The Canary Code: How to Create Inclusive Workplaces for All with Ludmila Praslova Ph.D.
Ludmila Praslova Ph.D. - Psychology Professor, Author and Director of Graduate Programs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University
Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is the author of “The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work” (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2024), listed as one of the top new management books for 2024 by Thinkers50. She is a Professor of Graduate Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California and a member of the Thinkers50 Radar 2024 cohort of global management thinkers most likely to impact workplaces.
Neurodivergent people face drastic barriers in the workplace, and even to entering the workforce. Like canaries in the mine, neurodivergent people are impacted first by issues that ultimately harm everyone.
In this conversation with Dr Ludmila Praslova we explore how when you look after the people who are most vulnerable in the organisation, the most susceptible to toxic culture and poor systems, you in turn look after everyone. And this creates a massive win-win.
In this thought provoking conversation, we explore the power of an explicitly intersectional and holistic approach to (neuro)inclusion, and what leaders can do to centre, celebrate and invite in multiple voices from the neurodivergent community.
Ludmila shares lived experience and academic rigor, and tangible examples of how the Canary Code Model for intersectional inclusion can transform not just the working life of neurodivergent people, but of everyone.
Learn more about Ludmila Praslova Ph.D. , and find her new book here:
Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is the author of “The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work” (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2024), listed as one of the top new management books for 2024 by Thinkers50. She is a Professor of Graduate Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Accreditation Liaison Officer at Vanguard University of Southern California. With over 25 years of experience in developing talent-rich organizations, she is a global inclusive talent strategy expert with deep knowledge of global diversity and neurodiversity. Her current consulting is focused on creating organizational systems for inclusion and wellbeing and providing neuroinclusion training and support to organizations such as Amazon, Bank of America, and MIT. Dr. Praslova is also the editor of “Evidence-Based Organizational Practices for Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity” (Cambridge Scholars, 2023) and the special issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, “Disability inclusion in the workplace: From “accommodation” to inclusive organizational design.” She regularly writes for Fast Company, Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, and is the first person to have published in Harvard Business Review from an autistic perspective. She is a member of the Thinkers50 Radar 2024 cohort of global management thinkers most likely to impact workplaces.
Connect with Ludmila Praslova on LinkedIn.
Get your copy of her book The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work here.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Sally Clarke: Welcome to We Are Human Leaders. Neurodivergent people face drastic barriers in the workplace and even to entering the workforce at all. Like canaries in the coal mine, neurodivergent people are impacted first by issues that ultimately harm everyone. Our guest today argues that when you look after the people who are most vulnerable in the organization, the most susceptible to toxic culture and poor systems, you in turn look after everyone.
[00:00:32] Sally Clarke: And this creates a massive win win. I'm Sally Clark, and today Aleksa Sarna and I are speaking with Dr. Lyudmila Praslova, professor of psychology and author of the incredible new book, The Canary Code, A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity and Intersectional Belonging at Work. In this thought provoking conversation, we explore the power of an explicitly intersectional and holistic approach to inclusion, and what leaders can do to center, celebrate, and invite in multiple voices from the neurodivergent community.
[00:01:00] Sally Clarke: Ludmila shares lived experience and academic rigor, and tangible examples of how the Canary Code model for intersectional inclusion can transform not just the working life of neurodivergent people, but of everyone. Lyudmila Proslova is professor of psychology and the founding director of graduate programs in industrial organizational psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California.
[00:01:20] Sally Clarke: Prior to her academic career, she built and led successful intercultural relations programs in global organizations. And her current consulting is focused on supporting organizations in creating systemic inclusion, informed by an understanding of neurodiversity. This conversation is a guide to change making for CEOs, managers, HR leaders, and everyone who wants to contribute to building a more inclusive world.
[00:01:43] Sally Clarke: It's changed how Alexis and I think about inclusion, and we're sure it will for you too. Let's dive in.
[00:01:53] Alexis Zahner: Welcome to We Are Human Leaders with Millie. It's It's an absolute delight to have you here with us today. And we'd love to start our conversation by getting to know you a little bit better and the journey that's brought you to this important work that you're doing now.
[00:02:06] Ludmila Praslova: Well, thank you for inviting me.
