I've learned so much as a line manager, which
I'm going to take back to the workplace myself.
The information was amazing.
So many people resonated and there was
actually a lot of functional information.
My favorite thing was the talks from Colin. I think he got the
information across really accessibly but also in a way that I felt
was sympathetic to people with ADHD.
Loved hearing about the different lived experiences
from Tom and from Demet. Both brought a completely
different view point across so really fascinating to hear
I wholeheartedly recommend it. 11 out of 10 or 100 out of 10.
I think they give you really practical takeaways and an opportunity to
network with other people in this field in a safe environment.
This was really well thought through. Brilliant speakers.
People really need to check this stuff out.
Hello. Hello everybody. Wow, everyone's joining. So yeah, welcome.
Great to have you all here at Skills Sessions.
So Skills Sessions online -- just going to let everybody join. Welcome.
Say hello in the chat. So yeah, welcome, everyone, to Skills Sessions.
This is an event series that's both online and in person, hosted by CareScribe.
It's all designed to share knowledge about areas of neurodiversity
and disability and, ultimately, to help build and foster an inclusive
community for these sorts of topics to be discussed.
Each event is based on a different topic
and we're excited to have Theo Smith here today
to kick off 2024. Very exciting.
So yeah lovely to see so many of you here.
Please say hello in the chat.
Let us know where you are joining from.
How cold is it where you are? We're in Bristol.
It's sunny, but pretty cold -- had to defrost the car again today.
Most of you have already twigged, but on the Zoom chat,
make sure the settings are set to "All"
just so everyone can see your messages.
Otherwise, you're just messaging the hosts and the panelists
And whilst we'd love to hear from you, let's share it
amongst everyone if we can.
And yeah. Please keep posting.
Post throughout the session.
Keep the chat going. If you've been to these sessions
before, that's always one of the best bits is the
chat and the community that we're sort of fostering here. So yeah.
Brilliant. Ah, I can see a couple of other
folks from the southwest, and even Bristol.
So that's fantastic. Sunny and cold from all over, it looks like.
Fantastic. Brilliant.
So I mentioned this is Skills Sessions
and it's hosted by CareScribe. So I'm going to spend just five
minutes just telling you a little bit about who CareScribe is
and what we do. And then we will get on with the webinar and
hand over to Theo who's got some fantastic wisdom to impart.
So about CareScribe -- who are we? So my name's Rich. I'm one of the
founders and directors of CareScribe. For those of you who haven't
heard of us, CareScribe is an assistive technology company.
And, as I mentioned, we're based in Bristol.
Myself and my other two founders, Chris and Tom,
we're all neurodivergent, as are many of our team.
And as a company, we spend every day working to support disabled and
neurodivergent individuals to work and study more independently.
And we do this by building technology.
We've got a couple of software tools, which you may or
may not have heard of. One of them is called Caption.Ed,
which is a captioning and notetaking software
that's used to help people better comprehend and retain some of the huge
amounts of information that's thrown at us every day in our busy lives.
Of course, that's of tremendous value to a wide range of people,
those with disabilities, those with neurodivergent profiles.
You know, from those who are maybe deaf or have hearing loss
who maybe find it difficult to comprehend what's being said,
to those like me who are dyslexic or have ADHD or ASD, who may have
similar difficulties and difficulties
with focus and retention of information.
Or even those who have, maybe, a motor impairment and find it
difficult to get their thoughts down quickly.
Captions there, as I say, to help them to retain and comprehend
some of the barrage of information that comes at us every day.
And then there's TalkType. So TalkType is
our other software which is a dictation
software that helps people convert their
thoughts into text, something that I
and a wide range of people find very challenging for a wide
range of of reasons. I'm not going to go into too much detail on
our software. That's not the purpose of today. But if you do
want to find out anything more about CareScribe or our software
and technology, then please get in touch. You can pop something in
the chat and we'll pick it up. We got some feedback at the end of the event
and also through our website at carescribe.io.
We can set up a demo and get any information over to you. Fantastic.
So, finally, a little bit of housekeeping. Keep the chat coming.
Let us know where you're tuning in from. Lots and lots of people -- wow -- lots
and lots of people joining. Fantastic. What a good start to 2024.
So yeah. A little bit of housekeeping on Zoom: so, hopefully,
you're well-versed in Zoom by now, but if anybody needs
captions they are available through Zoom. We've enabled them at our end,
So please enable them at your end if you require them.
Questions and chat -- very much encouraged. If you do have questions
about what we're talking about, there's a Q&A function. Pop it in
there if you can. And we will and will take time at the end to answer
those questions. You can also upvote your question. So if you spot
something in particular that someone's written and you want an answer to,
do up vote it because if we're short of time, we'll try and
prioritise them over based on demand.
There's no wrong questions. This is a
safe place to learn. So, please, don't hold
on to your questions. Do ask them. You'll be glad to know
this session is recorded. So you'll be getting a email from
CareScribe after the event, and it's was also on LinkedIn tomorrow.
So you will be able to access the recording. So yeah. Keep your eyes
peeled for that. The other thing, finally, to mention is that we ran
Skills Sessions throughout 2023 and they were really, really popular.
We're just kicking off 2024 now and we've got lots planned for the year.
So we're running monthly webinars. Obviously, this is January's.
