Curious about how neurodiversity can be a game-changer in the corporate world? Dive into an inspiring conversation with Rosie Zilinskas as she welcomes Katherine McCord to discuss embracing neurodiversity in the corporate world. Katherine, a champion of integrity, innovation, and inclusion in HR tech and DEI, shares her journey as a neurodivergent professional, offering invaluable tips for thriving at work. From the importance of self-advocacy and personal accommodations to the necessity of community support and legal rights, this episode is packed with practical advice and empowering insights. Plus, don’t miss Rosie’s mention of a promotion readiness checklist available on the podcast website to help women advance their careers. Tune in and transform your approach to work and life!

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Embracing Neurodiversity: Thriving In The Corporate World With Katherine McCord

We have a special guest. Katherine McCord is joining us to discuss the topic of embracing neurodiversity while thriving in the corporate world. Whether it is revolutionizing HR tech, innovating DEI, or founding the neurodiversity inclusion community, the neurodiverse Katherine always brings everything back to her three missions, which are integrity, innovation, and inclusion.

In this episode, Katherine is going to share her experience in neurodiversity because she is neurodivergent. She’s going to share how individuals, especially women can navigate the corporate space while being neurodivergent. She’s going to share a lot of stories, tips, and challenges on how you can thrive in the corporate world while being neurodivergent. Join us as we uncover the benefits of embracing neurodiversity in the corporate world.

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If you are tuning in to this, there’s a good chance that you’re a woman in the corporate world who feels stuck in your career and you’re not sure how to advance. If that’s the case, I want to let that I have an incredible resource that can help you. I created a Promotion Readiness Checklist with you in mind. The checklist can help you pinpoint exactly what you need to work on to advance in your career. The best part, it’s completely free, and it only takes three minutes to complete.

I have helped countless women like you achieve their career goals, and I know exactly what it takes to succeed in the corporate world. My Promotion Readiness Checklist is a perfect tool to help you get started on your path to success. You will find the link on the episode website, or you can go to NoWomanLeftBehind.com to take the quiz.

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Katherine, how are you doing?

I am fantastic. Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

I’m excited to have you. We are going to talk about how people in the corporate world, specifically women, are dealing with being neurodivergent while working in the corporate space. You are an expert in neurodiversity because you’ve been dealing with it your whole life. I read in your bio that you fired your mom.

Let me be clear about that. I was a little child and we were playing HR. I did not legit fire my mother. Although, she will be the first one to tell you that she would support me firing her if she deserved it. She would tell me right off the bat, “You need to fire me. I’m not doing a good job.” I do know a lot about neurodiversity. My expertise comes a lot more from the research, activism, and work that I’ve been doing around it in HR. I think that there’s a lot more where it comes from than my own because my experience is unique.

I had people in my life that supported me. They figured out that I had a very different brain when I was about 3 to 4 years old. Instead of being upset by that or trying to tell me that was a bad thing and shut that down, my parents were like, “Let’s roll with this. This is how her brain is. Let’s do it.” They taught me to accommodate myself positively and to use how my brain works to my benefit. I’ve come sadly to realize that is not the norm.

I wouldn’t say I was very good at neurodiversity in terms of other humans for a while because when you’re young, you assume that everybody has the same stuff that you do. When I was young, I was thinking, “Your parents are helping you, you’ll be good.” That wasn’t the case, but I do love neurodiversity too.

I have to interrupt you there because you were very lucky in the fact that your parents recognized the fact that your brain was different. A lot of parents are lazy. They don’t want to work. I think you were very fortunate from the fact that your parents recognized that. Let’s start with what is neurodiversity so that anybody can understand what we’re talking about.

What Is Neurodiversity

That is a wonderful question. It’s one of my favorite ones to answer. The original term was coined by Australian sociologist Judy Singer. She meant it in a much broader way than it’s used now. It was the idea that different is not a deficit and that a different neuroprocessing way is not bad. It has since evolved as terminology does. Now the term specifically refers to medically visible and or diagnosable differences in how the brain processes.

