The Elephant in the Org
The "Elephant in the Org" podcast is a daring dive into the unspoken challenges and opportunities in organizational development, particularly in the realm of employee experience. Hosted by the team at The Fearless PX, we tackle the "elephants" in the room—those taboo or ignored topics—that are critical for creating psychologically safe and highly effective workplaces.
The Elephant in the Org
Neurodiversity in the Workplace — Stop Fixing People, Start Fixing Work with Paula Brockwell
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Neurodiversity in the workplace isn’t an accommodation issue.
It’s a design issue.
Paula Brockwell returns to The Elephant in the Org — following her Season 1 appearance, which remains one of our most downloaded episodes — to go deeper into the structural realities of neurodiversity at work.
In this conversation, we move beyond awareness and compliance to examine workplace architecture itself.
If your neurodivergent employees are masking, burning out, or underperforming, the issue is rarely capability.
It’s rigid processes.
It’s behavioural conformity.
It’s systems optimised for predictability instead of outcomes.
We explore:
• Why “reasonable adjustments” are tolerance — not enablement
• How workplace systems unintentionally create disability
• The cost of masking for neurodivergent employees
• Why outcome-based management improves psychological safety
• How inclusive workplace design drives retention and performance
This episode is a practical, systems-level conversation about neurodiversity in the workplace, inclusive leadership, psychological safety, and employee experience.
If you lead teams or design organisational systems, this conversation will stretch you.
—
About Paula Brockwell
Paula Brockwell is an organisational psychologist and founder of The Employee Experience Project, where she helps organisations redesign work to support neurodiversity, psychological safety, and high performance.
Connect with Paula:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulabrockwell/
The Employee Experience Project: https://theexproject.com
If you missed her original appearance in Season 1 (one of our most downloaded episodes), it’s worth revisiting after this conversation.
📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com
🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn
- 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
- 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
- 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.
🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.
🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson
⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.
Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, employee voice, ...
We talk a lot about psychological safety on this podcast.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
You cannot build psychological safety inside a system that quietly penalises difference.
If performance is still defined by behavioural conformity…
If presence is still confused with productivity…
If neurodivergence is treated as an exception instead of a statistical reality…
Then the problem isn’t the individual.
It’s the design.
In this episode, we’re going beyond awareness and accommodations — and asking a much harder question:
What if neurodiversity isn’t the disability?
What if the workplace is?
Let’s get into it.
This is the Elephant in the Org.
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Danny Gluch: Welcome back to the Elephant in the Org, everyone. I'm Dani Gulch, and I'm joined by my co-host, Kasha Dora.
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Cacha Dora: Hello?
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Danny Gluch: And Marion Anderson.
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Marion: Hello!
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Danny Gluch: And today, we have a repeat guest, Miss Paula Brockwell. Say hi, Paula.
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Paula Brockwell: Hi! Thanks for having me!
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Danny Gluch: And as many of you know, Paula was a guest on one of our most popular episodes on change management. What was the title of Marion? Something About Tits Up?
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Marion: Oh, yeah, it's like, you know, because, you know, why does most change management initiatives go tits up? Because they're usually shit. So, that was the exact title, but that's what it meant. It was like a direct quote.
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Paula Brockwell: Nope. Yeah.
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Marion: Whereabouts, whereabouts?
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Danny Gluch: They're fuckin'.
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Marion: in garbage.
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Danny Gluch: Man, I just wanted to go and do a change management thing, but no! Today, we have Paula on to talk about neurodiversity in the workplace.
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Danny Gluch: And this is a part of not just the fact that neurodiversity exists in the workplace, but is the workplace creating the disability part? And I thought that was just a brilliant perspective. Paula, tell us what you mean when you say that neurodiversity isn't a disability.
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Danny Gluch: But the workplaces, the environments are creating that.
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah, well, for me, Donny, I am neuro-spicy, I'm a parent of a neuro-spicy household, and I've worked in this area professionally as well for a long time, and I just find it so infuriating when people come with their clinkly eyes, twinkly eyes, saying, I know what we need to do, we need to give people reasonable adjustments in the workplace, and that will make us more neuro-inclusive, and I think
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Paula Brockwell: For me, the lens about neurodiversity is wrong at the minute. It's really caught in that kind of treatment, and diagnosis lens, which means that what we try and do is just make life a bit easier for those of us, you know, slumping in the corner, trying to demonstrate our worth, rather than recognizing, actually, that what neurodiversity really represents is a range of different thinking styles.
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Paula Brockwell: constraints that if the workplace was set up not just to be a narrow box.
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Paula Brockwell: that works for a certain neurotype, then we'd be much more able to support people, or just enable people to access and leverage those strengths at work. So, I think we need to get out of this world of saying the world is normal, and people who are neurodiverse are not normal, but we can do some stuff to make it easier for them, and think there is a whole range of normal, and let's create a world where there's enough flexibility in working styles and modes that everybody can actually bring their own strengths.
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Marion: Paula, I don't know if this news has reached you over the pond yet, but did no one tell you that Tylenol causes autism?
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Paula Brockwell: Okay. Oh, trust me, that's reached us, that has reached us.
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Marion: Oh my god.
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Cacha Dora: of Tylenol I've taken in my lifetime with migraines, my god, I'm surprised I can't fly myself to the moon! But, like.
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Paula Brockwell: safe.
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Cacha Dora: Paula, I… I absolutely…
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Cacha Dora: agree with and love where you're coming from, because I think that so much of the world we live in, like, I could get on an ableist soapbox, but I won't, but…
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Cacha Dora: kind of will. But, like, the workplace itself is very, like, square peg, right? Like, and if you are a round hole in a square peg environment, then you're seen as not fitting in, and the whole goal is to try and make everything fit.
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Cacha Dora: Which, going back just a little bit and mentioning your previous episode, right, people don't like change.