We've got February's and March already
out, so you can sign up too. And lots of
you already are signed up to these. February's topic is reframing
neurodiversity for better mental health. So if that sounds like it's of
interest to you, then please sign up. We'll be sure to send
you details. March's topic is demystifying access to work,
where, definitely, some demystifying is needed. So yeah. Please tune
into that if it is of interest. Finally, end of the quarter,
we are at the Dyslexia Show in March. So if you're going, we're there.
Come say "hi" -- be nice to see you in person. And if you're not there,
take a look at it because it looks fantastic. Maybe you'll want to join.
Wonderful. So that's enough of me talking.
I'm now going to hand over to Theo -- Theo Smith. So for those of you
who don't know Theo, Theo is the founder of Neurodiversity World.
He is a LinkedIn Top Voice. He's the author of the award-winning book,
Neurodiversity At Work, and podcast host of Neurodiversity With Theo Smith.
So yeah -- amazing speaker, and we're very, very lucky to
have him here talking about empowering neurodiversity.
So without further ado, I'll hand over to to Theo. Keep the chat going.
And yeah, I'll speak to at the end.
Amazing. Thank you. Cheers.
That's incredible. I'm just going to the awkward thing of
sharing my screen now. So great to be here
with you all. I'm going to try and inspire you,
ignite some interest through some storytelling. I'm 15 plus years in
leadership roles in HR, recruitment, working also within HR tech and
a wide variety of organizations. And I take some of that knowledge and
expertise to support organisations
around neuroinclusion. So let me --
I can't do two things at once, clearly, because I was talking away and
not sharing my screen. But here we go. So that should have done it.
So yes. I, in partnership with Dynamis Group Talent Consultancy --
yeah -- there's the book and the podcast
if you want to find it later on and
listen to some episodes or have a little read. I co-authored the book
with the incredible Professor Amanda Kirby as well. And we're now
setting out to write our second book. So keep eyes out for that.
But it will probably take 12 months to
get out to you all. So today's topic. Here we go.
Right, what is neurodiversity? Probably, tonnes you here are like,
"Right, I know what neurodiversity is," right?
So I'm not going to teach you to
suck eggs or whatever other term is around teaching somebody something
they already know, but neurodiversity, for me, is the natural variation
in our neurological makeup, right? Every single one of us has a unique brain,
billions of brain cells like a thumbprint -- not one of us has the same
and just as be as important to the ecosystem --
so are diverse brains, right? And we were
meant to think differently.
So that is what neurodiversity is.
And it's a powerful concept for me because it takes
a lot of the barriers down that, unfortunately -- and this is what we're
going to talk about -- sometimes labels can put up
for individual scaling and access to support.
Right, but if we think about neurodiversity
as a concept, and every single one of us
having unique brain, we're talking about all
of us -- but, actually, what we also need
to consider is what those of us who have been marginalised or
system-impacted due to the way that our brains work, right?
And that's the problem that we have, that some individuals have faced
barriers and, even worse, they didn't even
know about it. So historically, we all
know that these neurodivergent traits or neuro minorities or
whatever the other terminology you would like to use to describe
people have been locked out of the system
because of the way that their brain works --
We're talking about ADHD, dyslexia, ASD, Tourette's
dyspraxia, synesthesia, dyscalculia,
Down syndrome, epilepsy -- I could go on.
There's also also other associated challenges around chronic mental health
illnesses, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, etc, etc, etc.
For all of you that know it, right,
I won't go on. But for anybody who doesn't,
this is kind of the medical terminology, I would say. We've got a
problem with disorder too much use of disorder. A lot of us
are starting to see it through the social model, not so much through
the disability lens. Although that's not to take value away from that
point of conversation, because much of us need it to access help and support.
It's more to say that we are, as a community, starting to
reframe the way that we see ourselves and
the way that we would like to see others.
So yes. So let me take a different journey.
And if you've ever seen me speak before I would -- oh, yeah, so somebody is
saying they prefer using the term autistic
referred to Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Just jump back -- that is exactly my point there. These are the
medical terms that we didn't get to choose and that's why we have a
very stern-looking expert there because these terms that were medical
terms are not necessarily ones that a lot of us have identified with.
But we're going to come on two more about that in a second.
This is the way that I want to see it, though.
This is the way I like to see the world.
The Earth itself is 4.5 billion years in development, right?
That's important, right? 4.5 billion years this planet has
been developing. We know that the universe is expanding at a faster
rate than we ever could have imagined. So when we put our lives today
into context of that period of time, oh, it's a pin-prick right?
It's almost inconsequential in terms of the length of time that this
planet that we live on, that we're borrowing time off, right, has been
developing for 4.5 billion years. Now, consider this, the Mexican tetra
blind fish -- one of the most researched fish and animals on the planet --
two million years ago evolved or developed to be blind it.
It lost its eyesight initially and, eventually, it lost its eyes completely.
And the reason being it took up a lot of energy when you're in the darkened
caves of Mexico. And therefore, you didn't need this energy in these
darkened caves to be wasted on something that you couldn't use.
So they evolved to be blind. They also evolved translucent skin,
all of this to optimize to the environment for survival, right --
which is incredible two million years ago. But actually, what we find
is the Mexican tetra blind cave fish that are now researched actually
evolved to be blind only around 20,000 years ago. So not only are we
seeing incredible adaptation to an environment through what we
would consider potentially traumatic, from our own perspective, to lose
eyesight and eyes, but actually it's happened. It's cyclical.
It's been happening again and again. The fish is predispositioned to
make these adaptations and changes.
