Episode 13 - Burn Bright for Neurodiversity

Today’s demanding work environment can easily lead to burnout, and for many, undiagnosed neurodiverse conditions are hidden contributors to this struggle. But what if burnout and underperformance could truly become a catalyst for positive change?

In this insightful episode of the bite-sized conversations around People Matters at Realising Potential Ltd, Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones welcome Wendy Macartney, a behavioural change specialist and psychologist. 

Wendy is a trusted Business Partner at RPX2 Ltd and an experienced practitioner of The Predictive Index. Diagnosed with autism and dyslexia in adulthood, she sensitively combines two decades of HR expertise in change management and coaching with personal insights.

Wendy's successful coaching practice, Burn Bright, is dedicated to helping neurodiverse individuals understand their natural behaviours and navigate workplace challenges with confidence. She talks candidly about what a neurodiverse diagnosis can mean for her clients and how she helps them to understand, navigate and accept it. 

Join us as we explore how Wendy combines her own experiences with her professional expertise to empower clients and guide organisations toward creating more inclusive, supportive environments.

Her passion to help neurodiverse individuals - and the organisations they work in - to 'burn bright, not out' shines through. This deeply moving and eye-opening episode is not to be missed.

Explore more on this dedicated webpage on the RPX2 website.

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help your people, teams and businesses realise their potential, please visit our website.

Transcript

Neale James: In this episode of our conversations on People Matters at Realising Potential, Fiona and Michael are joined by Wendy Macartney. Wendy is an experienced practitioner of The Predictive Index and a trusted business partner at RPX2.  She is a behavioural change specialist and psychologist with over 20 years of experience in HR, specifically in change management and coaching.  

Diagnosed with autism and dyslexia as an adult. Wendy brings personal insights into the topics of neurodiversity and burnout.  She has a thriving coaching business specialising in supporting neurodiverse individuals.  

Fiona Brookwell: Hi Wendy. Thanks for joining us today. Uh, appreciate your time. Can you tell us how you were first introduced to Predictive Index and how Predictive Index fits in with your passion for your new business opportunity? 

Wendy Macartney: Well, thanks, Fiona. So, I used to work in a financial services organisation and they introduced me to PI and I have realised what a fantastic tool it is, particularly to help people understand who they are and how they operate. And I use it within my business that I built, which is called Burn Bright, because my passion lies with helping neurodiverse people, whether it's assessing them, coaching them or helping their organisation to make reasonable adjustments.  

Now, PI fits into that because I use that as part of the process. So, so that individual can understand who they are and how they're operating and how that may interact with a neurodiverse condition. Because I myself am neurodiverse and I, when I looked at my profile, because I'm a Maverick, I looked at the kind of crossover of my profile with my neurodiverse condition, and I could see a really nice crossover that I also share with clients. 

Fiona Brookwell: So, can you just explain that a little bit more to us? What, what, what is a Maverick and what impact does your neurodiverse aspects have on that.  

Wendy Macartney: Yeah, so my Maverick's quite squished. So, um, I'm not really spread out.  

Fiona Brookwell: What is the Maverick profile, um, Wendy?  

Wendy Macartney: So, it's someone who is probably an out-of-the box thinker, quite dynamic probably an entrepreneur, and somebody who's social, likes flexibility, doesn't want to do too much detail, definitely somebody who can switch between being quite outgoing and introverted at the same time. 

I can flick between the two quite easily and I'm quite calm, but I can dial up and be really dynamic if I need to. So, I can combine a number of different things, but certainly sits with my confidence and capability to go forward. And despite my neurodiverse condition, I'm absolutely not afraid to get out there and see what needs to be said to help other neurodiverse people. 

And I think being a Maverick really helps with that.  

Michael Jones: The point that I'd like to just add there, Wendy, if I may, is the fact that, obviously, The Predictive Index is a Behavioral Assessment that is not designed to pick up any neurodiversity at all. After many years of working with the tool and giving feedback, there have been quite a number of times when I've fed back a profile and somebody has responded by saying that that makes sense because, and as then it told me, that they perhaps may have some elements of, you know, neurodiversity in their makeup. 

So, it just works alongside. It's not in itself a diagnostic for any form of neurodiversity, is it?  

