A Dog Called Diversity
A Dog Called Diversity
The Brain Diversity Advantage - with Jenny Turner
Ever wondered why some colleagues approach work so differently from you? It's not just personality—it might be neurodiversity at play.
Jenny Turner, founder of Human Fabric, takes us on a fascinating journey into how different brain types function in the workplace. With approximately 20% of the population being neurodivergent (including conditions like autism, ADHD, and dyslexia), understanding these differences isn't just an inclusion issue, it's a business advantage.
Jenny shares compelling reasons why organisations should embrace neurodiversity: the exceptional talents neurodivergent individuals often bring, the superior performance of cognitively diverse teams, and the enhanced leadership skills developed when managing diverse thinking styles. She reveals how the pandemic created an unexpected testing ground, with many neurodivergent people discovering they could thrive when freed from sensory-overloaded office environments.
Drawing from her personal experience with ADHD, Jenny provides us with insights into both the struggles (like rejection sensitivity and difficulty starting certain tasks) and strengths (hyper-focus and innovative thinking) that come with neurodivergence.
Her practical advice for organisations ranges from awareness training to simple accommodation processes that are typically low-cost but high-impact.
The conversation culminates in a profound realisation: we all process information differently, and when we adapt our work practices to accommodate these differences—like separating information-sharing from decision-making—everyone benefits. As AI increasingly handles systematic tasks, uniquely human capabilities like empathy and innovative thinking become more valuable than ever.
Whether you're neurodivergent yourself, manage diverse teams, or simply want to create a more inclusive workplace, this episode offers valuable information on how to harness the full spectrum of human potential.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
A Dog Called Diversity is proud to be featured in Feedspot's Best Diversity And Inclusion Podcasts
Become a supporter of the show so we can continue to bring you great content and stories.
Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn.
Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity and I'm really excited and also super interested to hear from today's guest. I'm sorry, her name is Jenny Turner and she runs a business called Human Fabric, which would have to be one of the best business names I've ever heard. Welcome to the podcast, jenny. Thank you lovely to be here. Oh, I'm so excited to have you here. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the work you do?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So I'm a neurodiversity and leadership consultant and coach and I'm the founder of Human Fabric. I provide, along with some colleagues at Human Fabric, we support organizations and individuals to understand, embrace and harness neurodiversity, with a focus on the workplace.
Speaker 1:Nice and for people who don't understand what we mean by neurodiversity. How would you describe that?
Speaker 2:Neurodiversity is the way that we all think, sense, experience the world differently. So our brains are all wired differently and it sort of reflects the fact that there is no normal brain, that there are lots of different types of brains. It's just that some are more common than others and so we call those neurotypical. If you've got the sort of brain wiring and therefore the way that you, you know, think, sense, feel, communicate, is kind of the common type, we call that neurotypical. And then there are various other types which we call neurodivergent. So things like autism, adhd, dys, dyslexia and hundreds of other conditions which make up that kind of what's likely to be 20 percent of the population, where literally the brain is wired differently. The structure and the chemistry, the networks are different. It's fascinating, eh.
Speaker 1:It's.
Speaker 1:Do you know, what's really fascinating to me is earlier in my career, when I was a much younger, more junior person, working in, you know, human resources kind of those business partnering roles, and like I always knew that there were people who were different and I probably would have classified these particular people I'm thinking of.