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Cacha Dora: So, if it doesn't fit with what they view, air quote, normal is, then it's different, and then they need to adjust to make it fit what they view as normal. And in the workplace.
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Cacha Dora: that's so strange to me, because I… I love what you said, like, neurodiversity just is, like, a different spectrum of strengths, and how anyone who's neurodivergent, neurospicy.
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Cacha Dora: quirky, right? Like, whatever kind of…
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Cacha Dora: adjective you want to throw, like, that's what makes things better, as opposed to, like, if everyone was homogenized and everything was the same, then we wouldn't get innovation.
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Cacha Dora: we wouldn't get, like, all these wonderful things that we get to create in the world. And it's just like, if you're not normal, then you're something else. You're just something other. We're gonna put you in the other category and make you fit our sense of normal.
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah, there's this really… something that really struck me around you. I've been playing with this for a long time. I worked in the early stages of my career in neurodiversity screening, when it was very much in that lens of you screen students to see whether you need to give them a laptop to force them to be able to try and cope with the ridiculous, kind of education environment that's just designed for people with really strong working memories. You know, there's the
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Paula Brockwell: And…
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Paula Brockwell: And I remember thinking at the time, working with those people, there is so… you are defined, the education system, and therefore you, are defining yourself by the things that you find difficult, and that is the disabling process, that if we just get people to focus all the time on the things that they find difficult, then that's all they see themselves as. The sums of their, for me, not being able to spell, not being able to learn French, all of the things
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Paula Brockwell: I couldn't do at school, but as I've got older, I've learned about myself, what my core strengths are, that I could have been leveraging from the moment I entered the world of work.
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Cacha Dora: I was too busy.
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Paula Brockwell: apologizing for the fact that I couldn't spell, that I didn't notice those things, and I think there's something about, in our current society, there's a certain set of strengths which are prized, which are held up in education, they're also held up in the modern world of work, and if you can do those things, mediocrity and all the other areas is kind of acceptable, and certainly, I don't know about you, but I'm a bit of a gobsite, if I'm honest.
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Paula Brockwell: And I used to get myself in trouble at work for calling other people out, for not noticing, you know, so my ADHD allows me to make links and things that other people can't immediately see, so it makes me really great at relationship management, it makes me really great at strategic-type work, it makes me really great at innovation. And I'd be sitting in a room thinking.
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Paula Brockwell: what do you mean, 1 and 1 equals 2? There's obviously a 3 and a 4 over there, and that equals 9, you know, what are you talking about here? And I think you're not allowed, as someone with, a neuro-diverse kind of thinking style, you're not allowed to call out those in the mainstream and in the normal, for what… that's just rude to say, how can you not see that thing? It's really obvious, and it just makes us all autistic or emotionally
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Paula Brockwell: unregulated, or whatever else words we use for these sorts of things to convince us that it's that. So, there's a piece for me about how do we help people see their diversity for the strength it brings, rather than staying stuck in a system that only values certain behaviors.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, it's such a difficult thing.
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Danny Gluch: Because on one hand, the labeling itself.
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Danny Gluch: Right? The recognition of diversity, whenever there is a majority versus a minority, creates this sort of, like.
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Danny Gluch: othering effect, where there is the core group, there's those that fit in well, and then there's the others. And I see it in education, you know, they'll pull kids out of school, or out of their normal class to go work with their other special teachers and get extra help.
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Danny Gluch: And there's similar things that happen in the workplace. What…
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Danny Gluch: I mean, you definitely are the expert on this, I'm not, but, like, what is the human tendency towards, like.
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Danny Gluch: when there is the categorized, whether we're doing personality types or learning styles, work styles, where if we're just labeling it at all, whenever there's a minority, we're going to look down on or other them and make them feel not included? Is that just…
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Danny Gluch: gonna happen?
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Paula Brockwell: So I think… I think it is part of the… of the human condition, is to tribe, is to… is to be attracted to people with similar characteristics to ourselves, because that makes us feel safe, that supports us around social acceptance, etc. But there is something, I think, that has happened within humanity through that kind of creation of structured, schooling and the world
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Paula Brockwell: of work, is that we haven't… instead of… you think about the world, the human world, before we created, you know, before the Industrial Revolution, and we'd made a load of boxes that people needed to be nudged into, and a load of schools that we needed to keep kids in until they were, you know, seven and able to go in the factories, or whatever happened. You know, before that, there were a diverse range of valued roles within society, but what we've done
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Paula Brockwell: has polarized that over time, and the world of work has become very seen. It's, you know, you need, in a lot of places, I think particularly in big
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Paula Brockwell: corporate worlds, and what schools are training people for, you know, what the landowners and the factory owners were good at is the stuff that's become the definition of what good is, and I think.
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Danny Gluch: Hmm.
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Paula Brockwell: we have to be careful. So part for me, that was a normal part of the evolution, but what makes me mad about where we are now is that we have this kind of, this demasking that's happening, but what's happening is that people are still seeing themselves in the lens of disability. So, and what I'm not saying here is that I'm gonna pie eye, say, it's a superpower, and we should only see it in that way because
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Paula Brockwell: I'm sure each and every one of us, with our own kind of spicy elements, will say there are some things that, when I interact with the system, are massively difficult and massively disenabling and disabling in my life. So I don't want to counter that, but I think if we keep blaming ourselves, then we'll keep living in the shame that we've been given through that education and early, work experience.
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Paula Brockwell: And there is a different conversation that we need to push about being mad at the system rather than being mad at ourselves, and that will give us the power to challenge that system and challenge the narratives around it.
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Danny Gluch: That makes so much sense. It brings… it reminds me of when you first started talking about the diagnosis, medication, sort of like…
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Danny Gluch: there almost becomes that shame of, like, oh, you're in this other group, not just because that's a fine category, but because you haven't gotten to this bigger category yet, and here's some medications, here's some tools to help you get there. But until you're there, you're…
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Danny Gluch: You're less than. That is… Not a fun place to be.
