And with that, let's introduce Aishwarya. Very, very nice to see She's an evil camera. As you know, we we just jump off it because it like it it was just descending like lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. We actually had pretty evil camera at the very, start of this where we bought a snazzy camera, so hopefully, made me look so beautiful. And but also we've got some people coming in and needed to work and yeah anyway whatever. And I froze. The first five minutes this whole thing was me frozen. Thanks so much for coming. It's a big deal. Thank you. We're very excited and if people got questions please go to globaladhd.com. There's a Q and A section to add questions there. We are very, very excited about it.

Yeah I think and how do you want to do this? Should I bring up the slides?

Yes please. That would be great. That would be great and.

It would be a wonderful thing and particularly, if you could see them, which It's alright if not. We can No. We've definitely got them. And Okay. Seamlessly, seamlessly, I think we all agree I brought that across. So there we go. Over to you. Although we can again only just.

I need I'm sure why that happened. I think it's That's me, not you.

I will we can see your face.

Gorgeous. Okay. Is that are we are we good now? Very good. Over to you. Alright. Awesome. Hi. Hi, everyone. Really excited to be here. I think I've been following the conference on YouTube. I just hopped over to this side instead to be able to be here. I'm Aishwarya Srinivasan. I'm an associate with Genius Within. I'm also a PhD student who's just starting at the back University of London with my PhD thesis sort of focusing on neurodivergence and particularly ADHD in the workplace, what it looks like, what strengths, challenges come with it. And so I'm really, really grateful I get to do this here. Gonna be speaking a little bit about ADHD awareness and inclusion in the workplace. Next slide, please.

Oh, the responsibility. It's it's it's terrifying.

Alright. Yes. Just give you a quick introduction to Genius Within. We're a community interest company that was founded in 2011 by doctor Nancy Doyle. We're focused on neurodiversity and center that in every conversation. We advise and consult with organizations as well as individuals on, neurodiversity strengths, how they can be used, in the workplace, how workplaces can be better equipped to work with neurodiversity. We're led by a combination of sort of lived experience and expertise in that 65% of the senior management team identifies as an, you know, neurominority themselves, and about sixty percent of all the employees in the organization are sort of identify as disabled. So.

We very much come with that combined expertise that that brings in. Next slide, please. Giving you a quicker overview of this because I do know this is something that was brought up, in the previous conversation as well by Sam. When we're talking about neurodiversity, we're broadly referring to the spectrum of cognitive, sort of differences in our minds that sort of mimics biodiversity. This chart that you might I can't see and read super well right now, but, you should be able to see and read, sort of talks about, a model of, you know, minorities that considers what strengths they bring in to workplaces, but also in everyday life. It's modeled after the work of Mary Colley who made a developmental.

Who ran the developmental adult neurodiversity association, and doctor Nancy Doyle modeled this off of that and sort of flips the narrative to focus on strengths instead because I think that is something that tends to be lacking in everyday conversation about, neurominorities. Next slide, please. Sorry. Yeah. Bringing our focus into ADHD. We're at a Global ADHD Conference, but I'm just gonna run over this very quickly. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which I think we can work on the naming over there. Not everyone identifies with being hyperactive. It affects five percent, of all adults and has been that's been the broad global prevalence. So I found that in India, when we're looking at studies.

They range anywhere between two to fifteen percent. Data presented on the slide sort of talks about workplace strengths as well as weaknesses. Strengths include alertness and ability to hyperfocus, which when you're interested in a thing and, speaking from lived experience here, I know I can sit with something for hours and hours, sort of think about it. And that leads into the other strength, which is passion and enthusiasm. We bring a 100% into whatever we care about care about it very, very deeply, tend to make model employees in that context and what we can drive and bring into the workforce. Our creative thinking abilities also mean we are good with problem solving, looking at.

Puzzles in slightly different ways, and are able to think of solutions that people might not typically think of, and sometimes tend to have strong visual or three d skills. Weaknesses, on the other hand, when considering the workplace end up being sort of taking on too many things, and I don't know how many people experience this. But though I suppose the twenty four hour conference is an indicator, which is the idea that we end up spending about majority of our time looking into commitments, taking them on instead of going, I can do this. And then when it when it eventually ends up happening, sort of being mildly perturbed by amount of things we've managed to take on. Also observed in terms of difficulties or a lack of attention to.