[00:02:07] Ludmila Praslova: I'm pleased to be here and oh goodness, my journey has been pretty long because I've been working in some kind of diversity, mostly global diversity, basically since I was in college. So I. Fell into a working global diversity when I was 19 and I absolutely loved it. It was great fun working with expatriates and helping people figure out cross cultural communication and building an organization that was very inclusive as far as big cultures, national level cultures.
[00:02:45] Ludmila Praslova: We had really fun. fun environment. Everyone knew, you know, a little bit of all the different languages. People really got along surprisingly well, even if they came from countries that didn't have the best relationship. So it was really great fun. But there was one interesting thing that I noticed then about diversity everywhere in that, in this particular organization, we were so Super inclusive of national level cultures, but we did not pay very much attention to other aspects of diversity, such as gender.
[00:03:19] Ludmila Praslova: So people would be pretty openly saying things like, Oh no, professional development is just for men. And so that kind of got to me. And I thought, well, you know, if you want to create inclusive organizations, we need to create organizations that are inclusive of every aspect of human being. And since I couldn't get professional development because I was not a man, I'm not a man, I decided to do my own professional development.
[00:03:45] Ludmila Praslova: And so I ended up going into a doctoral program in industrial organizational psychology, specifically. thinking that I want to figure out cultural change and organizational change with the goal of creating cultures that are inclusive of every aspect of difference. Well, obviously that was easier said than done because if anybody knows anything about organizations, that very rarely happens.
[00:04:14] Ludmila Praslova: If an organization proclaims itself to be super aware of gender or race, it's still very likely, for example, they forget disability. And even if they say they appreciate disability, they might only think about highly visible disabilities, but the majority of disability is actually not apparent, and that's very often ignored.
[00:04:39] Ludmila Praslova: And don't even get me started on neurodivergence because of course we will get to it, but that is something that's very often forgotten and ignored. So I've been working in this realm for many years from different angles, from practical and academic, just trying to to figure out how to create organizations that don't just focus on one or two aspects of diversity because humans are much more complex than that.
[00:05:07] Ludmila Praslova: And if you're doing an intervention for women, but you forget disabled women, guess what? Disabled women are going to be excluded. So eventually I started looking at the psychological level diversity. So I went from global Big culture to the smallest unit, which is our individual brain functioning and differences in our brain functioning and our nervous system.
[00:05:34] Ludmila Praslova: And that psychological level of diversity is really essential if you want to create organizations that work for everyone. So when I started thinking in terms of neurodiversity, neurological diversity, that really was the last piece. Uh, that told me that when we're focusing on things like global cultures or big differences like gender, big visible things, Uh, we are never going to go far enough and we really need to look at this individual psychological level differences that come with cultural differences as well, but specifically coming from the angle of neurological diversity and neurodiversity.
[00:06:19] Ludmila Praslova: It really informs how we can create organizations that are so inclusive of all kinds of differences. So when I started thinking about neurodiversity, it really clicked in a system that I call the canary code. And neurodivergence obviously has many aspects, but people initially started thinking about it as autism and ADHD, dyslexia.
[00:06:43] Ludmila Praslova: And when you start thinking about those differences, uh, neurodivergent, People are very sensitive to bullying or the lack of appropriate measurement in hiring more so than neurotypical people. So if you create organizations that have fairness on the level of those psychological differences or cultural differences can also manifest.
[00:07:10] Ludmila Praslova: And if you create organizations that are inclusive of canaries, people who are most Likely to be negatively impacted by things like lack of transparency or a poor measurement during hiring. We are going to create organizations that are inclusive of all kinds of human differences. So that's how my life's work and all the different aspects of diversity really ended up.
[00:07:39] Ludmila Praslova: In the Canary Code model and the Canary Code book. Amazing,
[00:07:43] Sally Clarke: Ludmilla. And we are so excited to delve in deeper to this work. And I think it's really lovely to hear your story as well, because it really sort of clarifies why there is such depth and, uh, research and rigor behind this book and so many layers of thinking.
[00:07:58] Sally Clarke: And as you described, sort of going from the macro to the micro, these different levels and identifying that, you know, Neurodiversity and. Maybe a sort of a canary in the coal mine, as it were people who are more affected and susceptible to those feelings of exclusion. So your beautiful book, the canary code, a guide to neurodiversity, dignity, and intersectional belonging at work.
