Neurodiversity Celebration Week

I have always had a great memory for anything I have an interest in; this is common for someone who is neurodivergent and in childhood was diagnosed with ADHD.

For years I hid my disability for fear it would hold me back in terms of a meaningful career, but I need not have done that!

When I started my career as a helpdesk analyst doing first line support, I moved towards management and then into cybersecurity quite by accident. There was a need for someone on the ground to have an active part in a security audit, and after picking this up, I found I had a bit of a flare for it.

I was able to hyperfocus on the standards we were working towards, which gave me the edge for getting it over the line. The Security Manager at the time recognised my abilities and moved me into his organisation and I simply took it from there. I was able to consume knowledge at an enhanced rate because of my neurodivergence and retain what I needed to meet the business needs.

Having moved companies to one where I felt I could be open about being neurodivergent – because the culture was one of pro-social inclusion – I sought an adult diagnosis to back up my childhood diagnosis and found that I was still highly ADHD. I decided to medicate my ADHD and in doing so, found a lot of Autism traits surfaced, so went back for a second diagnoses and was diagnosed with Autism as well.

Many people ask me why I bothered getting an adult diagnosis, or why I went on to have my Autism diagnosed. At the end of the day, a diagnosis doesn’t change the nature of the conditions, nor is it more or less valid then a self-diagnosis. What I've personally found is that it allowed me an insight into the pathology that underpins some of the quirks in my behaviour; in short, there is value for me in understanding that what I am is a normal zebra rather than a strange horse which allows me to meet my potential because of the condition, not in spite of it.

I always thought I had low support needs, but in the diagnosis journey I found a set of adjustments that allowed me to really tap into the potential that the condition allows and really stated to flourish.

My goal has always been to work in a place I could grow and add credibility to my skills as a Security Professional, and, being a passionate Northumbrian, when I saw that Leonardo had opened a flagship office in the centre of Newcastle, I knew it was somewhere I had to work!

I often think about how nervous I was about that first conversation during the hiring process, about my disability and the workplace adjustments I needed to be at my most productive. At the end of the day, this was the first career move I have made since being open about my diagnosis and I had no idea how a new company might view bringing someone onboard who was of the “Spicybrained” variety, especially one whose flavour of the Spicybrain was a two-for-one, but I need not have worried.

My hiring/line manager worked with me to help articulate my workplace adjustment needs in a way that would encapsulate precisely what I needed, so that the business would be in a position to make accommodations that allow me to work with parity to my neurotypical colleagues. On that basis, Leonardo is a truly neurodiverse place to work, encouraging the free flow of information without fear of marginalisation or discrimination. I found that throughout the onboarding process, I was unconditionally accepted into the business, the team and the projects I am involved with openness and inclusively.

For me, Leonardo's utter commitment to inclusivity makes it stand out as one of the most encouraging and developmental environments I’ve ever worked in, where the unique building blocks that make up an individual are accepted and you are encouraged to be authentically yourself to grow as an individual.

Learning about Autistic Time-Blindness

Everything I’ve ever read about time-blindness something, from which I suffer pretty badly, kind of made sense until the day I was issued a psychology essay question asking if the perspective of time running up and down was still linear. To my mind, of course it’s still linear, it just runs along a different axis. I started thinking about whether there was an alternative perspective, because I struggle with linear time so much, and started digging.

It turns out that there’s a very different way of perceiving time, and it matches mine exactly, and I have to wonder if others are in the same boat.

The Spherical Time Model

I live in, what has been dubbed by the tiny number of studies that have looked into it, spherical time. There is no real distinction between past, present and future. Events, people and memories float in a sphere around me as nodes in a complex, dynamic network. Things that my brain sees as important tend to be bigger and closer, while less important things are smaller and further away, and the whole thing is constantly changing.

Things that other people see as important and set in stone are often a tiny node in my spherical world, and I try to explain this because these things just not being ‘on my radar’, but I happily admit this isn’t a great description. These can be particularly difficult to deal with, since they can be completely standalone and not integrated into the network.

Almost nothing is time-stamped! Trying to work out when something happened in linear time without access to the calendar that I was using is often possible, but it involves tracing through multiple pathways of interlinked nodes to create their linear order, and involves a pen, paper and lots of scribbling to anchor each node. But even this can be a bit hit and miss.

How I Live in a World Dictated by Linear Time

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m never late for anything. There’s a reason for this, and it’s exhausting! It’s because the never-ending pressure to conform to linear time has made me hyper-vigilant around time and clocks, and I have a constantly running background task ‘whattimeisit_wheredoIneedtobe.exe’. I can’t exist in the neurotypical world without having a clock visible pretty much all the time, and calendars and reminders are absolutely vital. Having agendas for meetings is incredibly useful for me because it makes the meeting a bigger and more meaningful node.

Time itself is pretty meaningless to me. When I’m not dictated to by linear time, my entire world relaxes. I sleep when I’m tired, eat when I want (lack of hunger cues and proprioception issues is a whole other article!), but need to point out that weekends aren’t really a break from linear time because I have no sense of how many days have passed. Mondays are often still a bit of a surprise if I don’t have some sort of alarm or reminder to ‘register’ Saturdays and Sundays.

This is just one of the alternative perspectives that I have unearthed during my quest to understand more about how my brain works.

Supporting Neurodivergent People at Work

The latest DWP figures show that only 31% of neurodivergent people are in employment, compared to 54.7% of disabled people overall. However, numerous studies based on workplace experience highlight the value of neurodivergent people to the workplace.

Leonardo’s Enable Network Group supports our UK colleagues living with visible and non-visible disabilities including those who are neurodiverse.

Members of Enable have reported mixed experiences in the workplace.

Early careers is a particular challenge, with one member remarking “the move from university to traditional employment was a huge transition”. Other members have previously had to develop their own ways of working in the absence of structured support, with another member stating that “eventually I found my strengths lay in complex customer or senior facing environments”.

However, for every success story, there are two people (with interests, aspirations and career goals) who are not able to access opportunity. A study by Birkbeck University reveals in stark detail the lack of perceived support for neurodivergent employees and possible solutions for how to change this.

This left us thinking; if this is how people in work feel, then it puts the statistics from DWP into context. Our ambition, therefore, is to use Neurodiversity Celebration Week to open a discussion across our business. A Harvard Business Review article from 2017 highlights how Neurodiversity is a Competitive Advantage. We want people to consider how to unlock our competitive advantage. To ask the question of line managers, when were the needs of those who are neurodiverse, last discussed?

Leonardo already has several resources available that support our staff and our people managers.

Our Enable Network is a place for people who are disabled or neurodiverse, along with their allies, to share best practice, raise concerns and hold the business to account. In addition, our in-house People, Wellbeing and Health (Occupational Health) team is available to assist with workplace adjustments.

The company also works in conjunction with Business Disability Forum (BDF). Their vision is an inclusive world where disabled people can access employment, products and services equitably. Partnering with BDF has been fantastic for Leonardo, giving access to a wealth of practical guides and information, as well as direct support for employees and their line managers.

Our Business Disability Forum membership assists line managers with impartial advice and practical tips/challenge in recommending adjustments or adaptations. This includes the Business Disability Forum Knowledge Hub providing all with impartial information and advice on a range of conditions and disabilities.

From my personal perspective, making the effort to tailor performance and working environments to your needs as a neurodivergent person can make all the difference to how you feel at work. As someone who has struggled with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) my whole adult life, it’s really helped to have a manager who understands how my brain works and can adapt to my sometimes-unique way of doing things.