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WUN4ALL
WUN's mission is to help women to connect with other women, so they can share learnings, build confidence, and develop their own passion for the fast moving utilities space. Through our podcast episodes, we aim to provide our listeners with the skills they need to build long-lasting and fulfilling careers in the sector.
Find us at: thewun.co.uk
WUN4ALL
Ep 83 Reframing Dyslexia & Irlen's Syndrome: A Different Lens, A Bigger Impact
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In this latest episode, WUN Advocate Gill Edwards talks with Claire Treadwell, Director of Product Management at Everflow.
Claire talks about how, when she was 21 and writing her dissertation at university, her tutor identified that she was dyslexic, after years of being mischaracterised by teachers, and feeling that she had to hide her difficulties. This identification led to an Educational Psychologist picking up on the presence of Irlen’s Syndrome, a little talked about neurological visual processing disorder that affects how the brain interprets light and visual information, causing reading difficulties, light sensitivity, and visual distortions. Claire talks about how, for her, her differences are her superpowers, and how technological advances have helped her overcome barriers both at home and in the workplace.
Claire and Gill discuss the importance of male allyship, and also, as women, having the confidence to celebrate your own strengths and achievements. They talk about the power of speaking up and asking questions, and how asking for help is a positive, not a negative. Finally, they talk about how, if you see a role you fancy, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, by applying, even if you don’t fulfil every criteria mentioned – whats the worst that can happen?
Welcome to the Women's Utilities Network One for All podcast.
Speaker B:Our corner of the world, where we'll
Speaker A:be talking all things energy, water, sharing
Speaker B:personal stories and debating female issues.
Speaker A:Enjoy. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to our latest in our podcast series for Women in Utilities Network. My name's Jill Edwards and I'm one of the advocates for Women's Utilities Network. I'm delighted to welcome to our podcast today Clare Treadwell from Everflow. She's going to be talking to us in a moment, but before we start, I'd like to thank our sponsors. Ever without our sponsorship from all the companies we're involved with, we couldn't do things like this. And I know that people really enjoy our podcasts. The Women's Utilities Network aims to provide, well, make the utility sector a place where women can join, stay and thrive in workplaces with inclusive leadership and cultures. We do this through networking, connecting, influencing, sharing, educating and supporting. So if you aren't already a member, please do sign up. It's completely free, but we do a lot of work through LinkedIn. But we also have a newsletter that comes straight to your email inbox, so please do sign up for that on our website. There's lots of different things to have a look at. We've got old podcasts, we've got training sessions, we've got lots and lots of blogs and newsletters and sector updates. So please have a look and see what we've been up to. And if you haven't joined already, like I say, please do join us. There's always room at our table for another woman from the utility sector and I really hope it will be you. So I'm delighted to introduce you to my friend Claire Treadwell today. She works at Everflow and she has volunteered to talk to us about her experiences with dyslexia and Erlens syndrome. So welcome, Claire. Really lovely to have you with me.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker A:Fantastic. So we're going to start out, if you will, if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you came into utilities, your background and what we're going to podcast about today, please.
Speaker B:Yep, sure. My name is Claire Treadwell. I work at Everflow as their product director. So that means I look after their software systems and decide what products need to go to market and how we actually get services out to our customers. And they can be internal customers or external ones. So it'll be how you do water quoting or how you do quoting for waste, and looking after our customer portal. So I'm basically the person that makes technical delivery non technical. So explain it to all people that actually use the systems. So I came to Weatherflow. I started in October 2024, so I'm pretty new to utilities. Before that, I developed school software and payroll software for a large company and I've done all sorts of things to do software development. And the thing that attracted me to Everflow and Utilities was actually their company culture. Because I did a lot of research into them, discovered they were a massively growing business and that' what really interested me was trying something different and completely new. Because it's not education software, it's not payroll, it's something entirely different altogether. But it was actually the culture of the company because the core values about having fun, making sure that you could be yourself and obviously being neurodiverse, that was actually really interesting for me because I wanted to go somewhere that was gonna be quite accepting of me as an individual. And Everflow seemed like a really good choice for me. And it was something wildly different because I'm a curious person that loves to learn. So learning something brand new in a completely different industry really appealed.
