Welcome to the overnight trainer podcast where each week we talk about all things related to the world of learning and development, including facilitation, instructional design, sales, enablement and so much more. I'm your host, Sarah Ginestra and I'm an L and D strategist and career coach and I'm here to take the guesswork out of becoming an L and D professional and show you how to unlock continued success in your learning and development career.
I'm on a mission to quickly develop the next generation of L and the leaders who are looking to create meaningful and engaging learning experiences. So if you're looking to transition into L and D for the first time, have found yourself accidentally in a training position or are working up the ranks as an L and D professional already, you've come to the right place. Hey everyone welcome back to another episode of the overnight trainer podcast.
I'm super stoked, you're here and so excited about the guest that we have on today's show.
I have Jessica Michaels with me and we have been trying to record this podcast I think since like Jam january of this year, it is now september of this year, but we both had some scheduling conflicts earlier in the year and then as many of you know, my house flooded and I was out of my house for a long time, so didn't do any any interviews and so I was so happy to finally connect with her uh and record today's episode, which is super exciting and all about embracing neuro diversity in L and D.
I learned so much from Jessica in this episode. I continue to learn from her, her and I met Andy storch is Talent Development think tank, which is a networking group for talent development professionals. I'll drop the link in the show notes for it and for those of you that are interested, but that's where we met and I just was always just so in awe of her and always learning from her.
And it's just been incredible to see her as a talent development professional who is neurodivergent and also stepping into the role of coach and coaching other people who are neurodivergent as well. So really exciting topics before we get into today's episode. Um a couple of housekeeping announcements, we have tried to think of this podcast is coming out, I think it's coming out on it'll be Tuesday. So tomorrow, so that will be the 21st coming out on the 20th.
So the 21st, don't forget, it is the L. N. D. Or linkedin live workshops. So an opportunity for you to join a workshop which is all about your own personal brand when it comes to L. And D. On linked in. So we're going to go in the ins and outs and opportunity for Q. And A. It will be recorded and you will have access to it for 30 days afterwards.
So even if you can't make the live session, you still have access to the recording, which is going to be some a plus content for you also make sure you're signed up for that. We also have fast track going on which is the 90 days to your dream L and D roll group coaching program And yeah, lots of course there's lots of fun stuff.
So go to the overnight trainer.com, if you're looking for programs, programs, looking for events, master classes, hit the events section and I look forward to seeing you all in all the different things. So let's get into today's episode. Like I said, I am joined by Jessica. Michaels and Jessica has such a unique background. She spent 20 years of her career hearing the same thing. You're meeting all your goals, but you're still failing. People don't like you.
It had been the same story for her since childhood, but she had no clue really what to do about it. She continued to work through her challenges, became a facilitator, a speaker, a corporate trainer.
And then finally at age 40 she received a diagnosis explaining her struggles, autism spectrum disorder and A. D. H. D. She now uses her experience as a neurodivergent professional to coach others that have challenges in the workplace or a job search as well as provides consulting and training to businesses across the US. Like I said before, Jessica is a powerhouse.
I I was so engaged in this episode and learned so much from her just in the time that we had today and I can't wait for you to experience all of her knowledge, all of her amazing nous in this episode, Jessica Michaels, Welcome to the overnight trainer podcast. How are you today? I am great, thank you for having me. I'm so happy you're here.
You know, we like, we've been trying to get this on the books for such a long time and uh all the listeners know about all of my housing, crazy housing situation throughout the last couple of months. So, I'm so happy to have you here and for us to be chatting today about something that's a something that's being talked a lot about a lot more than it has been in the past, but also be something that's very deeply personal to you and to your experience. So, I'd love for you to start us off.
Tell us, you know, a little bit about your story. You know, first, I mean, you have a journey into L. And D. So it's very, very relevant to people listening, um and so much experience and the talent development space. Um so, I'd love to hear about how your journey in L and D how that became a career for you, and then moving into that personal and professional journey around neuro diversity and kind of where you are, where you are now and today, and and all of that.
