(0:03 - 1:16)

Flic Manning: We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which we record and especially to those who may also be living with a disability. Welcome to another episode of the Sunflower Conversations where we will explore a variety of disabilities, the way in which people experience their disabilities and discover the opportunities for society to make access and inclusion improvements for everyone. My name is Flic Manning and I'm your host.

Hi everyone. My name is Flic Manning and like many of our guests on the Sunflower Conversations, I'm disabled. Some of my conditions include Crohn's disease, Lupus and Reynard's syndrome. Today, I'm joined by an insightful leader, educator and change maker in the world of inclusion. I'm really excited to have her on the show. We've got Nicole Marshall with us. Nicole, welcome to the show. 

(1:16 - 1:18)

Nicole Marshall: Thanks, Flic. Thanks for having me.

(1:18-1:25)

Flic Manning: Oh, the pleasure is definitely all mine and thankfully everyone that's listening or reading the transcript today. Super excited to have you here. So Nicole, you've spoken actually about being a self-discovered autistic person who went through a diagnostic process in your thirties.

What was that experience like for you personally and how has it shaped the way you now move through the world?

(1:26 - 3:46)

Nicole Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. And so growing up, I always felt like life was so much harder for me than the people around me. Things just seemed to make sense and click for them.

You know, people would understand jokes and they could make friends really quickly and easily. They didn't seem to be exhausted just from doing everyday things. I always had this nagging feeling like I just didn't, I was always at the fringes.

I didn't quite fit in, but I wasn't too different, if that makes sense. But I also desperately wanted to fit in. And I think it was because of those experiences that I've always been driven by a mission to make life better and easier for other people.

It's one of the reasons I started teaching. I wanted to end bullying as naive as that sounds. And it was when I was working in a school with autistic children that something just seemed to click for me. And all of a sudden I could communicate easily and I could understand interactions easily, whether they were my own or I was watching the other children interact. It was what started me on that process of diagnosis. I still recall one of the things that the psychologist said to me during our diagnostic assessment results conversation.

She said she found that meeting some of the criteria for me was actually somewhat challenging because I had become so good at masking. I had, you know, for anyone who doesn't know exactly what masking is, it, you know, it's talking about this idea that we suppress our natural instincts of behaviour or interaction to adhere to socially acceptable or quote unquote normal behaviour. I really hate that word, but that's a different story for a different time.

You know, I'd spent my entire life into that young adulthood learning how to behave to a degree that would be socially acceptable to others. So getting that diagnosis was like a weight had been lifted. It was a beautiful thing, but it was also a very daunting thing because then I had to start figuring out who I was. You know, I had learned how to play this socially normative game, but that wasn't who I was. And so that's something that I still go through every day.

(3:46 - 4:07)

Flic Manning: Yeah. I love that you've, you've shared that. I think that's such an interesting part of it too. Um, the fact that the process doesn't stop at diagnosis itself, that it almost opens up another door, uh, for self-discovery and exploration and the confusion that can go with all of that too. I think that's such a relevant thing to share. Thank you for highlighting that.

(4:07 - 4:12)

Nicole Marshall: You know, it's one of these things where it answers so many questions, but then it asks so many more.

(4:13 - 4:24)

Flic Manning: Exactly right. So Nicole, in your view then, what are some of the most common misunderstandings people have about neurodivergent individuals, especially in workplace or team environments?

(4:25 - 6:59)

Nicole Marshall: Hmm. Um, I can only really speak to my own experience, of course, but the things that, that I really feel, uh, are most commonly felt or even just alluded to is that we're too hard or too risky to work with. Um, that if we're not particularly typical verbal communicators, then we can't follow or don't follow what's going on and we can't respond back.

Um, that we don't work with well with others, that we, that we isolate ourselves, um, and that workplaces will need to make too many accommodations or, uh, or adjustments for us to just be able to do our jobs. Um, and it's just not true. You know, um, I've had some wonderful managers and colleagues over my, over my career, um, and the ones that have been most effective was when I had conversations about my ways of working.

Um, and they were held proactively and they were held regularly because as we know, things change, um, disability and lived experience can be so dynamic. And so my managers and colleagues really understood, um, that I was still figuring out my best ways of working and what my access needs were, and they really supported me along that, that ride. Um, and that was when work was a joy, you know?

Um, so initially my requests at work were pretty few and far between because I didn't want to be a bother. It was that mask that was still on. Oh, just work however the rest of the team works.

Um, but I've actually learned that that makes things harder for everyone because that would be when misunderstandings would occur or deadlines would be misinterpreted or the context of meetings or events would be misunderstood. Um, so it's, it also led to a lot more exhaustion. So it's one of those interesting things that advocating for myself, um, particularly avoiding things like, can we have a quick chat drives me nuts at work.

Um, it would be a happy day if people stopped using that phrase, um, or sending meeting invitations or emails without any details. It's one of those things that it made me very aware that not asking those questions, not advocating for, for myself was then not modelling to everybody else. That access is part of an everyday conversation.

It's something that I, I would love us to do without even needing to consciously think about it.

(6:59 - 7:17)

Flic Manning: Yeah. You've highlighted some really good things there. Now, obviously you mentioned you have worked in teaching. Um, you've also worked in teams with people with disabilities and now in inclusion strategy. What are some of the most meaningful lessons you've learned across those different roles when it comes to actually creating inclusive spaces?

(7:18 - 9:41)

Nicole Marshall: The, one of the most important lessons that I learned, um, is that the experience of one person with disability, um, is just that it's one experience. And that diagnostic label doesn't really tell us a lot. Um, we really can't make assumptions.

