May 19, 2022 • 26 mins
Flying high: Managing and being managed as a vision impaired person.
Michael Linke talks about his challenges entering the workforce as a vision impaired accountant, to becoming a CEO of RSPCA and an airline.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:16):
Hello and welcome to the Career Path. A recent report
from Sweeney and Vision Australia revealed that 83% of employers
surveyed lacked confidence in hiring someone with a vision impairment.
With this podcast, we hope to delve further into this
issue by speaking to job seekers, employers and employees to
hear their perspective. This podcast is made possible with the
(00:38):
support of Vision Australia and the NDIS. Information Linkages and
Capacity Building Grant. A huge thanks to all of you
who submitted input into this podcast and all of those involved.
Each episode will be available to download As a podcast.
Just go to Vision Australia org and type the career
path into the search engine to find our webpage where
(01:00):
you can listen to other episodes and subscribe to make
sure that you don't miss any. I'm your host, Belinda Wilson.
Today with us we have Michael Link, who has developed
his career as a manager and CEO in private and
non-profit sectors. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
S2 (01:17):
It's my pleasure, Belinda. Really looking forward to this opportunity.
S1 (01:20):
I'm really excited to speak to you today and I
know that all the listeners are excited to to hear
all about your employment history. Is it possible you could
share that history with us?
S2 (01:30):
I started work back in the 1980s, 1984, so I've
been working quite some time at a 37 years now,
38 years. And I started in the Taxation Office back
in the day in the Commonwealth Bank building in Sydney.
I started at a time when the public service wasn't
really interested already or able or capable to employ people
(01:51):
with a vision impairment, and I've been visually impaired since birth.
I have significant short sight. I have significant difficulty with
colours and significant difficulty with identifying people who are more
than a metre or two meters away from me. Getting
a job in the tax office was something that I wanted.
I was very good at mathematics at school, achieved well,
could do a Rubik's cube, could, you know, do quadratic equations,
(02:15):
all the type of things that the kids do. And
they're 16, 17, 18. Back in the 80 seconds I
was good at and I thought, well, the Tax office
is a perfect fit for me. It's all about numbers.
It's all about adding up. That'll be fantastic. But when
I started, they had no understanding of what it was
like to employ someone who was visually impaired. So it
was difficult for them and it was difficult for me.
And in the end I spent 15 years in the
(02:35):
tax office, so eventually found a way and the employer
found the way. After that I moved into my own company.
I ran a computer training company for a couple of
years and really started to learn technology and understand how
technology could help people who were visually impaired. And a
lot of work in the Microsoft Office suite of products,
(02:56):
training people, how to use those, teaching people how to
build computers and really developing some technical skills. And then
after that, I really started to forge a sort of
senior executive career. I'd studied at the tax office, and
then I moved into the non-for-profit sector and spent a
couple of years with Royal Blind Society in Canberra before
(03:17):
I was appointed chief executive officer of the RSPCA, which
was probably the scariest day of my life. I've just
applied for a job, I'm visually impaired and here I'm
about to embark on a chief executive officer role looking
after 50 or 60 staff, 3000 volunteers and about 10,000 animals.
So it was quite a harrowing experience in the early days.
(03:39):
But again, I buckled down, did my homework, understood what
my role was, and succeed and did some really good
things and some things that I'm very proud of at
RSPCA and left RSPCA in 2013 and moved into the
aviation sector, I was appointed chief executive officer of a
company called Recreational Aviation Australia and the chairman there and
(04:00):
I used to joke with people that we've got a
blind guy running an aviation company with pilots and engineers
as a Boeing, I'm going to do this. But again,
knuckled down and we worked together and we solved a
lot of problems and solved a lot of difficulties around
my eyesight. And I was able to succeed in that.
And I was there for seven years, seven and a
half years. And that's when I met Ron Hooton, the
chief executive of Vision Australia. We're at a game of
(04:22):
cricket in Sydney, Australia and New Zealand Test match. He's
a Kiwi and I'm a devout Aussie fan in the
cricket and we had breakfast and had a bit of
a conversation and Ron suggested I join the team at
Vision Australia and perhaps use some of my 30 years
of experience to help the next chapter for Vision Australia
work with the staff, both the vision impaired and fully sighted,
and just share my experiences, share some of my leadership
(04:43):
experiences and some of my life experience and my lived
experiences to do good for Vision Australia, which is what
I'm doing now and I'm loving every minute of it.
So it's been a bit of a security career, reasonably
eclectic from different businesses and different industries, but I've enjoyed
pretty much most of it and there has been a
fair share of challenges.
S1 (05:01):
When you talk about knuckling down and figuring out your
role and overcoming these challenges, what sort of challenges have
you faced throughout your career while your job seeking in
an industry that may not necessarily be disability friendly?
S2 (05:16):
Back in the 80s, it was almost impossible. I had
a manager throw something at me once to see if
I could catch it, and of course I didn't see
it and didn't catch it. And he said to me, Well,
can you even see? And I said, Well, I can
see to do my job, mate. What's important, whether I
catch stuff that you throw at me or whether I
sit down and do my job. There was no complaints
process back then. There was no discrimination back. And it
was just he was this this this old man who
(05:38):
was a boss or a manager of the area using,
you know, something on his desk to throw at me
to see if I could or couldn't see. And I
went out in the office. And this is bizarre, but
I didn't let it stop me. Those little things are
sort of speed bumps in the way or crucible moments
that you have in your life. You don't let them
stop you and you apply yourself. There's another episode where
(05:58):
I won a promotion and I was promoted from the
lower grade to a sort of, you know, next level
up in the public service. Everybody gets graded and goes
up a level from time to time. So I applied
for a position and I won that position and then
someone appealed. And in the public service back in the day,
you could appeal against someone getting promoted and they appealed
on the grounds that I was visually impaired. Hey, this
guy's vision impaired, he can't do the job as well
(06:19):
as me. I'm fully sighted. Why are you giving people
who are visually impaired jobs ahead of me? And ultimately,
I lost that appeal when I was put back a level. So,
you know, and I'll forever question to the day whether
it was because I was visually impaired or whether it
was that this person was a better operator in the job.
