S2E9: Neurodivergence and autism at Work: Unpacking the Challenges and Triumphs

In this enlightening episode, we meet Shea, a Boston resident navigating the corporate world while embracing their autism and neurodivergence. The conversation dives into the intricacies of their journey in a traditional nine-to-five job, tackling subjects such as decoding sarcasm, fostering respectful communication, and addressing workplace biases. It sheds light on the often overlooked potential of neurodivergent individuals, particularly within the engineering industry, challenging stereotypes and misconceptions. The episode serves as a call to action, advocating for understanding and accommodation. 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheabelsky/

Welcome to Season 2, where we embark on authentic and unfiltered conversations about life, relationships, society, and more. Our opinions are solely our own and don't represent professional advice. It's just our perspective, so form your conclusions. Heads up, this podcast may contain adult content and explicit language. Let's dive in!
 
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Transcript

Nicola: 0:41

Okay, let's try to get. Shay, would you like to tell us who you are and where you're from? Absolutely.

Shea Belsky: 0:48

Thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to talk about neurodiversity in the workplace, what it means to be autistic in a working environment, and how much of a fun time, how much of an interesting time and how much of a challenging time it is being neurodivergent and more broadly disabled in a traditional nine to five corporate job. I currently live outside of Boston Massachusetts in the United States. I live with my fiance and two cats. The cat might come up and say hi in the microphone at any point, so be prepared to hear him meow at some point.

Nicola: 1:22

I am so excited about this episode. I think this is gonna be a really, really interesting episode because I think this is kind of the first time that we're deep diving into this topic, and I think-.

Gina: 1:33

With someone who identifies as neurodivergent. We've had people tell their stories and say I think my coworker might have been neurodivergent because they acted like X, y and Z, and there were a few. There was a few incidents where we were like mm, doesn't sound like that to us, like you're probably the problem. But then there was a couple that I think Nicola and I were like yeah, something sounds a little off there. I wonder what it was Like. We're not doctors, obviously we're not handing out diagnoses, but so I think it's gonna be really interesting to hear from an actual person.

Nicola: 2:08

An actual person.

Shea Belsky: 2:09

A real human.

Gina: 2:11

Are you actually a person or are you-?

Shea Belsky: 2:13

I hope I'm a real person, unless you're dressed in a flesh suit. I have the burn marks and the cuts and the scabbed over pimples and scribes to prove the fact that I'm human.

Gina: 2:23

All right, we'll give it to you. You're an actual person.

Shea Belsky: 2:26

Thank you for the accomplishment. The achievement, I'll put it on my way board.

Nicola: 2:31

Put it on your LinkedIn profile. I'm an actual person.

Shea Belsky: 2:35

An actual, real human being, certified 2023. Organic, a little more of a classic.

Nicola: 2:43

I'm curious to know, like as we kind of head into this podcast, because obviously I'm hoping that you're gonna share a little bit of your neurodiversity, and you've mentioned that you're autistic as well I'm curious to know, and maybe you can elaborate on this a little bit. For me, sarcasm is our second language, gina and I.

Shea Belsky: 3:04

How are you with?

Nicola: 3:04

sarcasm 50-50.

Shea Belsky: 3:08

If it's really obvious, I'll pick up on it. If it's subtle, it might fly over my head, okay. So I would say, give it a try.

Gina: 3:16

I feel like I'm right there with you with the subtlety. Sometimes I'm like I'll think about it after and I'll be like wait, is that a joke or not? Like I can't tell.

Shea Belsky: 3:25

I won't be hurt if something comes up as our casting ticket seriously, and then I'm embarrassed, like it just happens to me some often where it doesn't bother me at this point. So, like we'll give it a whirl and if it comes up in a conversation then we'll just have fun with it and we'll just fly up and see them in our pants. I'm not worried.

Nicola: 3:40

All right cool, I'm used to it, so do you want to?

Gina: 3:44

Go ahead.

Nicola: 3:44

Nicole, do you want to tell us a little bit about your neurodiversity and your kind of? Because I know autism is a bit on a scale, so do you want to explain some of yours to us?

Shea Belsky: 3:54

Yeah, so I am diagnosed with autism. A long time ago, the official diagnosis was Asperger's. As of right now, the diagnosis of Asperger's isn't given out anymore. It's just referred to as autism spectrum disorder. So if somebody says that they are autistic or they have Asperger's, they can refer to the same thing. But not all people who are autistic have Asperger's. Like, if you have Asperger's, the current medical definition is autistic, but you being autistic is not guaranteed that you were at one point diagnosed with Asperger's. To make things simpler, I just say I'm autistic. There's nothing wrong with people using that language if they choose to do so, but people really have different preferences for how they choose to describe it. So, honestly, it's just a matter of asking the person how they refer to themselves. I say I'm autistic, but if someone wants to say that they have Asperger's, there's nothing wrong with them doing that. I'm not going to give someone a hard time over it.

Gina: 4:49

Yeah, so, just so we get a full, accurate background, can you tell us how and you don't have to if you don't want to but can you tell us how the diagnosis came about a long time ago?

Shea Belsky: 5:01

Many moons ago, when you still were an actual person. Well, it was many moons ago, but I think that's what makes it, I would say honestly, more unique in that sense, most of the people who I know are either self-diagnosed or receive a diagnosis into their later years if they were an adult or more like a teenager. I had a diagnosis from a very early point in my life. I was about two or three years old. My grandma on my mom's side and my aunt on my mom's side both worked in the school system and they were around me often enough to say to my mom hey, shay isn't developing the way that he's supposed to at his age. We recommend getting him checked out by a professional. And then they did. And then I got a diagnosis with Asperger's at the time, autism, about two or three years old, and for most people that's not how it goes.

Shea Belsky: 5:46

Most people struggle for a lot of their life and then they stumble upon it, but I recognize very much the privilege that I have to have had a diagnosis from such an early point. It's honestly a lot rarer to have a diagnosis at that point. From my perspective, most people don't have that.

Gina: 6:04

And correct me if I'm wrong. Sometimes the symptoms, or whatever it is we wanna call the set of behaviors or whatever it is, are subtle and I feel like in some cases it's subtle and you can't there might not, you can explain it away, like, especially as a parent, whereas you know, like your-.

Nicola: 6:25

Oh, my child is just particular. Or oh, my child is just a bit fussy with food.

Shea Belsky: 6:32

It depends a lot on, honestly, circumstance like nature or nurture. To be totally transparent, for a lot of parents they may not be aware of what is normal or not. I am very fortunate that on my mom's side of the family there were two different people who both independently said that there was something not quite up to where it's supposed to be. But a lot of folks who I know that isn't the case, where the parents either didn't know what normal was supposed to be or, which is also common, they chose to reject what they were seeing. They didn't want to admit that half of the child maybe had disability or had something wrong with them. And so the first question the way that autism presents definitely varies from person to person.

