Online events seldom have a long tail – you attend, are briefly better informed and then get on with your life. That has not been my experience of the HFW event with Gareth Thomas that focussed on inclusion. Thoughtfully and often amusingly interviewed by Richard Neylon and Sid Welham, several sections of this event struck me as important and have stuck with me.
Being Authentic / Inauthentic
Gareth felt that he would have performed better throughout his career if he was fully “authentic”- if he did not feel that he was, at least in part, lying about who he is. More than performance on the pitch, he felt it was this that had driven him to have suicidal thoughts. I had not given a great deal of thought to the impact of working or living within an environment where you could not be yourself or, at least, substantially so. Plainly the drip, drip of self-doubt or criticism that will detract from performance in any field and just as plainly enduring this for years on end that manifest into thoughts of hopelessness.
Inclusion can feel like a hard process to drive through an organisation, but the positive effects and avoiding the negative impact on individuals otherwise excluded are worth any effort.
Actions being more important than words
Gareth gave an example of the Football World Cup tournament being held first in the famously intolerant Russia in 2018 followed by Qatar hosting the tournament in 2022, where homosexuality is illegal. He contrasted this with the public statement by FIFA about the importance of diversity and inclusion. Their policies can be seen here.
Organisationally, if your actions contradict your statements, your words cannot be trusted. Hypocrisy on such a grand scale has an impact on players, fans and society. On a more modest commercial scale, it really is this sort of thing that becomes associated with an organisation and increasingly impacts panel selections.
Education
Gareth pointed out that “People are unwilling to be re-educated about things they think they know – stone cold concrete in their minds”. This is in reference to the general public’s understanding of the transmissibility of AIDS having been formed by adverts and commentary in the 1980s and rarely, if ever, revisited since. He explained that while he is living with AIDS, his treatment regime means that he cannot pass the condition on to anyone. I think he phrased this effect perfectly – it is far harder to re-learn something you are certain of; knowledge becomes belief and a belief challenged meets resistance.
Opportunities to revisit a topic or challenge a belief do not generally occur organically – someone has to make the effort of creating an occasion for this to happen and I am grateful to the HFW Community team for the time, effort and thought committed to this event. Leadership in these topics always has to come from the top – Jeremy Shebson and Richard Crump are to be congratulated.