Details, sometimes the difficulty in concentrating depending on the nature of the challenge of the task, the novelty of the task, and how we think about.

Slide changing, I mean, a very difficult task. Yes. No. It's been a wonderful ADHD. I I think one of the places where ADHD, well where we can find ourselves having a lot of fun whether or not it's a good idea or not, is where it's very clear we have one thing to do. And this conference has gradually become the one thing to do. Everything else has had to get, you know, we only really started doing it twelve weeks ago and so then everything's had kind of get trampled out of the way whilst we make this thing and and so many wonderful people like yourself getting involved saying, yeah, I'll get it, I'll I'll come, I'll share my knowledge and twenty.

Four hours it goes around the globe obviously and the big downspike being that now you have meetings in every time zone. But, you know, it's been wonderful. It's Yeah. Been exciting as well.

Back to you. Back to you. No problem. I was just sort of talking about how it's exciting to have people out from all around the globe and the sort of the twenty four hour nature of it just really appeals to me at a visceral level almost. There's also some difficulty with teamwork in some occasions and working with other people, which leads for ADHDers to be perceived as difficult people to work with. This tends to be something that's linked to a struggle with inhibition control or struggling with patients sometimes, which is sort of ending ending up thinking too fast or too far ahead or waiting for somebody to finish the thought or waiting for somebody.

To complete a sentence before interrupting them. Things like that end up being difficult and prop up as challenges, in the workplace. Going over the next two slides slightly more quickly. Next slide, please. When I'm referring to a spiky profile, I'm referring to the idea that neurodivergent individuals more broadly tend to have a slightly more extreme sense of strengths and weaknesses than the neurotypical individual tends to. This makes us better as specialist thinkers than we are generalist thinkers and applies to multiple neurodivergences and not necessarily linked to just ADHD.

But also explains why we tend to notice this more cleanly or neatly in the workplace as something that stands out because it is something that literally ends up standing out in these contexts. Next slide, please. Skipping almost right over this one, which just contextualizes what we're trying to look at, which is, there are spikes that tend to be observed in different areas of perceptual reasoning, verbal comprehension, processing speed, working memory. We're either really good at retaining information, and remembering really specific details, or if it's a work appointment or if I've not noted it down, it's out of it is out of out of sight, out of mind. Motor control is also one of those things that end up being broadly affected.

Next slide, please. This is broadly where challenges end up showing up in the workplace. This is contextualized based on a survey, for people who ended up receiving coaching eventually in reported difficulties and challenges that they were facing in the workplace. It does tend to be linked to communication, time management, organization skills, and memory and concentration. What this ends up sort of generating is also a feedback loop where there are morale problems with how one ends up feeling in con in the context of the workplace, how they feel like they can engage with the workplace in the future, and sort of further sort of exacerbates the problems that are faced in the workplace.

This is broadly sort of thinking about what challenges and strengths ADHD brings into the workplace. The next part of the presentation focuses on inclusion and a little bit on the adjustments and what they can look like, in the workplace as well. Moving to the next slide. We have different levels of inclusion that we can sort of think about where we want to be always, where we want to be should be systemic inclusion. But we we start from from the left side, which is exclusion, which is something that you know, minorities do tend to experience. This also happens with other sort of marginalized communities in whatever capacity if race, gender, sexuality, disability, new neurodivergence.

All of that sort of tends to get grouped in. And if you sort of have an intersection of those minorities or marginalization, does tend to make it slightly more difficult, as an experience in a workplace when one's a neurodivergent individual. The employment gap for disabled and nondisabled individuals still stands at about thirty percent, and this does get worse when you think about some neurominorities. The three levels of inclusion that are indicated here are sort of compliance, deliberate inclusion, and systemic. When we talk about compliance, we're talking about individual level inclusion where we're accounting for a single person's, needs, and making adjustments in their context.

Deliberate inclusion sort of thinks about having specialist, themes come in that fit, the the the group of people you're trying to include but does not account for inclusion at a systemic level and at all levels of hierarchies. Systemic inclusion, on the other hand, sort of brings in inclusion to organizational culture, how do we talk about how an organization can do better by neurodivergent individuals, in this case, by people with ADHD, and what those changes in the workplace should and could potentially look like. Moving on to the next slide, please. Right. Common adjustments that we're thinking about, and I think this is my favorite part to talk about particularly because.

