S1E4
· 52:49
Welcome back. In this episode, I get to speak with Angela Prendner Smith, someone whom I have known professionally for many years, as we have both been fighting to change organisations and alter their cultures in a way that would encompass everyone. Angela is someone who has dedicated her life to change both in the public and the private sector and has founded successful consultancies, has led important change processes in various big organizations, and is now bringing something entirely new to the market, something that will genuinely make a difference in many people's lives. Angela has recently been able to create a diverse learning platform called Neve Learning that is right now being in its early stages of launching. And it aims to bring in everyone, those of us have challenges of different types are all coming together to learn in ways that make sense on this platform.
Duena Blomstrom:I won't give away too much of it in this conversation. We touched on everything from gender, statistics about the prevalence of the neurodivergent population. We have talked about practically what it feels like being a woman in this space and someone who is neurodivergent themselves as we are. And then lastly, and maybe more importantly, we have explored the connection with psychological safety because for organisations to be able to foster the type of diversity and inclusivity that will allow all of us, NeuroSpicy ones to thrive, they have to keep a keen eye on their ability to create inclusive cultures that are based on the notion of psychological safety. Give this a listen and come back next week.
Duena Blomstrom:Hello everyone and welcome back to NeuroSpicy at Work. We have an amazing guest today. We've just had the best conversation. I wish you guys heard some of it, not all of it, some of it is private enough. We try to touch on things that we will talk to you as well, but maybe not quite as dramatically as we put into each other.
Duena Blomstrom:I am really honored to have Angela here, there's going to be a proper intro about her amazing work. And I'll ask her while we talk to tell us more about what she's doing in this sphere both, but just as by way of mini introduction, Angela and I met practically being in the, I don't even know what to call it, change and organizational theory sphere, I would not know where, what industry we're in and maybe this part of the problem that there's too many industries and too many labors. But what we want to do is just make people have a better work life and have a better understanding of their identities at work. And all around this one concept that we both work on and toil at which is psychological safety. And in the context of this really quick before I even say hello in the context of this psychological safety is obviously different a bit at work in the concept we're using than what neurodiverse listeners are used to.
Duena Blomstrom:With all that said and we'll get into all of it, thank you so much for coming over and talking Thank you to
Angela Prentner-Smith:so much, Can
Duena Blomstrom:we start with asking you, because I think that this is probably the most polite thing to do at all times, are you happy to disclose and if so, what can you tell us about your neurodiversity?
Angela Prentner-Smith:Sure. So I formally labelled, diagnosed, identified, however you want to say it, I don't really care, as dyspraxic. And that identification came when I was in my late 20s and I was actually doing a master's degree in design innovation at the Glasgow School of Art. And how that came about was I was working at the same time and my organisation was putting me through the programme part time. And I happened to be seeing who is now my husband, and he had a new job and he was disclosing to them that he was dyslexic.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And he came and he said, my new boss was brilliant. I was expecting her to be like quite dismissive of dyslexia and not understand it, but she's apparently dyspraxic and her brother's dyspraxic. I had never heard the term dyspraxia before, so I googled it and I read the Wikipedia entry and I went, oh, that's me. That's me. That's really weird.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Luckily, and I take this as a total point of privilege, because I was at the art school and typically art schools are quite good with supports around neurodiversity and additional support needs, they put me very quickly through the diagnostic track. And before I had even finished the test, the psychologist said to me, and I still remember her name, it was Mitzi. Her name was Mitzi, she was Jewish. And she said, well you are definitely not dyslexic, but you are absolutely dyspraxic. And I had never even finished it.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Now that realization to me coming quite late in my life was in one sense life changing and in the other sense changed nothing. Because it doesn't change who you are, it doesn't change like how you operate in the world, but what it did allow me to do was to forgive myself to go actually found a lot of life really hard. Abnormally difficult. You know, PE class when I was a kid was honestly like torture. I'm traumatized by dodgeball and I have a sporty son now and he like chucks balls at me and I'm like, I want to just like cower in the corner and like get the ball away from me.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So it made a lot of even the things that I find as an adult, like cleaning my house. I find that so difficult. I was able to kind of go, do know what? That's okay. You find that difficult.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Get a cleaner. You know what? Just get a cleaner. That's my reasonable adjustment for me. I need a cleaner.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Right. Don't do sports. Right? That's not
Duena Blomstrom:for Allowing yourself adaptation. Your reasonable adjustment for yourself. That is it.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yeah. I allowed all of that. And then I kind of just sat with it for a while and was just like, it's just part of me. Right? And I kind of ignored it.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And then what happened is a little bit of serendipity. The world put me on a certain path and what happened, it was COVID. I was pregnant. No, in fact, I wasn't. I had a one week old baby at this point.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So this was in the summer that we were all in Covid lockdown and I had a one week old baby. And this challenge came out from the Scottish Government asking for companies to submit proposals to basically reinvent workplace learning and make it more immersive. And everybody sent me this challenge. It was coming in through WhatsApp and messenger and email. And I was going, I've just had a baby.
