Tag Archive for: Coaching

A red fast jet flying through the sky

Top Gun (1986) and parallels with neurodiversity coaching

If you grew up in the 80s, you may love or hate Top Gun which stars Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Meg Ryan and others. It’s a film I love and have written about before and has defined much of my thinking. There are lessons that have carried me through a lot of my experience around coaching and neurodiversity. Here’s little nuggets of wisdom that I have picked up from the film that parallel with neurodiversity coaching.

It seems coaching and the film are wildly different but hang in there, this could be the wildest ride of your life…I feel the need, the need for speed! (That’s entirely from the film, in case you missed it).

Let’s start

Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick. He shows a lot of promise yet lets himself down in many ways. He’s frustrated with himself and the system, but when he tries his best, he significantly improves. This is much like many neurodivergent thinkers and leaders I work with. They often struggle with the system and need to work out ways to interact to shape their processes so they can perform at their best. This is how I can help, by amplifying strengths and managing the things an individual may find tricky.

Difficulty

In the film, the characters join in a training exercise, competing to take down the practice enemy and earn personal points. Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, is piloting a plane with Goose who is the Radar Intercept Officer seated behind him. During the flight, they fly through the other planes’ jet wash (turbulent air created behind a jet aircraft due to the high-speed exhaust gases expelled from its engines). This results in both engines failing, sending the plane into an uncontrollable flat spin. Maverick and Goose are forced to eject from the aircraft with no other options. Tragically, Goose has a fatal injury during ejection, lands in the sea with Maverick and dies a short time later.

This forces Maverick to go to a place he is uncomfortable with as he blames himself for a mistake that wasn’t his fault. Ultimately, that ejection system should have been able to deal with those conditions.

This kind of self-blaming can show up in neurodiversity, for example, in ADHD or Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). This is where individuals fear rejection and blame themselves for the things that happen that have nothing to do with them. This can lead to crippling feelings of anxiety and low self-worth, meaning they are not able to perform at their best.

Tricky Mission

Maverick’s (Tom Cruise) journey involves him being selected to perform a tricky mission at the end of the film where he flies through another jet wash, but this time it doesn’t take his engines out. As you can imagine, this brings back the trauma of his friend’s death. He temporarily disengages and switches off from flying his plane, which puts one of his colleagues, Iceman in grave danger. Maverick overcomes this by the conversations that are happening over the plane’s comms system and also by his self-talk. This overlaps with coaching because coaching around neurodiversity is often about building resilience and creating coping mechanisms that support you in your workplace. This allows the individual to move forward effectively.

One of the other themes in the film is the idea of mentorship, which Maverick has from the Top Gun program from his mentors Viper and Jester. They guide him through how to take his raw, energetic and unorthodox approach and turn it into something valuable to the organisation. This draws many parallels with neurodivergent thinkers in terms of how they feel about workplace problems and the solutions they want to implement. Being able to deliver solutions in a palatable way that meets the organisation’s needs is vital for any changes to have the desired effect. I’ve worked with individuals who have great ideas, but don’t deliver them in a way that is appetising enough for the organisation and it brings the question, do you need a Top Gun mentorship programme in your organisation to help mould some of your mavericks?

Failure and Top Gun

The change and growth in Maverick’s story is an integral part of the film. Towards the end of the film, he has moved from someone who has failed in his responsibility towards Goose, his Radar Intercept Officer, to being confident in his own abilities to deliver what he needs to do to support himself and his team to be effective. He’s even able to overcome his lack of self-confidence as he reflects on what has gone wrong.

This narrative is just as relevant to neurodivergent thinkers, particularly in the workplace. Building confidence and reframing the conversations is vital. I worked with someone recently who felt they could not market themselves effectively yet were successful with a full calendar of client work. Their social media game was poor and they felt they were, “less than” because they could’nt advertise themselves effectively. We reframed it to, “I’m so good at what I do that I don’t need to advertise”. Having that reframe was vital for them to see their brilliance.

Collaboration and Top Gun

Collaboration and teamwork are needed in the film. The film emphasises the need for the pilots to work together in pairs, protecting and watching over each other as they enter challenging situations, particularly when faced with the enemy. I’ve noticed in a lot of my work around neurodiversity in the workplace, the team is often the best vehicle for neurodivergent individuals to move forward. It allows them to progress in what they are doing while working with others who are great at different things and can complement their skills. This is only possible through learning how to collaborate well. I’d like to add that agreement is not the same as collaboration, meaning you don’t have to agree on everything. You must decide on the essential things to move forward.

