Coaching for Leaders - Talent Management | Leaders
694: The Neurodiversity Edge in Organizations, with Maureen Dunne
We often don't notice our deeply held biases, and there's certainly bias against neurodiversity. In this episode, how neurodiversity can provide an edge for almost every organization. This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 694. Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahoveak. Leaders aren't born, they're made, and this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Today a conversation about neurodiversity. Sometimes we think about neurodiversity as a challenge, and yet, neurodiversity, like so many aspects of diversity is an incredible opportunity for us, for our organizations, for our teams, and for so many of the people that we serve. Changing our mindset can help us to be able to embrace so many of the strengths that neurodiversity brings into our organizations, and I'm so glad today to welcome an expert Maureen Dunn. She is a cognitive scientist, neurodiversity expert, global keynote speaker, board director, and business leader with over two decades of experience helping organizations build thriving cultures. She has served as a senior advisor to some of the world's top organizations, including the LACO Foundation, Cornell University, and to members of Congress. She is the author of the neurodiversity edge, the essential guide to embracing autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurological differences for any organization. Maureen, what a pleasure to have you on. Hi, Dave. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to talk to you. Oh, me too. And I was thinking about neurodiversity and your work and how some of our most harmful biases that we have, both as individuals and as organizations and in our society, are the ones that we don't even recognize or ever think about. And I was struck by an example you give early in the book of how almost all of us tend to think about maps and the globe when we look at a picture or globe of Earth that North is up. And yet it isn't necessarily quote, unquote true, is it? Yeah. I think there's so many on exam and assumptions in our daily lives and we never really even think about it, but there's so many things that we just accept as the correct reality and don't think more about that there could be value to seeing things outside that lens or from a different lens. And it was funny, after the book came out and I wrote that part, as you mentioned, and it was published, I was on a plane to Dubai, I was doing an event, an neurodiversity event with YPO, a young president's organization, and I happened to be on a plane where I could on the map, could change it where South was up and see where I was going from this different lens. And I kind of then noticed things that I hadn't noticed before. So yeah, so I just think there's so many things like that where we get stuck in a mentality or a mindset that's not always productive. And then we have a hard time seeing things from a new or fresh lens. One of the other examples you give early in the book is looking at colonies of honeybees and how they behave and how their diverse behavior actually serves the colony. Could you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. So there's researchers, I'm not an IB expert myself, but there's researchers that study the behavior of honeybees, and one thing that's well known is that there is basically their most important social phenomena is the Waggle dance, okay? It's this figure, dance, and it's performed to share information with other members of the colony, to communicate where already known sources of a pollen are. So it's very important to the honeybee colony, but there's about a fifth of the bees that don't follow the Waggle dance, it seems to be randomly flying off into different directions. And if you could see that mistakenly from what we call a deficit-based perspective and just say, okay, well, one out of five bees are failures, they're not following the Waggle dance. Why are they not following the Waggle dance? We should try to force them to follow the Waggle dance, but it turns out that others that have been examining this more closely that there's advantages to the behavior of these divergent bees that they're apparently responsible for disproportionately discovering new sources of pollen that benefit the entire hive community. And so I think sometimes we get so-called up in examining value at the individual level that we could fail as well when you apply this back to our own organizations and to humans, we could fail to see things from a community perspective or an organizational perspective of the different roles and different types of contributions that individuals could have. And so from a strength-based perspective, then even though one out of five bees are doing things differently, it's a huge contribution that benefits the entire hive. And yet in so many organizations, we look at that 20%. And we label that as problematic or we need to work around that as a quote-unquote problem. And you made a really big distinction there between individual level traits and community level traits. I think there's something significant in that distinction. What is it that is significant? Well, I think that in my book, the term that I bring up is one of the terms that I think is helpful to when you think about this is called neurodiversification and then another is complementary cognition. And I think the point is that a lot, especially the larger corporations that are at risk of stagnating and especially in the economic