[00:08:20] Sally Clarke: We're going to dive on in. I think it's really helpful. Certainly for us, and I suspect for our listeners too, to clarify some terminology before we go too much further. And I'd like to start by having you explain the difference to us between neurodiversity, neurodiverse, and neurodivergent.
[00:08:37] Ludmila Praslova: Absolutely.
[00:08:38] Ludmila Praslova: Those terms evolved and people also use them in a variety of different ways. But neurodiversity, neurological diversity was initially meant to, uh, refer to a perspective on differences like it started with autism, but again, we started talking about ADHD and dyslexia and then other kinds of human differences.
[00:09:00] Ludmila Praslova: Uh, that there were not deficits, there were not something that needs to be cured, but they were a form of diversity. So that's really the original neurodiversity perspective. We can also use this term to refer more academically to neurodiversity. paradigm as something that separates this difference perspective from looking even academically from the perspective of deficit and medical model and saying that, you know, there's this list of symptoms and we need to cure you and you're cured when your symptoms go away.
[00:09:40] Ludmila Praslova: Uh, so we're trying to look at it from neurodiversity paradigm and say, well, maybe those are actually. Not necessarily differences that need to be cured because humanity at large needs all those different people. Like biodiversity needs different kinds of organisms. The humanity needs different types of people and people who have different attention spans.
[00:10:03] Ludmila Praslova: We need people who can drill down on one task forever. hours and we need people who are monitoring their environment constantly as a group. Those are highly adaptive characteristics, but culturally we came to pathologize and say, okay, that's autistic behavior. That's ADHD behavior. And we need to make you pay attention differently in a more average way.
[00:10:29] Ludmila Praslova: But actually as a humanity, we need those characteristics. And then we can also talk about Neurodiversity movement as more of a social justice approach to using the term neurodiversity and saying that for the longest time, those people who are actually highly valuable to humanity have been pathologized and discriminated against.
[00:10:52] Ludmila Praslova: in various areas of life, including the workplace. And we need to create more justice for those groups who have been included or mistreated because their nervous system is a little bit more on, you know, the edges of the bell curve rather than for whatever particular trait that we're talking about, like attention or memory or how long do you like to work on the task?
[00:11:19] Ludmila Praslova: Five minutes or. 15 hours, and those are not pathological things, but people have been excluded and mistreated because of them. And social justice approach to neurodiversity is correcting that. So neurodiversity can be used as scientific paradigm term or a social justice term, but also it's just a thought process.
[00:11:38] Ludmila Praslova: Fact, we're all different and we need neurodiversity just like we need biodiversity. Now, when we talk about neurodiverse, we're referring to groups. So let's say a group that includes people who are neurotypical, and then there's some autistic people, and then there's some dyslexic people that's a neurodiverse group.
[00:11:57] Ludmila Praslova: Individuals, uh, would be referred to as. Neurodivergent. So an autistic person or an ADHD er, and I use identity first language as preferred by those communities, uh, we are talking about neurodivergent person.
[00:12:14] Alexis Zahner: Thank you, Lamila. That's very, very helpful. And I think the discernment in that language helps us to understand How to address this.
[00:12:21] Alexis Zahner: And as you've mentioned, I think there's been this rise in awareness around what neurodivergence is, and certainly, seemingly, there seems to be this kind of push to pathologize this a little bit more and help people understand their symptoms. And yet there seems to be a mismatch, I think, between how we can actually better include people in the workplace and the workplace.
[00:12:42] Alexis Zahner: One piece of data that really jumped out at us was that in the U. S., 30 to 40 percent of neurodivergent people and 85 percent of autistic college graduates actually struggle with employment. Can you help us understand why, despite this sort of rise in awareness that we have, why this is still occurring?
[00:13:01] Ludmila Praslova: If you look at how our systems are designed, the entire talent, uh, system in organizations, the, all of the HR processes, they are designed to cater to neurotypical people. And even within that group, the more extroverted, the more gregarious. Uh, so even introverts, who are a very large group, could be impacted by those systems.
[00:13:27] Ludmila Praslova: It's not just, you know, autistic people or ADHDers, it could also be people who are just introverts, people who have social anxieties. So many. People would fall into that neurodivergent type of differences for which the system simply was not designed. So my book talks about access barriers and success barriers in the workplace.