So, take away, I'll tell the stories together because they are just inextricably linked. For sure. So, I from the beginning of life I knew that I was different. Some how um you know the thing I think I noticed earliest was other people had friends and I didn't know how to do that. Like it just didn't, it didn't make sense to me.
I didn't know what the process was and so I didn't have friends and then you know, you start to get a sense of, you know, people view you differently um and but it just sort of was just a feeling um because grade wise most of the time I did fine, I was very smart. That was very clear. I was highly verbal and it was just enough to get by I think without causing anybody any alarm beyond you know. Well she she's having a tough time in junior high, tough time in high school but she'll be fine.
You know, and then when I went to college and then into the working world, those things persisted and when I was working I noticed that that inability to make friends was more relevant than I thought it was going to be because I had no idea how the office politics worked and how much interpersonal relationships mattered. I was always a top performer when it came to my numbers right? If I was a recruiter, you know, I sourced the most candidates.
I had the most people starting or on assignment if I was in sales, I was always at the top, but I would have this problem where I would talk to my manager about, you know, maybe promotion or even just my own performance and they would say variations of, look, your production is great, but you don't get along with people, so there really isn't opportunity for you until you figure that out.
I would get feedback that, you know, people thought I was mean or that they thought it was rude, they thought I was aggressive, that I was yelling at them, um that I was defensive um and eventually you start to kind of become those things when people are telling you over and over and over, that, that's what you are. So the great thing was that even through this, I was able to find that in whatever job I had, I could teach people how to do something, right?
So, if I was a really good individual contributors and maybe I could train new people or I would dive into a crazy special interests like physical therapy, licensure process across the United States, and I would have all 50 of them memorized, and that I could train people on that. So, I always managed to make training somehow part of my part of my role, then I would get promote it because you're a good enough individual contributor. That's the only way to go, I would become a manager.
The wheels would just come off, that was really the worst possible situation. So that got me interested in learning about management. What does it take to be a good manager because clearly I am not.
So how do I become one and sort of through all that process is what eventually got me into training full time and then training managers full time because those are just things that I had gotten into because of the issues that I had had now even in L. And D once I uh you know once I was still in a position so it's maybe 20 years later I figure okay I can probably handle managing again. I mean it's been so long and I know so much more stuff and surely this has got to work.
And of course it didn't of course it was the same disaster that it was. You know it was just it was really disheartening because I had earned the right to build a team of trainers and I just wanted it to go well and it just did not. And so I knew at that point that it was probably me but I didn't know what, so that's when I started seeing a psychologist who recommended me for analysis for autism and A. D. H. D. And ultimately that's what what came about.
I thought you know with my education and my L. And D. Heart was like great because now I know what it is I'm sure there are resources right I'm gonna go and I'm just gonna read it all and I'm gonna study it all uh and that of course that's just not how it works, you know? And so then it kind of morphed into, okay, so I know that I've got these challenges I know now why I can't change them.
So how does this affect what I train and how I train and who I train and what messaging I support and things, you know, because you really get to a point where you realize I can't I can't train to eat cute the same way, I can't train um communication skills the same way as I did before. And so what do I do, what does that mean for me professionally, what does that, what does that mean for me in corporate America?
So it's it's still an evolving journey so that your story is so powerful and I know it resonates with so many people and especially, you know, being being active on linkedin, seeing people who also are having these diagnoses later in life. Um and and you have to now go back and say, oh wow, you've been thinking about your your childhood and how that how those things like, wow now it all it all makes sense right? In some way, shape or form.
And so I'd want to back up a little bit because some of the terms that you might have mentioned that we might talk about today might be new to some people, so I know we talk about like neurodivergent and neuro diversity and there's probably many other terms that even I'm not familiar with. Two. Can you define some of the in some of the more terms that maybe we'll be discussing today? Give people a little bit of a baseline. So they really understand the context. Absolutely.