Speaker A:Oh, amazing. So I guess lots of companies will put all the great stuff on their adverts and, you know, on their websites. But how have you actually found Everflow to be inclusive? What is it about Everflow that is feels different to you?
Speaker B:Probably the fact that they are really what they say on the tin when it comes to being inclusive in terms of you as a person. So I've never been once chastised for my bad spelling practice. Clue. That's terrible. All my bonkers ideas. Because one of the things about being neurodiverse is, well, it has its challenges. It also has some massive benefits. So you see things in a completely different way. And I've been allowed to see things in a different way, come up with solutions and be really encouraged to look at the world of Everflow in a different way, for different software solutions and truly understand problems and being allowed to find out what happens if I press that button. How does this work? What does it do? What's the outcomes? So I think that's been a bit. That's enabled me to grow quite significantly. I've got a really supportive manager and he was one of the reasons I actually wanted to join because after meeting him for a few minutes in the interview saying, look, I'm dyslexic, you're going to get some crazy spellings and things that can't occur, that definitely didn't put anybody off. If anything, it was encouraged because not the bad spelling, but the curiosity and the whole thing of wanting to learn. That's something that really encourage. And more importantly, they encourage you to be yourself and have a bit of fun in the office as well, because there's a great ethos there that, you know, you spend a lot of time at work, don't you? So you've got to be. Be able to have fun with your work family.
Speaker A:That's it. And having met you a couple of times now, I can't imagine that you would appreciate a place that didn't appreciate fun in the same way that you do it'. I think it's a wasted day, isn't it? If you haven't laughed 20 times, you know that I can't imagine a place like that. So, yeah, brilliant. That's amazing to hear that they have been so inclusive and I guess probably a weight off your shoulders to be in a place that is. That does accept you for the limitations and all the difficulties and that type of thing. Because that can be so difficult if you have to mask it, doesn't it?
Speaker B:Yeah. And it becomes draining if you have to mask anything. Right. You should be able to be yourself and that should be. You know, I'm not saying don't be badly behave. That's not how things should be. You know, you should never use something as an excuse to behave in a bad manner. But one of the things that you should be able to do is be encouraged to take advantage of the things that make you you. You know, like I have an amazing ability to consume an enormous amount of data and instantaneously spot the patterns, whereas somebody else, it might take the majors to do. And it's those sorts of skills where I'm allowed to play to my strengths and allowing somebody else to pick up my weaknesses. So if I've got like a presentation that needs doing, adding my team and say, can you spell check that for me? And there's never a question about why can't you? Yeah, exactly. It's always a case of, let me help you. There's no problem with it. It's a. It's understood and accepted, more importantly, encouraged, because the creativity comes through better for me.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly. Amazing. Okay, so can we go back in time a little bit to when you were at school? Because I'm aware from knowing children and adults now who have had dyslexia, that school hasn't necessarily been the happiest place for them. And was that the same for you? And when did you find out that
Speaker B:you had dyslexia so, yeah, school was hard. It really was. Especially primary school. I think that was really the toughest. So one of the things that happened to me when I was in primary school, all my friends went outside one playtime and I was made to stay in. And it was because I couldn't draw an 8. And an 8 to me looked like two separate circles that weren't joined up together. And my teacher, I must have been six or seven, kept saying to me, just draw an eight, just draw an eight. And I couldn't do it. I thought I was. And I was made to stay in for the entire playtime when all my friends are running around having fun because I couldn't draw an 8. And that was devastating because I couldn't understand why I was getting shouted at. I was also reading out loud. That was hideous. So I could never do that. And I was always really embarrassed. But still make it up. When I was in primary school, like every child was made to read something out loud and I just couldn't do it. And I really just struggled with reading in general. We used to have this school hall where we would all go and take a book from the library and have reading time. And there was all the children from all multiple years. It must have been doing some teacher training. I've got no idea what was going on. But a few classes would all get together and they'd sit in a hall reading these books from the library. And I remember going to pick up a book, picking something that looked like it was about the same age as everybody else was reading. And I turned the pages over when everybody else turned the pages over because I couldn't actually read the book and I didn't want. Yeah, it wasn't pleasant.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So I really, really struggled. And then I went to primary school. Wasn't great. Secondary school was much better because they had a special educational needs section. So when everybody else was doing pe, I went into this special educational needs centre that with severe learning disabilities, physical disabilities in there. But they spent ages with me looking at how to sound out words and they still didn't understand what was wrong with me. Right. Cause I remember the teacher turning around and saying to me, you're getting all the right letters, everything's all jumbled up and you're coming up with a completely different word. But they did help because they put me on a paired reading program with somebody from six' four, a lady called Elizabeth. Right. And Elizabeth was amazing. We used to sit there between lunchtimes, play times, and we'd sit and read a book together where we'd go through line by line, word by word, finger by finger, each of the individual words on the page to try and work out what it said. And she helped me learn to read. Elizabeth from sixth form. So, Elizabeth from sixth form, if you're out there. Thank you.
