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Leadership: laying the groundwork for psychological safety

  • January 28, 2025January 28, 2025

In a coaching conversation last week, the subject of sticking your head over the parapet came up. Tina, as we’ll call her, is driven by an incredibly strong sense of natural justice, and is also a highly creative leader drawn towards doing things differently. Although she isn’t naturally assertive, she believes it is her responsibility to role-model the act of speaking up, and she’s cultivated this over time. 

Unfortunately, Tina is not supported organisationally by a climate that welcomes her speaking up, so she’s doing it in the face of defensiveness and opposition from senior leadership. Her experience of the culture in her department and more broadly her organisation (a UK university) is that, despite having all the ‘right’ policies, ultimately it closes ranks and preserves what is often an exclusionary status quo. Understandably, she’s frustrated, particularly because in previous organisational environments her experience was of staff feeling safe to have open, honest conversations; having licence to experiment with new ideas; and having the space and safety to fail intelligently, without an accompanying blame culture. Tina feels that her performance and career is being compromised because of this.

Because Tina has seen first-hand the direct benefits of psychological safety to both individuals and their organisations, she wants to take agency in establishing this where she can, starting with the conditions that she is co-creating not just with her local team but also in terms of the climate of all the spaces where she shows up at work.

What is psychological safety?

If you’re not already familiar with the concept of psychological safety, here’s a short and important primer, because the term can get an undeserved bad rap for being too lightweight, usually due to being misinterpreted as being politically correct or ‘nice’. 

What do we mean when we talk about psychological safety? Professor Amy Edmondson, from Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999, and over 20 years of research now demonstrates that organisations with higher levels of psychological safety perform better on almost any metric or KPI.  

Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.” It’s about creating an environment in which everyone’s voice can be heard, where people feel included and appreciated, and in which everyone has a felt sense of safety: safe to speak up, share ideas, not know things, admit mistakes and fail intelligently (recognising that this is a crucial factor for creativity and innovation). This safety and space are fundamental to high performance, collaboration, staff wellbeing, and transformational and sustainable organisational change.

It isn’t necessarily comfortable, because psychological safety doesn’t shy away from appropriate challenge – but leaning into productive conflict is far preferable to false harmony. When we feel safe at work, we can bring our best and be at our best. We can tackle the tough stuff and the difficult conversations being able to say what needs to be said, while continuing to nurture valuable working relationships. And it’s evidence-backed: Research has identified psychological safety as the #1 differentiating factor for high performance teams and a pivotal factor in increasing collaboration and innovation. We can measure it (through the Fearless Organization Scan), and as the saying goes: what gets measured gets improved.

Whose responsibility is it to create psychological safety?

In my leadership coaching, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who can theoretically see the benefits of psychological safety, but don’t know how they can individually make a difference, particularly when they already feel disempowered by organisational cultures and toxic senior leadership behaviours. 

The question I am often asked is this: Can you have psychological safety in an organisation if there is no awareness, appetite or vision for this from the top (at least not yet)? The answer is yes. You may find the snapshot below interesting in this regard, which shows team vs. organisational psychological safety ratings as measured by global research undertaken by The Fearless Organization. The data reflects how very highly-rated teams can be located within organisations rated as having a poor psychological safety climate. The reverse, however, is not the case; there is not a single datapoint for a low-rated team within a great organisation.1

*used with permission from The Fearless Organization

In essence, psychological safety grows: from pockets in teams, to pools in departments, you can have influence and build a safer climate from the ground up.

Crucially, this also reflects how psychological safety attunes to a distributed or collective leadership model – what this means is that although top-down leadership visibly sets the tone, role-models constructive behaviours and charts the direction for the kind of culture that a team or indeed organisation wants to stand for, all members of the system have a role to play. 

And because psychological safety is co-constructed, this means that leaders at all levels of the organisation have agency. Whether you’re in a formal leadership role or not, you can learn skills and adopt practices that support the creation of psychologically safe spaces around you.

Leadership skills and practices that support psychological safety

So I thought I’d outline a few personal thoughts on some key leadership practices and competencies that support the development of psychological safety. It may be helpful to observe that, in all probability, much of this will not be in fact separate from what you are already doing, or what is already happening within your organisation. In this respect the intentional practice of psychological safety is wholly compatible with existing management approaches, leadership methodologies and inclusion practices. I hope that these will serve as some useful prompts for reflection, whether you’re thinking about this from your own individual perspective or have an organisational hat on.  

The leader as coach
There are a huge number of leadership styles that are talked about in the literature, and effective leadership is very much about being well-versed in multiple styles, as well as the ability to flex between them dependent on the needs of the situation. There is one particular leadership style, however, that I think is especially aligned with development of psychological safety in teams, and that’s a coaching style of leadership. This is all about building long-term capability in your team, through understanding their strengths and weaknesses and facilitating their development, and non-judgmentally supporting them to find the answers for themselves rather than dictating how things should be done. 

The effective leader-coach supports the development of psychological safety in their teams in several ways. Their focus on understanding and developing their team is not only a vital complement to the climate of empowerment and innovation that marks out high-performing teams, but also allows them to build the strong trust with their team members that is a vital foundational component of psychological safety.2

Your attitude to, and skill at dealing with, conflict
We all have different tolerances and attitudes towards conflict, starting with whether we see conflict as a healthy thing or not. Many of us equate conflict with confrontation, and instinctively avoid any prospect of it by not talking about things that should be talked about, preserving a false harmony that stores up problems for the longer term. Many of us don’t have effective tools for effectively resolving conflict when we find ourselves in it – instead we experience defensiveness, aggressiveness, blame and capitulation. 

Conflict can be productive, however – and you actually want productive conflict on your team, as part of an ability to enter into open, honest conversations. When team members can address problems directly and productively, explore different opinions with curiosity, and thoughtfully disagree with mutual respect, it’s an indicator of high psychological safety, and it boosts the team’s ability to problem-solve and innovate. 

At the heart of productive conflict is the understanding that we all experience reality in different ways – as Anaïs Nin said, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” The key to better working relationships is listening to understand so that we can expand our perspective and learn to hold the space for multiple realities. 

As a leader, understanding your attitude towards conflict and learning about different conflict management styles can be incredibly rewarding not just for your personal development but also in the interests of more effective communication with your team. Working not just on your conflict management skills, but also on how to facilitate genuine dialogue (as distinct from debate or discussion), and on building the insight required to ‘read the room’ – the system of structural dynamics – can help you to improve the way that your team talks, so that conversations which need to take place can happen constructively in the room, rather than being held back. 

Designing from the margins: are your practices inclusive and affirming?
In my last article on neuroinclusion, I wrote about how no two brains are identical, how neurodiversity therefore describes the human condition, and how inclusion is about embedding difference as standard. Authentic and holistic inclusion is the key to people feeling like they belong fully, and yet another vital component in psychological safety – and this safety and belonging are in turn fundamental for organisational performance. 

George Dei, one of Canada’s foremost scholars on race and anti-racism studies, states that “inclusion is not bringing people into what already exists; it is making a new space, a better space for everyone.” Moving towards truly inclusive systems requires us to think about how our current practices may inadvertently be exclusionary, particularly of those least likely to self-advocate and to speak up. So many of our standard practices are anxiety provoking, for anyone – recruitment and cultures of overwork are two areas that frequently come up in my leadership coaching – but the impact is especially brutal for the marginalised. 

As a leader, how do you reflect on your approach to inclusion? Are your practices designed to be affirming for those from the margins? For an in-depth foray into this I highly recommend a read of Ludmila Praslova’s groundbreaking inclusion framework as presented in The Canary Code – the analogy relates to the historic use of canaries in UK coal mines as living, breathing carbon monoxide detectors, now a modern metaphor of people who are particularly affected by dysfunctional organisational environments and injustices. The core principles of the Canary Code framework extend what works for neuroinclusion to supporting holistic belonging for all, creating the ideal conditions for psychological safety: workplace systems that are valid, flexible, transparent, trauma-informed, human-centric and talent-friendly.