Speaker 1:They were in our technology team and I would have actually described them as difficult. And when I look back now and they weren't really difficult, they were just different. But I had to work out a style that I could work with them in the best way possible, right? And so in HR roles, you deal with all sorts of different people and you need to be able to change your style, be flexible and understand that everyone approaches work a little bit differently. So, you know, in the early years of my career, I think I was more successful because I could do that. I could work out okay, how can I work with this person most effectively to get the best out of them? Can I work with this person most effectively to get the best out of them? And now we have we have some ways of describing people who might not be in that 80%, as you said yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's just increased understanding yeah, yeah, which is really really helpful, particularly in workplaces. But what has happened over that time that we now have some names for the different diversities we see in different brains? Like what's happened? How does that come about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was around sort of in the 1980s that many of these conditions were first labelled in the manual that the psychiatrist used for diagnosis. Basically, um, and they, many of them, were sort of thought to be behavioral initially and that they were things that you could sort of manage your way out of. Only in the 2000s or late 1990s, into the 2000s that, um, through the ability to study the brain, um, that the scientific community understood that these are actually different brain structures or brain chemistries, or networks, the way that information is passed around the brain and that's resulting in the behaviors that we see and, and therefore it's not something you grow out of. You know these are. If you're adhd as a child, you will be an adhd adult. It's just that you get better at masking and, um, you know, camouflaging, um, some of your struggles, or you sort of learn strategies that work for you and so yeah, so, basically, these things are lifelong conditions and we now, we now know that these are, these are differences that are baked into the way that your brain is structured.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, what's changed? Our understanding of the conditions has changed in the scientific community, but also awareness and the sort of social stigma around them. So the awareness has increased and the social stigma is starting to kind of change. So you know, still I think 70% of people in the UK choose not to disclose their neurodivergence in the workplace, so only 30% are disclosing In New Zealand. I'd suggest it's more like 95% are not disclosing, but I'm increasingly hearing people that are, and I'm obviously working with workplaces that are progressive and um would be welcoming of a conversation around around that and what an individual might need.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so we've got the sort of social stigma changing. Um, a little bit like the mental health, um sort of what's happened with mental health? Um, people are talking about it more, and so that results in this increased awareness of oh, that's what autism is. I always thought it was this, you know. Um, well, that's what dyslexia is, oh, you know. So it sort of starts to bust some of those myths and people start to recognize oh, maybe that explains why I'm always like that or I always have this confusion, or I always have this difference from other people.
Speaker 1:Um, so you've got this increased awareness, yeah yeah, a lot of uh, people I've spoken to, and actually women that I've spoken to on this podcast that I liked how you talked about that mental, mental well-being has become more important, and, and that became more important because of COVID, because we were all struggling during that time and actually that period of time a lot of people got diagnosed, because it created this unusual circumstance. We don't normally get locked in our houses and we don't normally have to do everything online, so, um, yeah, one of the things I've learned is that period of time which we're sort of getting past now hopefully was a real catalyst for people learning about yeah, couple of things there.
Speaker 2:The um ability to work from home uh, opened up the, the contrast for some people. So if you are, say, autistic or ADHD, and you struggle with the noise and the movement and the phones ringing and the conversations in the office, and then in COVID you found yourself working from home and what is likely to have been a more quiet environment, unless you have noisy children and you know it's like having your own private office. Potentially, if you sit up in the bedroom or something, people realize that they could think straight and they got more work done, and so some people realize their difference through that. And another part of it is actually just coincidence with the timing. So there's a graph.
Speaker 2:If you search the um, look at the google search trends for the for the term neurodiversity, um in 2015 it starts kicking up, and globally so, and it's just going up and up and up like this.
Speaker 2:This is sort of the the relative interest in this term, and in new zealand it starts kicking up and globally so, and it's just going up and up and up like this.
Speaker 2:This is sort of the the relative interest in this term, and in New Zealand it starts kicking up about three September of 2020, um, so you could argue that that's because everyone's locked at home, but actually the rest of the world was already on to this five years earlier. Um, so, uh, I do think some of it is just coincidence, um, but for particularly autistic people and ADHDers, I think that time at home showed them what a different way of working could achieve for them. I mean, that was certainly the case for me. I have ADHD and I felt like I just got so much more done when I was, because I was able to sort of focus and then almost lose sense of time and I'd get three hours. Got so much more done when I was, because I was able to sort of focus and then almost lose sense of time and I'd get three hours of deep focus work done and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I resonate with that. I was thinking about, yeah, before we went into lockdown and I was in an office in Singapore and there was, we had open plan, which no one likes likes. I don't know why humans inflict open plan onto other humans. No one likes it. Yeah, but there was a woman who sat like three chairs down, who would have the radio on and it would drive me insane and I was always saying can you turn that?