And it is challenging because the terminology is evolving. So you might see different forms, you might see different words but a good bit base level understanding would be neuro diversity refers to the fact that everybody has a brain neuro and that they're all different diversity. Right? So if we look at the whole world the whole world is neuro diverse. But within neuro diversity you have a group of people whose brains work fairly you know pretty much the same way.
Like they have the same operating system. Right? So let's call those people are Windows people. Then we have this other smaller group of people whose brains work very differently than that larger group and similar to each other. Those are our max, right? So those the max those are neurodivergent individuals. Those would be people who are diagnosed or identify as people with autism. A. D. H. D. Dyslexia kind of the big ones.
But then it even gets further with um like things like Tourette's and dis proxy a and there's even some argument about what other things to include. Um But for our discussion the thing that you typically see in the corporate world is people who have challenges in interpersonal communication uh and their executive function, so like actually doing the things and often lots they might have sensory challenges as well. So that's kind of diversity in a nutshell, that's a really beautiful explanation.
I love the Windows Mac analogy, I think that will resonate with a lot of people too. So you actually, what I want to dive into next. You have already mentioned it a couple of times just in your intro and this was a it was about a post that you did this a while back now since we have been talking, but you didn't post on linkedin and it really sparked something within me and it really changed the way that I think about the idea of neuro divergence and neuro diversity.
And so I want to read that post and then talk a little bit more about it. So you said this emotional intelligence, active, listening essential is um self awareness. What do these concepts have in common? They have great potential to be able list in the way they are often expected, taught and put into practice.
They can give the idea that there is one way to do things to be successful, that deviation is bad and any challenge in doing these things means you can't be a good professional and certainly not a good leader, that's it sounds like that's your story too in a nutshell, right?
Talking about earlier around, you know, feeling I can't be a good a good manager and it's not that you can't, it's just that that's what from a societal perspective that the the Windows people right, are saying about about the Mac people for going back to that analogy. So can you dive a little bit deeper into what you mean by that and how this able ism manifest specifically in the way that we train these topics And um but you can tell it was feisty that day.
I like I like I like that was fighting words right there and it is something that's very relevant to me because I primarily train soft skills and what can happen is if you look at these concepts like eQ or like essential is um they all in, you know, really I'd say most of them if they were taught exactly the way they were intended with their the full breadth of those concepts and if everybody who trained it and took it did an intensive study,
then you'd probably be okay with most of the things because nothing about EQ inherently is able list. However, most of us when we train and most other people when they train, we're not diving into the original material necessarily that the people who created these concepts have would would recommend we're getting kind of a telephone version, right? We learned it, we learned it, then somebody else. You know, we taught somebody else.
And and and then when you look at the time pressure is just that we have an L. And D. I mean I would love to do a six week intensive emotional intelligence course. Wouldn't that be great? And then I just get real grimy with essential ISM right?
All of these things because that would allow you the time to get into things like hey, if I'm a person with A D. H. D. How do I make essential is um work for me there within the bounds of that concept or how, you know, if my self awareness is quite frankly very different than other people's, we would have some opportunity to get to get into that. But what we do is we have material we maybe live teach a one hour webinar with three other concepts. Um We make it a bullet point in manager training.
I mean there's just realities of what we do that means that we're not teaching these concepts in the way that they were intended. We're kind of taking a bastardized version or like a CliffsNotes version and what's able list about that is when you do that, you really run the risk of only teaching what applies to the masses. So if I have three concepts to teach then and I have an hour to do it. I'm going to pick the material that is most brought.
I'm gonna say eq you need to understand what is not being said. You need to understand the feelings and emotions that the other person has active listening.
You know, you really want to make sure you are um engaged and that you're making eye contact and and you know, that's, you know, one of the ways that you can communicate and then um maybe with essential is um you know, you really make your your listen, you you get your your essential tasks, the one or two things and you focus on them and you just let go of all these other things that are not necessary. Right? Put that out.