I hope you’ve found this helpful – do share your thoughts if you have a moment. 

Natalie Snodgrass
Quiet Space Ltd

  1. PSI quartiles are 1st: 14-61 PSI, 2nd: 61-76 PSI, 3rd: 76-86 PSI, 4th: 86-100 PSI. Benchmarks for the dimensions have been baselined through a 4-month trial PSI from 2665 Fearless Organization Scan respondents. ↩︎
  2. Here’s a great article on the interplay between trust and psychological safety, if you want to read more: https://psychsafety.com/the-difference-between-trust-and-psychological-safety/#:~:text=Trust%20is%20necessary%20for%20psychological%20safety%2C%20but%20not%20sufficient.,in%20a%20team%20are%20set. ↩︎
Articles

Neurodiversity and neuroinclusion: embedding difference as standard

  • March 16, 2024March 19, 2024

1. Introduction

This article was inspired by one of my neurodiversity and executive function coaching clients, whom I’ve been working with for several months now through the government’s Access to Work1 scheme. D was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as an adult, with co-occurring Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)2. 

At a recent session we celebrated a major milestone that shouldn’t have warranted being either a celebration or a milestone. D, after two long years, had finally received approval from her employer. For what, you ask? For the purchase of a non-standard work laptop with customised setup and specialist programmes, which would allow her to undertake her job duties much more efficiently and effectively. 

D struggles particularly with making presentations and fielding questions in the moment due to her RSD and the working memory challenges of ADHD, but when she’s made reasonable adjustment requests for questions to be submitted in advance for an important presentation that she’s also circulated a paper for in advance, this hasn’t been taken seriously because it isn’t a problem for anyone else and no one has made the time to read her paper before the meeting anyway. 

D is also having to secure her own funding in order to make sure that her manager and colleagues receive ADHD awareness training, and has to constantly self-advocate and push for change in the face of dismissive attitudes and workplace practices that are not effective for anyone, let alone neurodivergent people. We spent that session working to develop D’s disability passport3, and got into a discussion around neuroinclusion, the social model of disability, and what constitutes a ‘reasonable adjustment’ for disability vis-à-vis what is simply good workplace practice. 

2. Neurodiversity, neurodivergence, neuroinclusion: What does it all mean?

The language we use matters – it shapes how we see the world and one another, guides our behaviours, and reflects our values, beliefs and assumptions. So before I go any further, I think it’s worth briefly explaining what I mean when I talk about neurodiversity, neurodivergence and neuroinclusion, recognising that not everyone may have the same language preferences or make the same linguistic distinctions. 

Neurodiversity

When I speak about neurodiversity4, I’m referring to what are naturally occurring differences in human neurocognition. This is the idea that normal, natural human variation accounts for not just neurological differences such as autism or ADHD, but also simply the fact that no two brains function exactly alike. Neurodiversity, in other words, is standard: we are all part of a complex neurodiverse species. Each of our brains is unique, shaped by genetic factors as well as by each of our backgrounds, cultures and life experiences. The neurodiversity movement, a social justice movement that emerged during the 1990s, campaigns for the rights, equality, respect and full societal inclusion of all neurological differences, while increasing the acceptance and inclusion of all people.

Neurodivergence

Within that neurodiversity, most people have neurotypical brains. Others have less typical neurotypes – neurodivergent brains with pronounced strengths and weaknesses –  the ‘uneven cognitive profile’ or ‘spiky profile’ that I talked about in my last article on the autism spectrum, describing how autistic people (and neurodivergent people more broadly) may have significant strengths in one area, but be severely lacking in another. Collectively we might also refer to neurominorities.

At an individual level, people may relate to different terms and have preferences for how they want to refer to their diagnosis conditions. They may, for example, identify as neurodistinct or neurodifferent rather than neurodivergent, given that ‘divergence’ from the standard isn’t necessarily neutral and can still feel loaded with judgment. Or sometimes ‘neurospicy’, which still makes me smile whenever I come across it. Or they may avoid the overarching terms altogether and prefer to identify with their specific condition, e.g. “I’m autistic/dyslexic/I have ADHD”. 

Neuroinclusion

What, then, about neuroinclusion, and where it sits under the broader umbrella of equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging? When I talk about neuroinclusion, I’m referring to recognising, respecting and creating a level playing field for neurocognitive differences in exactly the same way as we strive to do with differences in race, religion, sex and gender and all other human variations. Neuroinclusion is about embedding difference as standard.

3. Challenging our biases: neurodivergent strengths, the social model of disability, and the neurodivergent lived experience 

I think that the first thing we need to do is stand back and challenge our perceptions, filters and biases. The 2020 Institute of Leadership research report “Workplace Neurodiversity: The Power of Difference” revealed that 50% out of 1,156 UK employers admitted that they would not employ a neurodivergent person (with the highest level of bias existing towards Tourette’s and ADHD). Survey outcomes also showed a significant lack of understanding and awareness about neurodiversity, despite an estimated 1 in 7 of the population being neurodivergent.

A couple of quotes from the report that stuck with me: 

“It is a common misconception that people having one of these conditions (…) are less intelligent and less able, whereas in fact there is no association between intelligence and neurodiversity.”

“Most employers are scared to hire neurodiverse people as they only calculate the risks based on the deficits of the condition.” – Claire Smith, CEO, Autistic Nottingham

So far, so disheartening.

Neurodivergent strengths

So let’s swap over that negative filter and instead look at the diagram below from Dr Nancy Doyle, which gives a great, simplified overview of the overlapping strengths of different neurodivergent conditions. The diagram includes diagnoses that tend to be more commonly encountered (if not necessarily commonly understood) such as autism and ADHD, but also, for example, the recognition that anyone who may have been neurotypical by birth can become part of the neurodivergent community later in life, through acquired brain injury.

Dr Nancy Doyle, drawing from the work of Mary Colley

One of the neurodiversity movement’s main goals is to shine a light on the benefits of this diversity. For example, my autistic or ADHD coaching clients may have sought support to deal with executive functioning challenges, but we aim to work together in a way that seeks to productively channel and build on their vibrant creativity; passion; ability to hyper-focus; complex problem-solving abilities; or novel, unusual insights and perspectives.

Society disables people, they’re not necessarily disabled: the social model of disability

Neurodistinct people are differently abled because of underlying differences in neurocognitive function that can lead to various impairments. The main issue is not in the impairments themselves, but what arises when we don’t account for those impairments. This is the perspective of the social model of disability, which frames disability as predominantly a social construct in which attitudes, practices and structures create limits on individuals’ functioning, and put barriers in the way of them reaching their valued goals.

What often happens, even in organisations that on paper have the right policies and procedures in place, is that neurodivergent people have to fight for access to the adjustments or considerations that would make it easier for them to engage and manage at work. Apart from D, some other real-life examples I’ve seen have included the “If I make this allowance for you I’ll have to make it for everyone” argument around headphones in the office to help with focus; insisting that someone stay at their desk to work rather than having autonomy to go for a walk to think through a data problem; refusing a request for a desk located in a quieter and more enclosed corner of an open-plan office to manage sensory overstimulation; and a three-line whip for compulsory team bonding activities. 

In other words, even if we recognise and hire for strengths, we don’t consistently and proactively support to level the playing field for impairments. Instead, we refuse to trust our talented people, and place the burden right back on the individual to have to self-advocate and negotiate daily hurdles just to be able to do their jobs. 

Daily living for many neurodivergent people is often invisibly tough. Neurodivergent populations are significantly more likely to be exposed to trauma and adversity across the lifespan. Many struggle with mental and even physical ill health from the imprint of childhood traumas, as well as an increased likelihood of experiencing further trauma as an adult through the impact of workplace bullying, discrimination, and feeling misunderstood, unheard, and unseen. It’s unsurprising that, for those whose neurodivergence can be concealed, it often is: in order to fit in, rather than cope with the cost of being different. And so not only is support not requested, but disclosure not made due to self-protection – at great private and personal cost.

If we were really committed to truly neuroinclusive ways of working, disability would not have to be the inevitable outcome for many neurodivergent individuals.