Shea Belsky: 7:12

It varies a lot by gender, by race, by sexuality, like a lot of the research out there about autism and their diversity is, to be honest, mostly about white men like myself, and autism in women is grossly underdiagnosed. It doesn't mean that women have autism less often. It means that the science is not, I would say, where it's supposed to be when it comes to autism, and that is trending in our positive direction, where it is starting to equalize out. It's not perfect, but we are starting to see more incidences of women getting diagnosed. It's not because autism is growing like a COVID variant would. It's because the science is getting better and the social situations and scenarios surrounding women getting a diagnosis in the first place are getting better. And that also applies to race as well. We're seeing more, more non-white people get diagnoses because the science and the social scenario around it is getting a lot better, around that even being a possibility.

Gina: 8:12

That's interesting, yeah, okay, so are you gonna tell us? So I know that you're right now. You're basically an entrepreneur, right, so you're working on something that's kind of linked with your disability, but and I'm sure we're gonna get to that as you tell your story but when did you really feel like was there a work situation where you really felt like was not handled properly in terms of your disability, or you weren't given the opportunity to speak freely or anything like that? I think there was one, right From whatever.

Shea Belsky: 8:50

I remember yeah. So and in my time going for different internships and full-time jobs and stuff, my last internship coming out of university, it was a very high stress, high velocity, high everything environment I'm not gonna name names, but it was a very fast-paced tech company Pick any of the ones that are out there and I'm sure you can guess and in that kind of environment I was basically like just barely getting by in terms of what was expected of me, how much I was expected to know off the top of my head and how hard I was to expect it to work. A lot of what was going on was just me not always being able to read between the lines or get into really subtle details about things or ask for help. I was kind of rabbit-holing myself down different paths of work and I wasn't in an environment where I felt that I had the support that I needed to sort of like pull me out of that rabbit hole and give me a reality check in a way that I felt was respectful, because the way that the feedback sometimes came across was more admonishing not in fantasizing but more disrespectful.

Shea Belsky: 9:59

And this was in an environment where I didn't disclose my neurodiversity until really close to the end of it and in that environment I'd wished that I'd had the support to disclose it earlier. And number two, that I felt that as though it could have there was more training or awareness for the manager is not me having to mention it in the first place, and I think that was a difficult situation for me which really revolutionized and changed how I thought about that kind of neurodiversity going forward for every employer after that, so do you think that if you had disclosed that like right from the beginning, that experience would have gone differently, or do you think it would have kind of still had the similar experience that you actually had?

Shea Belsky: 10:44

I think the mental experience for me would have been night and day in terms of what I worked on.

Shea Belsky: 10:49

I would expect that would have stayed the same, but I do believe that, had I been more transparent about my neurodiversity going forward, or if there have been more conversations about things that I could share in a way that was respectful with my manager, I felt that a lot of things could have been different in terms of how conversations were had about me, surrounding me and how I could have used that in the workplace, cause it was an internship, I wasn't expected to know everything and be the most brilliant person in the room.

Shea Belsky: 11:50

I was close to the bottom of the ladder, bottom of the food pyramid. So, of all that being said, I think it could have gone a lot differently and more supportive in that department. At the same time, though, I was still at a point in my own journey but neurodiversity where how much of this am I expected to know? How much, how aware of it do I need to be to get by? And in that moment I realized I kind of have to stick up for myself because it doesn't look like anybody else is going to, and that really sort of changed how I thought about it going forward.

Gina: 12:20

Okay, that's interesting. So so I think the question is, when do you know when to disclose? What are the like, the perfect circumstances where you're, like, I feel comfortable to disclose this is, you know, in a workplace or even in the interview process? I mean, is that something you should bring up during your interview process, like, how does that work?

Shea Belsky: 12:41

So, coming out of that internship experience, that really changed when and where I did it. Going forward, to answer your question, my opinion now and I believe this would be really true is that you should disclose pretty early on in the interview process. We're sort of a lot of benefits. My belief is that by disclosing disability, whether it's invisible is this a case for me or not?

Shea Belsky: 13:03

Invisible, visible it can do one of three things for you, the first being that if the company is an inclusive because of the culture, then it'll make things really easy and supportive and equitable for you and they will want to support you in a way that respects you and does not ostracize or discriminate against you. Second thing that can happen is that nothing happens. You know they don't do anything for or against you, but at least that there's context there and they can work with the method or ability and some companies are better than the numbers. And the last thing that could happen is the worst thing in air quotes is that they are ableists, don't want to hire you and they just cut you loose. But at that point you dodged the bullet, because why work for an ableist company in the first place?

Gina: 13:41

Yeah, I was gonna like watch your truck car there.

Shea Belsky: 13:44

Yeah, like I think in that instance, if you say in the interview and then all of your interviewers after that are ableists or make assumptions or don't know how to speak of you in a way that's respectful, you can just stop the interview right there and walk away and don't feel like you lost anything over the time.

Gina: 14:01

Right. So was there a situation in which, besides your internship, didn't you say you kind of did some experiment, though, like in your, when we chatted originally? Like you said you, you were looking right? Can you tell us somewhere about that?

Shea Belsky: 14:15

So coming out of university with the Cornell coming out of Cornell, I told you above average, smart.

Gina: 14:21

Wait, you watched the Office.

Shea Belsky: 14:24

Did you ever watch the Office? I watched it a few seasons. Yes, Andy, so Andy, yes, fun fact, he actually did end up speaking at commencement one year at Cornell.

Gina: 14:36

Did he. That's amazing. It was really funny. He was really chill about it.

Shea Belsky: 14:40

He's like thanks for letting me talk about your school. He was really cool about it.

Gina: 14:43

Yeah, I love that for everyone involved because he was he was such a pain in the ass about it on. Yeah, he was such a pain in the ass about it on the show that like it's so funny that he's probably not like that in real life. But it's like I don't know if I could ever look at him in any other way other than being Andy from the Office, you know.

Nicola: 15:02

He was really chill.

Gina: 15:04

Yeah, I'm sure he is I mean to play someone like that. You probably have to be, anyway. Okay, so you did some kind of experiment, right?