climate we have in front of us, where innovations is going to increasingly be a huge premium, it's so important to not make the mistake of hiring based on cultural fit, which in not being examining your own assumptions, where you're not bringing on talent that is able to complement other employees that you have or skill sets you already have on the team. If everybody's the same, if everyone is similar in their approach or what kind of perceptual analytical or experiential skills they bring to the table, there's inevitably going to be blind spots. You're going to inevitably miss risks that competitors may end up having more diversity on their team and being able to spot it earlier on. And also missed opportunities for innovation. So I think it's incredibly important, especially the future we have in front of us, to have what I would call cognitive and experiential diversity on our teams and make sure that there's what we, you know, complementary skill sets, but we shouldn't all be the same, right? There's risks if your team members and your staff and your organizations have everybody's sort of cognitively and perceptually and experientially correlated. Yeah. And we generally, we generally are there at least what we espouse in a lot of organizations when it comes to the things that I think many of us traditionally think of when we think of D and I, we think of race and gender and sexual orientation. And yet neurodivergence is something that a lot of us who are more neurotypical don't necessarily think about as much. I am just speaking for myself, like some of this language is newer for me. And I know for some of the folks in our listening community, I'm wondering if you could perhaps define like when we think about the term neurodivergence, what does that mean? Sure. Yes. So neurodiversity is a strength based concept and it's an umbrella term to really describe all the different and unique ways that people's brains work. And if someone says they're neurodivergent, that means that that person has a brain that works differently from the neuronormative majority. So that could be autism, that could be ADHD, that could be dyslexia, dyspraxia, synesthesia, hyperlexia. There's a lot of examples that fit under the neurodiversity umbrella. But yeah, generally, clearly speaking though, it just is, you know, somebody has a brain that works differently from the, from the neuro, what we would call the neuronormative majority. And it's a huge part of the population, isn't it? Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize just the scale of neurodiversity. So we know at minimum, it's documented at 15 to 20% of the global population. There's a lot of reasons to believe that the numbers are actually a lot higher. There's also interesting study where all sort of trying to make sense of where over 50% of Gen Zers have reported to identify under the neurodiversity umbrella, either as being definitely neurodivergent or somewhat neurodivergent. So a lot of the younger generations are embracing their differences a lot more than we've seen I guess in the past, and that's something also employers should take note of. Yeah, and it's really, it's really interesting how as a society, I think we, for some reason, we don't often think about neurodiversity in the same lens that I think we think of a lot of the other DNI aspects and one of the quotes that really struck with me from the book is you write the legacy framework for understanding neurodivergent people is generally known as the deficit based perspective or the medical deficit model, which still dominates how most people view neurodivergence at all levels of culture today. And I was struck that there's a study in the UK, you cite in the book, a 2020 survey of UK employers revealed that a shocking 50% openly admitted that they would not hire a neurodivergent job seeker. If that was about any other topic, if it was about race or gender or sexual orientation, we would all be horrified by that number and yet it's fascinating how like we don't think in our society. We don't think about neurodivergence in the same lens, do we? No, I mean, yeah, and it is horrifying and one thing I've always, you know, it struck me about that study is right, if over 50% are openly admitting that they wouldn't hire a neurodivergent person, you know, you'd assume that the real number is higher, right? But I think, you know, one of the complexities is just neurodivergence is invisible, right? It's so it's different, right? And so it, and then also there's, it's invisible and that's why I think it's, and it's also very misunderstood. And I think a lot of employers, you know, there's a DNI perspective, but there's also just the talent acquisition perspective, like you should, you should want diverse, you know, a diverse team, you should. And then that gets into trying to redefine or re-examine assumptions about how you've been hiring because it's because it's invisible. It's that much more important that you create healthy organizations and companies that everybody can do their best work, that everybody can thrive because you need to create the conditions where people feel comfortable even asking for what kind of support they might need to do their best work, you know, it's invisible. So you can't tell who's neurodivergent by looking at it. And I hesitate to mention this next thing because I know for some people in our audience this is like such an obvious thing, but I know for others it's not just to the point we just made of like society has a very different view of this. You write intellectual capability is entirely independent of the presence or absence of a neurodivergent cognitive profile. Neurodivergence just doesn't correlate to that, like anything else would, right? And yet we do have the assumption in a lot of places that that's the case, like you're not as capable if you think differently, right? