Neurodiversity, professional development, competency, purpose and leadership

Recently my mother gave me a bag of memorabilia she had kept from different chapters of my life going back to the early years. In it were my old school reports from the 1970’s. As someone diagnosed as neurodiverse late in life, it has been a tender, fascinating read, some forty years later.

As expected, Maths and English were not subjects I excelled in. At ten years old the teacher identified I was, ‘…always going to struggle with formulas and numbers.” In English, my teacher said I, ‘…possess a good imagination, can wax lyrical about characters and plot and sketch ideas with confidence.’ However, ‘…my arrangement and presentation are severely lacking when putting them into a structured form on paper.’ Their assessment and predictions were fairly accurate for the most part. In Maths I went on to fail the mandatory national requirement for higher education four times, though each time reflecting to my parents I thought I might get an A! (Confidence didn’t seem affected by my incompetence) English was a bitter sweet relationship. I’ve always loved books and words, especially poetry. According to a behavioural optometrist, my issue is I leap frog around a book with an inability to follow a linear order from left to right. So, I bounce over the page looking for word connections or associations to sense make what I am seeing. I’ve learnt how to make the best of this approach but back then I just found reading chronologically, exhausting. It came back to bite me when my kids came along. In my family, as with most of the middle class, reading is not an invitation it’s an expectation. When I tried reading to my kids, I found myself yawning loudly. I couldn’t make it past five minutes before I literally wanted to fall asleep! I am sure they are now deeply damaged as we have not passed on a love of books to our kids. They all enjoyed comics, if that counts!

As English moved from grammar and spellings to critical analysis and essay writing, the wheels came off. I was unable to makes sense or convey on paper perfectly clear thoughts in my head! The books became denser and more complex. To avoid reading the designated book we were studying, I devised a game and recruited others to play it so I could hide in plain sight among the group. To incentivize the buy in, I created a cash pool for whoever won. The object of the game was to see if you could survive class discussions without reading the book. The rules allowed you to read the introduction, back cover and last chapter. In class you had to ‘fly blind’ seeing if you could pick up the plot and characters from listening and then contribute to the conversation. Back then we were graded by our teacher for class contributions and I usually cleaned up! That game kept me in cigarettes and wine gums for a year! I was particularly proud of my input for George Orwell’s, Burmese Days and Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. This game was one of many lessons to pay attention and deep listening,

I did not enjoy school. I found the hierarchy of Maths, English and Science as the metric of intelligence and career opportunities very disempowering. It never felt like a good fit. I was often described as someone with ‘ants in his pants’ in class. I just couldn’t pay attention when sitting still. My mother often told people, I was either up a tree or under a chair. I longed to be in motion, play outdoors or engaged in more creative behaviour. I couldn’t ‘think straight’ especially if made to focus on words or numbers. Of course, this process of learning wasn’t the vogue in standardised methods. Aged 11 years, the headmaster of my school reflected.

“…he does need careful supervision at all times and, if he feels discipline is relaxed, he is far too ready to exploit the situation.” ?

I avoided typical forms of learning for decades after. (I did not return to academia until I was in my 40’s gaining an MSc.) However, I have always been a very curious person, intrigued by new ideas, testing assumptions, connecting patterns and reimaging how systems flow and people thrive. I love the development world and whilst it came to me relatively late professionally, I have always enjoyed designing and prototyping innovative programmes that colour outside the lines for developing a knowledge landscape with leaders and embedding this in their professional practice.

As I ponder this, I wonder about learning today and how we grow leadership competencies in professional terms. Do we work with the same standardized expectations as the education system, which may be helpful to create cognitive or functional competency but less likely to equip us to lead people and communities with a sense of purpose and clarity?

I remember being at a friend’s party some years back and bumping into an old contact from school. He had been the smartest person in our year by a long distance and went on to study at both Oxford and Cambridge. He now for the government. He reflected somewhat timidly that he goes to work most days worried and anxious. For whilst he has all the skill in the world to address issues and execute strategy within the field he works, he also has to lead a large team of people that comes with the position he holds. He confessed he has no idea how to raise collective performance, build a generative culture, listen and understand their concerns and so forth. He comes home some days exhausted. He lacked the competencies to know how to lead the people in his department. ‘No one ever taught me that in school!’ He said.

Today, I wonder if exploiting the situation which the headmaster refers to in my school report all those years ago might otherwise be interpreted as leveraging opportunity to learn and grow beyond empirical, rational deduction. With the gift of hindsight, I don’t think I was a difficult student, I just didn’t fit the mould because I couldn’t get to grips with this dominant education method designed by an industrial worldview. I became fascinated with how you tip the rules of a system into new forms and patterns that were more inclusive of all in the professional community.

Colloquially speaking, like in my English classes, how do you change the rules of the game and level the playing field? One way is to promote a range of competencies in the work place. Thanks to being neuro diverse I have done a lot of work discerning who I am and my purpose. We are all a ‘genius’ in something, according to the poet David Whyte. I learned some highly skilful competencies which orientate around relational capability. I discovered them as a means initially to survive and then, thrive. They are universal particulars for any particular person, however there is still a lack in this type of development in the professional sector.

This is why I designed the Wayfarer leadership programme. It’s based on what I have learned at a grass roots level from enduring school to finding creative ways to live and work to the best of my abilities and faithful to my purpose. Wayfarer is not a leadership qualification to enhance your professional portfolio. It curates space to invite the odyssey of self-inquiry, adopting artful ways to grow inner resources to become fully you as a creative, resilient and compassionate leader. It works primarily with an arts-based approach to the knowledge landscape and developing people, places and organisations. There are several lost techniques we explore from the art of listening, the art of ritual and the art of hosting. We encourage leaders to graft these into their way of being human and as a leader. ?If you can develop a professional practice that embraces these art forms as your foundation, I believe it generates a more integrated and sustainable pathway for you to follow and the courage to lead from there.

'Becoming myself' as the poet Mary Sarton reflects, is the hardest injunction to be faithful to when we come to work, but it is always the best outcome for you, others and the organisation.?This self-awareness creates systems awareness. It is a more relational way of being that shapes how we see and act in a system. The two are linked. Is it possible to become a systems guru and speak on such matters from the ivory tower of platforms and privilege and yet not be present to your own life. Well yes, I have met a few leaders like this, always speaking in the abstract and never in the first person. In the last ten years I have encountered some leaders, usually women, who are tremendously inspiring in their practice personally and professionally. They exemplify the only real leadership test that matters; Do people follow them and their ideas? To really see a system with all its beautiful strangeness, diversity and capability, we have to learn to see ourselves. This deep work requires authenticity, vulnerability with others and the willingness to change our own assumptions and behaviour. We have to place our life in the ‘swampy lowlands’ to find emergent life.

I am so convinced of this more relational way of being I am putting more and more of my time and energy into accompanying people to walk in this direction of travel.

Last Friday was Twelfth night, the traditional day post-Christmas that we take down the decorations and get ready for the cold snap of January. It’s a wintering season, symbolic in the way everything is stripped back in nature. None the less, hidden beneath the ground life is dynamically at play, preparing for springing forth in the days to come, but for now unseen. What a good time of the year as leaders to consider this deep inner work to ready ourselves for the emerging Spring that inevitably comes, present and able to the opportunities of the coming year.