As someone who pivoted their career in the service of courageous leadership, the past week has been an incredible and heartbreaking case study. With the release of the Royal Commission into the Robotdebt Scheme report ten days ago, the public has been given access to the extraordinary behaviours that led to one of the worst breaches of public administration Australians have ever experienced.
To help bring the lessons of Robtdebt to life, I first want to cover some key learnings explored in the Dare To Lead™ program.
Attributes of Empathy
A key characteristic of transformational leaders is good emotional self-awareness and literacy. They are practised in empathy both for themselves and those around them. Empathy is a learned skillset based on the following behaviours:
Perspective taking: honouring a person’s perspective as truth, even when it’s different from ours (remember that this may be challenging if you were raised in the dominant culture, which in Australia is – white, educated, middle-class, able-bodied, native English-speaker, straight, CIS, neuro-typical);
Staying out of judgment: we tend to judge in areas we’re susceptible to shame, and we judge people who are doing worse than us (which is why it’s incredibly important to be aware of our own shame triggers and to be a shame-informed leader);
Recognising emotion & communicating emotion: emotional self-awareness and literacy are crucial leadership skills to help others know they are seen and understood, and not alone in the shame swamp; and
Mindfulness: mindfulness is another way of saying ‘pay attention’, and in this context, it means taking a balanced approach to emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We don’t deny emotions AND we don’t set up camp in them either.
Why Is Empathy Important?
Because it’s the antidote to shame. And why do we need an antidote to shame? Because we all experience it. Because unchecked and unspoken, it’s one of the most insidious and destructive emotions we can experience in our lives.
And because:
When We Experience Shame
When we experience shame (feeling ‘not enough‘), the research shows we commonly:
Move away – withdraw, silence ourselves, shutdown, disengage
Move towards – perform, please, appease, perfect, sacrifice our boundaries
Move against – use shame to inflict shame on others, often aggressively
One of the key tools to move through shame, rather than get stuck in it, is to reach out to someone in an ’empathy seat’ in our arena, speak our shame and be seen. Empathy is the antidote to shame.
But what happens in the absence of empathy? Empathic failure leads to dehumanising, ‘othering’, outcasting, demonising and continued shaming.
Case Study In Systemic Empathic Failure: #Robodebt
A key tenet of daring leadership is to be a learner. I highly recommend you listen to this 7am Podcast series into Australia’s illegal Robodebt scheme to get an insight into how shame, dominant cultures, and a lack of self-awareness and empathy in the workplace can lead to the most dire outcomes. At the very centre of this illegal scheme deployed by the Australian government, is the weaponising of shame, wilful blindness in the pursuit of power and approval seeking, and systemic empathic failure.
Episode 1: Inside Robo-debt: The Shorten Interview
An insight into the departmental and media culture that gaslit and defrauded Australians. Listen here.
“Robo-debt was an industrial scale gaslighting of the nation, gaslighting of the workforce, a gaslighting of the victims, a gaslighting of the advocates, a gaslighting of the media, a gaslighting of the opposition.” – Bill Shorten
Episode 2: Inside Robo-debt: The Whistleblower
An interview with public servant and daring leader Colleen Taylor who was ignored, belittled and beaten down. Listen here.
“It pained me that the only thing that stopped it, in the end, was that it was illegal. But why wasn’t it stopped because it was unjust, it was unfair, it was cruel?” – Colleen Taylor
Episode 3: The Social Engineering of Shame
The flaws in robodebt were not discovered by any government department or oversight body. They were revealed by a group of people on Twitter: lawyers, journalists and welfare recipients.
They found a pattern of systemic issues and behavioural patterns that triggered and relied on shame to keep people silent and compliant.
This episode interviews senior lecturer in administrative law at La Trobe University, Darren O’Donovan, who was instrumental in piecing together the illegality of Robotdebt. Listen here.
It leveraged what the bureaucrats knew about people, that they wouldn’t contest those debts, that it was hard to retrieve the evidence and that people felt shame, so they would just pay up. They plugged that understanding into this new system, and they used those behavioural nudges to socially engineer a budget saving. And it was all built on the back of shame. – Rick Morton
Episode 4: The Minister’s Media Adviser
A brutally frank interview with media Adviser Rachelle Miller who candidly explains exactly how the power dynamics of the fraudulent scheme worked. How a scheme politicians thought was a neat and tidy solution to their own ambitions (to be ‘enough‘ to get promoted) quickly spiralled into a humanitarian disaster. And how against all the evidence, they tried to convince people robodebt that the illegal practice was fair and good.
This is also a powerful episode to observe how Rachelle Miller is processing her own shame in her involvement in the scheme. Listen here.
I actually think empathy makes for a much better media adviser, but it makes the job much harder for you. And I, at the time, didn’t have the same levels of empathy for people who were disadvantaged that I do now. And that is because I’ve been through my own, you know, mental health battles, and I’ve sort of reflected on that and said, “well, imagine if I was, you know, in this situation I’m in now with very severe mental health condition, and I get a debt letter.” – Rachelle Miller
Episode 5: The Mother
The tragic story of Robodebt victim Rhys Cauzzo and his mother Jenny’s quest for justice, despite deliberate bureaucratic exhaustion and media smears. Listen here.
They rely on people not understanding what’s going on and not questioning. – Jenny Miller
(Please note: these podcasts discuss suicide.)
Empathy As A Key Leadership Skill
Empathy is not ‘soft’, ‘optional’ or ‘easy’. It is one of the most critically important skills leaders and cultures MUST cultivate. It is foundational to a duty of care.
The cost of empathic failure is incalculable.
It is the skill on which all our lives depend.
And if your life, or the lives of colleagues or loved ones has been impacted by the Robodebt scheme, please reach out for support here.
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