Speaker A:If you're out there, make yourself known. Elizabeth, you've changed a life here.
Speaker B:You're amazing. And it really helped me gain some confidence. We read Stick at the Dump. I even remember it now. Took us ages. Absolutely ages. Yeah, that was hard. So secondary school was quite a lot better, but still tough to get through the exams because I'd always run out of time. I knew everything. And if you asked me to articulate it to you, I could absolutely do that, but I couldn't write it down. And I really struggled. And it wasn't until my dad got a computer that he had, like, little tiny, little green screen. It wasn't even a proper computer, it was a little typewriter. That's how old I am. And it did some spell checking for me. And then I'd start writing up assignments for my GCSES on this little computer. And it significantly increased my grades. So I became massively into understanding using a computer to help me write things. So I got through my GCSES and I was told on my careers, you know, when you do those careers surveys that you do, that I'd be a florist. And I was really angry about that. I've got no idea why, because I would have absolutely loved to be a florist. But the reality of it was, was just because I was told that I had to be, that I got kind of a bit annoyed about it. So I worked really hard and it probably took me longer than anybody else to revise or do anything. Cause it just took me ages. I used to write all my revision notes in different colored pens. Cause I'd remember what the page looked like. I just wouldn't necessarily remember the words. That when I came to do my revision, I'd think, what did that look like on the page? And then write it down in my exams. And that's how I got through them. And then I went to do A levels, got to university through trying really hard rather than anything else.
Speaker A:Absolutely. That is such an achievement, isn't it? After. Wow, that time at school. Yeah, Sorry, carry on.
Speaker B:No. And then when I got to uni, I didn't show anybody any more work when it came to assignments and stuff like that before I handed it in, because I was always so embarrassed, because when people looked at my work and read it before I handed it in, they'd always comment about my poor spelling, my poor grammar. And actually, that kind of really hurt when people gave you that feedback because you knew it was bad, right? You didn't want someone constantly pointing that out to you. So it comes along to me having to do my dissertation, and you have a dissertation tutor hand in your first sort of like, chapter. And I was so embarrassed because I thought, oh, I'm gonna put everything I can in this to make sure that this is right. Because I don't want him to think I'm stupid, because I thought I was stupid. Anyway, I handed it in and I gave it to my tutor. He read the first two sentences and went, claire, you're dyslexic.
Speaker A:Blimey. And that's the first person at age 20, 21 to pick it up.