Flexibility and Top Gun

The film Top Gun touches on this concept of adaptability and flexibility. The pilots in Top Gun, particularly Maverick’s character, must adjust to changing situations. This is true regarding how he treats Charlie, the female lead character, as he recognises, she is an incredibly skilled instructor instead of just someone he fancies in the bar that they drink in. He also must adapt his techniques and ways of approaching what he does based on what’s happening in front of him. This is a challenge for neurodivergent thinkers in the workplace because life is not always the way we see it.  There is complexity and nuance that we often don’t pick up on, so we have to find ways to adapt and learn how to be our most effective.

Coaching and mentoring played an essential part in developing Maverick into the successful fighter pilot he became. It can change people’s lives, and often, it’s about creating a space where individuals can learn to be their best so they can move forward. Coaching is often implemented for people who are struggling but can play a vital role in developing who they become.

If you haven’t watched Top Gun 1986 watch it, and it’s so good they’ve made a second film which is a continuation from the first film. The storyline is even less believable but will have you feeling the thrill of flying and the need for speed!

A blog about services

For employers

Workplace Needs Assessment

This is for individuals who are having difficulties with everyday tasks in the workplace and aims to make recommendations to help improve the effectiveness of the individual.

Neurodiversity Awareness Training

An introduction to neurodiversity that will help people understand the various neurodivergent conditions such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, dyscalculia and ADHD.

Leadership Coaching

This supports leaders in their thinking journey and is especially useful when considering neurodiversity within the workplace. This coaching can be focused on supporting leaders from neurominority groups.

For individuals

One-to-one Coaching

This service helps neurodivergent individuals deal with everyday life more effectively. It is designed to build on existing skills, and introduce new ones focused on improving workplace effectiveness.

Technology Mentoring

Assistive technology mentoring is about helping you understand how technology can solve your workplace difficulties. What’s important is finding solutions that work for you in your workplace.

Workplace Needs Assessment

This is for individuals who are having difficulties with everyday tasks in the workplace and aims to make recommendations to help improve the effectiveness of the individual.

Accredited courses

Dyslexia Champions™

This program equips individuals to be good listeners, approachable, knowledgeable and impartial and will help them become ‘qualified to guide’ colleagues to support neurodivergent conditions.

Neuroinclusive Practice™

This program is designed to equip leaders, line managers, supervisors and HR personnel to ‘spot the signs’ and be able to effectively manage and support neurodiverse staff in the workplace.

Bucket full to capacity

What is capacity, and why is it important?

Capacity can be a scary word and one that employers, supervisors and managers can find concerning. It can be helpful to think about this area through the frame of “assume individuals are together enough to deal with their own stuff until they’re not” (Credit Claire Pendrick).

That means dealing with the individual where they are right now and asking them what you need to do to make the space safe enough for them to do their work. Experience shows that asking that question helps most individuals feel safe enough to move forward. The fact that the question has been asked is all that’s needed to make it safe enough. If there is no response or the individual completely avoids the question, this can sometimes indicate that they are not in a position to have the conversation.

Capacity can be complicated, especially when we start talking about the medical definitions of someone having the capacity to make a decision. In a coaching conversation, two people are having a conversation about one person where that person is getting insights into their stuff so they can make leaps forward or understand things better.

Sometimes the coach plays a role in capacity. What I mean by this is, have they created a safe enough space for this person to do the work they need to do? If they haven’t, they may have reduced the thinker’s capacity, and as a result, the thinker can’t do the work. This reflects on the space the coach has created, which may mean they’re just not the right coach for the thinker; often, there is no way to know this. 

So an excellent way to keep the space safe is to have a single coaching session so the thinker and the coach can work this out. Then the thinker can decide if the coaching is working for them.

If you’re trying to work out what to do and are concerned about capacity, it’s well worth considering a coaching single-session to find out what would be worth doing next. 

What to know more? Please get in touch.

Clock ticking - what is effective coaching

What is effective coaching?

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Jump or stands still, commit or walk away, move forwards, or move backwards. These are the choices that we face everyday. They could be about work, our personal life or just how we do life.

How often do we not take time to decide what we want to do? And instead, let life happen to us.

