Dyslexia case study 1

An engineers story of their diagnosis for dyslexia and how their workplace has understood their neurodiversity.

Please share your neurodiversity – diagnosed or undiagnosed, and the area of engineering or technology that you work in e.g. civil engineering.

I am a Control Systems Engineer. I completed a PhD in Fault Tolerant Flight Control Systems.  After my PhD I worked in manufacturing, but for the last 20 years I have worked in railways.  I have worked in many areas, including condition monitoring, control rooms, rail traffic management, tram control and signalling, passenger information systems, cybersecurity, and rolling stock manufacture and testing.  I am a Visiting Professor of Railway Systems Integration at the University of Birmingham, as well as a Director in the Rail Advisory group at WSP.

I am an undiagnosed Dyslexic. 

What behaviours or processes do work well for you in the workplace?

Workshops and meetings where someone else leads – where I can think and then summarise.  

Documents and processes that have clear, simple structure and use consistent language and terminology.

Thinking time or focus time – quiet areas where I can shut out distractions – I used to do lots of work on trains as usually on busy business trains, very few people talk.  

Working from first principles.

What behaviours or processes do not work well for you in the workplace?

Long documents to read – especially if they are poorly structured and use lots of terms for the same thing.

Complex processes – with many steps.

Reading and interpreting numbers or data quickly. For example, “just read this slide” – when a lot is going on.  I often actually can’t.

Remembering names.  Remembering documents or projects I have worked on. What we did – who said what….

I really struggle with open plan offices – too much noise and distraction.  However, they are good for meeting people.

What tasks do you excel in?

Solving problems – I am good at seeing the real problem and solving it from first principles – my poor memory means that I am less likely to jump to a solution that has worked before.

Visualising problems – creating shared understanding.  I am good at capturing core principles in an image.

Seeing misunderstandings – I am good at drawing out misunderstandings and resolving them.

What workplace adjustments have been made to support you? If none, do you know of any that could support you?

The most important tool I use is Read Aloud – it is amazing to help me read when I am tired and otherwise would just not be able to face a document or an email.  Also it helps me correcting errors in my writing – I get Outlook to read back to me any important emails so I can correct mistakes.

I also use OneNote – using the Building a Second Brain technique – really helps with my poor memory.  It works on my phone too.

I use Mural to help me organise Ideas, think and collaborate more visually.

Hybrid working works well for me – I plan things that I need to talk to people about when I am in the office, and things that I need to focus on for homeworking days.

What do you want employers and colleagues of neurodivergent colleagues to know about your neurodiversity?

We are all different and we all bring different skills and insights to work.  I would like employers to really value that – don’t do neuroinclusion because you should – do it because it produces better engineering and more profits. 

All employers and colleagues should invest a little time in learning about different neurotypes – education is the key to breaking down barriers and fear. We need to create an environment where it is cool to be different.