Angela Prentner-Smith:I don't want to start a tech business. Well, here I am. I started that tech business and we kept winning. So after six weeks off on maternity leave, I was bored to be honest and I needed to go back to work. But also we went on to the exploration phase of what's the CivTech challenge, which is a Scottish government accelerator.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And again, we kept winning. But we pivoted midway through the accelerator process because we went and did a lot of user research and we, you know, we ate our own dinner and we went and we did what we told other companies to do, which was actually go and talk to users. And what we learned was that actually workplace learning was broken anyway. A lot of people were telling us things like I'm dyslexic, so that didn't work for me anyway. Or they weren't labeling themselves, but they were saying things like school wasn't for me and actually I've always forged my own pathway.
Angela Prentner-Smith:I do these things instead. And the insight that we actually landed on is that who knew it? Everybody's unique and we don't all learn the same way which of course is effectively neurodiversity. That is what we landed on. So as I'm kind of learning about learning and I'm starting to build the designs for this learning platform, I was also going through the process of trying to have my son diagnosed with ADHD.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And COVID was horrible for a little sociable child with ADHD. COVID was just the worst thing that could have happened to him. So I was really distressed. I was crying every night because my son was so unhappy and I was doing everything that I could to push this through. In the end, we didn't get a formal diagnosis for my son because, well, the school wouldn't give us evidence, even though it was during COVID and he wasn't even at school.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So the psychologist was unable to diagnose him. But I had like landed on this neurodiversity thing. And then I hired this wonderful woman called Lynn Pilkington, who is effectively an ambassador for disability rights. And I was in this just complete learning mode. And then all of a sudden I went, wait a minute, they're talking about me.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Oh, okay. And it was like, suddenly I realized that this was my movement, right? Neurodiversity was my movement. And then I realized that my whole family is just a hot mess of this stuff, right? As most of us do realize.
Duena Blomstrom:And what is my second question? Is it just you or are you coming from a neurodiverse family? I've never met anyone who is like, I am the only autistic human in my family.
Angela Prentner-Smith:No. And so on this journey, right, my brother had and I don't like to talk too much about other people's diagnosis, but my brother had a kind of diagnosis when he was a child, but they couldn't quite put their finger on it. Knowing what I know now, both my brother and I were autistic children. If you put a gendered lens to it, I was absolutely autistic. And I didn't learn social skills until my twenties.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Right, I didn't. I literally remember being at work and crying that I had no social skills. So when I look back, I'm like, by today's standard, I was an autistic little girl. I really was. I couldn't do sequences.
Angela Prentner-Smith:They thought I was mute for the whole first year of my school. And I wasn't mute. I was in fact very verbal and very articulate. And I now know I was hyperlexic. I could read before I was four, But it was the 80s and that there just wasn't that knowledge.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And in hindsight I was also a gifted child. But you know
Duena Blomstrom:Which obviously comes with its own challenges. We all we've all been the perfectionist that then has to pay forever for it.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yes, so now see once you start seeing the world through a lens of neurodiversity I now see it everywhere. But my husband is dyslexic, I'm dyspraxic officially, I identify as autistic and I have a lot of ADHD traits. However, the ADHD part of my brain we have, and this may be controversial, I have got that really well under control through omega oils and yoga and exercise. So for me, vitamins, minerals, and exercise has really helped with that part of my brain and my son as well, where just omega oils is is basically what we're I'm kind of saying works for us at the moment.
Duena Blomstrom:Doesn't get smarter things are being approved by markets everywhere. Hopefully one day.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Hopefully one day. I mean, we ever get to the stage where it's not down to the school who, you know, to I mean, the fact that the school's opinion trumped an educational psychologist with thirty seven years experience just tells you how broken the system is, which is why I view that diagnosis that I got in my 20s as a privilege. Because a lot of things had to be in place for me to even have access to that. You know, how many people actually even get to art school be able to kind of and have that conversation to go, oh maybe I'm dysphagia. And again, didn't change anything, but it changed everything.
Duena Blomstrom:Absolutely. I got actually, I don't know if I said this on this podcast ever before, but I got my diagnosis twice. Once in psychology school, because we all got tested. And I was like, so what? Does it even mean?
Duena Blomstrom:I didn't even remember much of anything. And then and then again, I went and got a genuine formal diagnosis when my little one was diagnosed because it took us, as in your case, to diagnose him. The answer we kept getting back was with that eye contact your child is not autistic. So years and years and at the end of it I just said look I want to talk about this but I cannot talk about this from his prism. I have to talk about this from my own diagnosis prism.
Duena Blomstrom:So I went back to do the evaluation and they gave me the former one of the first AUADHD, longer one. But the question was, and it was correct, what are you going to do with it? Are you looking for special parking rights? What's happening with it? Aren't you an all accomplished author with a software company already and the person of importance in your domain?
