Dyslexia at work

Does ADHD impact you a lot at work?

Impacting my job, yes, hugely because can’t get anything done, because you start something, someone comes in and interrupts you or an email comes and interrupts, you start, oh where was I again? Go back through the whole process to start again, so it takes so much longer to do anything working incredibly long hours so therefore impacts your mental well being and physical well being. Impacts time with your family and impacts you know, time all over the show. and that’s because I’m just trying to self manage and still function within society wants, and what the workplace wants.

How do you cope with ADHD?

A lot of that is understanding those and going, hey actually, I can do something about this. I don’t have to live like this. And not everybody lives like that. Because I think that was one of those aha moments as well was just that I didn’t know that other people weren’t like this. I just had no understanding in my mind that other people didn’t have these struggles and I wondered why things were like they were, but I didn’t know that it was an actual thing. So I think out of all of that process, that’s what the diagnosis is, it’s sort of given me something to label it with, so that I can address it. And then just like everything else, like it’s systematically addressing it. So it’s going through and finding out how I can put things in place that are going to help me be better.

What things can be done to support people with ADHD in the workplace?

Again, just having an understanding, maybe leaving a task list, with check, this is what’s been done, this hasn’t been done. So some really practical, pragmatic, pragmatic things can help in this space from what I can understand from it. But I think for me, it’s more at this part of my journey, it’s more understanding myself more, And what I do and how, I can how I can help myself before I can say this is what some of those benefits are.

What strengths do you think ADHD brings to the workplace?

I don’t know that I do yet because I really probably don’t understand ADHD enough as a lived experience because I’m only just learning what it actually means. And I don’t, I have not treated it like I’ve not gone through the process of going okay, this is what it’s like to focus or to, to be able to just do these things. So, you know, like ADHD is I feel… comparative to Dyslexia is more of a disability and in that way if you want to look at it like that, because it does cause barriers for you to get things done and to even to be able to sit still or if you’ve got the hyper or side of things or if it’s just the more inattentive side of things where you’re losing things all the time or can’t remember where you started or I think those – those really impact you more in a workplace than anything before.

How did you get diagnosed with ADHD?

The next process was seeing a psychologist and she’s like, Oh, don’t worry, you’re not crazy because it was like, I was like… The doctor said that to me. I was like, Well what do you mean? So already, there’s some preconceptions there that because I was going to a psychologist that you know, potentially deemed as crazy or mentally unstable or mentally unwell, and none of those things are the case, but also she labelled me as “high functioning”.

And that was an interesting term as well because I’m like, Okay, well, what do you, what do you mean by “high functioning”? in which she didn’t really answer us? She said something like, oh, well, you know you, you can function really well in society. You’re really smart, you’re really quick, but you have other issues.

And I was like, so what, I’m really smart but you can’t tell me what you mean by it? Yeah, so you know, we didn’t get a lot more out of the doctor than that, but, but I think that it really got me thinking about some of the things that were happening in my life.

What does having ADHD mean to you?

ADHD, so basically ADHD to me is around focusing and attention, procrastination. They’re not going to have any motivation to keep going. But then having these huge periods of being able to just focus and get stuff done like to the nth degree, just like really, really, really great pieces of work that are done an hour before they’re due type of thing. Typical student cramming stuff, but in life, that’s how it is.

And that’s really interesting because I’ve just recently been diagnosed and the reason I got diagnosed was I had a neck injury that I had to go on to some meds for and these meds also, off-label treated anxiety and general social anxiety. And it kind of made me chill out a little bit and slow down and my mind slowed down a little bit and I was like, Whoa, what’s going on? Like, I don’t know if I don’t like this, but I don’t know if I like it because I don’t understand it. So I went back to the Doctor and when we were talking, and she was like, oh, I look, maybe we could just… because of this, maybe we could just do this little screening test. It doesn’t mean anything.

I was like, oh yeah, yeah, whatever…

So we did this little screening test and I came back severe for anxiety, depression and stress. And so that’s one of the things that I was like, Okay, so there’s, there’s things going on. And this medication has enabled you to see that there’s some things going on but you can’t articulate what those things are exactly, but let’s go to the next process.

What is your experience with having Dyslexia in the workplace?

It’s been really, really tricky. I had no idea what I could do or should do as a career. So I didn’t really have a career pathway. I ended up teaching, I hated the idea of teaching, but that was something again, that just happened because someone saw me and said, Hey, you’d be a great teacher. Can you come and do this and here’s a job for you. So kind of forced me into that because I had no other option, or no other dreams, or aspirations. So I just went with the flow. And I think that was definitely partly or a huge part caused by Dyslexia.

