Celebrating Neurodiversity Week with Our Very Own Tai Jordan

What benefit do you get from the ND community group?

For me, the biggest benefit of the ND group is that sense of camaraderie. Being neurodivergent in whatever shape that takes carries with it a host of "symptoms” which affect your life in a range of different ways. The thing that hits me hardest is the inherent loneliness it can create, especially in work or social situations. It often feels as though everyone else is "in on the joke", or has a script, and then I rock up clueless, and even the most well-meaning people give you that look of "Oh, didn’t you get the memo?" For me, the group just reminds me that actually there are other people who "weren't given scripts", and these people are all higher up the corporate ladder than me, so it's kind of inspirational. As something of an aside, I was reading an email from Andy Hague (Cyberfort’s Founder and previous CEO and ND advocate) recently and he talked about how he is “much more of an ‘ideas’ person, setting things up and getting them going rather than following through", and hearing that spun in a positive sense rather than a negative was really heartening.

What are your biggest challenges in the workplace when it comes to your Neurodiversity?

Ironically, considering my role, my biggest challenges are communication and organisation. That doesn't mean that I am bad at them or that I can't do them, in fact, I take great pride in my communication skills. But because I struggle with it I had, and continue to put a lot of effort into sussing out how to communicate with other people in a way that is mutually beneficial. It's the same with organisation, although this one is somewhat harder to manage day to day because of the dynamic nature of my role, but I have put a lot of work into designing systems that work for me, and I have a great manager who gives me the freedom to do things in the way I need to.

What has Cyberfort put in place to help you overcome any challenges?

Other than the ND group, the one thing that has helped and supported me most in Cyberfort is the people. I am very fortunate to have an amazing manager who I know I can go to and say: "I'm struggling with this", or "Can I get that in writing?", or "Could you go through that one more time?", and it's never an issue. There is never any "Can't you just write it down?", or "Well no one else needs X, so I don't know why do" - all of which I have had before. For example, I mentioned in passing once that I write everything down (my brain works on ‘out of sight = out of mind’) and I had run out of post it notes. Next thing I know they’ve arranged for post-its and notebooks to be ordered and sent out to me on the regular so that I don’t run out. And this is the thing, post-it notes aren't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but my reliance on them makes them invaluable to me, so having that acknowledged, respected, and taken care of means a lot.

Similarly, the Internal Coaching Scheme that Cyberfort offers has been a massive help, largely around helping me with my communication. It's great feeling able to be able to speak to my manager about what I might need, but sometimes figuring out how to say it is tricky and so being able to hash it out beforehand, and learn techniques and methodologies on how to frame conversations is priceless.

But ultimately, and this I think is perhaps an intangible byproduct of Cyberfort’s culture, but being able to access the support is only half the story. Being able to access the support and not feel like a burden, or an inconvenience is, I would say, the most important thing of all. In one of the early ND group sessions we had the People Team join us to talk about ND in the recruitment phase as well as the work place, and it didn't feel like a tick box exercise. It felt like they were genuinely interested, and actually wanted to explore and invest in it. I know perhaps everyone in these sort of roles would say they were "genuinely interested", but it's one thing to be interested, and something else entirely to help people feel as though you are genuinely interested.

What more would you like to see from workplaces to support ND individuals?

I think there are still a lot of archaic thoughtforms around what neurodiversity looks like, so I think the first step needs to be open and honest communication between the business and its people. It's not about setting out a list of demands for each other, but actually being honest about the business needs, what an individual’s needs, and having a discussion about the why's what's and how’s and reaching a solution. I think for far too long corporate entities and businesses have seen employing Neurodiversity, and indeed any minority groups, as a task of "Accommodating the Other" and ticking boxes on a diversity quota. By creating more honest dialogue on both sides we can begin creating a labour market that is more focussed on finding the best people for the job, rather than the most convenient. Also, I think there needs to be a more comprehensive understanding, and offering of the Access To Work scheme. It’s completely free! It might take a little time, but it highlights that there is actually a fair amount of support available to individuals and businesses to help remove some of the more restrictive barriers to work.

Finally, what would you say to a hiring manager who declines the request of providing interview questions in advance?

Firstly, I would ask what is justifying that response? In the workplace, if you asked a person to undertake a task or a project you would expect that person to be well equipped, do their research and prepare before they moved forward – especially in Cyber where there are new trends and vulnerabilities all the time. Why should an interview be any different? You don’t have to give the exact questions but you could advise them on a specific area so that the interviewee? knows how to prepare broadly. Also, the hiring manager should have knowledge in their own field to be confident that if they someone was going to “blag” a technical question, they’d be able figure this it out after a few probing questions. There’s no reason why you can’t share interview questions in advance to everyone in my opinion. Whilst we’re on the subject, please can we stop asking “Tell me about yourself?”. It’s so broad and vague – where do you want me to start? What do you actually want to know?