Speaker B:To pick it up. And I burst into tears in his office. And I cried and I said, thank God I thought I was stupid. And after that, I went to an educational psychologist who said to me. He said, went through a load of different things. And the one thing I remember, I sat in his office, he said, stand on your left leg. So I stood on my left leg and he went, how did you know that was your left leg? And I went, because the left. And I put my left hand on my left leg. I knew that that was an L and went, that's my left leg, so I'll stand on that leg. And I developed all these, like, weird and wonderful ways of remembering things just to try and help with the stuff. So in the end, I had an assessment and this educational psychologist said, yeah, you're dyslexic. You're sequentially dyslexic. Which is why I always struggled to dial telephone numbers, because I could never understand why I couldn't get them right. It's why I'm good at adding up but can't take away. I can times things, but I can't divide all these really weird things that just people get for granted. And it's why I'd basically look at a word and then all the letters and jumble up and I'd get them all in the wrong order. Or I'd quite wildly put in a word with all the same letters but a completely different meaning. And sometimes that can have hilarious consequences, by the way. But it wasn't ever any. It wasn't great. But I was actually really good at maths, really weirdly, because it was logical. So as long As I had a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet, I could calculate anything. I was brilliant at it because it was really. Although it was sequential, it was logical. So logical things made sense. English is not logical because there's loads of different rules, but they sometimes apply, sometimes they don't apply, sometimes they need to be there, sometimes they don't. So that was always my downfall. But anyway, an educational psychologist said, yeah, you're dyslexic, and I also think there's something else going on. Well, okay, what's this then? He said, I think you might have some sort of, like, visual perception problem with Erlins, because you get really tired when you're reading. So, yeah, okay, let's have a look at this. So off I went and went for an assessment for Earlens, and it turns out that I have got it. And what it means is, with Erlens, it's quite common in people with dyslexia. Your words can jumble around on the page and they can glow. So the reason I was struggling to read is because my words have halos around them, so they glow. So you can imagine when trying to read a book and all your words are glowing and they move and they don't stick on the page. So the reason the eight looked like it was two circles is because in my eyes it was two circles. It was two circles, yeah. And they were glowing and moving around and. And that's why I was getting eye strain, because essentially I was trying to make the words stay on the page by focusing so hard. I was getting really tired, getting headaches. I'm struggling with it. So I ended up with a pair of purple glasses. Pair of purple glasses. My purple glasses are the best thing that has ever happened to me because as soon as I put them on, I realized the world didn't look the same to me as it did to everybody else. I always thought that. That it looked like it does on a TV and it was quite flat. And my depth of perception was really poor. So when I put my purple glasses on and realized the reason I was a bit clumsy and fell over all the time is because actually the world, you should see it in 3D. And my visual depth of perception was out of sync as well. So without my glasses on, I can't actually peg washing on a line. I missed the line and I can't feel it. I don't know where it is. Made it really hard to learn to drive because I couldn't tell where the car was in front of me. It was always Quite difficult to judge distances and things. So my purple glasses helped me put words on a page, but also helped me understand where things were in the wilder world. Then a couple of years ago I thought, you know what, technology's moved on, right? There's going to be a better way than you having to wear purple glasses all the time. Because loved my purple glasses as much as I did. They were a bit annoying when you went into a meeting with new people that just assumed you were wearing sunglasses inside. I'd tell everybody that they weren't sunglasses. But occasionally you get somebody being particularly smart going, no sunglasses. And it, it was a bit irritating. So I just thought, you know what, it'd be really nice to wear a pair of glasses that didn't have to be purple. And I did a bit of research and found some that actually have a honeycomb in them. So they act in the same way as the purple lenses. They filter out the light. My brain doesn't understand and keep the words on a page and all they have in them is like a little honeycomb lens. So these are them that I'm wearing today and they filter out the light so I still get the depth of perception, my words stay on the page, but I have glasses that are clear. And that was super exciting for me. That was like a game changer because I was like, I can be a real girl that goes and buys glasses of whatever color she wants. They don't have to match the purple lenses.
Speaker A:And then I met you, you had never realized that anything was different about your glasses to, I mean, do you have sight issues as like, you know, normal, short sighted and long sighted? Is that as well as.
Speaker B:Well it is now because I have, because of my age, I got. Had to go to the opticians and I have age related sight loss. So.
Speaker A:So you've got, you have glasses for age related sight loss and they integrate this special honeycomb feature as well, do they?
Speaker B:Yeah. So basically they're just normal glasses because I'm now short sighted, sorry, long sighted. So I need them anyway for the computer screen so that I can see you and the world around me just because of my age rather than anything else. So yeah, they just integrate them exactly the same as what you would do any normal lens. But they've got like a honeycomb coating on them so it diffracts the light differently, stops me from getting the eye strain that makes me have massive headaches because when I'm not wearing them, the fatigue is a lot. I'm really bad at concentrating when I'm not wearing my glasses because everything's so much harder to do. And you can imagine spending ages trying to make words stay on a page. Just the amount of concentration in doing that is humongous.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:A lot of effort.
Speaker A:A lot of effort. And so is Erlins linked to dyslexia? Do you have to have one to have the other?
Speaker B:Or you can have it separately?
Speaker A:Right, okay.