And I would hope that a merit protection agency wouldn't
have used my eyesight in the decision making process. But
(06:40):
you never know. It was the 80 seconds again. There
wasn't a lot of support and people who had disabilities,
whether vision impaired or something else, weren't treated as equally
as they are today. So, you know, those type of
things taught me a lot in time, but I continued
to apply for jobs. I studied a degree, I've got
a bachelor's degree in taxation and work with people. And
it was incredibly hard because we had no digital technology
(07:03):
back then. It was all out of books and handwritten
notes back in the early 90 seconds, and I had to,
you know, work twice as hard as the next person
to get half as much done. But I did it
and I continued to show that I could succeed and
ultimately the promotions would follow. You know, there were a
few champions within the Tax Office movement that saw the
effort I was putting in, and I was awarded a
(07:25):
public service medal for my hard work in taxation inquiries,
working with the inquiries, solutions for a number of people
who are lodging their tax returns. And then I did
a lot of work with the Child Support Agency, and
I had a couple of very good managers that were
very supportive at the time. And I think that's all
you need. You need someone who accepts that you are
who you are and your eyesight's not going to stop
(07:46):
you doing stuff. It might mean you do things a
little bit differently, but invariably it doesn't stop you. And
if you get that person that accepts that, it's not
going to stop you, that we need to work a
little bit differently, well then you're going to get the
best opportunity to succeed. And I had a couple of
managers in the tax office which allowed me to to
get to the executive level before I left. But in
the early days, it was difficult, It was hard, and
(08:08):
it was demoralizing at times.
S1 (08:10):
It sounds like there's still a lot of those negative
attitudes and lack of information and education about people who
are vision impaired and how they can do their job.
So for those who are out there who are currently
job seeking and looking for a job, whether they be
entering a field or changing a field later on, what
would be the advice that you would give them?
S2 (08:30):
You need to prepare yourself and you need to have
your expectations set. If your vision impaired and you don't drive,
you're not going to apply to be a bus driver
or pilot. Understand that the jobs that you can do,
but don't make your vision impairment be the pivotal point
of the interview or the pivotal point of the application process,
and demonstrate to the employer how you would do the job.
(08:50):
As an example, when I was appointed the chief executive
of the the aviation company, there are a lot of
questions around, well, you don't fly an airplane, Michael. You're
not a pilot. How are you going to get to airports?
And I talked about, well, you know, I'm almost 50
at the time. I've independently traveled my whole life. I've
never got lost. I've never fallen off a train or
a bus or a car. I've never been to a
meeting late. So I've been able to manage my life
(09:13):
with my vision and attending meetings and getting to functions
and events. It's not going to be a problem working
for you. So as a prospective employee, you need to
remove barriers from the employer because what the employer is
going to do, they straight away think about safety and
work practices and how are we going to get this
done and how are they going to use the computer
and how are they going to find the toilet? How
are they going to get a cup of tea in
(09:33):
the tea room? So take away all those barriers. The
fake barriers that employers are putting up and say that
I've never burnt myself on a cup of tea in
my life. And straight away they go, Oh, okay, that
solves that problem. I've never fallen down a set of stairs.
I've never got stuck in a lift. All the things
that people think that blind people or people with low
(09:54):
vision can't do because they don't have awareness, they don't
have an understanding, they haven't been educated. But we're just
like everyone else. We just find different ways of getting
things done. So prepare yourself for the interview, present yourself,
wear a suit, polish your shoes, you know, do all
the right things that you do in interviews so that
you're competing with the people next to you because you
are starting with a disadvantage. But you've got to turn
(10:15):
that disadvantage into an advantage and say to the employer,
all these things that you want me to do, I
can do them with the eyesight that I've got. I've
got technology that helps me. And I started studied a
master's degree for two years on an iPad and got
a full blown master's degree. You can do it if
you apply yourself and you find the tools and the
technology to help you. And you've got a responsibility to
(10:37):
say that to an employer that you can get this
done and remove any barriers that they may put in
your way.
S1 (10:42):
That's such great advice. Something you just mentioned is that
when you go and you speak to an employer, they
really have concerns, maybe because they've never met someone who's
vision impaired or blind or they have concerns over safety
and productivity. What would be some advice that you would
give to an employer who are considering hiring someone who
is vision impaired or blind?
S2 (11:02):
The first advice I'd give them is do it. Give
the person the job. You know, I'm one of the
hardest working people I know. And I think there's a
culture within people who are visually impaired that they want
to succeed, that they want to prove that they can
get the job done. So you're going to get a
really valuable, worthwhile employee. The other piece of advice I'd
give is if you exclude a group of people from
(11:23):
a pool, you're excluding potentially the best candidate. So if
you've got a job for, you know, an accountant, say,
or a computer programmer or whatever, and you get 100
applicants and five of those applicants are visually impaired or
ten are vision impaired or 15 are disabled. And you go, Well,
I'm only going to employ someone who's fully abled, so
you're cutting your chances down by 15% straight away. You're
(11:44):
excluding 15% of the pool and you don't know within
that 15% of the pool in spite of their disability
that they may have skills over and above what other
people may offer. So it's exclusionary straight away to say,
let's not have these people employed in the 60 seconds
and the 70 seconds when women who got married in
the public service have to resign and the loss of
talent that the workplace lost because all those people have
(12:06):
to retire because they're going off having families. It's just draconian.
And I think today, to exclude people with a disability,
specifically people who have low vision or who are blind
is draconian thinking, and you just limiting yourself and limiting
the capability of your company or your enterprise because you're
not accessing the whole gamut of the talent that's available
to you and technology and, you know, problems that you
(12:27):
may face can be overcome so easily and so readily.
S1 (12:30):
I think you're in a really interesting situation because you've
been both a manager of people with vision impairment and
blindness and also a manager who is vision impaired and blind.
And some people say, I don't know how to manage
someone who's vision impaired and blind. What do I do? What?
How do I do anything that's different. So how do
you manage people who have a vision impairment or blindness?
(12:53):
Is there any difference between working with someone who's sighted
or working with someone who's vision impaired.
S2 (13:00):
Today that there's no difference? But there are obviously some
changes or adaptations that you need to put in place.
So as an example, when I go to a presentation
at Vision Australia that the board or the CEO might
have to have a presentation sitting in a room with
that presentation up on the screen, you're not going to
see it. I'm not going to see it. So the
accommodation you make is you email it to the person beforehand.
