Workplace Interdependence and Employees With Disabilities

Summary:
In the complex structure of any workplace, the importance of who you are as a resource to others transcends any disability. Workplace interdependence makes functional considerations immaterial.

The Real Nature of Workplace Relationships: Beyond Teamwork

Functions, Roles and Archetypes

The Virtue That Transcends All


The Real Nature of Workplace Relationships: Beyond Teamwork

The Birds and the Bees ... and Bats: A Story With a Point

If you put a buzzard in a pen six or eight feet square and entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of his ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of 10 or 12 feet. Without space to run, as is his habit, he will not even attempt to fly but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkably nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists until it completely destroys itself.

In many ways, there are lots of people like the buzzard, the bat and the bee. They are struggling about with all their problems and frustrations, not realizing that the answer is right there: They need to change something, starting with themselves.
- Author Unknown

In the 21st century, we continue to work towards a world, and a workplace, where everyone can be included as a member of a team trying to reach a goal. But until we understand the real and elemental nature of how we work together, differences that have nothing to do with working together will present themselves to us as insurmountable obstacles.

Affirmative action. Discrimination. Unfair labor practices. The Americans with Disabilities Act. All these and the myriad other programs or behaviors that affect inclusion in the workplace seem to defy our best efforts to change. As a culture, the business world seems penned in, flat on the floor, buzzing around a tumbler. To unburden our societies from inequities and to improve business itself, it is time to change how we look at interdependency in the workplace.

You've heard, "No man is an island." Recently Dr. Howard Bloom described on the Art Bell Show how the evolution of living things on Earth is actually "co-evolution." From the microbes in our bodies that digest our food and excrete the nutrients without which we'd starve to the wolves who, attracted to our scrap heaps, came to be "man's best friend," no species changes or evolves without changing or influencing another. Dr. Bloom says that our very cellular makeup is radically different from that of our great grandparents, even though we don't look any different. As we live and change, so do those microscopic helpers and the less than desirable other "bugs" that try to take us over. In other words, we evolve and they evolve in a continuous, dynamic ebb and flow.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Marcia Appleton, head of social services at Community Services for the Blind and Partially Sighted. During the interview, she brought up the topic of this interdependence, specifically as it reveals itself in the workplace. She stated, "I don't understand why, if we are all so interdependent, the fact that one or a few of us might be disabled should be such a problem." I later asked her to say more about what she meant. The result is an insight into human relationships and even our cultural traditions: There is little or no importance to the more visible differences among us.

"What I'm talking about is more than simple teamwork," Appleton begins. "Teamwork is about our job functions and how they interrelate. But, with cross-training, functions are not specific to the worker. There is something deeper and less tangible that makes each of us unique and can make a workplace fall apart, if someone who plays a vital role leaves." She goes on: "Disability can have an impact on your function. If you were the driver and you go blind, you can't be that person any more. But disability is irrelevant in the areas that are more vital to the health of a company -- those roles that we take on that we and everyone else rely on, depend on."

I decided to illustrate Appleton's point by analyzing the characters of the very popular television program, M*A*S*H, since it is so familiar to most of us. You may recall that it was about a field surgical unit during the Korean War in the early 1950's. Ostensibly a comedy, the program was based on a film that ultimately was eclipsed by the popularity and complexity of the series.

While many of the characters changed during the run of the television show, the relationships steadily developed more and more depth. As viewers, we came to know Capt. Pierce, Maj. Houlihan, Father Mulcahy and the many others so well that we felt like they were real people we knew. We recognized the interdependencies in the unit because they reflected interdependencies in our own lives.

Let me give you an example. On M*A*S*H Corp., Walter O'Reilly, better known as "Radar," was the company clerk. But he represented a great deal more. When he went home, Max Klinger took over his post. But Radar was lost to the unit completely. His absolute efficiency was gone, yes, but so was his childlike ability to bring everyone else down to basic values and goodness. The show's writers began by making him a bit of a clown but ended by portraying him as the Keeper of Innocence for the whole 4077th M*A*S*H.

That Radar was a young, white, Protestant, male Iowan is not what counts. That he was the company clerk was just his job. Another young, white, Protestant, male Iowan could have been a scoundrel. Radar could have been the motor pool clerk. But Radar never could have been anything but an innocent, trusting and stalwart friend.

These are the relationships that really matter in a workplace, Appleton affirms. "Our functions, our jobs, are not really who we are in a work team," she points out. While a blind person may need someone to take over or assist with a job function, who does what is less important than who can best help the team achieve its objectives.

Some of the most effective disabled characters in movies and on TV are those whose personalities were created without undue emphasis on the disabilities involved. As an example of crossing typical roles, the character played by Sigourney Weaver in the first "Alien" was a remarkably well-drawn one. Why? It was written without having a woman playing Ripley in mind.

