Written by: Kelly Lane, Deputy Headteacher, Trevelyan Middle School
Invisible Difference – Even if you cannot see it
Neurodiversity blindness in the workplace
“You can’t be what you can’t see” – Marian Wright Edelman, a sentiment as much relevant to staff neurodiversity blindness in education as to the context in which it was initially shared.
Picture the scene, you are sat at your classroom desk, shrouded by the pile of books to mark, a lukewarm coffee at the side, preparing to greet your tutor group. Your class are a vibrant bunch of all different shapes and sizes, needs and talents. You could probably list these with ease and describe all the unique qualities that make them who they are, the things that they need to help them to learn and thrive at their best. In this, we know we do our best to support all children to achieve their potential, aiming to celebrate diversity and remove barriers along the way.
I wonder if the same could be said if we were to change the scene to the staff room. What do you see? Perhaps the old photocopier in the corner, or the queue building at the guillotine that you urgently need to use, or maybe you are eying up the ever-popular coffee station by the sink. Perhaps you see the hustle and bustle of ‘busyness’ before the day begins, too busy to truly see everything; to see everyone. For me, it is the things that we cannot see that can make the biggest difference of all.
This year I had the pleasure of meeting new colleagues joining the Trust, and for the first time in my experience of recruitment and induction, a new member of staff shared that they are on the Autistic spectrum. They clearly articulated everything that they would need to thrive, and everything that might pose difficulties for them. Firstly, I felt incredibly proud that the Pioneer Educational Trust had successfully conveyed that we were an inclusive and equality driven organisation, and had created an environment in which they felt safe and comfortable enough to share. Secondly it made me wonder, how much do we really know about the people we work with? Had this colleague not shared this information, we as an organisation would have had no idea, and the consequences of this for the individual could have been quite catastrophic. It made me question, are we encouraging openness and acceptance at all levels, and what more could be done to cultivate an environment in which all staff feel safe to bring their authentic selves more readily, neurodiversity and all.
What could the impact be if there were more examples of Neurodiverse teachers, staff, and leaders in schools, for our school children, or our wider communities?
I once had the privilege to observe a conversation so powerful that it remains with me to this day. I remember observing a teacher share with a dyslexic pupil that they too were dyslexic and understood their struggle. I saw something physically lift in the child, a realisation that she would be okay – ‘she’s dyslexic and she’s a teacher!’ The brave choice to share this resulted in two key impacts: giving hope to the pupil for the future, but also in becoming a visibly diverse role model. The importance of this action is captured beautifully in the following quote ‘Diverse leadership fosters social cohesion and supports (young) people to grow and develop in an environment of visible, diverse role models.’ (Deloitte, 2018)
Only when we create a culture of diversity and inclusion will more people feel safe and confident to share who they are, and in doing so creating safe places of acceptance, care, and happiness, where the things we cannot see, begin to be seen. Moreover, ‘Diverse and inclusive organisations have happier more motivated staff and experience less turnover.’ (McKinsey 2018).
We often focus on what the challenges might be or what adjustments might be needed and rarely talk enough about what neurodiverse people can do that neurotypical people cannot. Neurodiverse people may have diverse ways of thinking or acquired life skills from having to manage various complexities that other people might not have had to cope with. I believe that the talents neurodiverse people can bring to the workplace are too valuable to miss. ‘Diverse teams are more creative, innovative, adaptive and productive.’ (CIPD, 2019).
Neurodiversity statistics
- 1 in 10 people have dyslexia
- 4% of the adult population has ADHD
- 1 in a 100 people in the UK have Autism
- 5% of the population are estimated to have dyspraxia traits.
- 16% of people are neurodiverse
Were you surprised by the statistics? These are just some of the conditions that fall within this category, but there is an increasing debate over whether bipolar and other similar illnesses are also part of the neurodivergent category. Regardless of the debate, everyone deserves to be seen and known.
Over the years I have had the privilege of working with many people both neurodiverse and neurotypical. The invisible differences have ranged from dyspraxia, ASD, ADHD, and dyslexia. For those who do not have an invisible difference, I would like to share some experiences of what it really means for someone to have a difference you cannot see, or for someone who feels unable to be seen. (Examples are not from within Pioneer Educational Trust).
Experiences of a person with ADHD
There is a myth that people ‘grow out of ADHD’ when in fact this is not always the case. Many people have simply learned to manage their ADHD or to mask it when it comes to adulthood. Research has shown how this myth has led to inadequate support for those with ADHD (Unison, 2020).
A leader I once worked with described how they found it impossible to filter through so many different environmental distractions at any one time. Here is the short story she told me.
“I was trying so hard to focus on what was being said, but there was a gentle draft through the door, that pushed the door against the wall making a knocking sound, suddenly I found myself counting the seconds between the door knocking, mixed with the presenters’ voice and the loud clicking of his pen. My colleagues’ pencil started scraping loudly against the paper and I caught sight of a new poster that has just been placed on the wall. Each of these things now pull on my attention and although I can hear the presenter speaking, everything is happening at exactly the same time, flooding my brain with equal intensity. It sounds cliché, but it is exhausting.”
