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S2 Ep 1 Nerodiversity in the workforce
158 Plays2 years ago
Ever find yourself asking for a different opinion and to have your employees think differently? Meet Ed, one of the leaders in the field of Neurodiversity and hiring. We talk to Ed about finding, cultiivating, and most importantly, supporting a neurodiverse workforce. If you've got a problem finding talent, maybe it's time to change your thinking and your talent pool.
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Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, president of BusyWeb, and every week, Trigby Olsen and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations.
Mistake Leads to Neurodiversity Topic
00:00:24
Speaker
I made a mistake recently, Dave. Do you ever have this with your wife where she's talking and she's explaining about her day and then she uses a big word and you go, wait, what? Once in a while, yes. And as you know, my wife is a school counselor and she was recently talking about neurodiversity in schools and I was like, wait, what? And then I got a primer on neurodiversity and I thought that was such a fascinating concept.
00:00:53
Speaker
which again, don't tell my wife that I agreed with her, but I looked up some books on
Guest Introduction: Ed Thompson
00:00:59
Speaker
it. I found a great book called Hidden Force, Unlocking the Potential of Neurodiversity at Work. We actually have the author who's joining us today. His name is Ed Thompson. He's one of the world's foremost experts in workplace neuroinclusivity, and he's the author of the book. He runs a company called Optimize, which he's founded in 2016. Welcome, Ed.
00:01:23
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let's start with the basics and hopefully you can help me explain to my wife why she's wrong.
What is Neurodiversity?
00:01:31
Speaker
What is neurodiversity? Yeah, I think we have to start here because there's a lot of misconceptions and we also see when we train companies, 60-65% of people say they've never even heard the term. Yeah. Definitely good to start here.
00:01:47
Speaker
Neurodiversity means sort of what it sounds like. It simply means that humans have different brains. There's no one normal brain. One neurodiversity writer made the nice point that you can't go to a museum and see the normal brain in a jar because it doesn't exist. So everybody's brain is wired differently. That's what neurodiversity means. And because of that, and sometimes people misuse this term as well.
00:02:16
Speaker
humans are neurodiverse. As a result, organizations are neurodiverse, your candidate pool is neurodiverse, your audience and so on. There's no one normal brain.
Neurodivergent Strengths and Challenges
00:02:28
Speaker
I think where people get confused is how does that relate to neurodivergent, neurodivergence, and they hear terms like autistic and so on. So some people within that human spectrum, and again, we all have a different brain.
00:02:43
Speaker
have an identity as what's called neurodivergent. Now that could be dyslexic, it could be being an ADHD, and so on. That comes from having a particular cluster of traits that are less common overall, but have been labeled and given a medical diagnosis really only over the last hundred years or so.
00:03:05
Speaker
And today, many people have reclaimed some of those terms as just being a part of their identity, you know, not being a disability. All of those are typically diagnosed on negatives, it's behavioral, it's sort of what can a kid not do as well as their peers. But actually, I think there's this growing recognition that these are simply different brain wireings within that bigger spectrum, and brain wireings with great strengths, as well as
00:03:33
Speaker
contextual challenges. And it's estimated today around 20% of people might be neurodivergent, although many have never had a diagnosis. And it's also very much debated what is considered neurodivergent and what isn't. So I think the easiest way to think about this is just remember, humans are neurodiverse, no two brains are alike. And if we recognize that in everything we do, that's the best path to including everybody.
00:04:02
Speaker
Absolutely.
Importance of Neurodiversity in the Workplace
00:04:03
Speaker
Excellent. So why does this matter in the workplace? I think it matters a lot. I think it matters for a couple of reasons. First of all, we look at organizational priorities in the 2020s. Interesting. I was looking at a Fortune 100 company yesterday, looking at their annual report from last year. And the first thing the CEO was talking about was COVID.
00:04:27
Speaker
Second thing he was talking about was human capital. The first sub-point there was diversity and inclusion. I think organizations increasingly recognized how important their people are, that their people are their most expensive and important asset. I think organizations are struggling to keep people around, to attract the best talent, and to maximize productivity.