I want to specify medically visible or diagnosed. You do not have to have a diagnosis to be neurodiverse/neurodivergent. That is not a requirement, and it’s everything. She has everything from the medical side. One of my neurodiversity is my seizure disorder because it causes my brain to process differently. Cerebral palsy and MS would also fall into this. You have the little bit more obvious ones such as autism, dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia, Tourette’s, etc., and then over into the mental health spectrum like obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar, dissociative identity disorder, and so forth.

One of the cool things is that now science has caught up and has realized, and you can find studies in PLOS Genetics, the National Institute of Health, and the National Library of Medicine. Johns Hopkins has done some wonderful work around this, talking about the benefits of neurodiversity. There is a disability, and there are benefits. It’s a very interesting little meld that we have going on there.

I also like that you clarified that being different is not a deficit because there are 7 billion people in the world and no two people are alike. It doesn’t matter if you’re married, related, or whatever, no two people are alike. Does anxiety fall into that realm?

Yes, because the chemicals being released change your neuropathways. Anxiety falls into this.

Many people suffer from severe anxiety, and so I wanted to clarify that. Thank you for answering.

Also, brain injuries and PTSD would affect women directly. Pregnancy and postpartum can temporarily throw you into the neurodiversity category because of the hormones going on, and so can menopause.

It’s funny because pregnancy-wise, I remember when I had my son, he’s now 25, but I was trying to nurse him. I only did it for three weeks, but I was such a wreck. I decided to watch at that time Grey’s Anatomy. In Grey’s Anatomy, they had a story of a woman nursing her baby, and the baby died of malnutrition because she didn’t realize that she wasn’t making enough milk. I was hysterical. I know how difficult it is to be in that postpartum depression.

Going back to my original question. When we’re talking about women in the corporate space who are trying to have new opportunities and advance in their careers, but they’re finding difficulty to either be organized or prioritize for whatever reason. They might have ADHD, for example. First of all, what are some of the things that they would need to do to get a diagnosis? I know you say a diagnosis is a benefit. Let’s start there.

Getting A Diagnosis

Diagnosis is a great way to better understand yourself and to better be able to communicate your needs. That’s the point of it. It’s not about labels. It’s not about an identity. It’s about the practicality of better communication and being able to better care for and research yourself. That’s all it is. Also finding some community, by the way, because then you can reach out to other people like you and say, “Cool, we both have this thing in common.”

One thing that’s interesting to note in the history of women and neurodiversity is that thanks to the patriarchal structure of the world of medicine, we spent the vast majority of human history not being studied at all. All diagnosis criteria were based on the male anatomy, male hormones, and so forth. There was no thought about this. They thought it would be the same thing for women, and everything would manifest the same for these people who have completely different hormones and body structures. I don’t know why they thought that would work, but they did.

Until the last couple of decades, they thought women could not be autistic. Women who had dyslexia were called absent-minded and things like that. They weren’t reading into it. Same thing with heart attacks and all of that as well. A lot of women have gone undiagnosed, and that’s why I bring that up because now you have a lot of women who are adults, even retired people.

I have an aunt who figured out that she’s dyslexic, and she’s retired. Think about going your whole life and nobody tells you. It’s like you’re different and it’s okay, which is fine. It’s good that she always still had the self-esteem to go with it. That’s good but it would have also helped her a lot if she could have gone even further. She even said that, had she known what was going on.

Ladies, if you’ve always felt a little bit different and nobody has ever made a think about it, it might be time to go get it checked up by somebody who is an expert in these areas. Be careful getting diagnosed by a general practitioner. Some of them are very well-versed and some are not. Look up doctors who specialize in neurodiversity and neurodiverse diagnosis.

There are also online tests that you can do to get the process started and get a feel for what might be going on. I highly recommend that, but always look for a specialist in these types of things. If anybody wants recommendations for different healthcare systems, you can find my contact information. I’m sure that Rosie will post it and you can reach out directly.