(13:21):
He's he's the presentation we're about. Put on the screen, Michael,
you've got it now on your device in front of
you so you can see it. So there's no extra
work there. The presentation is prepared. It's just making it
accessible to me, putting it on a device. And it's
little things like that. Simple little things like that that
you need to think about. It might be a lighting issue. Well,
let's get the person an extra lamp on their desk
(13:41):
so that their desk area and their work area is
a little bit more lit up than it is for
the next person who perhaps doesn't need as much lighting,
Sit them there, a window. There's a whole range of
little things that you can do in that space to
macro things. And I've got a number of staff in
my team. I can think of six straight away that
are vision impaired in they're in the front office of
this organization. They're serving customers on the day to day basis.
(14:02):
Now think about retail sales and how complex and difficult is.
You don't know who's going to come in the front door.
You don't know what they're going to ask for. You
don't know what issues they've got or problems they've got.
Are they going to lodge a complaint or they just
want to buy a product or are they going to
steal products? What are they going to do? And I've
got a number of staff who am vision impaired doing
a fantastic job on the front desk because we've made
some accommodations for them. We've got an POS system that
(14:24):
is fully accessible so they can process transactions. Now, you
don't expect your targets and Woolworth's and places like that
to change their whole system for someone who's vision impaired.
But there are accommodations that you can make and reasonable
adjustments that you can put in place to ensure that
that type of job is accessible to someone who is
vision impaired. And we've done it at Vision Australia. There
are so many things you can do color contrasting lighting,
(14:47):
as I said, technology solutions and technologies so cheap these days.
You know, an iPad is a mainstream device. It's not
an accessible device or a device that's specifically designed for
someone who is blind. There's millions of them out there
in the marketplace. And so to provide me with an
iPad to get part of my job done is just
a normal business investment in a normal business tool and
it's fantastic. Allows me to be as efficient, if not
(15:09):
more efficient than someone without an iPad. So there's not
a lot that employers need to do. There's no fears.
You know, blind people aren't more breakable than people who
aren't blind. We're not more clumsy, we're not more accident prone.
But if the right accommodations are put in place for us,
we can make sure that the tea room or the
stairs or the lift or the workplace is as safe
as it is for every other employer. And think about
(15:31):
the universality of design as well. If your tea room
is safe, where you. Make room a little bit safer
for someone who is visually impaired? Isn't it inherently safer
for everyone who's got full sight as well? So aren't
you then creating a more safe environment for your employees anyway?
And why wouldn't you do that? So it's a simple
equation and a simple solution to employers, and I think
they need to get out there and think about it.
(15:51):
And there's hundreds and hundreds of people who have low
vision out there who would make fantastic employees, and they
just need that go that opportunity, that leg up from
time to time and a little bit of reasonable adjustment.
But it's it's not a lot and it's certainly not expensive.
S1 (16:05):
Just in terms of employers being managers to people who
are vision impaired. Sometimes they feel like they might be
scared to ask vision impaired or blind people questions about
their disability, the fear of being discriminatory. How would you
handle that type of situation?
S2 (16:20):
The way I've handled as a vision impaired person, because
I've always been open and honest about my eyesight. When
I started at Recreational Aviation Australia, I gave all the
staff a presentation on what I could see and what
I couldn't see said. Here's the inside of my eye.
This is what it looks like. Here's the inside of
a normal eye. This is what it looks like. The
difference in this image means that I see like this
and I put a number of images that have been
(16:41):
adjusted on screen, an actual fully sighted image, and then
an image as if I was looking at that image
and then everyone in the team went, Right, okay, this
is what Michael sees. Like this is the things that
we can do to help him in his job. So
I wouldn't be fearful of asking somebody, What can you see?
Or throwing something at someone like happened to me in
the 80 seconds to test their sight, but have a
(17:02):
sensitive conversation with the person and sit down and say, Look,
we've offered you this job. What are the things that
we can do to help you excel and succeed in
the workplace? And are there any things that we can
do to assist you with your eyesight? And then the
conversation flows from that. People will then volunteer, will actually
see well in the light or I don't see colour
well or colour. Contrast is difficult for me. And as
(17:22):
they tell you more information as the employer, you understand
how to adapt and work with them. So it's not
hard and it's not a hard conversation, it's not an
embarrassing or difficult conversation if it's done in the right way,
but it's simply the employer sitting down with the employee saying,
How can we make your experience the best possible experience
it can be? And then the conversation will flow from that.
S1 (17:42):
I also think what you're touching upon having that individual
conversation is not to make any assumptions about what the
person can and can't do or can and can't see.
Everyone's different, everyone's individual.
S2 (17:53):
Exactly. When I was in Sydney, I transferred from the
Sydney Child Support Agency to the Canberra Child Support Agency
and the registrar, all of the manager of the area
that I was getting transferred to was told that I
was blind. And she was like, Oh, he's fine, what
are we going to do? We've got to move the desk,
we've got to move the chairs, we've got to move
the pot plants, we've got to do this. All these
things that she was planning on doing before she met
(18:15):
me because she had this vision in her mind of
what a blind person would need in the workplace. And
then when I walked in, in my suit and walked
up to her and shook hands, she went, Oh, you
haven't fallen over anything. Now I generally don't fall over
things I can get myself around. These are the type
of things that need a large monitor, some good lighting
and that type of stuff, and maybe some color contrast
stuff and someone to talk me through the kitchen so
(18:37):
I can find cups and saucers and plates and put
my fingers over everybody's stuff. And she was like, Oh,
is that all? Huh? Okay. So, yeah, making an assumption
is is the wrong thing to do. Having that individual
conversation don't run around and putting marker tape on the
ground and stuff like that before the person starts, because
(18:57):
every eyesight condition is different. What everyone sees is different.
How much they can see and how they get by
is different in every case. So that one on one
conversation is the most important thing.
S1 (19:07):
That's great advice to managers. So speaking of advice, what
is the best advice you've ever been given in regard
to being a successful manager?
S3 (19:17):
Listen.