00:04:53
Speaker
and innovation. Innovation, we know, is no joke today because of the plummeting lifespan of companies. Companies aren't oil tankers with 60-year lifespans anymore. If you're not innovating, somebody else is and you're going to be disrupted. All of those things
00:05:10
Speaker
I think come back to the fact that if people are so important, what's the one tool that we're all bringing to work every day is our brains. And it's extraordinary really that we don't learn about neurodiversity at school. We don't appreciate these differences. So all of these interactions at work, whether it's a team looking to innovate, whether it's a recruiter trying to hire and so on, all of those interactions take place between people with different brains. And if we're,
00:05:40
Speaker
managing those interactions without paying any attention to neurodiversity or what we call neuroinclusion, which is that kind of consideration of these differences. I don't think we can live into all those promises of being a diverse and inclusive employer. But even more than that, I don't think we can meet all of those talent goals that we all know every business needs.
00:06:05
Speaker
This is great Ed and I should interject here that I have a neurodiverse son who wears it as a badge of honor and I think all of his friends that are in the same kind of general crew all do as well. They're all very proud of their Asperger's slash wherever they are and so it feels like
00:06:30
Speaker
maybe at least along among the youngest generation that's just coming in and getting in and out of school and entering the workforce that there's a real embracing.
Changing Perceptions of Neurodiversity
00:06:40
Speaker
Of neurodivergence are you seeing that kind of in the corporate world as well where people are more accepting and i know that that's part of the point of the book but is there a good ups well right now of recognition.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, there is absolutely because I think businesses exist within their societies. And so you have to see all of this together and you have to think about the kind of societal change here. And again, I mentioned these, some of these terms are really quite recent, quite recent in human history. Humans have always been neurodiverse, but some of these terms are quite recent. The terms
00:07:20
Speaker
the medicalization of some of these differences I think has led to a focus on negatives and I think you see that as well in culture and so one of the things I talk about in the book is
00:07:34
Speaker
Where do we get these stereotypes from? Where do we get these stereotypes from that dyslexic people are a dumb or autistic people are incapable and so on or socially useless? Actually, culture has represented neurodivergent people in a very warped and one-dimensional way. I think if you
00:07:57
Speaker
If you don't get educated on what neurodiversity really is and then you get these kind of cultural representations, it's not surprising to see how people, you know, face
00:08:08
Speaker
difficulties in the workplace. But to your point, I think that's all changing. And actually, if we talk about business, I mean, look at the business icons of our time and how many of them are neurodivergent and how many of them talk about the fact that it's because they're neurodivergent that they've been so successful. And actually, if you dig, and again, I talk about this in the book in a different chapter,
00:08:34
Speaker
you look at the top of almost any field of life, whether it's the Olympics, Michael Phelps, your sports, Michael Jordan, acting, Tom Cruise, music, Adam Levine. I mean, neurodivergent people are at the top of absolutely every field, including business. So I do think that awareness is starting to shift. And it's being driven as well by neurodivergent people in organizations who've really
00:09:03
Speaker
been hidden and quiet and I think often been nervous to talk about their differences. That's hugely changed over the last couple of years. You now have networks, ERGs, one company I interviewed in the book have 400 people in there.
00:09:21
Speaker
neurodiversity resource group saying look hey we're here and we you know we want change we're committed to the company but but we want it to be more inclusive of people like us absolutely there are there positive cultural influences of neurodivergent people because i know i know i'm of the age that might kind of want one of my first experiences with the neurodivergent person and
00:09:45
Speaker
popular culture was Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man, where he had this very specific diagnosis that caused him to be the way that he was, but that's not indicative of all the people. I think it's changing as well. I think the last five to 10 years is probably an improvement on what's come before and you have more, say, TV characters who are openly neurodivergent and shown in a more balanced
00:10:15
Speaker
fashion, I think it could still go beyond. I think some of these shows still lean on some of the stereotypes. But for example, very successful crime drama in Europe called The Bridge.
00:10:29
Speaker
and the main character, I think it's Swedish, Danish, the main character is an autistic woman. So first of all, I mean, we know from our interviews, autistic women at work, in fact, autistic neurodivergent people, sorry, in fact, female neurodivergent people often find, you know, particular, you know, even disbelief at their existing at work, you know, oh, you're autistic and female didn't even know that was a thing that sort of
00:10:57
Speaker
And so just having a character here who's in a leadership role, who's pretty female, I think even that's a positive if you look at what came before.
