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Your Company's Superpower: How Dyslexic Thinkers Are Shaping the Future | Kate Griggs
01:01:33
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- [00:04]
A
I was failing miserably at school. Eight years old. My parents took me to a parents evening and basically the headmistress said that I wasn't very bright and I remember my dad saying, that woman knows absolutely nothing. I then went for an interview at the school that my brother was at. I remember in the interview saying to the headmaster who was interviewing me, if you're going to ask me to take any exams, I probably won't pass them. And he said, oh, we don't worry about exams here. He said, we can teach you to pass exams. What are you passionate about? What is it you love to do? That's what's going to make you successful in life. Within a couple of weeks, they identified my dyslexia. So they then gave me help for all the things that I was struggling with. My life completely changed and I think that's really why I do what I do now. My son had a terrible experience his beginning of school and I couldn't believe things hadn't moved on because it's not good for kids to have that level of failure put on them at such a young age when it's just not true.
- [01:05]
B
Welcome to the Work for Humans podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. Dyslexia has been framed as a learning disability, but what if dyslexia is actually a strength, one that fuels innovation, storytelling and problem solving. In this episode, I talk with Kate Griggs, the founder and CEO of Made by Dyslexia, which is a global charity dedicated to reframing how we understand this special way of perceiving the world and thinking. Kate is on a mission to shift the perception of dyslexia from a disability to a valuable approach to solving problems, one that is essential especially for the future of work. Kate reveals the hidden talents of dyslexic thinkers, why traditional education fails fails them, and what companies need to do to unlock their full potential. We discuss how work environments can adapt to different cognitive styles, how AI is making cognitive diversity more valuable than ever, and the game changing campaign that put Made by Dyslexia on the map, which was the first dyslexic sperm bank. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a future episode. Get ready for an eye opening conversation with Kate Griggs. Kate Griggs, welcome to Work for Humans.
- [02:29]
A
Thank you very much Dart. I'm delighted to be with you today.
- [02:33]
B
You are the founder and CEO of Made by Dyslexia and you are on the path promoting a complete Reframe of how we think about dyslexia. And in fact, it completely reframed it for me reading it. What's the mission of Made by Dyslexia?
- [02:52]
A
It's really simple. It's to help the world understand the brilliance of dyslexia and dyslexic thinking and to empower it in every home, every school, every workplace.
- [03:04]
B
What is the misconception that you're remedying?
- [03:07]
A
Most people see dyslexia as a disability or a learning disability or. Or learning difference. And it is a different way of learning and processing information. But very few people really understand the brilliance that is dyslexic thinking. Things are getting better because I think we've moved the dial a long way as a charity in the eight years we've been around, but it is still viewed first and foremost as a difficulty. You just need to Google it or look at it on any search engine, and the first thing comes up is a disability with the acquisition of learning to read. And that's such a small part of what dyslexia is, that we really need to teach the world the big picture of dyslexia. The range of challenges that dyslexics have, but also these brilliant, incredible superpowers that dyslexics have that are now vital for the future of work.
- [04:01]
B
Let's get into the facts of it. How about how many people are dyslexic in the world?
- [04:06]
A
One in five people are dyslexic. That's a stat that is very commonly used in the U.S. some countries use the stat 1 in 10. But whenever there's been a longitudinal study into dyslexia, like Yale have done one, for instance, we did something a few years ago. Whenever you actually look and screen routinely in an education system for dyslexia, the number that comes out is one in five. So we're very sure that that is the number. However, because we don't routinely screen in schools, about 80% of dyslexic people leave school without their dyslexia being identified. So it's a big number of people. That's 20% of the population. It's a large number of people, and most of them won't find out at school but will find out later in life.
- [04:55]
B
Is it one thing? Because a lot of times there's something that we give a big name based upon one symptom, for instance, and I see it in medicine all the time, which is that we're going to call it one thing. Well, like cancer as an example, which is we call it one thing. It's a hundred things when you actually look at it. But it has a few characteristics on the surface, and that's what we name it. So do you think of it as one thing or is there a. I'm going to actually say two questions, which is, is there a range of it? Some people have a lot and some people have a little. And also, are there differences?
- [05:31]
A
So if you think of dyslexia as a pattern of strengths and a pattern of challenges, no dyslexic person will have exactly the same pattern of strengths and challenges. So you may find some dyslexic people are very good in some areas that other dyslexics will find challenging. So the best way of thinking about it is like a spiky profile. You'll be in the top percentile in several things, and when I say top, you'll probably be right at the top. So those are your dyslexic superpowers, if you like. But then you'll have areas where you really struggle, and that's your kryptonite. And those are the things that we traditionally measure in education. So rote learning, your ability to learn to read lots of information and a recall of facts, it's that sort of area processing information very quickly. Those are all the things that you need to pass exams in the traditional education system, and also often for psychometric tests and measures we use within the recruitment space as well.
- [06:39]
B
The funny thing about the education system, and I've spoken about it a couple of times on the show, most recently with Christine Renaud, about how the education system would like to be a factory and would like to treat everybody the same and mass produce graduates. And it has in many cases settled on a very limited set of educational tools that became the standard and in many cases became the measure of intelligence, which is good grades, you must be smart, and bad grades, you must be dumb. What was your schooling experience?