Speaker 1:off because I can't stand the noise, but, um, yeah, so yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah. It's interesting to me now that we we created an environment through COVID which worked for a lot more people than having everyone in the office, but we have a push to get people back to the office. Um, and so for organizations, why should they be thinking about neurodiversity and that that people might be neurodiverse in their organization?
Speaker 2:so why they should be thinking about neurodiversity. There's sort of a number of prongs to it. So there's the um, there's the sort of ethical moral reasons around sort of inclusion and belonging and the significant mental health impacts to individuals through, you know, when you've got to force into environments or ways of working that just don't work for your brain. You know the statistics around mental health for neurodivergent people are awful Something like 93% experience burnout at some point in their career. So there's kind of an individual reason, but the business reason, which is often what compels organisations to actually take action, is there's some incredible talents that neurodivergent people can bring. They've often got some real what we call a spiky profile, like some high strengths, some greater strengths in some areas and some greater challenges, so sort of almost like specialists in some areas. But then these other challenges which we need to mitigate or, you know, have strategies in place for. So there's some exceptional talents, so things like, you know, the ability to hyper-focus, pattern recognition. You know divergent thinking, so just people who think differently, that sort of thing, innovative thinking, quite creative thinking. And then there's the benefits in teams. So you know, when you bring together people who have all different types of ways of thinking, you get this really cool cognitive diversity, and you know the evidence shows us that that really results in better outcomes. So cognitively diverse teams, or diverse teams in general, perform better and have greater sort of outcomes on all sorts of fronts than homogenous teams.
Speaker 2:And actually some of the talks I do, I open with you know, what do these disasters have in common? And I have all these different project disasters from around the world, famous examples, um, and if you look at the underlying thread underneath each of them, you go back to the reports it's because of lack of cognitive diversity in the teams or a lack of inclusion of any divergent views that were offered. We're talking massive sort of collapses of companies and you know the, the classic ones the challenger space shuttle that exploded on takeoff and it killed all seven on board and there was a faulty o-ring which the engineers had warned about. But the, the sort of group think and the decision making, um and um, the, the group decided to launch anyway. Um, yeah, so cognitive diversity, um, which neurodiversity is a really big part of, because it brings all these different ways of thinking together in teams. It's kind of like a risk prevention for businesses. It helps with innovation, but it also helps prevent group think and blind spots, you know. So that's a key, a key part.
Speaker 2:There's actually even a third lens to this whole business base, which is business benefits, which is the. You know, when you have leaders that can lead neurodivergent teams or neurodivergent people, they actually become better leaders overall because they become better at being able to adapt and communicate with all sorts of different people. So they kind of learn these strategies that work for people that might be just having a really difficult period in their life, or people that have immigrated from another country and have a different cultural style or, you know, all other aspects of diversity and engagement and psychological safety of the whole team actually lifts, because people see that you can be different and be accepted and contribute around here. You know. So there's, you know, great data around that.
Speaker 2:The other interesting thing is the future case, so the next generation coming through that are in the workforce today. They are very open about these differences, able to sort of welcome difference and welcome particularly, you know, different neurodivergent conditions, because you've got this generation showing up and saying I have ADHD and anxiety and the managers are sort of like god, I don't know what to do with that. You know I don't really understand it. And what does that mean? I do differently, and so it's a bit like the mental health conversations as well, where you've got a younger generation that are just more comfortable with talking about this stuff out loud. But they also expect to be accepted for who they are, you know, and have their needs met so that they can contribute to their best potential, you know, achieve their full potential in the workplace. So quite a few things there the sort of individual case, the business direct benefits and then the sort of where the future's headed all adds up to it being a really timely thing for businesses to be getting across.