Speaker B:So Erlin's can be linked to. It's normally linked to some sort of neurodivergence. So you're somewhere on that neurodiverse spectrum, quite often linked to people having adhd, quite often have earleins, and you can have earlenes without having any neurodiversity at all, where you're just very sensitive to light. So it can be commonly linked to dyslexia or other sort of light. Autism, adhd, lots of different things on the spectrum, but normally it's just about light sensitivity and how you can interact. So they can be related and they can be unrelated as well, but normally related to some sort of neurodiversity.
Speaker A:It's just so interesting because prior to meeting you, I have to say I'd never even heard of it at all. And I've, you know, had children that have gone through cams and all sorts of, you know, different things, but it's not something I'd ever heard of. So it's been so interesting learning about it. And I guess what you say about, you know, putting your purple glasses on and suddenly realizing that the whole world was seeing something in a different way to what you were saying, that's actually quite emotional in a way. You know, that must have. I can't imagine how it must have felt to suddenly see everything, you know, that you had been missing out on before, really.
Speaker B:So it just explained a lot, to be honest with you, because I was terrible at tennis. Right. You can imagine you can't even work out where the ball is. Right. If I can't play a peg Washington, a line, what hope have I got with the tennis ball? So. And what it explained why I couldn't catch, and I was really rubbish at that, is because the ball wasn't where I thought it was. It was somewhere else. So it was just the best way to describe it. It's like living your life looking at a TV screen rather than realizing that it's not flat, actually, it's got a lot more depth to it. So it was almost. Yeah, it was bizarre because you don't think, as somebody that sees through your own eyes, that anyone sees Anything differently?
Speaker A:No, why would, yeah, why would you even, you know, think about that, really? So I guess now if people want to find out who are listening to this, if they think, crikey, that might be something that would help me. So I know there's a website, it's just www.erlen.com Irlen so I guess this isn't something that your normal GP is going to pick up on or maybe even your normal, you know, optician. If you go into specs like this, this probably isn't something they're going to pick up on or maybe they will, I don't know.
Speaker B:But no, it's not right. And this is the thing. So I was really lucky because my educational psychologist that found out about my dyslexia totally understood about earlands and he pointed me in the right direction. Not everyone's as lucky as that. But if you go onto the Earlins website, it does like have a little test, you know, like they do on some of these things, which asks you, you know, a few questions and shows you some examples of how Earlene's people might see words on a page or how things might move around. So have a look at that because that'll give you an idea. But if you are dyslexic, I would go and find out about this because there is a high chance that you might have something light. Erling if you get reading fatigue or you get eye strain or you're really sensitive to the light. I really hate, you know those big bright lights in offices, white walls. I come out and I'm tired. I find it really hard to concentrate and like I say, I fall over quite a lot if I've not got my glasses on. Just if you're clumsy, struggle with headaches, lights, looking at the page and seeing that things move around a little bit, you might not even realize that they are moving around a little bit until you relax your eyes and then go, oh look, it's swirling a little. Then that's the time to go and have a look at getting an assessed. And there's centers throughout the uk, but there's also, there's a centre actually in Newcastle called Colour Through Vision. They're really useful as well. So I've taken my son there because he has earlens as well to get assessed and that's been really helpful to him because he came home one day from school, I'd not spotted it and I felt mortified. I keep going, I'm reading my book and for some reason I keep going to the same sentence over and over again. And I went, oh, I'm really sorry, Harry. You've got that from me. Let's go and get you some glasses. I mean, his are green, mine were purple. So, you know, there's this myth that if you're dyslexic, stick everything on yellow paper. Totally untrue. Yellow might be the worst colour that you can have for some people. Everyone's colour can be completely different. So, yeah, definitely go and have a look into it.
Speaker A:Yeah. Having a look at this little website now, you can change the background color to all sorts of different pastely shades. And so, yeah, I guess one thing we'd really encourage anyone listening to this podcast to do is just to have a look into this because, you know, who knows, it might. It might be, well, life changing, really. I guess so. So, I guess, I mean, you're probably similar age to me, if not a bit younger. But growing up, you know, when a computer came to the classroom, it was wheeled in on a little trolley, wasn't it? And you were lucky to have a go.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:But I know there are, you know, lot of things, like, I guess a Kindle springs to mind that probably have been invented in the last few years. Does that type of thing help you or did it help you?