Duena Blomstrom:What the hell do want? And to be fair, I did not need accommodation. What I did and like you said, I didn't change anything, of course. Put things in perspective for you. This is probably I'd like to hear your opinion.
Duena Blomstrom:Possibly also, everything we say is controversial. Might as well drop that. Of course, it is. Everything we say. Someone someone's gonna take someone in our community will take some type of unfortunate RSD moment with it.
Duena Blomstrom:I hope they don't, but they So, you know, kind of not having that adaptation as young people, whereas other people, I advise anyone who can to go check themselves, whether you disclose or not afterwards, it's a different story. But the amount of, how do I put this, like self awareness it allows you and the amount of being able to put two and two together. Why are you in a maelstrom of emotions? Why are you so dysregulated by the wind or the air in the car? The things that come to you in your forties or fifties.
Duena Blomstrom:There's a reason we have such a such a widespread autistic burnout layer now in the Norwegian business is because all of these things we've had calculated to our ability to to exist on are no longer necessarily holding. So it's it's a big shift. So it comes with negatives, but it also comes with the positive of being self aware. So I would say to people, if there's a way for you to check and you can spare the 300 it costs to get it privately, go check because it explains you. What do you think?
Angela Prentner-Smith:I think it does. And I think I have a lot of people in my life who have never been formally diagnosed or checked, but they identify themselves. And I know that that is, you know, a political statement right now in the neurodiverse community. But given the layers of things that have to be in place, for example finances, the right system I mean the system is broken for diagnosis in the first place. So given we have a broken system and the access that we have to information, it doesn't take anything away from me if somebody else identifies as ADHD or autistic or dyspraxic or anything else.
Angela Prentner-Smith:To my mind if that helps them better understand themselves, better communicate who they are, better communicate their needs, then it takes nothing away from me. So I am all for people going and learning themselves, right? And understand as well where some people are coming from in terms of not feeling heard by the community or losing their place in that community because they feel that their circumstances are worse somebody who has got through life without And that how can you be taking my label from me when nobody formally has said that that is your diagnosis? But on both sides of that, I feel like privilege is at play. You have the privilege of being able to go through life and maybe you've been able to get through without severe trauma.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Maybe you got through school and you know passed and so you But never got picked maybe you got through school and it was very traumatic for you. Like me, school was awful. I hated school. It was really bad. Was one of the worst times of my life.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It was awful. I struggled with most of it not because I wasn't smart but because school requires social skills. School requires interaction, it requires physical activity
Duena Blomstrom:sensory overload.
Angela Prentner-Smith:All of this and it was a challenge for me. And I remember when I when I finally got my my dyspraxia identification I remember saying to my grandmother and she went but Angela there was nothing wrong with you. I was like, no, there wasn't anything wrong with me, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a challenge to me. And so I think there's so many different life experiences. And then when you bring an intersectional layer to this that we take in wealth, we take in race, we take in gender, there's so much privilege and anti privilege that goes along with that, that to my mind whatever you need to do as an individual identify, I feel the same way about people identifying as women, right?
Duena Blomstrom:Gender, yeah.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Gender, I feel the same way. If you identify as a woman, okay. It doesn't take my identification away from me, right? I I feel and I feel the same way with this. It's like identifying as neurodivergent doesn't take away from my neurodivergence.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yeah. And somebody identifying as a woman that wasn't born in that way, then it doesn't take that away from me So I look at this in the same kind of way. Neurodiversity as an umbrella, and I think that's a beautiful analogy for it, is meant to take in everyone and we're splintering a little bit.
Duena Blomstrom:But then the question I think, and it's a question I ask everyone, I wonder, are there more neuro diverse people or more neurotypical people in the world?
Angela Prentner-Smith:That's a very good question. So Doctor. Halliwell, who of course wrote ADHD 2.01 of his most recent books, he actually goes to the data and we are becoming more divergent, right? More people are being born ADHD than have ever been born before. And I don't think that is just around we're picking up on it more and we're diagnosing it more.
Angela Prentner-Smith:We are genuinely becoming more neurodivergent. Also where like the diagnostics for these are also flawed and all overlap. And I mean it's more common and this is another thing as well, right? It is more common for you to have more than one neurodiverse condition than to have one. But the way the diagnostics work is typically you're only assessed for one at a time.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It seems really silly to me that we do that though. So we go okay this child so I had this with my son so my son's dyslexic and the school were like well he's dyslexic and I was like, that doesn't mean he's not ADHD. It actually means he's more likely to be ADHD because these things come together. Yeah. Yeah.