- [07:18]
A
My schooling experience started out terribly, but then was very, very good. But just to get back to that point, and then I will tell you about my schooling experience. I think the problem we have in education, it's the measurement. It's the way that we have to find something to measure in order to be able to benchmark schools against each other or benchmark students against each other. So it's all about giving somebody the same questions, the same exam, and then we can look at how well they've done against that or how well the school is performing against other schools. But the Truth of the matter is what we should be doing is really valuing the people who think differently and the people who are individuals. And that's right across the board, whether you're dyslexic or not. It's the people who think differently we need to be looking for now, because artificial intelligence can do all the bits that are the standardized tests that we're using as measures. So I think the main problem is the fact that we're measuring the easily measurable things in schools, which we shouldn't be doing.
- [08:23]
B
Before we get to your school, I actually want to dig into that a little bit. Let's talk about those things that dyslexics tend to be very strong in, because I'd like to assess, if we are measuring those in schools, what are some of the things that dyslexics tend to be really strong in?
- [08:41]
A
Communication skills. Being able to simplify things, simplify lots of complex information and present it in a way that is really easy for people to read and interact with. So you will find lots of dyslexic people in journalism, in TV presenting. Lots of authors are dyslexic. All of the places that you wouldn't expect to find dyslexics. But we're really good at storytelling. There's a big role in that, in entrepreneurs, to be good at storytelling. So being able to really communicate and simplify something. I don't know whether you've heard of Axios, but their smart brevity model, which is keeping things really simple because people only read a very short amount of news. One of the founders, Roy Schwartz, is dyslexic. So that is very much dyslexic thinking. Keeping it simple, keeping it succinct. I don't think we measure that, particularly in schools. It's normally. Is your essay long enough? If you can say something in short, bullet points. Why does it have to be in a long essay if you can get the same amount of information out of it? Creative thinking. So imagination. Being able to find different ways of doing things. So not following the status quo. Finding a really innovative, creative, different solutions. And I don't think we check that in school because it's all about having a right answer and teaching to that right answer. Complex problem solving, making connections between lots of disparate things that other people may not see as connected. So we often talk as dyslexic people. The ability to see the big picture. So you sort of rise above things and have a helicopter view where you can look at lots of different things and connect them together. We work a lot with gchq, the British intelligence agency, and that's one of the skills they specifically hire for recognizing that it is a dyslexic thinking skill. Again, I don't think we're measuring that effectively in schools because normally with problems you have to have a set rule for what that problem is and what the solution is, rather than coming up with alternative, not necessarily easily connected solutions. And then interpersonal skills. Dyslexic people are brilliant people. People we're very good at reading people. We're very good at seeing what people are not saying. And that's using our sort of multi sensory way to read people, I guess you could say. And again, I don't think that's anything that we really do measure or treasure in schools either. So I guess it's all the soft skills, although I hate that word because they're not soft skills. The power skills, whatever you want to call them, that we don't actively measure in schools. Those are the things dyslexics excel at.
- [11:25]
B
I'll admit I hadn't thought very hard about dyslexia, which is probably true for a lot of people. When I thought of dyslexia before reading your book and before listening to your lectures, I thought of it as primarily a visual processing challenge. So I thought of it primarily about reading. And I knew that there was a component of it that would affect things like spelling. And so what I sort of imagined was this very narrow pathway between language perception, Printed. Absolutely, printed. So that's what made me think of it as a visual issue. Printed language, transferring that, and then reproducing visual language. And so to hear it described as being a much broader range of thinking behaviors really surprised me. And it's very interesting to hear you talk about, first of all, people who are dyslexic being writers. And I can completely see how you could be an extraordinary writer, but be considered remedial because you can't spell. And so people don't see the content. What they see is the production.
- [12:43]
A
So that's Agatha Christie, a very famous dyslexic person. Her spelling was atrocious, but she's one of the most famous authors of all time. So there's lots of examples because it's the storytelling and the imagination and the ability to use your emotional intelligence to know how you want people to feel with the words that you write. And there's a lot more to writing than actually the words on a page. It's all of the Things that wrap around it that dyslexics tend to be brilliant at. There are a huge, huge number of top Hollywood actors that are dyslexic as well, because that's bringing all of those things together, you know, in the acting form rather than the written form.
- [13:21]
B
And I don't think you mentioned spatial thinking as one of them. Is it one?
- [13:28]
A
It is. It's not one of the top skills that are needed in the workplace. The things I listed to you are the top four skills that the workplace are looking for. Spatial awareness is a really big dyslexic thinking skill for a lot of dyslexics. You find that a huge number of sports people are dyslexic because of their ability to predict where the ball is going to move on a field, on a pitch, or where they need to move their body to hit a ball or interact with something. And then also you have a very large percentage of architects who are dyslexic because they can see the 3D space of where the building is going to be. They can see it, imagine it from the inside out. They often talk about being able to see something. So, yes, all of those. That visual spatial thing is a very big dyslexic thinking skill.
- [14:19]
B
It's funny, I was just talking to a couple of executives and I found out that they couldn't visualize things. And I didn't even know that was an option. I did not know. And it turns out a very large proportion of the population can't visualize. In fact, I'd love to explore this on the show further, which is different ways of moving through the world and thinking about things, but I can't imagine not thinking about things visually. I don't even know how they function in the world. So it's fascinating to learn that that's actually an option.
- [14:55]
A
Yeah. I can't imagine what it must be like not to be able to visualize. But you see, a lot of dyslexics say they can see round corners, they can predict things before they're going to happen, which I can do. And I've always had that ability. And at school, that's a real problem, because I could see the solution, I could see the answer, and I'd have to show my workings in math. So it took me so much to pass my maths exams because I couldn't show my workings. I just knew what the answer was. But now I can look at a spreadsheet of numbers and I tell you if there's a mistake, because it just jumps out at me as if it just doesn't make sense. It's really fascinating.