Problem is that every one of those things that I just said will make somebody hopping mad because it's defensive, I cannot physically, my brain will not ever allow me to understand what somebody else is feeling unless they tell me your face doesn't tell me anything other than you got one, that's great. Uh but other than that, I need to ask you, I need to know if you're mad, you need to tell me you're mad.
But what what happens ultimately then is, so we've got this concept now that's really watered down, we're teaching it in this way that applies to most people, but not all, but then we're also training employees then that if my manager this is the way they show acute right, they need to do this, they need to be able to figure out what I'm thinking and feeling and what my needs are, and if they aren't doing that in this way then it's wrong. Well then they must not care.
They must not, you know, do these things. So we're really just putting this idea of what is professional in this tiny little box like you know, 100 years ago a bunch of old white men got in a room and said, here's what a professional person looks like sounds like and act like and we just keep unintentionally reinforcing that.
And um so yeah, I think that it's not something people are doing intentionally and there are some people who really get to the heart of these concepts and and would never maybe teach the kind of just the CliffsNotes version, but that's not the reality for most of us.
When I read that post, it made me think about all the times that I taught a communication skills class and talked about eye contact and it really has been through, through reading your content and hearing you speak and you know, some other thought leaders in the space too. But really I've learned so much from you because it's those, if we're operating from those that windows right?
And that's what those old white men, you know, thought 100 years ago, it is, it is a conditioning that we have to, you know, people don't like to use the word unlearned anymore. It's not cool. It's not cool to use that word apparently. But yeah, put it to the list, you don't unlearned, I don't know, whatever. But I think in this case unlearn it, like unlearn it right, that there's so many other ways.
And one of the things that you just said it was really was I was thinking about the next question around, I was gonna ask you if you think L. And D. Has a role in perpetuating this able ism. But in our conversation it sounds like unintentionally we do right? It doesn't sound like intentionally, we're like, all right, let's be able this. But unintentionally we're perpetuating it.
So, so how how then if if I didn't unintentionally perpetuating it, and people are gonna listen to this episode and say, okay, now I'm now I know now I have the knowledge what can L and D. Professionals do or be mindful of be conscious of as they now move forward in looking at their content and developing new learning programs and making sure that they are being inclusive from a neurodivergent perspective. Yeah, absolutely.
So, and I think, and I don't want to make anybody feel bad because I when I learned to be a trainer, the things I learned were ok, if the class is engaged, they're going to have all eyes up front, no phones are gonna be out, nobody's gonna be doodling or looking anywhere, but at me, they're gonna be throwing their hands up when I have questions, they're going to be really engaged in partner activities and all of these things that I used to determine if I was doing a good job,
all of those things are in some way list. So I really needed to shift my focus from things like what are my attendance metrics? Right? How many people logged into the zoom call? Um, how many people completed a workbook while they were doing this? How many, you know, how did this person respond when I just called them out of thin air and I had to let that go.
And my ego was a little challenged by that because I was just used to that energy as truly a part of my facilitation and how good I thought I was. So I had to switch my focus then to truly, what am I here to do? Well, I'm here to help people learn and in business you're here to drive a behavior change.
So instead of looking at attendance, who came to this webinar, who did this one thing this one way, you just flip that and look at, did they, are they able to do the thing, whatever the thing was that your training, can they do that? And that doesn't necessarily even mean, did you teach them to do that? It's can they do that? And separating that from, and did they come to the webinar? And did they attend the life training? And did they turn in a workbook? And did they?
And did they, whatever, watch that you're learning? Uh and that was a hard shift in a lot of ways because it's just not the way we're set up. Um So I think focusing on the outcome is important. I also think giving people multiple ways to access information is critical. I heard a lot, I'm writing a book right now, almost done, almost done on. So it's on neuro diversity in employee growth and development.