[00:13:51] Ludmila Praslova: So just to get a job. Usually. Whether you are a singer or an accountant or a trash collector or a university professor or a doctor or whatever, literally pretty much any occupation, you have to go through an interview and very few organizations allow hiring based on something like skill test or skill measurement.
[00:14:18] Ludmila Praslova: Instead, everyone has to put on the charm and talk themselves up. Well, talking yourself up does not necessarily correlate with the actual ability to do things like accounting or food prep or million of other tasks. Okay, if you're hiring someone to be a face to face salesperson. Okay, fine. Give them an interview for how well they can sell, even though there is also selling over email and selling that doesn't include, involve that kind of face to face selling.
[00:14:49] Ludmila Praslova: But let's say if it's relevant to your job, then do test it. But why do accountants and trash collectors and truck drivers and programmers and pretty much everyone has to go through the test of how well they do. small talk and sell them, sell themselves. It really prevents organizations from hiring the best, most qualified talent because competence and confidence are shown not to necessarily go together and sometimes really don't align.
[00:15:22] Ludmila Praslova: So people who can talk themselves out. up are not even necessarily the best people for the job, but then people who are perceived as different and people typically pick up that there's something different about neurodivergent people, people who are anxious even though they're really great at the task, people who fidget, they could be based on those completely irrelevant characteristics rejected for the job.
[00:15:48] Ludmila Praslova: So that will be your access barrier that really keeps many people out of jobs. But then even if you do manage to get through that barrier, there are success barriers. For example, if you have sensory sensitivities and for some reason all organizations insist on open offices, even though research shows they are actually bad for communication because people get stressed out and start emailing each other from the same room.
[00:16:15] Ludmila Praslova: But for, let's say, autistic people or anyone else with sensory sensitivities, they are just, they literally make us sick. And there are many highly sensitive successful people who had wonderful careers and then their organization decided to go to open office and those people couldn't do their jobs anymore.
[00:16:33] Ludmila Praslova: They've been doing them for 20 years and they got sick and there are many stories when people actually ended up being diagnosed as adults, as autistic adults, because they've been put into an open office and suddenly they couldn't function anymore. So open offices. bullying, the same kind of personality preferences in performance management that we see in hiring, all of those things are success barriers.
[00:17:02] Ludmila Praslova: So the neurodivergent people are more likely to be bullied, they're more likely to be mistreated, they're more likely to be managed out, they're more likely to be fired just because. Somebody doesn't understand that when an autistic person says something, they actually mean it, and they don't have any hidden meanings, but someone starts looking for their hidden meaning and suspect them of something, and then you end up being fired.
[00:17:24] Ludmila Praslova: So there's all kinds of issues of those hidden barriers. That also impact success of neurodivergent people in the workplace.
[00:17:35] Alexis Zahner: That's a very comprehensive answer there, Lyudmila. Thank you. And if you wouldn't mind, we have another question prepared later on, but I think it makes the most sense for this to be a fit now and as someone who has worked In a hiring position as a leader of a team, hiring people onto my team, a word that I will admit to using fairly loosely is this idea of culture fit.
[00:17:57] Alexis Zahner: And from what I've just learned from you and heard you say, is that the idea of hiring for culture fit is often very rife and laden with our own biases. And I pulled a particular quote out of your book. And if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to just read it back to you here. Cause I thought it really struck me and it was quite powerful.
[00:18:13] Alexis Zahner: And you said, of course, everyone has limiting beliefs. It's painful when these beliefs limit our own lives, but it's unfair when these beliefs combined with power limit other people's opportunities. And that really, to be honest, slapped me in the face. Again, as a hiring manager, as someone who, you know, has worked with checklists and aptitude tests and personality based tests to get the right culture fit for my It became very apparent to me how.
[00:18:40] Alexis Zahner: My own bias, although I couldn't recognize the bias had very much infiltrated the kinds of people that I was wanting to recruit onto my team. And I'd love if we could just keep expanding on where we're at in this conversation to talk about this idea of culture fit, what some of the dangers of this are, and some suggestions that you might have for us.
[00:18:59] Alexis Zahner: As to what we could use instead, please.
[00:19:02] Ludmila Praslova: Yes, well, as you said, we're actually taught to discriminate. Of course, our HR associations and various people who train us to hire, they themselves don't realize they train us to perpetuate biases. But in essence, when they tell us, don't hire anyone who fidgets, don't hire anyone who doesn't look you in the eye.