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I think on the one hand, one of the challenges has been that so many of the examples and the movies and the media, there's been a, you know, this has been a sensationalized in a way where we don't see broad representation, especially in leadership roles. And yet at the same time, because there is a huge stigma that, you know, it's one of the things, one of my goals, hoping to get people to understand this well enough to see it differently in a more nuanced way. But because there's, you know, there's still some of Sigma, there's a lot of high level leaders I know in big corporations, even senior vice presidents, there's, you know, or higher that are neurodivergent, but just don't disclose. And so some of, and then you look at our history, right, you know, so many of our innovators and entrepreneurs and trailblazers were clearly neurodivergent or had strong neurodivergent traits. I mean, you think of Einstein, you think of Benjamin Franklin, you think of Thomas Jefferson, you think of, well, you know, Richard Branson, obviously, he's very open about his dyslexia, so he's been a huge advocate. But somehow, you know, I think, yeah, there's so much more work to be done for people to really understand that neurodivergence is, yeah, it's independent of intellectual capability. It's a, that's sort of a separate thing. And there's lots of people that are both gifted and neurodivergent. They call that population twice exceptional. And everybody else, so I think it's important to realize that we all have strengths and challenges, right? And one of our diversion people just may, you know, may be a little bit more uneven in some of their skills, but there's so much, there's so many strengths that we sometimes fail to see. And it's important that we include those strengths in our organizations. And we had talked a minute ago about that deficit-based perspective that tends to be the view that a lot of organizations our society have. And you really advocate for a strengths-based approach. What's different about that approach? Well, I think if, well, first of all, there's, well, a lot of times, if you're focusing on just the deficits, you fail to see how those same things that are being perceived as deficits could be strengths in a work setting. So like, you know, think about autism, for instance, like one of, you know, from a deficit-based perspective, a lot of autistic people have what we call special interests, right? And it's restricted interests. Okay, but, you know, that's also results in intensity and focus that is very, very big, a very huge advantage, right? If you're an entrepreneur, if you're, you know, heading up an innovation center and a company and, or you're a cybersecurity expert, I mean, there's so many situations where that level of focus and intensity is such an asset, right? That's an uncommon skill that you want on your team, right, you know? And so I think if you fail to see the strength side of that, even in yourself, right, as a neurodivergent person, then it's there, you're not, you're not going to, you're not going to be able to thrive in the same way. And so when I think in organizations as well, if they assume they're looking at things from a deficit-based perspective and they fail to understand that, okay, this isn't charity, right? But there's a lot of reasons why you should want and really strongly desire to hire neurodivergent people and seeing that side of it, you're going to miss out on that talent. When I picked up your book, I initially was having one of many thoughts about what we would discuss in this conversation was some of the things about accommodation that I think a lot of people in organizations have at least thought of even if they haven't done when thinking about neurodivergency. And I changed my mind on that pretty substantially after reading the book and thinking about it in that one of the real nudges that I hear you make in your work is that instead of maintaining a list of accommodative practices for, as you say, quirky people, moving the entire organization toward a norm where there's a wide-ranging system of universal accommodations that work for everyone. And I'm wondering if you could tell me a bit about that distinction because I think oftentimes we do approach, especially from an organization, a leadership standpoint, we think about accommodations for one group of people versus of thinking of the entire system. Right. Yeah. And to be clear, accommodations and support is hugely important. But at the same time, we have to, if our organizational cultures don't grow to a point or evolve to a point where there's a genuine value, there's a genuine valuing of different kinds of minds. We're not going to get to, we're not going to create organizations where we're maximizing everybody's happiness and productivity in general. And so I guess the difference is, so to the extent that it's possible, if you can follow what we'd call universal design principles, that's going to benefit everyone. And then there's very simple things employers can do that are inexpensive, don't take a lot of time, but could make a huge difference in the productivity and well being of all your employees, many, which, you know, may be neurodivergent, like just normalizing simple