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Paula Brockwell: No.
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Marion: And I think that there's, like.
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Marion: you know, there's areas where I feel like this is even more concentrated. Like, we had a guest recently, Tara Main, she is a CEO of a tech company which exclusively employs adults that are neurodiverse, right? And…
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Marion: It led us to kind of getting into that conversation of approximately, like, one in…
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Marion: 5 of, employees in that environment, in a, you know, a regular company type thing, not one that was specifically catered like hers, are likely to be neurodiverse in some way, shape, or form.
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Marion: And so in tech, it's a very much more… believed to be a much more concentrated environment.
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Marion: And that really got me thinking, because especially in parallel to the work that I'm doing in my research, right, about how companies approach remote hybrids or turn to office, how that supports psychological safety, how psychological safety supports innovation, right?
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Marion: If we are…
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Marion: not thinking about those environments and those… all of our… all of our employees, not just those that are neurodiverse, but if we're not really thinking about how to tailor environments to support that wider range of needs.
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Marion: then we're missing this golden opportunity in time. Like, if we're gonna force people in the office, let's learn
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Marion: From the things that have happened over the last 5 years, where we've realized that, you know, by having more flexibility and by being able to work at home more, we've been able to invite more people into the workspace, rather than exclude them.
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Marion: blowing my mind that we're… we're forcing people back to the office, and it's like we've learned nothing! It's like…
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Marion: None of that, and none of that, stuff that we've realized to be true in the last 5 years is now relevant, or interesting, or whatever, and companies are now just, yeah, but… but look, we've got great Starbucks coffee. I don't give a shit, like, you know, I can go to Starbucks on the way if I want it. Like, that's not important to me. So…
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Marion: Why are we not, like, taking all this great knowledge that we have now, and actually doing something important with it? Why are we going back to where we were in the days of the Industrial Revolution?
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Cacha Dora: Especially when you think about how work… the workplace, right, your corporateee's workplace, is 100% built for people who are neurotypical.
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Cacha Dora: Right? You have a lot of noise, you have bright fluorescent lighting that may or may not be adjustable, in certain areas. So you have a lot of these, and I'm just… those are just two factors, but there's so many things that can actually overstimulate people who are neurodiverse in whatever capacity they are, and then, like.
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Cacha Dora: you could be like, I'll be working at my desk, I work in an office, and I could be working at my desk, I have headphones in to listen to music to focus, and people will walk by, and they'll start talking, not noticing that I'm actually, like, locked in on my computer and working and listening to music, because I'm neurospicy, and being able to
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Cacha Dora: Focus means that I have to kind of, like, wash everything out.
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Cacha Dora: That's, like, part of how I do it, right? But then people will come up and they're like, oh, are you on a call? And if I say, no, I'm not on a call, then they'll just start talking, as opposed to realizing I'm actually working. And so, that's just one thing that, like, companies don't factor in
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Cacha Dora: How we've got open workspaces, and we've got all these things, and how great this is, but they're thinking about it from a neurotypical lens, and what happens is when people do try to advocate themselves, then suddenly we're now in an in-an-other category.
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Marion: Yeah, and just adding to that, like, I actually brought this argument up very recently in a discussion with a leader, and said, you do realize that at least, most likely, a fifth of your team
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Marion: will not, you know, will… will work better under different conditions. They might not want a camera on on Zoom calls, or they might need to work in a different light setting, or they might this. And the response that I got was.
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Marion: No, it's not that many. Like, no, no, no, no, no. Why would we change everything for one person or two people? And I was like, whoa. So, like, even just the lack of awareness, is so telling and so profound that
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Marion: I don't know how we shift the needle on this, without really screaming it from the rooftops, and even then, is that working?
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah, and it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because for me, that's the problem with the current conversation, you know? I… I don't know what the percentages will be. I think there'll be a really interesting thing that happens over the next few years. I'm predicting that it won't be a fifth, I'm predicting that it'll be…
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Paula Brockwell: two-thirds or half, you know, unpredictable.
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Cacha Dora: 100%, I agree with you.
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Paula Brockwell: distribution curve is going to flatten out, because I don't know about you, but I… I did an alright job masking for a good while. You know, I think there are a lot of people out there who are conditioned to suppress and manage those things, or, you know, to really suppress and manage some of those challenges that come from interacting with the normalized environment. But I think because the disability lens is so strong.
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Paula Brockwell: strong, and I think… I see it in a lot of the very vocal advocates as well. There's such a focus on, this is what people find hard. You know, I was at an EHR networking event this week, and somebody stood up to very proudly tell their very clever thinking that they'd been doing about reasonable… or the work that we should do to make the work environment more neuro-inclusive, the recruitment process, and they had
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Paula Brockwell: Three suggestions. Typically, I can remember two of them. I probably should have just lied to you and said there was two, but one was to, one of them was, I forgot what one of them was, because I laughed at my own joke. That's terrible.
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Danny Gluch: So now we're down to 1.
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Paula Brockwell: Food?
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Paula Brockwell: The second one was to give people the questions in advance, and, I can't remember what the first one was, but they were rubbish! It's like, it's rubbish! It's rubbish. Stop testing people for skills that are irrelevant and outdated and don't link to what the core skills are. Stop asking everybody to fit into exactly the same behavioural competencies. Get rid of competencies, because why does everyone need to be.
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Danny Gluch: making it in exactly the same way, why don't we start using all of the research that we have, that outcome-based management is by far the much better model for high performance, and do that for everything? If we…
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Paula Brockwell: If we orientated our organizations towards an unrelenting focus on outcomes, but we allowed people to take whatever route they wanted to towards those outcomes, our neurotype wouldn't matter, because we could flex to the strengths and the working style that worked for us, but
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Paula Brockwell: our factory owners, who are now our big business bosses, like to feel like they're in control, and like to feel like they're safe, so they've got to use task and finish management processes, and they've got to define exactly the behaviors and the working conditions that we need to work in, because they haven't got the leadership skills. So, let's just shift the conversation. Shift the conversation. Stop being proud of the fact that you send questions out, early to people.