00:11:09
Speaker
I even think the BBC version, updated version of Sherlock Holmes with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. He was played as Doro the Virgin, I think, if I remember correctly, too. Not seen it. Oh, it's fantastic. They're all little mini movies. I definitely recommend it. I do like Sherlock Holmes, so I should check that out.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. And that was part of his issue is that he was neurodivergent in a way that was elevated his thinking compared to everyone else. Yeah, it's a great job for somebody who has a different way of thinking. I actually interviewed a neurodivergent police officer
Unique Interactions and Challenging 'Normal'
00:11:58
Speaker
for the book who wanted to stay anonymous because of
00:12:02
Speaker
the lack of appreciation of some of these differences in his force, which I think is a sad but quite typical thing. But he was describing how his thinking style has benefited him in his job, and he said,
00:12:21
Speaker
One of the things that makes him different is if there's action. Suddenly, there's an incident in a house or a store or whatever. He would describe his colleagues as all getting very steamed up, right? Up and at him, let's jump in the car. He would say he would be the only one who would just have this calm, analytical approach. He'd say, go off to the computer and he'd figure out, who are these people? He'd figure out where
00:12:51
Speaker
where they probably going next, because they're probably not where we think they are now. And then he'd be the one to say, right, check out, you know, this house down the street. And lo and behold, you know, they were so
00:13:03
Speaker
Interesting, really. Fascinating. My son, I have a nine-year-old son who's neurotypical, but he has a neurodivergent friend whose name is Jack. Jack is just the coolest kid. I remember the first time I met him, or I think the second time I met him, I said, hey, Jack, what have you been up to? He sat down next to me, and then for about 10 minutes, he described everything that he did that day.
00:13:31
Speaker
And initially, I thought, this is hilarious that he's doing this. And then the longer he talked, the more I realized how personally at fault I was for thinking that. Because why is this behavior not normal? I asked him a question to tell me what he's been up to. He's telling me what he's been up to. And he's genuinely happy that I'm having this conversation with him.
00:13:55
Speaker
So I felt really bad, but also really honored at the same time. So I learned a lot from Jack. And now every time I see him, I ask him the question, hey, what have you been up to? And he does the same thing, and it's really neat. But back to the topic, why has neurodiversity been overlooked in the workplace?
00:14:17
Speaker
I think it's partly because it's been overlooked in society. Again, you look at diversity and inclusion, if you like. The first movement on those topics was really in the 60s with the civil rights legislation. In fact, the first enterprise resource group was at Xerox in 1964, African-American employees.
00:14:41
Speaker
coming together to support each other and advocate for their needs. Now, the term neurodiversity wasn't coined till the late 1990s. So around half the time DEI has even been a thing, nobody's even used the term neurodiversity. And I think it's been wrongly seen as this kind of tiny niche of disability.
00:15:07
Speaker
which as we know now is probably wrong for a couple of reasons. Wrong because many neurodivergent people don't consider their neuro differences at disability and wrong because actually this may be 20% of people. So I think that's part of it. I think the other part is that the symptoms of what I would call non neuro inclusivity. So an organization is most of the organization we work with.
00:15:33
Speaker
are in a similar state when they start. They're super committed to people, diversity, and so when they recognize this stuff matters, they appreciate diversity of thought, they realize that's how they're going to innovate and build stronger organizations. But they've never done anything on this, so it's kind of a blind spot. And partly it's a blind spot because a lot of the issues are hidden. So when we talk to people who are neurodivergent, they describe
00:15:58
Speaker
being excluded in hiring processes because you know they're not making eye contact or they're speaking with a flat affect so people don't think they're interested or they're struggling with a psychometric test that's confusing or they're struggling with a timed application form that's poorly formatted and stressful because it says you've only got two minutes left you know we're hemorrhaging talent there but you know nobody realizes and it's one of the great sort of I think
00:16:27
Speaker
challenges for us to get across to organizations is that you're not always hiring the best people. And it's very, very difficult to say that to somebody who's in an organization themselves because, surprise, surprise, they think, well, if they hired me, they must be doing a pretty good job and these processes have got to be working fine. That's not true. Even within the workforce, we know
00:16:51
Speaker
organizations by definition are neurodiverse already, albeit they could probably be more so. We hear lots of stories of people masking, which means pretending not to be neurotypical, which can be of course exhausting in terms of your productivity and so on. You don't get the support you need, you don't get
00:17:12
Speaker
The accommodations you need you have to deal with your colleagues is on not catering to your preferences and then we hear all sorts of issues and this is the only bit that kind of bubbles above the surface.