She gave the following Zoom screen analogy. Imagine an everyday interaction with a colleague is represented by a Zoom room with 9 screens showing on your computer. In a neurotypical persons mind, the person you are meeting with is the point of focus; their Zoom square is larger than the rest, lit up in colour with full sound. All of the other screens are muted, black and white, and smaller. These represent all of the environmental stimuli – the room temperature, the brightness of the lights, the phone ringing, racing thoughts, a colleague typing on their keyboard, a door slamming down the corridor, trees moving outside the window. It is easy to see what the important part is, your attention is automatically drawn there. Now imagine all 9 screens are large, one next to the other, all in full colour, sound on. For a person with ADHD, there is no ability to mute the distractions, make them smaller or turn the cameras off. The level of stimuli is consistently invasive; it overwhelms and exhausts the brain.
A jug of water is a good representation of the level of capacity to operate. Most neurotypical people function with roughly 30-50% of the cup full of water, meaning that if pressure arises there is room for more capacity. People with ADHD tend to operate at 90-95% of the cup being full; almost always on the brink of overwhelm due to high processing skills and receptors in operation, all at the same time. The smallest of things can flood the cup, a simple change of plan or priority can stall cognitive function entirely, if only for a short period of time.
People with ADHD can also suffer with something called time blindness – an inability to judge time properly due to being deficient in temporal processing abilities (executive functioning), which interferes with the ability to perceive time accurately. This leads to procrastination, due to the multiple opportunities for impulsive distraction, missing deadlines, doing things in the wrong order due to the inability to prioritise – “everything just feels as intensely important as everything else – the list never ends” – and consistently underestimating the time it takes to do things.
She is also, however, insightful and creative and has an excellent memory for detail. Her hyperfocus enables her to quickly learn new skills, support others with work she hasn’t done before and become a (temporary!) expert in just about any subject. She can piece together complex layers of information accurately and at speed, describing them as visual, intricate webs of data linked together in patterns that make dynamic assessments, decision making and problem solving an intuitive and exciting process.
Despite this, she has not shared her experiences of ADHD with their workplace for fear of judgement and concerns over her ability to perform. The irony she finds is that she is repeatedly described as ‘quirky’ or told ‘your brain runs at 100 miles an hour’ – clearly demonstrating that the differences are seen, but they are not seen as ADHD.
Is there a blindness to ADHD for adults in the workplace? If you were this person’s line manager or co-worker, what could you do to support them – what adjustments could you offer? Would you know where to begin?
Experiences of a person with dyslexia
I once worked with a teacher who shared with me that he was dyslexic, he shared the types of difficulties he faced such as, how much longer it took him to mark the pupils’ books, the additional hours spent checking his own spelling and making sure there were no errors. He described the fear of not being able to interpret lots of written information and being expected to share his thoughts, without having had adequate processing or thinking time. He also shared that despite feeling overwhelmed in particular situations, he had noticed how creative he became when faced with a problem. He was able to see the problem more holistically and piece it together to create a progressive and sequential strategy extremely quickly, in most cases more quickly than others.
Another colleague described their sinking, deflating feeling at an interview when they were asked to handwrite a letter for a parent or handwrite a years’ action plan without the use of a laptop. Let alone the hours and hours it takes to write and re-write emails until they are sure it is of a good standard to send.
A friend once described how the anxiety would rise in training sessions when the paper and pens were handed out for a scribing activity, or even worse being put on the spot to make notes on a flip chart at the front during training! She described that over the years the anxiety became too much to bear and so she created an exit strategy in the form of a prepared joke, that as a Maths teacher “I do numbers not letters!” to get her out of the situation. Despite this, she has very high levels of pattern recognition and the ability to see how things connect to form complex systems, identifying similarities among multiple things easily.
There is no correlation between dyslexia and intelligence and yet many children and adults with dyslexia struggle with confidence and low self-esteem and are still greatly affected by the stigma that continues to exist. It is startling to consider that because of this, most of these struggles might never become known to others.
We have excellent awareness of differences in our classrooms, but sometimes overlook that adults in our communities also need our awareness. Children with dyslexia grow up to be adults with dyslexia and although it is argued that by adulthood many skills and strategies have been learnt to help, perhaps the strategies and skills only ‘mask’ the struggle, when the struggle may still exist.
What can we do about this?
I now place an expectation on the reader to ‘do their bit’ to promote diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. I wonder if you might be thinking, “I can’t do anything if I don’t know, surely it falls to the neurodiverse person to share this?” Yes and no. There is still a lot of stigma associated with various differences and this can sometimes prevent people from feeling comfortable to share. This means that we really do need to ‘do our bit’ to ensure the stigma is removed and we can work together to create a culture that fully embraces diversity and inclusion. Just by being more open to talk about it, we can create a lot more space for people to be themselves.
Here are some top tips to help us to thrive with our own and others’ differences.
- Accept people for who they are.
- Acknowledge invisible differences.
- Share your own differences.
- Appreciate the differences.
- Avoid labels.
- Develop your emotional intelligence.
- Focus on the strengths of people not their weaknesses.
- Take time to understand what the differences are.
- Tell your story.
At Pioneer Educational Trust we pride ourselves on the work we are doing to celebrate diversity and we are active in our pursuit to develop this even further. A focus has been in developing empathy for others, and I believe this is where it begins. We are a Trust that actively seeks to embrace and celebrate people for who they are, because we acknowledge that everyone is different in their own way. With this in mind, I shall lead by example and take a step of trust into acceptance and share that the ‘I do numbers not letters’ prepared exit joke, is actually mine. I hope that this article encourages you if you are neurodiverse to share your difference, and if you are neurotypical to embrace the differences.
Let us now return to the busy scene of the staff room, caught up in the hustle and bustle of the ‘busyness’ of school life, take a moment to look around and really ‘see’.
What more could you do to begin to make the invisible, visible?