Shea Belsky: 15:12

So, coming out of Cornell, a planet doesn't have to write and for most of most of the time it's pretty easy, like fill out your address 20,000 times in the same application. I don't remember you a bullet in your resume, fill it out all again. Yada, yada, yada. And one of the questions that gets asked is do you have a disability? And there's three answers yes, no or I choose not to answer, which is ambivalent, basically, and so I applied to maybe 100, 200 jobs coming out of Cornell, just online applications and I took the job that didn't really care a whole lot about, the companies are kind of like not jumping up and down about, but I wouldn't be mad or happy to get a rejection for and just did an experiment with that checkbox. So for half of this was about a size sample has about 100 of companies, and for half of them I said yes, I have that ability, and for the other half I said no or I don't answer, and on average, when I said yes to that, I got automatic rejection more often than if I said no or I don't answer, which is frustrating In this sense that, again, this is purely a anecdote, it's a perspective.

Shea Belsky: 16:22

I'm not a forintative. I can't like speak to whether or not that's legal or not. I think my understanding of my next question is it's just meant for, like reporting purposes. It is not meant to bias you in the interview process, but from my personal perspective I don't believe that to be true. Could be coincidence, could be a pattern. I'm just here to say that I saw it as a pattern of a sample size of 100.

Gina: 16:42

That you witnessed that, yeah, and then even further on in you go, I was gonna say and like, for every time you didn't, you got a rejection or you didn't hear back from the people you tracked, like how do you know if it was specifically because of that Like? And especially now in this day and age, you know they usually have like somebody like a program. They run resumes through a program and if you don't have like a certain amount of the keywords that are looking for, it's automatically rejected. It's like before anyone, anyone sees anything else. So there's an argument to say that it wasn't because of that and maybe your resume just didn't hit on those keywords. But you don't feel that way, right?

Shea Belsky: 17:30

But the sample size of 50, I find it unlikely, not impossible. It could be that I didn't have what these companies are looking for, and it's completely a valid argument in my opinion, with a sample size of 50 companies where that happened. I don't know how much I buy that, but it's certainly a possibility that we just didn't have the skills that these companies were looking for. Time 50.

Shea Belsky: 17:49

But, going beyond that as well, also thinking about companies where I did say it and then I got into the interview and then I talked to a person and then I got rejected.

Shea Belsky: 17:59

I would definitely say that when talking to a human, seeing how they spoke with me, talked about me, maybe they asked about my neurodiversity or something, whatever it was that is where I saw more of the human element, more of how people may be biased for or against or impivalent towards people who are neurodivergent, and it really does come down to what. Do they know about some autism and are they going to project that onto me?

Gina: 18:28

Right.

Nicola: 18:30

So and I'm pretty confident that you're talking to a network of people that are in a similar situation to you, where there's neurodiversity and there's potentially autism or the raft of things that they may bring with them that are completely different I'm curious to know how that translates into the workplace. What are we seeing happening to these people in the workplace that makes it potentially hostile or toxic? So do you have potentially some examples of how that kind of translates?

Shea Belsky: 19:09

Some of the biggest things that I've experienced personally, either with myself or people that I know, is, as you mentioned, that sort of maybe hostile or unfriendly social interactions or confrontations. Since becoming more aware of neurodiversity, I'm able to sort of be more aware and careful of those social interactions. But there were definitely been times in my past when I've said or done something or behaved in a certain way which wasn't acceptable, but at the time I didn't know any better, and that created a negative interaction or relationships with me and somebody else and I didn't know any better. So it created a difficult situation for me, for my manager, them having to talk to me about it and whether or not I knew about it or never at the time was a whole number of issue.

Shea Belsky: 19:53

But I've definitely been in situations where people get really budding heads of me for things that maybe are in my control or out of my control and it's up to me to manage it and keep my cool.

Shea Belsky: 20:06

Or else I blow my steam, lose my top or something else happens and I'll be honest and say I haven't really had what I would call a breakdown or meltdown in the workplace. I've come close, I've come very close, I've burnt out, which is different. But I know a lot of people who have had a lot of really stressful either sensory or emotional situations go on and they have chosen to sort of step away from work or take time to themselves to be quiet. And people don't really know how to handle that. Just only because when you as an outsider with no knowledge of what it means to have a meltdown, have a breakdown or experiencing that or seeing somebody who's experiencing that, what are you supposed to do? Most people would leave them alone, but others just be more confrontational about it, which has made my life difficult and people who I know in those lives very difficult.

Gina: 21:00

How does that look, though, for you, and what would you suggest? A co-worker who maybe works in proximity to you, but maybe you guys aren't chummy. What would look like the best case scenario for you with something like that at an office or a workspace?

Shea Belsky: 21:21

If something was happening in a workplace, let's keep it simple. Let's just say it was a sensory thing where the lights are really bright or there's an annoying sound coming out of the background, or there's a smell or something which is not related to a person, but just something in my environment. What I would choose to do as a person is try to relocate myself, to not be in a situation, whatever possible. If it's a smell, go for a walk or do something else. If I can't do that, if it's like a light above my desk, then it's a matter of addressing that, with my manager saying, hey, this light is bothering me, can we fix it? Just trying to be respectful about how I address it rather than making it selfish.

Shea Belsky: 22:01

And where the confrontation, where the negativity comes in, is that other people feel like I'm asking for these things or trying to make these changes because I'm being selfish or trying to get a leg up above them. But the idea behind these adjustments, these accommodations, is not to create an advantage. It's to create equity. Whether or not a regular person or a typical person can work the same way that a bright overhead light doesn't matter to me. But if I can't do my work effectively with this bright overhead light, then I would like to change it so I can work better, and 90% of the time I shouldn't bother other people. But there's a 10% of people out there who feel it's some personal attack against them, that oh, this person wants to ruin my light so I'm going to give them a hard time for it. And that has happened to me in the past, where people give me a harder time than they need to about something that does not affect them at all.

Gina: 22:54

Yeah, people can suck sometimes like they just don't. So that leads me to the next question. If you just close to the hiring manager whoever it is your disability and then something like this comes up right, let's say, the light is constantly, it's too bright, as you said, right. And then maybe your co-workers don't know that you have a disability, how do you address that? That's right, it's like a personal thing. You don't have to tell everyone, you don't have to announce it to the whole company. But how do you determine whether or not to tell the people who are in your close proximity?

Shea Belsky: 23:38

I think it really depends on the scenario and in that example, where, if I'm asking for something that would change their environment or affect them in some way, I think it's constructive to say as little as you need to while still satisfying their curiosity, because if they hear someone say I'm autistic and this is a never tangent but it's an important topic when you say to somebody, when I say to somebody I'm autistic, they immediately associate me with whatever their next closest definition of autism is. It could be a family member, it could be something from TV movies, whatever they are going to immediately look at their definition of autism and put it on me, unless I choose to tell them otherwise. And that's where things get really tricky. So in the workplace I need to say to people very carefully hey, I'm autistic and what this means is sometimes sensory things such as light, smell, smell, whatever bother me a lot more than normal person would.