When disability is added to a character after he is already defined, the character becomes more real. The character stops being a cartoon and starts being a human being. In M*A*S*H, Father Mulcahy loses his hearing, but he remains exactly the same person in relation to all in the company. He is not lost to the others who rely on him.

To get beyond the artificial barriers to inclusion, Appleton points out, we need to change. How? We can stop looking at individuals in terms of functions and whether one individual can perform every single function in his job description without assistance from another person or a machine.

Companies need qualified people, of course. But Appleton believes a rigid assumption that the best candidate for a position exactly matches the job description is misguided. If, for instance, we're presented with someone who can't sit right down and use a computer because he is totally blind and that poses an apparently irremediable problem for us, there will never be true integration.

However, integration can take place if we understand that this person can use other tools, can share responsibilities with a sighted person and can do the work in a different way. Using any number of variations, that person, like all others, has a vital role to play in a workplace setting. That approach, Appleton says, can help us build truly effective and productive workforces.

To a frustrating degree, Appleton points out that we are faced with a chicken-and-egg proposition. To learn how minor the differences are and what strengths a group of people has, we must get to know each other. The workplace must be integrated. But, to integrate the workplace, we must understand that the differences are minor and strengths are many.

As the director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Paul Steven Miller, stated at a Washington State Business Leaders breakfast, "We have to have laws that force the issue so that the integration begins."

But perhaps it can also take individual hiring managers, such as you, who can see beyond the surface issues to the profound interdependencies among us. Answer Appleton's question ("Why, if we are all so interdependent, should the fact that one of us is disabled be such a problem?"), and you have made a start.

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Functions, Roles and Archetypes

Most of the time we think about our workplace relationships in terms of flowcharts and job descriptions. Capt. Pierce is a surgeon, but he is also the head of surgical operations for the 4077. Maj. Houlihan is a nurse, but she is also the commanding officer over all the nursing staff.

It can be tempting to think that the hierarchy represented in the flowchart reflects the true nature of our workplace relationships. But, the specifics of authority are not always fully reflected in flow charts.

A boss I once had, annoyed no doubt because I disagreed with some aspect of her instructions, asked me, "You know, Nan, that I am your supervisor?" When I replied that I did but that I suspected we defined the term "supervisor" differently, I meant that she appeared to see it as absolute authority over my work. I, on the other hand, taking meaning from the word itself, "overseer," believed (and still believe) that supervisors coordinate work and empower staff to do their best -- not to make abstract commands.

Remember the world of the corporation was only modeled on the military. Rather than a chain of command, the structure of a business relates, ideally, to respective responsibilities. All employees, including the CEO and the mailroom clerk, are co-workers -- not generals and enlisted personnel. Even M*A*S*H, an Army unit, recognized that its interrelations had more to do with interdependence than rank, and it was often the intrusion of rank that was the problem to be solved in the story line.

If we can't agree on a specific function related to a job title and a linear hierarchy of either power or responsibility, how can we truly understand our relationships and where we are in the interdependencies of the work as a whole? This is where the distinctions between function and role as well as teamwork and interdependence come into play.

Function is what you do, what your job is: Surgeon, nurse, company clerk, chaplain, motor pool clerk, commanding officer. Teamwork is how surgeons and nurses work together in triage, surgery and in post-op and how the clerk, chaplain and other non-medical staff support them. The nurses and orderlies prepare the wounded soldier for surgery. The surgeons, supported by the nurses, perform the surgery. The chaplain stands ready to comfort and to administer last rites. Everyone has a job. Specialization is the essence of work and teams.

But role goes beyond function. Capts. Pierce and Hunnicut, Maj. Winchester and Col. Potter (and their precursors) are all surgeons. But the scenes we were shown in the surgery tent rarely defined their various surgical specialties. These scenes were about their subtler, intangible roles.

Pierce is the loose cannon. He makes light of the seriousness of the situation as a way of helping himself and others distance themselves. He also will point out wrongs or at least wrongs as he perceives them.

Hunnicut is Pierce's comic support but also brings a stability and common sense to the scene.

Winchester regards himself as above the rest, offering a focal point for frustration. In fact, he really is better in terms of education and experience as a surgeon. That enables Winchester to take on a centering role as well when the story requires it.

Finally Potter is the kindly peacekeeper who puts the lid on the levity when it gets out of hand.

Appleton talked about her own workplace in terms of roles. She believes she is the touchstone and historian, having been with the organization the longest and being in the office itself on a routine basis. Her role is that of the one you can always count on to know "how it's done." Her job title and place on the team are irrelevant. She would have this role whether she were head of social services or the receptionist.