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Paula Brockwell: I'll just stop that and start being proud of the fact that you have really talked to your people and figured out who your really great people are and what you value, and you've created an inclusive environment for all of those people to allow them to thrive. So, I'll give you a rant about bee colonies and what they value in a minute, if you want, but I think, you know, there is a lot for us to learn from nature on this stuff that we just haven't got, really. But, yeah, I'll stop my rant, shall I?
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Paula Brockwell: I'm clearly.
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Marion: Wait, no!
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Danny Gluch: You can't bring up bee colonies and then not talk about bee colonies.
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Cacha Dora: But we have to save the beanies!
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Paula Brockwell: Well, there was a bit of research done quite a while ago now, about studying bees, and they find that, you know, there's this kind of belief that all the worker bees work in the same way, and they've got their dances, and everybody comes back, and they go and they,
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Paula Brockwell: they kind of search the areas that the prospector bees have gone out on. Well, they did some research, and they found that actually about 20% of bees ignore this feebled wiggle dance. It's not feebled, this famous wiggle dance that the bees do. So, in every colony, around 20% of the bees don't do the job that they're supposed to be born to do, and so the researchers were very interested in this to start with, because they're like, oh, are they just, you know, is it a social
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Paula Brockwell: thing, what's going on? And what they actually identified was it was the colonies seething themselves. Those revolutionaries were sieving the colonies from over-farming. So, if all of the bees followed all of the dances and went to all the same flowers, then they would run out of food at some point because they were actively restricting their range. And actually, you needed this 20% of disruptors within the colonies, because they were just, like.
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Paula Brockwell: interesting dance, I'm going on an adventure, and they would find other sources of food, and bring that back, and then they would transmit that information, and I think
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Paula Brockwell: I don't think that we as a species understand the value of our lateral thinkers, or our literal thinkers, you know, those with, with different,
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Paula Brockwell: neurotypes, we don't appreciate that. We've created this really narrow, you know, it's… I guess it comes down to some of that corporate stuff around find your niece and rinse it into, into profit. We've got ourselves into this really dangerous place of only valuing this type, this single protivia set, and… and we actually, if we want to be able to evolve and innovate, we kind of need to start listening to the other styles, or give
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Paula Brockwell: it's space to thrive in a different way. So, there's a big lesson, I think, for the message that we're getting ourselves into in human race, and what we have and haven't listened to, or what's had power over the last few years. But that's maybe a Friday night with a glass of wine conversation, I don't know.
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Danny Gluch: No, I imagine it's just a coincidence that it's the same percentage. That's… I'm just gonna say that that's coincidence. But either way, I find it so fascinating that
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Danny Gluch: You put some sort of, like, anthropomorphizing language on the bees of, the bees understand that this 20%, this one-fifth needs to exist.
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Danny Gluch: They don't understand that. And the funny thing is, is humans have the capacity to understand what that 20% actually is doing and bringing, but we're not allowing it.
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Danny Gluch: The bees allow it, and it's allowing them to thrive and do well. We have the capacity to understand and are just like, nope, everyone needs to be like this 80%. It's so frustrating to me.
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Paula Brockwell: Let's give the 20% a bead of Adderall and see how long they last.
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Danny Gluch: That's exactly what I was gonna say! We need to get that 20% abuse of medicine so that they do the normal stuff, and then we all die.
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Marion: I mean, we're laughing, right? Like, but I… just… it struck me there when you were talking, Danny, that change is happening.
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Marion: Like, I know that we've all been a bit doom and gloom, right? But actually, change is happening. When I think back to even, Paula, what you said a minute ago about, you know, kids in schools and being kind of, like, singled out and extracted out for additional
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Marion: resources or whatever, because they were different. Like, I mean, I don't have kids… I don't have my own kids in school these days, right? I'd like to think that that's evolved somewhat since, you know, when we were in school. I don't know how much.
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Marion: But, like, the fact that we're…
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Marion: Talking about it shows that certainly we are… there is an increased awareness.
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Marion: But it's just slow, it's so slow, and… and I think when you layer into this…
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Marion: the changes that the very, remarkable differentials between generational preferences and generational behaviours. Like.
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Marion: I'm curious, and I haven't read research on this, but I'd be curious to see any research that related
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Marion: any of this kind of work or themes, and how that's kind of, like, crosstabbed with Gen Zs or, you know, even the newer generations that are coming through now. Like, I'm very curious about that, because I just think that these are generations that don't…
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Marion: let things languish, maybe the way that we did, or have. Not intentionally, just through lack of knowledge, I think.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah.
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Cacha Dora: I think also, Marion, I love that… I love that because there's one factor that changes as we go through the generations and how they responded to differences in the neurotypical versus what we now name as neurodiverse, and that's social media.
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Marion: Mmm.
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Cacha Dora: And when you think about, like, what happened, excuse me, what happened during the pandemic, where people were on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, what have you, like, and name your social platform, and they started to identify, oh, wait, all those characteristics mean I might have ADHD?
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Cacha Dora: I might…
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Marion: Hmm…
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Cacha Dora: other thing that I did…
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Cacha Dora: know about. And, you know, people started to have the… there's that phrase of, like, later-in-life diagnosis, and that later-in-life diagnosis means that suddenly they now know, well, hey, if I do… if I learn these things about myself, is work going to be easier for me?
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Cacha Dora: Am I not… I don't have to be in a Sisyphysian task climbing the exact same mountain as everyone else. Maybe I can acknowledge my mountain looks different, and once I know that, it… I can work better for myself.