Shea Belsky: 24:36

In a situation of that being like a light fixture, I would say I'm having a really tough time being able to work because of these lights. I would like to ask HR or building facilities or whoever it is, to put shades over them so it's a little bit darker, and, assuming that no one has a problem with it, because get it done and the likelihood that somebody has a problem with it is really really low. But in that moment it's a matter of what do they need to know to empower them with information without getting too personal. I need to tell them about all the other stuff, but what do they need to know to support me and what do they need to know to not feel like I'm being selfish?

Gina: 25:15

Right, like you're just there to ruin their lighting.

Shea Belsky: 25:20

Yeah, it's important in that sense. I don't want it to come off that I'm trying to be selfish or really self-serving as regard. It's about creating equity, not creating another environment just for me. The simple situation would be if I could move out from underneath that light, that's easy. Nothing else has to change about the environment other than me moving a desk to like a row over or something.

Shea Belsky: 25:44

But if they can't be done, then we go to plan B, which is change the lights if we can. And that happened at a previous company of mine where a lot of people worked for planning about this and enough people did where HR put up shades above the lights in a certain part of the office and then building facilities took them down because it was a fire hazard. That was a big fight going back and forth between HR and building to keep them up, put, take them down. That was a whole never can of worms.

Nicola: 26:12

Do you find that there's Because then I'm going to kind of give this a caveat when I'm done stating my question but do you find that there's any industries or professions that are more akin to people that could potentially have characteristics of autism or characteristics of neurodivergency, or do you feel that it's?

Gina: 26:37

pretty much any or playing field.

Nicola: 26:39

Yeah, open sliver.

Shea Belsky: 26:42

In my opinion, I feel like when we think about the answer to this question, the first thing that comes up to mind is, like IT and engineering. I don't necessarily think that's a fair answer, not just because of the stereotype of because autistic people work in every industry under the sun and just because the large majority of those that we know about happen to be in engineering doesn't mean there aren't offers in other industries. So I don't think I can answer that question honestly because I think to do so would play into the stereotype of. They make me software engineers and I'm not an example of that because I am a software engineer. But I know a lot about autistic people who are extremely creative, who love to work with food, who are good with their hands, who let them be outside. Like to say that we belong in one bucket, one industry, more than ever.

Nicola: 27:29

You can only aim at new engineering. You're done.

Gina: 27:33

Only software engineering. That's it.

Nicola: 27:36

The reason I ask is because at my previous workplace we had a team of kind of researchers and it was really interesting work that they were doing and the majority of the team was neurodivergent or autistic and some of them were engineers, some of them were not, but it was mainly around research and development for this organization and it was fascinating to see the dynamics of the team, because you needed to kind of go in with a special mindset to be able to kind of engage or get information out of the team as well. So you've got this team that is just filled with fascinating information and if you don't, it's like a Rubik's Cube, right? If you don't ask the right question for the information that you need, you're not getting the information.

Shea Belsky: 28:36

I do think to come with the observation. I do think that, to be honest I think in engineering I would say attract more people who are neurodivergent and autistic because of the environment that they're working in. But I don't think that that means that the majority of people who are autistic work in an industry. But I think it is appealing to people who are neurodivergent in the sense that they have much more flexibility and control over their environments. They have a greater sense of autonomy in that regard and they can basically do their work without being supervised by as many people, as opposed to, for instance, a customer service job, which is all about working with people. If someone gets really frustrated or has a hard time working with people, that's not a good industry for autistic people. Does it mean that autistic people can't do customer service? I know some of work great at that, but it really depends on the individual and I think, to answer your question, the observation that autistic people enjoy working in the industry is accurate, but it doesn't mean that the majority of them are actually there.

Nicola: 30:15

Great. I'm also curious to know what are some of the, because I know when we spoke in our meet and greet, we spoke a little bit around the really toxic stereotypes that we've created for autism and neurodivergency, and one of them being hashtag Big Bang Theory Sheldon, and so I'm curious to dive a little into that as to how we've kind of created these toxic stereotypes and how so many people assume that that's kind of the standard, or the bold standard, of autism.

Shea Belsky: 30:54

I alluded to this earlier, but when people think about somebody who's autistic, one of their first stereotypes is either Sheldon Big Bang Theory or Rain man from the movies, and that's a very harmful stereotype in the sense that it doesn't constructively represent people who are autistic in a way that does them any respect or justice. It portrays the Sheldon example, specifically portrays somebody who's kind of mean, kind of selfish, kind of aloof and all of the negative, deficit-based things that autistic people sometimes are, but by no means do they represent everything an autistic person is. It doesn't represent their passion or their joy or their happiness. It's that representation specifically focuses on a very selfish, individualistic model of what an autistic person is supposed to look like, but by no means is that accurate with regards to everything that they are. It doesn't really portray how they make other people happy, what their love language is, how they get really happy and by in the world.

Shea Belsky: 32:00

I think it really sort of varies based on the interpretation, and there's great interpretations of autism and their diversity that are out there, either out there today or being developed. One of my favorite portrayals of it today is actually by Pixar, disney Pixar. They have a short film out there called Loop, which portrays a non-speaking, autistic black woman, a black actress who is going on a summer camp, like it portrays the story of a child, but the idea, by eating, that it's a black woman who is non-speaking, autistic and a black man neurotypical, black child neurotypical, and how they interact that it was very carefully, very precisely designed to be authentic and real. And the actress is also a non-speaking autistic woman. So really authentic, really careful about how it was presented, how it came across and, I think, very tasteful, I would say, and I think that it does a much better job of saying this is another flavor of autism and not just pigeonholing us into one stereotype or another.

Nicola: 33:11

What I'll do is I'll insert a little clip from the video in the final edit so we can see a little bit of the little view into the mind-side of. Did you say it was Disney?

Shea Belsky: 33:26

I'll put it in the Zoom chat here Disney. It's on Disney Plus. If you have that, if not, with trailer that they're on the internet too. It's Disney Pixar. It's called Loop.

Nicola: 33:36

I think it's a good idea to put a little clip in there, because I think it's important for us to really highlight the fact that neurodivergency and autism we've said this many times but it's a spectrum. It could be anything between A and purple. That's another thing as well.

Shea Belsky: 33:58

It's not just a spectrum. My personal belief system is that putting it on a spectrum is very linear. For instance, comparing the individual from the movie and myself. Is it really linear? Because it's a short film, it's 12 or 15 minutes, it's not long, so you would never know the whole breadth of life that they live.

Shea Belsky: 34:21

But I'd argue that they were a lot brighter or smarter or more capable of things than I am in some areas, whereas I succeeded in others that they don't Communication, sensory stuff, emotional awareness but I'm sure that they are more capable in some other areas that I struggle in.