And that is incredible -- that a blind fish can
be more competitive in that environment than a fish with eyes
because of the nature of the environment. And how little do we give that in
consideration to the human brain and the
way that the human brain has evolved?
So now, consider this, if we consider neurodiversity by
design, right, the neurological variations by design,
what we're talking about is the human brain has developed over 200,000 years --
the modern human brain, the big one in our heads, right?
Before then, it was smaller. It's actually getting smaller again now.
Technology -- who knows where we're going? But 200,000 years ago it became big.
And the reality is, over that period of
time, it's optimised to the environment.
But we have a problem. If we think around what happened to the
Mexican tetra blind cave fish, and we think about 4.5 billion
years of development of the planet, we think about 200,000 years of
development of human brain -- now, what have we done, I guess, since the
industrial revolution, right? What have we done since we
completely transformed the world, possibly in less than 200,000 years?
When we put people down mines, when we put people in mills to produce
cotton, when we did these things, we were not thinking about the
impact on the health and well-being of those individuals. We were not
thinking that they would die of of horrible illnesses and they would
suffer greatly. We were thinking about building stuff, right?
And the world that we've now built, we built at such a rate of speed that
we cannot expect the human brain to evolve quick enough.
It's not possible when we consider bright lights,
noisy environments, planes,
all these infrastructure that we've built -- AI machine learning and
being put in chicken coops, then being told to work from home.
All of these adaptations and changes are at such a rapid rate, and we've
not thought about the impact on the human brain, like we didn't through
the Industrial Revolution, and now, globalisation -- the internet of things, right?
So we need to think about adapting the environment
because there is no way we can expect the brain to adapt at pace.
And by the way, the brain has been evolving for 200,000 years, to be able
to adapt to the planet of 4.5 billion years.
You can now see the complexity, right?
This is why we have to take responsibility and
accountability and open our eyes and mind to the reality that the
world we're building at a rapid rate is
having a negative impact on the human brain.
So the reality is, this topic is exploding.
You go on Google Trends, you can see
people across the globe are typing in neurodiversity,
autism, neurodiversity movement, at a
rapid rate. People want to know, right?
TikTok, 12 months ago, 22.1 billion views of the #ADHD.
Twelve months before that, I took the same data. It was half that figure.
I imagine, you know, beginning of this year,
it could be 40 billion, right? The reality is more and more people
want to know. It's young people; it's old people; it's people across the board
are now going, "Wait a minute. I'm facing barriers because of the
way my brain works and I want to remove those barriers, right? And
And I want to influence organisations. I want to influence environments,
teaching environments. I want to support my children to be able to
remove some of these barriers. And that's
why they're going any way they can go
to be able to find information to help empower them to be able
to make these changes within their environments, working environments,
and for their family members. But we have this challenge.
The challenge is that we have these labels and the labels, unfortunately,
are not easy to access. And in some areas of the world, they may not even
exist as labels or they may have negative connotations. And therefore,
you may not want to be able to connect with those labels at all.
And we segment those labels in such a way that they can be very confusing
and complex, whereas we don't just have motivation; we don't just
have energy; you don't just have logic. We don't just have creativity.
Some of us may have more logic, more creativity, more
motivation, more energy levels at any one point than someone else.
But we all have them at some point, right? And they cross over.
There's co-occurrence across these. Well, the reality is, we now know
that there's co-occurrence across these labels that we have that are
attached to neurodiversity. So consider this, we have these labels
and they empower individuals to be able to gain access to help and
support, specifically within the school system, education system.
So there are parents who are stressed out and anxious and banging their
heads against a wall -- they need the label because the label, at the moment,
is the only way that we, as parents, can gain help and support
for our child within that environment. So the ADHD label comes with
support if we can get the label. Autistic label, autism label comes
with support. But when in reality like me or my daughter, we are autistic,
ADHD, dyslexic -- and who knows what else -- we could collect
these labels up -- that becomes problematic because when you're going
for one label, you may be able to get it, but then, you may not get the
other label. However, the reality is there's co-occurrence there.
You're impacted by both. You're just not able to demonstrate.
And that may well be because of your early years' experience because
the diagnostic assessment model is built around those early years experiences.
Well, what if you were able to get the support in those early
years that meant you coped, you managed to get through the
education system for whatever reason, but actually, now you hit perimenopause.
And actually, the system that you exist in at
that point, as a senior leader for example, and the barriers that
you start to face and the changes in your makeup, become so challenging
that you can no longer function in the way you did before.
But you don't have the label,
and you don't necessarily have the evidence from
being a young person and being a woman and the way that the
diagnostic models worked, the barrier is significant.
Well, this is when labels start to become a problem, not just in terms of
accessing support and help but actually,
in terms of being able to identify as
having a label to fully understand your neurological makeup,
therefore, to be able to let somebody know within the organisation,
"Hey, I need help, and I need help because of this." It can become very
confusing and therefore, the barrier exists because you can't get the
help and support -- and that you've not had it at any point in your life.
And the reality is is for a lot of individuals, they may
have not got the label but they may be sitting with the trauma.
So if you imagine, for me, when I was
in the classroom, and I couldn't say my name properly,
I used to say "Theo" and everybody else could say "Theo" --
it becomes very traumatic when everybody else can say your name and
you can't say your name. So whether that's the dyslexia or the autism
or the ADHD, whether the speech problems were associated with any one of those,
in the big scheme of things, at that point, it doesn't really matter to me.