So going through, like into the workplace, I really sort of was a “yes” person. I think I’ve mentioned that before, but I think that’s a really big characteristic that I took with me throughout everything because I wanted to please and I wanted to do well and not fail. And so that’s something that Dyslexia has made me… has sort of ruled my life in a way. So for example, if I start a new job, or come into a new working environment, I’ll be very, very quiet. Won’t be myself, I’ll just be listening. I’ll be very nervous. Maybe sweating, just anxious. Just not sure about people.

Not sure what to say to people or how to say things to people. So just kind of socially awkward if you put it that way. And then you’ll see that I’ll come out of my shell a little bit and I’ll start to chat to people and I’ll start to contribute to spaces. But I will only do that when I feel safe to do that.

And so that’s again, something that you know, I always worry about in terms of am I in the same wavelength as, you know, say, Anzel, in this conversation? Am I thinking what he wants me to think or you know, and some of those self censorship things really get in the way particularly as you go through the ranks in organizations. So you know, if you’re not putting yourself forward, because you’re sitting back and listening and worrying about whether your opinions are gonna be challenged or uptaken, then you could be missing out and I think that I missed out a lot, because I was really scared to say stuff.

How did you land your first job?

As part of my journey, when you don’t know what you’re good at, and you always fail, you’re always scared to put yourself out there and I think that was part of my journey. I was very, very afraid to like keep failing because I really, really didn’t want to fail. I wanted to please, I was a people pleaser. For that reason. I would say yes to anybody, I’d do anything for anybody, so that they liked me, I think more so than anything. But anyway, my dad was selling computers, absolute tech____.

But he was selling computers, and he was selling to schools and he dragged me along because he was worried that he was gonna get asked a question, which he was. Anyway, this particular question was in front of a whole class, and I’m standing there, I’m an introvert, and I’m just bright red and just the worst place possible.

And this teacher turns around and says, can you put this RAM in the computer because I’ve tried and I can’t do it. And I’m like, okay. So I tiptoe over to the computer and I put the RAM in and I set it in properly, click it in, start up the computer. And it goes, and he’s like, Do you want a job? And I was like, uhh, okay? And then he was like, okay, you can start Monday. Can you install a printer? and I’m like, I guess so.

So he gave me a job, and then he told the principal later, and then six months later, he left, he completely left the school. And this school in particular, they had a mixture of coax cabling and RJ45, you know, like standard Ethernet cable that we have now. This is a complete disaster, this network so I diligently worked away and self taught, and rebuilt the network, looked after seven servers, got it all running, ticking really nicely. So that was kind of my first job.

What strengths do you bring to the workplace?

My greatest strength is listening to my students in terms of the students setting. It really is just actually stopping and listening to what they’re saying. I find a way to match in my mind what they’re saying to the learning outcomes. So because I’m looking to evidence, what they are saying as knowledge against what they’re needing to achieve.

So for a student or Neurodivergent student or for a student that’s struggling to meet the learning outcomes, often they’ll be able to just tell me what they are. And so it’s having that skill and being able to facilitate that conversation without, without inputting into that conversation. So you know, I can really support the students to achieve, no matter where they come from in education spectrums, I guess.

Yeah, I can really, really support them to achieve and I think that really brings them… having empathy, compassion, as well. Sometimes I’m too soft.

But I think also just understanding that they, that they’re human and that things are going to happen. So how can we problem solve and having that optimism to be able to overcome things and I think, again, I’ve always had to have that internally, but I’ve not really necessarily had it externally. So, but I really believe in it, I really believe that things will get better. And so they do, because I stick at it.

What were the challenges you faced in the workplace?

I think I’m my own biggest barrier and I think that it’s because I’ve set up that I’m going to fail rather than I set up that I’m out to gonna achieve. And I think my mindset, no matter how much I want to change that, dictates that nearly every time, even now, like you said. Yeah, I’m Programme Lead for a postgraduate programme, but I still feel like I shouldn’t be here and that if it was a traditional academic Institute, I wouldn’t be here and potentially that’s true. But in terms of what I add in value, like I know, I add value to what I do, and I know I’m good at what I do, but it’s difficult to say that and it’s difficult to feel that because you’re always worried that someone’s going to find out that you’re not who you say you are, and that’s something that I’ve just lived with.

