6.4 Neurodiversity

As the world pivoted towards online meetings, advice proliferated about how to run such meetings effectively, such as requiring participants to have their cameras on throughout the meeting to show they are fully engaged. This might have been well intentioned, but everyone in your team or department is different and has different needs, so what works well for some may be a source of anxiety for others. Taking time to understand those varying needs is important to fostering wellbeing in your workplace culture.

The term ‘neurodiverse’ has been adopted to cover people with a range of neurological conditions and specific learning differences – for example, autism spectrum disorders, dyslexia and Down’s syndrome – that mean they need to develop coping strategies to function in a world designed for the neurotypical.

As a leader or manager, you can make your workplace more inclusive by:

• not making assumptions about preferences or needs – ask the individual
• not equating ‘camera on’ behaviour or eye contact with attention being paid
• considering recording meetings for later review – with the consent of participants
• communicating clearly – avoiding sarcasm, euphemisms/metaphors and subtext
• being sensitive to sensory requirements, e.g. related to sound or movement
• providing clear, concise, step-by-step instructions for tasks
• not making last-minute, unexplained changes to plans or schedules.
• sharing meeting agendas in advance and asking participants if they feel comfortable or if there are adjustments that would be beneficial for them.

Watch the video below in which Becky May explains her experience of being neurodiverse.

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Transcript

BECKY MAY

Hi, my name is Becky. I am a learning experience designer. And I’ve been working in hybrid for a number of years, having transitioned from working in a face-to-face environment to then being on-boarded with the company and working 80% remotely and 20% in the office. I made my transition to working hybrid a number of years, even before COVID. And I found at that point it was much less flexible than it is now.

It’s become less of an issue. And actually, teams are now working more to try and push and consider well-being instead and taking breaks and normalised. That being said, though, working in a hybrid world as somebody with dyslexia and dyspraxia, plus some other hidden illnesses and disabilities, means that I actually find just turning up to an office and finding a hot desk really difficult and quite anxiety-building. And it would be great-- I had this thought that maybe if you could book a desk and the desk had a rating on it, as you would rate say an Airbnb or any other kind of rental property, in terms of accessibility, such as noise and distraction levels. And I think if people started to do that, and they started to see the corners of the office that felt uncomfortable to people, then it might prompt leadership to start really thinking and recognising how it works for neurodiverse and neurotypical people at work in the office, and where things are not ideal.

I also hate the trauma of having to get dressed in a certain way. For example, our working policy is wear business casual clothing. Well, that can be quite confusing. And actually wearing suits, having worked at home in your kind of casual clothing, can be really uncomfortable. And actually, it’s really distracting all day when you’re feeling hot and itchy from wearing your more formal attire.

My days in the office, I find, are much more unstructured and actually quite chaotic. I find people-- they want to come and chat to you face-to-face a lot more because I’m only in 20%. It’s a bit more of a novelty. And they want to build those connections. But for me, it takes a lot of energy out of me. I am quite introverted normally, so being around other people and their energy and enthusiasm, as much as it is really exciting and great to connect with people, it is quite draining, and especially coming from a world where I’ve been in quite a quiet and calm situation.

So this is what I would call a land of chaos and enthusiasm. And because of it, I do tend to kind of mask my anxieties. And that, on top of having to deal with this kind of energy drain, is actually really exhausting. And I sometimes go home feeling pretty empty by the end of the day,

I also feel like I act a little bit weird around other people or not in the normal, typical states that people would be seen when they’re working at the desk. So you would probably catch me gazing out the window for long periods of time. I’m not skiving, I promise. I am in deep focus. And I do have occasions where I just randomly stand up during meetings or during conversations just because I need that kind of energy movement to kind of kick me back into thinking about things a bit deeper again. It’s quite hard to explain the reasons behind it, but it’s just something that I do.

Unfortunately, for me, it kind of brings back memories of treatment at school and doing this in class. And if you were a person that kind of looked out of the window or not automatically writing and focusing on your work, then you were deemed as having lacked focus. And you would read that in school reports that Becky doesn’t focus. She isn’t going to succeed in life because she doesn’t do things the normal way. And I feel like that kind of school hangover messaging has never really gone away for me. And I have kind of carried that baggage into this new hybrid world as well. And that adds to the kind of anxiety bucket.

I have chronic fatigue, or ME, as it’s sometimes referred to. And that means that I have to be really conservative with my energy for the day. So if you’ve ever heard of the kind of spoon theory metaphor, it means that I measure out certain activities that I do during the day in spoonfuls.

Each spoon represents a certain activity for me. And I often estimate I have about 12 spoonfuls of energy a day. I don’t have an endless supply. And certain activities during the day, such as a really busy commute on a tube to London or taking my kids to school on the school run and trying to be at my desk by 9:00, or even just going to really long kind of creative meetings, they all use up energy from my spoonfuls of the day. And quite often to the point when I go home and I log off, I’m probably out of spoons. And therefore, you know, that impacts on my family and home life.

Well, things are less structured that turn up in my day eat away at my energy budget that I allowed for the whole day working in the office. So what I would probably say is if people are really transparent and they book time in my calendar in advance and they arrange meetings in like 15 to 50 minute blocks maximum, then I can be prepared, reserve energy for it. But if people constantly interrupt me when I’m, like I said, in that deep flow and deep focus, then that really does have a knock-on effect and can impact the quality of my work.