“Impairment is a fact of life, but disability is a social and cultural artifact” – Professor Tom Shakespeare, Royal Institution of Great Britain talk (YouTube link)

The social model of disability stands in stark difference to what is still the norm – the medical model, which says that people are disabled because of their impairments or differences.

The difference is important. The medical model drives us towards an impairment-focused conversation in which neurodivergent people need to be modified or accommodated so that they can fit within neurotypical designs and standards. It also drives the focus towards legislative and policy frameworks, checklists for what workplaces need to do to meet their obligations, and concerns over what managers ‘can and can’t say’ in order to be compliant. ‘Disability’ in this context can become a dirty word.

Understanding the neurodivergent lived experience: examining our assumptions and revising our models

The experience of D, whom I mentioned at the start of this article, is not unusual. The sad thing is that her workplace is, actually, relatively progressive in its attitude towards neurodivergence.

As we’ve seen, a lot of that attitude is bound up in lack of knowledge, partial information and misunderstanding. It’s also rooted in a lack of motivation to step back and rethink the things that ‘we’ve always done this way’, because ‘we’ aren’t the ones on the burning platform and don’t personally experience the need for change. Part of the difficulty here stems from the fact that neurodivergent traits may look eccentric and can even seem to conflict with what workplaces usually associate with professional competence, such as social and political awareness, tact and diplomacy, productivity and good timekeeping, and being a ‘team player’ who doesn’t require any particular managerial attention.

This, however, doesn’t mean that neurodivergent people aren’t good employees. It means that our notions and standards for what constitutes a good employee need to shift, adapt and expand; that we need to examine our damaging assumptions and stereotypes; and that we need to create supportive conditions not just for neurotypical performance but also neurodivergent excellence. 

For example, many autistic people’s communication can come across as very direct, often blunt, which can jar with a mode of communication that is used to greater subtlety. One potential downside of greater subtlety, however, is that one of its common bedfellows is not actually saying what you mean. Thus the neurotypical ear is trained not to take what it sees on face value, and tends to search between the lines for what may have been implied, omitted or disguised. In unhealthy workplace cultures, this creates a constant wariness in employees who are concerned or suspicious about what their colleagues aren’t telling them. This is the beauty of direct and honest communication, and many autistic people have it in spades. It is straightforward and unambiguous, there is no game-playing, and everyone knows where they stand. This is not to say, of course, that better communication skills don’t need to be cultivated. But the learnings are for both neurotypical and neurodivergent people alike.

Another example that comes up frequently in my coaching work is the strong sense of justice that many neurodivergent people experience. This can emerge as an intense need to speak up and persist when others remain silent in the face of unfairness or a violation of rights and principles, which can often lead to being labelled as a ‘troublemaker’. When we take a step back to look at what’s really going on here, we may realise that the real challenge might be a workplace without a healthy level of psychological safety (more on this below) in which honest opinions and feedback can be discussed without threat of recrimination, blame or punishment.

There is a valuable opportunity here for a curious, empathic dialogue that has compassionate humanity at its core, seeks first to understand, and is committed to finding ways to genuinely live out what it means to be inclusive.

4. A vision for neuroinclusion

Neuroinclusion benefits everyone: think of inclusion by design

I want to start with the core premise that, just as difference is standard, neuroinclusion benefits everyone.When we remove barriers for a few, we can increase accessibility for all. Through this we can begin to do some important reframing: from adjustments and accommodations being ‘special treatment’ or even an inconvenience, into an opportunity for us to create the conditions for high performance for all our people.

The principles of neuroinclusion by design – thinking about the needs and abilities of your neurodivergent employees when creating spaces, systems, processes and practices – are pretty aligned with Universal Design, which is the design of buildings, systems, environments etc. so that they can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by people regardless of age, disability or other factors. This is not a special requirement, for minority benefit, but is in fact a fundamental condition of good design.

This can happen at the most basic of levels, like with D. One of the requests on her disability passport was for the introduction of written agendas, to be circulated in advance of scheduled meetings to support preparation and a clear, predictable flow of discussion. What in some organisations is already standard administrative practice is still a ‘reasonable adjustment’ request elsewere, but this also gives us the precedent and model for changing our thinking.

Recruitment is a great area of focus for organisations looking to embed inclusive design in their processes. Many tweaks can benefit all candidates, not just neurodivergent ones, and allow them to show up at their best. Some quick and no-cost options include thinking about the detail and structure of the information that’s issued to candidates pre-interview – clear timings and venue information, details of who will meet candidates on arrival and who will be on the panel, and clarity on how the interview will be structured. Providing a hard copy of questions at or just in advance of the interview can serve as an important aide memoire not just for candidates with working memory challenges, but also all candidates who can get anxious and overwhelmed under the interview spotlight.

Psychological safety: create a high-performance environment where all people feel safe to show up fully and authentically

Psychological safety is present when colleagues trust and respect each other and can speak up with candour, airing their ideas, questions and concerns and making mistakes, without fear of humiliation or retribution. It’s a shared belief, held by members of a team, that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. First conceptualised in the 1990s by Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard5, over 20 years of research have since identified psychological safety as the #1 top differentiating factor in what makes a high-performance team, and a pivotal factor in increasing collaboration and innovation. 

When I think about inclusion, I have often concluded that we limit ourselves because we spend lots of time focusing on our frameworks, charters, policies, processes, etc., but then stop short of what happens in the small spaces: the quality of our human interactions.

How do we create thoughtful spaces for conversation where all of us feel safe not only to show up as we are, but also to take up our rightful space and use our voice? This is the practice of creating psychological safety. Showing up in this way takes vulnerability, and all the more so if you’re neurodivergent. We don’t see the additional cognitive load it’s taking an autistic colleague to work out unspoken social group norms, or how someone with auditory processing disorder may need additional time to process what’s been said before they can think about a response, or when we lose valuable contributions from neurodivergent or socially anxious colleagues who have difficulties in navigating group discussions and so, feeling unsafe, choose to stay silent. When we create spaces in which people feel safe to be vulnerable, we create spaces in which people can be at their best.

Give your managers licence to operate, with clear guidance around adjustments to individual work contexts

In several unrelated conversations last year with various senior university leaders I was interested to hear the same question popping up: how do we get people to move away from a culture of permission seeking? We keep telling them to take risks and they don’t! 

There is a clear link here to psychological safety – and what happens when you don’t have it. In an organisational culture where there is fear around the consequences of taking risks, you can’t simply tell people to take risks. Rather, you have to not only actively model risk-taking, but also systematically reframe and destigmatise failure; invite participation; set up structures and processes to build people’s confidence that voice is welcome; express appreciation; and regularly refresh your orientation towards continuous learning. This is the same kind of environment that invites and nurtures inclusion. 

Within permission-seeking and risk-averse cultures, requests for reasonable adjustments often get framed as issues that need solving. They also tend to create bureaucratic delays through unnecessary layers of approval. Giving managers greater licence to operate, with greater autonomy over their staff budgets, can make the process of making reasonable adjustments an integral and value-added part of boosting staff performance. It’s worth making the observation that many adjustments can be undertaken at negligible to relatively low cost, and that ‘fair’ doesn’t mean treating everyone in the same way.

An important observation worth reflecting on, if you’re a manager yourself, is how you can be proactive about supporting your neurodivergent team members. Asking for adjustments can be difficult not necessarily because of the request itself, but because it’s not always clear what to ask for or what would help. Organisations can support this through developing resources noting the different adjustments that may have been made in the past and what options there might be, which can be a helpful springboard for discussion. 

Educate staff and encourage allyship within your organisation

We all have biases, blind spots and imperfect knowledge, and we have a natural tendency to gravitate towards and favour people who are similar to us. In a neurotypical world, our neurodivergent colleagues can, through no fault of their own, be subconsciously judged and left on the outside. 

Changing this requires awareness-raising and education – we cannot challenge our own biases until we are aware of them and have the language to talk about them. Neurodiversity awareness training and education through e-learning, webinars and toolkits, provided by specialist psychological consultancies like Lexxic, are great ways to reach large numbers of staff and start conversations about neurodiversity in your organisation. 