S2 (19:18):
Listening is is the key thing. As a manager, too
often in life, we're racing ahead with our thoughts. We've
got an answer to a question straight away. The minute
someone starts talking and the minute we've got that answer
in our head, we just think about getting it out
and our ears are shut. We're not listening to the conversation.
So a skill that I've developed and I've used for
years and years and years is stopping yourself from interjecting.
(19:40):
It's a great line from the Hamilton musical Talk less,
smile more so sit and listen to people and people
will tell you what the issue is and you can
work through it. Once you've sat and listened and understood
their situation and as a manager, it really allows you
to contemplate and think about the solutions that you're trying
to achieve. If you've already got the idea in your
(20:01):
head and you've listened to one person and you're ready
to run off down the street with your idea, we
haven't considered all the options. You haven't considered everyone's view
in the room and you may be making the wrong decision.
So listening is probably the number one skill that I
employ as a manager. If you don't give people the
opportunity to be heard and encourage people and listen to
people again, you're missing out on valuable contributions that people
(20:24):
might be able to add to your team and valuable
outcomes that you might be able to achieve. So listening
is the number one skill family.
S1 (20:30):
So, Michael, in terms of listening, it's been absolutely. Phenomenal
listening to you today and all of the advice that
you would give. One of the things that we find
very difficult is that children sometimes think that work is
not a possibility for them because they are disabled or
they are vision impaired or blind. What would you say
to kids and their parents if they were considering employment
(20:52):
in the future?
S2 (20:53):
The parents have a huge role to play there, and
my mother was instrumental when I was 18 months old,
two years old. She took me to a number of doctors.
I had the head wobble going that a lot of
people who have low vision have going on. I used
to look at things really closely, hold things up to
my face. And every general practitioner that my mum saw
said something wrong with his brain. He's got a brain injury.
(21:15):
Just walk him into the local mental asylum. So eventually
she took me to the University of New South Wales,
to the optometry centre there, and said maybe a couple
of optometrists can look at it. And a couple of
the student optometrists came out, looked at my eyes and
when there's nothing wrong with his brain, it's his eyesight.
That's the problem. If we fashion a pair of glasses,
maybe we can get a little bit more functional vision
for him and get him interested in stuff, which is
(21:36):
what they did. And I've still got the pair of glasses.
They're 54 years later, 53 years later, and Mum pushed
and pushed and pushed. And then I had three brothers
and they're all perfectly sighted and Mum just threw me
in with those three boys and the four of us
just grew up as normal. So she never gave into
my eyesight. There were times that she made sure I
was at the front of the queue or the front
of the classroom or the front of the movie theatre
(21:58):
to make sure I could get an equally and shared experience.
So she was aware of what to do. But parents
have a tremendous responsibility not to wrap your kids in
cotton wool. They're going to fall over. You're going to
scrape your knee, but let them experience the world, get
get them out there. It's an eyesight issue. It's a
vision issue. But the world is a is a tactile, interesting,
exciting place. Just throw your kids out there. And I
(22:21):
had the joy of doing the Lego launch in Australia.
I did a Lego launch in October last year, meeting
with some parents and talking to some kids about their
eyesight journey and their life journey. And that's the advice
I was giving to parents Just let your kids live.
Don't let them live dangerously or stupidly. Go out there
and grab it. The world certainly is your oyster and
there's lots of opportunities. Don't convince yourself or think that
(22:45):
you can do anything because you can't do anything when
you've got low eyesight. There are some jobs and some
tasks that you can't do, and that's a fact of life.
I wanted to be a racing car driver at school
and the career advisor said, No, you've got all the aptitude.
You understand the technical side of it and the engineering
side and the mathematics side of it and all that
type of stuff. But actually you can't see, so you
can't physically drive the car. And that was like, Yeah,
(23:07):
that's disappointing. But yeah, that's true. I can't drive a
racing car. What else can I do? Which is then
I was interested in numbers and physics and all that
type of stuff. So I got into accounting and finance
in the end and much happier there than driving a
car around Mount Panorama. I can assure you. It seems
like hard work to me. But yeah, set your expectations
really high and don't put any limits on yourself, but
(23:28):
accept that. Yeah, there's kind of the odd job that
you can't do. You know, not everybody is going to
be a pediatric neurosurgeon either, whether they've got full eyesight
or they're vision impaired. So even if you've got full eyesight,
the sky is the limit. But not every job is
possible for you to do so. You have to balance
your skills, your abilities and your life experiences and find
something that you love. And, you know, management is something
(23:50):
that I love and I love managing staff and working
with staff and leading staff and talking about their journeys
and how we can get the best out of their
journey and how we can expand their world. And how
we can unleash wonder in people is, is something that
I love doing, you know, making sure people are curious
and asking questions. And as a parent, if you if
you develop that curiosity in your son or daughter who
(24:11):
has a vision impairment, you're going to unleash a lot
for them. The curiosity is the thing that ask the
questions to find out, to peel back the layers of
the onion and see what's out there.
S1 (24:20):
I love that statement. Unleash wonder.
S2 (24:23):
Yeah, that was my mantra that I developed. I had
the opportunity to go to Harvard Business School pre-COVID in 2019,
and as part of that training, we had to really
edit down what your vision as a manager is. What
do you want to be as a manager and a
leader and not a sentence about? I want to unleash
the strategic imperatives of the organization to get the best
(24:45):
financial outcomes. You know, it wasn't about that. It was
about you as a man, what's inside you as a
manager and the one that I developed, it took a
day or so to develop was Unleash the wonder and think.
When we unleash the wonder in the world, whether it's
a sunrise, whether it's an aeroplane taking off know there
is so much wonder around us that we need to experience.
(25:06):
We forget about that sometimes. And I think if we
can unleash the wonder, the world is a beautiful place.
S1 (25:11):
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. It
was absolutely incredible to hear all about your work history
and your experiences and how much things have changed over time.
And I hope that those people listening have the chance
to unleash some wonder and to push themselves a little
bit to see the world in a different way.
S2 (25:30):
Thank you, Belinda. It's been an absolute pleasure and yeah,
really enjoyed the opportunity to chat. Thank you.
S1 (25:36):
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can provide feedback through the email Career podcast at Vision
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(25:59):
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(26:20):
and twitter.com slash radio network. Thanks for traveling with us
along the career path.