Confidence internally vs. externally

I would try and hide from people because I didn’t want to be exposed. You know, like, I didn’t want to be found out that there was something wrong with me and that, you know, I would, I would have to live with that sort of stigma. I think internally that was going through my head a lot. And at university in particular like, I felt like a fraud. And I sat in a class, I think it was, I was just interested in the teaching world because I kind of had been within that school or education environment. And so I did this adolescent behaviour paper and the lecturer there said, it was really weird, but we’re talking about imposter syndrome. And he kind of asked the lecture theatre, which was pretty full, and he said, oh how many of you think you’re, you shouldn’t be here? How many of you think that you are not good enough to be here? And I kind of looked around and like a lot of people were putting their hands up. So I kind of put my hand up. And then he put his hand up and he says, so did I and it was kind of like, Whoa, hang on a minute, but you’re a professor, you’re like, you’re lecturing us. And you feel like you shouldn’t be here? So yeah, I think it was one of those moments that started to… the “aha moments” because I think “aha moments” for Neurodiverse or for myself anyway are really, really important. Those moments where you actually start to understand, understand yourself a little bit more and think actually, I’m not so different to everybody else.

Tell us about your journey of overcoming failure in university

Because I failed so much, but I knew internally that I knew stuff. But I had no validation of it. So I wanted that validation. I wanted to be successful, and that was sort of part of the drive to get better. So as part of my degree, I was… Some opportunity to do screen and media. So not only did I have to prove myself in C++ but I also had to prove myself in the creative space. And both of those things were like pretty scary. I really, really, really enjoyed the hands-on video-making side of things. And I was like, Yeah, but that was easy. Like I found it easy. But then there was a paper called Screen Theory. And that’s probably the one thing that changed my life trajectory in terms of me sitting here today, because I realized that there was a vehicle that I could take to learn how to write. And I scraped through at high school, hated it, every second of it, but typing, I had to learn how to type and the teacher was going, A, D, S, F, J, K, L, C, B and you know like reading it out loud, and my mind was sore because it was so boring. But you know what, it really helped me because with a laptop I could type what my brain was thinking without having to do any conversion.

So I didn’t have to handwrite it, and it would come out in like, even though it might have not been spelled perfectly. I could fix it and move on. So it enabled me to start writing and I would spend hours. I would spend half of my hours available in the lab, making sure that I was going through the program and then getting that right. And then the other side of it was, was writing and that’s what I would do so I didn’t really socialize or do anything else. I just did those things every single week. So yeah, it was seven to eight every day at uni, and then up to 3am and sometimes writing 700 words per week. So it wasn’t a lot of words like I’d just get that out there. It was, yeah. And I was getting C’s and I was just dragging it through but this professor he was like, I see you, like, I know you no more because when I asked you in class… It was really encouraging and able to kind of keep building those strategies needed to get through and I did got better and better and better at it because I just kept on applying myself and I think that was another lesson that I had to learn around Dyslexia was that if someone said to me I couldn’t do it, I could find a way to do it. And that was really, really important, no matter how hard it was. People, “aha moments” reflection, have been really strong in terms of setting me up for whatever came next.

You said, you didn’t do anything for a number of years and you didn’t know how to ask for help, so how did it affect your mind space when you were getting into the workforce; were you applying for jobs?

I was in fear. So what I actually did was apply for a programme at a polytech because, again growing up it was the stigma to go to a polytech. Like you weren’t good… you were going to the second tier not to university like all the popular kids were going to because that was where they were going and you were not. But anyways, I did suck it up and I applied to a course, which was Environmental Science and Resource Management and that was something because I really love the outdoors. I love being on the beach. I love being on the sand. I just, yeah, I love the… geography as a topic, even though I wasn’t very good at answering questions I really enjoyed and I just had a lot of knowledge about it. And I guess that’s something that I learned really early about myself was that I could dive really, really deep into topics and I would and I would immerse myself and I’d have all of this knowledge about a particular topic, but then it wasn’t really relevant to anything I was doing educationally.

So you know, it didn’t really help with, with outputs but any project at school I would get A’s, 100%. If I could put myself into it, then I would, even even in English. I remember making a telephone bomb for, a fake one of course. They don’t let you get away with it these days, but because we were studying the Irish and the bombings there and how things were sort of hidden within within these bombs and things like that. So yeah, I could fully build stuff and make sense of it and put it into context. But yeah, so it was really more just that written side and, and also the social side. I think I really struggled to make friends because I was really worried about, well what I looked like, but that I wasn’t thinking in the same way as, as they were so I, I held myself back a lot I think at that point in time.

Getting to the, to the work side of things, I actually passed this Environmental Science and Resource Management course with Distinction. So I failed high school but this polytech course I passed with Distinction. Two of those papers within the course were mathematics with statistics papers which passed with A+, which were university entrance. They were 101 papers so they were cross-credited through Massey University so they got me into university as such but I didn’t go straight there.