Speaker 1:Yeah, completely, completely.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I resonate with the generations that are coming through. I do some coaching and mentoring with women who are younger than me and there are some differences that I think are really important for workplaces to know. So the things that you're talking about they're they're open, they're honest, they're demanding about what they need for support and, yeah, interestingly, our leaders, I don't think, are quite ready for it yet. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, if you don't- have an open mindset about it. You can kind of be a bit us and them about it. Yeah, you know a bit sort of oh, they're very demanding, but actually maybe the way that we've always done it is not right or not as effective. So it's about having an open mindset about these things, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, I think throughout my over 20 years in HR roles, those people who were a bit different and we couldn't manage and they didn't fit in, were often exited. So, instead of supporting, understanding what's going on for them, what they need, they were often performance managed out yeah or or less of their own accord, because they felt so.
Speaker 2:Other, no doubt you know, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So what is that? Like what? Sorry?
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna say the interesting trend here where, um like so my, my generation and more senior it's sort of expected to come to work and you're expected to act a certain way, right, you kind of be professional. When you're in a professional workplace you act like professionals act. And that is the attitude that's sort of shifting with the next generation is they respect and value this individualism. And if you think about the world of work and how it's changing, you've kind of gone from, like the I think Taylorism and Ford, the Ford era, where you're producing widgets out of a factory and it's all about conformity and uniformity. We want to produce the same quality widget at the end of the factory every time and we're kind of moving to this more complex world where it's it's more about diversity of thought and we need to be more human-centered and less sort of systematic about everything you know. So it's less sort of policies and procedures and practices and more flexing around. The individual is kind of the shift that's happening. But we're kind of shifting at different paces, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think AI is going to drive a huge amount of that, because we will look to AI and that technology to systemise the boring stuff the stuff that gets repeated over and over, and that human-centred approach will be much more important, because what are the things that humans are capable of that AI won't be able, you know, can't do? And it's around empathy and kindness and emotion and innovation and yeah, nuanced responses and sort of individualized responses yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what are the types of things that you're talking to organizations about that they need to start doing to support a workforce that has so much difference in it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it starts usually with awareness, which is, you know, educating the workplace around neurodiversity and that there are different brain types and that the person over there who seems difficult actually just has a different social norm to you. They communicate differently, they think communicating directly is the fair thing to do and, and that your way is a bit confusing, you know. So we talk about um, neurodiversity and the sort of awareness, um, for leaders. I think they need something a bit deeper, which is actually getting into sort of, how do you create a culture that's inclusive in a team? What are the ways of working that are more inclusive? Um, what about individual leadership styles, management approaches for, um, different neurotypes? So, um, something a bit more in-depth for leaders, because I think that's where cultures are really shaped, you know, like that makes or breaks the employee experiences, the attitude, attitude and the I don't know the settings that are put in place by the manager of that team, the people leader. We then get into kind of some of the systemic things, so things like the interview processes and the capability assessments, so that you know, traditionally capability assessments are very generalist and it's difficult if you're a specialist but maybe your communication skills are different, to actually get through to the next level of a in a promotions round, um. So there's some systemic things like that, um. You know policies around flexible work and the ability for individuals to be able to work with their manager to come up with. You know individually different settings, things like accommodations. So accommodations are sort of individual supports, something like maybe having your, your Microsoft Teams headset but noise cancelling headphones if you're really struggling with noise in the office. Or you know, for dyslexic folks, there are many little apps and things that you can install on your computer which can make it easier for you to be able to absorb information. You know reports, websites, etc. Um, but often they're blocked by it.
Speaker 2:You know, um and so having a process in place for people to be able to request what they need to do their best in the workplace, um, and a centralized budget for it. So it's not the individual manager going oh, we don't have enough budget in our team for this. This year You've got sort of centralised. It ends up spreading out. A lot of them are free, a lot of them are low cost anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are kind of the key things, just kind of like mentally working through my little model of the sort of um having in place a neurodiversity employee resource group? Um is really valuable, but I think um making sure that you've actually empowered them or been clear around what you want them to do, because these are often highly motivated individuals who want to change the world. But it's really difficult and frustrating if they are not empowered or actually you didn't want them to change the world. So do you want them to be a club, you know? Do you want them to be a place of peer support or do you want them to actually have initiatives to be able to shift some of these things, to be able to shape the flexible work policy or the? I don't know even the way the office space is is used. You talked about the open plan. That's often difficult for, you know, neurodivergent people and so you know, is there a way that we could have a quiet zone, a kind of deep work zone of the office here and we could have a collaboration zone here? But if you've got a neurodiversity employee resource group that's not kind of connected to the people that can make those changes, you know they're not set up for success. Yeah, so some organizations have the neurodiversity erg, do the work as well as being a peer support network and some of them um have a diversity, equity and inclusion lead or team that is doing the work under the guidance of the neurodiversity erg who's communicating what they need Mental health, first aid training is quite important for them too.