[00:19:24] Ludmila Praslova: Don't hire anyone whose voice wobbles because they're anxious, because they're going to be poor culture feet. This is really a tool of similar to me bias. And we end up perpetuating employment and growth and power of the neurotypical people or even us. subset of neurotypical people. And we keep excluding and we keep many other people, neurodivergent people, but also people from other cultures.
[00:19:54] Ludmila Praslova: Not every culture prizes eye contact. There are cultures where eye contact is rude. So people who do not fit whatever ideal image we created very arbitrarily. Uh, they still kept on, they kept powerless. And this just keeps perpetuating those exclusionary systems. And one thing we can think about is culture ed.
[00:20:20] Ludmila Praslova: So let's say we have this very fun loving, extroverted culture. You know what? Maybe a couple of serious people wouldn't be a bad thing. Or we have this, uh, culture that's Very, very focused on achievement at any cost. And we're all working 80 hours a week here. You know what? Maybe that person who comes from a different culture, different generation, or different mindset, who is going to remind us That, you know, well being is important and mental health is important and balance is important would actually be a valuable addition for everyone before we give ourselves heart disease and other issues that come from this kind of high stress.
[00:21:09] Ludmila Praslova: So if we just expand our minds, we can stick to organizational values, obviously, but things like ethics, we're not talking about that, but the style, how you go about working, uh, how you present, how do you wear your energy? People wear energy in all kinds of different ways. And if we just say you don't have energy because you don't work in a super extroverted way, you're going to lose people who can work.
[00:21:33] Ludmila Praslova: Literally focus for 12 hours and bang out 12 days of work. So thinking about ad rather than fit is something that is extremely valuable and obviously also a much more inclusive approach.
[00:21:49] Sally Clarke: I love it. That's such a great sort of dichotomy you've shared there, Lydmila, between the culture fit and the culture ad and that sort of augmentation of culture and experience.
[00:21:57] Sally Clarke: Expansion rather than this kind of clicking ourselves into place and fitting in. And it's interesting, I've had a few conversations recently that have haven't had a diagnosis, but I've had some insight into some of my own neuro divergent behaviors and tendencies, and I think potentially on the A DHD spectrum.
[00:22:13] Sally Clarke: And I feel like a lot of those were also really trained out of me, drilled out of me almost. Just at an early age, and it's interesting sort of learning more about it that I think, Oh, that's actually, you know, there's a lot that feels like that aligns with genuinely who I am and sort of to that end, I'm really resonated with the term that you use in the book, which is holistic neuro inclusion.
[00:22:33] Sally Clarke: And I was wondering if you could unpack briefly for us what that entails.
[00:22:37] Ludmila Praslova: Sure, when people think about neurodivergent people, sometimes we kind of tend to reduce it to just differences in thinking, but neurodivergence really is a full person difference. So when I talk about holistic inclusion, it's really a full person inclusion.
[00:22:55] Ludmila Praslova: So let's say, uh, how we organize our social lives. If we have this very rigid idea that you need to be this kind of person who loves after work parties and telling everybody everything about yourself, well, there are people who are highly uncomfortable with it, and they just have different kinds of social needs, and they can be very warm and understanding.
[00:23:16] Ludmila Praslova: And that is how they receive social satisfaction. So organizations need to be more flexible in how our social life is defined and how people meet our social needs. And then cognitive differences. Our memory, our attention span, our preferred schedule, when our brain works the best in 25 minutes, break 25 minutes early in the, or, you know, four hours, break four hours, or when it works better morning, afternoon, in the middle of the night.
[00:23:55] Ludmila Praslova: So those differences are important, and we need to allow different schedules for cognitive inclusion. We also need to Also need to remember emotional differences and emotional inclusion. So when we talk about let's say our authenticity being trained out of us, many neurodivergent people have those stories that really are pretty traumatic.
[00:24:15] Ludmila Praslova: And that's one aspect that we need to be respectful of different kinds of emotion. And then naturally we're also wired to process emotion differently. Some people naturally are more or naturally more reserved. And when we start telling people, why are you so happy or why are you so grumpy and they're just, you know, just doing whatever their face is naturally doing and we're telling them to do something else, and waste their energy trying to arrange their face and whatever way other people like instead of actually doing what they They need their mental energy to be doing.
