One DSD People, Access and Culture · DEIA leadership and growth
Bring your experience, your curiosity, and the kind of leader you want to become. Develop a practice that makes equity, inclusion, and accessibility part of how DSD works.
Your own curiosity is enough to begin. Explore what leadership could mean for you, with or without a future management role.
Leadership can begin in how you listen, explain a decision, or make room for another person's contribution. Through an equity lens, the question is also whose experience informs the work and who can access the opportunity to shape it.
You may already bring relevant experience from community work, professional practice, caregiving, or collaboration. Connect that experience with a specific capability and test it in a manageable situation. Feedback helps you see both your contribution and what you want to develop next.
An invitation can open a possibility. You decide whether it fits your interests and what you would like to explore.
Being encouraged can help you recognize a strength you had not named. It is also a chance to ask what the person noticed: which contribution, capability, or example led to the invitation? Specific feedback is more useful than an unexplained label of potential.
A meaningful opportunity includes preparation, time, access, and feedback. A mentor can help you think; a sponsor can help you access work where you can develop. Agree on support before the opportunity becomes another responsibility, and keep space to change direction.
Bring a decision, a recurring challenge, or a skill you want to refresh. Use your experience as a starting point for deeper equity practice.
Experience can make decisions quicker, while familiar patterns can make some assumptions harder to notice. Revisit the criteria behind a recurring decision: what counts as a strong contribution, who receives visible work, and whose perspective changes the options?
When responsibilities broaden, the equity question broadens too. A supervisor may improve a team's practice; a manager or director may need to align opportunities, resources, and expectations across teams. Both benefit from evidence of what people actually experience after a change.
Leadership growth includes your own relationship to cultural difference, not only the decisions you make about others. Staff and DHS as an organization sit somewhere on a continuum from treating sameness as fairness toward genuinely valuing, adapting to, and integrating real difference. Naming honestly where you and your team actually are is leadership work, not a detour from it.
| Capability | Practice | Feedback to ask for | What shows growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Examine assumptions and use evidence | Review a practice example and separate observations, interpretations, and job-related evidence. | Which conclusion is supported, and which needs more information? | An explanation revised after considering evidence or another perspective. |
| Communicate and facilitate across difference | Facilitate a conversation with several ways to contribute and check what people understood. | Whose perspective influenced the discussion, and what would make participation easier? | A revised meeting or communication approach informed by participants. |
| Build inclusion and accessibility into work | Examine a handoff, meeting, or development opportunity for avoidable access barriers. | What helped you participate, and where did you have to work around the process? | A changed process and feedback about whether it became more usable. |
| Develop and sponsor others equitably | Make one learning or stretch opportunity visible, with clear criteria and support. | Who could express interest and take part, and what support was missing? | An opportunity plan revised to make participation more accessible. |
| Connect equity with workforce decisions | Prepare options for a workforce issue, including affected perspectives, tradeoffs, and a way to learn from the decision. | Which perspective or consequence is missing from these options? | A decision brief that explains evidence, tradeoffs, and follow-through. |
| Share knowledge and build future capability | Document a critical handoff and invite a colleague to try it with supported preparation. | What knowledge remained implicit, and what would help someone else carry the work? | A tested handover and a development opportunity connected to the capability gap. |
| Examine your own cultural default | Notice one moment this month where you treated your own norm as neutral or universal, in a meeting, a decision, or a piece of feedback. | Whose norm was actually being applied, and who had to adapt to it without being asked? | A specific example of your own default named honestly, not a general statement about valuing diversity. |
From role design and recruitment to development, retention, and succession, each stage offers a practical way to grow.
What does the work actually require?
Examine the difference between a necessary qualification and a familiar picture of who usually does the work.
Reflect: Whose experience did I initially recognize, and whose did I overlook?
Something to carry forward: A revised requirement with a clear explanation of its connection to the work. Check job-related requirements — program page /resources/ja-job-relatedness-check
Who can discover and navigate this opportunity?
Inclusive recruitment concerns access to information, application processes, and networks as well as the reach of an announcement.
Reflect: Did I interpret limited response as lack of interest before examining access?
Something to carry forward: An outreach and accessibility plan, with a question to check after recruitment. Explore the inclusive hiring life cycle — program page /resources/ja-inclusive-hiring-lifecycle
What is evidence, and what am I interpreting?
A diverse panel still needs shared, job-related criteria. Cultural knowledge invites curiosity; it does not tell us why an individual behaves a particular way.
Reflect: Would I interpret the same behavior differently in a person more familiar to me?
Something to carry forward: A practice rating explained through the answer and the job criterion, rather than eye contact or assumed cultural traits. Practice inclusive hiring and selection — program page /paths/gp-6
What does someone need to belong and contribute?
Orientation includes relationships, access, expectations, and the informal knowledge established colleagues can take for granted.
Reflect: What did I expect a new colleague to know without anyone explaining it?
Something to carry forward: A welcome map and a follow-up conversation about what helped or remains missing. Explore the whole program — program page /orientation
Whose work is heard, supported, and recognized?
Feedback, workload, access, and recognition are repeated leadership decisions. Look at specific work and conditions rather than using a preferred communication style as the standard.
Reflect: What am I rewarding: a useful contribution, familiarity, or visibility?
Something to carry forward: A change to a meeting, feedback conversation, or assignment process and what participants found useful. Connect working conditions and well-being — program page /one-dsd/amplify/well-being
Can people begin growing before someone selects them?
Mentoring offers perspective; sponsorship helps people access opportunities. Development should make room for self-expressed interest and different career aspirations.
Reflect: Who gets invited to develop, and who has to discover the pathway alone?
Something to carry forward: A development plan linking a capability, supported practice, feedback, and a next conversation. Explore mentoring and sponsorship — program page /resources/pn-mentoring-sponsorship
What would demonstrate readiness for different responsibilities?
Clear pathways connect real role requirements with opportunities to develop and demonstrate capability. A learning portfolio supports a conversation; it does not guarantee selection.
Reflect: Am I confusing lack of opportunity with lack of potential?
Something to carry forward: A role-to-skill map with evidence, a learning opportunity, and feedback from someone familiar with the work. Explore accessible leadership pathways — program page /resources/pn-accessible-leadership-pathways
What would make it easier to stay and thrive?
A stay conversation is useful when it leads to a response. Career growth sits alongside workload, support, relationships, recognition, and the conditions of the work.
Reflect: Did I offer an individual coping strategy where a work condition needed attention?
Something to carry forward: An agreed action, a responsible role, and a follow-up that checks the employee's experience. Prepare a stay conversation — program page /resources/pn-stay-interviews-and-retention
What capability must continue, and who can access the chance to develop it?
Succession planning connects critical work, future capabilities, open development opportunities, and knowledge transfer. It should broaden readiness rather than quietly designate an heir.
Reflect: Whose potential am I noticing, and what access would let others demonstrate theirs?
Something to carry forward: A continuity plan with a development opportunity, knowledge-transfer product, and practical readiness check. Carry access across transitions — program page /resources/ja-accommodation-across-transitions
What should we carry forward and improve?
A transition can reveal what the organization has learned, where knowledge is concentrated, and which working conditions need attention.
Reflect: What can this transition teach us about the beginning of the employee life cycle?
Something to carry forward: A tested handover and an improvement returned to the relevant earlier stage. Connect learning with the One DSD Team — program page /one-dsd/team
One DSD People, Access and Culture