She identifies another staff person, Mark, as the detail person. He can take an idea and develop it into a workable plan. Mark turns to Marcia for the long view. Marcia turns to Mark to tell her if a plan is a good idea and how to pursue it. The technology expert, Lan, Marcia says, is a great deal more than a computer guru. He is a catalyst for everyone on the staff. He regards everyone's job as important and supports him in it. Lan is the reliable, willing team builder for everyone else. Which of these individuals is blind is not even part of the "plot."

We see that these three people and the characters on M*A*S*H go well beyond their interrelated job functions. Marcia oversees social services and the volunteer program. Mark presides over orientation and mobility as well as the rehabilitation and the low vision departments. Lan heads technology services. Clients are triaged by Marcia's department, given practical training by Mark's department and come to Lan to learn about and get assistive technology tools.

Interdependence goes beyond teamwork. It refers to the "higher" level of teamwork -- those innate and intangible roles we all seem to play in any microcosm environment such as family, work and so forth. The 4077th relies on Capt. Pierce to spotlight what's not working and to punctuate the terror, tragedy and tedium with his undisciplined ways. Hunnicut is a friend, a stable influence and a confidante. Father Mulcahy brings the chaos together with insights that are both wise and loving. Maj. Houlihan reminds everyone that war and medicine are serious business -- and also that there is a life outside the unit.

A brief word about archetypes. Archetypal literary critics point out that writers tend to build certain common roles into their fiction. These can be fairly easily detected in television plots because the relationships between a limited number of regular characters have to be consistent from show to show.

The best-known author on archetypal criticism is Joseph Campbell. Campbell could detect common archetypes (that is, patterns or models that show up in all similar parts of stories we have told on every continent and in every age). For instance, Campbell identified a common story line in every culture of a young man who journeys and is tested along the way and then judged for whether he has achieved "heroism." This archetype can be identified in everything from the story of Jason and the Argonauts to Hamlet to the reality series, "Lost."

The reason these archetypes show up everywhere is that they mirror our own experience, our own reality. Each of us is on a journey through life and is constantly given obstacles to overcome. Archetypal critics predictably disagree about what the central roles are in an archetype.

But the 1972 book, "Subliminal Seduction," about advertising and how it is used to manipulate us, identified four archetypes and illustrated these through a reference to the original "Star Trek" series. The four relationships were: the Father, who makes hard decisions for everyone (Capt. Kirk); the Mother, who keeps an eye on the well being of her children (Dr. McCoy); The Child Scientist, who has the know-how to take the Father's decisions and put them into action (Sulu); and the Child Clown who charms everyone with his comments and his behavior (Chekov).

You can learn about the interdependencies, even archetypes, in your workplace and, as a result, uncover the genuine, underlying roles individual employees are playing. You can then see many other subtleties: how some employees manipulate others, why a certain worker seems out of place, why leaders emerge from other than leading ranks and even how to build a team that does something better than teamwork. And you can see how little disability impacts these more important workplace dynamics.

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The Virtue That Transcends All

Whether the average workplace demonstrates an awareness of the interdependence of roles is a matter of debate. But Laurel Weiland, an account executive in a marketing firm, believes there is. "Qualities seem to have more influence on career path (than skills)," she says. The subtle is subtly detected and rewarded.

How we come to rely on one another, what roles we take when the interconnections become established, transcends any other consideration in any grouping of people: real, fictional, family, workplace, adults, children, men, women, rich, poor, and disabled and non-disabled.

Since disability is the one "minority group" consisting of members of every single other group -- anyone can be born or become disabled no matter one's race, ethnicity, gender, gender preference, religion, economic status etc. -- people with disabilities can take on any of the multitude of roles, interdependencies and even archetypes. In our example from Marcia Appleton's workplace, Lan is the disabled person. He is Vietnamese American, male, young and totally blind. And yet, when we discussed Lan's role as supporter and catalyst, that had nothing to do with his disability - or, for that matter, any other of the personal characteristics from that team I just listed. Marcia's historian and Mark's strategist roles have nothing to do with the fact that neither one is blind. Here's one way to think about this: What would a story about these people be like, if depicted entirely on radio?

The message of eSight and of the disability rights movement is that the differences and the adaptations are tiny compared to the potential that workers with disabilities offer. And while these roles cannot always be predicted, a disabled job candidate is just as likely to fulfill a more elemental role in your company as anyone else. He is just as likely, as a non-disabled worker, to be the level head in a crisis, or the one who always knows where to get a tool, or who makes everyone want to work together. He is just as likely to be the person who inspires the others to work harder and reach higher standards or to break out of a rut and try something new -- the person who, when you look back on events, you simply can not imagine having done without.

None of this is an argument to hire people with disabilities. But it is a powerful argument to regard a job candidate's disability as irrelevant -- just as whether Maj. Houlihan had blue eyes or brown.

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