things like, you know, it's, hey, if, if, if you need, if you'd like to use noise canceling headphones, if you want to make a request to, you know, an open floor plan is not going to be where you're going to be most productive, do you know, if you want a corner office or if, you know, just normalizing more flexibility, I guess, in the workflow and in how work is being done and focusing on results. And under that model, there's going to be, you're going to have employees not only that are already neurodivergent and aren't disclosing, but also, you know, everyone's has employees that aren't neurodivergent and maybe haven't been diagnosed yet or haven't even realized it themselves. But what they do know is that they're struggling in some way, right? And so I think to the extent you can optimize systems where everybody has access to tools that will just make them feel like they are supported and have options to be more productive in the way that's going to work best for them, that's going to be really, really helpful. And then, you know, there's, there's, there may be other types of supports or accommodations that might might be needed. I mean, it's always a case by case, but I think the most important thing is if organizations can move towards universal design, that's, that's the ideal because then we're normalizing just the fact that we, we're all different and, you know, we all have strengths and weaknesses in, we don't need to be the same, we shouldn't be the same, we bring different things to the table to our organizations. And it's normalizing that it's, you know, it's okay if, if someone needs to use, yeah, things like headphones or fidget spinners or just just the mentality, I think the mindset with that I think is hugely important, especially to make neurodivergent people feel like, feel like they are at an organization where they're valued. Yeah. Indeed. And the big distinction I'm hearing as you say that is that yes, this is great for folks who identify as neurodivergent. And it's also great for everyone else to like it's not that we're, yes, the accommodations are important and it, but it's not just we're just doing this for one type of person in the organization, but we're doing this for everybody. And for, for those who have not thought about that in their organization or have never done something like that, what's, what's an example maybe of like universal design that you have seen an organization start with or do that speaks to that. That's something that really does serve everyone. Yeah. I mean, the, you know, a classic example, the Venus fossil design is ramps, right? Where initially it was perceived that, okay, this is, this is for people in wheelchairs, but it, you know, the idea was yes, it makes it what's, what's essential for some benefits all. And obviously there's so many examples of people that benefit from the use of ramps, right? That aren't in wheelchairs. You could be, I don't know, a mom in a, with, in a, using a stroller, you know, a blind person with a cane and elderly per, there's so there's just everybody knows it or just people that for one reason or another, it's just a better experience or easier than stairs. So it's, it's, that's, you know, it's a different kind of example, but that's usually, you know, that's usually a classic example of universal design at work. I know you support a lot of leaders and organizations and helping them to think about the bigger why their mindset behind this. When you see organizations and leaders start to shift and think about this less from deficit and think about this more from a place of strengths, what are those leaders doing that helps them to make that shift? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think, I think one of them is that they've taken the time to understand our diversity in a way that allows them to, in their own organizations, be an advocate and, and talk about it through a strength-based lens, most people don't hear all the stories of the strengths of neurodivergent people and why it's important and so I think when you, if you're, if you're in an organization, your CEO is sharing positive stories about the neurodivergent employees or people that he or she knows, I mean, like that, that changes the culture, right? That starts to, you know, and something I bring in my book is, you know, we don't have time to elaborate here, but it was called the three Cs, codification and, and conduct, drives culture and the idea there is like I've worked with organizations, we could change and update policies, right, to make them more neurodivergent friendly, but if the day-to-day conduct and how people behave, don't, you know, reinforce or are in alignment with the values that that company says that they value, you know, then that's, that's going to affect your culture, right? And so I think, I think the greatest success is I've worked with a lot of companies, organizations and, you know, and directly with the CEOs and I think, I think having the CEOs on board, like truly on board, really getting it and being willing to be vocal, right, within their own organizations that, yeah, this is something that we value, you know, we, we value diversity of all kinds and we are, you know, looking to hire and support neurodiversity as well, like just be that, that I think has been a really important part of it. And such a big part of getting that support from top leaders is being able to demonstrate in addition to the important and critical human and values pieces behind this, also the results. And there's a ton of research behind this. What are the, what