00:17:23
Speaker
where people do disclose, often they are met with disbelief, cynicism, ignorance, and so on. I've heard every story from, oh, I'm sorry, you're autistic, that means you've got a short lifespan. I mean, nonsense, but that's the sort of thing people have to deal with. So you get this vicious cycle where people don't disclose, and actually 90% of people don't.
00:17:49
Speaker
Tonight we talk about trying to bring your full self to work. 90% of 20% aren't doing that because they don't feel comfortable. So it really is a sort of bubbling volcano. And occasionally we'll talk to an organization who says, look,
00:18:03
Speaker
We had an incident, we had conflict with the manager, we had somebody leave and so on. I think high turnover is probably also correlated to this. You look at why people leave companies, it's really interesting. It's often my manager doesn't understand me, my teammates don't understand me, I don't feel comfortable in the environment.
00:18:26
Speaker
It's this real, I think, sore that's often overlooked for all those reasons, and that's something we want to help correct. That's primarily the work you do at Optimize. Tell us more about how that happens.
Ed's Journey and Optimize
00:18:42
Speaker
Well, the background, which is probably helpful as well, I rather to my surprise found myself doing people and diversity work at a tech company in London. Surprised because I'd always just done commercial stuff up to that point.
00:19:00
Speaker
But I really saw, they say these days, HR priorities have become CEO priorities. And I really saw that firsthand because my boss, who was the CEO, what were the things that were keeping him up at night? We can't hire fast enough. Everybody sort of looks the same, thinks the same. This isn't the 21st century workforce that we need. So I got involved in apprenticeships and other ways of trying to change that.
00:19:24
Speaker
I was really struck by the impact not just on you can always take an individual and say we've given them a chance isn't that a great human interest story sure but i was really interested in the impact on the business.
00:19:40
Speaker
Because we've done this from a very strategic people perspective. And you could see this organization being energized by different talent, different perspectives, and also just by the kind of social ethos that the organization was displaying and actually putting money behind. So I was interested in that. I wanted to explore that more. And I'd had a traumatic brain injury and I have neurodivergent family and sort of ended up putting two and two together and thinking, well, what about
00:20:08
Speaker
Neurodiversity, and this was very, very, very early in what's now thought of as this kind of neurodiversity at work movement, but really wanted to commit to helping organizations understand this and ultimately helping them embrace every type of thinker. And that's our mission. That's been our mission from the beginning and the same today. So we started supporting organizations like SAP, Microsoft,
00:20:34
Speaker
JP Morgan as they tried very small, what were called autism hiring programs. So this all started when these big tech employers, you don't think of banks as tech employers, but they've got huge tech teams.
00:20:48
Speaker
was struggling to find tech talent and thought, probably to your point about Rain Man, there's this kind of cultural correlation with autism and let's go find autistic people because they could be really good at this. I think we felt all the time that ultimately that's okay as a starting point.
00:21:10
Speaker
But organizations actually really leaning into this topic. That's about how do we all work together every day. That's a collaboration thing as much as it is or more than it is a hiring thing. So today, again, we take organizations that are generally committed to their people, committed to diversity, committed to innovation. They've started to hear about this term. They've started to realize they don't know much about it. They want to change that.
00:21:37
Speaker
We've built a whole bunch of stuff that can help them along that journey.