Two things, and I think you'd mentioned the part of this as well, Henry. One, it's that it benefits a lot more people than just neurodivergent people. It if include all of these adjustments for every individual in the organization, it's gonna be super helpful for everyone, but adjustments in the workplace for, neurodivergent people, particularly with ADHD, can look at some of these. And it's exciting, but also sort of remarkable to know that all of these adjustments can be implemented for little to no cost. Executive functions coaching basically talks about the challenges that have been previously mentioned. You have a coach who specializes in ADHD, works with it.

And works with your strengths and models behaviors and considers strategies that might work in the workplace for you. Literacy coaching, again, a broader neurodivergence inclusion thing, which helps with, skills that require more reading and writing and how we can ensure we include everyone in the workplace. Supervisor input and managerial input is something that sort of goes how do you generate a feedback loop between a supervisor or manager and, a neurodivergent individual who gives you specific feedback, who gives you things you can work on, and how can these individuals be sort of facilitating model, of coaching and coaching behavior for you as well. Assistive technology, which includes.

Something like the the bot, I think, that Tammy had mentioned, which sort of just made time sheets automated so that you don't have to think about inputting the time sheet if you have time liners and you can't think about time in particular capacity. Formal training so that everyone in your workplace has an understanding of, how a particular neurodivergence works, how you can support an individual, how you can create a workplace that is friendly and that is inclusive. Workstation adaptations, which is adapting for, any sensory issues or anything that you might physically require in your workstation to be able to work better, and of flexibility in schedule, which is.

There tends to be bursts of concentration or bursts of focus that tend to arise when you're working with ADHD. How do you ensure that a workplace is conducive to that burst and also to the lulls and the exhaustion that might follow after that does happen? Next slide, please. Common organizational strategies. I am trying to just go over what's on the slides here so that and read it out so that anyone who's not able to read it or would prefer for me to say it out loud just gets some context. They divide it across communication, how we can do it in meetings, and how you can have general organizational awareness. Communication use bullet points, use.

Highlight keywords, which, like, signal areas of focus, be more specific, provide templates for communication that make it easier for employees to communicate to employers and the wider organization, provide context for why a certain piece of work is happening, what that means for the organization, and pro explain rules that we might not necessarily understand. This is something that, again, other marginalized communities also understand, which is the idea that there are rules that tend to be hidden that you're not made aware of. How do you recontextualize that and bring that to the forefront and say, hey. This is explicitly what we want you to be doing, and here's what you could be doing instead.

A system of feedback that's intense to self work in this context is clean feedback mechanisms. There are three broad questions, and each question has evidence of the behavior, what what the inference from that behavior was, and what the impact of that behavior was. So you ask what worked well, what didn't work well, and what would work better. So if you're providing feedback and you have a system in place for how you're providing this feedback, then it makes the system one expected and therefore doesn't sort of startle the individual or confuse the individual. There are no gaps in communication, and you know that the feedback is not personal or impact driven, and so also helps with emotional regulation and support within an organization.

Moving towards meetings, give extra time to prepare for those meetings. In those meetings, provide slides beforehand so that there's some preparation time for people to familiarize themselves with what they want to be talking about. Email minutes of the meeting right after. Provide an agenda. Build in breaks so that there's time for people to step away and step back into spaces that might potentially be overwhelming, and importantly provide alternatives because if these are strategies that don't end up working for everyone, and they don't because there's no one size fits all, how do you ensure, that you give them other options and other ways of communicating, providing updates, and getting information.

Across organizations in the way that needs to happen? Awareness strategies across the organization for individuals, but also as sort of larger systems, listen to what people are saying, set clear deadlines, communicate those deadlines, communicate check ins, try to ensure there's a model of how you want to be checking in with each other. I found that, particularly in my work experience, it's been useful to sort of go, hey. I would like for you to check-in with me these many times. Or, hey. I would like this by this deadline, but I would like part of the draft, or I would like to see some part of, this project by this timeline instead. Take an interest, try to understand how.

Things like ADHD impact people's everyday life, how it impacts their workplace, how it impacts how they engage with work, what means for their energy levels, and be aware of sensory stimulation, which can overwhelm an individual and can make difficult to create a working environment that works for someone. There are several more strategies that end up working for people, and some of these work for some individuals or others. I found that coaching, or workplace needs assessments tend to be good ways sort of drawing out what individualized strategies can look like. Next slide, please. Right. Just quickly going over how this does tend to be quite successful adjustments in providing.