Speaker 2:They end up becoming this kind of first port of call for individual employees, often at a time of distress and they've finally reached out to someone and so they need to be equipped to deal with this and they need to know when to call in sort of specialists, help themselves, because there's a lot of um. It's asking a lot for for people to um, yeah, yeah, be an untrained counselor effectively, you know, yes, yeah, and you get a lot of distressed parents as well, um in workplaces, so they're dealing with issues at school and so they go to the neurodiversity erg members to sort of seek support and information. So, yeah, getting some strength around that group. Executive sponsorship all the things that you would expect for, you know, a successful initiative of any kind. So having a visible executive sponsor, sharing positive stories, so you know, ideally from within your organization and from the more senior, the better. But if you're not able to do that, sharing other you know from the industry or something positive stories that help break the stigma. You know that helps to sort of shift hearts and minds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's such great advice in there and actually a lot of that advice applies across the board. So even, um, yeah, I was reflecting on some ERGs I worked with in an organization and we had we had a neurodiversity one, but we had some other, um, I guess, identity areas as well and even at the start, working out why you exist, and in this particular organization, it was the leaders saying we don't know what you want or what we need you to be.
Speaker 1:So you tell us and the group of people are saying well, we don't know what you want as senior leaders, and so, yeah, even just getting clarity at the very start of some of that stuff, I think is really helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the charter has to line up with, like the budget and the time allocated too. You know so there's. Often these are people that are doing this out of the love of their heart and their spare time. You know so there's all very well having this enormous charter of what they're going to achieve, but if they haven't, actually they've got day jobs. Um, you know it needs to match up, um yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the other point around, you know, having a process to be able to request, uh, things that will help accommodations accommodations and I have seen these processes in organisations and they're bigger than Ben-Hur.
Speaker 1:They become these massive things when they don't have to be. They just need to be. I need noise cancelling headphones, please. Like that should just be, like anyone should be able to have those. But I've seen organisations create big processes because there's money involved sometimes and I'm like just keep it really, really simple and like, don't make a big fuss. A lot of them are free.
Speaker 2:A lot of them they relate to flexible working. So a lot of it could be covered by the flexible working policy, but it's things like working offset hours, the ability to start at 10 and finish at 7 or that kind of thing. There was data out of the UK that said that the average cost of accommodations across all the companies surveyed was £50. A whole lot of them are zero, and then some of them might be like $200, you know, or more, but most of them are quite cheap. You know, they're often little pieces of software.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and having the more mature organizations in the uk will have, um, you know, kind of like a pre um approved list of like. If it's one of these, the process is real simple. We've got them in stock or we order them in the here in two days or whatever. Yeah, um, uh, and, and then there'll be the sort of custom request for things. But there'll be sort of common bits of software that are useful for dyslexic people, which are 10 percent of the population, you know. So just having those pre-approved as a vendor or as a you know, often procurement process, that that slows down these things would you talk a bit about maybe your personal experience in organizations like I know that you have been?
Speaker 1:yeah, um diagnosed more recently, but when you look back. What was some of the things, I guess, that you were masking, or what were some of the challenges that you were having as someone with ADHD?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I found it really confusing. Um, so I could be quite exceptional sometimes and I could get you know my my manager used to say you know, gosh, you get down three times the work of someone else. Um, which I was pretty pleased with, right but then other times I uh, other times I couldn't even start things, you know.