00:21:42
Speaker
What's the business case for creating a neurodiversity hiring practice? To me as a leader, I think the most important thing in hiring is somebody who doesn't think the way that you do. So to me, this is kind of a lay down. Of course you should do this, but not everybody thinks like I do in that they want to have people who are more universal in their thinking. So walk us through why should organizations do this? And especially in the neurodiversity
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think we probably we did some interviews with managers, of course, many of whom are also hiring managers in corporate America, a few years ago. And we asked them, you know, do you know anything about neurodiversity? And of course, most of them say no, never heard of it. But then we asked them about diversity of thought. And the idea of having different perspectives in their team, to help solve their problems and so on. And they said, yes,
00:22:37
Speaker
That's what I want. I know that's what I need. That's what I want. I don't always know how to get it. I think there's a really interesting thing with business as a whole today because of that shrinking corporate lifespan that every organization has that initial startup phase, which is very kind of idea based, but then you go into this kind of process phase and you just need, you know, the right shape cog in the right shape hole.
00:23:05
Speaker
But at some point that breaks down, especially with this pace of change. You can't just be a process organization. So how are we going to build in that diversity of thought that can help us to innovate? Because yes, we have AI and so on. But look, where's innovation coming from? Innovation is coming from human brains getting together with different perspectives and so on. So I think the case for a hiring program is
00:23:30
Speaker
to bring in talent that you're excluding. I think there's a bigger case to just make sure that your hiring practices don't exclude the 20 percent of people that includes the Richard Branson's, the Elon Musk's, the Steve Jobs, the Barbara Corcoran's, the Kevin O'Leary's, because I think it's pretty obvious that people like that are going to add something to your team. I think it definitely is.
00:23:56
Speaker
a goal and if we can get companies to want to hire newer diversions, then there's one more step that we probably need to do and that's to figure out how to maximize their input or
00:24:14
Speaker
to give them the runway in order to soar. So how do you foster that culture that embraces neurodivergence, whether it's autistic, dyslexic, ADHD, because everybody has special, everybody has different needs, but how do you foster that culture that accepts and lets people do what they need to in order to contribute to the company?
00:24:44
Speaker
You need really everybody in the organisation, not just recruiters, not just managers, not just senior leaders, everybody, to have a little bit of a pivot in their thinking and their understanding of what work and what collaboration means. Because I think if you haven't been taught about neurodiversity and you're having all these interactions, just like the three of us are here,
00:25:09
Speaker
and you're not doing it with neurodiversity in mind. You're not approaching, say, a meeting or an interview or a sales presentation thinking, look, I'm bringing my own brain wiring, my own way of processing information, my own preferences to this, but so is everybody else. And theirs aren't the same as mine. If we're not doing that, we know we're missing out. But if we can pivot people to appreciating that, I think that's where our training starts. It's just that
00:25:36
Speaker
fundamental appreciation of the neurodiverse reality in which we all work, good things start to happen. Then it's okay, well, what do we do about it? And to your point, Dave, look, everybody's different. So this is not about having a kind of menu for autistic people and a menu for dyslexic people and so on. It's certainly not about waiting for people to put their hand up. Because as I said, look, 90% of people, for many good reasons, don't typically want to share that their neurodivergent
00:26:06
Speaker
off the bat. So what we preach, if you like, is the application of what's called universal design, which means essentially proactive measures, proactive steps to recognize the fact that I may not know how everybody thinks in my team, maybe they don't know, maybe they don't have a conscious identity. But the one thing I know is they're not the same.
00:26:30
Speaker
And they're not the same as me so what can i do off the bat to appreciate that whether it's asking them how they like to communicate problem solve surfacing my own. Preferences having some sensitivity around environment how we run meetings and so all of that proactive doesn't matter if i've got someone who's put the hand up and said by the way.
00:26:52
Speaker
I'm autistic and I need this. Whole load of stuff we can all do off the bat that just changes the nature of our team, really. It unlocks this empathy and compassion that we all have and we're just kind of locking up. I love that empathy. Yeah. And empathy and curiosity, probably. How can that go?
00:27:12
Speaker
I want to ask, but I think it's potentially a stupid question and then follow it up with a good one. Can you ask people in a hiring practice, let's say I'm interviewing you, can I ask you if you're neurodivergent? No, you shouldn't and you can't legally. I think there's good reasons for that in terms of respecting people's privacy and obviously, to some extent, this being linked with a medical identity given the medicalization of some of these terms.