Angela Prentner-Smith:But we don't do that. We look for the one thing and then it's like, you've got that one thing. Let's not look any further. And like it That could
Duena Blomstrom:be financial though. That could be systemic and financial It
Angela Prentner-Smith:could be. Absolutely. And even just the way that the medical community has evolved, it's been very, you know, dyspraxia was typically physiotherapists, right? ADHD was psychologists. Dyslexia often gets picked up in schools, you know, by educational practitioners who've been trained in a specialist way.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So you even have different specialists that identifying these different things. But it doesn't make a lot of sense. Autism and dyspraxia, for example, is one of the biggest overlaps. Some of the stats I've seen, eighty percent of people with autism also meet diagnostic criteria for dyspraxia, and something like fifty percent of dyspraxics also meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. So you literally never have dyspraxia alone.
Angela Prentner-Smith:No. But was I put through for a test for autism or ADHD? No, wasn't even mentioned. It was just like, right, you're not dyslexic, you are definitely not dyslexic, here's your dyspraxia identification. And the other bit that I feel was under spoken about was the strengths of my brain at that point, right?
Angela Prentner-Smith:Because I do have strengths of my brain. And you know, whether we get into that superhero conversation or not, because I don't feel I'm a superhero, but I also don't feel I'm disabled. And that's a personal choice. I'm choosing that for myself. I do not believe my brain is disabled, but because it can do things that a lot of other people's brains can't do.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And when you look into the neuroscience of this, your mirror neuron network, which is the part of the brain that's responsible for copying sequences, is also the part of the brain that's responsible for empathy. And typically people with dyspraxia have enhanced empathy but cannot follow a sequence to save their So different parts of that different bits of that brain in your mirror neural network actually light up differently if you're dyspraxic. So this isn't and I know that's another thing that gets said that like everybody's neurodiverse now. Everybody's neurodivergent. It's not true.
Angela Prentner-Smith:We are literally wired differently. Can scan our brains and they they are wired differently. Right. So we are, as a society, if you want to believe Doctor. Halliwell, becoming more neurodivergent.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And anyone might think that that's because that's the kind of brains that we need for the future.
Duena Blomstrom:But I don't even know if I was necessarily wondering about what it would be. I I take your point a 100%. It's I believe it's evolution. I think that's where it needs to go. If nothing else, there's more breadth of views and more breadth of thought and more breadth of of feeling.
Duena Blomstrom:So Yeah. Obviously, that's the the more evolved way to go. But irrespective of that, think currently, right now in the world, we probably have a population that is largely undiagnosed. And I think the more we would learn about ourselves, the probably the better it would be. We always come back to the superhero versus disability conversation.
Duena Blomstrom:And I get a lot of flack online because my answer is always it's both. It's just it's a super super power at times and it's a horrendous disability at others. It's just a question of context and I
Angela Prentner-Smith:It can be a superman with a limp. Right?
Duena Blomstrom:Oh, and I did say this, although that really got me a lot of flaky as I said, look, I don't know much about Marvel heroes, but don't think any of them are happy or lucky types. So it's not an easy thing sometimes to channel and to we have to remember that the challenges of being autistic, I know the people like to go well it's all hard for everyone, we all have a hard life, big deal, how much more have you had to deal with?' are not to be understated, right? Just because we've had to I learned to deal with my ableism every day. I speak about this sometimes on the podcast. It's only since my little one became grown enough to bring it to me and to accuse me of it that I started to to think of it.
Duena Blomstrom:And there is a lot of internalized ableism in someone who's attempted to make a life and be a successful immigrant and whatever. You cannot otherwise make it. But I have to put that aside when I look at my team, when I look at the neurodivergent new people that are I work training, that are coming into the new workplace. Just as you have to put aside mini resentment we all carry with ourselves that why didn't I get the adaptation that other people did and two more hours in an exam like others did and so on. But the reality of it, I think, is in terms of acceptance and in terms of vocabulary, in terms of whether you call it, I don't, it doesn't necessarily matter whether we call it one thing or the other, as long as we don't call it just one thing or just the other.
Duena Blomstrom:I think the beauty of it is to keep going. It's both super humanly hard to live a life as an autistic person, which is why we have such incredible mortality rates. Let's face it, let's be honest, right? Autistic people die and I repeat the statistics as often as I can, primarily of suicide and secondly off of incredibly high cortisol that will eventually pop your heart. It's a fact of life.
Duena Blomstrom:We live with a lot more stress, a lot more anxiety, a lot more stressors. Right? So when that happens and we then you and I come from an organizational kind of line of thought. No, I lie. We come from a design for humans line of thought, I think is where where we kind of enter this oh wait we can't design for humans if the organization doesn't care about the humans, it's how we ended up in organizational thing, right?
Angela Prentner-Smith:This is exactly it, yeah.
Duena Blomstrom:It's kind of our journey, we're like oh my god, human centered design is a thing, wait, we can't do human centered design or agile or anything good for humanity until we have empathy and common sense and we're not dicks to each other, it's practically what our business is.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Don't be a dick, it's a good life motto.