Speaker 2:So things like reports, would you know, board reports or board updates, that kind of thing, or um gosh. I used to really struggle with the financial planning time when we had to sort of put in business cases for things, and I just didn't find that particularly interesting, and so my brain, which is wired for interest, not importance, really struggled to start on some of those. So inevitably I would leave them to the last minute, and what would happen is I would then, you know, stay up to one o'clock in the morning and the night before finishing the thing. And so what people don't see is that I've stayed up till one o'clock in the morning because I still got the thing there on time, sometimes a little bit late. I might've begged for an extra day or two. I'm sure I've done that a lot of times, but the ultimate thing I produced was still of a high standard, and I'm not I'm kicking myself for the fact that I left it so late. So I'm not telling people I worked all really late to get it done. Um, but what I found is I was kind of running life with no contingency. So what happens is if you leave things to the last minute, like that, and then you get sick on the last day for, you know, or your kids get sick or something. There's no contingency there, you know. So you're kind of running on adrenaline all the time and you just can't sustain a life like that. Um, that was one of the things. The other one is around, um some.
Speaker 2:So most of my experiences were actually really positive. Um, I feel very lucky to have had um, particularly, my last manager was really, um, he made me feel very valued, like I could tell that he really thought I was good at what I did and he valued my contributions, and it meant that when he did give me constructive feedback, I didn't feel so rejected by it. And so, you know, adhd has had this thing called rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, the medical name for it. But you know, it's really this sort of sensitivity to criticism, because we feel emotions really strongly, but we've also been criticized a lot in our life, so you get quite sensitive to, oh God, another telling off kind of thing. And so he was able to give feedback in a way that made me feel that he had my best intentions at heart and that I knew that he was doing this to help me improve or help me be more influential or whatever. So that's classic five to one, ratio of like five positive to one constructive feedback. So that was, that was quite good. Um, other things that weren't so good.
Speaker 2:There were times where, like, my brain works really quickly and I, my and I talk quite quickly and I kind of go from a to z very quickly and I would get frustrated when other people don't go from A to Z quite as quickly, and I used to always get this feedback You've got to take other people on the journey and I get frustrated. I'm like, why aren't they on the journey? I'm like I've been on the, you know, and I just I always found that really confusing. I didn't really understand what it meant to take people on the journey. Because people on the journey, um, because I felt like I had, it's just that they kind of fell off the wagon or something, um, so that was kind of a piece of confusion for a long time before I realized, oh, I'm just kind of, my brain has gone way too fast and gone and I need, I need to um work at the. I need to work at the sort of rate of progression that others are comfortable with as well, not just what I'm comfortable with.
Speaker 2:Um, sometimes I've got a very high energy and quite, um, I get excited and uh, all that kind of thing. That's part of ADHD. It's quite common to have high energy, um, but that would be sometimes taken as a bit aggressive and it's never my intention, right. And I remember the first time someone said to me, you're coming across very aggressive, I was like, oh my gosh, like I totally didn't speak that and I and I was very offended by that um, yeah, uh. So that's, that's one aspect and another. I've been described as disruptive quite a few times, um, when I don't intend to be disruptive.
Speaker 2:So there's sort of this mismatch between intentions and how you think you're coming across and, um, and and what's appropriate in this project setting or with this group, and so probably, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, there were a couple of project teams that I was involved in where my style, which is driven by my ADHD brain, just really didn't match the the group and the group didn't have the open mindset to know that there are lots of different communication styles and assuming the best of intent here, you know. So that resulted in a pretty shitty experience, to be honest, where I, you know, felt pretty um, uh, othered, you know, sort of felt like I didn't belong and and pretty confused about you know what I was? How was I supposed to carry myself? So it results in you spending more energy and trying to kind of conform to how you think you should be than you know doing the stuff that you're actually effective. You know better use of your energy. Yeah, and of course I'm sitting on the other end of the microphone going.