What matters is everybody else can say my name, and I can't.
Everybody else can spell and write on the board, and I can't.
And that trauma that we experience as a young person, whether you have
a label or not, we carry through into the workplace. And especially if
nobody's been able to communicate to us what that means, what it looks
like, why it's happening, the impact of it, where the support exists,
even as an older person with experience and expertise
and somebody who's been able to survive up until this point, when I still
walk into a board room, I still get heightened level of stress and anxiety
because I'm asked to go and write on a board for this group of senior
leaders, who I'm used to talking to. But the minute I'm asked to write
on a board, I still can't spell; I still can't write properly; I still
can't construct grammar. Yes, I wrote a book, but with the help of
technology, and nobody was stood there watching me whilst I did it.
And fundamentally, this is really what's important: when we insist upon
labels and when we insist that people need to come with a diagnosis
or that they need to come with an expectation of what help and
support they need, we already a raising the bar far too high for
many people. And when we also add in the complexity of some of these
labels, for somebody who's dyslexic who struggles with words and
grammar and understanding words, you've already locked me out of the
conversation and the decision. How many people do we do that to?
And by the way, it doesn't just exist within entry-level roles.
For example, this is happening to senior leaders who maybe have coped
for so long or this might be happening to people within the legal system.
This might be happening to a judge, right? If we don't have
people who are ADHD within the legal system, then we're going to
continue to have a disproportionate amount of people with ADHD or who
had ADHD going into prison -- 1 in 3 in Wales, for example, from
Professor Amanda Kirby's research. So these are the things that we
need to consider all levels throughout the organisation.
We have barriers that we can remove, and we're not going to remove them
by just having labels. And the reality is, if we
talk about labels, we need to talk about disclosure.
So even if we are privileged enough, even if we fully
understand our neurological makeup -- like, who really does? --
the reality is will we then want to share that information?
And this is a problem that you have within
the organisation is you want people to
tell you about some of their challenges, their strengths, their
abilities, yet there's fear and anxiety because people have experienced
trauma, stigma, barriers, even in environments where they thought that they
were safe and later found out that they weren't. And we can see this
is independent research by Auticon in 2021. And think about what's
happened since then -- it's not got any better. But you can already
see the -- I mean 2 in 5 are not ready to tell people.
So irrelevant if you want them to tell you, they're not ready.
And if we think about the impact from a cultural perspective, there are
some individuals who can't have this conversation at home. They can't talk
about this in their community. How can you expect them to come into
the workplace and talk about being dyslexic or autistic or ADHD or
combination of, when it's not even accepted to be able to have this
conversation within their home environment, within their culture?
This is an immediate barrier to individuals being able to gain access
to support and help.
So what can we do about it? What tools
are available? How can we consider making some of these changes and
adaptations if we can't get people to tell us, right?
Because every single one of us has a unique environment, a unique workplace.
We have unique challenges. We have unique pressures. By the way, we have
unique individuals who put up significant barriers to us making changes.
That's the reality. And we also live in a world where we've got to
have control of everything, even as HR leaders or Business Leaders
or even working within your area. We have to collaborate with so many
other people, and not everyone will buy into the concept and therefore,
that can become quite challenging to get things over the line.
And a great point there -- and the barrier of getting a diagnosis in the
first place. So my child, it took us five years on waiting lists and of
filling out forms to get the ADHD and autism diagnosis.
And by the way, there were two separate
lists, waiting lists. And when we did get it,
we then had to go through the process of the EHCP because we realised
actually, in the education setting, the autism and ADHD diagnosis is
like stilts with a match ready to burn the studs beneath them
because you can gain support, and unless
those individuals who are giving you
support decide they don't want to give it anymore,
and you have not a leg to stand on legally.
So therefore, in the UK, we had to
progress to get the EHCP, which is almost impossible to get in certain
areas now, and the funding is changed. Therefore the government now wants
to discourage giving out EHCPs because they want to change the
mechanism of the way individuals get support and they want to push it
back into the education system, which is very problematic. So, yeah.
I fully understand the complexity around getting a diagnosis unless
you're willing to go private and the costs are significant,
and the trust has gone from some of these organisations because of the
negative press in some of these areas which has not helped.
So what we need to do to remove some of these barriers is we need to
consider where kryptonite exists within our systems, our processes,
our communications. And I describe it as kryptonite because whether you
talk about Superman or whether you talk about Clark Kent, if kryptonite
is introduced into either of their worlds, they become
completely disabled. They're not able to carry out any task --
irrelevant of whether it's a significant power skill, whatever --
they're completely disabled to be able to do anything.
And the problem we have there is that often the kryptonite within our
working environment is not visible. Right? And the greater challenge
is that because as individuals, especially if I consider individuals
with later diagnosis or individuals who self diagnosis based on
information that they've had -- not to gain anything, because of an
insight to be able to help themselves -- we have spoon-fed ourselves
to kryptonite for so long we've become used to it. That doesn't mean
we're able to perform effectively in it. It just means we're so used
to spoon-feeding ourselves this kryptonite, that it's become a way of life.
And you can define it as masking, but it's not just about masking.
It's the idea that you do something to again and again and
again, that is debilitating; that is harmful; that hurts you.
It's like eating peanuts when you have an allergy, right?
You have just enough allergy that you can
survive every time, but you keep doing it
because people tell you, "Eat the peanuts. It's fine."