- [15:33]
B
I am interested in the effects on math, because math, of course, most of the time when we're doing it, has this big visual component, but it's not the printed word. And what I read in your work is that many mathematicians are dyslexic. So you've said a little bit, which is showing your work as opposed to jumping to the answer. But how is sort of the visual processing part of arithmetic?
- [16:00]
A
There are sort of three parts of maths. Math, or maths, as we call it in the uk. First of all, there's a lot of rote learning, so it is about when you know learning math facts. So you've got to look at your times tables and you've got to learn them off path. That's something most dyslexics will struggle to do, because we're just not very good at that whole rote learning and the memory side of things. Then there's also the sequential side of things. So dyslexic people don't think in a sequential 1 to 10 way. We jump around, we look at the big picture. So that's where we often struggle. When you have a math process, that means you've got to go through step by step by step. We often find that quite difficult. And then I think from the visual side of things, if you're looking at math that is visual, we tend to be very good at that. But it's the other bits before that that we often struggle with. Also, if you think about the way that we teach math in school, an awful lot of it is full of words. So if you have a question, that is, you have to get to 100 miles down the road and you have to take this detour and that detour, which takes 10 minutes and five minutes and you're driving at 20 miles an hour, what was your average speed for a dyslexic person to actually do that? It takes so much to actually break that down. And that's always timed as well whenever you have those questions. So those are the things that we would struggle with. But anything that's conceptual or visual, we tend to actually be really good at. So I think there isn't any really solid, robust information on this. But if you talk to experts in the field, they tend to say that about 50% of dyslexic people will be brilliant at maths and 50% will really struggle with maths. So when you look at all those different elements that probably explains why my family, we're not very good at maths, 50%. So we all struggled a lot to get. But as I say, you know, I can look at a spreadsheet and see where a problem is, and I can understand numbers. I'm just not very good at the sequential element of it or the rote learning.
- [18:12]
B
I also suspect that one of the challenges with big picture thinking is that it's very laborious to learn a piece of something and in order to incorporate it into your mind, have to fit it into the big picture, which is that that's not learn a piece of a thing that's actually fitted into this larger picture that is developing. I'd like to talk about your family. You've mentioned in your book that dyslexia is heritable.
- [18:42]
A
Yeah, definitely. They even know the gene group that dyslexia sits in. But in my family, my father was dyslexic. He didn't realize he was at school. His mom was a teacher, so she really helped him to learn to read. And he found out that he was dyslexic. Actually, when my elder brother was assessed, they assessed my dad as well and said, did you know you're dyslexic, too? My dad was a brilliant botanist, an amazing scientist, had an incredible imagination. He was a phenomenal explorer, always looking for different ways of doing things. I have one brother, my elder brother, who's dyslexic. He has two kids who are dyslexic. I have two boys who are dyslexic. My dad was one of six kids. And my aunts and uncles, I now have cousins and they have children as well. And I would say probably about 80% of my family are dyslexic. So if there was ever any doubt that it runs in families, they have it right there. But we do know there is a gene that is associated with it. But it's very common that people find out that they're dyslexic through their kids because we're not routinely looking for it at school. And I think also your dyslexia can be quite different to the way your child's dyslexia presents. So I have two boys and they are both dyslexic, but they have different strengths and different challenges. So it's quite interesting and a little bit different from me. My husband is also dyslexic, actually. So we're all slightly different, but we do all struggle with maths. So that's the thing we can Just say, have a calculator handy.
- [20:20]
B
Now we can get onto the question of early schooling. How was your schooling?
- [20:24]
A
So I had a really interesting education. I mentioned I've got an older brother who, his dyslexia was spotted when he was about 8 and he went to a school that then supported his dyslexia. I was failing miserably at school. I learned to read okay. My spelling wasn't great, but just when the level of schoolwork stepped up, I just couldn't keep up and I was really not doing well at all. And I went to a parents evening when I was, I think I was about eight years old, my parents took me to a parents evening and basically the headmistress said that I wasn't very bright. I was never going to be able to get into the schools that my parents wanted me to get into. So they need to just prepare themselves. That just wasn't academic. But they actually said to my mum and dad, I wouldn't worry too much because she's got quite a pretty face so she can marry well, which was a 1970s, admittedly, probably, probably would have been a little bit more acceptable and it would be to say that today. But to my dad, he was absolutely furious. We came out of the parents evening and I can remember feeling that I was this just terrible disappointment to my parents because I was failing at everything and couldn't get into the schools they wanted me to go to. And I remember my dad saying, that woman knows absolutely nothing. You're not staying at that school for a minute longer than you need to. I then went for an interview at the school that my brother was at and it was just like somebody had just opened my eyes to this whole new world. Because I remember in the interview saying to the headmaster who was interviewing me, repeating what the headmistress had said at my other school, she said, I'm not very bright, I'm not going to be able to pass my exams. So just as long as you know that if you're going to ask me to take any exams, I probably won't pass them because this was the common entrance. She was saying I'd never pass. And he said, oh, we don't worry about exams here. He said, we can teach you to pass exams. What we want to know is what are you passionate about? What is it you love to do? Where are your strengths? Where are your skills? Because he said, that's what's going to make you successful in life. And it was, for starters, that was just so, so freeing for me because I Was terribly worried about having to take exams, which I failed miserably. But then also when I started at the school, it literally was like that. Within a couple of weeks, they identified my dyslexia. So they then gave me help for all the things that I was struggling with. But it was about saying, you know, well, what are your passions? What do you love to do? What are you good at? And a lot of that was being done behind the scenes without me really realizing it. I mean, I didn't have any. I'm not sort of a fantastic artist or a brilliant sports person, but I have always been really interested in people. I've always had really good people skills. I think I've got good leadership skills. And those are the things that they pulled out for me as a child. And I was made head of this and head of that and given responsibility, and I was always very much championing the underdog or something. It's always been really important to me. So, yeah, literally within a few weeks, my life completely changed. And I think that's really why I do what I do now, because my son had a terrible experience, his beginning of school, and I couldn't believe things hadn't moved on. Because I look at the alumni from my school and it's a private school, but it's a mainstream school. It's not a specialist dyslexia school. And there are some brilliant kids who are on full scholarships who've gone on to achieve incredible things in all walks of life. And so many of them were dyslexic and would have just been turned away from other schools. So it makes me very passionate about what I do and helping everybody to understand what dyslexia really is. Because it's not a nice place at 7 or 8 years old to be told that you just have to rely on your okay face to marry well. But all joking aside, just being made to feel stupid at that age, when, you know, I'm not stupid, I'm perfectly able. And that's what I wanted them to see and tell me. Because it's not good for kids to have that level of failure put on them at such a young age, when it's just not true.