Speaker 2:I think we need more disruptive people yeah, yeah, it's all just like more of that in certain settings, in certain contexts, um, but I mean ideally that that team you know this particular one in my mind I'm thinking you know they were used to working with people of a certain style and they probably didn't appreciate my difference might have brought some different views that might have been useful for the project.
Speaker 2:You know, and so I was just I was the difficult one, like what you described at the beginning, the sort of slightly different one. But I have to say, most of my career I've actually been very lucky. I've worked in some great teams and I think I've actually worked in some really diverse teams and I think that's helped because when, when there's a lot of diversity in the team from a lot of different angles, you know being slightly different in the way that my brain works, it doesn't you know, you're not standing out as much as if you're in a very homogenous team where there's all the same kind of person and then you're quite different. So I mean, I mean I've worked on a lot of international teams, so you've got sort of diversity from all sorts of different ethnicities and backgrounds and technical areas and education, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and there's actually been some work done around. When you have a diverse team like if people look diverse, sound different, different like all of those things as humans we recognize that and so we do work a little bit harder to uh like understand that difference. Um, yeah, I think that was a.
Speaker 2:Really I wonder if that doesn't apply with um neurodiversity. So thing with neurodiversity, it's invisible, um, so you know, you can see if somebody's a different gender, you can see if somebody is a different ethnicity. You can't see if somebody's got a different brain wiring. There is no um look of being autistic or adhd, and so if you don't assume the best of intent you can, you can make assumptions that maybe someone is being aggressive or someone's. The other classic with autism is where people are quite direct and then so their style of communication is very much information exchange. So, unless of the social kind of fluff that we put in and so they can come across as blunt and people can be offended by this, when actually they're just being direct and to the point um, yes, and yeah, it's classic, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it's sort of different, the way that the communication given and the intent behind it is different from what's received, you know yeah, I was even thinking about if you are on a multicultural team with people from around the world and you're the only kiwi, well, they know you're different anyway because you're a Kiwi. So some of the stuff that might be from ADHD could just be oh well, she's a Kiwi. That's how Kiwis are, maybe that's how they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I mean, I worked overseas for seven years and so it was always an international team. So, yeah, you're right. I'm probably sorry. New Zealand, canada, thinks that you're all like me well, how wonderful is that?
Speaker 1:oh, my goodness. Um, tell me about the work you do with human fabric. What is what is the most satisfying, what is the most soul-filling work that you get to do through your business?
Speaker 2:I think the feedback you get at the end of a session because sometimes you feel like I mean, I deliver these sessions fairly regularly now and you feel like God, I'm saying the same old thing all the time but people find it like quite eye-opening because they haven't been through sessions like that before and so I do get some really strong feedback and that just makes my day. You know, that really makes my heart sing. Also, working with individuals, I think so. We do coaching with individuals and for many they've never had a conversation with somebody who can sort of validate their experiences and explain what might be going on for them and what's driving some of these behaviours and things. And so some of those, especially those first sessions, can be like. There's often tears of sort of happy tears, realisation tears. You know, they can be quite moving.
Speaker 2:Working with individuals and these are usually really accomplished individuals who've had successful careers, but they've always had these sort of differences and things they haven't really understood, um, and they've hidden it from the world or they've, you know, they haven't felt comfortable to talk to many people about it.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they have talked to people about it and they've had really negative responses, you know, um, yeah, and so, yeah, working with them is is quite empowering and and and satisfying um. I would love it when an organization comes back for more um, so I they often start with the um. I do like a one hour lunch and learn kind of webinar, an introductory webinar, which is kind of a low risk place to start right. And if you're not sure about you know whether this is going to land with your people, I often suggest businesses start with that. It's quite cost effective. And then what happens just about every time is they have more people show up to that than they've had show up to previous things, which gives them an idea of the sense of the interest in this topic and potentially the neurodivergence within the organization and it lands really well and so then they go well. Actually, maybe we'll do the people leader training and some other things. We'll sort of start to actually take action beyond just awareness. Um, nice, so that's yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:That's some of the the highlights of it yeah, and I think this topic, even if you yourself know that you're not dyslexic or you know, you think you might be neurotypical you will know people it will be children or members of your family and so you have this inkling, and so I think, when organisations, they're all around you at the workplace now.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I talked over you.