What do you think Dyslexia brings to the workplace?

I think Dyslexia overall is a huge gift. You know, like, of all the struggles and all the battles there’s something that you bring to the table every time, that’s different to somebody else. You think so differently that can really advantage, I think organizations that can really create ideas from others really easily. You can understand things and put things together and make sense of things. And I think that’s one of my strengths. One of my I guess, I guess if you want to call it, “superpowers” is to be able to bring complex information, make sense of it for others. And it’s apparently not easy for, for people to do that. But for, for me, I find that easy to do that. And how do I know that? It’s the feedback that I get over and over and over again. So the validation is really important. Because if you don’t get validated, you still feel like you’re failing. And even though you know you don’t need it.

It’s something and I think that it’s something as well because if you don’t get the validation because you’re looking for it to making sure that you’re on track you feel like you’re not on track, it can really destruct you. So whilst you’ve got this ability and you’ve got this outside the box thinking and you’ve got sense making potentially you can see gaps, you can see patterns, you can be, you can be creative within, within the space you can you can really innovate. If you can’t trust yourself or get it out there into the space then you’ve got none of that.

I think I could have been… had a completely different pathway, had I, had realized my potential as a youngster. I really do. But I’m not complaining, you know, like I love what I do and I, you know, I found something pretty special. But I think that there are certain things that are challenges, but there are, you know, on the flip side, some, some really huge advantages of Dyslexia itself.

What support mechanisms can we put in place for people with Dyslexia?

If we’re looking to provide some support mechanisms for Dyslexics in a workforce, is recognizing who is really good at spelling and who has that natural ability. Pairing them up with somebody who, who doesn’t is quite a simple way to be able to get someone quite innovative and bringing different ideas to the table, but then having someone else to check and go through their work or work collaboratively who will pick up those mistakes because you still get really, really embarrassed every time someone buys a spelling mistake, you’re like, oh gosh.

But it’s, how do we take that away from the workplace as a, as an issue? There’s value being added from the thinking of the Dyslexic but also there’s value being added from the person who is a really good speller and they can come together and you’ll make a really great team. So it’s thinking about the resources that you have within an organization and trying to pair them up so that you’re getting the most out of them and being able to leverage their strengths rather than dwell on their weaknesses. There are certain things that you can also put in place to support your Dyslexics, i.e. making things like Grammarly available, I know you can get it free, but there’s also a full version which you can you can support your employee with so that they can have it across all of their devices and they can identify more of the areas because they have come up with headlines, or blue lines or whatever lines so that you can actually go back and check. Having text to audio available is really good as well because then you can read it back, because if you don’t have an inner voice, how’re you read… how’re you checking if you’re trying to read in silence? So like sitting there at your computer in a shared office, reading out your emails, you know that’s not gonna happen but if you had had something that was available and it was good. That could read out your, your emails. You know, that sort of tech is really, really helpful.

What do you wish employers and employees knew about Dyslexia?

I guess just the fact that I’m not stupid because I can’t spell like actually seeing past that would be would be number one on my list because it’s it’s probably a huge fear. It’s the reason why I don’t like to write and it’s the reason why if someone asked me to do a social media post, I’d be like…

Yeah, that was me dropping the mic, because I would be running as far as I can away from it. And it’s not that I don’t want to say something. It’s that I’m in fear of the critique and the repercussions that come with that. So yeah, so I think just understanding that each individual has their natural abilities and strengths, but also weaknesses, but not seeing those weaknesses as failures, but actually something that we can support them with in multiple ways. So yeah, I just would like, I think there’s a statistic out there that 82% of neurodiverse don’t divulge their neurodiverse to the workplaces in fear of repercussion and negative repercussions. So, I think, you know, it’s a huge issue that needs to be tackled. And I think, you know, again, one of my “aha moments” was being able to tell my story and for it to be accepted as part of who I am, so that I can bring myself to work every day. And I can talk about it and I can ask for help if I want to. I’ve got people looking out that say I’ll check that over for you if you want. And I’m like, oh wow, thank you! You know, so those sorts of things are just naturally coming and I have a, have a vehicle to be able to to gain support, I guess, to bring to bring myself and yeah, I can’t tell you how great that is, to have that feeling that actually I’m okay. as I am.

Because I’ve never felt it.

What is your role and where do you work?

So I’m Programme Lead for a programme, a Postgraduate Certificate in Leading Change For Good, that’s based at The Mind Lab, in Auckland.