These adjustment, however simplistic they may seem, do tend to have positive impacts for workplaces. There have been, managers who've rated their, employees as having improvement in productivity. There's been a self rated improvement in performance and how confident one feels about their ability to get work done. Promotion rates do get better, and I think importantly, that statistic would set there's a good job retention rate, which can be quite difficult if organizations feel like they're at odds with a neurodivergent individual. Having a greater retention rate by making few simple adjustments is inherently worth it because keeping that pool of talent, that pool of individuals who bring so much more to the workplace is inherently worth it.

For my last section, I'm gonna be focusing a little bit more on the Indian context surrounding ADHD, which is something I'm most familiar with. It's something that I care deeply and passionately about, but I've also found that it's difficult to have these conversations, and the conversation is just beginning to be had, which is why I'm all the more thankful that I get to do this conversation at the Global ADHD Conference here, to bring, like, that to the limelight a little bit more. Next slide, please. Right. The Indian context. As as late as 2016, the updated act on the the people with disabilities act did not include ADHD as of yet. It had begun to recognize specific learning disability, disabilities and, autism spectrum disabilities.

In addition to some mental health conditions, but they tend to be vague as well. Neurodevelopmental context do not currently include ADHD, but, that is part of an ongoing sort of policy level dialogue on how neurodivergence inclusion can work at a government level. Research in India surrounding ADHD has been limited, though it has been increasing in the last two to three decades. This is still, for the most part, focused on, ADHD at the school level or, in younger children, tends to have a focus which looks into disability through the medical model, which looks at what, diagnostic criteria look like. Are they looking any different in the cultural context?

What comorbidities look like and developing a clinical profile that's more pertinent to the Indian context. There's very few studies that look into adult ADHD, let alone adult ADHD in the workplace. The current research gap that's been sort of identified has indicated that there needs to be more research into awareness of ADHD, how it persists into adulthood for a lot of people, how you move away from medical model disability to champion social model, talking about neurodivergence as something that needs systemic support and inclusion as something that just exists out there in the world that should not be sort of stigmatized in the form it is and broadly making these conversations more mainstream.

Just just quickly, though, for On the professional sure. I'm sorry. For people who aren't so familiar with the social versus medical model of disability, would you be able to quickly tell tell people what what the difference is?

Sure. 100%. So, basically, the medical model of disability looks into disability as something that says that problem lies within the individual and is something that needs to be fixed. It's something that needs to be treated. It's something that needs to be accounted for. The social move and pathologizes disability and neurodivergence more broadly over there. The social model of disability sort of talks about the systemic impact of, disability. It talks about how it is the environment, surrounding an individual that fails to provide for the individual to thrive in the environment. And so shifts the onus away from the individual into what the environment and social context can provide for the individual.

How adjustments and little things can make sure the world is more equipped.

And the example I've I've heard which is sort of make has helped talk about that is just the example of a building with stairs to get into. So if someone is in a wheelchair, if it's got a small entrance with stairs like that chair's not going in and that person is disabled in their ability to use that building and to go in and be part of that. Whereas if there's a ramp with a wide enough door for a chair then that person is able to access the building, to access its resources and use it and in that context that disability has been well they're not disabled in their ability to use that building per se and so that and when we talk about ADHD that's looking at the sort of adjustments that allow us to thrive. The.

Adjustments you were talking about in the workplace, those are the changes that have people included and thriving. But if you put the blocks in the play instead, then we're out. And Yeah. And how important that is. Right. Back to you and slides. No. No problem.

I think, like, thanks for using that example as well. Think, like, that also really contextualizes what that means in sort of non, non very, research oriented terms. I don't know. But sort of nontechnical terms, a little bit at least. And yeah. Sorry. Moving ahead to the professional context surrounding Do we need the slides? And ADHD, we're looking at, mental health infrastructure, which is limited. I think COVID also highlighted how limited mental health infrastructure is and how it is sort of struggling under the weight of the sheer number of people who need mental health support.

There is a gap in the number of practitioners that are required to be able to address what this can look like. Their diagnostic and systemic bias is because there are individuals who were trained at different ages and sort of stage in their life and still tend to use older models for diagnosis or tend to use, different narratives, do not have, for instance, the gender context that's linked to ADHD, sort of tend to think, hey. If you're getting good grades, you can't have ADHD. And I think those conversations need to shift a little bit further, but there are also limited funding resources, and that's something that's a more sort of.