[00:24:50] Ludmila Praslova: It doesn't make any sense. And when we start dictating emotional life, we also hit on the larger cultures because there are different emotional display rules in different cultures. So we really also need emotional inclusion in the workplace. And then another aspect of holistic inclusion I talk about is Physical sensory.
[00:25:13] Ludmila Praslova: So the same thing with open offices. Sensory sensitive people are going to have a horrible time in those places. But then there are also sensory seeking people, so we need to provide them environments where they get enough stimulation, but without bothering other people. So if they need to listen to their music, don't blur music for everyone.
[00:25:32] Ludmila Praslova: Just let them listen to their music in their headphones. And if somebody needs bright colors, don't paint the entire office orange, but allow people to bring personal items that brighten up their space and don't force everyone into sameness. in the physical environment and don't force everyone into the same temperature.
[00:25:53] Ludmila Praslova: Just allow people to regulate their physical environment to the point where they're most comfortable. And that usually is highly compatible with at least Partially remote working, hybrid working, that also helps. And then, so thinking about every aspect of the human is something that creates inclusion.
[00:26:14] Ludmila Praslova: Because, you know, if we're coming to the office and the temperature is set at 60 degrees Fahrenheit because that's how our boss likes it and we're not the kind of person who does that very well. We are not going to feel included and we're not going to feel belonging however many times they tell us, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you belong here and we love you.
[00:26:36] Alexis Zahner: I love that, Ludmilla, and I think what's so important about it is it really helps us understand the difference between creating an environment where we expect conformity, and that is, you know, we'll allow neurodivergent people to work here, we'll allow mothers to work here, women, whatever it may be, as long as You fit within the neat box that we've created versus all of you is welcome here and we will adjust how and when and what things look like to make sure that that's the case.
[00:27:02] Alexis Zahner: And I think in my experience, that to me is the thing that leaders seem to get wrong. The most is this idea of conformity being synonymous with inclusion and then belonging. So thank you for helping us unpack that.
[00:27:14] Ludmila Praslova: Thank you. And that is definitely a very important point. Assimilation is not inclusion and forcing everyone to, uh, fit into a box instead of creating more flexible environments is not inclusion.
[00:27:28] Sally Clarke: Beautiful message, Lyudmila. I'd love to sort of briefly look at the six key aspects of the canary code model. And I encourage everyone who's listening to go grab the book and delve in deep to these because we won't have time, unfortunately, to cover them right here right now. But there are six key aspects that you've derived from your research as being part of this model for intersectional inclusion, participation, focusing on outcomes.
[00:27:51] Sally Clarke: Flexibility, organizational justice, transparency, and valid tools in decision making. So many powerful concepts and I'd love to today just sort of double click on focusing on outcomes because this is I think a really interesting one for me and I think for our listeners too. What does that aspect of the canary code model entail when we're focusing on outcomes?
[00:28:12] Ludmila Praslova: Well, if you look at many modern workplaces, we very often have managers who just evaluate whether you're present. So then we end up with people just sitting in their workplace and staring at the computer and then doing their work at some other time when their brain works better, or really just evaluating all kinds of other proxies.
[00:28:34] Ludmila Praslova: So did I see you? Did I talk to you? Rather than the actual productivity. And that really. Kurt's many neurodivergent people who are able to do the work but on a different time, on a different schedule, or just in a different style that may not be quite as maybe chatty and noticeable, but their work is incredible.
[00:28:56] Ludmila Praslova: And so why not focus more on the actual work and allow people then to work with their work styles, with their brain to produce this work and stop this evaluation by Proxies that really are very often not valid and highly subjective. So focus on outcomes rather than, you know, what you look like and how you talk and your personal style is definitely something that can help inclusion in many ways, intersectionally, because again, people could be judged by their appearance, their accent, uh, their, again, face.
[00:29:35] Ludmila Praslova: Fidgeting their neurodivergent presentation. And instead of making people suffer for those things that have nothing to do with their performance, let's just focus on performance. It seems like an obvious thing, but most organizations are still very bad at doing
[00:29:51] Alexis Zahner: it. You're so right. And I think, again, it goes down to this idea of the proxies of productivity.