Duena Blomstrom:So it's we came into it from the same point of view. But let me ask you about this. And wonder if you've seen it as well, because we speak on this podcast with with people from across The Pond than than Europe, and they have a very different perspective I think of the workplace and the way that disclosing or non disclosing is being seen and so on. So I think it is still very area driven, much as in our cultural work. There is no such thing.
Duena Blomstrom:I'll say this for anyone listening. There is no such thing as a cultural element. I don't care what kind of enterprise you have. We all have to speak the same language and do the same five things to get psychological safe. But when it comes to these bits, this part, right, of us being autistic, these are so, like you say, intersectionally and context driven from where you live, your culture
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yep.
Duena Blomstrom:Your level of intellect, your ability to access adaptation. Yeah. So I think yeah. That's what I was asking if you saw the same same differences.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So it's interesting because there are some qualities that we would relate to autism, for example, that are seen in certain cultures, right? Like being very direct. Every Polish person I work with is very direct. It's just that's their culture, that's how they communicate, right? And I love it because I'm like, I know where I stand.
Angela Prentner-Smith:I don't have to work through shades of grey here. You're just being straight with me and I love it. And some the gender thing is so interesting with this as well, because like there are these cultural constraints that we put around gender, around male and female, and as much male, if not more so than we do female. I actually feel privileged at times to be a woman because I am allowed to play with my identity in a way that men, most cultures do not allow for. Think you're saying that.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It's a bit controversial, but it's the truth, right? It is the truth. And I think I said this to you earlier that it was having a son that made me a real feminist because I saw how society policed little boys' genders. And some of, I live in Scotland and there is a Scottish male identity. And there are expectations of being a man in Scotland that are related to an autistic identity, right?
Angela Prentner-Smith:And when we layer the medical community's response to neurodiversity with gender, the whole thing is very, very complicated. So you put in social constructs, cultural constraints, the medical communities, growth Political context. Political context, wealth. I mean, I feel like as a child, had I grown up with money in The States, I probably would have been identified as a gifted child and probably put on a program and, you know, managed in that way. That wasn't what I lived through.
Angela Prentner-Smith:There's so much of this stuff that you can't disentangle, but within a work place organization it's so the disclosure piece is interesting as well because I feel like that is an organizational culturally specific thing right and yes it's driven by what's going on in the societal context And in some countries we are talking about neurodiversity quite openly now, not without some pushback, not without you know the people saying everybody has ADHD now, you're just lazy or whatever else that happens to be. But there is a movement and there are people talking about it. Are still parts of the world though, that that isn't, the conversation isn't happening to that level. And I've had people come and speak to me because I've been out talking about neurodiversity so openly and they've asked for my time and I'm giving with my time. If somebody comes and they want to speak to me about something so they've come and they've spoken to me and they've said listen I'm in the workplace now, I'm just out of university but I'm really struggling.
Angela Prentner-Smith:I'm struggling with meetings. I'm struggling with focus. And I think I have ADHD, but in my culture, we don't talk about it. So that person is, you know, benefiting in a way from the increased dialogue around neurodiversity. But it's not even the workplace that they feel they can't disclose that to.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It's their cultural community because it's not talked about. We don't talk about neurodiversity. It's just not there. So this whole thing is just so complicated and we all have our unique place in it. Right?
Angela Prentner-Smith:We all have our unique knitting that's got us to the place that we are. And I have heard of I have heard adults who were diagnosed as children resent that diagnosis as a child because it gave them a label and that's perfectly valid as well. Lived experiences. That's It's lived experience. That's what you
Duena Blomstrom:must learn to talk about. You know what? I am old enough that I remember the days when hearing words like boundaries or lived experiences or adaptation was a bit irritating because we had jobs to do and this was not the time, right? I was one of those people back in the day, although I knew I needed it, I had such an adversity to being a victim that needed anything that I kept all of that out. And again, I'm apologizing to the younger generation for promoting.
Duena Blomstrom:This is not something I advise anyone else to do. If there's a way to get away from your ableism, go ahead. If you need it like I did so that you get through life, go ahead with that one as well. But I think it is an immensely vast topic. And I think we need to start somewhere.
Duena Blomstrom:We can't chat about it. I think we have we are in a place in the workspace where one, we see a lot of very, very dark tendencies, if you wish. One and I programs everywhere, unfortunately and incredibly and immorally are being torpedoed by the powers that be. That alone means that whatever adaptation you got for gender topics, whatever adaptation you got for other topics, your whatever, that's all your plot. So whatever else adaptation we need for neurodiversity is just literally not going to happen.
Duena Blomstrom:Keep that in mind for whoever thinks that you know we're just talking neurodiversity let them deal away with the DNI programs because that's just the feminism bit. It's not. Once they do away with it, they do away with all of it. And I would be happy if I heard that companies are moving away from diversity and inclusion, because there's no need for it anymore. Are now happily equally, understanding that we're all different, and life is carrying a lot.