Larger scale conversation that needs to be had as to who can fund this research so that we have policy that's more inclusive, and actually considers neurodivergent individuals in the mainframe of research. At the workplace level, neurodiversity, inclusion, and support and adjustments are beginning to get recognized. I know of a few sort of organizations that take it among themselves, but it's not broader, national level policy yet. So it is up to individual companies to choose to employ policies that are friendly and inclusive of neurodivergent individuals. There still seems to be a barrier where there is an assumption that financial cost associated with these adjustments or with inclusion is heavy, which needs to shift as well.

But the overall news, I would like to say as as sort of latest, couple of articles added from two weeks ago and one week ago is that they're beginning to recognize the benefits of a neurodiverse workforce, what did what a company can bring, out into the world if you have people who are allowed to thrive in the environments that, that are adjusted for them, that accommodate them, that are inclusive of them, and sort of the magic that a neurodiverse workforce can bring. Next slide, please. Just sort of concluding on the note that inclusion should be a moral, social, and economic imperative. We stand to lose a lot of human potential when we don't think about these things, And I hope it becomes centerfold conversation everywhere in the world.

I hope it becomes policy conversation at the India level. The change is beginning, and I hope we sort of see an upward trend from here in terms of inclusion. Next slide's just references and then we're wrapping up for any questions. You're muted again, Henry. Damn it.

Damn this. Damn it. So I think we're running a bit later actually a bit later even with hope. I I think we might have to have to skip questions but although I've tried to insert as as we went along relevant pieces. And I'm very very pleased and thank you so much for bringing in the India perspective particularly like this is a global conference we want to bring in different knowledge and understanding and attitudes because it educates us around we have a lot of shared fights and we have fights we can learn from each other and we think this is a global battle this is a change in perception globally around ADHD and so it's I think it's great I mean it's pretty devastating to hear it's not recognized as a disability.

We're getting there. We.

Know how much people are struggling and it's just really really tough and I thought that when you talked about and there's people still thinking, I'm afraid that Stephanie's still here as well, that if you've had some success in life, you can't have ADHD. If you've managed to hold down a job that's probably beneath your potential, you've managed to get a qualification then you can't have ADHD. That's just absolutely wrong and actually it's a plug for later at 7PM. We've got Heston Blumenthal on, right? And he had one of my questions which I managed to put in a lot of swearing for so heads up for people there, is, you know, when you got diagnosed, you know, you had three Michelin stars and your restaurant was voted best on the planet.

Like Yeah. Yeah.

Like and yet you talk, you know, and actually also the question of how can you be the person who can deliver a dish with multiple ingredients things coming together in one perfect moment of gastronomic delight and also be the person who you know forgets to walks upstairs for a duffle coat and comes down with a watch that they'd lost five years ago. You can be the same person? And I think they're really important questions and and Yeah. And directly to what you were talking about that, those attitudes that, yeah, that still pervade that people can't be successful and have ADHD that they can't, gosh is it like, is it like awful, hearing myself say it, it's an awful perception that people have. And I.

Thought that was what you guys and you know what you're doing and I think you're particularly a PhD researcher in organizational psychology at Burbank and you work as a coach with Ingenious Within. You're particular of interest in neurodivergence and the inclusive careers and coaching which obviously you're doing and you previously worked as an independent neurodiverse coach with organizations in India. So now you're really bringing that expertise for which we are very grateful and do truly wonderful to bring in that.

Experience Thank in you for the opportunity honestly. This was this was great to talk about. I mean, it hurts, but it's also something I think needs to be conversation.

Everywhere, people need to be talking about it more. So thank you for that opportunity as well. Oh, well, thank you. Well, this is the moment where we've got to sign off to say goodbye and say thank you so very, very much and move on to our next.

So thank you so much for your really, really nice care. Bye bye. I'll hop on the other side and see you on YouTube then. I will. See you. Take care. Thank you. I will say hello. Bye bye.

Bye. Bye bye. Bye. That was absolutely spectacular. I'm like very genius within her doing incredibly important work around inclusivity and around getting people into the workplace around those You could see a number of it is their own primary research. It's a big deal and very grateful to have her here.