Speaker 1:there they're all around you. I mean sorry I talked over you that they're all around you.
Speaker 2:But I mean, I had one organization say to me no, no, we've only got two neurodivergent people according to our survey. And I said, well, hold on, you know, it's likely to be 15 to 20 percent of the population and if you're in a really technical field, it's probably more than that. You know like, yeah, I think some of the engineering, professional services and the tech ICT fields are much greater prevalence. I had one company, one very tech company, say to me we don't need neurodiversity training, we need neurotypical training, how to work with neurotypical people.
Speaker 1:I love that. I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I was like well, that's going to be interesting.
Speaker 2:You've got to flip it. Yeah, I'll have to get a neurotypical person with lived experience of being neurotypical to do that. Yes, where?
Speaker 1:would we find those people? I don't know. So how can people work with you, Jenny, and how can they get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our website, wwwhumanfabricconz, is probably the best place to start. You can follow me on LinkedIn, jenny Turner, and you can email me, jenny, at humanfabricconz. We do a free discovery call for both the individuals we work with and with the organizations, and so that's usually the best place to start. We just have a kind of no obligation chat and talk about where you're at and and help figure out um how we can best support you from there, nice, nice.
Speaker 1:So, to finish off, what is, uh, maybe one thing that we haven't talked about today that you would like to share with the audience um, what is one thing?
Speaker 2:um, oh, I'm sort of I'm thinking about what do I choose?
Speaker 2:it's like the pressure to choose the perfect one thing. I know, I know, I think that I mean, I think the kind of parting thought is just realizing that not everyone thinks the same way as you and that not everyone works in the way that you work best. And for many people that is a realization, that kind of just because you work best with lots of routine and structure and you need to plan everything on a Monday and you know other people will work differently. Or you know, I had this realisation where I would call a meeting and expect to kind of have all the information shared and then we would make a decision in that meeting. Right, because it's all. I filled my head with the information I'm ready to make a decision.
Speaker 2:And I worked with somebody who was autistic, and I don't know if they knew that they were autistic at the time, but you know they would then go away and send an email to me three or four hours later with like pages of thoughts on the thing we've just made a decision on, and sometimes with a different recommendation. And it would drive me mad because I think why didn't you share this in the meeting and different recommendation. And it would drive me mad because I think, why didn't you share this in the meeting? And one day we had this conversation about it and and they said, well, actually I just need processing time. I struggle to kind of like absorb the information and then think about it and then come to a view all at the same time, and so we ended up splitting the way that we work, so so we would have kind of the information sharing meeting and then we would have the decision making meeting a day or two later, which gave the opportunity for processing time.
Speaker 2:And that, to me, was a realization that, oh, not everyone sort of works in the same way that I do, you know, and so just I think there's a lot of that sort of. When you think about what you're trying to get other people to do, it's usually driven by what you think is the best way to do it yes which might not be the right thing for their brain, and usually they know what's right for their brain. So if somebody says this is how I work better, really letting them do that is you know how you get the best from them.
Speaker 1:That is a fantastic final thought that we all think differently, and actually that process you just described is great for mitigating bias as well. So if you're yeah, you have a meeting about what we're going to talk about and what decisions we need to make, but actually make the decision a few days later, because it actually gets the decision into the right part of your brain, where you're not using your biases. So that's interesting. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I thought it would. It's useful as well for the old um you know, seeking. And you know, if we were to go around the room and the most energetic person shared their view first and everyone else kind of has this group think thing where they where they kind of align with what the first person said, um, so it also helps with um getting a range of views um from people who might be less confident to share them verbally on the spot. You know, yeah, yeah good for everything.
Speaker 1:Helps with diversity of thought. Yeah, diversity of thought, yeah well, thank you so much, jenny. It's been so nice to hear from you and learn from you. I think you've got a really great way of um explaining concepts that can be quite tricky for people and quite new for people, so thank you so much oh it's been fun.