Duena Blomstrom:That isn't why they're they're moving away because money, because dumbassery, sorry for the French, and multiple reasons. So instead though, what we have is a venue for advocacy for everyone. And I say this over and over again, the informational highway that we have access to. Yes, it comes with the downside of it being a hose of potentially Russian influenced AI crap. Once you've once you learn to filter that bit out, what you're left with.
Duena Blomstrom:In particular, as an autistic person, I think this is crucial and I have to say this over and over again, get yourself on TikTok, get yourself on whatever ads you're using, and it doesn't have to be the Chinese necessarily, find a social network to find a tribe, because the very first thing you get as an autistic person out of social media is the invaluable understanding of there being others like you. All of us autistics, I believe, have spent a good majority of our time trying to patch these models. It's why we read a lot. It's why we go like, where is this other thing? How does it work?
Duena Blomstrom:So we attempt to emulate it, right? And do it that way. But if the models where we're learning are these together, we can redo them and we can we've broken down these things. Right? We're now at least discussing them.
Duena Blomstrom:But in the workplace, finally, to bring back the point, I think we need to find a bedding of comfortable disclosure, if that makes sense. That is probably step one. We can talk about diversity for another fifty years and absolutely nothing will change until people have the courage to say me too. And what we were talking about earlier, I wanted to ask you about is obviously psychological safety for anyone who doesn't have the definition is the ability of expressing yourself in a way that doesn't make you fear consequences, consequences, in a way that you are most true to whatever your opinion was. So you feel safe enough to express that with your peers.
Duena Blomstrom:And then obviously at work, crucially important if you're going to create anything together, it doesn't matter how many times we say it, no exec will understand this, but in life you still have to have the psychological safety to be able to disclose, right? Yeah. So I think it's super important that we, the six of us that understand the definition of psychological safety, go to these execs and say, you know psychological safety that Google, Amy Edmondson and the rest of our software told you about, so you get performance and that you need that to make the organization work. But you know this other piece, you have an even lesser bit of it because your people are not even telling you who they are. If you don't have it, you're not going to get further.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And this is where it always comes back to psychological safety. I don't think it matters what you're talking about, It always comes back to psychological safety. Because I'm working right now specifically with two organizations that I can think of that are working on their EDI strategy still. And we have worked this background to actually, do you know what? Forget about talking about getting more women in the boardroom or getting a better racial mix to your organisation.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Let's forget about all of that right now. Because if you recruit those people and you do not have psychological safety in your organization, you might as well not have the diversity because you're not gonna harness the benefits of it because people are not gonna come to work with their lived experience. They're not gonna speak up and say, actually lights in this room are way too bright for me. They're probably going to be too bright for your customers too, because they don't feel psychologically safe to do so. So if there's one thing that organizations can focus on, it's always psychological safety.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Improve the psychological safety, you will improve your inclusion, you will improve your performance, you will improve your ability to innovate. And you maybe, just maybe, we won't need EDI strategies in the future because people will feel comfortable. I mean, that's me getting a little bit moonshot there that we'll ever get back
Duena Blomstrom:very real and and it needs sage. I wonder if anyone's listening because we've all been saying it for fifteen years and also because also because genuinely because we I obsessed with numbers. I'll give you an example. When I first arrived at psychological safety, was like: my god, there is this thing that is like the magic sauce and these guys in Silicon Valley have loads of it and let us get some of it so we too make money, right? So I went ahead and found out what all existed, right?
Duena Blomstrom:I spoke to obviously the professors that worked in it and Amy Edmondson was part of what we were doing and I looked at the Spotify model and we we turned we every stone. I was like, how is this even bloody possible that there is a thing that makes Google is talking about the 40% improvement in teams who have for 40% more money that thing gives you. Yeah, yeah. So if there is a number can that you could
Angela Prentner-Smith:measure it, yeah.
Duena Blomstrom:What is wrong with you people? Get more of the stakes, you get more of this money. I thought it was that obvious. Unfortunately, we now know many many years down the line how obvious
Angela Prentner-Smith:You know what, I think it is, right? And this is controversial as well. It's egos. That is the issue. Let me just call it out, it
Duena Blomstrom:is
Angela Prentner-Smith:egos. Because actually the thing that is hampering psychological safety is ego. It is people not being able to be vulnerable. It's people not being able to hold, like to hand the pen off to somebody else in their team. It's not being able to say, I'm not maybe the person who knows the most about this.
Angela Prentner-Smith:You speak up. It's ego, but it's also ego that is maintaining the hierarchies. It's also ego that is meaning customers' needs are being forgotten at the door because we're more concerned about are we climbing this greasy pole up to the top of the organization? It's egos. Egos that is stopping all of this.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Even though we have this thing here that we say, right, here's a super magic sauce and we can measure it. We can literally measure this. We'll put the numbers behind it and say, here's your psychological safety score and it correlates to higher performance. We can do that. And even with that, you'll do better.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It doesn't fit with people's egos. And I think that's the issue is egos, right?