Hello and welcome to the Career Path. A recent report
from Sweeney and Vision Australia revealed that 83% of employers
surveyed lacked confidence in hiring someone with a vision impairment.
With this podcast, we hope to delve further into this
issue by speaking to job seekers, employers and employees to
hear their perspective. This podcast is made possible with the
(00:38):
support of Vision Australia and the NDIS. Information Linkages and
Capacity Building Grant. A huge thanks to all of you
who submitted input into this podcast and all of those involved.
Each episode will be available to download As a podcast.
Just go to Vision Australia org and type the career
path into the search engine to find our webpage where
(01:00):
you can listen to other episodes and subscribe to make
sure that you don't miss any. I'm your host, Belinda Wilson.
Today with us we have Michael Link, who has developed
his career as a manager and CEO in private and
non-profit sectors. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
S2 (01:17):
It's my pleasure, Belinda. Really looking forward to this opportunity.
S1 (01:20):
I'm really excited to speak to you today and I
know that all the listeners are excited to to hear
all about your employment history. Is it possible you could
share that history with us?
S2 (01:30):
I started work back in the 1980s, 1984, so I've
been working quite some time at a 37 years now,
38 years. And I started in the Taxation Office back
in the day in the Commonwealth Bank building in Sydney.
I started at a time when the public service wasn't
really interested already or able or capable to employ people
(01:51):
with a vision impairment, and I've been visually impaired since birth.
I have significant short sight. I have significant difficulty with
colours and significant difficulty with identifying people who are more
than a metre or two meters away from me. Getting
a job in the tax office was something that I wanted.
I was very good at mathematics at school, achieved well,
could do a Rubik's cube, could, you know, do quadratic equations,
(02:15):
all the type of things that the kids do. And
they're 16, 17, 18. Back in the 80 seconds I
was good at and I thought, well, the Tax office
is a perfect fit for me. It's all about numbers.
It's all about adding up. That'll be fantastic. But when
I started, they had no understanding of what it was
like to employ someone who was visually impaired. So it
was difficult for them and it was difficult for me.
And in the end I spent 15 years in the
(02:35):
tax office, so eventually found a way and the employer
found the way. After that I moved into my own company.
I ran a computer training company for a couple of
years and really started to learn technology and understand how
technology could help people who were visually impaired. And a
lot of work in the Microsoft Office suite of products,
(02:56):
training people, how to use those, teaching people how to
build computers and really developing some technical skills. And then
after that, I really started to forge a sort of
senior executive career. I'd studied at the tax office, and
then I moved into the non-for-profit sector and spent a
couple of years with Royal Blind Society in Canberra before
(03:17):
I was appointed chief executive officer of the RSPCA, which
was probably the scariest day of my life. I've just
applied for a job, I'm visually impaired and here I'm
about to embark on a chief executive officer role looking
after 50 or 60 staff, 3000 volunteers and about 10,000 animals.
So it was quite a harrowing experience in the early days.
(03:39):
But again, I buckled down, did my homework, understood what
my role was, and succeed and did some really good
things and some things that I'm very proud of at
RSPCA and left RSPCA in 2013 and moved into the
aviation sector, I was appointed chief executive officer of a
company called Recreational Aviation Australia and the chairman there and
(04:00):
I used to joke with people that we've got a
blind guy running an aviation company with pilots and engineers
as a Boeing, I'm going to do this. But again,
knuckled down and we worked together and we solved a
lot of problems and solved a lot of difficulties around
my eyesight. And I was able to succeed in that.
And I was there for seven years, seven and a
half years. And that's when I met Ron Hooton, the
chief executive of Vision Australia. We're at a game of
(04:22):
cricket in Sydney, Australia and New Zealand Test match. He's
a Kiwi and I'm a devout Aussie fan in the
cricket and we had breakfast and had a bit of
a conversation and Ron suggested I join the team at
Vision Australia and perhaps use some of my 30 years
of experience to help the next chapter for Vision Australia
work with the staff, both the vision impaired and fully sighted,
and just share my experiences, share some of my leadership
(04:43):
experiences and some of my life experience and my lived
experiences to do good for Vision Australia, which is what
I'm doing now and I'm loving every minute of it.
So it's been a bit of a security career, reasonably
eclectic from different businesses and different industries, but I've enjoyed
pretty much most of it and there has been a
fair share of challenges.
S1 (05:01):
When you talk about knuckling down and figuring out your
role and overcoming these challenges, what sort of challenges have
you faced throughout your career while your job seeking in
an industry that may not necessarily be disability friendly?
S2 (05:16):
Back in the 80s, it was almost impossible. I had
a manager throw something at me once to see if
I could catch it, and of course I didn't see
it and didn't catch it. And he said to me, Well,
can you even see? And I said, Well, I can
see to do my job, mate. What's important, whether I
catch stuff that you throw at me or whether I
sit down and do my job. There was no complaints
process back then. There was no discrimination back. And it
was just he was this this this old man who
(05:38):
was a boss or a manager of the area using,
you know, something on his desk to throw at me
to see if I could or couldn't see. And I
went out in the office. And this is bizarre, but
I didn't let it stop me. Those little things are
sort of speed bumps in the way or crucible moments
that you have in your life. You don't let them
stop you and you apply yourself. There's another episode where
(05:58):
I won a promotion and I was promoted from the
lower grade to a sort of, you know, next level
up in the public service. Everybody gets graded and goes
up a level from time to time. So I applied
for a position and I won that position and then
someone appealed. And in the public service back in the day,
you could appeal against someone getting promoted and they appealed
on the grounds that I was visually impaired. Hey, this
guy's vision impaired, he can't do the job as well
(06:19):
as me. I'm fully sighted. Why are you giving people
who are visually impaired jobs ahead of me? And ultimately,
I lost that appeal when I was put back a level. So,
you know, and I'll forever question to the day whether
it was because I was visually impaired or whether it
was that this person was a better operator in the job.