00:27:42
Speaker
I think more important, I don't think that should be your aspiration. We often have to coach companies, coach leaders out of this idea of, how do I know who everybody is? There's this wish to say, if I just knew that that person was an ADHD or that person was dyslexic, I'd know how to help them.
00:28:03
Speaker
And really, that's, I think, a fruitless pursuit. Again, because of so many people don't want to share this. And the other complexity is many, many people, you think about diagnoses being costing thousands of dollars, many people have never had access to that service, particularly women, particularly people from ethnic minorities. So the best place to start is, again,
00:28:30
Speaker
We know everybody thinks differently. They're likely people who are neurodivergent in the team. Some may want to share this. Some may not. What can we do to embrace that muddy picture rather than trying to have this kind of false clarity? And we work with one organization. In fact, we didn't work with them. And here's why, because they said they'd done a survey and they had about a thousand people. And they said, we've got three people who say they're neurodivergent. So it's not really a priority. I think that's it.
00:28:57
Speaker
Well, I fully agree and wholeheartedly admit that you shouldn't ask people that kind of thing. But I asked that question to set up the next question I wanted to ask, which is, if I'm in an interview setting, hypothetically, and somebody is behaviorally, for instance, acting in a way that is different. So one of the things you mentioned is
00:29:20
Speaker
not really making eye contact, is how can I flesh out with the difference between somebody who's neurodivergent or just bad at interviewing? Because I think if you're just bad at interviewing, that's a whole different thing. But if there's a particular reason for it, then that's the first step, I think, in taking advantage of learning about what this person's strengths are and how to maximize them
00:29:49
Speaker
the hiring process. I think the first thing I'd say is, why does it matter if they're good or bad at interviewing? So I would rewind to what is the job we're actually hiring this person to do? And I think
00:30:03
Speaker
People don't do this and it's a big thing with recruitment at the moment intentional recruiting start with the outcomes what you actually want to get done and then what are the skills and experiences that are needed for those outcomes and a lot of the time in many roles for example.
00:30:22
Speaker
you don't need excellent communication skills. Or if you do, you need them in one dimension, but not other dimensions. And yet people will hire right from the beginning, right before interviews and say, Oh, of course we need excellent communication because we just sort of put that on all our job descriptions. So I think that's one thing. And I think it's then from that intentionality,
00:30:45
Speaker
having a very clear understanding of the role and purpose of interviews before you even start. What are we measuring here? And to what extent do we actually need somebody to be good at the source of social performance under pressure that an interview is? And some people aren't good at it. Some people are. If you're hiring for a television presenter, that's probably a
00:31:08
Speaker
a pretty good way to do it if you're not. There's probably ways, alternative assessments you can consider to complement the interview. Then I think that intentional list allows you to answer your question. I think it allows you to have questions that really dig into some of those skills, that dig into some of the personal attributes you're looking for. As much as possible, you go on people's words and you don't go on how they present.
00:31:38
Speaker
And it's a real, it's a real, I mean, interviews are a bias minefield. And I find it fascinating. And I do this myself, and we're hiring. And it's amazing how you catch yourself. So you're hiring for a role. And then you pause and think, right, what's my mental picture of this kind of candidate? And you always have one.
00:32:04
Speaker
And it's often, you know, in my case as a white person, it's often sort of, you know, white person in their late 20s. And I think, hold on, why is that my mental picture? There's absolutely no reason why this person should be of this age, of this ethnicity, of this gender. And the nice thing I like to recommend with interviewers as a tip is to
00:32:26
Speaker
acknowledge how people present and maybe even record it, but to use that term present, right? So Dave, if I'm interviewing you, I'm going to say I'm going to record your answers, but I'm also going to note presents as highly socially competent or presents as less so. It doesn't matter, but I'm putting it in a box and I'm recognizing it and I'm not allowing it to kind of
00:32:51
Speaker
some of my judgments and just with that snap thing of like, oh, you're talking in a certain way, so you probably don't care that much. If you do know specific
00:33:05
Speaker
buckets that people are in. So, you know, perhaps an ADHD or an autistic person, are there specific roles or how do you capture the best potential contribution of those people? Like are there specific roles that are better for different kinds of neurodivergent personalities?