[00:29:56] Alexis Zahner: We still have ill defined. Outcomes for a lot of organizations. Like what is it that we expect from people? And when we're over indexed in the optics, that is, you know, we want things to look a certain way versus achieve a certain outcome. Not only are we also stopping our organization from reaching high performance because we're focused our time and energy and anxiety in the wrong things versus the actual outcomes that is serving our customers to produce products or services in a certain way.
[00:30:23] Alexis Zahner: So I can't help, but think that. Whether it's to include neurodivergent people or not, it's a big old waste of time for organizations to not be focusing on those things, period.
[00:30:34] Ludmila Praslova: Absolutely. It is a huge waste of time and it's really not good for the bottom line.
[00:30:41] Sally Clarke: No, that's it. Yeah, and it often really interrupts culture too, doesn't it?
[00:30:44] Sally Clarke: It can really undermine our sense of responsibility. And, you know, what you actually hired me to do. You seem to not trust me to get it done. And that can very quickly sort of eviscerate, uh, culture.
[00:30:55] Ludmila Praslova: Yeah, culture and, uh, engagement, and it can also create all kinds of toxic dynamics where people start competing for attention instead of actually doing their jobs.
[00:31:06] Alexis Zahner: Absolutely. Now, Ludmilla, The canary code, which we actually haven't unpacked that terminology yet. So just quickly, it's the idea that canaries have been used in coal mines for a long period of time and they're early indicators of air pollution. So applying this to your book, correct me if I'm wrong, but the canary code is that people who are neurodivergent or people from other neuro minorities are actually more susceptible quite often to early signs of things like toxic Culture.
[00:31:33] Alexis Zahner: So when we sort of use those as a proxy for a canary, they start to indicate earlier than neurotypical people that something might be happening incorrectly or not perhaps an inclusive part of a systems culture. Is that the sort of idea behind the terminology here on canary code?
[00:31:49] Ludmila Praslova: Yes, that's a great summary.
[00:31:51] Ludmila Praslova: And if you think about canaries. They are the first to feel toxic air and then minors are also going to be impacted. The same thing with neurodivergent people. If there's toxic culture, whether it's bullying or backstabbing or just unhealthy productivity expectations, improper management of performance.
[00:32:14] Ludmila Praslova: Neurodivergent people are probably going to be first to feel it, first experience distrust and worst case scenario be pushed out of the organization. But if those things continue, then everyone is going to experience those negative effects and eventually you're going to end up with massive quitting, massive burnout, massive disengagement.
[00:32:38] Alexis Zahner: And just to further that Ludmilla, how can we then apply the canary code in these. Six sort of elements that you've mentioned, and by developing a trauma informed culture, how does that actually help us begin to prevent toxicity in our organizational cultures?
[00:32:51] Ludmila Praslova: Yes. So in one of the chapters, I do talk quite a lot about detoxifying organizations using those practices.
[00:32:59] Ludmila Praslova: principles. So if you think about, let's say principles of transparency and organizational justice, it's very hard to have a toxic organization if you're practicing transparency because toxic things tend to grow in the shadows. So if you practice transparency, it's a lot less likely you're going to have toxic culture.
[00:33:21] Ludmila Praslova: If you practice organizational justice and there are checks and balances, and if a decision was made in a subjective way, there is actually a mechanism for considering it and improving justice. Again, it's much harder to have a toxic and unfair culture. And then of course, if we add flexibility and participation for individuals.
[00:33:46] Ludmila Praslova: and designing their work. Then we're going to end up with healthier organizations, happier people, who are also a lot less likely to go after each other, because it will create an environment where everyone can do a little bit of job crafting. And because Everyone is different. Oh, we don't hire the same person who wants to do the same thing, but we are different people who likes doing different things.
[00:34:10] Ludmila Praslova: Uh, we don't have to, uh, you know, push someone into doing something that nobody wants to do because we hired enough of a variety of humans that everyone likes to do something. And there is a right person for every task. So, um, valid measurement with valid hiring, helping people to feel agency and control for participation, a focus on outcomes again and flexibility makes for environments where there is less motivation for negative behavior.
[00:34:42] Ludmila Praslova: And then if we do have some negative behavior, that transparency and organizational justice factors are going to help me put in the bot and prevent it from creating a hugely toxic mess.
[00:34:58] Sally Clarke: Amazing. Ludmilla. I couldn't. I think when I was reading as well that this framework, this model is such a powerful force for driving the kind of organizational change that has, as you indicated, the impact for the canaries who are most quickly affected by toxicity, but also just for those who perhaps aren't as quickly, and it really does have this effect on culture, on a sense of safety and belonging.