And I would hope that a merit protection agency wouldn't
have used my eyesight in the decision making process. But
(06:40):
you never know. It was the 80 seconds again. There
wasn't a lot of support and people who had disabilities,
whether vision impaired or something else, weren't treated as equally
as they are today. So, you know, those type of
things taught me a lot in time, but I continued
to apply for jobs. I studied a degree, I've got
a bachelor's degree in taxation and work with people. And
it was incredibly hard because we had no digital technology
(07:03):
back then. It was all out of books and handwritten
notes back in the early 90 seconds, and I had to,
you know, work twice as hard as the next person
to get half as much done. But I did it
and I continued to show that I could succeed and
ultimately the promotions would follow. You know, there were a
few champions within the Tax Office movement that saw the
effort I was putting in, and I was awarded a
(07:25):
public service medal for my hard work in taxation inquiries,
working with the inquiries, solutions for a number of people
who are lodging their tax returns. And then I did
a lot of work with the Child Support Agency, and
I had a couple of very good managers that were
very supportive at the time. And I think that's all
you need. You need someone who accepts that you are
who you are and your eyesight's not going to stop
(07:46):
you doing stuff. It might mean you do things a
little bit differently, but invariably it doesn't stop you. And
if you get that person that accepts that, it's not
going to stop you, that we need to work a
little bit differently, well then you're going to get the
best opportunity to succeed. And I had a couple of
managers in the tax office which allowed me to to
get to the executive level before I left. But in
the early days, it was difficult, It was hard, and
(08:08):
it was demoralizing at times.
S1 (08:10):
It sounds like there's still a lot of those negative
attitudes and lack of information and education about people who
are vision impaired and how they can do their job.
So for those who are out there who are currently
job seeking and looking for a job, whether they be
entering a field or changing a field later on, what
would be the advice that you would give them?
S2 (08:30):
You need to prepare yourself and you need to have
your expectations set. If your vision impaired and you don't drive,
you're not going to apply to be a bus driver
or pilot. Understand that the jobs that you can do,
but don't make your vision impairment be the pivotal point
of the interview or the pivotal point of the application process,
and demonstrate to the employer how you would do the job.
(08:50):
As an example, when I was appointed the chief executive
of the the aviation company, there are a lot of
questions around, well, you don't fly an airplane, Michael. You're
not a pilot. How are you going to get to airports?
And I talked about, well, you know, I'm almost 50
at the time. I've independently traveled my whole life. I've
never got lost. I've never fallen off a train or
a bus or a car. I've never been to a
meeting late. So I've been able to manage my life
(09:13):
with my vision and attending meetings and getting to functions
and events. It's not going to be a problem working
for you. So as a prospective employee, you need to
remove barriers from the employer because what the employer is
going to do, they straight away think about safety and
work practices and how are we going to get this
done and how are they going to use the computer
and how are they going to find the toilet? How
are they going to get a cup of tea in
(09:33):
the tea room? So take away all those barriers. The
fake barriers that employers are putting up and say that
I've never burnt myself on a cup of tea in
my life. And straight away they go, Oh, okay, that
solves that problem. I've never fallen down a set of stairs.
I've never got stuck in a lift. All the things
that people think that blind people or people with low
(09:54):
vision can't do because they don't have awareness, they don't
have an understanding, they haven't been educated. But we're just
like everyone else. We just find different ways of getting
things done. So prepare yourself for the interview, present yourself,
wear a suit, polish your shoes, you know, do all
the right things that you do in interviews so that
you're competing with the people next to you because you
are starting with a disadvantage. But you've got to turn
(10:15):
that disadvantage into an advantage and say to the employer,
all these things that you want me to do, I
can do them with the eyesight that I've got. I've
got technology that helps me. And I started studied a
master's degree for two years on an iPad and got
a full blown master's degree. You can do it if
you apply yourself and you find the tools and the
technology to help you. And you've got a responsibility to
(10:37):
say that to an employer that you can get this
done and remove any barriers that they may put in
your way.
S1 (10:42):
That's such great advice. Something you just mentioned is that
when you go and you speak to an employer, they
really have concerns, maybe because they've never met someone who's
vision impaired or blind or they have concerns over safety
and productivity. What would be some advice that you would
give to an employer who are considering hiring someone who
is vision impaired or blind?
S2 (11:02):
The first advice I'd give them is do it. Give
the person the job. You know, I'm one of the
hardest working people I know. And I think there's a
culture within people who are visually impaired that they want
to succeed, that they want to prove that they can
get the job done. So you're going to get a
really valuable, worthwhile employee. The other piece of advice I'd
give is if you exclude a group of people from
(11:23):
a pool, you're excluding potentially the best candidate. So if
you've got a job for, you know, an accountant, say,
or a computer programmer or whatever, and you get 100
applicants and five of those applicants are visually impaired or
ten are vision impaired or 15 are disabled. And you go, Well,
I'm only going to employ someone who's fully abled, so
you're cutting your chances down by 15% straight away. You're
(11:44):
excluding 15% of the pool and you don't know within
that 15% of the pool in spite of their disability
that they may have skills over and above what other
people may offer. So it's exclusionary straight away to say,
let's not have these people employed in the 60 seconds
and the 70 seconds when women who got married in
the public service have to resign and the loss of
talent that the workplace lost because all those people have
(12:06):
to retire because they're going off having families. It's just draconian.
And I think today, to exclude people with a disability,
specifically people who have low vision or who are blind
is draconian thinking, and you just limiting yourself and limiting
the capability of your company or your enterprise because you're
not accessing the whole gamut of the talent that's available
to you and technology and, you know, problems that you
(12:27):
may face can be overcome so easily and so readily.
S1 (12:30):
I think you're in a really interesting situation because you've
been both a manager of people with vision impairment and
blindness and also a manager who is vision impaired and blind.
And some people say, I don't know how to manage
someone who's vision impaired and blind. What do I do? What?
How do I do anything that's different. So how do
you manage people who have a vision impairment or blindness?
(12:53):
Is there any difference between working with someone who's sighted
or working with someone who's vision impaired.
S2 (13:00):
Today that there's no difference? But there are obviously some
changes or adaptations that you need to put in place.
So as an example, when I go to a presentation
at Vision Australia that the board or the CEO might
have to have a presentation sitting in a room with
that presentation up on the screen, you're not going to
see it. I'm not going to see it. So the
accommodation you make is you email it to the person beforehand.