00:33:32
Speaker
Well, being very open here, we had, in our first e-learning we ever did, we had a module called Suitable Roles.
Feedback on Training Modules
00:33:40
Speaker
And we didn't say, you know, autistic people are good at this and dyslexic people get that.
00:33:46
Speaker
But we alluded to what might be some commonalities and we felt that our customers would be interested in that. But honestly, as we interviewed more people who are neurodivergent, you realize this stuff doesn't really stand up and actually far more people buck the stereotypes than conform to them. And we would talk to many autistic people who said, look, I'm hearing about all this stuff about autism and tech.
00:34:09
Speaker
I'm not that techie. I'm not a web developer. You know, I'm a children's librarian. And, you know, yes, it's I find it sort of exhausting, but actually I love interacting with people. And so I think it's I know it's probably not it's an annoying answer, but I think you have to acknowledge that, you know, the right person with of whatever neural identity could be the right person for for any role. But it's also about, as you said, having that kind of
00:34:37
Speaker
curiosity with people to understand, to what extent does the role that they're in, if they're working for you, to what extent does that role match their particular strengths? I get asked a similar question a lot, which is, working from home, COVID, is that good or bad for neurodivergent people? Again, it's an impossible question because somebody's neurodivergence is just one part of
00:35:05
Speaker
their bigger identity. I have a friend who's autistic. He's in his 20s. Some people would think, of course, he loves working from home. He's not social. Well, he's actually incredibly social. He's also in his 20s. It's boring working from home. Somebody else might actually hate the sensory environment at work, but they might be in a huge tiff with their husband and think, God, if I get to go out of the house for eight hours a day, fantastic.
00:35:34
Speaker
You can't really draw the lines. It's about curiosity, Dave, as you said. It's about flexibility. I think the last thing with Suitable Role, sorry to labour the point, but it's also really important not to draw lines, not to say that that role could never suit somebody like this, and that's a misconception we hear. No, we couldn't have anybody like that here. They wouldn't cope or
00:35:58
Speaker
A lot of the time, people thinking that neurodivergent people couldn't be good managers, which is also nonsense. Some neurodivergent people might not want that kind of reward. My parents were teachers. They were not neurodivergent, but they didn't like the types of tasks that came with management, just didn't suit them. Some people want alternative rewards, but some neurodivergent people make fantastic managers, partly because
00:36:25
Speaker
They have this empathy and curiosity to how everybody thinks that every manager should have, but doesn't.
00:36:33
Speaker
I can remember when years and years ago, I was a recruiter. One of the things that I got told very early on in my career was that if you find somebody who's really good at data entry, that person is like gold because everybody thinks they can do data entry, but the person who's really good at it has a very specific set of skills. They do not want to talk to people. They want to be given a set of work and to be left alone.
00:37:03
Speaker
And that person will excel in that role. And so one of the things I learned very early in my career was everything is sort of flat. When you have a role that needs to be filled, you try and find the best person to fill it. And I think that certainly applies here. So as a follow-up to me asking too long of a question, what are some of the consequences of ignoring this kind of way of thinking of neurodiversity?
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, as I mentioned, I think it's what are our goals when it comes to people attracting the best talent, it's keeping them around. That's where we talk in HR about wellbeing, belonging and so on. These are not buzzwords. These are
00:37:42
Speaker
the solutions to one in four corporate employees leaving voluntarily every year, perhaps one in three. That is a real retention crisis. That's an important statistic that needs to be repeated. And turnover is very expensive. I mean, that's no joke. Having unfilled positions is expensive in terms of productivity. Replacing people is expensive, particularly senior people. So there is a real kind of financial bleed to this. I think the bigger thing, we talked about innovation. So what's the ultimate thing?
00:38:12
Speaker
Attract people, keep them, but then make the best of them. Again, I don't think you can make the best of your team if you don't appreciate the way that they all want to think. And again, we've seen this because we've seen collaboration improve. We've seen innovative outcomes emerge where we have teams where we respect these differences and we allow everybody to contribute to their best.