Shea Belsky: 34:35

So making it very linear as a spectrum doesn't fully describe, I think, what's actually going on. So I subscribe to the model of it being more of a color wheel where it's not linear. It's much more, I would say, of a circle, in the sense that I can be great in areas involving communication, involving emotional intelligence, but I struggle in an area which involves sensory stuff, very detailed social interactions or things that are regarding other things related to sensory stuff. Like my struggles vary, but not to the point where it's linear. I know a couple of non-speaking autistic individuals who are far more intelligent than I will ever be. They just can't talk. So who is, as we say, high functioning? Low functioning I don't like those terms either, but who is where on this proverbial spectrum? Because when you think about it in a very two-dimensional way, you kind of lose a lot of the strength behind it.

Gina: 35:36

Hmm I agree with that I totally.

Nicola: 35:40

I'm on board with a color wheel. If we're going a color wheel, I'm there for it.

Shea Belsky: 35:46

It's different. It doesn't mean that the spectrum is wrong. We live in a society which refers to autism spectrum disorder. That's the medical definition for it, so it doesn't mean that that definition is wrong. The color wheel is just a better way to say it. The spectrum is not an invalid way of describing it, but one is better than the other.

Gina: 36:06

Right.

Nicola: 36:09

Yeah, I think that's why I said you know from A to purple, because you know, you just don't even know where, like it's not from A to Z, it's from A to who knows what, because I'm sure there's so many kind of intricacies that haven't even been identified yet as part of the process. Or even you know the color wheel, I guess.

Shea Belsky: 36:38

Yeah, like it's some autistic people who I know love sound, they love clubs, they love parties, they love loud things, they love bright things, they love smelly things.

Nicola: 36:48

I'm none of those things.

Shea Belsky: 36:49

So just to say that either one of us is for a lot of the spectrum.

Gina: 36:53

I'm with you on that Che I don't like clubs, I don't like loud things, I don't like overly smelly things.

Nicola: 37:00

I don't like bright lights. I don't like people chewing Like don't breathe near me, like it don't even like make eye contact most of the time. I know.

Gina: 37:11

That's why I saw you were such good friends, Nicola, because we're like we are friends who exist virtually, just online, right?

Nicola: 37:18

Like don't breathe near me, you can breathe on a different continent, it's fine.

Shea Belsky: 37:22

My eye contact hack is to look at myself on a Zoom call, so that's been one benefit to the pandemic, if there was any benefit to it not making light of it but being on a video call and not having to look someone in the eye. I look at myself, which is a lot easier than serving at somebody else or serving into the camera. I find it's serving into the camera very awkward, but I look at myself in the camera and it looks like I'm looking at the camera but I'm not actually and it actually helps a lot.

Gina: 37:48

But then me, I'd be like I don't want my internal dialogue. I'd be like God, you're so ugly, like when you look at yourself so much like you start like picking yourself apart, like at least that's what I do. So I had to learn the opposite, because I would be, you know, I would always be looking at myself thinking like, oh my God, I have to get this fixed, like very, you know, like weird, like that. But I have to focus on the person speaking, which I think is really funny. So anyway, nicola, what do you do?

Nicola: 38:22

I do a bit of both. Yeah, I do a bit of both. If I'm getting, if I'm getting fatigued in the meeting, I'll just watch myself because I'm less fatiguing than others, but then I like to look at others to kind of concentrate as well. So I'm a bit of both. I'm a little hybrid-y.

Gina: 38:40

You are. I love it. I love the hybrid situation for you.

Shea Belsky: 38:47

I did my first ever like in-person speaking thing about neurodiversity yesterday and it was so weird for me being in-person because everything that I've done has been virtual. This was the first time, I think, since the pandemic, where I had done it in-person and I'm like I've kind of forgotten how to like read a room, like look at the people in the eye and just sort of like manage that in-person, because for the past three years it's all been virtual. I haven't had to worry about it, and now that we're back to being in-person events it's so different, it's just a whole different can of worms.

Shea Belsky: 39:19

How did it?

Nicola: 39:19

go? I don't know oh how did it go?

Gina: 39:22

It went over really well.

Shea Belsky: 39:23

Like it was a lot of networking People who I'd met virtually when I was seeing in-person for the first time. Lots of opportunities to socialize, chat about neurodiversity. The event was hosted by an organization called Neurodiversity in the Workplace and they're a great organization to check out, similar to what we do, but they're a nonprofit, really focused on empowering companies to also become more neuro-inclusive and really help them get where they're going. It's related to my company Mantra we are for a profit, they are not for profit, so kind of a different track, but similar outcomes Okay.

Gina: 39:59

Do you want to tell people who might have neuro? Have you do this, Nicola?

Nicola: 40:10

I was actually going to go for a totally different.

Gina: 40:12

Go ahead.

Nicola: 40:13

Go ahead, let's go a different rabbit hole. I'm curious to know so let's say, you've got Gina and I as a manager I'm curious to know what we could do to best support someone on our team that has neurodiversity or autism. What is the best thing that we could do to make that comfortable, accommodating, inclusive and, most importantly, supportive as a leader?

Shea Belsky: 40:44

The first thing you should do is just sit down and listen to them. As I said before, your first inclination may be to impose your existing idea of autism neurodiversity onto them. You need to check out at the door and just listen on top of them first, and here what they have to say. I am autistic and this means ABCDE, and it may line up a posterior type or it may not, but you never know if it did or didn't, if you just assumed what they needed and walked away. So the first thing you have to do is just sit down and listen.

Shea Belsky: 41:16

There may be scenarios where an autistic person may not know what they need. They may not know how to advocate for themselves or what they need to be successful, and that happens to a lot of people who are struggling in a workplace but don't know what words to say or don't know what they need to be successful. Lots of companies have ERGs or communities or other groups about disability or neurodiversity. In those situations it may be beneficial to pair up this employee me with a mentor or someone else from there to help reduce a lot of that stigma with somebody who understands it, like at both of my previous companies before Nantra I'll name them because I enjoyed it that much. If you don't want me to let me know. You can cut it.

Nicola: 42:04

If you feel comfortable naming them, go. That's a good shout out to hey, these are really cool. Diversity inclusive countries.

Gina: 42:11

We're both struggling right now.

Nicola: 42:16

I cannot say words today, apparently. I think it's a start.

Shea Belsky: 42:20

Words are hard on the first days.

Gina: 42:23

Yeah, well, it's Friday morning for Nicola. It's like 5 am Friday morning.

Shea Belsky: 42:29

To answer the question, wayfair and HubSpot are two previous employers before Nantra and at both Wayfair and HubSpot they had disability communities or neurodiversity-specific ones.

