Dyslexia - Why great minds don't think alike
Thought Leadership | Author: JJ Eastwood, Managing Director, Carousell Media Group; IAB SEA+India Regional Board Member)
We have come a long way in understanding many forms of cognitive diversity, including dyslexia. Once thought of as an impediment to a successful career, countless high-profile leaders and entrepreneurs are helping dispel the misconception that dyslexia is an adverse condition.
Many Great Leaders are Dyslexic
The list of great leaders with dyslexia is impressive: Singapore’s founding prime minister, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, director and producer Steven Spielberg, and billionaire investor Charles Schwab to name a few. Many of these leaders believe that their dyslexia has been a central reason for their success, as it has allowed them to overcome adversity, think differently and see insightful connections that others simply miss.
It’s estimated that over 10% of the population are dyslexic, however, only 3% of people recognise dyslexia as a strength. This highlights the sad reality that most dyslexics don’t even understand the advantages of dyslexia.
My Dyslexic Journey
In the early 1980s, kids at my school were categorised by teachers as either bright, normal or slow. I was affectionately labelled as “slow”. This wasn’t the most outlandish thing given the lack of knowledge about dyslexia back then and how little training teachers in a small town in Northern Ireland would have received.
Despite the challenges at school, I was lucky to have some fantastic teachers along the way and very fortunate to enter the business world in the early 2000s at the dawn of emails, auto corrects and spell-checks. However, I was ambitious and understood that successful people were, by-in-large, well-read. As Harry Truman famously said “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
While I enjoyed books, simply getting through them was a long, arduous process. Thankfully audiobooks (originally on CDs) became more widely available in the mid-2000s, and in 2010 I discovered Audible, the audiobook Holyland. Eleven years later, I have listened to over 250 books and have proudly earned Audible’s highest listening level status of ‘Master’. While I won’t be winning a scrabble tournament anytime soon, in many ways, my belaboured relationship with words has given me a deep appreciation of literature.
For almost forty years, I was embarrassed to admit that I was dyslexic, particularly in a work environment. However, after reading research conducted by consulting firm EY that highlights how dyslexic individuals have a range of natural strengths, I felt obliged to bring this to the attention of the business community. The main goal is to inform employers on how they can benefit from dyslexic minds and perhaps lift the spirits of some dejected dyslexic individuals along the way.
In addition to the EY report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has published a separate report on the core work-related skills and abilities in demand in the era of digitisation and automation. The report finds that the tasks dyslexic people typically find more challenging, such as spelling, reading and memorising, will continue to be replaced by machines. The soft skills most valued in today’s workplaces, communication, creativity, complex problem-solving, and interpersonal skills, are the skills that people with dyslexia excel at.
What can organisations do?
The first step is to make sure that workplace processes and procedures are designed so that dyslexic employees and job candidates can reveal their strengths and shine. They should not be held back by relatively minor issues, such as spelling, memorising, and assimilating large amounts of information.
Employers should show that they value dyslexic thinking by providing tools and technologies that allow people with dyslexia to perform at their highest potential. For example, dictation software can help bring out innovative ideas and eliminate the barrier of having to write down or type out information, mind maps can help more visual individuals and tools like Grammarly can quickly fix punctuation and grammatical errors.
The world of work is changing, and we’re often told to “think differently”. To achieve this we need to employ different thinkers, and organisations can reap the benefits from a cognitively diverse workforce.
Hiring and supporting dyslexic talent isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s a great way to future-proof a business too.
October was World Dyslexia Awareness Month, and the Dyslexia Association of Singapore created a series of activities for families to debunk common misconceptions about dyslexia, encouraging people with dyslexia to embrace their learning differences and to call organisations to take greater action in supporting dyslexia communities around the world.