You can also make an impact as an individual through becoming an ally. As an ally, you might not be neurodivergent yourself, but you can support and take action to help your neurodivergent peers. There are a number of ways in which you can do this:

  • Listen to your neurodivergent colleagues, learn from their lived experiences, and actively educate others.
  • Speak out if you see discrimination happening.
  • Volunteer to act as an inclusion ambassador, dignity at work contact, or other similar roles within your organisation, or get involved with any relevant employee resource groups (ERGs).

5. Neuroinclusion is a shared responsibility

Neuroinclusion isn’t someone else’s responsibility. We all need to play a part, and we can make a big impact even in the everyday gestures. It does mean that we have to look at and do things differently from how we may have been used to in the past, but this is the essence of inclusion – that we all take our share of the heavy lifting in making this world a fairer place. 

Natalie Snodgrass
– Quiet Space Ltd

  1. Access to Work (AtW) is a government grant that funds practical support if you have a disability, health or mental health condition. Your disability or health condition must affect your ability to do a job on a day-to-day basis or mean you have to pay work-related costs, and the funding can support a wide range of support such as a support worker or coach, specialised equipment, travel fares to work if you can’t use public transport, and disability awareness training for your colleagues. The grant does not have to be repaid.
    The aim of the scheme is to help you start work, stay in work, be able to move into self-employment or start a business. To be eligible you have to be over 16, self-employed or either in a paid job or about to start a job or work trial with an employer based in England, Scotland and Wales (there’s a different system in Northern Ireland). Full details are available on the AtW website. ↩︎
  2. See this Additude Mag link for some info about RSD. ↩︎
  3. Disability or reasonable adjustment passports (also known as workplace adjustment passports) were introduced following a GMB motion at the TUC’s Disabled Workers Conference in 2018. They provide a continuous, portable record of an individual’s agreed workplace adjustments that can be transferred when the individual changes roles or managers, avoiding the need for the adjustments to be re-explained and re-negotiated. Further information is available here from the TUC. ↩︎
  4. Judy Singer (Amazon link to updated reprint of Singer’s original 1998 thesis “Neurodiversity: The Birth of an Idea”), an Australian sociologist, coined the term ‘neurodiversity’ as one of the seminal ideas in her pioneering work that mapped out the emergence of what was, at the time, a new category of disability with no name. ↩︎
  5. Professor Edmondson’s profile at Harvard Business School. ↩︎
Autism spectrum wheel showing an example autistic individual profile Articles

We’re all a little autistic…and other mistruths

  • June 20, 2023June 20, 2023

Some three years ago, I responded to a recruitment call from an organisation called Connections in Mind (CiM), who were looking for executive function1 coaches. CiM specialises in raising awareness and understanding of neurodiversity and the impact of living with neurodivergent conditions, as well as coaching neurodivergent children and adults to develop their executive function skills – and, more broadly, perform to their full potential. 

Since taking on that executive function coaching work with CiM, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with numerous neurodivergent clients, supporting them in dealing with the daily challenges brought about by living in a world that is, more often than not, stacked against them. As a mother to an incredible son with ADHD, and as a partner to a brilliant autistic man who also has ADHD, I’ve also seen those challenges through a very personal lens. 

It occurred to me that although this work is hugely important to me I haven’t written anything about any of it. So I thought I would start with something that often comes up when I have conversations about this – the idea that ‘we’re all a little autistic’ or that ‘everyone is on the spectrum somewhere’. 

What actually is the autistic spectrum?

I think that this perspective has its roots in a misunderstanding of what the autistic spectrum actually is.

I’ve seen comparisons made to the visible light spectrum and I think it’s a useful analogy that I’m going to reproduce here. So this is a representation of the visible light spectrum – the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that’s visible to the human eye. As wavelength gradually increases, we move from violet to red:

We can describe each colour on the spectrum in terms of gradients or intensities. Red, for example, can range from pale to quite intense. We don’t, however, compare colours in terms of how far along the spectrum they are, or how they are positioned relative to either end of the spectrum. Violet isn’t ‘not very red’, and green isn’t ‘middle-of-the-road red’, and red isn’t ‘acutely red’, or somehow ‘more on the spectrum’ than violet is:

What I often encounter is a perspective of the autistic spectrum that looks like this:

I’ll put aside the problematic nature of functioning labels2 for now (if you’re interested in this, have a look at the footnote) to make the point that we tend to think of spectrums in terms of linear progressions, and so the conversation around autism is often how someone is autistic to a less problematic (to other people) or somehow more drastic/severe/tragic extent. 

What does this tell us? When people talk about someone being ‘more’ or ‘less’ autistic and ‘everyone being on the spectrum somewhere’, it seems to me that they’re thinking about a question of gradient, like we were all varying intensities of red. Like any two neurotypical people, no two autistic individuals are identical, and the idea that you can position them all along a scale of increasing degrees of autism is damaging, because it diminishes people to reductionist stereotypes. 

In fact, it’s also fundamentally incorrect, because you can’t be ‘a little bit autistic’ or ‘very autistic’ in the same way that a colour can be intensely red or pale red. It would be like saying someone was ‘a little rainbowy’ when they were only wearing blue and red. 

This is because the autistic spectrum is not a linear spectrum. I’m going to illustrate this point with the autism wheel or pie chart, which I think presents a much more accurate portrayal of the diversity of experience within autism and gives us a helpful visual representation of what the autistic spectrum really looks like. 

The autism wheel, or autism pie chart

The illustrative examples above show us how autism might manifest very differently in two autistic individuals. In the two contrasting charts, you’ll see how individual autism traits are represented by separate wedges of the pie. (In these examples it’s important to note that the pie chart represents a simplified picture of autism and does not include every relevant trait.) 

Challenges in multiple areas across the autistic spectrum

The first crucial observation to make is that all autistic people are affected in one way or another in most or all of the individual traits represented in each chart above. Neurotypical people may well have challenges in one or two of these areas, but in order for someone to be considered autistic, they must have difficulties in multiple categories across the autistic spectrum. If you only have a slice of the pie – if you only have difficulties in a couple of these areas – then you aren’t ‘a bit autistic’, although you may well be neurodivergent in another way. For example, if you have significant issues with only sensory processing, you might have sensory processing disorder. Or if you struggle with certain executive functions such as self-control and the ability to focus attention and task-switch, allied with social awareness challenges, you might have ADHD.

The uneven cognitive profile and the problem with making assumptions

The autism wheel/pie chart also provides a clear visual representation of one of the distinguishing features of autism that is described in the DSM as an ‘uneven profile of abilities’, or an ‘uneven cognitive profile’. This basically describes how someone on the spectrum may have significant strengths in one area, but be severely lacking in another. Taking the left profile above, one example might be someone with very high verbal and academic ability, who also struggles with social awareness, high anxiety and perseverative thinking – becoming very fixated on particular thoughts or tasks and being unable to redirect their attention to other things. To much of the external world they may be mildly affected by their autism. In reality, however, they may have hugely disabling executive dysfunction that has a significant impact on their employment prospects and relationships.

In contrast, the right profile might represent someone who more closely fits the stereotypical ‘severely autistic’ profile – mostly non-verbal, with neuro-motor differences and high repetitive behaviours. Yet that individual may have much higher social awareness and information processing capacity than might be perceived.

Being aware of this uneven profile is important because we often make assumptions about a person’s overall ability and capacity when looking at a slice of their strengths or challenges. As Bradshaw, et al. (2021), for example, note: “Using functioning labels and autism levels overlooks the real challenges and barriers of autistic people who may not outwardly appear different, and minimises the strengths, abilities, and capacities of those who do.” 

Neither of the individuals above is ‘more’ autistic than the other. Autism comes in all shapes and sizes, and each individual’s experience of autism is uniquely their own. That experience can also change and develop over time, and the autism wheel or pie chart also acknowledges and accommodates the possibility of that fluid development.