- [24:38]
B
I really want to dig into this school. And a part of the reason I want to is that here on the show we talk a lot about the design of work and how we might design work that makes people feel whole and alive. And what I hear is that you were at one school that was going to make you feel dumb all the time and tell you that you were no good. And you went to a school that looked at you as a whole person and looked at you as a complete person and gave you opportunities that made you feel whole and alive. And so do you know the backstory of this school?
- [25:10]
A
Yeah, the school has a really interesting backstory. It was set up in the 1930s and the guy who started the school was called Boss, Boss Mayor, and he was tutoring the Indian princes in India. There were five boys. And it got to the age where the royal family wanted the boys to come over to England to go to one of our top schools in the UK for education. So he came over with all five of the boys and there was one particular boy who really was struggling to learn to read. But Boss thought that of all the kids, he was the smartest. He did the rounds of all of the top schools. So Eton, Harrow, Stowe, all of the top schools in the uk, and every single school wouldn't accept that one lad who was not as academically smart as the others. And the Royal family were determined that they all went to the same school. So Boss decided that he was going to set up his own school and he would find a way to teach this lad and then he would open that up to every other school, because whenever he'd gone to a school, they were all saying, oh, yes, there's lots of people that try and get in here, but we can't accept them, so we can't make an exception to the rule. So he did some research into dyslexia, or word blindness, as it was still sort of being termed as in the 1930s, and he sent a team of teachers over to Columbia University, where Professors Orton and Gillingham were doing this remarkable teaching method to help children with dyslexia to learn to read. And that methodology is still used today to teach dyslexic children to read. But he sent a team of teachers over there, he then brought them back to the uk, he bought a site with some funding and he set up the school, which is called Millfield School. And it's actually, it's a world renowned school, it's one of the best schools in the uk. But he then went around to all of the private schools that this young lad was being turned away from and said, send me your duffers, send me all the kids that you can't educate and I will turn them around. And because he was talking to Eton and Harran, some of the most expensive schools with very wealthy families, he was able to charge the parents three or four times. More than they would have paid at Eton and Harrow. So he could then give away scholarships. So he set up the school on the basis that you would have very wealthy children who weren't able to achieve or be accepted in these private schools. And then he was able to give scholarships to really able kids who may also be struggling academically. And that's the premise of how the school was set up. And he did manage to educate every single child and get them reading and get them learning. So it's a very special school. We actually sent our children to the school because of the education system not quite supporting them in the uk. So it's still as brilliant as it was when I was there.
- [28:13]
B
I listened to your book with my wife, who's an educator, and so she was giving me a constant running commentary on things. And it was very interesting to hear her take on it. One of the things she said is that your son, when he first started school, he didn't start at that school and he was having a very hard time because there were no accommodations. And what she said is, well, yeah, if you're from a family of dyslexic, you live in a household full of accommodations that essentially you're working in that world and that works great. And then kids come to school. And especially now in the United States, there's a very big push for early literacy. Early literacy means when you're five, we're going to teach you to read. And on the one hand, she said, look, it's really important to be able to read and early literacy can help with that. But I'm interested in what the teaching method was that those two academics had identified that works.
- [29:12]
A
It's the teaching methods that are used to teach dyslexic children. Still today, it's phonics based, multisensory teaching. So it is evidence based. You know, there's the reading wars going on in the US at the moment. And the way that you teach dyslexic children to read is the reading wars, the sort of top runner in the reading wars. It's what everybody's campaigning for. So it's using phonics, but making sure that it's building on your knowledge and using multisensory teaching as well.
- [29:42]
B
What does multisensory teaching mean?
- [29:45]
A
Multisensory teaching is using all of your senses to learn. So I'll give you an example of multi sensory teaching. Dyslexic children struggle to learn how to spell. So one way that you would teach a dyslexic child to spell is to actually have some sand in a tray and get them to actually write the word in the tray. So that is just using more channels to be able to remember something. And it's just using all of your different emotions to be able to retain and absorb information or. Or process information.