And I’m really not great with my boundaries. And I always will stop for people. And I will talk to them, but that normally is at the detriment of me. And I then pay the price of it. I have seen companies try to provide quiet zones and quiet spaces for people to work in. And these are great. And they are a step towards being more neuroinclusive. But they should really try to take care on what that means and looks like for their employees and speak with them because sometimes they can quite often feel a bit like a padded cell. And you’ve been segregated, or again, harking back to that school hangover feeling that you’ve been put in the naughty corner, when actually, you’re just trying to kind of re-energise and re-centre yourself.

Some of the key advantages that I find, though, from working in the office compared to being at home is you get the instant response to the questions quickly that you need. And you get that constant feedback that you might miss out on if you didn’t have-- if you didn’t have that face-to-face connection. And one thing I’m really guilty of is I go into an over-analytical state when I am at home. And I’m in silence and I’m waiting for a response. So if I sent a question out or run a particular learning intervention pitch and I’ve not heard anything back, I’ve got nothing to read and nothing to bounce off. So I start in my head unpicking all of that good work that I’ve been doing.

When actually, in the office, you kind of get that instant feedback straight away. You can see how it hangs in the office on people’s faces. I also find it less lonely being in the office. So although I find it quite tiring being around other people, I also do still experience loneliness. And I think it’s quite important to talk about it and how different people experience it differently.

So I tend to overcome that, sometimes, by sitting in, like, a local library or a coffee shop or like a co-location place just so I can be around other people and know that other people are still alive and out there. And I feel less isolated. But the beauty of it is no one needs anything from me. And I can just carry on with my own work, but draw kind of creative inspiration and feel less anxious when I’m with others.

And I sometimes manage to get around that at work. It wasn’t possible during lockdown to actually sit-in a coffee shop. And I listen to the office background noises that you can get on some of the different music app channels.

When working at home, I have more of a routine in place. And I share this with my team. So we have stand-ups on a Monday morning. And we talk about what our week looks like, both at home and at work, and potential overlaps of what could affect us in the office, and what could affect our home life because of the projects that we’ve got on. And we really try to work around that as much as possible. And we plan lunches.

So we all commit to using our lunch to do something, rather than sitting and working through the lunch break or eating something unhealthily or even booking meetings and lunches. So that’s been a really great change because of working remotely, and more people working remotely now. I think prior to COVID, I probably would have just worked through my lunch.

And I think it’s been great because it builds up the feeling that you’re not just a two-dimensional person behind a screen anymore. You’re not a caricature. You’re actually a human and building up that empathy and understanding what’s affecting you what the struggles are. Then we’re starting to look after other people. And we’re role modelling to the rest of the team.

We then follow it up later in the week to kind of check in to see whether you stick to it. And you’ve got accountability, which is really helpful. Otherwise, I don’t think I would stick to it. Our connection as a team has actually gotten closer during the time. And I actually find, now, that I can get my whole work day done in one go.

So I tend to work from 5 AM in the morning and log on and get a big proportion of my day out of the way, which is not possible if I worked in an office. So if I had to wait till 9:30 to do my work, then I find I’ve wasted a lot of what would have been my natural energy pattern up to that point. And I’m effectively like a coiled spring waiting to go at 9:30. And like a torrent of ideas will come out in a really haphazard way, which is not helpful to anybody.

So working from home means I can work to my kind of natural rhythm and cadence for what works with me. And then I can then take time out of my day to take the dog for a walk a little bit later or perhaps practice some kind of self-care, such as meditation. I’m also able to use my bike during longer meetings and podcasts. So whereas before, I had the feeling that I had to sit behind my desk all the time. Now, if I need to go off and think about things or kind of ponder them in my head and unpick them and look at them from different directions, I quite often use a stationary bike that I’ve got in my house or a dog walk.

And it’s been really helpful because I work in quite a creative role, so I need to have that freedom and flexibility without feeling like my colleagues are looking at me or thinking that I’m wasting time. So a recent example was I was asked to come up with a new innovative learning intervention in my current role, something that they hadn’t seen before. And I was really interested in the Choose Your Own Adventure books. So I brought a couple of those to read during work time. And I then started to look at things like the Charlie Brooker Bandersnatch concept. And I don’t think I would have been able to do that had I been based in an office because, if somebody looked over my shoulder and saw that I was watching a Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, for instance, on YouTube, they would feel like I was wasting company time and having a great old time there just watching a bit of TV.

When, actually, for me, that was me doing some learning research. So had it been in the office, there’s no way I would have come up with that concept and that idea. As for me, it’s quite creative being at home. It gives you the space to just explore things and look at things in a different way. And it’s actually increased my levels of innovation.

And recently, I was actually hired because I do think differently and I’ve brought new ideas to the table. And that’s only been from the freedom of working in this way. In the home environment where I work, I would definitely say I’m much more relaxed, I’m much more creative, and I’m able to get the work done how I need it to get done, and how the business needs me to get it done as well. I can’t be creative if I’m behind my desk all the time.

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