Duena Blomstrom:Isn't if we an ego practically just fear? It's object of left behind, losing this mortgage you need to pay and it is the intersectionality at the top, think it's an entire episode we should discuss because you probably have, not probably, I would wager that you have a layer of people that are undiagnosed autistic, beyond burnt out. They are not professionally and stress burnt out. They are autistic burnt out. That is a whole other ballgame that can kill you.
Duena Blomstrom:And I don't say this enough on this. And also, big big issue you you touched on it a little bit before and I want to reiterate it. Medically, if you conflate these issues and you don't you you take someone on a path that they are not on and you give someone like a diagnosis of maybe depression or anxiety or even burnout.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Oh, then
Duena Blomstrom:this diagnosis instead of a burnout that's an autistic diagnosis, can and you will destroy people. So the medical profession can help quickly.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Absolutely And that's something that we haven't touched on. So there's missed diagnosis, right? We've talked about that, but then there's missed diagnosis. And it's the women who've been told that they have borderline personality disorder. It's the men who have been told you're bipolar.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And a lot of this, maybe there's those overlapping conditions, but in many cases, the autism's been missed. The ADHD has been missed. And again, ADHD two point zero, a fantastic book, but George Hallowell goes through this and he basically equates having ADHD undiagnosed takes 16 off your life at sex 16, because you're more likely to take risks, you're more likely not to look after your own health needs, your diet is generally poorer, many people with ADHD have eating disorders. There's then the cortisol aspect of it and all of this. 16
Duena Blomstrom:of your years of That's always going to yeah,
Angela Prentner-Smith:of this. And interestingly, I have a friend who's a mental health nurse and she was telling me that it's only been the last couple of years that even as a mental health community that they're actually starting to understand autism and ADHD. So what chance have the rest of us got to get those proper diagnostics and support if the system isn't even ready for it, right? The psychologists and the mental health community aren't ready. You know, and I have people that work with me that have been like, yeah, been told my whole life I've had borderline or, you know, my whole adult I've had borderline personality disorder.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It was only the other day, one of my nurses actually acknowledged I had ADHD,
Duena Blomstrom:you know. And legions of on medication that is personality altering and brain chemistry altering. That is incorrect for them, the regions. We hand out antidepressants in the NHS like they're candy to everyone and their dog, every nation that's subdued by the medication. It is a crisis but it is what we're all fighting.
Angela Prentner-Smith:It is and there's a beautiful book. I don't know if you've read The Lost Connection. Oh yes. Yeah, it's a great book. That is a great book and for anyone listening I would thoroughly recommend The Lost Connection because it takes it down to actually what we are labeling as depression is actually a normal human state, right?
Angela Prentner-Smith:We experience at certain points in our lives, we experience when we've had our status removed from us. And a lot of workplaces are removing that status, removing that hope by design. There's a lot of human stuff, regardless of whether you're autistic or you're not, that we have dismantled from our society that is causing depression.
Duena Blomstrom:Right, right. That's exactly the human stuff, regardless of autism or not, is where organizations should start. That's why Angela and I started by saying, okay everyone, look, you've done some shitty stuff on the human side, let's fix that first. We didn't start with because everyone's autistic. We just said let's fix it for everyone around.
Duena Blomstrom:Then you'll find that most people in adaptation are never telling you that the organization as it is, is perfect. All we need is to make sure that this one dude can only work on Wednesdays from three to 04:30 and he'll be great. That's never the case. People advocate for adaptation, they're advocating for genuine systemic change that cleans up something I call human debt, which is what these organizations keep amassing not giving us the respect and the help and the support that we need to be our best selves. If we just did it for everyone, we would not have to call it adaptation.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Absolutely. That's the learning platform that we have built.
Duena Blomstrom:Right, let's get to that. Please tell us about it.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yes, so, Neve Learning, which is our learning platform that was sponsored by the Scottish Government, it was not designed just to cater to people who are neurodivergent. It's not that you know you're dyslexic so you need this special system. It has been built better for everyone because it considers what is better for a person with autism, for a person with dyslexia can be better for everyone. What it now does as well is it takes in the fact that inclusion means include everybody. So your carers that can't come away for an all day training course that you're currently excluding, they can't do it.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So we need a hybrid world. It's your person that lives up in the Scottish Highlands that can't come down to London because it's going to take them two days of travel. It includes them too, but it also keeps the human connection because what learners and what trainers told us when we did our use of research was that they didn't want that removed. They don't want to be taught by a robot. They don't want to be taught by an algorithm.
Angela Prentner-Smith:They want to be taught by human. We want human to human connection and we want that community, but we want to feel included in it. And we don't want to sit on Zoom for nine hours listening to training. Nobody wants that because it's not good for any brain. Add in ADHD on top of that and you're no hope.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Who can do that? So the platform itself has been designed to be accessible and it has been designed to be inclusive for hybrid workforces, which is what pretty much every workforce now. It also takes into account multi generational, you know, that we have whole populations that prefer video, for example. And what we're now starting to do is to bring in the AI, which is on the first side, it's helping the trainers to deliver content in multiple formats. Because for example, I can't watch videos.