Wendy Macartney: Absolutely not. We have much more formal, rigorous assessments. For example, if I'm assessing someone, they would do an online profile. It’s something we do before. We then interview the individual. That usually takes about two hours. 

And then I would interview a family member or partner, and we would look at. All three different sources before we make, you know, a formal diagnosis, but I also work in partnership with clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who read all my diagnostics, all my reports and letters and sign them off.  

So, when you go to the GP and if you require medication, or reasonable adjustments, there's that rigour and thoroughness in the assessment process to ensure you don't come up with any barriers in that process.  

Michael Jones: So, I'm guessing understanding a person's behavioural orientation as well as of course the specifics of their neurodiverse condition allows you more information to help them to be more effective in terms of what it is that they do. 

Wendy Macartney: Absolutely. It gives me a real clear insight into the person. And allows me to adapt my coaching style, or if I'm mentoring, I can adapt my style to get the best outcome and use the right language to help people move forward and support them more.  

Michael Jones: And I'm a complete novice at this Wendy, so forgive me, but how does coaching somebody with neurodiversity differ from coaching somebody who may not. 

Wendy Macartney: So, it's taking into consideration… So, if I can give you an example just to emphasise it a bit more. So, as someone who's autistic, and I'm coaching a couple of autistic CEOs at the moment, the way that autistic people hear sound, the way people that are autistic understand what you're saying to them is different from someone who's neurotypical. 

So, for example, the sound in my ears is so sensitive, and also my clients’, that I have to adjust my tonality, think about how I position things with them. And check understanding and quite often, you know, you're following up with write things in writing. And when you talk about these things, you have to think about using the right language. 

And that's where PI comes in, because it allows me to have an understanding of how they behave in the workplace so that I can adapt my language to understand and support them more. Because what diagnostics do is they only give you a diagnosis of the particular neurodiverse condition. It doesn't give you that extra layer to understand the individual and what language and what sort of support would help them. 

Michael Jones: As somebody who is neurodiverse, I imagine that you've spent your career working in an environment where there's an expectation of neurotypical  behaviour. How do you find it, being yourself, as it were, in that coaching conversation with somebody else who is neurodiverse.  

Wendy Macartney: So, I tend to be upfront with all my clients who actually prefer that I am neurodiverse because they feel more comfortable because I can say to my clients, you don't need to mask because I have masked my whole career and adapted to look normal, shall we say, um, whatever that means.  

But with my clients, they can unmask, they can skim, they can relax, they can just be completely honest and blunt with me. And they feel a relief that someone truly understands what they're experiencing and someone who can really empathise because I have had the exact same experience. 

Fiona Brookwell: Wendy, could you possibly share with us a success story of a senior leader that you've worked with who maybe was struggling and through the coaching work or the development work you've done with them, they've ultimately been happier or more successful in their careers?  

Wendy Macartney: So, I was coaching a senior director who had ADHD, dyslexia and acalculia diagnosis.  

And this individual had convinced themselves that they were stupid, incompetent, and they always felt like they were going to get fired. And that was the ADHD driving that constant worry. When their CEO would send them a note to say, I need to speak to you, the automatic assumption was that they were going to get fired. 

And that was causing lots of stress and lack of sleep and worry about their job constantly, and they have a family to look after. So, it was really impacting them. And what we did, I did walk and talk with this individual, because someone who has quite a medium to high level of ADHD, sitting and talking is quite challenging. 

But if you walk with somebody, they're able to listen better. And we talked about, you know, exploring the thinking, was that thinking logical? We talked about that in our walk and talk sessions. And explored what reality was, what was something they were building up in their heads. And we kind of really built on understanding why they were jumping to those conclusions. 

And we tested those thoughts, and after a good exploration of that in three sessions, the individual certainly started to feel a lot better. And when the CEO sends a message saying, I want to speak to you, can we have a meeting? They would go straight back and go ‘can you tell me what the meeting's about’ rather than going down a rabbit hole of thinking it was something really negative.  

And that really transformed the relationship because the dynamic between the CEO and this director improved and the communication improved between them and it stopped the person, what I would call catastrophising about what the CEO actually wanted to talk to them about. And just going through each aspect and the thinking patterns, it's kind of using cognitive behavioural therapy to a degree, but doing it in a very coaching, non-clinical way.  

Fiona Brookwell: I've had people maybe talk about that as imposter syndrome, whether that, you know, it would typically be, yeah, I'm in the job that I'm in, I'm hugely successful at what I do, but I don't feel I deserve to be here. 