Speaker B:It's massively helped me. So, ironically, love books. Right. I love reading. I just can't read an actual physical book. It's too hard. I've tried multiple occasions to do it and it just doesn't work for me in any way, shape or form because the words still move around because the contrast between the black and the white on the page is just too much and it sends my. My brain into overload. It makes it really hard. Me, even with my glasses on, it's still not perfect. However, a Kindle. Amazing. The reason the Kindle's amazing. So I can change the font on a Kindle to open dyslexic font. I can make this line spacing really big so that if the words don't move, then because there's so much space in between them, they can't do. And the open dyslexic font gives you bigger bottoms on O's, so, you know, it's an O. It's got. Got different sort of like, inflections on the. The words to make it much easier to read. So I love my Kindle and if I tell you, as a dyslexic, I read 28 books last year because I've got a Kindle, but if you ask me to read 28 books that were normal books. Not a chance that I'd even get through one. So my Kindle is. I just love it. It's one of the things that's really helped me read, enjoy books, because ironically, while I struggle with the words on the page, I visualize everything in that book. And my imagination can tell you what that character looks like, what they're wearing, what everything smells like, because I can feel what's going on in it, because I can build pictures in my head so quickly. It's unbelievable. Which is why I'm really good at being a product director, because I can tell you what the end product's gonna look like before anyone's even figured it out.
Speaker A:Crikey, I love that. And so I guess, you know, also, you've gone all the way through school being treated like something that you weren't just because of some differences in the way your eyes and your brain function. But I guess things. Things have moved on. And, you know, I think schools are definitely trying, but clearly they didn't pick up on your lads until you picked up on it. But I guess that's why we're doing today, isn't it, to, you know, promote awareness of Erlens syndrome and just say, this is a thing that's out there. So how is he getting on then, with all of, you know, his green glass?
Speaker B:He's getting on really well with his green glasses because funnily enough, Harry wasn't very good at concentration. I wonder where he got that from. He struggle with keeping the words on a page. Again, really well. So, again, they've made things a lot easier for him. He's been able to look at the words on the page. Everything stays where it is. He's reading more, he's enjoying it. I've put the open Dyslexia font on his Kindle as well. So he's enjoying books. So, yeah, doing really well with that.
Speaker A:That's awesome, isn't it? And so when you're at work now, do you have them change all the font in stuff that they produce so that it is a bit more accessible, or do you just not have the fonts with all the twiddly bits on the sides?
Speaker B:Yeah, so I have the Sansarif fonts because all the twiddly bits on the side just make it really hard for me to read. So I got no chance of reading a newspaper ever, because it's always done in Times, New Romans. So what I tend to do is, is if I do receive document, and it's in a serif font, I change the font altogether. So I'll just go select all on word, change everything to be whatever it needs to be and then just make it into the right font. But I'm really lucky our corporate font is dyslexic friendly, so everything I receive is in dyslexic friendly font anyway. So I'm quite lucky with that. So things like an aerial is okay. You know, anything without any flicky bits on it is good for a person with Irlins or dyslexia.
Speaker A:So I guess that would be the learning from here is for, you know, companies that are using more ornate fonts maybe to consider if you want your, your piece of work to be widely consumed, then, you know, make it as, as friendly to everybody as you possibly can, I guess. And I'm assuming that there are sort of guides on the Irlen syndrome or maybe on the dyslexia societies. I know there are various things that you can look up, but you know, ways of, of making your, your written documents as accessible as possible. So let's hope that people take that on board.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the other thing to do is make them screen reader friendly as well, because while I'm quite good at reading, other people won't necessarily be as lucky as me when it comes to being able to interpret the words on a page. So that accessibility standards is really important because screen readers follow, set in order and if you enable those to take place, then that's brilliant for somebody like myself because you can just get the word flow back to you. And I use a screen reader for my own email sometimes if I've not got anybody that. Can you just read that for me and I'll go, oh, yeah, I didn't do that. Right. Oh, that's an interesting word. I replaced that one with. So, you know, those sorts of things are really helpful too. So just make sure that you make it pick a font that's clean and doesn't have all the flicky stuff on it and make sure that your website or you are friendly for screen readers.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely. And I guess it'd probably be, you know, remiss to not talk about it, but at the moment, you know, AI is having a moment, you know, in the last couple of years, it has really come to the forefront and is seeming more accessible every day and less scary to the people that, you know, like me, think Terminator is about to happen at any moment. So do you think that there are going to be, is there more potential to make life easier for People with Earlens, do you think through AI?