Everybody eats them. We all have to eat our share of peanuts every single day
to ensure that we complete our work. And it's become so harmful that
it's significantly impacted our mental health and wellbeing.
And that is why the topic's becoming big. We need, as a community, but also with
the support of those in key positions -- yes, those leaders within HR,
within people functions, but also leaders of people, operationally,
we need you to also do something about this, to understand what the
kryptonite looks like, and to support us in either bridging it,
so that some of us can circumvent it or, in actual fact, eliminating it,
taking it away where it does not need to be there.
So one way that we've been
able to do this, and a way that I advise organisations to do it, is
if you are thinking of a consumer process, if you're selling
something, you go talk to your sales and marketing team, especially
if you're thinking about it in a consumer market. If you're looking at
the journey of a consumer, where they drop out in that journey really
matters, and if you get somebody right up to the end of that consumer
journey, and they're almost about to buy your product or walk into your store,
but they don't, that is a that is somebody you want to
hyperfocus on, right? Because you want to understand why they're dropping out.
And you would run that right back and you'd adapt and change every
part of that process to optimise it, to make
sure that we carry that person right through.
We don't do that as well with --
We don't really do it at all with
candidates with employees, yet candidates and employees
can also be consumers as well. Therefore,
they can be very important in terms of
the organisation that we work in. So I asked organisations to
consider this. And it's not a simple process. And that may initially
make you think the hints and tips Theo's giving me means it's a lot of work.
But actually, I think that work's really important.
And if you were to segment all of your process, if we think about your
employee life cycle and you were to break it down and segment it and
to think, OK, what parts of it do we think we might be failing
individuals most from a neuroinclusive perspective? And if we started
to look at those and audit those systems and processes, then we're
going to be able to understand the way those barriers are.
And that may well be through including your current workforce. It may
be through using external suppliers or technologies or systems to be
able to understand or to plug those gaps. But until we start to do that,
we're going to miss out significantly. And my suggestion is to
audit and assess those systems and processes. And you can do them one
by one or you can do it is a complete
overhaul of all the systems and processes.
However, before you start that, you need to increase awareness
within your organisation. You need to help your workforce
understand what neurodiversity is, what neuroinclusion is, why it
matters, and why you're going to start on this journey of looking at
where the challenges are within the organisation before you
take the steps to rectify them. Because, at some point, you're going to
want to interview, assess, and communicate with that workforce
to understand how it is impacting them. And some of that will be
anonymous through surveys, and some of that will be directly through
sitting down and having one-to-one conversations.
Now we've done this with an organisation.
We've worked with them for quite some time.
But specifically around neurodiversity,
around a year ago, we worked through
this process with them. First of all, we talked to the board and
senior leadership team and advised them on neurodiversity and neuroinclusion.
So we got them bought in at the top of your organisation.
Now, Clariane -- one of the largest health and wellbeing organisations in Europe.
We worked directly with their UK arm, Berkley, and through
working with the senior leadership team at Clariane level, then at
UK level, then working with their management team to help them
understand what neurodiversity is, what neuroinclusion is,
what we mean by it, and how it potentially impacts their workforce.
Then, talking to the rest of the workforce so that they understand
some of the terminology. And we then surveyed the workforce
alongside doing the assessment of these different systems and processes.
So that, ultimately, at the end of it, we could feed back to them,
to let them know where the barriers were and if they
can remove them. And by the way, you can do this yourself.
You don't necessarily need to work with an external provider.
You might have somebody who's skilled in auditing and assessment. You might want to
work with different providers at different areas of that process.
But you need to understand where the gaps are, because until you do, you're
not able to plug the gaps; you're not able to rectify them.
And so much insight came out from surveying the workforce anonymously.
One of the questions we asked them was do they identify -- after all the
sessions we did with them -- do they identify as being from a neurominority?
Ie, we've gone through sessions with them.
But ie, "Do you identify as being ADHD?
Dyslexic? Dyscalculic? And do you have a diagnosis?"
One in ten of they work force came back and said, "Yes, we do."
Now, what's important with that is we don't know for
100% they accurately do. We're not we're not asking for them to
verify it with a document. What we're now seeing is 1 in 10 people
are saying within the organisation that, "Yes, we identify with it and
we're facing barriers." We then went on to ask them if they don't have
a diagnosis, do they identify with being from a neurominority and
facing barriers because it's in your neurological makeup?
We got up to 3 in 10. Two in ten more said,
"Yes." That was 3 in 10 of their workforce.
We then asked if they have a family member who they're
responsible for who they believed to be from a neurominority,
and we got up to -- it was almost 50% of
the workforce. Now, you can understand
the impact that that now has. That insight and information, along with loads
of other insights that we extracted, would able then to allow
the organisation to take action and to start working groups and to start
further training and development with managers, with the understanding
that this was important to the organisation, and the employees were
saying, "We are facing barriers, and these are the types of
barriers that we're facing." At no point would individuals having to
come forwards and say, "I am dyslexic and help me for this reason."
This was around understanding where the problems were, how it was impacting
the workforce, and then thinking about a longer-term strategy around
how we were going to be able to deal with them.
