Many leadership criteria are never written down. People are described as ready, confident, strategic or having presence. They are invited to present because they think quickly on their feet. They are expected to travel, work long hours or answer messages at night. These expectations can screen out many disabled staff, and many people without disabilities, and they are rarely tied to what leaders at DHS actually do: make sound decisions, develop people, resolve conflicts, deliver plans and serve communities.
A useful test is to list every criterion actually used, including the unwritten ones, and for each one write the leadership work it predicts. If you cannot connect a criterion to that work, it is probably a proxy. Then ask who each criterion screens out. Quick verbal response screens out people who process or communicate differently, including some colleagues who are Deaf, autistic or living with a brain injury, and people working in a second language. Travel and long hours screen out people with energy, mobility or caregiving limits. Always-on availability screens out many people with chronic health conditions. Executive presence often measures resemblance to past leaders.
Replace proxies with observable behaviors and let people show them in more than one way: a written analysis, a portfolio of past work, a structured conversation with questions provided in advance, or a work sample with time to prepare. Use a written rubric applied the same way to every candidate, and prepare the panel on disability bias before interviews. Offer accommodation for every stage in the same message used for scheduling, without asking why.
The State of Minnesota already recognizes that standard selection methods do not always measure what people can do. Its Connect 700 program lets eligible applicants with disabilities who meet minimum qualifications demonstrate their ability to perform a specific job for up to seven hundred hours on the job, as an alternative to the usual competitive process. That program is about entry, not leadership, but the principle carries over: judge people on the work itself. When your unit reviews its leadership criteria, record who reviewed them, such as leadership, the Human Resources partner and the equity lead, and keep the reasoning with the pathway map so it can be examined later.