The problem is if we do not make choices about what we want to do and where we want to spend our time, we are not likely to end up in the place we want to be. Effective coaching offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on where we are and the choices we have in front of us.

Taking time

If we do not take this time, the implication is that we miss opportunities and don’t get to be our best selves. This can often mean being overlooked for the jobs we would love to do or just not getting the most out of the things that we enjoy.

Effective coaching

Offers a place where you can think and work out what you would like to do next. It is a place that offers high support and high challenge where one person is thinking and the other is noticing what is going on in order to help you understand and gain insight into your own stuff. Coaching has changed my life, giving me insight into the things that really matter and helping me make choices about where I spend my time and what I do.

Some Questions for you on effective coaching.

Do you need to have a conversation to work out what to do with the time that has been given to you?

If it’s useful for you, I’d be more than happy to have a conversation. Contact me here.

Triage coaching – Nathan Whitbread in conversation with Claire Pendrick

So what is triage coaching?

Here is the recording of a conversation about Triage Coaching that moved my thinking forward – along with some of the highlights below.

These are some of the things I took away

Quite often when we know something is wrong we don’t always know what we need to fix it. Triage coaching is a single session that allows the thinker to navigate what they need to answer their questions. Spoiler alert — coaching isn’t always the answer.

Triage coaching is a place:

  • where you can talk about your workplace in a confidential space.
  • where you can work out what you want to do.
  • that leaves you in control.
  • that gives you agency in terms of what you do and don’t disclose.
  • that allows you to get to the issue before you work out the best way to deal with it.
  • that allows the issue to be dealt with without any detail needing to be shared.
  • to move things forward.
  • place that keeps the power in the middle, and
  • that is safe place that organisations can offer to their people.

What it can help stop happening.

  • Time and money being invested in the wrong things!
  • Confidentiality being broken (subject to safeguarding)!
  • Individuals from saying something that didn’t need to be said in the workplace!
  • Escalating levels of helpfulness creating premature disclosure!

The justification.

  • It’s incredibly cost-effective!
  • It maintains agency!
  • It enables cocreated conversations that change everything!

What to know more?

Please get in contact. It was the most amazing privilege to join Claire Pendrick MMC for a conversation on her podcast the Coaching Inn. For those of you who do not know, she is the author of Simplifying Coaching, one of the most inspiring and interesting books on the subject.

Explosion

Exploded coaching, or coaching exploded?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could take the same powerful insights that we get from individual coaching and implement them in a team environment?

Now imagine that environment also supporting each individual member to become a better coach themselves.

The group deals with real problems by working together with the intention of moving forward and getting things done.

This is not just another talking shop, it is a place where real problems get focused on, learning happens and new ways of solving problems are implemented.

There will be an opportunity to think outside the box, expand on ideas and solve problems in ways that you’ve never expected.

Thinking and assumptions will be challenged with the goal of moving things forward. Each team member will have the opportunity to bring their question and come away with a plan to move ahead.

Exploded coaching is built on the belief that reflecting on our experience and experimenting with what we can do differently will bring insight and action. In many ways, it’s about having a different kind of conversation in order to change everything!

Is this totally new?

Not entirely, it’s based on the concept of Action Learning Sets, but what’s different is the way it’s implemented in your organisation by bringing the opportunity to use existing meeting spaces in new and more productive ways…

I’m currently looking for two organisations to pilot this coaching approach. If you have a team that is stuck or needs to create space to think collaboratively together, then please get in contact as I believe this could offer you an opportunity to move forward. Get in touch here.

The unfair test - Neurodiversity and Intersectionality

Neurodiversity and intersectionality: lost opportunities and goldfish?

Situation

A considerable number of people are still arriving in adulthood without a diagnosis or understanding of their neurodivergent traits (ASC, DCD, dyslexia, dysgraphia or other neurodivergent traits). There is often an assumption that people know what they need and know how to access it. The reality is not everyone has access to the support and insight that is needed to help them identify their neurodivergent traits. This is why I think it’s so important to consider neurodiversity and intersectionality.

Neurodiversity is all of us. Some individuals are neurodivergent and have traits including strengths and difficulties that are unique to them. Intersectionality is a framework that considers the social and political identity of an individual. When the two are combined it creates the potential for extreme advantage or disadvantage for the individual.