And what you then find is -- my co-author,
Professor Amanda Kirby, has created
some incredible technology and consultancy and advisory around then being
able to help individuals understand their individual neurological
makeup and how they can be supported. So, on the one hand,
you need to be understanding your systems, your processes, the barriers,
the potential negative impact lifting the lid off Pandora's box,
but also, then, being able to support individuals that if they're not
privileged enough to be able to gain the access to support through a
diagnosis or may not want to go through that process because it's too long,
you're helping them understand their neurological makeup and where
some of the challenges and opportunities may come from. And the real
issue here is that a lot of people may be misinformed, misadvised,
misunderstood their neurological makeup and therefore, they may really
be able -- they may be struggling in communicating to the organisation of
what they're having problems with, of why they're not able to finish
certain tasks, of why they're struggling to communicate with certain
people, of why they keep on getting into hot water over certain
pieces of work, conversations, etc. So I utilised to Do-IT Profiler
by Amanda Kirby, not just for myself when I started to explore my
neurological makeup about 6/7 years ago, when I realised -- dyslexia,
that I was diagnosed with as a mature student,
with no formal qualifications in university --
I was diagnosed there with dyslexia.
It was many, many years later that I was thinking there's something
else going on in my brain. And there's
other barriers and opportunities I'm
just not understanding -- I utilised the Do-IT Profiler to help me to
be able to better understand that neurological makeup, and it was powerful.
I then utilised it to advocate for my child because the school
were not that forthcoming because she's highly introverted
and quite quiet and compliant and therefore, wasn't a problem.
Yet, she wasn't obtaining the information
and she wasn't learning in that environment.
And, for me, if you're not learning in the environment, that's the greater
problem, not whether you're compliant or not. And therefore I
was able to utilise it to help me advocate for my child because the
the child version enabled us to have that. Now, by the way, I'm sharing
some tools and concepts and ways of working --
You can do these things yourself.
You can start very small. You can support employees
through simple mechanisms to better understand some of the barriers
and challenges. But there needs to be trust that's built there,
initially, based on what we were talking about around individuals are
not comfortable at necessarily coming forward with specific labels.
So as I bring this to a close, I'm hoping to ignite -- I can see
the conversations lighting up. People are talking about diagnosis,
the barriers, the challenges with getting support. And it is horrendous
out there, from the support from the government, from local
authorities. The money is not there. We're at a Tipping Point.
I really, truly, believe that, specifically within the UK.
And something needs to change significantly, but I do believe we have
the power in this room today to make a positive impact within the
workplace, which is what we're talking about here, what I'm trying to
excite and delight people around the topic here.
So there's something I want to leave
you with before we jump into questions,
that you may have and that's we see
the world in a different way.
Whatever label we want to put on it, whatever
understanding of co-occurrence and everything else,
we all have a way of visualising the world, and
whether that's like High Contrast, who has synesthesia, and he sees sound as colour,
and that literally influences all part of his music.
One of the most renowned drum and bass music producers -- electronic
music producers in the world, as far as I'm concerned, and it's
because of the way that he perceives the world through seeing
sound as colour that makes him incredible in what he does. Glen Keane,
who has aphantasia or is impacted by
aphantasia, however you want to define it --
he cannot visualise the world through his mind's eye.
He doesn't see things when he goes to sleep in the same way that some
other people might. Yet he's one of the most incredible cartoonists for Disney.
And Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who's dyslexic, and when we think of
the incredible way that she perceives and sees the world,
it is more common the individuals who are dyslexic see in 3D, have
incredible spatial awareness. So if we taking the dyslexia, the
aphantasia, the synesthesia, the fact that a lot of us will just see in 2D --
We are visualising the world, we are experiencing the world in
such a different way. And I see what synesthesia -- synesthesia for High Contrast --
-- it's different for different people -- but it's almost like
one experience -- the experience of hearing sound -- is impacted by
another experience that others wouldn't. So in the instance for High Contrast, it's colour.
So when he hears certain sounds, he has a significant colour
come to his mind's eye, and it's most prominent when he knows
he's creating the right types of sounds. He also gets an
experience of machines, so the feeling of industrial machines and the
beats are like machines and therefore, that experience of beat has
a significant impact on the way that he creates and feels about music.
This can also be seen not just in music, but in artists and in other
areas of the world in creative elements of the way that people
experience one thing, but they have another, powerful experience that
can come and interplay at the same time. But this is the point, right?
It is this incredible, diverse way of a seeing the world and the
Mexican tetra blind cave fish will experience it in another completely
different way. And by nature of the way that we have evolved and
adapted to exist in this incredible planet. But I come back to the point.
We have created the barriers. We have created the challenges.
We have created the bright light. We are still creating barriers
within our organisation. We created systems like Horizon that
meant that people went to prison and, unfortunately, faced significant
injustice in their lives. These are things we humans created and instilled
upon other people and told them it was for their own good.
We have the power to remove them to change them to adapt them, right?
But we need to take responsibility for that and we need to go back into
our environment and really take some time, and to consideration to
assess where those barriers are, where those gaps are, and to work with
others to be able to plug those gaps and empower more people to
thrive at work to succeed rather than to struggle, which so many of us have.
So thank you very much. I'm going to stop sharing my screen and we can
perhaps go into some questions. Thanks for staying with me.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Theo. I don't know if you would have been
able to see but there was great conversations going on in
the chat whilst you were talking -- and just encouraging people to pop
any questions you might have for Theo and or myself in the Q&A section.
We've got quite a few coming through. And also, remember you can
upvote as well. So, please please, please upvote any that
you particularly want answers to.