(13:21):
He's he's the presentation we're about. Put on the screen, Michael,
you've got it now on your device in front of
you so you can see it. So there's no extra
work there. The presentation is prepared. It's just making it
accessible to me, putting it on a device. And it's
little things like that. Simple little things like that that
you need to think about. It might be a lighting issue. Well,
let's get the person an extra lamp on their desk
(13:41):
so that their desk area and their work area is
a little bit more lit up than it is for
the next person who perhaps doesn't need as much lighting,
Sit them there, a window. There's a whole range of
little things that you can do in that space to
macro things. And I've got a number of staff in
my team. I can think of six straight away that
are vision impaired in they're in the front office of
this organization. They're serving customers on the day to day basis.
(14:02):
Now think about retail sales and how complex and difficult is.
You don't know who's going to come in the front door.
You don't know what they're going to ask for. You
don't know what issues they've got or problems they've got.
Are they going to lodge a complaint or they just
want to buy a product or are they going to
steal products? What are they going to do? And I've
got a number of staff who am vision impaired doing
a fantastic job on the front desk because we've made
some accommodations for them. We've got an POS system that
(14:24):
is fully accessible so they can process transactions. Now, you
don't expect your targets and Woolworth's and places like that
to change their whole system for someone who's vision impaired.
But there are accommodations that you can make and reasonable
adjustments that you can put in place to ensure that
that type of job is accessible to someone who is
vision impaired. And we've done it at Vision Australia. There
are so many things you can do color contrasting lighting,
(14:47):
as I said, technology solutions and technologies so cheap these days.
You know, an iPad is a mainstream device. It's not
an accessible device or a device that's specifically designed for
someone who is blind. There's millions of them out there
in the marketplace. And so to provide me with an
iPad to get part of my job done is just
a normal business investment in a normal business tool and
it's fantastic. Allows me to be as efficient, if not
(15:09):
more efficient than someone without an iPad. So there's not
a lot that employers need to do. There's no fears.
You know, blind people aren't more breakable than people who
aren't blind. We're not more clumsy, we're not more accident prone.
But if the right accommodations are put in place for us,
we can make sure that the tea room or the
stairs or the lift or the workplace is as safe
as it is for every other employer. And think about
(15:31):
the universality of design as well. If your tea room
is safe, where you. Make room a little bit safer
for someone who is visually impaired? Isn't it inherently safer
for everyone who's got full sight as well? So aren't
you then creating a more safe environment for your employees anyway?
And why wouldn't you do that? So it's a simple
equation and a simple solution to employers, and I think
they need to get out there and think about it.
(15:51):
And there's hundreds and hundreds of people who have low
vision out there who would make fantastic employees, and they
just need that go that opportunity, that leg up from
time to time and a little bit of reasonable adjustment.
But it's it's not a lot and it's certainly not expensive.
S1 (16:05):
Just in terms of employers being managers to people who
are vision impaired. Sometimes they feel like they might be
scared to ask vision impaired or blind people questions about
their disability, the fear of being discriminatory. How would you
handle that type of situation?
S2 (16:20):
The way I've handled as a vision impaired person, because
I've always been open and honest about my eyesight. When
I started at Recreational Aviation Australia, I gave all the
staff a presentation on what I could see and what
I couldn't see said. Here's the inside of my eye.
This is what it looks like. Here's the inside of
a normal eye. This is what it looks like. The
difference in this image means that I see like this
and I put a number of images that have been
(16:41):
adjusted on screen, an actual fully sighted image, and then
an image as if I was looking at that image
and then everyone in the team went, Right, okay, this
is what Michael sees. Like this is the things that
we can do to help him in his job. So
I wouldn't be fearful of asking somebody, What can you see?
Or throwing something at someone like happened to me in
the 80 seconds to test their sight, but have a
(17:02):
sensitive conversation with the person and sit down and say, Look,
we've offered you this job. What are the things that
we can do to help you excel and succeed in
the workplace? And are there any things that we can
do to assist you with your eyesight? And then the
conversation flows from that. People will then volunteer, will actually
see well in the light or I don't see colour
well or colour. Contrast is difficult for me. And as
(17:22):
they tell you more information as the employer, you understand
how to adapt and work with them. So it's not
hard and it's not a hard conversation, it's not an
embarrassing or difficult conversation if it's done in the right way,
but it's simply the employer sitting down with the employee saying,
How can we make your experience the best possible experience
it can be? And then the conversation will flow from that.
S1 (17:42):
I also think what you're touching upon having that individual
conversation is not to make any assumptions about what the
person can and can't do or can and can't see.
Everyone's different, everyone's individual.
S2 (17:53):
Exactly. When I was in Sydney, I transferred from the
Sydney Child Support Agency to the Canberra Child Support Agency
and the registrar, all of the manager of the area
that I was getting transferred to was told that I
was blind. And she was like, Oh, he's fine, what
are we going to do? We've got to move the desk,
we've got to move the chairs, we've got to move
the pot plants, we've got to do this. All these
things that she was planning on doing before she met
(18:15):
me because she had this vision in her mind of
what a blind person would need in the workplace. And
then when I walked in, in my suit and walked
up to her and shook hands, she went, Oh, you
haven't fallen over anything. Now I generally don't fall over
things I can get myself around. These are the type
of things that need a large monitor, some good lighting
and that type of stuff, and maybe some color contrast
stuff and someone to talk me through the kitchen so
(18:37):
I can find cups and saucers and plates and put
my fingers over everybody's stuff. And she was like, Oh,
is that all? Huh? Okay. So, yeah, making an assumption
is is the wrong thing to do. Having that individual
conversation don't run around and putting marker tape on the
ground and stuff like that before the person starts, because
(18:57):
every eyesight condition is different. What everyone sees is different.
How much they can see and how they get by
is different in every case. So that one on one
conversation is the most important thing.
S1 (19:07):
That's great advice to managers. So speaking of advice, what
is the best advice you've ever been given in regard
to being a successful manager?
S3 (19:17):
Listen.
S2 (19:18):
Listening is is the key thing. As a manager, too
often in life, we're racing ahead with our thoughts. We've
got an answer to a question straight away. The minute
someone starts talking and the minute we've got that answer
in our head, we just think about getting it out
and our ears are shut. We're not listening to the conversation.
So a skill that I've developed and I've used for
years and years and years is stopping yourself from interjecting.