In writing about this I’ve been reminded that there is so much that I have learnt over the past few years not only about neurodivergence itself, but also about my own attitudes and biases with regard to performance, resilience and patience. However, I’ve also learnt about how much I still don’t know, and that although general awareness and understanding of neurodivergence has come so far in recent years, we still have a long way to go to shape a world that is genuinely neuroinclusive. 

I hope that you will take two things away from this brief article. The first thing is that, in future conversations, you too will have the ability to correct the misapprehension that ‘we’re all on the spectrum somewhere’. Although I think it’s important to recognise that people may have good intent when they say this, the real impact of loose identification like this is that it can be very hurtful and disheartening for autistic people as it diminishes their lived experience. 

I also hope that I, as much as you, remember to continually question the assumptions that we may be making about our autistic family members, friends and colleagues. Dr Stephen Shore, an autistic professor of special education at Adelphi University and an advocate for autism awareness, says that “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” Like any other person, autistic people are individuals with unlimited potential, and we need not to measure people on the basis of what may be visible. 

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts – drop me a comment or message and let’s start a conversation.

Natalie Snodgrass
– Quiet Space Ltd

Footnotes

  1. Executive functions (EFs) are the high-level cognitive functions that enable us to successfully undertake tasks such as planning and scheduling our time, focusing our attention, remembering instructions, regulating our emotions, and keeping going in the face of challenge. Moderated primarily by the frontal lobe in our brains (specifically the prefrontal cortex), the core EFs relate to three types of brain function: working memory, self-control, and mental flexibility. Whilst we all have difficulties with executive functioning from time to time, neurodivergent brains can often experience particular EF challenges. In EF-focused coaching, we help people to build skills and strategies to improve their executive functioning, which strengthens the foundations upon which they are then able to build the lives they want to lead. 
  2. ‘High-functioning autism’ is an unofficial term often used for individuals with autism spectrum disorder without an intellectual disability (Alvares et al, 2020) – in other words, whose autism symptoms may appear mild to the outside world. This term is not used in official diagnostic criteria, set out in diagnostic manuals such as the ICD-11 and DSM-5 (the International Classification of Diseases and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The DSM-5, for example, categorises autism in terms of the severity of the condition and how much support a person requires in daily life. Level 3 (requiring very substantial support) includes those who may have significant learning difficulties, Level 2 (requiring substantial support) includes people who would struggle to live independently, and Level 1 (requiring support) includes people without intellectual disabilities who have the capacity to live independent lives. ‘High-functioning autism’ often gets used interchangeably with Level 1 in this respect. 

    Functioning labels are problematic because how well someone functions can actually fluctuate significantly on a day-to-day basis. And even though the diagnostic categorisation has moved away from functioning labels, I have to confess that I still find autism categories problematic, because it is small comfort to know that you are either ‘high-functioning’ or require little support on a day when your anxiety and sensory over-stimulation is so intense that the only way you can cope is by hiding from everything. People can also be high-functioning in some areas while having significant difficulties in other areas (a distinguishing feature of autism – what’s described as an ‘uneven cognitive profile’). And despite other common misconceptions, ‘high’ function doesn’t necessarily equate with an absence of learning difficulty, nor ‘low’ function with being non-verbal. 

References

Alvares, G. A., Bebbington, K., Cleary, D., Evans, K., Glasson, E. J., Maybery, M. T., Pillar, S., Uljarević, M., Varcin, K., Wray, J., & Whitehouse, A. J. (2020). The misnomer of ‘high functioning autism’: Intelligence is an imprecise predictor of functional abilities at diagnosis. Autism, 24(1), 221–232.

Bradshaw, P., Pickett, C., Brooker, K., Urbanowicz, A. & van Driel, M. (2021). ‘Autistic’ or ‘with autism’? Why the way general practitioners view and talk about autism matters. Australian Journal of General Practice, 50, 104-108.

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Ambition: When you don’t want what they’ve got

  • October 27, 2021October 27, 2021

[This was originally written back in 2019, as a guest article that I recently discovered is no longer available online. Here it is, republished. The article may ostensibly have been written for women, but there is a message for everyone in there. If you’ve ever felt an unravelling of the path you’d hitherto been following, and realised how vital it was for you to re-evaluate what matters to you in your life and career, then have a read – and let me know what you think.]

Ambition

I vividly remember my very first work appraisal back in 2005. I was 24, full of ambition, a perfectionist and ultra-high achiever, and I’d spent the first 6 months in my new job doing whatever it took to impress senior management and not let myself down.

Driven by that ambition, I was regularly in the office well after hours and on the weekends. I’d missed my best friend’s wedding because I couldn’t afford to fly 6,000 miles only to be able to stay for the weekend, let alone get the time off for the plane journey in the first place.  At the appraisal, my boss told me something I’ve never forgotten: “You’re the best administrative officer I have ever had”, she declared, before we discussed my tendency to be ruthlessly harsh in my own self-assessment. Then she said, “You could be a Registrar* in years to come.” A pause. “If you want it.”

I’ve recalled this conversation many times in the intervening years. It came back to me in my early thirties, during a coaching training session when I was in the role of client. The exact content of our conversation escapes me now, but the turning point was when my coach looked me in the eye and said “Why are you in such a hurry?” 

The memory of this conversation resurfaced again when I returned to my employer in 2018 after a year’s career break. During my sabbatical I’d set up my coaching business, and, as part of a new portfolio career, had also negotiated a new part-time contract that was far more aligned with the career direction in which I wanted to go. 

This decision meant that I was consciously to take myself out of what had previously been a potential trajectory to the top. I’d gone in with my eyes open. Yet, a couple of months into the job, I found myself blindsided when my contemporaries started getting Director-level jobs. I knew I didn’t want their jobs and everything that came with the territory. But a part of me really wanted to know I’d have been well in the running. 

Moving Through Change and Doubt 

As a coach and mentor, I’ve worked with numerous women over the years who’ve found themselves unexpectedly wrong-footed by the question of ambition. Many had risen through the ranks as single, career-focused individuals, their drive focused squarely on performance and promotion. At some point in their careers, however, something had begun to change.

For some, this had come about as a result of motherhood and the re-evaluation of purpose that often accompanies this kind of major life shift and extended time away from the workplace. A second group, burnt out from the chase or having otherwise reached a tipping point, had been forced to step away to recover and reassess. For others, it was nothing quite as dramatic – over time, however, a nagging feeling of discontent and unhappiness had emerged and persisted.

With all of them, there was a feeling of guilt. Overcome with thoughts like: I’m not performing well enough anywhere. I’m not a good mum, not a good partner, not a good employee. Then doubt, moving between the polarities of wanting it all and wanting something completely different: I should want that. Why don’t I want that? What do I actually want? Worry, too: I thought I’d be much further along by now. Why is it that she can do it, and I can’t?

Asking some Important Questions 

What characterises ambition? You’ll find two main definitions in dictionaries: (a) a strong wish for fame, power, wealth or status; and (b) the desire to achieve a particular end. The first is fairly self-explanatory. The second bears somewhat more scrutiny. 

We’re conditioned to compete. The scourge of that competition is that while it can lead us to excel, comparison with others can often find us seduced by what others have and inevitably feeling like we come up short. Leaving the arena, then, and setting out on the lesser-trodden path, can be hugely freeing. Of course, it can also be scary and destabilising, but this is the thing about fear: being scared of something is all the more reason to face it.

So, where to start? You can’t go far wrong with asking yourself some important questions, and taking the time to give yourself some very honest answers.

Who am I? (And who do I want to be?) 

Your identity develops over the course of a lifetime. It’s rich and multifaceted; a community of selves. And because you’re always learning and growing, you will almost certainly reach various turning points throughout your life that will make you ask: Is this life an honest reflection of the person I am? And if not, am I prepared to live it anyway, or will I take the plunge and connect with who I am really meant to be?

What’s important to me? 