- [30:17]
B
It's interesting. I don't classify myself as dyslexic until I took your test. And I was like, oh, maybe. But I'll tell you what's interesting about your book is that reading your book, I'm like, no, now I want to be dyslexic. So it was a really funny experience. I had a teacher in the fourth grade in Australia and I was the worst speller. I mean, literally, it's hard to explain what my writing was like at the time. Incomprehensible. And he had me do large motor spelling. So he had me print out these really giant words and he had me use my large motor as opposed to small motor for it. And I learned that way it absolutely was totally effective. And I learned good British spelling in time to go back to the United States where it was all wrong. But I did learn that that large motor learning was very effective. Hey, everyone, I want to let you know about some upcoming speaking events. If you happen to be in the Great lakes area on September 30th. I'm keynoting the HR track at the UWEBC 27th Annual Emerging Best Practices in Technology Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference pulls in some fabulous speakers to discuss topics across all of business, not just HR. Also in Oakland, California, September 17th and 18th, two of our past guests and work for humans will be speaking at the Responsive Conference. Bree Grof will be talking about her sparkling new book Today was Fun. And Simone Stolzoff will be talking about his next book. So check it all out at responsive.org use promo code elevenfold. That's one one f o l d to get a substantial discount. All right, hope to see you there.
- [32:09]
A
A lot of dyslexic people have got a photographic memory or a percentage have a photographic memory so they'll remember how a word looks. So it's using that as well. If that's the way that you remember things and can process things best, it's knowing that that's a channel that is open to you. It isn't all about the rigid way that we probably teach spelling, but I think that's the thing with teaching for dyslexic kids is actually good for all kids because it's just equipping Teachers with different ways of doing things if the way that you're trying first doesn't work. So it's a win win really when you actually understand that. So it's no secret, expensive magic bullet. It's just good teaching that is the right way to teach all children to learn to read. It's just not happening in every single school yet.
- [32:58]
B
So one of the things my wife also said in her running commentary, she said, yeah, some kids come in through the front door. She said, some kids come in through the window, some kids come in through the chimney.
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A
Exactly.
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B
And it's our job as teachers to welcome them in regardless of where they came in from.
- [33:15]
A
Love that.
- [33:16]
B
And what she said is don't fit the kids into the box, build the box around the kids, build to fit. So it sounds very much like that's the way the school that you attended went.
- [33:27]
A
Yeah, it was very much that. And it was not about the traditional way that we measure intelligence. They looked at different sorts of intelligence. So for me it was recognizing my interpersonal skills, recognizing I was really good at communicating and connecting and just pulling on all of those things and helping me to realize that there was value in that and my self esteem raised through that as well. But I think is looking at that person as a whole, as you said earlier, and saying, you know, how is that person going to be their best fit, their happiest fit in their sweet spot when they're at school? And it's the same with the workplace. If you think about it. It's really the real core of skills based hiring, isn't it? It's knowing this is what I need somebody to do in my job. These are the skills I need for them. How do I find somebody who is best suited for those skills and then how do I make sure I'm actually hiring? My hiring process is looking for those skills and it's not being filtered out by a whole load of psychometric tests that actually are going to remove the creative thinker or the complex problem solver from the equation. Really that's my education was very much looking at that. And I think that's where we are as a world in terms of how we're going to be hiring people in the future. I think artificial intelligence can do so much of the everyday stuff. We're looking for specialists, not generalists now. So it's looking at who's got those specialisms and who is most passionate about them and can really fill that role. That's good for an organization, it's good for the person and it's particularly good for dyslexics because there'll be a lot of things that we're not good at, and we really, really delegating those is incredibly important.
- [35:14]
B
There's a change underway that the mechanics of writing are going to be automated, are automated already. And I'm always reminded of Thelonious Monk, incredible composer, and he didn't try to be a virtuoso at the piano. And a part of the reason is that it wasn't about virtuosity. It wasn't about what his fingers did. It was what his composition was. And in fact, when one of his patrons was first shopping his music around radio stations, they said, yeah, the guy can't play. But of course, he's one of the greatest jazz composers of all time, and he makes mistakes on purpose. You can hear it. You can hear it. And he's like, missing. It's the wrong key. But AI is coming along, and it's making virtuosity in terms of the mechanics, a commodity. What it leaves on the table is originality and taste. Originality coming from things like the big picture, originality coming from a whole new perspective, taste coming from great perceptions of how people perceive things. So I think it's a very compelling argument that technology, and not just AI because spelling was solved ages ago.
- [36:36]
A
Try telling a teacher that when they're teaching to forcing you to, or a dyslexic kid when they're being forced to learn spelling at school. It should be spell check. Should just be there, shouldn't it? But anyway, right, Right.
- [36:48]
B
I mean, spellcheck when I was a kid was science fiction, but you did an absolute, in my opinion, masterstroke PR move in opening the dyslexic sperm bank. And I'd love to know the story of that, the origin and how it was received.