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Cacha Dora: So I think…
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Cacha Dora: I think those generational changes will…
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Cacha Dora: this is me being very idealistic and very positive, but I also think we… and maybe it's just what my algorithm looks like. But, you know, I see a lot of these posts, and I see more of it. I do think, to your point, I do think it's being talked about more, because people…
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Cacha Dora: Are seeing it, because now they're… they are that lens of awareness is increasing.
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah. For me, honestly, am I a bit nag about it? Well, maybe because I'm a parent of a young child at school with some…
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Paula Brockwell: With some,
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Paula Brockwell: well, who's hitting a system that wants him to be a certain thing, and he is not that thing, and values, you know, what it doesn't immediately value, and what we're having to actively educate it on. And again, this could be localized, but what isn't valued is a love of learning and a kindness. What is valued is reading, acuity and ability to sit still and keep hands still, and…
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Paula Brockwell: I… what…
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Paula Brockwell: I see all that you see, Kashia, but what I also see is a system that still believes that it's doing kids and adults a fever whenever it provides
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Paula Brockwell: adjustments, that what it isn't… what it hasn't done yet is
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Paula Brockwell: is become enabling. It's starting to tolerate, but it needs to be reminded to be tolerant, because actually the priorities are still what they've always been. So, I think… I agree with you, I think we're at the start of the revolution, but I… in my work, I still see a lot of people who,
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Paula Brockwell: who are full of shame for who they are, and what… how their brain works. And an ideal world for me is where that…
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Paula Brockwell: that she'am is something that… that they don't even have to start to come to terms with through diagnosis. It's something that's never there in the first place, because we're celebrating. So, like you, I'm an absolute idealist, but I think, for me, we've gotta… we've got to become totally intolerant to systems that she and people, just because they're different.
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Cacha Dora: different.
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Paula Brockwell: this fictional ideal, which I'm not, you know, I'm not even sure that there is such a thing as neurotypical. I can't wait to see what it's going to be like in 20 years, and what the curves look like, you know, across the good old waste, and how all the different cognitive functions work. I can't wait to see what that looks like. But yeah, I think it's just not happening soon enough for me, and it makes me mad every time I see someone who feels shameful for who they are.
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Danny Gluch: Well, imagine the shame of all the bees if every time they had a one-on-one or a performance review, they were reminded that they weren't doing the little dance, and they were spelling things wrong, and that they forgot this task that was mentioned offhand to them. Like, you know, if that happened on a weekly, monthly basis, they would feel shame too.
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Paula Brockwell: But bees are better than us.
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Marion: Yeah.
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Paula Brockwell: My brain's role play in that conversation. It's like, thanks, Bob, for, you know, finding those seven trees over there that saved the colony, but we did notice that you didn't follow Barbara's dance yesterday, and, you know, that didn't feel very nice to Barbara. Like, that's just like, it's what behavior is really valued, and what… how do we make sure that people are really being celebrated for the breadth of who they are?
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Paula Brockwell: That's, yeah, how do we start that revolution? Or how do we support that revolution on continuing to lift, maybe?
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Marion: Yeah, and I keep see… Danny, you're gonna laugh, because you know what I'm about to say, because I keep… feel like at every single conversation we've had lately, we keep coming back to this same recurring notion that
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Marion: You know, in the words of the great Dr. Angela, that I quote every time. But, you know, they say, build for the most marginalized, and you'll include everyone, right? So, we should think about education that way, and we should truly think about the workplace that way. And that's not just
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Marion: ramps and…
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Marion: magic door openers that you can hit, and if your hands are full, you're trying to wheel yourself in. Like, it's more than that. It's way more than that.
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Marion: And the other thing I'm thinking about is going back to what you were saying about what will it be like in the next 20 years. Again, this is not my area of expertise, but just through conversations recently, I feel like the…
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Marion: the… The definition, the realm of, conditions that are being considered under neurodivergent is increasing by the day.
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Marion: I've forgotten who it was, Danny, we were in a conversation recently, it might have been Tara, I can't remember, but, you know, rolling in depression and anxiety and PTSD into…
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Marion: I'd never thought of that before, because I would not necessarily have considered myself as neurodivergent. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. And then I'm like, wait, I have depression, I have anxiety, and I have PTSD. Wow!
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Marion: You know, and then when I think about how those things really impact my
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Marion: brain, and my function, and my ability to remember things, and my ability to, you know, join dots in certain situations. Also, how it makes, you know, if I'm in a… if I'm really triggered with anxiety or PTSD, my brain will start to go at 3,000 miles an hour, and I will start to join dots.
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Marion: that never existed before, and I always just thought, well, that's anxiety, but actually, when you really start to think about it through that lens, it's like, whoa. So…
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Marion: I think that you're right. I think that the more we start to understand about these sorts of neurological conditions and situations.
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Marion: the definition itself is going to continue to evolve and change, and naturally, I think that's going to
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Marion: Up the number of people that we consider within that category, because
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Marion: you know, there's so many… there's so much happening out there, which, really, that's not the most marginalised anymore, that's everyone, and in fact, we should just be building with everyone in mind, right? So, it's not that… it's not that complicated, and yet it's really complicated.
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Paula Brockwell: Isn't there something really interesting there, where you're… and what you're describing there is moving… we're moving from behavioral types… we're moving from the behavioral reporting, which causes some of the challenges in modern society and world, into cognition or thinking style reporting. So we talk about this idea of neurodiversity, which we've labelled as thinking style differences.
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Paula Brockwell: but then a lot of the conversation that we have is about the observable behavioural differences. A lot of the time are related to overstimulation, overwhelm, or just being stuck in an environment where we are so fatigued from masking or managing for times that it brings out behaviors from us. When you talk about it in terms of thinking style, that's where you're able to start to think about the strength. So, I've started to play a game with
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Paula Brockwell: myself, in all honesty, where I'm starting to look to see if I can spot ADHDers in my world from the way that they talk… the way that they talk about and view the world. So in my head.