Neurodiversity is a term originally coined by Judy Singer in her bachelor thesis and later explored by Harvey Bloom who Singer corresponded with. When the term was originally introduced it described the autistic community, but since then it has become synonymous with a far broader range of thinking styles. The neurodiversity umbrella has now opened further to include many acquired conditions and medical diagnoses like migraines and PTSD to mention a few.

Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how a person’s social and political identity combines to create discrimination and privilege. This term was first conceptualised by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. The original work was looking at gender and race, but again this term has broadened out to include a much wider spectrum that includes underrepresented groups.

When we look through the lens of intersectionality, neurodivergent individuals can experience huge opportunities while others experience a perfect storm of disadvantages.

For example, a male from a middle-class family with supportive parents is more likely to receive support and opportunities to amplify his strengths and manage his difficulties than a female who has grown up in a deprived area and has a mixed cultural heritage. There are many biases in play including gender, race, language, criminality, and social-economic background. This can put the female mentioned above at a considerable disadvantage before she has even started the race. When we then lay on top neurodivergent conditions for example ASD (Autism), where much of the criteria for diagnosis have been developed around male behaviour and presentation, the female is considerably less likely to be diagnosed and as a result, receive support that would amplify her strengths and help her manage her difficulties.

Task

The task before us is to ensure individuals have access to appropriate screening and diagnostic resources in order that they can be properly identified regardless of their social and economic background. In short we must consider their neurodiversity and intersectionality. This then needs to be followed up with appropriate support and guidance for individuals to understand their strengths and difficulties, allowing for the introduction of co-created interventions that help them be their most effective.

The government this week through Matt Hancock has proposed a blanket policy of screening every child of school age for dyslexia. Though at first, this seems like an excellent policy, what is important to consider is this is a screening of one neurodivergent set of traits. Based on research by Prof Amanda Kirby, co-occurrence of neurodivergent conditions is the norm rather than the exception. So, what will be missed? Is this just creating another silo with partial knowledge that doesn’t allow the individual to fully understand their neurodiversity?

Screening is just the start of the journey. Interventions and reasonable adjustments based on the whole person are essential to help individuals amplify their strengths and manage the things they find difficult.

Playing fields can seem level until you look at where the starting point is!

The challenge is not just to look at the individual as something to be fixed, but to also look to the organisational context that the individual is within. As with this illustration, a goldfish has many strengths, but climbing trees is not one of them, especially if the purpose of the assessment is to find out how well the candidates can swim!

Action on neurodiversity and intersectionality

As we look at how to be truly inclusive, organisations must look beyond the easy silos, considering people as a whole and making sure that we reach out to groups and individuals who have different intersectional backgrounds. We must look at this as a process of changing our organisations instead of fixing individuals to fit in.

As we embark on this process it is important that we engage in constructive dialogue and do not take shortcuts. Quick wins are okay but shortcuts are often detrimental to the overall aims of what we are trying to achieve. Look for evidence-based approaches like work-based strategy coaching that support individuals and teams to deal with their own issues so they can be their most effective at work.

These evidence-based approaches look at supporting the individual with the tools and strategies that are relevant for them to be most effective in the workplace. They also look beyond this and start to consider the organisation or environmental factors that impact the individual while critically reviewing their purpose and their fitness for use with the overall aim of creating workplaces that are better for everyone.

Many adjustments that are put in place to support neurodiversity are person-centric (changing the person, not the problem). Though important they do not address the environmental factors that cause disability. If there are no environmental changes then we run the danger of just putting a sticking plaster on the problem.

How to make neurodiversity and intersectionality work

We talked about insight, environment and impact. The reality is we are all looking for practical measures that can be used to make the neuroinclusive workplaces a reality.

So here are some suggestions on where to start:

  • Understand your colleagues, not just who you think they are, but who they really are. Take time to talk to them, listen to them, and get your head around where they are at.
  • Be compassionate and listen to hear what they’re saying, as opposed to listening to tell them what you think.
  • This is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself for a sustained effort as change is often painful, but the results are extremely worthwhile.
  • Actively seek out and recognise where there is discrimination or practices for disadvantage individuals or groups of people.
  • Record and measure where there are inequalities and start the process of deciding how you are going to measure and record the changes you want to see.
  • Be honest and be ready to own up to the mistakes you have already made and will make in the future.
  • This process is as much about building relationships as changing things.
  • Do not make neurodiversity the ‘charity of the year,’ this is an ongoing effort that needs to be ingrained within your organisation’s culture.
  • Do not be tokenistic, keep it real or it will be worth nothing.
  • Start with people and finish with people (with no campaigns in the middle).