- [37:08]
A
So when we launched Made by dyslexia back in 2017, we. We're a charity on a mission. We believe that we don't need to exist as a charity. Our goal has to be rather to not exist. Because if we can help the world to understand the brilliance of dyslexic thinking, if we can make sure that every home, every school, and every workplace has got the resources to learn about dyslexic thinking and empower it as they should be, then we don't need to be here as a charity. It's one of those things where most charities exist to solve a problem and everybody's looking for the solutions to the problem. But for dyslexia we know what the solution is. It's just most people don't realize they've got a problem. So we knew, as a charity, we wanted to do things differently. We aligned with UN sustainable goals, so we want to not exist by 2030. And we said to our ad agency, who did all of our work for nothing, which was incredible. We said to them, right, we want you to put us on the map. We have a very simple mission, and that is to help the world to understand dyslexia as a strength. And we give you complete free rein to do whatever you want to do. Give us any answer, any idea you've got. We're open to absolutely everything. Well, for any ad agency, that is just the most amazing brief, because normally you have clients who are going to draw the line at something. But there was an interesting story in the media about two months before, and the London sperm bank had said that you couldn't donate sperm if you were dyslexic because they considered to be a neurological defect. So, of course, that came out in the Sunday Times and all the other newspapers and everybody was up in arms over it all. But the ad agency looked at this and thought, this is a really interesting angle. So we hired a shop in Upper street, which is a big shopping street and shopping market in Islington in London, and they turned the shop into a sperm bank. So they had, well, a sperm bank in terms of how it looked, obviously. But we had doctors in white coats. We had counters, as you would if you went into a private clinic. You had lots of sort of leaflets around and it all looked very smart. And we had pictures of famous people, famous dyslexics all around. In fact, some of the pictures you can see in the back here. So we had pictures of Muhammad Ali, of Steve Jobs, of Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, incredible sports people, all these amazing people. And we went outside on the street, we had people going outside onto the streets, inviting people to come in and learn about this new dyslexic sperm bank. And we filmed the reaction to people from. We had hidden cameras behind. We filmed the reaction to people, and we also filmed the reaction to people who were asked on the street whether they wanted to come in and learn more about dyslexia and dyslexic thinking. And the film is. The reaction was absolutely extraordinary. It really sort of set up why we needed to do what we do. But it also really, really hit the media big time. It was the announcement that we were opening the world's first sperm bank was made by Richard Branson, who is a big supporter of our charity and what we do. And he actually put the announcement out on the 31st of March. So by the time it hit the media, it was the first of April. So I think some people thought, was it an April Fools? It just was a phenomenal campaign and it literally put us on the page. We had millions and millions of views over the next first couple of weeks. So it was brave and bold and we did get a lot of people saying, what are you doing? But that's good because it got a lot of people talking about it.
- [41:08]
B
And I don't think you. You named all of the famous dyslexics. I don't know if you said Thomas Edison. I don't know if you said Ford. I can't remember. It was missing. I was thinking, I was thinking at the time while you were talking, but John Chambers was my CEO for more than a decade at Cisco Systems. Severely dyslexic to the point where when we built tools, we built tools that he did not have to personally approve anything at any level that somebody else could do the approvals for him because he wasn't going to interact with the tool. One of the most brilliant speakers I have ever heard. And I used to just go to his all hands and just marvel at his talents as a speaker. And so I've had a lot of personal experience with some incredibly talented people who were dyslexic. In fact, a friend of mine ran into him and said, thanks for your work on dyslexia. He says, my son is dyslexic. And John Chambers said, talk to my people. I'll call him. We'll put him on the phone. And he talked to my friend's son for half an hour about dyslexia. The son was a teenager, and so everybody said, what did he talk about? And he was like, meh. It was like monosyllabic. We don't know what he said, but he spent a half hour of his life as CEO talking to a teenager about it. Really admirable thing to do.
- [42:38]
A
Yeah, I think we tend to feel very passionately about inspiring young people because I think every dyslexic realizes that education can be tough. And if you have that inspiration to realize that it's. It's all going to be okay. That's a really, really important place for every kid to feel or to message for kids to know.
- [42:57]
B
Is there a population that the education system has failed to such an extent that we can see it in the data? An example is, well, there's sort of two different things. I think when I hear all the incredible minds who have had dyslexia and all the incredible minds who we didn't know had dyslexia. Today there's probably a population that just couldn't get there because of how the education system worked for them.
- [43:23]
A
As a charity, we don't talk a lot about the downside just because we're trying to really elevate people. Whether you're somebody working in an organization, we're not saying everybody needs to be Richard Branson or Steve Jobs or John Chambers, but every dyslexic person has skills that they just need to find them and nurture them in the workplace. But the truth of the matter is, yes, there is a huge percentage of dyslexic kids in pupil referral units, as we call them in the uk. So they are children that are excluded from school because their behavior is bad, usually as a result of not being understood and thinking that they're really stupid. I did some work in pupil referral units on a project I was running, must be 20 odd years ago now. And it was incredibly sad to see really, really bright dyslexic kids just totally disengaged from school and messing around, because it's an awful lot easier to do that than it is to admit that you're actually really struggling. So there's a big link between prisons and dyslexia. We know that a huge percentage of people who end up in prison are unsupported dyslexics. Wherever you look, there are some really bad outcomes, which is why I think it's so important that every school understands dyslexia, every teacher understands dyslexia, because the support should not just be something that is there for people who can afford it, it needs to be there for every kid. Because if you come from a disadvantaged background and you have a family history of dyslexia, probably you'll find that the earnings in your household are not great and therefore you've already got things stacked marginally against you. It's those kids that we 100% have to be finding and supporting. We've worked with Microsoft to produce free teacher training that's available on Microsoft Learn. And we're working to make sure that that isn't every single school because it's a mainstream problem. It's not a special ed problem. It's one in five kids in every classroom that can be picked up and supported in an inclusive classroom. If teachers know how to do that. And that's what we're really pushing for as a charity, to make sure that that happens so these kids don't slip through the Net. They're not being made to feel that they're stupid.
- [45:43]
B
What is that Microsoft Training called? Do you remember?