And like I mentioned before, that our experiences can be really dynamic. So they can change in different situations or when we're with different people or at different times of the day, or even in different weather, um, it's, it's, it's so ever changing and we really need to be very conscious of that, but also challenge ourselves on that. Um, and that's where to challenge what we think we know about disability and what we might know about the people in our lives and in our workplaces.

Um, I mentioned earlier that, that a driving force behind why I wanted to be a teacher was to end bullying. And in some respects, that's also what's led me into the inclusion work that I'm now doing today. Because ultimately it's, it's about making sure that everybody not just feels like they belong, but that they do belong.

Um, I, my, my end goal really is to put myself out of a job because if, if the world was inclusive and accessible and embracing of our, our, you know, our human diversity and our human experience, then we wouldn't need roles like the roles that I have. We wouldn't need people who work in the DEI or in the inclusion space. Um, it would just be our way of working and our world.

Um, it's also been proven time and again, that it's good business sense. Um, it's, it's a whole population of people that we're not tapping into who want to do things. They want to get out and be part of the world.

I say they, but I mean, we, you know, um, we, we have money to spend. We have desires. We want to be taxpayers, you know?

Um, and if we're not being accessible and inclusive in the way that we designed our businesses, our services, our schools, then we can't do that.

(9:43 - 10:07)

Flic Manning: Beautiful, beautiful. And I think anyone that's, again, listening to this today or is reading the transcript today, just that last portion of what Nicole said, there's, you really can't make it any more succinct at how powerful inclusion actually can be. So Nicole, how has your lived experience informed the way you collaborate, lead and problem solve in your current role as inclusion strategy lead?

(10:07 - 11:36)

Nicole Marshall: In some ways, it's a really easy question to answer. And in some ways it's really tricky. Um, because it depends on how well I know the people that I'm living or working around and with, um, but also the structures that are in place to support that and how hard or fiercely I have to work within a system or fight against it in many respects.

Um, the voices of, of disabled people, people living with non-visible disability, um, people who are neurodivergent are often seen as defiant, um, as disruptive, as troublesome, and it's because we're trying to navigate a world that isn't designed for us. And so understanding the people that we're working with, understanding ourselves, trying to advocate for that and for that advocacy to be embraced and to listen to is inevitably what's going to make things easier for all of us.

(11:36 - 12:06)

Flic Manning: And I think that's a really good answer too, because it is, I think in some ways it's sort of contextual, it's circumstantial, it depends on the environment that you're in, like you said, it depends on the people that you might be collaborating with, working with, living with at the time. So, you know, again, that, that dynamic nature to so many of our, um, conditions also means that we're sort of having to adapt on the fly at any given time. And that in and of itself is complex and layered.

(12:07 - 12:08)

Nicole Marshall: Yeah, it absolutely is.

(12:08 - 12:20)

Flic Manning: Yeah. So then Nicole, if you could suggest two changes, big or small, that organisations could make today to be more supportive of neurodivergent staff in particular, what would they be?

(12:21 - 15:33)

Nicole Marshall: One of the things that I was most proud of and am most proud of, um, when I was a hiring manager is the improvements that we made, um, to our recruitment and particularly to our interview process. Um, we know that looking for, looking for work is a really daunting experience. Um, and it's also the thing that sets us up in terms of what to expect from the culture of a workplace.

So for, for me, one of the things that, that I find most challenging about, um, about career progression or looking for new experiences is the unexpected. And so one of the things that we did, um, when we were bringing new people into the team was try to remove the element of surprise. So we would give candidates as much information as possible about what to expect from that process.

It was, you know, giving people maps with explanations of, about how to get to the office, how to find us when they were in there, who would be part of the interview and importantly, what questions we were going to ask. And we did that so that people could actually bring the most relevant information that, that they wanted to share, but that was going to benefit us in making our decision. And the quality of the interviews dramatically improved, but also we were getting a broader candidate pool.

We were getting people who felt safe to share their various lived experiences. And we were getting brilliant feedback to say that it was a wonderful process to go through rather than a daunting process to go through. And so if I can, I suppose, inspire any other workplaces to improve their, their recruitment practices is give people as much information as you can.

Try to remove the element of surprise because it also will then set your workplace up for success. And the last thing that I want to mention is, is bringing that visibility into the non-visible lived experience. And that's why things like the Sunflower Initiative are so wonderful is because we can see it and so we can be it. And so we can feel that community. We can be part of it. We can feel safe.

And for anyone who is autistic, neurodivergent or lives with any visible, non-visible disability, I do hope that we collectively can find moments, find situations, find people that make us feel seen and safe and valued and loved. And so we collectively become more and more into the center of our conversations and more and more into every part of our world. I really do hope for and believe in a world where our access conversations are as routine and as mundane as how we like our tea or our coffee or of our beverage of choice. It's things like that that just bring me joy.

(15:35 - 16:05)

Flic Manning: Well, hear, hear, Nicole. I am all for a world that is like that. And I'm really glad that we have wonderful people in our community like you who are out there doing that work to try to make that a possibility, even if it's not necessarily for us, but certainly for the next generations of people coming through.

They deserve equality with everybody else. So I really want to thank you for sharing your lived experience with us today on the show and just for the incredible work that you're doing. So, Nicole, thanks for taking the time to speak to me today.

(16:06 - 16:08)

Nicole Marshall: Thank you, Flic. I so appreciate it.