Results to expect from neurodiversity and intersectionality

This all starts with positive power and neutral conversations built on trust. These will open dialogue that enables a more inclusive workplace that considers the intersectionality of the individuals involved. Let’s do this openly, while actively looking to engage others from different backgrounds, cultures and experiences, especially those in the groups identified experiencing a greater level of difficulty and or representation within your organisation and society (looking outside your organisation is also helpful).

Review

What has been described here is a process that enables organisations to become more neuroinclusive especially to those with different intersectional backgrounds. As this is a process it has no endpoint, it is instead something that will constantly need to evolve and adapt based on the greatest resource organisations have – your people.

 

Original article published on FE News here.

neurodivergent traits are strengths

What are neurodivergent traits? – How do we retain and empower them?

So what are neurodivergent traits?

Based on statistics from the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) it is estimated that at least 15% of the working population have some neurodivergent traits. Neurodivergent traits are those associated with conditions like dyslexia, ADHD, ASC along with medically diagnosed and acquired conditions like PTSD and migraines. These traits are likely to appear in different combinations in each individual. This is supported by research carried out by Professor Amanda Kirby that shows it is more common for individuals to have co-occurring traits from several different neurodivergent conditions, rather than traits just associated with one.

As we consider these traits, I believe it is essential we take a strengths-based approach looking to understand what the individual is great at, while at the same time helping them to understand the things they find difficult and how to mitigate the impact of these on their effectiveness.

These neurodivergent traits include (this is not an exhaustive list):

Neurodivergent traits (strengths)

Creative, imaginative, energised, solution finders, emotionally intelligent, persistent, inquisitive and have fresh eyes.

Neurodivergent traits (difficulties)

Short-term memory, anxiety, fear, disguise and sensory overload. Screening diagnosis and understanding of these various traits and conditions are improving rapidly, though there is still much more to do.

How these traits impact an individual’s working environment and their effectiveness at work is unique to them. I work with a wide range of individuals across several different sectors. Though their stories are all different the recurring theme is that they have hit difficulties at some point in their working life that has caused them to reach out for support. Some of these individuals have been recently diagnosed, while others have known about their traits since primary school. The challenge is not just to know that you have these traits but how these traits affect an individual’s effectiveness in the workplace.

Some of the ways that common neurodivergent traits impact individuals’ effectiveness in the workplace include:

Memory and concentration

Working in environments where a lot of information is shared orally can be extremely challenging for individuals who have poor short-term memory.

A way to think about this is like a bookshelf. The average person (if they exist), can typically hold around 7 to 9 books on a bookshelf. However, someone who has difficulties with their short-term memory is likely to be only able to hold one to three books on the bookshelf. The implications of this are when a new book is added the first book is pushed off and the individual is forced into a situation of grabbing the book that has fallen, often disrupting the rest of the shelf.

If the culture of the organisation means that this is just the way things are done it can be incredibly challenging for these individuals to keep and recall information.

There are ways to help individuals through coaching and technology that allow them to support their short-term memory. This can enable them to work effectively within their organisation.

Organisational skills

In a workplace being organised and understanding what is going on is an essential skill, especially when collaborating with others. If however your sense of time and your ability to follow processes is challenging, then this can make life very difficult. We often assume that having a calendar allows us to be organised, but what we take for granted is that there are a whole bunch of skills around making that calendar work for us. These include building in time to do post and pre-meeting work, accounting for travel and building in buffers to deal with unexpected situations.

Not being able to organise effectively can be very debilitating but through co-building processes, the individual’s situation can be improved dramatically.

Time management

Having a sense of time and being able to estimate time effectively are again essential skills within our current workplaces. If you are unable to do this effectively it can detract from your credibility in the workplace. For some individuals, this could just be that they have no sense of time, while for others they may be overwhelmed by the sensory inputs from their environment.

There are various solutions to this difficulty, including the use of alarms and wearable technology. It is important to work with the individual to understand their unique working environment and how time management affects them.

Wellbeing

Some individuals feel that they are unable to share or not aware of their neurodivergent traits and as a result, try and mask them. This can often mean that they spend far more time working on tasks than their colleagues. This type of behaviour can generate a considerable amount of anxiety, especially when coupled with change. This is because the individual may well be barely hanging in there when they need to reconsider changing all their strategies.