A big part of it is that a lot of women don’t know. I run into that all the time. Talking about funny stories. I accidentally diagnosed someone in the middle of a public presentation. Everyone who knew this woman knew that she had ADHD. Factually, it was part of knowing this human. Somehow, she did not know that. I assumed that this was the last time I ever made this assumption. I assumed that she knew based on a few things that she had said to me. Later, we laughed at that little misunderstanding.

I accidentally referenced her as somebody having ADHD, and she looked around. She said, “I have ADHD?” Everyone goes simultaneously, “You didn’t know?” I’m talking to a dozen people looking at her saying, “You didn’t know?” It was very funny. She steers into it like, “Great. This explains a lot.” It’s very common. Now she can accommodate herself even better. That’s what I tell people as to why. It’s so that you can learn yourself better why these things are happening, and realize you’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your brain is different. You need to function differently than other people.

I like that you said that being neurodivergent, whatever it is, is not a label, but it’s more a way to get to know and learn more about yourself. In a way, it’s a gift because then it could explain so many things that may have been going on in your life, like that one person who didn’t know that they had ADHD, but the whole world knows.

Everybody else knew. I have a best friend. Again, diagnosed late in life. She’s so cute. She runs two different businesses and is an extraordinary human, a wonderful friend, and is always punctual, but then she’ll leave her husband’s keys in the freezer. That happened. It helped her to understand that there’s nothing wrong with her brain, she doesn’t need to be scared because sometimes people think something is wrong. She realized that her brain is different as she realized what causes instances of that to happen and how to prevent that because she then understood herself. That’s all of this. It is understanding yourself better.

Day-To-Day Life

Let’s assume someone realizes what their neurodivergence skill is. Once they figure it out, what is the next step for them to start incorporating it into their day-to-day life?

That’s a beautiful question too. It is learning to work with your skills. I was speaking to a man not long ago who was diagnosed late in life. He said, “At first, this was very jarring and then I started to realize that if this ADHD wasn’t here, then this other thing about me wouldn’t exist. That’s the thing that makes me awesome. I love my ADHD.” I said, “That’s wonderful.”

Of course, there are little hiccups along the way. We all have those, and we have some things to accommodate. The first thing is to set up your accommodations to set you up for success. Get yourself accommodated. Start doing some research and figure out what works for you. Now, it’s becoming very normal to have toys at work, which I freaking love because my desk behind me is covered with toys, squishy balls, fidget toys, and sitting on yoga balls, not desk chairs.

The reason for this is this will help you to work naturally and comfortably for your brain, and that will help you to then discover your talents and to best utilize those talents. If you’re trying to work in this little box that doesn’t work for your body and your mind, you will not be able to reach your full potential. It does not work that way. Human beings are not designed that way.

We need to take away that stress, accommodate ourselves, and then start letting the strengths take over. One of the things with me is that I can put together an event, a policy, a procedure, or anything like a big project. I can organize it like a crazy person. It is a superpower. I can get through all of that type of work at exponential speeds, but I have to be in charge.

One thing that I let people know is, “I know you want to see the superpower of action. This is how it’s going to work.” I let them know. I’m very good at teamwork and listening to people, but I need to be able to go at my own pace. I need the autonomy to look at people and say, “That’s fine that you want to do it this way, but now it’s due in half an hour or it’s due in two hours, let’s go. If you’re going to do it, do it.”

Speaking up for yourself is the next step. Self-advocacy, speaking up, and saying, “This is what I need, this is how I need it, and this is what I can do, let me show you,” and sometimes doing it. I once was in a situation where I had a leader who would not believe what I was capable of. One day, I ignored everything he was saying and did it myself. I did it. I didn’t ask. I ignored what he told me to do, and I did it my way. It got done exponentially better. It got done quicker. It got done with more accuracy and I added something to it that people liked.

He came to me and asked, “Who helped you with this?” I said, “Nobody.” He said, “Are you kidding me? Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, “I did. You didn’t listen.” He laughed and from then on, he would listen to me and he would believe me. Sometimes you have to take that first leap and show some gumption and do it.