- [45:46]
A
We have a whole day's worth of training, but the one to start, it's on Microsoft Learn. And if you put Made by Dyslexia into Microsoft Learn, it will come up automatically. There are lots of links to it on our website as well. The one to start with is the Empowering Dyslexic Thinking at school, because that will really help you to see these kids differently right from the outset. And that takes about an hour. And then we have a whole day's worth of training if you want to learn more about all of the other ways that you can support dyslexic children. But that's the best place to start. And it's also really good for parents too, actually, if you think your child is struggling and it might be dyslexia. They're all video based courses featuring teachers from my old school and also amazing schools, private schools across the US as well. So they're really amazing insights for you to help support your child.
- [46:43]
B
There's a sort of a larger message too, which is that there's lots of ways to be great, of course, and school is not great at identifying all those lots of ways. And so we get so obsessed with school. And I don't know if it's the same in the uk, but there's a very intense competition to get into the best schools.
- [47:06]
A
Yeah, it's the same everywhere, I think.
- [47:09]
B
And so the way to get there is partially through grades and that can be an enormous filter. So if I'm the leader of a company and I want to build an environment that can recognize all the differences in the population, including those differences that are dyslexia. How would I design it? What are some of the actions I might take to do that?
- [47:36]
A
I'll kick off this question or this answer to this question with something that Steve Varley, who at the Time was the CEO of EY in the UK. In 2018, we did a report with EY called the Value of Dyslexic Thinking or Value of Dyslexia. And we aligned dyslexic thinking skills with the skills that the World Economic Forum said were going to be vital in the future. And it was a really groundbreaking report that kicked off the whole conversation around dyslexic thinking. And this different set of abilities and I think really helped to turbocharge the neurodiversity movement in general. But I remember Steve Varley saying, you wouldn't employ Superwoman and spend your whole time telling her how bad she is with kryptonite. And I think that basically sums up what every single employer should be doing. We know that artificial intelligence is doing and can help with doing a lot of the general things that we have been asking workers to do in the past. So we're much more focused now on looking at where is your superpower? Where is the thing that you're really passionate about and can do really, really well? Because if you can bring that to this workplace, then we know we're going to get the best out of you and you're going to get the best out of us. So for a dyslexic person, there are four things that you need to do to get the best out of a dyslexic thinker at work. The first one is to make sure that you actually define dyslexia as a valuable thinking skill. So as an organization, top down, bottom up, you acknowledge that dyslexic thinking is a skill set. It is officially a Skill set. On LinkedIn, it is in the dictionary as a term. So recognize that those skills are really important. They're also featured in a report that we've put out recently, Intelligence 5.0 report that we've worked with Ranstead on, and that looks at the top skills that are needed in every single workplace. And dyslexic thinking skills are straight at the top four of all of those skills. So understanding that as an organisation is really important. Then the next thing that is really important is to offer adjustments so that dyslexics can thrive. We don't need a lot of adjustments. We don't need quiet rooms or special spaces. We just need to be able to be open and say, this is what we're good at and this is what we're not so good at. So we want to be able to delegate our challenges or find somebody else who, you know, that's their superpower, that's their wheelhouse of strength. So it's really understanding that knowing that we're not going to be able to read a lot of information straight up in the middle of a meeting. So give us notes beforehand so we can find our own way of making sure that we know and can absorb that information. So there's lots of really, really simple things, and then the recruitment process as well. Make sure that you're not inadvertently putting people through a recruitment process that is going to alienate dyslexic thinkers and stop them from even getting through the first hurdle. Be open in your recruitment process that you're looking for dyslexic thinkers or you're looking for these skills. And this is often aligned with dyslexic thinking. And then the last thing is communities and ERG groups, encourage them, make sure that you've got people, anybody senior with an organisation, encourage them to be open and talk about their dyslexia because you'll suddenly realize that there are these people coming from all over the place that will tell you, actually, yes, I'm dyslexic too, but those groups are amazing for being able to mentor and support employees within an organization, but also informing you whether your systems are working or not. The best person to see whether a system is working for them is that that person themselves. So get your dyslexics to test your systems as well to make sure you're doing everything you can. Those are four really simple things that you can do. And knowledge is power. Again, We've worked with LinkedIn Learning to create free training for the workplace. There's a free one hour course on LinkedIn learning. You don't have to have a LinkedIn learning account to take the course. And we would urge everybody, whether you're a leader or a dyslexic or you work in a team, there'll be dyslexic people within your team that may or may not have told you they're dyslexic and finding their superpowers and making sure that you're not leaning too much into their kryptonite is a really important thing that anybody can do. It's very simple to support dyslexic people. It's about recognizing they are going to have this spiky profile of things they're really good at, they things they're really not so good at. And it's just understanding that.
- [52:31]
B
What do people who have dyslexia or suspect they might have dyslexia? What would you like them to know?
- [52:38]
A
I'd like them to learn as much about it as they can so they have the knowledge that they have these incredible abilities and they will have challenges that they shouldn't be embarrassed about because the more you understand the way you think, it really is very empowering to know that, okay, I'm very good at these things and not so good at these things and that is who I am. It's how I think it's where my value is. And I think the more you can learn about your dyslexic thinking and talk to others about it as well, the easier it is to really become comfortable in your own skin and really start leaning into those strengths. We've got so many resources that are all free. We've just launched Dyslexic U, the University of dyslexic thinking, which we've launched in association with Open University, a British online university that's available internationally. We have courses on entrepreneurs and startup mentality, which features Richard Branson and a whole load of other amazing dyslexic entrepreneurs. We have one on change makers and activists, which features Erin Brockovich and a whole load of incredible activists. We're launching new courses throughout the year, so eventually there'll be a whole range of courses from everything from sport and elite performance through to banking. So we're building that whole resource, but there's so much information. Join our LinkedIn community. Follow me on LinkedIn to see all of the things that posts that we put out. There's a host of things that you can learn, but knowledge is powerful and learn about it and share what you've learned, because that really will make a difference.