Spending time assessing an individual to help them understand their traits and how these impact their work is invaluable. It can help them flourish and become their true self at work. This should focus on amplifying their strengths and building strategies to help mitigate their difficulties.

Don’t underestimate the power that these changes can have

Christopher Reeve the actor who played Superman, paralysed in a horse-riding accident in 1995 – put it like this.

“When the first Superman movie came out, I was frequently asked, ‘what is a hero?’ I remember the glib response I repeated so many times. The answer was that a hero is someone who commits the courageous action without considering the consequences – the soldier who crawls out of the foxhole to drag an injured buddy to safety. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”

Unfortunately, overwhelming obstacles are present for many individuals with neurodivergent traits and if we do not change this then our organisations will be poorer for it with implications including:

  • Non-compliance under the equality act 2010.
  • Attrition of staff who can add value to our organisations.
  • Loss of competitive advantage and innovation.

To this point, we have discussed supporting the individual. It is important that changes to support the individual are not sticking plasters, but instead part of an organisational wide environmental support.

The road to success

This journey starts with raising awareness of neurodiversity and specifically neurodivergent traits. This mustn’t be a sheep dip approach, yes neurodiversity training is good, but it needs to be supported by mentoring and coaching for managers and leaders of neurodivergent staff.

This then needs to be supported with high-quality processes that are easy to understand and are embedded across the organisations, (not buried at the bottom of some old filing cabinet).

For example:

  • It should be obvious where to seek support.
  • It should be clear how you will be treated.
  • It should be clear what you can expect to happen and when.

Is there an opportunity to be assessed by a professional who can look at your strengths and difficulties and then be given tailored help and support to amplify your strengths and manage your difficulties?

If you have met one person with neurodivergent traits, you have met one person as we are all uniquely different.

Article originally published on FE News

Perfection vs excellence

Perfection vs excellence mixed with neurodiversity

I recently worked with Peter who is responsible for managing union activists within a teacher’s union. Peter had been a successful teacher who had left the classroom due to frustration with government policy that got in the way of his passion for teaching. He then moved into the union supporting teachers to be the absolute best they can be in their job. Peter has a dyslexic diagnosis, and this impacts his ability to process information along with his short-term memory. I should emphasise that he is extremely competent at his job and exercises a high level of emotional intelligence especially when dealing with union members, but he has struggled with perfection vs excellence in his role.

Recently Peter has undergone changes at work as his union has been taken over by a larger union, which has meant a complete change in infrastructure and IT with many new systems being introduced along with additional processes. I should mention at this point Peter has a well-rounded education including a master’s degree in organisational management, he is a well thought of and highly trained individual working in a frontline role because he wants to make a direct difference to teachers. Peter always wants to do the absolute best job he can, often at the expense of personal time and well-being.

Working with Peter through a series of coaching sessions we were able to explore the difference between excellence and perfection and why it is vital to understand it. I must emphasise here, I’m not suggesting Peter should be doing shoddy work that is unfit for purpose, the issue was that the work he was producing was so far above and beyond what was required. It meant other clients were not getting what they needed (nor was he).

Excellence vs perfection

Excellence is about doing the right things, in the best way possible and doing them well enough to meet what is required. It also means accepting that there is always room for improvement and ironically that perfection should be your goal. You also need to have a reality check that you are highly unlikely to get there, but if you keep aiming in that direction your current working processes will just get better and better. This is a growth mindset, it’s about building on yesterday, recognising what could have been done better and doing it. In addition to that, it is also about being kind to yourself.

It is a journey of wonder and surprise

Perfection is the definitive 100% right way to do something and is completely unobtainable and if you do try and obtain it you will use a disproportionate amount of energy and gain a diminishing return for what you are doing, often causing anxiety stress and disappointment. This can further manifest in depression, procrastination and ultimately poor performance within individuals and teams.

