ones you may think you're familiar with, remember no two individuals are the same. Your job is not to judge or verify, but to support.

In general, remember that accommodations are the least you can do. Real inclusion in the workplace can only come from a mix of inclusive cultural practices, proper leadership, specific HR policies, diverse participation opportunities, and investment in training.

RESOURCES FOR MANAGERS (and allies!)

Here you have some actionable, quick to adopt utils for your manager toolbox:

• Situations and Solutions library by the US Job Accommodation Network.

• A report about invisible disabilities in education and employment.

• Disability language style guide.

• Americans with disabilities act: a summary for managers.

• Tips for Managing Neurodiverse workers, remotely.

• Make your online meetings more inclusive (free lesson).

• Zoom's accessibility features.

• Make your Slack messages accessible.