Now is the time to take a step back and think: what is your driving purpose and what values do you want to see reflected in your life and work? Some people want to make a difference through the execution of their vision for a better world – social change, environmental work, political activism. Perhaps your driver is focused on touching people’s hearts and building them up at an individual level. Or perhaps your fundamental values are all about freedom and independence, yet somehow that wild spirit has ended up on the predictable rhythm of a treadmill. 

What am I good at?

If you’re searching for work that will give your life more meaning and fulfilment, then you need not only to understand your values and what you identify with, but also your motivated skills and strengths – the things you’re not only good at, but also like doing. Are you good with people? Or are you more comfortable with data? Perhaps you’re great with your hands, or when working with concepts and ideas. How well do your top strengths and skills align with your current work? 

What dream am I chasing? (And whose dream is it?)

Is it the one that you think you should want, the one that the you of yesteryear did want, or the one that you actually do want? If you think you might be heading in the wrong direction, ask yourself: If all jobs paid the same, what would I want to be doing for a living? What would excite me and help me grow?

When we stop looking outward to external standards of achievement and ambition, we become free to focus on what is infinitely more valid: our own measure of what constitutes success. That may look very different for everyone else, and that’s ok. Are you being true to yourself, and if not, what choices are you going to make about that? 

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass, Quiet Space Ltd 

(*Registrar: The head of the central administrative service in a UK university.)

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Learning how not to fall over

  • September 22, 2021September 22, 2021

I’m sitting here today in the enclosed space, time and silence of what is the hour between appointments, in a car surrounded by people coming and going.

I’ve been reflecting on a lot of things lately, and it’s been difficult to get enough consistent headspace to unravel the knots and reconnect them into a narrative that flows and makes sense to me. This isn’t surprising, as my life over the last eighteen months has pretty much been characterised by that same fragmentation. Lots of chopping and changing, never in the same space long enough to properly experience it, and seemingly never enough time to stay in the same space. 

So many of us fall into this pattern of constantly-distracted movement, locked in a constant cycle of ‘doing’. Sometimes the ‘doing’ sustains us, but only for as long as we keep moving. Kind of like the momentum you get when you’re spinning around.

This reminds me of the video I took years ago of my then 23-month old daughter, when she discovered that if you suddenly stop when you’ve been spinning around quickly, it generally has the effect that you fall flat on your bum. Or your face.

See what I mean:

Toddler discovers the vestibular system

This happens because, although you’re no longer spinning, the liquid in your semicircular canals is still moving, and so the hairs inside the canals are sensing movement even though you’ve stopped. Effectively your brain is getting conflicting messages and is confused about where your head is. So you get dizzy and lose your balance. When you’re not spinning quite as quickly, or gradually slow down, there’s time and space to re-orient, so your brain gets the right message sooner and you regain your balance without falling over. 

I might get hauled up on this by those of you who object to the looseness of my interpretation, but I rather think that the vestibular system is a nice analogy for what happens when we’re locked in a rapid ‘doing’ cycle. Often, instead of slowing down and taking a pause, we suddenly stop and the sudden halt throws us off-balance. Or maybe we stop physically, but mentally we’re still going, so we don’t regain equilibrium and instead end up depleted from dealing with the mental noise.

Breaking the cycle of constant movement and doing is a conscious and purposeful choice. How do you stay paused in the moment, and just be? How can you best disconnect from the mental noise, and stay in the space of the here and now – which ultimately is the only time we actually have in which to live?  

We all have different ways in which we manage to achieve this. My own personal reflection is that when I’m very stressed and anxious and would best benefit from a proper pause, an unhelpful coping mechanism kicks in instead: whereby to regain a sense of control, I end up blitzing through my to-do list and driving myself into the ground instead of remembering what would actually help me – the self-discipline of stopping, doing some deep breathing, getting outdoors for a walk, and being kind to myself.

So today I’m consciously taking a meaningful pause, to guide myself out of this distracted coming and going and the confused noise of my thoughts. And now I’ll be closing my laptop, and taking a deep breath, to appreciate the space, the time and the silence. 

Sending you all much love as you navigate your own pauses.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass, Quiet Space Ltd

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Responding to Change in a VUCA world

  • December 20, 2020December 20, 2020

Greek philosophers are pretty good at pithy quotes. To illustrate, I give you this from Heraclitus of Ephesus: “Panta rhei”, or “everything flows”. Modern-day parlance has translated this into “the only constant in life is change”. 

21st-century change has taken Heraclitus’ observation a step further: change these days isn’t simply a constant. It also isn’t linear, incremental or predictable. Even before the current pandemic we were in a period of social, geopolitical, environmental and technological volatility and disruption. You may have encountered the acronym VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), originally coined by the U.S. Army in the 1990s to describe the post-Cold War world (and more widely adopted across the leadership literature post 9/11 to describe a work environment characterised by the turbulent and uncontrollable unknown). It may be the circles I’ve been moving in lately, but it does seem that as an easy acronym it’s now entering the general lexicon as it becomes more relevant than ever to all of us. 

There are criticisms about the limitations of VUCA as a framework (e.g. cultural bias, ‘past its sell-by date’, convenient label for a challenging reality without adequate exploration of how we can respond to that reality, etc.), but rather than going off on a tangent I’m going to observe that there are some useful concepts that it offers us.

Change is volatile and complex. The changes we are encountering in our personal and professional lives are rapid, sudden and unstable. They’re becoming ever more dramatic, and moving at an exponential rate. In contrast to many of the complicated challenges you may have come up against in the past, complex problems don’t have logical solutions where an evidence-based approach and learned expertise are all you need. Instead, multiple interconnected variables interact in unpredictable ways and the relationship between cause and effect is blurred. We’re called upon to manage paradoxes and polarities, and if we’re looking for clarity and ‘right’ answers, we’re likely to be disappointed.

Change is uncertain and ambiguous. Changes are also unfolding in unanticipated ways – the context we live in is an evolving state of ambiguity. Like the iteration of fractals or a murmuration of starlings, you can’t predict how the system will change or what will emerge. Historical forecasts and past experiences are, increasingly, no predictor of the future, and planning is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge as the shape of things ahead becomes more and more uncertain. It can feel rather like an existential threat – many of us have a preference for safety and certainty, and when we can’t easily predict what’s going to happen, we have a tendency to predict hazard.

Unpredictability in complex and chaotic systems: (a) A murmuration of starlings (Image: © Wikimedia Commons/Tanya H.) (b) Chaos theory demonstrated through long exposure of a light at the end of a double pendulum (Image: © Wikimedia Commons/Cristian V.)

So, what to do? How do we make sense of complexity and our place in a volatile, uncertain and ambiguous world? How do we want to show up? Here are my thoughts on some of the ways we might respond, in both professional and personal contexts. 

Control vs. curiosity: Standing in inquiry

When there is no blueprint to follow, trying to control the future is an approach destined to frustrate. You may be able to predict broad-brush behaviours, but specific outcomes for specific situations are unknowable. Past experiences, paradigms and dogmas are all ripe for scrutiny. Rather than a focus on control, therefore, we need to respond in a different way – by cultivating curiosity. The answers we seek will change in place and time, but a discipline of inquiry will be a stalwart essential in helping us navigate the way ahead. 

What good questions can we ask? Here are some potential starters: 

  • In how many different ways can we look at the problem? 
  • What has thrown us off-course, and what can we learn from that? 
  • Are there any patterns? Exceptions?
  • What is the most important challenge we need to focus on?
  • What resources and influence are available to us? 
  • What values and guiding principles do we want our actions to align with?

 

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions. – Denise Levertov

Not Knowing: There may be no ‘right’ or clear answers

In the above context it’s also important to acknowledge and accept that there may be no ‘right’ or clear answers – the systems that we are part of are dynamic, and at any point in time there may be paradoxical tensions at play: short-term measures vs. long-term strategy; performance vs. wellbeing; the needs of the collective vs. the individual. This makes it critical that we are open to a diversity of views, helping us to expand our own perspective through constructive debate and dialogue.