My friend Laurie Potts is always talking about how we have been taught to go inside ourselves, be polite, and cater to other people. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I’m all about accommodating other people and catering to other people to an extent, but not to our own detriment. That’s what we’ve been taught to do. We have to break out of that and say, “No. I’m here. This is what I need. This is how I need it, and this is how it will happen. Cool,” then keep going.

I think that’s great because when you have children who are neurodivergent in school, you can get them accommodation. I know some documents are called a 504 or whatever the name is.

An IEP. A lot of schools call it IEP.

You can create that for your child when they’re in school. That document goes to all the teachers, and then they review it, and then they try to help the child collectively.

In theory.

You’re correct. At work, we don’t have that process. We don’t have anything like that. You are going to have to almost create your own document to show your manager like in your case, “This is what I do best. This is how I work the best. If you want to see me succeed, let me do this.” I think you have to have that conversation. In your case, they weren’t listening, and once you showed them, then they started listening.

Sometimes you do have to show people why you need certain things. One of the things that I teach companies a lot is to quit being nosy with people. You don’t need to know somebody’s diagnosis to give them a tool. That’s ridiculous. All you need to know is what they need, how it will help, and how you can implement it. That’s it.

According to the Department of Labor, 54% of accommodations are free. There is no reason not to be accommodating people. That’s ridiculous. Accommodate your people especially when you look at programs the Hewlett-Packard in which they not only have created a neurodiverse hiring program, but a neurodiverse cultivation program.

When they did, they let everybody work however they wanted to. Whatever way was natural for them and comfortable for them, they let it go. When they did that, the team became 33% more productive than its counterparts, and employee satisfaction went up, retention went up, customer satisfaction went up, and so forth.

That program was amazing and now other large companies have started to adopt it. It works. Sometimes you have to look at your manager and say, “See, Hewlett Packard did this. I want to try that here. These are my ideas.” They come in and say, “See? It works. It’s proven. This isn’t a whim. This is something that is proven. Let’s do it.”

Another thing too is that people don’t know their rights. In America, we have the American Disability Act or the ADA. The short version is it guarantees you reasonable accommodation. Reasonable is exactly what it is. If it sounds reasonable, it’s reasonable. In other words, you can’t tell somebody to have to completely change how an entire job is done. That’s not going to be reasonable.

You can’t request that they pay you an extra $100,000 a year. Those are unreasonable things but you can ask to sit on a yoga ball, not a chair, and they have to let you do it. It’s not a decline thing. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t let you do that, so you do it. If you work in an assembly line or a job where you need to stand, you can use a standing stool. That’s a reasonable accommodation. Noise-canceling headphones are a reasonable accommodation and so forth.

At Bose, the speaker company, they have a program to get you those for free. You could always reach out and apply for that too. You have to know your rights and be willing to assert them. What I tell people is when you want to make an accommodation request, put an email, start with the email, and get it documented to your boss, HR, and Legal. Do not forget the Legal Department because they’re the ones that know what’s up.

“You have to know your rights and be willing to assert them.” – Katherine McCord Share on X

Sometimes HR people do. Sometimes they don’t. Put those three groups on and you title it “Accommodation Request” and then state. You can put your diagnosis if you’re comfortable. If not, you do not have to. You can say, “Due to my disability or such and such, I’m requesting the following accommodations,” and then you list out the accommodations. Put a little dash and how it will help you be more productive, then shoot it off them.

Go to your boss and say, “I wanted to talk to you about the email I sent you, just to give you a heads up.” It is so that they don’t feel you’re trying to go around them. “I wanted to make it formal, but here you go.” If your accommodations are reasonable, folks don’t get to decline them. I hear people all the time, “They declined my request.” They don’t get to. You can report them and it will not go well.

That’s extremely helpful. Let’s talk a little bit about the benefits of your differences and how you can use them to excel. I think that’s going to be a case by case, but how would you implement something like that?

Using Benefits To Excel

Using your benefits to excel. It is a problem that they don’t understand themselves and how they work. Make sure that you understand exactly what you need so that you can communicate that. Focus everything on that. When I was a little kid, my parents realized early on that something was different with my brain.