And it started just being a book for trainers and instructional designers, but then it's anybody who imparts information, anybody who is responsible for learning moments within an organization, so managers, enablement, uh you know onboarding orientation, things like that. Um One so in that process I was interviewing a lot of neurodivergent professionals saying, okay, tell me about your learning experience in corporate and so many times I heard well you gotta watch these videos, right?
And so you gotta watch till the end or you've got to do these e learnings but I don't learn that way. That is I I can watch that 1000 times and I'm not going to learn it.
So I just put it on and wait till it ends and then I find the process document or whatever and I read that or I just try to hit next as many times as I can if there's a quiz, I try to take it, if it sends me to a document then I'll look at but I will find other ways of accessing the information outside of what you have provided me to learn. And I will now have had to do all these extra steps to do the thing that I thought you were helping me with, which was learning.
So we ask people to go through motions without really realizing that that's what we're doing. But to me, if I am teaching a concept and I have a desired outcome, you know, my objective is to make sure that at the end of the day all of the people in this group can do X. I don't care if they came to the live event, You know, if they did cool, but I'm not gonna require it because some people don't learn that way or they just don't prefer to be in that environment.
Some people would prefer to just listen to the audio or watch um you know, watch the recording or find the process document. I don't care as long as they can demonstrate in however way I've decided they're going to be assessed that they can do the thing. The challenges. Then though my program, oh your attendance on your webinar is really low because there's no way to take this job. This process document and say, oh, these people participated. This is like attendance.
So it all kind of goes together. But I think um so multiple ways to access information and then pay attention to what your outcome is and and how you're going to assess that and let that be the guide over how they participate. I think it's really important and the last thing is never just give one way to do things or like, you know when you're saying, EQ you have to just intuit what the person said, you have to listen to, the words behind the words is always my favourite one.
Well, some people can't do. Yeah. So if you say that, that's what you have to do and then you have to have a queue to be a good manager, then you're telling people you're not going to be able to do this. So instead of that, then say, and if you, you know, teach that Absolutely learn the words behind the words, great. If you're not able to do that or if this is not something that comes naturally to you, then here's some good coaching questions.
You know, here's a way to design an alliance with an employee to create a psychologically safe space where they feel that when I ask these questions they can tell me. And those are, those are so those are kind of my three, my three big rules, those are great and I think it's such an important lens too. A go back through all of what, what, what are you training right now, what are you developing right now. How are you developing employees and looking at it from the lens of what you just said.
Um, and then saying, okay, here's kind of some pillars and I'm sure your book will be like the guidebook for this, but these pillars now to think about when it comes to moving forward and designing and developing learning experiences and it the what came to my mind as you were talking was like L and D also we have to get over ourselves and that's something I talked about a lot of like, early, early, early on in my L and D career, you know,
I learned around like the golden rule and the platinum rule and I love both of those. Like the golden rule is, you know, do unto others as you would want done unto you. And I think a lot of times learning professionals designed that way and think that way well, oh, this is how I would want to learn eq, this is how I would want to do this.
Like I would get bored if I did that or I, I wouldn't want to read a process document and it's not about you, it's not about you like at all, like literally at all, it has nothing to do with you. But that mindset because we feel strong in our beliefs or we, that's how we were brought up or we have, you know, 2030 40 years of conditioning in that way. It's hard to break. It's really hard to break.
But I think once we can say here's the lens we need to look at it from, which is really the people centered lens at the end of the day, no matter what, I love those, those tips that you gave to to really start to look at it. So I want to shift for a second because I know that many of the listeners are job seekers and and I know that there are some, including some of my personal clients who are neurodivergent.
So I know that you, in addition to having a really wonderful talent development role, you also do coaching for people who are neurodivergent. And so I kind of want you to put both of those hats on if you can for how would you advise people who are, who are neurodivergent through the navigating the job search and interview process? Because I know and the next question I'm gonna ask you is how do we make that process more equitable?
