A Different Kind of Thinking Has Entered the Workforce

The importance of neurodiversity

Ric Edelman: It's Monday, July 24th. Have you ever heard of Neurodivergence? You get the importance of diversity, right? We, and when I say we, I mean us. Old white men. We've been pretty oblivious to the importance of diversity over the decades. Companies used to be filled with nothing but white men, especially in the boardroom and in senior management. We've gotten smarter, mostly because other people, and I mean women and minorities, along with people who have disabilities and other attributes that us white men don't have. Others have worked really hard to get our attention, and fortunately, a lot of us are now paying attention.

A variety of federal laws have helped as well. Everything from the Civil Rights Act to the Equal Opportunity Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act and a lot more. And so our boardrooms and our management ranks now have a lot more women and minorities and such, but not yet nearly as many as we should.

But there has been progress. Anybody who's been paying attention to all of this has to agree that having this diversity has actually helped. It's not merely about helping the people gain opportunities they didn't have. And I don't mean merely giving people opportunity that they didn't have before. I mean that the fact that these people are involved in the company's management and strategy, the companies are better off. We're getting better at creating products and services that serve a broader array of people who want to buy what we have to offer. 

We do well by doing good. Wow, this is awesome. Well, now we have neurodivergence. This is the notion that we all have differences in cognitive thinking. Differences on how we make decisions. Neurodivergent individuals. I'm talking about people who have conditions that affect how the brain functions. Autism. Dyslexia. Dyspraxia. ADHD. Have you hired any folks with these conditions? Do you work alongside any folks like these? Are you talking to any of these folks?

I'm not just talking about this from a moral or ethical or legal perspective. I'm talking about the fact that these qualities that neurodivergent individuals have offer your organization tremendous opportunity. For example, some neurodivergent individuals are really good at liminal thinking. That's being able to take yourself outside of a system and look in on it. These folks often have radical imagination. They see problems from different perspectives.

At Invesco, for example, they have a neuro diversity network of employees. This helps give the company diversity of thought in its investment and operational processes and its client facing experiences. When you recruit talent from a broader pool of candidates, you get better outcomes. So when you look at DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, when you look at these DEI programs, you need to be sure to include disability and neurodiversity.

In fact, a lot of people who are neurodivergent don't consider themselves to have a disability. We're talking 15% of the population is neurodivergent, but half of them say they have faced challenges at work or in even getting hired because of their neurodivergence. Half of them say that they have not disclosed their neurodivergence to their employer. They're afraid it will hurt their career.

Does that sound familiar? That sounds a lot like the LBGTQ community used to say, and frankly, often still does say. We've got a long way to go.

At Invesco, they have provided neurodiversity training to staff members across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to turn them into neurodiversity champions. These champions then educate their own teams. They also run a series at Invesco called Storytelling, where neurodivergent individuals or those with families or experiences of people with relevant conditions share their stories. The company then publishes these stories, so all employees in the organization can learn.

It's taken us old white guys a long time to realize there are a lot of people out there who are not old, not white, not guys. Now we need to start paying attention to people who are neurodivergent as well. The sooner we do this, the sooner we are all going to benefit. Thanks to Invesco for its leadership in this area. I'm proud to have them as a sponsor of this podcast.

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