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Paula Brockwell: again, this is not, like, this isn't evidence-based, this is definitely lived experience and playing with it based, but in my head, as an ADHD-er, I see myself as a constellation thinker. I see everything related to each other. It's all linked together in a big network, which makes written communication, things like that, remembering other stuff that's boring that isn't in the network, makes all that difficult. Cool, we know that. Behaviorally, I forget to close kitchen
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Paula Brockwell: doors, okay, haha, I've got ADHD. But what it allows me to do is do a set of quite complex and nuanced thinking that people without that thinking style find more difficult. So I love going to things like networking events, and somebody asks an awkward question that nobody else has even thought of, because they're all thinking at the symptomatic level, and they'll slide up beside that person and just wait a little bit and see… have a bet with myself until
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Paula Brockwell: they admit that they've got ADHD, or if I get to know them well enough, I might say, so, have you been diagnosed? And I think…
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Paula Brockwell: If we can start to think about it.
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Paula Brockwell: at the level of cognition, thinking style, thinking strength, then we are changing the conversation quite significantly. So, for me, the behavioral stuff is symptomatic. That is influenced as much by our environment and active coping. Gosh, the behavioral stuff is the thinking stuff is where the core strengths come and drive. If we're given space to do that, it can drive real behavioral strength. So.
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah.
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Paula Brockwell: that's, you know, that's what I'd love to see. When someone gets a diagnosis, the report doesn't tell them all the things that they're shit at that they've had to admit to in order to get that diagnosis. What I'd love is if what you got, actually, was a cognitive strengths profile and a behavioral strengths profile that told you the things that you're going to be brilliant at. That, you know, that… that… we know the revolution's happened, if that comes, really. So that's, you know, that's what I'd love to see, and it's lovely to hear you, Marion, reflecting on that journey of.
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Paula Brockwell: shit, you know, yes, this might… this might feel problematic in this lens, but in this world, I can see how it brings me strength and value, really.
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Marion: Yeah, there needs to be more of this, and I think.
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Cacha Dora: It just…
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Marion: These types of conversations.
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Marion: Should be normalized, but also…
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Marion: these types of conversations need to be really happening in organizations, and they're not. They're not. Like, I know when I've approached this type of conversation in a… through a work lens, it's often met with confusion, like.
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Marion: why are you talking about this? You know? And then that makes me think.
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Marion: are you not seeing the same things that I'm seeing, right? And… and…
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Marion: I just don't know if it's…
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Marion: Lack of a… complete lack of awareness, or just…
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Marion: it's so uncomfortable that if I do this, then it's not really happening. Like, I don't know what it is. I'm like you, Paula, if I see something, I kind of call it out. Like, that's just…
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Marion: something I do, and…
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Marion: I like to think I do it in a nice way, but, you know, I definitely feel like I'm observant of these types of things, and I'm looking round, going, is no one else seeing this?
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Danny Gluch: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: I don't… I don't think they are seeing it. I don't… I don't know if they know what they're looking for.
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Marion: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: Well, you brought up earlier the, you know, you want to focus on outcomes. Did this team do its goal? We can be playful about how people get there. They can get there in all their different ways. And, you know, you see organizations all the time that say, we're outcome-focused.
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Danny Gluch: I'm not so sure that they are, right? They're not outcome-oriented, they're hyper-process-oriented, and this specific process that they think is repeatable and will lead to these very safe outcomes. And…
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Cacha Dora: And those outcomes that give results. They label outcomes as results, as opposed to.
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Danny Gluch: Thank you, yeah.
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Cacha Dora: Moving and saying, we have defined processes, we know the results, and we know that this stamp, if we stamp it every single time, the stamp's gonna give us the.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah. Yes. And it's funny, because I'm very process-oriented. I think refining the process, you know, it gets you to a better process that gets you to better results. But, like, that's not what they mean either. They don't talk, you know, the…
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Danny Gluch: process-oriented, aren't actually focused on doing the process better and refining. They're talking about that stamp that Kasha was talking about.
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Danny Gluch: And I wonder if that's part of the real shift, is just coming clean with all of this, that what we need to do is be less rigid of what the process looks like.
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Danny Gluch: And we're gonna end up getting better results. And we're also gonna end up being more inclusive of the kinds of processes that people allow themselves to do, the way, you know, the sort of path to getting to the outcomes.
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Danny Gluch: And I think that that, you know, think about the bees. Like, no one's sitting there and saying, hey, why are you doing this thing that's very different?
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Danny Gluch: How's the organization doing? Oh, we're doing great. You know what?
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Danny Gluch: Bob, you keep doing your work. Like, there's just not… that.
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Danny Gluch: And I don't know if that's the inclusion of stripping away and just letting people do their work more.
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Danny Gluch: freely, but… I don't know, that's…
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Paula Brockwell: I think… I think the world of work has reduced itself to CF mediocrity. A lot of organizations, you know, even the really big ones, I always find it really funny when you see X whatever, I'll not call out all the ones that… but, you know, I'm X this, but, you know, it's not like X Google, even that makes me laugh, but, you know, it's like, I'm X this, and it's like, oh, well, cool, very nice for you.
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Paula Brockwell: But all that tells me is that you work in a big system that was fueled by brilliance for a while, but got it to a point, and now mediocracies enough to let it keep making those billions, it's just pumping along, doing what it needs to do. And I think there's this thing, isn't there, where we're just trying to uphold a load of mediocrity that makes people a shitload of money, and actually the collateral damage doesn't really matter in the system. God Cashy, you'll be… you'll be thinking.