But knowing that the world exists right now as is, and it's not always equitable and inclusive when it comes to neuro diversity, neuro divergence, what what can job seekers do too To show up and to be successful in that process? Absolute. And this is really where um you know, one of the things that galvanized me into action was learning that 80-85% of autistics are un or underemployed and that just broke my heart.
I got lucky because my first job was in recruiting, I, you know, had applied for an admin position, I just knew I didn't want to waitress anymore. So I just fell into this world where I learned the rules of, hey when you interview somebody, here's what you're looking for. So I learned what people look for. I learned so much just as a fluke that and most people don't have that, don't have that opportunity. So I had no idea then that that that would be such an important part of my life.
But I think right now with neurodivergent candidates, a couple of things tend to be blockers. The first is when they are applying for jobs, They'll look at a job description and sometimes they will say, Okay, well this is asking for 12 things. I only have 11 of them. So I'm not going to apply because I'm not qualified or they'll see things like we want a rock star, we want a hunter, we want an ace, you know, and not apply. That's hilarious.
So like I had to meet myself because I was like laughing hysterically at that. Yeah. And so, you know, and in women statistically women already don't apply to as many positions as men because they tend to want to have more of the listed qualifications than men do. Uh And so men will throw their resume in and and hope for the best and women tend to be a little bit more cautious.
Then you add neuro diversity on top of that and it really does make women who are autistic or a D. H. D. Really reluctant to uh to apply because they feel like they can't they're breaking a rule they shouldn't. Um But you know so just just get your resume out there, do tailor it to the position as much as you can. You know you should have a resume that does reflect what you do have that is applicable for that position.
But don't wait until you have 100% of the things listed because honestly a recruiter is gonna look at that and go oh you're overqualified. So so you're shooting yourself in the foot twice. Um the other so that that I think when you're you're job searching and then also have an organized job search um when you're using all these aggregate sites when you're using.
Indeed and uh and you know in all these other places you might be applying to the same job 30 times and not knowing that that's what you're doing. So you do need to be organized about the company the role and making sure you're not wasting effort by applying o on the company's website and going through indeed and send you know and that is just uh it leads to frustration because you feel like you're you're wasting your time.
Um then from an interview perspective you do always want to ask questions in an interview even if you don't have any. So you should have prepared a few questions to ask that you can use if you don't develop any natural questions throughout that interview process. Also in the interview, I always want to remember that any of the questions they ask you, they're looking to see kind of how you've done things previously and how might you do them now at my company.
So when they say things like tell me about a weakness of yours, you really want to think about that and say, okay well how does this apply in this context? The fact that you make terrible chocolate chip cookies is not helpful in this situation. So you want to present something, you know that is applicable to work, but also what you've done to improve on that because you always want to end with a positive. So maybe your Excel skills weren't strong that was hurting you early in your career.
So you took some online training and now you're that's something that you're much better at um if they asked about a failure again work related but also something where you did learn something and how you're going to prevent it from ever happening again. So it's just really thinking about not only what is the question and literally what are they asking, but thinking about the context of the interview and what they're after to formulate your answers and I highly recommend mock interviews.
I know coaching is not accessible to everybody, but there are some great resources on common interview questions and there so there are things you can learn that can help prevent you from some of those situations and don't ask about money or vacation time on the first interview. I know it is why we all want jobs because we need money but you can't say that and I know how dumb that sounds. I actually disagree with that. Last point.
I coach my clients to never leave the first interview without knowing what their what their salary range is, what their what their budgeted for. Because I've had way too many clients get to the end of interviews and the process and spend Hours and hours and hours and hours prepping and showing up to interviews and only to hear that the salary is $20,000 less than what they're making.
So definitely what I always encourage that was that's not the first question that you're asking, you Would be like why do you want this role? What interests you in our company? I need a job and I need a job that pays not not the answer there for 100% agree with that. Yeah, so now let's flip the script right? So that's what people who what people can do to prepare. So it sounds like preparation is a is a key part of that there.