does the research look like as far as organizations and their results when they really, when they really move in the direction toward that strengths-based approach? Yeah. Well, there's, there's a number of studies that have looked at also just, you know, the, the benefits of diversity, more generally speaking, I know there was one with a, you know, McKinsey Boston consulting group, there's been, Deloitte, there's been several studies that have there. But I think in terms of neurodiversity in particular, there's a lot of emerging research now looking at just the productivity of organizations increasing dramatically. So there was a JP Morgan and their pilot program with autistic employees. They found they had not only a 99 percent retention rate in their program, but their autistic employees were 48 percent faster and 140 percent more productive than the neurotypical employees hired in the same, in the same position. And then what I finding I've been in my research and, and work with consulting with lots of different types of companies and organizations, there, that there's just in terms of preparing for integrating, you know, preparing for the future work, preparing for AI, taking over more cognitive work than maybe we've seen, you know, throughout in history, I've been encouraging the CEOs I work with to make sure that we're not neglecting the human resources side of that equation. Okay, yes, yes, let's make sure we're, you know, integrating the right technologies, understanding AI, but understanding the implications of where things are going, that that changes the human resources equation. And I found that the companies that are that I've been working with as well that are, you know, internally, you know, there's, there's an increase in terms of their R&D and their patents and their innovation in terms of their evaluations, it's because they've made this shift of, of trying to be more supportive of diversity, cognitive and experiential diversity, and that is leading to more innovation. And that innovation is just hugely important, right, especially where we're at now with, with these, these accelerating changes with technology. Yeah, indeed, and there, it's one of the reasons I wanted to have this, you know, more of a big picture, the mindset conversation that we've been having. There's, of course, so many detailed things, tactics, and the book is a masterclass in being able to think about at all aspects of the organization, the why the tactics, the what's next, the strategies, the research. So I hope folks will hear this conversation and if you, your organization haven't yet thought about this much, I hope that you'll use this as an entry point to begin that thinking. And Maureen, I'm curious as you have put this book together, I've been doing all this research, I've been teaching people about how to do better through your work. In the last year or so, as you've been doing a ton of that, what if anything have you changed your mind on, on this? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I, I think when I, you know, I've been doing this type of work and in literacy for, for a long time, and I think if we go back some years anyway, I was a little skeptical of things like value statements, you know, do they really change anything? And I've had, it's been interesting to see, you know, I've changed my mind on that for a couple of reasons, so, so one is I, I'm the former president of the Illinois Community College Trustees Association and worked even in that role, worked with a lot of employers, you know, trying to build some partnerships with community colleges and, and employers, those opportunity pathways. And we, as an organization, as a state organization, was the first to approve a, a neurodiversity inclusion statement across, you know, we had support, broad support from all of our representatives across the Strait. And then that actually led to some new legislation as it was a house resolution in the Illinois House of Representatives. I was encouraging all the Illinois colleges and universities to adopt a similar strength-based statement, so that, you know, it basically said like we value all students, you know, nerd version and neurotypical alike and the original statement included beyond students, like faculty, trustees, staff, just encouraging wider acceptance. And what's been interesting to me to see is that the colleges and then I've, you know, have since then have worked with a number of corporations and organ, and comp, and smaller companies and nonprofits too that wanted to adopt a similar type of value statement. But seeing how getting that buy-in from the board of directors or the board of trustees and the CEO or the president and the cabinet, you know, like at the, at the highest level leadership that it actually does change things or it could, you know, I've seen great examples where that level of buy-in and seeing in its, so it's very visible, right, that it, it has led to conversations, more open conversations internally about, you know, what more could be done. Like, well, why aren't we even more talking about the budget, what, you know, it seems like it would really be everyone's benefit if we had a sensory friendly room, right, which would benefit everybody, not just neurodiversion people and so, so that's been kind of interesting. It's something I've changed my mind and I guess I started out thinking, well, is that, does that really change anything when you evaluate a statement in and of themselves it doesn't? But I've seen in the right conditions and with buy-in from top leadership that it