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Paula Brockwell: kicking us down the neck again on this, but I do think that there's this… this challenge around,
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Paula Brockwell: just people are numb. They're numb to the possibilities, they're numb to exploring brilliance and innovation, and just going through that process and being accepted by the Fat Lardy tribe that we've all become part of is enough, and there's a chunk of us who don't like that, and we kick the safety, and then we've got to go and be self-employed, because nobody wants to be around.
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Marion: Or we end up in these, you know, like, if you think about the environment that we're in now, where we're all quiet quitting or job hugging, or whatever the fuck it is this week, right? Like…
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Paula Brockwell: So many people sitting in these environments.
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Marion: that feel that way, that are like, I do not belong here, I do not fit here, what is happening? But then, the world around us right now is so unsafe in terms of employment and stability, and so we job hug to something that literally makes our skin crawl sometimes.
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Marion: For those very reasons, but there's no safety in it, you know, and not everyone can…
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Marion: go off and do their own thing, or even has the skill or the will to go and business develop and do stuff like that to then be able to thrive in that environment. So they stay in mediocrity, and it kills them slowly, painfully, and it sucks everything
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Marion: that was nuanced and interesting and, you know, innovative and creative. It sucks that out of them, because they're just part of this machine, and they're part of this machine, because guess what? We live in this
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Marion: crazy capitalist world, and we have to have shit to be stuff, and to do things, and whatever. And, like.
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Marion: That… God, I'm depressed listening to myself. Like, it's like…
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Paula Brockwell: Like, with Robin?
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Cacha Dora: There's… there's this…
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Marion: Truth!
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Cacha Dora: There's a need for safety and security, right? Like, we talk about psychological safety in every single episode because there's a reason we need it, right? And…
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Cacha Dora: when we think about our safety and security, and when you think about how people feel safe and secure, you could do any values assessment on the internet for a quick Google search, and one of them always comes down to safety, security.
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Cacha Dora: you don't even need to be, like, wealth, money, whatever, no, but it's like, do you feel secure? Do you feel safe, right? Because when you don't, we know
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Cacha Dora: That it affects your…
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Cacha Dora: your… that biochemistry. It affects all of the things going on in your head. It affects all of the hormones your body's releasing if you don't feel safe. And so, you know, going back to Paula, you know, you talking about masking.
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Cacha Dora: what happens when people stop masking, you know, and how that biochemistry changes for them, because now they're not releasing or holding on to some of those hormones. They're actually just being their true, authentic selves. The system might not like it.
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Cacha Dora: The system's not built for it.
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Cacha Dora: But then the people that surround them, most of the time, just appreciate the person for who they are. They don't even have the awareness that the system's not built for that person.
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Danny Gluch: Can I see someone virtual? Because they see.
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Cacha Dora: Please!
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Danny Gluch: So, that, that, that safety that you guys, that, you know, love safety, psychological safety, awesome.
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Danny Gluch: I think what happens, right, you had all these, you know, really innovative tech companies all move from the innovation, the risk-taking, the, you know, exploration of the possible.
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Danny Gluch: to very safe were now run by financiers, and they're moving from innovation and risk to safe.
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Cacha Dora: a risk to safe.
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Danny Gluch: what Marion was talking about is it's stripping away some of those things, and we know, especially in the tech sector, there is a higher rate of people who are neurodiverse. And all of that beauty, all of that interest was, like, stripped away. And what we need is this, like, mass group of people, the neurotypical.
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Danny Gluch: To take risks, and say, no, stop doing what is super safe, stop doing this, like, stamp method of what you want.
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Danny Gluch: be a little more open. Don't just do 100% go after the flowers that you researched and will always provide you the, you know, the results you want, because eventually that's going to lead to your demise. You need to be risky and let
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Danny Gluch: This 20%, this 1 in every 5, sort of be themselves, and in the overall, it'll help your organization.
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Marion: But that's risky to them.
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Paula Brockwell: Well, and I think.
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Cacha Dora: Meanwhile, my brain's like, that sounds exciting.
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah, exactly. This is probably not the room to have, because we're like, it's not a problem. What's the problem? We don't see a problem. We need… we need someone terrified in the corner for us, don't we, to calibrate, round out the conversation. But I think that's the point for me, Danny, is exactly what you're talking about there, is how do… not… how do we make the world… you know, I'd love to make the world a massive roller coaster. That would make me happy, that would suit my kids, and I'd have an adventure all day, every
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Paula Brockwell: day, sure, but I, you know, I guess I'm tolerant enough of those, of those, neurotypicals that we've got to all… we all got to hang about with sometimes, that I appreciate that there is a function and a value in the world. I think all I'm… all I'm excited about doing is speeding up the process in which we stop
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Paula Brockwell: we stop tolerating, and we start enabling those who are neurodiverse. And I think we're in a phase of tolerance at the moment, and tolerance is lovely. It's a lovely start from where we have been. We've all been told to sit down and shut up, or whatever it is that we've been expected to do, over the years. That's definitely coming from my own lived experience. But imagine a world where every organization
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Paula Brockwell: recognized that you needed those bees, and it still fed them, even if they were doing something that you didn't quite understand, because you knew that you were going to get some sort of payoff, and it still let them work in a way that worked for them. You know, it's that… that piece around how do we support those who are going through a process of self-discovery, to not do that through the lens of shame, but get them to do it through that lens of strength, and how do we then get that message of strength and
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Paula Brockwell: opportunity and value into the world of work, because I don't… my…
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Paula Brockwell: I think… I think there are conversations happening. I don't want to poo-poo the progress that has been made, but for me, the right conversations aren't happening yet to really make the full revolution. We're playing at the edges at the moment, and I'm ready not to be playing at the edges at the minute, which is why I'm being probably quite so provocative about it, because there are lots of people doing brilliant work, and I do not want to slag that off, because it's hard, bloody work, and they're out there doing it.