[00:35:20] Sally Clarke: And you know, as a burnout researcher, I think these are also a lot of the things that tend to, you know, drive people towards burnout, towards that quickly. stress in their work. So I think it's an incredibly powerful model that has so many potential benefits. And it's a really great lens for leaders to be able to use to start to look at where they can pull some levers.
[00:35:38] Sally Clarke: And on that note, I know I'm sure that you have plenty of recommendations for leaders, but for someone who wants to be a better leader towards neurodivergent people, perhaps in their team, what advice do you have as a starting point?
[00:35:50] Ludmila Praslova: Right. And I do have two chapters for neurotypical leaders and two chapters for neurodivergent leaders, but just humility, cultural humility, and not making assumptions.
[00:36:01] Ludmila Praslova: Those are really key because when we start making, uh, label based assumptions, or looking for label based one size fits all solution. How to work with people who have anxiety or how to work with people who have depression or how to work with ADHDers. We are all different and learn as much as you can. By listening, by understanding this particular person, how they function, how their brains function, and then work with them to focus on their strengths.
[00:36:36] Ludmila Praslova: So that's another problem. Sometimes people think that different is less, and an important perspective is to start thinking about different is different, and start focusing on what strengths come to those differences, and valuing those different strings. Whichever it is, someone could be super chatty and wonderful with people, not necessarily great with paperwork.
[00:37:01] Ludmila Praslova: Someone who's great with paperwork, not necessarily the most chatty around people. Just align their strength with what they do and enjoy. the benefits of the outcomes of someone working with their strength. So understanding everyone as an individual and helping people develop with their strength and creating opportunities to do something that is really aligned with who they are on the individual basis is really the kind of leadership that I see.
[00:37:33] Ludmila Praslova: Every human wants, but because neurodivergent people tend to have more pronounced areas of strengths and differences, that is even more important for neurodivergent people.
[00:37:43] Alexis Zahner: Thank you, Lyudmila. And I couldn't agree more. And I'd love if you could leave us with a message specifically for neurodivergent leaders.
[00:37:50] Alexis Zahner: What is it that you would like them to know as a closing message?
[00:37:54] Ludmila Praslova: Well, again, there's a lot, but one thing that I keep repeating to myself is don't let the world gaslight you because the world keeps telling you that something is wrong with you and you're too sensitive and if everyone does something then you should be doing the same thing and if you're not then you're deficient even though you're not.
[00:38:16] Ludmila Praslova: So you can do all kinds of things that other people can't. So don't let this bias and just bias cultural assumptions, bring you down and don't judge yourself based on the standards of neuro normativity, including neuro normative definitions of leadership. Because sometimes people say leadership has to be this and that, and you have to be super extroverted and you know, whatever else your culture tells you to do.
[00:38:42] Ludmila Praslova: There are many. Ways to be a good leader. There are things that are not negotiable, such as being competent at what you do and being ethical and being authentic. And if you're authentic, many different personality styles and strengths can make for excellent leadership. We don't need to be all clones of one person, so we don't need to drain yourselves trying to pretend to be something that we're not and maybe losing out.
[00:39:13] Ludmila Praslova: on working with what we're best at and doing the type of leadership that aligns with who we are. And it could be people leadership, or it could be ideas leadership. And again, I talk about that quite a lot in my book. So there are many ways to be a good leader and we don't have to try to feed ourselves Into that very rigid cultural ideal,
[00:39:36] Sally Clarke: such a beautiful closing message.
[00:39:37] Sally Clarke: And it's so resonates for us at human leaders that Miller, we often speak to, we are human first and leaders second, and you've just so beautifully articulated how that can look in practice. Thank you so much for being with us today on. We are human leaders.
[00:39:51] Ludmila Praslova: It's a pleasure and I so appreciate your work and your message.
[00:39:54] Ludmila Praslova: It's very important to remind us that we're human first.
[00:40:04] Sally Clarke: Thank you for being a part of the conversation at We Are Human Leaders. You can learn more about Ludmilla, including ordering her incredible book, The Canary Code, at the links in our show notes. And of course, learn more about what we do at Human Leaders at www. wearehumanleaders. com. See you next time.