00:38:40
Speaker
What, along the lines of, we were talking about best fits, do different neurodivergent communities thrive in different workspaces or certain workspaces, I should say? Again, I think it's really too varied to say that, but I think it's interesting you look at the journey of one company that started with an autism hiring program,
00:39:04
Speaker
hiring tech people and within a year or two they'd hired into 22 different roles. So that I think tells you and it's a credit to them that they had that recognition that actually if we're hiring from one community or another there are all sorts of different things that people can do. But I would encourage people to think of this not as
00:39:28
Speaker
here are people on the fringes of society who need a chance and maybe I could give them a chance, that sort of thing. I would think of this again as, look, this is 20 percent of people who think in a particularly different way. This is your clients, this is your audience, this is your team, this might be your manager, this is much more close to home to consider it in everything they do again.
Discussing 'Hidden Force' Book
00:39:55
Speaker
Tell us about the book.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yeah, so the book came out this year. It's really a capturing of some of the journey that I had building the company and all the people I've met and everything I've seen along that journey. And it's really been fascinating to be part of this new movement and to see the energy of that and then to see the impact on individuals who find that suddenly their organization is the first one they've ever worked in.
00:40:26
Speaker
that said, hey, we care about people like you, or it's the first one that's actually in the hiring process allowed them to shine and given them a chance. One of the big motivators actually to write in the book was the response that we've seen to the training that we've done in organizations. It's often quite emotional because you have people saying,
00:40:50
Speaker
I'm so glad we're doing this. I'm so proud of my organization for doing this. This is really changing my experience. But we also see a really powerful response from the cynics, if you like. It's the people who said, what's this got to do with me? And sometimes they admit this and they say, I didn't know what this had to do with me, but it's the best thing I've heard in leadership in 20 years because I hadn't been thinking about the fact that my team thinks differently. And now I have all these tools for hiring, for collaboration and so on.
00:41:21
Speaker
to get more out of people. And we know how important that is. And I just think that's something quite special happening, really. I think there's a lot of people doing good work training organizations, but I don't think they're getting a response like that. And I thought that was something to share with the world. So it was actually on a socially distanced walk at the beginning of COVID. And I said to my wife, gosh, the world's going mad. Maybe I'll have some time to write that book I've been talking about.
00:41:50
Speaker
And three years later, 2023, here it is. I love it. Wow. Where can we find the book? Yeah. A hidden force, unlocking the potential of neurodiversity at work. It's on Amazon and other book outlets currently paperback and ebook, shortly hardcover and audio book as well. Fantastic. And I believe it's available from your website at optimize.com as well. Correct.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, linked to it there, but I think that's going to take you to Amazon as well. Ed, any final thoughts, any last things that you want to give our listeners, things they need to be thinking about if they're considering or whether or not they should spend time thinking about this? Because I think
00:42:36
Speaker
I live in a very different world than a lot of people in that I've appreciated all of this in how people think because in my job in business development, everybody thinks differently. So my job is to try and figure out how you're thinking and match up with you. But this has been such a fascinating conversation. Do you have any last licks that you think people should know? Yeah. Thank you both for having me. It's been fun.
00:43:01
Speaker
I should say that this stuff is coming. I don't think you can bury yourself under a rock from it, nor hopefully I've argued, should you? This is changing you, the diagnostic rates of young people, the expectations of the workforce as a whole, and I think to some extent as relates to inclusivity and as relates to neuroinclusivity are skyrocketing. We're hearing people in organizations we work with saying,
00:43:28
Speaker
I'm never gonna go and work with a company that isn't taking this seriously you know why would i such a difference in an organization where we have this sensitivity to each other and how we work versus one where. The way the manager works is how we work and everybody scared to speak up and say hey what about me actually i'd like to do something different so i think it's a big risk to just assume that the way you're doing things at the moment when it comes to this topic is right.
00:43:55
Speaker
I think the customers we work with recognize that's not the case. And they have the foresight to see that and to want to change it. Hidden Force, available on Amazon now. And people are looking for you and they can find you on Optimize.com as well. Yeah, absolutely. And feel free to, I always like to give my personal email as well if you want to reach out to me. Personally, it's ed.thompson with a P at Optimize, U-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E.com.
00:44:22
Speaker
Thank you, man. Thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure. Thank you for having me.