Getting comfortable with being in a space of not knowing, and creating an environment in which we can inhabit that space with others, requires a few things of us. I think the following are particularly worth reflecting upon:

  • No man is an island. It can be difficult to admit that you don’t have the answers, but there is strength in vulnerability. How can we stand in inquiry together with others so that new and diverse thinking can be encouraged to emerge, and collaborative solutions to new challenges can be co-created? 
  • We may not always be able to plan for a desired outcome, but we can nonetheless seek to develop in ways that allow us to seize the day when opportunity presents itself. What can we do right now to shore up our capacity for resilience, whether personal or organisational? At a personal level, how can we orient our thinking towards an attitude of optimism, self-efficacy and healthy risk management, and how can we develop our capacity for persistence and flexibility?    

Experiment, fail

The curiosity that we need to encourage is all about an appetite for continual learning. Solutions to novel and complex challenges don’t come about through repeating what we’ve always done and reiterating what we already know – they need to emerge through seeking out new experiences and new knowledge and insight. Evidence-based methods need to be accompanied by an attitude to risk that involves encouraging experimentation and an agile, iterative approach: trying, failing, regrouping and learning, and trying again. Sometimes it also requires a leap of faith – jumping and not knowing where you’re going to land, but taking each step in line with your core values and principles, and trusting in the journey.

Traveller, there is no path. The path is made by walking. – Antonio Machado

Compassion and connection 

At the core of everything is the person. Any approach we take needs to embrace both the rational and the human: the values, emotions, the way our social and cultural history can bind us to limiting horizons for action. In the face of threat and pressure it is exceedingly easy to find ourselves being harsh and critical of ourselves, or judgemental and intolerant of others. 

Many of us find self-compassion a big ask. We may be able to show compassion to others, but then judge ourselves by a far harsher standard. Negative self-talk is common and perpetuates an unhelpful mindset. These are hard times, during which it can be hard to focus, see the bigger picture, and perform the way we may have been used to. These tough moments don’t need us to square up to them – they require us to be firm yet resolutely gentle with ourselves. I am dealing with a lot, and it’s ok not to be ok. What’s the best thing that I can do for myself right now that will help me get to where I need to be? Self-compassion is also vital in experimentation – we need to allow ourselves to fail.

That same compassionate-yet-firm approach also applies to the way we deal with others. When we’re stressed and there is no clear way forward it depletes our inner resources, which usually means we are much quicker to become irritated when other people don’t meet our expectations or frustrate our intent. Rather than reacting with intolerance, however, we can elect to respond with kindness, understanding and respect. Starting with kindness makes it far more possible to forge a connection through which we can jointly work to find solutions.

A discipline of inquiry, getting comfortable with not knowing, and a willingness to experiment can all take practice. I think compassion, though, calls upon something that is an integral part of our humanity; something that can be simple, straightforward and constant in the face of a volatile and complex reality. Henry James said: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” We are all in this together, and a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world is a little easier to deal with when we place compassion at the core of us. 

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass, Quiet Space Ltd

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Resilience

  • September 2, 2020December 24, 2020

I originally wrote this article in 2018. Since then, coaching for personal resilience and mental wellbeing has seen a surge of interest, with individuals and organisations both keen to find ways to reduce the toll of ever-increasing demands on their mental and physical health, increase their ability to adapt flexibly and positively to change, and start thriving rather than simply coping.

The extraordinariness of 2020 has brought this into even sharper focus. In the early weeks of the pandemic, many of us went into a heightened energy state of adaptation – described by Ann Masten as the ‘surge capacity’ we draw upon in short-term survival situations, rather like an emotional and physical power bank to help us navigate a crisis effectively. Except that, as the acute phase became chronic, our uncertainty over how long the uncertainty would last continued to stretch out, and we found ourselves with little opportunity to recharge through many of our usual means of self-care, we were all left significantly depleted. 

In the immediate crisis stage there is often increased clarity as people are forced to focus on a delimited set of priorities and they pull together more than ever before. Individually, however, the adaptation can often come at profound cost to our wellbeing as we try to prioritise performance. Crisis can bring out the best in us, but can also make us revert to a lower level of emotional function. 

I’ve read a lot of very well-written pieces in the past few months about finding new ways to be in this brave new world. There is so much in the resilience science to draw from and so much good advice out there about identifying your own set of primary resilience factors – certainly far too much to distil into one short article. I hope, however, that some of this will prove helpful to you. If you’re finding life particularly challenging right now, there are really just three things that I hope you will take from this: 

(1) You are not alone and there is plenty of support out there. 

(2) Be kind to yourself; there is no shame in struggling and feeling overwhelmed. 

(3) All you need to focus on is the next step. The rest can be something for another day.

———————

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I bend, I don’t break.

I always bounce back.

Do you use any of these metaphors when you talk or think about resilience? Personally, I like the picture of resilience that’s summed up by this plant.

It illustrates nicely the definition given by Carole Pemberton (2015) in Coaching for Resilience:

The capacity to remain flexible in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours when faced by a life disruption, or extended periods of pressure, so that we emerge from difficulty stronger, wiser, and more able. 

In other words, resilience is gradual adaptation in the face of adversity. Being resilient doesn’t mean you have to be somehow invulnerable to life’s hard knocks – it’s all about learning and growth, and the ability to steer your way constructively through difficulty. I think the danger of the popular characterisation of ‘bouncing back’ is that it gives the impression that recovering from setbacks is as effortless and instantaneous as the rebound of a rubber ball. You just pick yourself up and carry on as you were, utterly unchanged by the event. Except you’re not.

Even if you’re of the true grit school of thought, it’s important to recognise that resilience isn’t a you’ve-either-got-it-or-you-don’t thing; it’s a continuum. Life continually tests us, and our ability to respond well to this can vary depending on context and domain. You may be able to cope very well with pressure in your professional life, but feel crushed by the breakdown of a personal relationship. You may historically have had no problems navigating the ups and downs of life, but find yourself unexpectedly and completely derailed after being made redundant. Our resilience can become overwhelmed in all sorts of different ways – and we will all respond differently, too.

I find it useful looking at this from the perspective of the three-factor model that combines the effects of genetics, external protective factors, and learning (diagram below adapted from Pemberton, 2015):

What this tells us is that although some people may be more naturally resilient than others, resilience isn’t just a product of our personality. Research has also shown the important contributions made by the support networks around us (the availability of ‘secure attachment’) and what we learn from experience. That latter factor is probably most crucial for me. I love the way Masten puts it: resilience, she says, is ‘ordinary magic’: something we develop through the demands of living. It marks resilience out as something that can be available to all of us, even if we haven’t had the most fortunate start in life.

So how, then, can we cultivate resilience? It’s worth spending some time thinking about resilience factors – here are some that I think are particularly important, although resilience studies have identified dozens more: 

(1) Finding meaning

Purpose is a key factor in what drives us – the desire to connect to a greater and meaningful cause can give important direction and a reason to keep going. What purpose can you find in what you may be going through? What can you take from this experience that you can channel positively into something meaningful?

(2) Flexibility, Perspective and the Big Picture

Inflexible patterns of thinking stop us being able to see the larger picture and its possibilities for learning and growth. What can you learn from this adversity? How can you widen your perspective? What other ways are there to think about this situation? What can you control about this situation (conversely, are you expending energy in wrestling with what is actually outside of your control)? 

(3) Thinking Space 

It’s difficult to get perspective when you’re mired in the doing and the detail. What time are you taking to get the necessary headspace that will allow you to take a step back for a more objective evaluation? Resting from its incessant activity is what the brain needs to really harness its creativity and problem-solving capability. 

(4) Support

Resilience is not helped by social isolation. How can you reach out for help? What positive and mutually supportive relationships can you build? 

(5) Mindfulness

Pain is typically seen as a problem. Mindfulness helps us learn to detach from our negative thoughts and feelings in order to observe and accept them without becoming trapped in them – moving forward despite them, rather than trying to remove them from our lives. As Camus says, the human condition is absurd. But man’s freedom, and the opportunity to give life meaning, lies in the acceptance of absurdity.

(6) Proactivity

What action are you taking? Sometimes all we need to take back control is to take one small step at a time.