And, you know, it's been classed as a version of imposter syndrome.  

Wendy Macartney: Yeah. And it's definitely really prevalent in people with neurodiversity, you know, you just see it in neurodiversity. So many people have imposter syndrome because sometimes what you'll find is they've been masking for so long.  

And I certainly found this myself. You begin to question who you really are.   

Michael Jones: Wendy, you said you work with psychiatrists, psychologists, and they sort of sit behind all the work that you do. How does, how does that relationship work?  

Wendy Macartney: So, I'm currently going through the process of contracting with a specialist, um, company called Neurodiverse You.  

And how that really interacts is because I am relatively new to assessing people, um, for neurodiversity, I wanted a really rigorous and collaborative approach with a clinical psychologist and a few psychiatrists just to ensure my diagnostic assessments were really thorough.  

Get together as a multidisciplinary team and talk about my assessments and they critique, improve, and help me to get my assessments to a really high standard. And also, all my reports and letters to a really high standard.  

For me, I want to go through that process over the next year, just to make sure. Giving someone a diagnosis for neurodiversity can either be a positive. ‘Ah, I thought that's what was going on.’ Or it can be, ‘Oh, I didn't expect that.’ And it's quite a big thing for some individuals. 

So, you want to make sure you're doing it really carefully and concisely. And my partnership with clinical psychologists and psychiatrists makes that rigour and thoroughness really to a high standard and that's important to me. 

Michael Jones: For those of us who do take on coaching assignments with, um, as part of our own practice, we always have to define what coaching is and isn't, and be really clear about that line between coaching and therapy. 

How do you do that? Or is there anything you need to do differently when you are working with somebody who is neurodiverse?  

Wendy Macartney: Yeah, so I, I always have an introductory conversation where we explore that quite extensively. So, we have a 30-minute free call where I will talk to them about whether it's a therapeutical intervention they're looking for, coaching, pure coaching, which of course is no advice, no exchange of me telling them what would work, what wouldn't work. It's purely a question and answering situation. 

But then I will also offer a coaching/mentoring where I will actually help them with, um, going to the best resources and support them a bit more. And what I'm tending to find is that about 90 percent of my clients want a blend, but we do that at the outset to establish the grounds of how we're going to work together. 

Michael Jones: And do you do anything, or do you envisage doing anything as your business expands, to work with organisations in order to kind of help them offer reasonable accommodations, if that's the right word for it. 

Wendy Macartney: Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely going to expand into one of those areas as well as workplace assessments and how you can enable your neurodiversity employees to really excel. Because some neurodiverse conditions or neurodiversity areas are so talented.  

So, if you take someone like me who's autistic. I can really focus, and I can notice mistakes really quickly. Um, someone with ADHD can hyperfocus as well and can really deliver brilliant work.  

It's not always about making adjustments in a negative context. It's making adjustments because those people could be superstars and your top performers. 

With a few tweaks, they would do a great job. 

Fiona Brookwell: So just to be clear. Wendy, if we have current clients, RPX2 clients, Predictive Index clients who are looking to work more proactively to understand neurodiversity and to work with neurodiverse employees in a positive fashion, we basically put them your direction? 

Wendy Macartney: Absolutely, because I can do a number of workshops on neurodiversity and, and the positive aspects of having neurodiverse employees, absolutely.  

Fiona Brookwell: Wendy, this is such an important area for organisations, your background sounds as if you've had a very successful career in corporate life. So, what qualifies you to get into this field of consultancy that you're moving into now? 

Wendy Macartney: Yeah. So, whilst I was working in the corporate world, I decided to retrain as a psychologist. So, I'm currently just finalising my chartership.  So, I'll be going through, um, full chartership and be a chartered psychologist by the end of the year, but I do have a degree and a Masters.  

I also have a neurodiverse family. So, every single person in my family has every type of neurodiversity you can think. So, I've been managing it my whole life.  

So, it gives me a really deep understanding of those different neurodiversity conditions and what, what, what actually, you know, living with it, what it's like growing up. And, and both my children are adults now, so, and it's negotiating that, and understanding what parents have to do and the dynamic within that. 

Neale James: Realising Potential with Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones. For more information about our services and organisation, visit www.rpx2.com