News and vivid imagery reverberated around the globe after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by a white police officer after their knee was pinned to his neck. The outrage led to massive global protests and left Black communities reeling with anger and pain at the hands of injustice.

Denley McIntosh — the leader of government professional development networking group Connect Ontario, which centres the experiences of Black public servants — felt the gravity of the moment. He sent around a message to the network to encourage solidarity and discussion among those feeling unable to speak out in government.

“I’m writing to give voice to some of our voiceless and exhausted,” he put. “They can no longer plead, can no longer speak, and can no longer cry in their communities, including their workplaces.” McIntosh’s message to the group was simple: connect, be vulnerable and be real with one another.

This is the founding principle of Connect Ontario, which began as a simple lunch group to meet and talk. As more members joined, the lunchtime meetings outgrew the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services’ cafeteria space. McIntosh put together a more formalised program for public servants and word spread: the group now has 200 full-time members. It has an all Black leadership team and admits members from all ethnic backgrounds.

Connect Ontario offered Black public servants the space to discuss a moment that weighed heavy on everyone’s shoulders as they grappled with injustice. And although it’s a network to lend support, it also has a unique approach to professional development. To become a success required trial and error, and the group was even put on ice before Connect Ontario formed a community based on reciprocity.

Structure and points

When McIntosh first became a public servant, there were around 300 managers in his ministry. Only three of them were Black, with only one Black male manager, who managed McIntosh. His frustration at not being represented grew, and McIntosh ended up leaving the government, heading back to the private sector. His departure provoked a lot of questions. McIntosh’s manager approached him to come back, and suggested channelling his frustration into action.

McIntosh returned and held the first lunchtime meetup. Word spread, and Connect Ontario was born. The meetups remained, eventually becoming what it calls its monthly “power chats”, where all members discuss a pre-prepared topic on the phone together. The group also holds smaller coffee chats and bi-monthly in-person meetings.

McIntosh, a change management specialist at the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, structures the program around a points system, drawn from his project management background. The system allows members to see how much they’re contributing to the group, to build their commitment to improving their performance and that of others.

The points system is underpinned by reciprocity: members must give in to the system as well as take out. It can also serve as a powerful learning tool for members themselves. “[It] gives members a sense if they’re truly contributing or giving to our community, or just receiving or hoarding the benefits,” said McIntosh. The system holds up a mirror for members to gauge their participation themselves.

“I lead by compassion. If you come to me and say, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t attended events, it’s been a hard time,' and especially with Covid-19, they’re the kind of person that I want in the group because they had the sincere willingness to let me know.”

The reciprocity built into the system means that the group’s executive team don’t just give their time — and members don’t just take. Connect Ontario became a shared ecosystem where everyone contributes.

Members gain points via their participation in various remote or in-person activities or giving back by volunteering their time as facilitators or referring new members. For example, attending a “power chat”, one of the monthly teleconference calls with members, gives members one point, while referring someone new is 0.25 points. Members need seven points to pass into next year’s cohort.

But McIntosh is keen to stress that not meeting the points threshold doesn’t lead to automatic expulsion. “I lead by compassion,” he said. “If you come to me and say, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t attended events, it’s been a hard time,' and especially with Covid-19, they’re the kind of person that I want in the group because they had the sincere willingness to let me know.”

McIntosh’s empathic attitude towards members who may not meet the threshold is often met with surprise. But he wants to embody what it means to connect — to tell the truth about how things really are, and take responsibility for your actions. “The reason that we want to keep that person in our community is because they thought enough to prioritise us, to come and apologise,” he said.

Reciprocity

Although the point system has led to greater ownership over members’ development, the messaging didn’t always work. Similar to McIntosh’s own personal career reset, at one point he had to step away and put the group on hold to rechannel its objectives and focus.

Instead of a place to connect, some members were instead seeing it as a place to get promoted — nothing deeper. The group would send around job openings (something which it still does) and potential new members would ask for access to the opportunities rather than access to the project itself. Rather than a group where people lent each other support and helped each other grow, McIntosh felt Connect Ontario had become a job board.

“It’s not a drive-through... it’s a potluck. We all bring something to the table.”

After a succession of similar employment requests, McIntosh hit pause on the group, feeling it had come to a crossroads. “We were growing, but it was artificial,” he said.

He sent an email out to members, telling them that if they really wanted to be part of the community, they needed to invest in the community, asking them to turn up to a meeting where the new reciprocal points-based vision would be laid out. The group lost a few hundred members.

The pause is a good lesson in building a professional community — it’s not always going to work the way you want it to. Building a community based on reciprocity requires engagement from both leaders and members, rather than a one-way channel.

After the reframing, the members that stayed now understood what was expected of them, and the purpose of the group. “It’s not a drive-through,” said McIntosh. “It’s a potluck. We all bring something to the table.”

It’s also a lesson that you don’t need to scrap something entirely once it’s built — sometimes, you just need a reset.

Maintaining energy and focus

A reset can be necessary when running a group like Connect Ontario, as it requires a lot of heavy lifting from its leadership team. McIntosh takes this very seriously as to not overburden its leaders and let the group become a chore.

Preserving the team’s emotional energy is built into all of its practices; one is the orientation of new members. Previously held throughout the year, it now takes place only in the autumn, so that people are not constantly being onboarded. Another is by sticking to one theme throughout the year, 2020’s prescient theme being leading in a digitally connected environment.

The theme means that members don’t receive unnecessary reading materials and struggle to keep up. But there are exceptions, like those sent over the past few months covering Covid-19 workplace needs and materials to support racial justice, as the team views them as a priority.

The singular focus means that when the group does diverge from its program, it sends a message. Following George Floyd’s death, the monthly “power chat” call instead allowed the group to explore ways for non-Black colleagues to support and empower Black colleagues in government (in a hat tip to its Canadian origins, the call was titled “So You Want to Be an Ally Eh!”). The space to diverge when needed didn’t take anything away from the group’s focus: it emphasised the importance of the step away from the agenda.

McIntosh also recommends the single focus to keep the group lean with its communication and to avoid overloading members with too many emails. It came from a complaint McIntosh heard about other networking groups — that there was too much “stuff” to read. This focus on “just in time” content also gets the group better engagement.

The lesson here is that public servants often don’t have the bandwidth to dedicate large chunks of time to activities. By making it easy to contribute, like limiting email correspondence or making tasks manageable, networks are more likely to thrive.

Connect Ontario doesn’t work all year, either. It’s active for nine active months, from October to June with three fallow months, to give both the executive team and the group’s members a break and re-energise them for the next year ahead. It’s all part of McIntosh’s vision to maintain momentum. “Folks get tired of us,” he smiled. “I don’t want my team to get tired of them.” — Emma Sisk

[Picture credit: Unsplash/Krzysztof Kotkowicz]