Shea Belsky: 42:38

So both of them I was able to be a part of different mentorship programs that they had helping connect people who are disabled or neurodivergent in some way with folks who have benefit from having a buddy or a mentor, somebody who knew what they were doing with disability and maybe somebody who was less confident in themselves.

Shea Belsky: 42:56

So in this example I would say, having a peer mentor, someone who can empathize directly with their circumstance, even if it's not exact, is hugely helpful. As of the before, two autistic people can be very different. So while having a mentor-mentee scenario between two autistic people isn't guaranteed to have exactly the same results, it'll still be really good to have someone who at least can empathize or understand with their plight and just be able to roll with it and have a good conversation and just having the same shared diagnosis or label of autism or neurodiversity or whatever it is. And as I think, even having that peer mentor is really advantageous and really powerful and Wayfair and HubSpot both had that and I really benefited from having those mentors and also being a part of their programs when they were around.

Nicola: 43:51

That's awesome. That's really positive to hear. I think maybe what I'll do as well is I'll head over to the two websites and see what it is that their statement is, or their. Do they have a DNI inclusivity statement? Oh my word, the words are not coming to my brain today. The words are not worded.

Shea Belsky: 44:14

HubSpot is huge about this. Hubspot, I would say, is, I would say, miles above the rest in terms of creating a culture that is inclusive and supportive and equitable, where people feel like they belong. I really felt as though at HubSpot the leadership is very approachable, you can have conversations and the culture around having a disability was really relaxed and chill. And that starts at the leadership level HubSpot's disability community. The executive sponsor was a person with a disability, which I think is huge in breaking down barriers and allowing people to feel comfortable to talk about the disability with their manager, because if this senior vice president is out there talking about disability very openly, then I have no reason not to. My manager should care because if not, this VP is going to go chew them a new one.

Gina: 45:08

And that also, who are we talking to is talking about how affirmative action might affect diversity and inclusion in workplace.

Nicola: 45:16

Oh, the lawyer, Stephen the lawyer.

Gina: 45:19

Stephen, the lawyer Right, because so he was making the bridge between this whole. What was it? The Supreme Court.

Nicola: 45:29

Yeah, the Supreme Court's rules against Supreme Inspection is not happening anymore.

Gina: 45:34

And so he was saying what is that going to look like now in a work spot, like in a workplace in a work spot? My words are not wording either this morning, nicola.

Nicola: 45:46

Maybe we just have like word elitist, I don't know what we have I don't know what I have A brain box, we have brain farts.

Gina: 45:56

I think we're both brain farting. Yes, okay, fair enough. Anyway, he was making. He was saying what is that going to look like for American corporate culture, if affirmative action, because it's closely related in terms of those boxes that you mentioned earlier? Right, it's like. So do you have thoughts on that?

Shea Belsky: 46:22

I do. I actually spoke about this with someone at the event yesterday and the current consensus is that it doesn't appear to be affecting the workplace just yet. I think companies are aware of it and sort of reading through what happened and trying to understand what's going on. I don't think any of them are ready to pull the plug in anything or giving away just yet. But it does seriously bring those programs into question. For instance, there are lots of companies which have a specific neurodiversity hiring program and if affirmative action at the job company level goes away, then those programs are illegal or obsolete. So then what does my company do? Because we work a lot with a lot of organizations who have these sorts of programs. So that puts my company out of business, but also it makes it very hard for companies to specifically bring in talent who is underserved or struggles with a traditional process.

Gina: 47:18

Right, and I guess because you were saying with HubSpot, the, the president of the neurodivergent group, is that what you called it? I don't know.

Shea Belsky: 47:29

They were a vice president in some of our capacity in HubSpot. Who has a disability? Who is the executive sponsor of a disability community?

Gina: 47:36

Got it okay.

Shea Belsky: 47:37

Disability more broadly, not just neurodiversity.

Gina: 47:39

No, right, that was my mistake. So like and this is going back to what the lawyer said earlier this week that it's like how important is it to have people in these powers of like, in leadership positions and so on and so forth, who look just like us? You know whether and that's where the diversity inclusion comes in right?

Nicola: 48:00

So it's like we need leaders from all different backgrounds, and that's not what we. You know, we're still kind of stuck in this 1990s vibe where it's male, pale, stale up at the top.

Gina: 48:16

Exactly, we're that male, pale, stale.

Shea Belsky: 48:21

A huge part of it is seeing like those leaders out there who are neurodivergent or have disabilities in some way shape or form Like, and there's not a whole lot of them that are out there which are so open and transparent about it. Something that I try to do in my life as a leader is to be open about it, to break that barrier down. My co-founders at Mentor do it, but beyond that there's not a whole lot of people who are out there talking about their experience with disabilities as frequently or repetitively as I think they should be. That's not the fault of them. People have different levels of personal comfort with the topic, but if more people are out there talking about the disability or neurodiversity and de-stigmatizing it, a lot less the conversation would be so different. For instance, a good example of this is Richard Branson, who is the CEO of Virgin. He has a sexia and he's really open and talks about it all the time Great example.

Shea Belsky: 49:15

A counter example might be someone like Keanu Reeves. I love him dearly. He's one of my favorite male actors of all time. He has a belief. He has a sexia, Doesn't talk about it as often as I think he could to have an inspirational or motivational impact on others with the sexia. That's not the fault of him in any way, shape or form. I love this man to death. I think if he upped the ante and how much he talks about it, he would really have a massive impact on people who look up to him and respect it and it would cause more people to look up to him. Keanu is going to be listening to our podcast.

Nicola: 49:46

Yes, who knows?

Gina: 49:48

That's the thing, though. You're 100% right. You just don't know right. You never know where in the world it's going to end up. So you're right, but I would be so stoked, as growing up in the late 80s, early 90s if you can't reuse I had to check.

Shea Belsky: 50:05

He has a sexia for sure. I once said there was a sexia or ADHD. It's a sexia. I love this man to death. I love the matrix, I love John Wick, so all of a sudden.

Nicola: 50:14

Look at him. I only just recently discovered John Wick. It's a little violent.

Shea Belsky: 50:22

We'll be tangent.

Gina: 50:24

I know, but yeah, keanu Reeves is pretty awesome, so it would be cool if he actually did listen to our podcast.

Shea Belsky: 50:28

I love him dearly.

Nicola: 50:30

Yeah, maybe we should tag him in the social medias.

Shea Belsky: 50:34

Maybe he's like my celebrity guy, crush Him and Josh. Groban I love Josh Groban.

Gina: 50:39

Oh, I got Josh Groban on the office to bring it full circle, as Nicola would say. Did you see any of the ones that he's in?

Shea Belsky: 50:47

I didn't know he was at the office at all.