Angela Prentner-Smith:I'm bored. I'm too bored. I don't wanna watch them. Give me the transcript. I will digest that.
Angela Prentner-Smith:No problem. But it's a lot of effort for a trainer to have to produce the same material in multiple formats. So the system helps you do that. Over time, what it will do is you start to interact with the system. It will start to learn what makes you learn better, and it will deliver the content for you in a way that suits your unique person.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And this isn't just about preference because that's a problem in learning. Preference does not equal better learning. It's about impactful learning.
Duena Blomstrom:In particular for the rest of us hyper interested ADHDers, preference does not equal learning.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Exactly, exactly. And sometimes you have to learn things that you don't get hyper focused on. Damn it! So this is about impact from an organisational perspective and ultimately who we've made this for is for workplaces. However, we are seeing a huge need in prison populations as well, where sixty percent of the prison population is undiagnosed, neurodivergent, and a huge need for upskilling.
Angela Prentner-Smith:So there's a need there within prisons as well. So we've built this platform, and Nieve is my daughter's name, it also means And of course we're all unique like snowflakes, So I'm reclaiming the word snowflake in the right context that we are all individual. Ultimately, I believe that through education and through removing barriers to education, which is ultimately what we're doing here for everybody will mean that we can untap more of our intelligence, more of our innate abilities as humans, which means we can solve the world's wicked problems, right? And that's ultimately, that's what I'm doing.
Duena Blomstrom:We can hope for. So can hope anyone listening to this, you still have a chance to come into NIEM at the ground level because you're in luck, but Angela's still looking for a couple of super smart investors. We were talking about this a minute ago or not a minute ago.
Angela Prentner-Smith:We've been talking a long time.
Duena Blomstrom:A million minutes ago but we were talking about the fact that it feels like for how many people we have thankfully meeting that are neurodiverse and have successfully gone through life and so on, it is almost impossible to raise as a neurodiverse founder and we know that because we've been neurodiverse founders for way too long.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Neurodiverse female founders, just to add that extra The
Duena Blomstrom:vagina part doesn't help, In my case, to make it work, in your case too, because you're not English, so in my case and in your case we're immigrant as well to anyone we ask for money for so it's not exactly an easy thing to do. But with all that said, people should see the opportunity I think. We run a neurodivergent only team which I'm still to be figuring out despite multiple lawyers have asked whether it's legal or not. Seems to be for now. Let them throw me to jail.
Duena Blomstrom:Let me
Angela Prentner-Smith:let them try. Go to
Duena Blomstrom:jail for posing the discrimination.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yeah, think it is legal, I mean I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand
Duena Blomstrom:it's But the beauty of it is that we obviously learn from each of our people and also working together in an all neurodiverse team is heaven, I can promise you. The things we've learned from them are that to make this change, to get this money, to find other people that are neurodiverse would be the only way really. So what we're saying is if you're listening to and you are neurodiverse yourself diagnosed or undiagnosed and you are sitting on some axis, some influence and you know a way to also change learning while we're fixing human debt, we can put that into people's hands tomorrow. We've built the vehicles to do that. In fact, we're going to stay on and have a chat at some point soon, but you change learning and we have managed to show that if you improve learning, you improve psychological safety in the software, if we could put the two together, we would make such a compelling incredible case.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Absolutely and you know what, I think I have a client that we need to speak to about that, right? Exactly. That just popped into my head.
Duena Blomstrom:Cool, let's change the world. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna let you guys look for us online. I'll make sure I put all of your you can go to www.thisismill.com I think, if that's your correct Yeah,
Angela Prentner-Smith:we have that one or there's nevelearning.co.uk as well and it's n e v e, the simple dyslexia friendly spelling of NEVE. Because my husband is dyslexic, we needed our daughter's name to be dyslexia friendly.
Duena Blomstrom:Oh bless, that makes perfect sense. But thank you so much for telling us your story today. It's been an absolute pleasure listening to you, and we're really trying to change the world for every other neurodiverse person out there. Don't know exactly how, but we're gonna try or die trying.
Angela Prentner-Smith:And every other person for that matter. Like, Like am not shy on ambition. I am gonna change this for everybody. It's my calling, right? So I'm just might
Duena Blomstrom:It could be young person. That's why you can do it. A few years ago I wanted to change the entire world as well.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Eventually I will burn
Duena Blomstrom:the world. The world has changed and we are grateful and our kids undoubtedly we live in a better world so we have to be super excited about that at least for having phone connection and listen to each other. So talk to you guys next week and you'll hear Angela on the podcast again. Thanks so much Angela for coming over and we'll talk to you soon.
Angela Prentner-Smith:Fabulous. Bye.
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