Speaker B:Oh, definitely. I mean, I use Copilot or Claude. We've got Claude in our business to be able to sort of write emails if I'm not sure about something or ask it to spell check something for me, check the grammar. I do all sorts of those things because it definitely helps with. With making sure that I've not missed something as well as asking a person to go and do it. Because although AI is really clever, sometimes it comes up with wildly wonderful scenarios that aren't necessarily true as well. So even after I've put something through an AI bot to just say, can you just check that for me and make sure the spelling and grammar is correct. Sometimes it interprets the words into completely wrong things as well. So you just have to be careful with that to.
Speaker A:That's it. And in an industry that has so many acronyms as utilities, you know, there's an acronym for virtually everything, isn't there? So, yeah, we definitely need the flesh and blood people to still be reading and listening to everything.
Speaker B:So, yeah, and that's actually one thing I really struggle with is acronyms, because as you can imagine being sequentially dyslexic when they've got all these acronyms in, I spend half a meeting looking around going, I've got no idea what that even means. So my top tip on that one is I just ask now just go, what do you mean by that? What's that? What does that acronym mean? Because otherwise my head's just going, wonder what happened by that? And then the next thing you know, I've lost the meeting.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, that was four points ago. Let's try something else now, shall we?
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:I guess, I guess one thing that's really coming through from all this is having the confidence to say, hold in a minute I haven't understood, or holding a minute I haven't seen. And that I know, I know. You know, as a woman in midlife, I've. I've lost the filter where I can't ask people to stop and help now. But I. It was something that I definitely would have struggled with in, you know, maybe when I was younger, not wanting to look foolish or any of those things. So I guess another thing to take from this is that there really are no stupid questions, you know, I think we should all be asking more. And if you're asking something, you can bet your life that somebody else in the room hasn't understood as well. I guess that's one of the points to take forward.
Speaker B:I would Definitely agree with that. Because as a younger Claire, I would have struggled to ask some of those questions. And now I just go, I don't even know what you mean by that. Can you just repeat that? Otherwise I'm going to spend the entire meeting wondering what those three letters mean. Can you just put it into context for me? And normally people are just happy to explain. You don't. You're right. There is no such thing as a stupid question. People need to embrace that more. It's okay to ask questions. It's better to ask a question than go away not understanding a word anyone said.
Speaker A:That's it. Yeah. Ask questions. Always ask questions. I think that should be one of the one missions to live by. Always ask questions. So, yeah, so, you know, that segues really nicely into talking a little bit about women in careers and in careers that were mainly male oriented in the first place. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about that really. But I guess software and utility share the background that they were never really the sectors that women thought were for them, but clearly they are. We know they are for them. So for women starting out in utilities or in, you know, software and digital, that type of thing, what are your thoughts about breaking into a workplace that's seen as traditionally for the boys?
Speaker B:I think you've got to be confident in your own ability and I think that's one thing that women tend to struggle with. We tend to suffer quite a lot with imposter syndrome and wondering whether we're good enough to do something or try something. So there's quite a lot of research about the fact that a male will apply for a job even if they don't hit all the success criteria. A woman will question whether they're going to hit all the success criteria and not necessarily apply for the job. Job. I think you've just got to take that punt. Right. I took this job at Everflow knowing full well that I didn't know anything about utilities, didn't really know anything much about water, but I knew how to build software. And actually the success criteria was like, you know, it'd be good if you had some background in utilities. I didn't have any, but I knew full well that I'm a great product director. I'm brilliant at solving problems. So it's about feeling confident enough in your own skin to just give something a try. If you see something, what's the worst that can happen applying for it? If you don't get it, you don't get it. And there's nothing lost. It doesn't matter if you failed, it doesn't matter if you've not got something, at least give it a try. Because you always regret the things in life you didn't do, not the things that you did do.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely. And I love the way you speak about yourself that you out you do say, I'm fantastic at this and I'm a great software, you know, person. I love that because that is something I really see women struggling with is actually acknowledging their own achievements really and thinking back and saying, yeah, actually I am really good at this thing.