So I'll read out a couple of questions if
that's OK, Theo? And then, if you're happy to
answer them. So Lucy's asked, "I've a question, please, about
employees paying for neurodiversity diagnostic assessments as
many employees are asking for this. In my view, this is not very --
not a very social model approach, not required for access to work, and
also problematic for GPs, as they do not accept privately assessed diagnoses --
do not always accept privately assessed diagnoses.
It will be great to hear your view on this." So yeah. Do you have a
view on -- I guess there was a lot of chatter around difficulties
getting diagnostic -- diagnoses through the NHS.
Obviously, there's the private, but that comes at a cost and then there's a --
sometimes a need in the workplace for a diagnosis.
Yeah, absolutely. So some organisations will support it. I've worked with many
organisations. Some see the value in the needs. They may work
with mental health and wellbeing charities or or not-for-profit
organisations. They may provide support from a psychological
perspective and therefore, at a tipping point -- that this is the key
thing, right? A Tipping Point of where they feel, "Hmm. Maybe this may
become a legal risk," they then may pay for private diagnosis.
The problem I have here is that we don't account -- we still
don't account, in many instances, for the level of co-occurrence,
and we're still focused on a model the requires you to look into
your past as a child, to be able to identify whether or not you are autistic.
You know, what were you like when you were a child? What were you like --
that leaves so much confusion, potentially, and also
a lot of us may not be able to communicate that effectively,
and therefore, we may miss out on the support because we're not able to
access the label. So this brings complexity for organisations
because do they start just paying £1000, £2000, £3000 per dual
assessment, triple assessment or whatever? And then because of the
co-occurrence, you may not actually come out as any but, in fact, you are,
it's just the model for assessment is built poorly because
you're a woman and you're black and you speak English as a
second language and and and and and -- and therefore, that diagnostic
model did not suit your needs. We're then creating an additional layer
of bias and barrier to certain people. So if you're white, you're male
your organisation pays for the assessment, you get it, you pass --
if you're someone else, you may not. See, I think it's more complex than
just "Should organisations pay for it or shouldn't?" We should have a better
system where it's intervention from the government, right?
We pay taxes. This shouldn't be all in on organisations from my perspective.
It should be government intervention. It should be support directly
from the government. It should be coming into to reduce waiting times.
Also if we think about a five-year period to get a diagnosis,
where's the help in the five years? It's not there.
When we think about our child, it's -- you're on a waiting list, five years later
you get that diagnosis. Oh then, by the way, it doesn't really mean anything.
You still don't have the knowledge and expertise. You still have to
go out and learn it all yourself. You have to join communities and talk
to other parents. That's where the power is. I've talked to other
people in Slack communities or in Discord communities about ADHD and
be misinformed and be led by somebody who's not that genuine.
You can see where companies are like, "Whoa, don't even want to go there or
get involved." What I think we need is greater mechanisms for
supporting individuals earlier on. And that's why I talk about
not just identification of a label because if you've not got
it early on, it may be more difficult to get it.
But it's the identification of where are the barriers? Where's the impact on mental
health and wellbeing? Where's the potential points that will mean that
you may end up without a job, without a house, without support?
And then you fall into a different area of support, when we could have
helped so much more people before that. So I'm much more interested
in the mechanisms we can put in place that are much easier, simpler --
just to allow individuals that, yes, they would like a diagnosis of
ADHD or autism, for example, because they believe that they are and
they deserve to have that diagnosis in the wide support. But today,
really, they just want to be able to have better conversations with
their manager, and are really struggling. And it is linked with the
way that they see the world, the way they communicate, the way that the
environment is impacting them and making them feel. And I think that
is something that we can change tomorrow, but we can really start to
think about that through the auditing, looking at the systems and
processes and making those adaptations and changes. But we need to
include the community in those conversations, to make sure that we
make the relevant ones within our organisations and environments and
communities and education settings and what have you. Sorry, long answer,
but this, it's complex. That's the challenge that we're facing.
We need to simplify it.
That leads really nicely on to the next
question, and actually, I'll kind of link to two together. So...
Do you have any practical tips for line managers to help create environments
in which people feel more comfortable disclosing at work? And then if --
what would be a nice one is, "Is there any -- further down -- is there
any examples of any companies that you worked from that
provide examples of creating that kind of neuroinclusive work and it being the norm?
So let me tell you, if you've not watched Sex
Education, go and watch that as a programme. Fascinating, right? Because
I'm thinking around the generational shift as well. And the reason
why I mention that is because some of the topics that come out and
identify with the one of the main characters, who's the mum, who has a child
She's talking, as a sex therapist, and he's going through some
experiences. I kind of feel that almost as a dad to an ND child, as an
ND dad, but who's speaking about this topic, right? Yet, I'm
"vulnerable" in some respects as well because I'm a human being like all of us.
So when I consider that journey and I think about having a
conversation with somebody, a meaningful conversation, often if you
put all the weight and responsibility on the individual they're going
to stop talking to you. So Sex Education has a great example of where
the mum is almost like. "Oh, she told me. I didn't know what to do
with it. And then she stopped talking to me." And the advice there is
to well, go back and learn something -- can take something to the table
and share to show you've thought about it.
There's no difference with the manager, right?
Where I've seen this work within organisations, I love talking
to Leena and Sean at BBC many years ago -- included them in the book.
They basically -- Leena went to Sean and went, "This is who I am.
This is what I'm about." So she did more right she came forward and he
then went, "Right. I'm going to go away and learn. I'm going to go and
educate myself. And now I'm going to bring that back to the table and
say, 'What do you think about that? How do you feel about that?'"