One of the earliest neurodiversity that they noticed was my obsessive-compulsive disorder. Little tiny thing, I’m completely obsessive about things. They taught me to steer into that and to use it to get things done. I was very meticulous. You could set me on a task and I would go down the rabbit hole and get everything done.

Very early on in my professional career, it became obvious because of my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I could solve any problem thoroughly and I could lead a group in coming up with a good consensus quickly, accurately, and going down every possible rabbit hole with nothing missed. Those kinds of things.

Taking what you do here and translating that is a big piece of that, so learning to translate your skills. I use this weird obsessive thing at home, and that’s not the most fun thing, but how can I use that video as a proactive thing over here? Steer into that. I looked at that and I thought, “What jobs can benefit from this?” This is one of the most predominant skills that I have.

I started researching, paying attention, and listening to people. I went to some conventions and started talking to people and meeting people. I tried a whole bunch of different jobs. I figured out that event planning was great for me. Executive jobs, very specifically, not middle management, but executive level jobs were great for me. Working with HR, building out projects, and stuff like that was great.

To activate your superpowers, steer into them hardcore. Stop focusing on this thing that you’ve always done. Who cares about that? Focus on what you can do. Ultimately, when you’re looking for a job, pitching somebody on this unique thing that you can do goes well. I’m trying to think if there’s an exception to this and I don’t think that there is.

I’ve gone into almost every single professional job interview that I’ve ever conducted and I lead with the things that make me unique. I don’t say it’s because of my obsessive-compulsive disorder or my mania or whatever else it is. I don’t say that, but I explained to them these unique things about me very early on. I showed them what that looks like. That has captured even the people who didn’t hire me.

I want to circle back at some point. When you lead with that and you embrace and you show confidence, confidence is sexy. It’s not just for dating. That’s for everything. Confidence is appealing. Steering into that and then embracing it, but then also playing with it. People miss that too. They fail to expand those gifts. I can create an entire company within two days. Yay for me. What else can that do? Pivot it, play with it, and don’t be afraid of them.

A lot of times, people in the neurodivergent/neurodiverse community are afraid of the things that they can do because they’ve been taught that it’s weird and bad. Steer into it hardcore. Be the weirdo. Seriously. Let it go because the more unique you are, the more people are attracted to that, and the more they’ll let you go. You will become known for that very unique special thing that makes you.

The other thing too is that people forget that our brain chemistry matters. If you want to activate your superpowers, listen to music, eat the foods, and be around the people who release the correct chemicals that put you in your most productive and creative or whatever it is mindset. That matters. The humans matter. The music matters. The food matters. The lighting matters.

Pay attention to your environment because a lot of people squish themselves down by putting themselves in an unpleasant, negative, and bad environment. Even in my workspace, I’ve had to make sure that all of my sensory toys and products are around me. I have the correct lighting. I have my fans because of menopause. I have fixed the external lighting that’s coming in. I have the right chair so that my back and my neck are comfortable.

Making sure that your environment is on par is another huge piece, and to get those chemicals going, listening to the right music always works for me. Get those chemicals going the way you want or call that person who puts you in that mindset that you need for that moment. Talk to them for a while and get those positive chemicals going. It makes all the difference in the world. Learn your body and how to trick it into doing exactly what you need when you need it.

That’s all great advice. My son had ADHD growing up. What they had done in school was to put some elastic cords at the bottom of his chair so that he could move the cord because he needed movement. He needed to move his feet. Instead of tapping or whatever, he could hit the elastic bands or whatever, and it didn’t disrupt anybody. It was quiet. That was one way that they could get all that energy out.

That’s great. I love that.

Self-Accommodation

If you’re neurodivergent, that already means that you’re different. How can you use your differences to be inclusive in the community, or how can the community include you in things when you might have, for example, sensory issues? If you’re inviting everybody to a party and you don’t like crowds or whatever, how can you still accommodate?

I am the perfect person to ask about this because I am southern and obsessed with entertaining people, and then I also have misophonia, which is a condition in which certain sounds essentially make me malfunction. They can give me headaches. They can cause me nerve twinges and things like that. I am probably the perfect person to ask this question to. One of the things goes back to self-accommodation and welcoming people to self-accommodate.