- [54:19]
B
Yeah, I can imagine that becoming aware of one's own strengths in that spiky profile would be a powerful first step. I remember when the book came out, it was called now discover your strengths by Gallup and it basically said, we're not all the same, we have different strengths. And it gave permission to be spiky, essentially, which is it gave permission to say you can be different and lean into it, because the thing that you are really good at is the thing that you're going to be able to learn and excel at. And so yes, you should mitigate some of your weaknesses, but leaning into your strengths is a real power.
- [55:00]
A
So imagine for a dyslexic person when you've spent your whole life from age 5 when you start school, being told that there's something wrong with you because you can't learn the way other people learn. And you don't even need to be told that. You know it. When you're sitting in class and everybody's reading faster than you and getting the answers to things faster than you. Very little time is spent on all the things that you're good at and your strengths. So you end up at the age when your sort of self concept is being developed. As a young person, you end up thinking you're stupid and you As a dyslexic person, carry that through life and without a shadow of doubt, it may turn into a chip on your shoulder that you think, right, I'm going to show you. But it's still there. And I have a podcast that I present called Lessons in Dyslexic Thinking. And in every single podcast, I ask my guests to think back to when they were seven years old and to ask their seven year old self what they would, what they would think about what they were doing now. And without exception, every single person cries, even tearing me out when I think about all the reactions. Everybody cries at that thought or gets choked up at that thought because at seven years old, we are sitting in a classroom being told that we're stupid, really low self esteem, having to kind of fight to understand who we really are. And that stays with you for a long time. So that's why as a charity, we are so focused. And I personally am making it my mission to make dyslexic people understand they are absolutely brilliant. And they need to get out of that and really understand what they're good at. Because we assume that everybody can see the big picture. We assume that everybody can imagine things, we assume everybody's a good communicator, but they're not. We have those really brilliant, lots of people are, but we have those really tangible strengths. And it's not about all the things that we're bad at. And it's so important to get that message out there for, you know, however old you are, however, wherever you are in your dyslexic journey.
- [57:09]
B
Well, I think you just answered one of my closing questions, which is what I ask everybody at the end. And I'll explain why I ask it, which is that because this show is founded on the premise that work is a product, we ask product marketing questions. And one of the questions you ask about any product is, what job do you want to get done with this product so I can design it better for you? And so I ask that question about work and I say, what job do you hire your job, your work to do for you? So for many people, they work at a company, it hires them to do something for the company. And I ask, what do you hire it to do for you?
- [57:47]
A
If you think about what our mission is, what my personal mission is, it is all about changing the perception of dyslexia, letting people understand how brilliant they are and how amazing their thinking is. And I think that's ingrained in absolutely everything we do. And I learn more every day as well, so I think for me, that is the most important thing that we find every way we possibly can to help dyslexic people, young and old, parents and employers, to really understand that this is a brilliant way of thinking. And we have to stop telling these children, these employees, that there's something wrong with them, because we are not broken. The system doesn't fit us and we need to change the system to fit the way we think and not the other way around. And that applies to every neurodiversity. I just think dyslexia is the biggest neurodiversity and we are making a lot of noise around it, but we're not all the same. We have to accept that we're not all the same, we're all different. And it's our differences that are valuable, and that's what we need to learn to really embrace as a society.
- [58:57]
B
What does your work cost you?
- [58:59]
A
I love what I do. I love the impact that I'm having on people's lives. I love the impact that we are, as a charity, having on people's lives. So on that basis, it doesn't cost me anything. In fact, I think it gives me masses. I am a workaholic and I think sometimes I need to take more time off. But that's every founder's problem. I think there's just always something else to do. And I think also, dyslexic people tend to have very, very big, bold aims and dreams, and sometimes that can be tiring because we're really shooting for the stars. But then on the other hand, that is incredibly empowering when you achieve it. So I think what it costs, it also gives back, if that makes sense.
- [59:47]
B
It does. I think you've said it. But where can people learn more about you and your work?
- [59:55]
A
So Made by Dyslexia is the charity's website, madebydyslexia.org there's masses of information on that. I'm Kate Griggs on LinkedIn and there's lots and lots of information on that. Dyslexic U is an amazing place to learn about dyslexic thinking. So that's dyslexicyou.org and I've got books out. A book for children and a book for adults as well. This is Dyslexia, which is the one that you read earlier on. So if you go to any of my social channels, you'll find information to all of that. And for the workplace, empowering dyslexic thinking at work is a free course on LinkedIn. So yep, hopefully that's lots of links.
- [60:37]
B
That's fantastic. And there is, by the way, an assessment. You have kind of have to dig around a little bit on the site. There's and that's not a failure of the site. There's a lot on the site. There's a lot of information, very multimodal information too. There's lots of videos, there's lots of information on the Made by Dyslexia site. But if you dig around, you'll find an assessment and it's very interesting to take. So thank you very much for coming on the show today.
- [61:05]
A
Thank you Darth. It's been great chatting to you. Thanks so much.
- [61:11]
B
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it, believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and re reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and his high standard for quality. Final note, the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.