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Paula Brockwell: I'm just ready for us to be on to the next few years, which is moving past tolerance. I don't know if that even makes sense at this point, but hopefully so.
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Marion: Paula does. Paula for president! Paula for…
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Cacha Dora: Oh, Jesus.
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Danny Gluch: It's.
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Paula Brockwell: Oh, no, no, wait, that was wrong. That was misinformation.
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Paula Brockwell: Causation does not equal causation. Do we all need to get that tattooed across our forehead?
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Marion: Oh.
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Marion: Yeah, nice.
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Cacha Dora: That'd be my first tattoo. I love tattoos, that's not the one I would pick for my forehead.
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Marion: I don't know, I think, I think, I think mine might have to be proximity does not equal productivity.
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Cacha Dora: Oh, yeah, it's gonna be amazing.
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Paula Brockwell: That's a separate podcast.
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Cacha Dora: area, that's a separate podcast.
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Marion: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: That location doesn't equal proximity.
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Danny Gluch: It's.
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Paula Brockwell: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: You know…
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Danny Gluch: I really think that there is hope for organizations out there. I, I love the sort of, like.
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Danny Gluch: adding strengths. Like, what are you adding? And, you know, you look at job descriptions, and job descriptions just list the box. Like, can you please fit into this box where you're gonna be, you know, reliable? They're just drawing the stamp.
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Danny Gluch: And I wish, you know, that they would listen to all the research. Like, the job crafting and how people want to impact their organization is really what creates longevity and retention, you know, reduces burnout and creates more productivity for the organization.
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Danny Gluch: What are some of these strengths? And, you know, as we're wrapping up, what are some of the strengths that, you know, again, we don't want to say, like, oh, it's a superpower, it's actually better if everyone's this, but what are some of the strengths that you could list on a,
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Danny Gluch: job description that would be like, you know, not everyone's gonna fit those, and you're okay hiring someone who doesn't fit these, but, like, if someone does fit these strengths.
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Danny Gluch: you should still consider them, even if they don't fit some of the more typical stamp, boxy things. What are some of those strengths we could put on a job description?
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Paula Brockwell: Again, I think… I think, again, it's relatively… I think it's… people operationalize their thinking style in quite an individual level, so again, I think we have to support people and go in that… on their own individual journey of strength, so I… I know how that plays out for me as someone who has that constellation thinking style and is also a raging gobsite. You know, I know… I know how that plays out in terms of… of what you get when
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Paula Brockwell: whenever you, you work with me, but what that means for someone with a thinking style who's maybe a little bit more reflective, or less naturally outspoken or, the like on things is different. So, I think the call for me is more about how do we… how do we understand the nature of the beast in rules? So exactly what you're saying there, stop creating role profiles and start creating outcome requirements. So, I think about that
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Paula Brockwell: right at the start of my career, I did loads and loads of selection, and people had had me the job role, and I'd say, I don't want to see the role profile, let me talk to the person who's hiring on this so I can learn about the role context and what the outcomes are, so I know what type of strengths you need to be able to deliver what's required. So we need to do… we just need to do that. That's how we need to describe and recruit for jobs, I think, and develop people through jobs.
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Paula Brockwell: And then we need to support people to have the strengths-based conversations, so they understand that in themselves, because a lot of people don't know what they're good at anymore, because they've only been told what they're shit at through their whole education and, professional career. And noticing that, noticing that, and really helping people, who… particularly those, I think, who've been late diagnosed, to take that journey, I think, is really critical. Or do it yourself. If you…
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Paula Brockwell: if you are neurodiverse, I met a parent from school last week who's just been diagnosed, and he was like, I don't understand why you own it, because I just see the fact I never do my invoicing on time, and I was like.
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Paula Brockwell: been all that stuff. Forgive yourself for that, and start thinking about what you're great at. Let's have a conversation about what people really appreciate you for, and the more we force that, and then support people to have that conversation, the quicker the revolution will come, I think.
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Marion: Just tying a bow on that, Paula, like, what advice would you give to HR leaders, C-suite, to be able to take steps towards this? Because this isn't something that you're going to do, you can do, like, overnight, right? This is a massive, massive organization.
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Danny Gluch: I know, change management's really…
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Marion: Change management, I know, right?
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Cacha Dora: It's just an acronym, it's fine.
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Marion: Yeah, it never goes tits up, it never goes tits up.
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Marion: Paula, what advice would you give companies that want to start taking steps in this direction?
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Paula Brockwell: Well, it goes right back to that piece that I talked about, both in terms of my early career, but we talked about in the first episode that we did together, stop defining your culture and your ideals off a spreadsheet, or off a should-do, or off what the Joneses are doing. Look specifically at your context, what it is you want to achieve, and what your operating context is, and define the type of mode, the type of experience.
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Paula Brockwell: It's the type of behaviour if you have to, but ideally the type of outcomes that you need to deliver that. And if you start there with a realistic set of what are the outcomes that we need, what's the strengths, and broad the different range of behaviour sets that we need to do that, you're immediately shifting the conversation within your organization from, we need an analyst with 5 years experience, to we need someone who can build relationships in a fantastic way, or
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Paula Brockwell: can notice when a customer's wobbling six months before they even realize themselves they're wobbling. You know, if we start having the nuance in the conversation, we'll be much more able to match and foster people to the right place. So I think just start with that, start having the right conversation about what you actually need.
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Danny Gluch: That sounds fantastic. And it's less quantifiable. There's some qualitative things in there of what's the experience like? What does it feel like to work on this team and reach that outcome together? And I think that just makes for a better work environment. I think that makes for a more psychologically safe work environment as well.
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Danny Gluch: Well, thank you, Paula, for joining us. Thank you all for listening. Be sure to leave a 5-star review, be sure to subscribe, message us on LinkedIn. We're still looking for more elephants out there as we, get further into 2026. Thank you all very much, have a great day.