Rather than going, "Oh, you tell you're me autistic. So let me tell you about
all the things I might be able to do for you" -- because you don't really
understand them. You don't understand the complexity of their life,
what's going on, their journey -- all of that you just immediately go
solution building, which is problematic. What you need to do as a
manager is you need to be able to go away and educate yourself a bit
and then go like you would with any conversation, "Hey, I listened to
this podcast. This person was sharing this stuff about this.
What do you think about that?" Bumph -- opened up the dialogue, opened up the
conversation. No pressure on that individual to say that they need
to share about themselves. But you open up a conversation about
something, and that starts to enable you to develop that conversation
further. Start small and build. Don't go on with the most, you know,
dramatic problematic idea or concept first of all. Just start with,
"I watched this programme. And this is how they portrayed this thing.
I found it a bit odd or strange or I was interested or fascinated. What
do you think about that?" And I think that's a much more productive
way to start having productive conversation within the team
as well, by the way. Start as you mean to go on. Start
building those conversations within the team, build them individually
and start to create that sense of psychological safety, but, but
protecting individuals because if that person shares with the team
that they're autistic today, and you go and to take another job as the leader tomorrow,
where does that leave that individual? Well, it leaves them
with a different leader tomorrow. And it may not be as a leader who's
as empathetic, as caring as compassionate, as understanding, as
appreciative as you were. So we also have a responsibility and
accountability as leaders, that just because we think we're good and
we're OK, and we're doing the best by them, doesn't mean the next
person will. So we have we have to future-proof it as well. We have to
think about the the longer-term impact on that individual who's been
at the company for 15 years, and we've only been there for 2, as
a leader. So I think it's not as simple as, "Individual tell me your
problems," it's what am I going to do as a leader to protect that
individual and to ensure that they're not left in a desperate
situation in the future, which, unfortunately, I think many are.
That's the problem we have.
Thank you very much, Theo, for answering that
question. Yeah I couldn't agree with more with that, I think.
Yeah, I mean, we -- line managing people, running a
business as well, and especially in this sort of assistive technology
space -- I think one of the other things I've kind of learned is kind
of leading, I guess, by example. And not related to this, but it is --
is that there's a book called Radical Candor, which somebody in our
business advocated for and I read. And one of the things that that
advocates for is that, as a leader, it's useful to
understand yourself and then voice that back to people that you
manage. So, for instance, for me, I'm dyslexic. I have ADHD; I struggle
with lots of different things. I have quite bad anxiety.
It's saying, "Look, I'm going to be good at these things. I might really struggle
with that when you bring this up, and this is kind of why. And I'm
not that good at that," and if you can -- if you're setting the example
that you can say these things to people you manage and you can
lead by example that you're open and transparent about the things you
struggle with and how you want the business to support you, even
though you might be the leader then, that does, I find, or have found
that that has opened up conversations the other way as well.
Just very briefly. That's incredible, Rich. And it's right. And I interviewed a
manager and an employee, and it's on the podcast if you want
to hear it, but they worked in forestry. She was having significant
challenges. In the end, she was identified as potentially being
autistic, and she got a diagnosis and support. It transformed her
experience. But what he said, which was fascinating, was that,
"I started, then, explaining to her she needs to take time out. She needs to
lie down on the floor when she needs to she can cry. She -- whatever
it is" -- all things that she needed to do that she said herself
that helped her in certain instances. But then he was
saying, "I realised I was telling her all these things, and I wouldn't doing
any of them myself." And he said it, "Just -- being, having a
greater empathy and consideration for her on her journey made me
a better human being because, actually, I wasn't I wasn't doing many
of these things I was telling her to." And he didn't necessarily need to
lie down, but he did need to think about the way that he saw the
world and that he managed his life and managed to other people and
that he allowed others to manage him and how he saw his workplace and just by
turning the table, it educated him on better mental health and
wellbeing for him and is wider workforce. I thought that was so powerful.
Absolutely. Fantastic. And there is quite a lot of questions left,
which I, unfortunately, don't think we'll get time to answer now, but
we will get back to them and we will send you responses afterwards.
So even if you've got questions popping up now, then still put them
in the Q&A, and we'll get back. But I think it's time for us
to wrap up. So I want to finish by just saying a massive thank you to
Theo for joining us and providing us that enlightening talk.
That was really useful. And thank you to everyone for participating
and making these webinars so enjoyable and such a dynamic
event. So thanks so much for that. Everyone's going to get a
CPD certificate. So, as you leave, there is a survey
that will pop up, If you can provide us feedback, that's really, really
helpful. It helps us guide future talks and events and make sure
we're covering topics and bringing in speakers that you want to
hear from. So please fill that out. And then, after that, you'll be
sent to your CPD certificate for the this event. As I say, the
session was recorded. So we will send that over to you, along
with the transcript in the next day. Next month's webinars,
please come along. As I mentioned, there is one in February on reframing
neurodiversity for better mental health and one in March on
demystifying access to work. Do feed in by that survey to let us know
what else you want to hear about as we plan the the whole year aheads --
webinar series. And that's fantastic. And yeah and come along to
the Dyslexia Show. We'd love to love to see you there. So we'll ping
you a link to join that as well. And that is it. So, thanks again.
Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Thank you to Theo. Thank you for
being so brilliant and joining in in the conversations, and yeah. Hopefully, we'll
see you again soon.
Thanks, everyone.