actually is pretty important, you know, because, because then it, it changes the mindset and the kinds of conversations people are comfortable happening at all levels of that company or organization. Maureen Dunn is the author of the neurodiversity edge, the essential guide to embracing autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurological differences for any organization. Maureen, thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for your work. Thank you. I'm so glad you invited me and I enjoyed this with a great conversation, thank you. There are certainly a bunch of things that fall into the category of things we don't talk enough about, that's the inspiration for three other recommended episodes that I think will be helpful to you if this conversation was useful today. One of them is episode 594, how to begin difficult conversations about race. Kwame Christian was my guest on that episode. The host of the Negotiate Anything podcast has done incredible work on helping so many of us be better negotiators and to handle all kinds of difficult conversations. That episode is focused on beginning the difficult conversation about race when that's a factor in a conversation and the framework that Kwame talks about in that conversation, three steps. Also very useful for starting a difficult conversation about anything, a very helpful starting point, something we don't talk enough about, episode 594, a beginning point for you. Also recommended episode 639, supporting return to work after maternity leave. Anna Greenberg was my guest on that episode, we talked about her work and expertise and research looking at supporting women in particular and returning to work after a baby and what that looks like, what it looks like for them and also the thing we don't talk enough about, what it looks like for the manager that is supporting her, what it looks like for the rest of the organization, what it looks like for partners and spouses and so many others who are involved in helping a family to expand both the professional and the personal side of that. Episode 639, a helpful listen there and then also recommended is episode 675. How to be a better ally, Lauren Wesley Wilson was my guest on that episode and we talked about the good intentions almost all of us have of being able to support those in the workplace and in our lives more broadly that are underrepresented and how do we do a better job at that and perhaps more importantly, how do we take the good intentions and place them in a place where it actually results in a positive impact. We talked through that in episode 675 and some of the beginning points to actually show up as a better ally. All of those episodes you can find on the CoachingForLeaders.com website, many, many years of conversations around not only diversity and inclusion as we're filing this episode under but so many other topics as well. It's why I'm inviting you to set up your free membership at CoachingForLeaders.com. It's going to give you access to the entire library of episodes that I've aired since 2011 plus a bunch more inside the free membership and one of the resources that's available inside the free membership is my book and interview notes. I spent a whole bunch of time preparing for the conversation with Maureen and thinking about what I was going to ask her also some of the things we didn't have time for in our conversation that I've documented, highlighted from her book and also many of the books in recent years and all of those are available in book and interview notes. So when you set up your free membership at CoachingForLeaders.com, you can go over to the book and interview notes section, you'll see alphabetical, all of the books that have been featured, at least most of them on the podcast in recent years and the highlights, the key things I found in the books that I think are most critical, my interview notes, again, some of the things that come out in the conversation, some of the things we don't have time for, all of it's there for you as a resource to support your ongoing learning and development and your skill development. All of it is part of CoachingForLeaders.com just set up your free membership and if you're looking for a bit more, I'd invite you to discover CoachingForLeaders Plus. If you take a moment to go over to CoachingForLeaders.plus, you'll learn all about the additional benefits that are inside of CoachingForLeaders Plus to support you and one of those benefits is a weekly journal entry. This past week I wrote a journal entry on the importance of seasons in our lives. There are some things for all of us that are lifelong commitments. For me, marriage, parenting, right at the top of that list. For most other things in life though, there are seasons. There are things that come to an end, good or bad, that tend to close out over time and the challenge a lot of us have is that we think about our commitments, all of them, as lifelong. When in fact many commitments are seasons and the key question is when does that season come to a close? I wrote about that in the past week on Dave's journal Inside of CoachingForLeaders Plus. If you'd like to get access to that plus all of the benefits inside of CoachingForLeaders Plus, just go over to CoachingForLeaders.plus for more. CoachingForLeaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday I'm glad to have Mary Murphy on the show. We're going to be talking about team collaboration that supports growth mindset. Join me for that conversation with Mary and have a great week. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]