NEURODIVERGENCE AND THE BAKED-IN BARRIERS

It seems like a lifetime ago – the 1990’s. I was a secondary school teacher and getting very uneasy about what I saw happening in education. The National Curriculum (’82) and School League Tables (’92) seemed to be shutting down the very thing I loved about working with young people – their insatiable curiosity, creativity and need to challenge the ‘old’. It’s what made me leave teaching in 2000 and go to prison instead (to work with Geese Theatre Co.)

In the 2020’s, I’m witnessing the outcomes in my own children’s education. I’ll try to sum it up in one example. My 15-Year-old daughter is studying Macbeth for her English GCSE. I thought this would be great because she played Lady Macbeth in a primary school production of the play, and I thought she could really deepen her understanding of Shakespeare. But no, instead she was told that she ‘didn’t need to read the whole play’, given a sheet with the themes she needed to write about and a list of quotations to use. It has become about teaching the formula for getting a good grade in the exam, not about developing intellect, understanding and insight in our young people. This is exactly what my 1990’s self feared most. I’m sure that some schools are better than this, but the over-riding drive for ‘attainment’ (good grades) is now baked into our system.

Last week, my daughter was busy revising – i.e. sitting on her bed memorising reams of quotations for her English texts, and I was struck again not only by the absurdity of this, but also by the injustice. I have another, 12-year-old, daughter who works with pretty much a full hand of neurodivergent cards – dyslexia, ADHD, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and Tourette Syndrome. She is smart and insightful and resilient, with more emotional intelligence than I could ever aspire to. She has enormous energy to offer the world, but she will stumble right at the beginning of the road to success (as it’s currently mapped out). Her dyslexia will severely impact her ability to interact through written word, her poor working memory rules out those lists of quotations, her ADHD and autism turn the traditional classroom into an obstacle course. She’ll be lucky to even get entered for her GCSE English. But give her the content of Macbeth, the dark heart of the story and she’ll spin it into a thousand wild tales and terrifying images - and she’ll start connecting it to current world events.

So much for education. How much of this also applies to workplaces? I’ve worked with so many organisations that have their own, baked-in, curriculum, league tables, and rules, creating systems that immediately disable a large portion of staff potential.

Let’s take meetings as an example. Imagine a meeting that needs to solve a really tough problem or find an innovative way forward. Now picture this traditional scenario: people gather in a room and sit round a table, there may be some digital colleagues on a screen, a senior person opens the meeting, lays out the issues and then asks everyone what they think. Some people talk, some people say very little, the clock is ticking, the pressure is on and a decision is reached. It might be a decent plan, but often the opportunity to create a brilliant plan is missed.

What’s really needed here is the power of COGNITIVE DIVERSITY! Consciously bringing together very different ways of looking at things can create brilliance (if you’re in any doubt about this read Matthew Said’s book ‘Rebel Ideas’).  I’m someone who dislikes the idea that people with ADHD, autism or dyslexia should be seen as having a ‘superpower’. Let’s not romanticise it, because in our society, the overriding impact on these people is negative. They have to battle the systems and attitudes that exclude them – it’s exhausting and demoralising. But, in the right environment, their neurodivergence can also be brilliant, fostering innovative ways of solving problems and creating strategies that might seem ‘off the wall’ to other minds, but which could be the stroke of genius that enables the great leap forward – or just gives a nice little solution to a problem that’s been niggling for ages.

Now, back to that meeting…. well, I’m afraid that our neurodivergent colleague is one of the ones that didn’t say anything because they didn’t have time to think, or because everyone sitting round looking at them was too uncomfortable, or because they’ve learned that they won’t be taken seriously.

If you need to unleash some innovation in your organisation, you need to unleash the cognitive diversity of your staff by lowering the baked-in barriers. I can help you do that. Get in touch and I’ll give you as much time as you need to explore problems and solutions.