Nicola: 50:49

Oh my God, I've watched all of the office and I do not remember this. Did I sleep through that episode?

Gina: 50:54

He plays Andy's little brother, who's favored.

Shea Belsky: 51:00

That's news to me.

Nicola: 51:01

Wait hold on Watch me this is news to me too, where I'm like hold on. I literally recently binge watched the whole, all of the seasons, because I was like oh my God, yes, it's definitely him.

Gina: 51:13

Okay, let me just get in the office.

Nicola: 51:16

I'm sorry, I'm here for it.

Gina: 51:20

Okay, he's in. Okay, he's in the garden party one.

Shea Belsky: 51:31

When.

Gina: 51:31

Andy has the garden party at his I mean at Dwight's beet farm. Oh, yes, now I remember, yeah. And then he does like. He has a couple of cameos later on, like when Andy's the manager and his dad, his parents die or whatever, and then they're on the boat to like Bermuda or whatever. He has a few cameos there, but he's been in a lot of like TV shows because he's like oh, he's so funny.

Shea Belsky: 52:01

I love him. He's on Broadway right now and I wanna go see him.

Nicola: 52:04

I'll do it. He's good. We've gone way in relation to where you are.

Shea Belsky: 52:10

Four hours for me, four hours Broadway, new York.

Nicola: 52:13

Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, I think it's a good train down I have a volcano four hours for me, Like I gotta get it.

Gina: 52:20

Yeah, all right. So, nicola, do you have any other questions? Comments.

Nicola: 52:28

Learning questions? I think no. I'm really happy that we covered off like what we could do as leaders to better accommodate for people that may have neurodivergency and potentially autism or whatever it is that they disclose. I'm curious to know more about MENTRA, though. So how did this come about and what was? What was?

Shea Belsky: 52:52

the happen there. So I met the co-ventors of MENTRA February 2020, right before COVID shopping is down. For the very first time I met with them, we hit it off really quickly and we decided to really start to figure out how we're gonna take this idea that they had. They had the idea. The way I describe it is they had the dream and I was the artist who could make their dream a reality. I was doing all the engineering tech work. They were the ones that came up with, like, actually what we were gonna do and that really launched us into what is now MENTRA.

Shea Belsky: 53:23

We have like 34,000 job seekers three years later. We work with companies all over the United States. We've gotten almost 100 folks hired over the last year or a half and this guy has the limit, as far as we're concerned, in terms of getting folks hired in a way that respects them, give them a job that are equitable environments for them where they feel like they have to support and structure that need to be successful, and also educating other companies about how they can do better for their hires not just people who they're hiring, but people who are already in their organizations. A big part of where these neurodivergent initiatives don't succeed in is they only focus on hiring, just getting people in the door, and then, once they're there, I was like, oh okay, you're gonna have fun. But the reality of it is that if neurodivergent people don't have what they need to be successful in their company, they're just gonna leave. They're gonna be either forced out or they'll quit. And MENTRA also focuses on empowering companies and embedding within them or assessing their neuro-inclusivity, how inclusive they are for neurodivergent individuals, and helping them improve and grow and become a company that people really wanna work for.

Shea Belsky: 54:37

And companies come on to MENTRA and they talk about their neurodiversity. Why should a neurodivergent individual want to work for you? Why should they bother? Why? What makes you special? And then for the job seekers themselves, we ask them talk about your neurodiversity. What do you need to be successful as a neurodivergent person? What are your superpowers? And then also the generic stuff like work history, schooling, skills and stuff like that. So it really is a mixture of balancing how to allow the neurodivergent aspects to come out for the job seeker and the employer. It's wild, it's crazy, it's chaotic. I certainly enjoy it. It gets me out of bed in the morning and it really is just an awesome thing to do.

Gina: 55:26

So did you guys? All you guys all had previous experiences working for other companies being neurodivergent, and that's what gave you this idea Like how could this have been smoother, how could it have been better suited or inclusive? For someone like me Is that sort of the impetus behind the idea?

Shea Belsky: 55:46

So that was my experience. We're going to it, To be honest, with Conor Angelica. The genesis of the company came from Angelica. She has an older brother who is non-speaking autistic and she gave a TEDx talk at Georgia Tech and she's also a keynote speaker at the Grace Hopper Conference down in Florida, a massive conference for women in technology that happens every year. She was a keynote speaker I think it was 2019 and I saw her keynote and I went wow, this is amazing. I want to get behind this. Conor Angelica are now a diagnosis being neurodivergent. That didn't happen until a year or so after they founded MENTRA, so they didn't know that they were neurodivergent themselves until they saw the diagnosis were medical, professional, which is very expensive and very confusing and time consuming. As you get become an adult. It's a lot easier. When you are younger, because there's more to work with than when you're an adult is much more resistance to it.

Gina: 56:46

Okay, so that's interesting though. So they had, like, their careers already sort of in front of them, and the whole time they didn't realize that they had.

Nicola: 56:57

Whatever it is that they were working with Diagnosed with.

Gina: 57:01

Yeah, so that's so interesting, but okay, so how did you meet them?

Shea Belsky: 57:09

On the subject of a late diagnosis, it happens really frequently if someone is around someone else's neurodivergent and they're like, oh wait, I'm seeing a lot of the same things in them that I see in myself. Maybe there's something going on here, or they're in an environment where the stigma or the conversation around neurodiversity is much more positive, or they have the money and the resources and support structure for diagnosis. There's a lot of reasons why someone can get a diagnosis later in life and there are a lot of reasons why someone might not be able to. It is definitely an oddity, but I would not say that it's rare. It happens a lot more often than people think, for the reasons that I mentioned and for others.

Gina: 57:57

Yeah, absolutely, if you need to answer your question.

Shea Belsky: 57:59

Go ahead, cy.

Gina: 58:01

No, I also think there's just more transparency about it, especially over the last year or so. People are starting to talk about it fairly freely, so I think it opens it up for people who, like you said, who might not realize it or until they're around someone else. But I feel like this is what's happening with ADHD Everyone's talking about ADHD, right and how everyone's, especially women. I feel like a lot of women are recently diagnosed.

Gina: 58:35

Yeah, I found that, especially on our age like 35 to 50, I would say People I followed for years on Instagram. Now they're saying well, I was just recently diagnosed with ADHD and they're within our age range and it's like that's, on one hand, that's fantastic, like great, let's normalize it right. But on the other hand, it's like is this just a diagnosis? That is being like I think that's what you're reacting to. It's like, oh, you can't concentrate on one thing for like more than an hour, so you're automatically ADHD. So it's like you know, I mean, I don't know, because a lot of the ADHD characteristics, like I feel like you and me, nicola, would fit right in there.

Nicola: 59:16

So I'm like hyperindependence, hyperfocus, hyperfunctioning.