Speaker B:I think I got that confidence from my old boss. So I used to come to him and be like, oh, I'm not very good at this and I'm not very good at that. And I'd never tell him what I was good at. And one day he sat down, he said, claire, using the words like that against yourself will hurt your own self wellbeing. You need to start speaking about yourself in a positive light because actually that'll make such a difference to your own confidence levels that you don't really realize that when you are detrimental to yourself, you don't realize how you are harming yourself because those words stick. So my old boss, Winston, love him to bits. That confidence came from him because he gave me the confidence to grow as a person and basically turn around and say to myself all the nice things that are true that I struggled to say. Mainly because going back to how I was when I was younger, I was always not very good at this and not very good at that. He taught me to embrace myself strengths and that's something I learned to do and be unapologetically me because actually, yeah, I'm not very good at picking up a book and I can't actually read one, but I can read a Kindle and I can read a book. And I am immense at solving problems and consuming data and seeing things in a completely different light to other people. So to the people that are struggling with exactly that. Be confident in the fact that, yeah, you're neurodiverse. It doesn't mean you're not very good at things. It means that you're brilliant at stuff that other people can't do and, and you need to embrace that and enjoy it. So I actually, in my interview foreverflow said, you know what? Yeah, I'm neurodiverse. I'm not very good at reading. You're gonna get some incredible spelling mistakes and it will give you some hilarious consequences to what those things say. But dyslexia is actually My superpower, right, Because I can solve a problem in 35 seconds before anybody's even realized it's a problem. I can read the room and I can instantaneously tell you how people are feeling or what's going on in. I can read people because I see that actually what was coming out of their mouth is not matching their body language. So something's not quite right. And do you need a hand with everybody? Anything. I'm great at understanding my team's feelings, really, with a manager, because I can instantaneously tell you that something's happened, that somebody's not happy that day, and I'll go and make sure that they are and ask questions about that. So I'm very empathetic. I'm really good at consuming data and seeing patterns. I'm brilliant at loads of things. I'm not great at reading stuff.
Speaker A:What an amazing act of allyship for your old boss, Winston, telling you that it was okay to do that. That is such a. Such a powerful bit of messaging to a woman, isn't it, from a man in a leadership position. So, come on. All the guys who are leaders tell the women that are working their way up, you know, from roles beneath you, that they really are capable of doing some extraordinary things and making huge changes and advances. That's lovely. So I think we're coming to the end and honestly, I could talk to you about this type of thing for ages. Such an engaging topic and I think such an important one to really share with the world and say, you know, there is this thing out there. You might think that you are less than, but actually you're not. It's just something that's going on that's slightly different to everybody else. So if you do think that this is something that's affecting you, please do have a look up the earland syndrome or irlund.com there's lots of information out there and I guess ever more so as we become a digital world. So, yeah, I'd like to really. Thank you, Claire. It's only with conversations like this where people are willing to talk about the struggles that they've been through and what's happened and what has blocked them in the past and has been unblocked now by new technology that people are going to move forward. But is there anything else that you'd like to say before we close or anything else you'd like to say to Everflow or other people?
Speaker B:Just embrace being neurodiverse. If you are neurodiverse, enjoy. Enjoy it. Play to your strengths. Enjoy them and let other people know that you're strong in other ways that other people aren't. And actually thank you Everflow for accepting the slightly wacky ideas that I come out with and taking Claire for Claire.
Speaker A:Oh yeah, thank you Everflow for taking clever Claire and thank you one for introducing me because you are just a ray of sunshine and I'm so glad that we've had this chance to discuss so so I hope you've enjoyed this podcast as much as I've enjoyed recording it with Claire from Everflow. If you would like to listen to podcast please go to our website and we've also got some more events coming up in future days. So some of them are live, some of them are in person and some of them are virtual and online. So have a look at www.one.co.uk and see what we've got going on. Thank you for joining us today and I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks very much then. Bye bye bye Sam.