It is a destination with no seats

For Peter, much of this was to do with the changes that were taking place in his role and responsibilities and how he felt he needed to be able to continue to deliver one hundred per cent, even though all these changes were happening. A breakthrough moment happened when we talked about the concepts of working in your job and working on your job, as for excellence to take place your processes and working practices need to be a well-oiled machine. This means taking time to understand them and innovate to meet the needs of your organisation, but more importantly to meet your own needs to achieve your objectives. For Peter, this was a breakthrough moment that enabled him to look at his job in a different way. He recognised although he wasn’t the most senior person in the organisation he was the most senior person who had control over what he did because he was able to manage himself. Once Peter started to take this point of view, excellence became the only option. He couldn’t have perfection in a changing, innovating workplace because by its very nature improvement involves failure and learning.

This was a life-changing moment for Peter and something he has been able to use as he has moved to a role with more responsibility since completing his coaching. If this is something that is of interest to you, please get in contact.

dyslexia

How well does your workplace fit you if you have dyslexia?

Let me introduce you to Sarah, she has recently finished university and started working for a large retail bank in the UK as an Account Manager. She is responsible for developing clients for the bank by introducing them to the bank’s products and helping them understand how these products can make their businesses work better. Sarah’s role involves a large quantity of writing proposals in addition to producing other written materials.

Sarah was diagnosed with dyslexia at school and as a result, had some help so that she could study effectively and pass her qualifications. This help continued through university but since leaving university she has been able to cope without any help.

Unfortunately, in Sarah’s current role things started to get a little bit difficult as she is struggling with spelling and punctuation, in addition to remembering all the tasks and actions that she is given by her boss and team daily. Fortunately, when these issues were flagged to Sarah’s HR department, they immediately recognised it would be appropriate to ask Sarah what was going on. As a result, Sarah shared some of the tasks that she was finding difficult so the company initiated a Workplace Needs Assessment.

A Workplace Needs Assessment

An assessment that should be carried out by a qualified Workplace Needs Assessor who looks at an individual’s workplace, role, job description and tasks. Then working with the individual to make suggestions called Reasonable Adjustments.

Reasonable Adjustments

These are adjustments that can be made in the workplace to help people who have difficulties completing their everyday tasks. As an employer there is an obligation to provide these if you know, or could be expected to know, an employee or job applicant has a disability.

For Sarah to have this assessment, she did not need to have a formal diagnosis, she just needed to recognise that something was not working for her in her workplace. This assessment helped Sarah understand some of the difficulties she was facing. It also helped her understand some of the strengths that she offered to her workplace.

A vital part of the Workplace Needs Assessment is to amplify strengths and manage the difficulties of the individual.

Sarah’s employer had a legal responsibility under the Equality Act 2010 as Sarah is a neurodivergent individual who has a substantial and long-term condition that is covered under the act because of the following wording:

You are disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

This is important as Sarah’s Workplace Needs Assessment suggested a large range of different technologies along with some workplace coaching. In Sarah’s case however, several of the pieces of technology that were suggested did not work with the systems used by her employer. This resulted in a large amount of stress and anxiety for Sarah as she felt it was her responsibility to make IT work. Sarah’s manager tried to support her in this implementation but unfortunately was unable to make any headway in a reasonable time. In Sarah’s situation, the stress and anxiety got to a point where she was unable to continue working and had a prolonged period signed off sick from work.

I would like to make it clear Sarah’s is not an isolated case, implementation of help can cause even more stress and anxiety sometimes making the issues an individual faces far worse.

This unfortunate situation illustrates the need for a joined-up approach to reasonable adjustments within the workplace. It is vital when technology solutions are suggested that they work with the existing organisation IT infrastructure and policies. In Sarah’s particular case this situation could have been remedied very easily by having an IT representative involved in the process to ensure the technology suggested would work with the existing infrastructure. This is unfortunately overlooked in many situations causing a large amount of stress and anxiety for the individuals involved who are asking for help.

The final component is awareness within the organisation of the impact change has on individuals with neurodivergent conditions. What is often not recognised is that any change can be stressful and anxiety-inducing. To help alleviate some of this it’s really important that everyone within the organisation has an appreciation of what neurodiversity is and how it can impact their colleagues.

Some ways to help avoid this situation include:

  1. Creating a list of approved applications that IT are happy with will work within the organisation’s infrastructure and fit within the organisation’s policies.
  2. Making sure supervisors/managers are spoken to as part of the assessment process.
  3. Having a dedicated IT contact who can support the implementation of assistive technology.
  4. Ensuring that all members of the organisation have attended neurodiversity awareness training and are aware of who to speak for support.

If you would like to know more about Workplace Needs Assessments and how to implement them effectively within your organisation, please get in contact.