So in addition to talk about what L. And D. Can do, but you I don't even I learned from you that you were in recruiting before too. So I'm learning so much about you personally also. So what can recruiters and hiring managers and leaders do to create an equitable and inclusive hiring and interview process that's inclusive of people who are neurodivergent. Yes. That's what needs to happen. Yes, it is. That's that's what's more fair. Yeah. So the first is be literal and clear in your job postings.
No rock stars, no aces, no hunters specifically. What does this job do? And what does the person who's gonna do it? What do they have to have would be nice to have? And I know that sounds so basic, but it is a huge problem.
We just, you know, we we look at a job ads advertisements, I think in in Mark more of a marketing piece sometimes or we look at them as aspirational like this would be the perfect, perfect person who could jump in and and do things from minute one, but that's really not what we're trying to do most of the time. That's not realistic about the candidates. So clear job descriptions that are have literal language.
Then when you look at an interview itself, there's all of these things that we have learned, right that tell us if it's a good candidate. I remember when I was sourcing, I would, when I would talk to somebody, I would want to see, did they drive the conversation because I was recruiting for sales. And so that was something that was very important. What does that even mean? Like what, what, that doesn't mean anything.
So when you're looking at these things, like how they presented the questions they asked, did they make eye contact? Um do how do those things compared to what they have to do on the job. If the job is being a developer then does whether or not they had a good handshake have anything to do with how good of a developer they're gonna be. So we just have to separate out these social expectations from actually finding out if somebody can do the role.
So if there are alternative ways to determine that if somebody can turn in a portfolio, if somebody can do a sample project or somebody can demonstrate their skills then often that you will get a true picture of what that candidate can do compared to this unnatural setting of interviews. It's also good I think just ask are you comfortable right now? Because things like a light buzzing always tell the story.
My wife can tell if a light bulb is about to go because it makes a different sound before it goes off. And she can also tell when your cell phone is done charging because it makes a different sound. So she can hear those things. If you think about all that sensory input that people are bringing in, that you don't notice how long do you think they're gonna do answering questions when this light sounds funny, the cell phone is charged, The fan is buzzing, you know?
So why can't we just accommodate that person and create an environment where they can um where they can think and and speak and you do have to train hiring managers for sure on how to be inclusive because from a hiring manager's perspective, they are trying to figure out can I manage this person, you know, how are they going to fit into my team? So this idea of a culture fit needs to go, needs to go, needs to go, needs to go. So there needs to be some really good training and support.
I always advise companies that you're gonna put in neuro diversity programming. Don't start with recruiting. Start with supporting the employees that you have through er, GS and diversity training and manager training and then go into recruiting. Um, and then if you do have a neuro diversity friendly or a disability friendly setup, make sure you advertise that or in your job and say if you need accommodations, let us know, but you have to mean it.
If somebody says, oh, you need the questions in advance, then you need to give them to them and not use that to disqualify them. Yeah, you see that a lot in job descriptions about accommodations, but it's like the last thing all the way on the bottom and like, tiny italicized font, like, and it's the, like, the standard legal jargon of like we are accessible and we will accommodate? And it's like the robot wrote that. I really love what you're saying about truly meaning.
It really, truly meaning it like please let us know what we can do to accommodate you. What are what are your thoughts, what are your thoughts on creating overall best practices? Like So you had mentioned around sending the interview questions ahead of time. Another guest of mine who was recently on Kristy Woods, she focuses on networking and most of the people who are introverted um and say and gave that same advice around, you know, from an introverted perspective.
Making it inclusive for introverts. Getting those questions ahead of time really helps them prepare and be calm and not be able to think in that moment necessarily. So what are your thoughts on on making making some of these Practices and overall practice versus having making someone have to ask for them? Mm Hmm. Yeah. And it's it's funny. I say, you know, neuro diversity is one of the few areas where you can target maybe 30% of your population and positively affect 100% of your population.