(19:40):
It's a great line from the Hamilton musical Talk less,
smile more so sit and listen to people and people
will tell you what the issue is and you can
work through it. Once you've sat and listened and understood
their situation and as a manager, it really allows you
to contemplate and think about the solutions that you're trying
to achieve. If you've already got the idea in your
(20:01):
head and you've listened to one person and you're ready
to run off down the street with your idea, we
haven't considered all the options. You haven't considered everyone's view
in the room and you may be making the wrong decision.
So listening is probably the number one skill that I
employ as a manager. If you don't give people the
opportunity to be heard and encourage people and listen to
people again, you're missing out on valuable contributions that people
(20:24):
might be able to add to your team and valuable
outcomes that you might be able to achieve. So listening
is the number one skill family.
S1 (20:30):
So, Michael, in terms of listening, it's been absolutely. Phenomenal
listening to you today and all of the advice that
you would give. One of the things that we find
very difficult is that children sometimes think that work is
not a possibility for them because they are disabled or
they are vision impaired or blind. What would you say
to kids and their parents if they were considering employment
(20:52):
in the future?
S2 (20:53):
The parents have a huge role to play there, and
my mother was instrumental when I was 18 months old,
two years old. She took me to a number of doctors.
I had the head wobble going that a lot of
people who have low vision have going on. I used
to look at things really closely, hold things up to
my face. And every general practitioner that my mum saw
said something wrong with his brain. He's got a brain injury.
(21:15):
Just walk him into the local mental asylum. So eventually
she took me to the University of New South Wales,
to the optometry centre there, and said maybe a couple
of optometrists can look at it. And a couple of
the student optometrists came out, looked at my eyes and
when there's nothing wrong with his brain, it's his eyesight.
That's the problem. If we fashion a pair of glasses,
maybe we can get a little bit more functional vision
for him and get him interested in stuff, which is
(21:36):
what they did. And I've still got the pair of glasses.
They're 54 years later, 53 years later, and Mum pushed
and pushed and pushed. And then I had three brothers
and they're all perfectly sighted and Mum just threw me
in with those three boys and the four of us
just grew up as normal. So she never gave into
my eyesight. There were times that she made sure I
was at the front of the queue or the front
of the classroom or the front of the movie theatre
(21:58):
to make sure I could get an equally and shared experience.
So she was aware of what to do. But parents
have a tremendous responsibility not to wrap your kids in
cotton wool. They're going to fall over. You're going to
scrape your knee, but let them experience the world, get
get them out there. It's an eyesight issue. It's a
vision issue. But the world is a is a tactile, interesting,
exciting place. Just throw your kids out there. And I
(22:21):
had the joy of doing the Lego launch in Australia.
I did a Lego launch in October last year, meeting
with some parents and talking to some kids about their
eyesight journey and their life journey. And that's the advice
I was giving to parents Just let your kids live.
Don't let them live dangerously or stupidly. Go out there
and grab it. The world certainly is your oyster and
there's lots of opportunities. Don't convince yourself or think that
(22:45):
you can do anything because you can't do anything when
you've got low eyesight. There are some jobs and some
tasks that you can't do, and that's a fact of life.
I wanted to be a racing car driver at school
and the career advisor said, No, you've got all the aptitude.
You understand the technical side of it and the engineering
side and the mathematics side of it and all that
type of stuff. But actually you can't see, so you
can't physically drive the car. And that was like, Yeah,
(23:07):
that's disappointing. But yeah, that's true. I can't drive a
racing car. What else can I do? Which is then
I was interested in numbers and physics and all that
type of stuff. So I got into accounting and finance
in the end and much happier there than driving a
car around Mount Panorama. I can assure you. It seems
like hard work to me. But yeah, set your expectations
really high and don't put any limits on yourself, but
(23:28):
accept that. Yeah, there's kind of the odd job that
you can't do. You know, not everybody is going to
be a pediatric neurosurgeon either, whether they've got full eyesight
or they're vision impaired. So even if you've got full eyesight,
the sky is the limit. But not every job is
possible for you to do so. You have to balance
your skills, your abilities and your life experiences and find
something that you love. And, you know, management is something
(23:50):
that I love and I love managing staff and working
with staff and leading staff and talking about their journeys
and how we can get the best out of their
journey and how we can expand their world. And how
we can unleash wonder in people is, is something that
I love doing, you know, making sure people are curious
and asking questions. And as a parent, if you if
you develop that curiosity in your son or daughter who
(24:11):
has a vision impairment, you're going to unleash a lot
for them. The curiosity is the thing that ask the
questions to find out, to peel back the layers of
the onion and see what's out there.
S1 (24:20):
I love that statement. Unleash wonder.
S2 (24:23):
Yeah, that was my mantra that I developed. I had
the opportunity to go to Harvard Business School pre-COVID in 2019,
and as part of that training, we had to really
edit down what your vision as a manager is. What
do you want to be as a manager and a
leader and not a sentence about? I want to unleash
the strategic imperatives of the organization to get the best
(24:45):
financial outcomes. You know, it wasn't about that. It was
about you as a man, what's inside you as a
manager and the one that I developed, it took a
day or so to develop was Unleash the wonder and think.
When we unleash the wonder in the world, whether it's
a sunrise, whether it's an aeroplane taking off know there
is so much wonder around us that we need to experience.
(25:06):
We forget about that sometimes. And I think if we
can unleash the wonder, the world is a beautiful place.
S1 (25:11):
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. It
was absolutely incredible to hear all about your work history
and your experiences and how much things have changed over time.
And I hope that those people listening have the chance
to unleash some wonder and to push themselves a little
bit to see the world in a different way.
S2 (25:30):
Thank you, Belinda. It's been an absolute pleasure and yeah,
really enjoyed the opportunity to chat. Thank you.
S1 (25:36):
The conversation doesn't have to stop here. Share this podcast
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and followers, or tell us what's on your mind. You
can provide feedback through the email Career podcast at Vision
Australia Talk The Career Path Podcast series is available to
download via our website. Just go to Vision Australia org
(25:59):
and type the career path into the search field to
find our webpage where you can listen to other episodes
benefit from a range of resources and subscribe to ensure
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(26:20):
and twitter.com slash radio network. Thanks for traveling with us
along the career path.
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