Gina: 59:21

I'm like, is that just trauma?

Nicola: 59:22

responses Like I know, and I'm like I personally would probably not get, like I wouldn't go to get a diagnosis, even if I've got these similar traits to someone else, because I'm like, I'm pretty confident that that's a trauma response.

Gina: 59:40

I'm the same and I'm like, what's the difference? What's the difference? What's the difference? Like, let's say it is something that can be diagnosed. I'd be like, okay, and like I still operate this way, so like it's not changing the way I'm doing things Right and it's like it's been successful so far.

Nicola: 59:59

But then isn't that like the key takeaway here, right Is? You've got an entire group of individuals that have neurodivergency and autism and, regardless of their diagnosis or not, that's still the way they're going to operate. So it's about you know, making sure that there's those accommodations in place, because it's like well, just because you have a slapper label on it and put it in a jar doesn't mean that that person's going to be any different because of it. They're just going to be exactly who they are and live their true self.

Shea Belsky: 1:00:34

The idea behind a diagnosis is not that it's meant to change things or like really make it like a flashpoint type of thing. The idea is some people need a diagnosis to get access to medication. Workplace may need a diagnosis before they can give accommodations or something like that. It really varies on an individual's needs. So the most common example is getting a diagnosis to be able to get medication either at a much reduced rate or free or something else, or as justification for the doctors that go out and get a prescription for you. It really is. It's not meant to make anything different, but it can also have the social effect of helping you understand. This is why I've been struggling for all this time. This gives me now a community, a framework within I can find self help without medication if that is what you want to do. It provides closure to a lot of people to say this is the name for that thing that's been bothering me for all this time.

Nicola: 1:01:30

That's a really good point as well. I think that's probably the piece of the puzzle that you and I were missing, gina, was that it does provide access and availability outside of your scope, where you were previously.

Gina: 1:01:51

Yeah, and this is my fault. Now, thinking more about it and as we're talking it through, ADHD and neurodivergency are like you can't really compare them. They're completely un-.

Nicola: 1:02:03

Okay, and again, I'm no doctor, Not just to be clear. But isn't ADHD a type of neurodivergency?

Shea Belsky: 1:02:11

It is, adhd is considered a part of it. Adhd is a way of describing somebody who's neurodivergent. One of my co-founders, jilica, is ADHD and autistic. She's neurodiverse in that regard.

Gina: 1:02:26

Wait, I might just be really old. I didn't realize that.

Shea Belsky: 1:02:31

I realized this you can be autistic.

Gina: 1:02:33

You're younger than me.

Shea Belsky: 1:02:35

You can be autistic and neurodivergent, but neurodivergent does not mean that you're autistic. Neurodiversity covers a lot of related definitions.

Nicola: 1:02:45

Yeah, adhd is part of the family. It's part of the family group of stuff Again, not a doctor Like I'm just now lumping it into a group of stuff, a family of stuff. That happens, it's related, it's related.

Gina: 1:03:01

Okay, okay. So even with our example of ADHD, that was the part we were missing. Okay, having that diagnosis opens up access and availability of things that maybe you wouldn't have before.

Nicola: 1:03:16

And I think you know what, Now that we're talking this through a little bit more and I'm having time to percolate on this a little bit is I don't think that you and I are the only two Muppets on the planet that had that same thinking, Right.

Gina: 1:03:31

Oh no, for sure not, we're both Muppets.

Nicola: 1:03:34

That too, but it's all over Instagram right now. That ADHD stuff, especially for women, is all over Instagram and if you and. I can make the same assumptions based on the information that's provided to us and not really know all of the facts or the details. We're not the only Muppets on the planet that have probably done that.

Gina: 1:03:56

Oh for sure we're not, Because we're Muppets, yes, but we're not intelligent. We're two intelligent women who can have conversations about this, sometimes better than others. Today's not our top work. I don't know why we showed off with peanut butter for brains Just goofy, but yeah, I mean. Now that I think about it, I probably did know that ADHD would be considered part of the whole neurodiversity. I don't want to use the word spectrum on the color wheel, but I think you hit the nail on the head, Nicola. It's the way it's being portrayed. Nobody is talking about ADHD as being neurodiverse. They're calling it ADHD and that's where they're leaving it.

Nicola: 1:04:50

Yeah, and then they give you do you have these traits Right?

Gina: 1:04:54

Everybody under the sun has those traits at some point or the other.

Nicola: 1:04:58

Exactly, and I think they're not delineating between, they're not really giving you any more information other than you probably have ADHD because you have these same traits, and it's like, well, not quite right. So I think actually this has opened a whole can of worms that I think we weren't expecting.

Shea Belsky: 1:05:20

Yeah, it really has. What Now you guys have something to talk about. I said A big part of this is people have really different experiences with neurodiversity. Some folks live their lives neurodivergent and there's nothing wrong with them or with that. I live my independent life. I'm getting married in a month and a half. I do my own thing. Some folks need a lot of support to get for the day. Some folks live with their parents or in a group home and need everything they can get. So the experience of neurodivergent people really varies greatly from person to person and the moral of the story is not to assume everything about someone based off of a diagnosis or a label and just sit down on top of them. It's really important to just be a good listener. That's enough that they are. It's something that I felt were just being a good listener.

Nicola: 1:06:11

Personally, have found this conversation really fascinating. I think it's also unpicked our own biases a little bit as well. I think it gave an opportunity to be a little bit more reflective. Even just our conversation around ADHD that just opened up that thinking even further, which I'm hoping it would help others to think differently too. So I really appreciate you coming on, Shay.

Gina: 1:06:43

It's been a great conversation.

Shea Belsky: 1:06:46

Absolutely. Thank you for letting me borrow some of your time to talk about neurodiversity, share my experiences in the workplace, talk about movies Deadpool, john McKeon-A-Reeves, all that stuff. I love talking about it.

Gina: 1:06:58

Thanks for having me and tell us where people can find you. Give us websites, handles, whatever you want to give us.

Shea Belsky: 1:07:05

I'm on LinkedIn Shay Belsky. There's only one of me. There's only one person my name out there, and if there isn't a person out there with my name, tell me and I'll fix it real quickly. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram. On TikTok, I'm starting to put some more neurodiversity content about there in the workplace. I am artistic underscore techie, which should be a fun little handle to remember, but if not, you can find me one place or another. Just look up my name.

Nicola: 1:07:31

Okay, yeah well, as I say, it's been awesome chatting to you and I think we kind of came into it, probably blinder than what we thought we were, absolutely, and I think it's been really great. So I really appreciate it.

Shea Belsky: 1:07:49

It's never too late to learn something. Thank you so much for having me again. It was a blast.