That's a mic drop moment. I know. And so because even if people don't identify as neurodivergent because a lot of people don't know. Or even if maybe what they prefer doesn't go to the level of I need an accommodation under the A. D. A. S definition of accommodation, everybody has references, everybody has things that make them more comfortable and things that they prefer that allow them to do their best work.
And so if we approach things from that perspective of being flexible because we truly want people to be able to do their best work, which is what we should want. Then it again you're helping those neurodivergent people, but you're really helping everybody who might, you know, some people don't want to interview with the camera on because they've been on zoom for two years and it's making them crazy or seeing themselves is a distraction. Does it matter if that person is neurodivergent or or not?
If that is something that would help them focus and help me determine if they're a good fit, why would I not want to do that? So I think if we approach the work place overall as being more neuro inclusive and and creating cultures of preference or preferences are understood and honored, then you'd I mean it would change the world. I love that. I love that.
Thank you for all of those mic drop moments right there and I really hope that people listening to this take everything that you've said in in today's in our conversation because what you're what you're talking about are not all right. I want to say the right thing here, but I would say it's not hard to make some of these changes, like you're not talking about complete overhauls of culture or ways of working you're talking about really realistic.
I think that's a better word to use really realistic things that in ways that what we can implement into your point. Yes, yes, in in in in thinking about the smaller population, but that's going to benefit everyone as as a whole to and that what what you're talking about here, aren't things that take years to put into place. These are things that and and ideas that people can can really think about implementing tomorrow today. So I really, really appreciate, appreciate that.
So, two last questions for you. One is the question I ask every person, which is what are you learning right now? What am I learning right now? I am learning a lot about communication and how to create a communications process because one of the most challenging things that neurodivergent individuals have is that we like you and I speak the same language, but we have totally different dictionaries.
So the way that I feel and express emotions and is totally different than maybe what a neuro typical person would, but the neuro typical person doesn't know that. So they're going to read my words and actions through the lens of what they know and what they've experienced and so in trying to create kind of a system that is, you know, allows people to really let go of their expectations of what communication is.
I've learned a lot about, you know, throughout history, how people have communicated in different communities, maybe who don't use uh you know who, who don't use language that we would recognize, you know, where, where it's more, you know, different sounds that we would not easily identify as being as being language. So I'm learning a lot about language and communication right now. So my useless knowledge fountain is just overflowing right now, which is pretty great.
I feel like that's from an L and D perspective, you know, like I said before like the curse of LNG, we just can't, we can never get enough. Alright, last question, where can people connect with you? I am sure people are going to listen to this episode um they're gonna want to connect with you, follow you, learn from you hire you, so how people connect with you, what services do you provide? When can we get your book, all of those fun things. So I do offer speaking services.
So I will come in and do general employee trainings or if there's a specific topic that people are looking for, I'll do bespoke talks. So, um and that information is on my website. I also do have a few coaching slots open for neurodivergent professionals, so again, go to my website which is coach Jessica Michaels dot com.
The book will be coming out this fall, hopefully early in the fall, but you know, well see it's called one size fits no one a practical guide to neuro diversity and employee growth and development and information will be on my website. I'm also on linkedin. Uh and all my media links are on my website because I do publish content on twitter instagram, tiktok Youtube and linkedin as well.
Wow, I need to, I need to learn from, you need to get on those platforms to, but Jessica, thank you so much for having on with me today. I have learned so much, I continue to learn so much from you. I will put all of those links in the show notes as well so people can find you very quickly and connect with you, but appreciate all that you're doing all that you're doing. Uh you know, on behalf of the neurodivergent community and all that you're doing on behalf of L and D as well.
And like you said, when you know when a small population wins, we all win. So thank you so much for being here today and I know for sure it won't be the last time we have one of these conversations. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If it resonated with you in any way, please let me know by subscribing, liking and leaving a review. I'd love to hear from you on how you're using these tools as well as what you want to hear more of.
So connect with me on linkedin at Sarah Ginestra, send me a DM or email me at hello at the overnight trainer dot com. I can't wait to hear from you and until next week stay learning.