What someone needs in order to help them become more resilient will of course vary. In coaching, there are many tools that can be drawn upon, including mindfulness, cognitive-behavioural approaches, narrative coaching, and positive psychology. If you’re interested in how coaching can help you build your personal resilience, why not get in touch?

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass, Quiet Space Ltd

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To Follow Your Heart

  • November 18, 2019November 18, 2019

I posted the image above on my social media accounts a while ago and was amazed to find how much it resonated with people. Maybe you’re not tired, maybe you’re just doing too little of what makes you come alive. It’s a theme that has kept cropping up in my coaching sessions and in random conversations with people over these last couple of months, as well as something that has been particularly close to my heart this past year.  

I don’t know about you, but my energy typically comes in bursts – often in moments of palpable connection and chemistry when I find a kindred spirit, when I’m talking about things I care about a great deal, or when I’m completely absorbed in making a project that matters to me happen. It’s also a running joke in my family about my ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, and for rudely long periods. There are days when I’ve simply had no energy for anything at all, yet also others when I’ve been on fire. 

You have, most likely, experienced what it feels like to just get by in a job, your work environment or just life in general – your energy levels dip, motivation wanes and productivity suffers. I hope, however, that you will also have had moments of alchemy when everything seemed to be working out – when you believed yourself to be happy, you were surrounded by the hope of possibility, and your energy levels and motivation were correspondingly high. 

There’s a complex relationship between energy, motivation, productivity and happiness. I’ve written before about motivation and how we’re all driven to achieve three things: autonomy (the ability to behave with a sense of volition, endorsement, willingness and choice), competence (mastery of our environment), and relatedness through purpose (the ability to care about and connect to others and to a bigger cause). When those three conditions of autonomy, competence and purpose are in place, there’s a much higher chance that you’ll be able to find yourself in the zone of what positive psychologists call ‘flow’: the mental state of being completely immersed in what you’re doing, where your skill is equal to the challenge and you are enveloped in the focus of the present moment – a space for you to be more productive, creative, and yes, happy. Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (credited with having popularised the concept of Flow) has described it thus:

“(Flow is) being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” (Wired interview, 1996)

“You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)

You’ll see from the images above that Flow has a number of key characteristics, but I like a bit of simplification, so where all these concepts come together for me is in recognition of this one thing: tapping into what, for you, is the meaning that makes life worth living. 

Meaning, I think, is the ultimate intrinsic motivator.  We catalyse our own happiness when we have meaningful goals that challenge us, yet are within our grasp, and when we’re able to direct and control our own actions in pursuit of those goals. 

In coaching I sometimes find that people feel happiness to be quite elusive, mainly because they’re looking for it anywhere but right here, right now. The thing about the energy of happiness, however, is that – unlike many of the events and things around us – harnessing this energy is very much within our control.1 Rather than expending energy on places, people and things that drain us, we can choose to direct our energy and presence into the optimal experience and ease of pursuing mastery of an area we care deeply about.

So where do you start? When working with my coaching clients we often look at the question of values pretty early on. ‘Values’, in straightforward terms, are the things that we stand for and how we want to behave as we move through life – they’re not something to be achieved, but rather what we want our lives to be about. Your set of values is individual to you, and when you connect with and set goals based on those values, you become able to take your life in meaningful directions even when the going gets tough. 

It’s helpful to think of them as a compass, giving you direction and keeping you on track as you go through life, setting and achieving goals along the way. Or perhaps like a lighthouse, guiding you on your way – your goal never being to obtain the lighthouse itself. Valuing is about the process and the journey, rather than the destination. 

There are plenty of tools and techniques to help people identify and clarify values. With my clients I like working with values card sort exercises (e.g. Carriochi and Bailey’s (2008) Survey of Life Principles) and questionnaires like Crace and Brown’s (2002) Life Values Inventory, but you can also do this old-school with a pen and paper, thinking about what matters to you in your life – you can split your life into as many areas as you like, or you may want to keep it simple with just a few key domains: work and education, love and relationships, health and wellbeing, and leisure and recreation. The values you identify might be obvious to others, or deeply personal to you, and there are no right or wrong answers. Perhaps your list might contain connecting with nature or having a life filled with adventure, or being self-sufficient, working with your hands, and making a lasting contribution to this earth. And then, perhaps the trickiest part: once you’ve clarified your values, it’s time to take a good close look at them and think about whether the life you’re leading is one that aligns with what you care about. 

What really matters to me, deep down?
What kind of person do I want to be?
What personal strengths or qualities do I want to develop?
What legacy would I like to leave?
And what am I going to do with these answers?

Plenty of people think of success in terms of goal achievement. If you do, I invite you now to consider an alternative to this, and see how it changes your thinking: success is living by your values. No matter how far your goals reach into the future (and no matter whether you ever achieve them), just like how happiness can be right here for you in this moment, so too can you have success right now – all that is required of you is that you choose to commit to your values, and start to work in the service of what really matters to you.2

This isn’t always going to be easy. You may have heard the adage that ‘fear and desire are two sides of the same coin’. If something really matters to you, when there’s a lot riding on something, the more it also matters if you don’t get what you want: what you desire is also what you fear to lose. 

British theologian John Henry Newman said, “Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.” So ask yourself this question: Are you willing to face whatever comes when you’re heading in the direction you desire? Self-doubt, distress and anxiety are common when we’re seeking meaning. Willingness takes strength, but if you summon the strength to say ‘yes’ to overcome your fears, there is a whole world beyond what you think you already know, filled with possibility.   

And finally, that image I posted at the top of the article? This was the accompanying caption.

Life is fleeting. One day you may look back and see how you let time march on inexorably, passing you by. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Happiness doesn’t only come about through grand gestures; it is in the moment of unguarded laughter, finally learning to be who you are, the willingness to be vulnerable, the seeing of joy in the mundane, the purpose in the pain, and living out what really matters to you. Go big or small, as long as you go. 

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

References

Carriochi, J. & Bailey, A. (2008). A CBT practitioner’s guide to ACT: How to bridge the gap between cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Crace, R. K., & Brown, D. (2002). Life Values Inventory. Williamsburg, VA: Applied Psychology Resources. 

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Coaching

Slow Down Retreat, 22-24 November 2019, Cotswolds

  • September 30, 2019October 31, 2019

***20% discount when quoting Quiet Space!! Say I sent you and pay just over £350 rather than the normal price of £445 for a shared room***

Exciting news! I’ve joined the Slow Down Retreats team to deliver a very special retreat weekend from 22-24 November in the luxurious surroundings of Cotswold Park Barns.

It’s going to be a weekend of relaxation, yoga and meditation, and nourishment for body, mind and soul. Time for you, time to breathe deep and press pause. Time to rest, to unwind, to find some headspace, and to sleep.

I’ll be leading a group session during the retreat focused on self-care and self-acceptance – do you know what your body and mind need and what replenishes you (and conversely, what drains your energy)? How kind are you to yourself? We’ll be working to identify your personal strengths and your unique self-care recipe, and discussing how we can all move towards self-acceptance.

Full details are available at Slow Down Retreats. I’d be thrilled to see you there!

Confidence and motivation

Climb on

  • September 1, 2019September 30, 2019

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At the climbing wall today I managed to get told off again (twice), once for having an unsupervised child (in fairness I thought someone else was watching him, but no excuse really) and once for failing to notice that I was clipping said child into an autobelay adjacent to a route already being climbed on. I was musing to the child that it wasn’t very nice being told off, whereupon he said wryly “welcome to my world”.

I also failed to send most of my climbs. After one 6a+ on which my grip had failed three moves from the top, I joked to someone that I was going to do one of the easier routes for my ego.

I was chatting with the child after having failed on this lovely V2 route for the third time and I said something to him along the lines of “I want to try that again…” “So try it.” he returned promptly.

“…I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it’.”

“Just do it.”

So I did (swipe to second video.)

Sometimes life is really that simple. You might rip your palms slightly in the process but you know, no pain, no gain. Failure lies in not trying. Kick the ego to the kerb and just do it.

Climb on.

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