In my household, my husband is on the autism spectrum, which means that he loves his people, but sometimes too much social interaction can be too much for him. Me over here, if I’m manic or something, I’m all over the place and going. There is a lot of making it clear to people that self-accommodation is welcome.

If you have friends who maybe they need to wear earplugs while they’re there. By the way, there’s a great new product I’ve been trying. It’s called Loop, and there is another one called Calmer that’s very similar. They’re specialized earplugs that are designed for things like parties and all of that. It helps you focus on what you want to hear and drown out the rest of the noise, and that can be helpful. Same thing with work in a workplace. They are great products. I highly recommend it.

Welcoming the self-accommodation. I always talk about designing universally. When I set up a party, I set up what I call the party activity room. This is where if you want to get down and all that, this is where you go. This is where the drinks are being made. This is where the music is happening. You have an area that’s designated for letting people get situated. Here’s where you can put your bag. Here’s how you can do this and that, then there’s always a quiet area, usually outside because I don’t want to disturb my neighbors.

Outside, where it’s nice and comfortable and relaxed, you can hear each other talk and you can get away from it all. I always have at least one room where somebody needs some quiet. Maybe they need to make a call or something like that. Universally designing so that there is space for wherever people are is a huge aspect.

People overcomplicate universal design. It’s very simple. Think about the things that people might need. Do the best you can, and then be flexible past that. When somebody comes to you and says, “I need this.” You say, “Okay. Cool.” Don’t be offended that you didn’t think about it. You’re not going to think of every single little thing. Go ahead and say, “Alright. Great. How can I help you? Let’s figure this out,” and get it done.

Be courteous. It’s the same thing. For the neurodivergent or people with disabilities or anything like that, accommodate yourself too like with the earplugs. Have fidget spinners if that’s something that’s going to help you in a social setting. These things are becoming more socially acceptable. People want to play with it too. That’s the funny thing.

I’ve had people who were very self-conscious that I get them to take their toy with them to the party, and then everyone wants to play with it, and everyone thinks it’s cool. I said, “See? We don’t grow past wanting toys.” The people told me to say that toys aren’t full past a certain age. We truly still want to be playing with toys.

It’s like when you’re a parent, you buy your kid LEGOs because that’s what you want to play with or whatever it is that you want to play with. It’s the same thing. Self-accommodation, but also thinking like a southern hostess, planning accordingly, and universal design. It initially thinking from the ground up, from the very get-go. We’re going to have people that are different from us. Let’s plan accordingly.

Katherine’s Story

Let’s talk a little bit about you and your story. Your parents knew from a very young age that you had different neurodivergent skills. As you entered the workforce, talk to us about your challenges of entering the workforce or even being in school, high school, or college, where you needed to manage a workload and then go into the workforce, and then how you became an entrepreneur. I’d like to hear about your story.

I’m not the best example. My story is very different from most people. I was raised to be very confident and to have a lot of autonomy and to speak up for what I needed. I would tell people what I was going to do. That’s what I did. Either teachers ran a little bit or they got frustrated. I don’t know. I was reasonable too. I was always respectful but I would tell people, “This is what I need and this is how I’m going to do it. There we go.”

I managed the workload fine. As I got older and the mania kicked in, I had to relearn to share workloads because my tendency when I get in a manic state is that I do the thing, and then we go. I also had to learn when I was in a depressive state how to keep going, but that was pretty easy because my father taught me. He has always had depression problems and he taught me how to get through that at a very young age.

From the time I was a teenager, I knew how to work through all of that, and that worked pretty well. It’s a lot of grounding exercises. It’s a lot of using calendars and keeping the repetition going. It’s also understanding what’s happening so you can tell your brain, “I know what’s going on. You’re not going to trick me today. I know that this is chemical. I am safe. I am okay. I can get up and work.”

It takes a minute and you have to get going but get through all of that. I didn’t experience a lot of discrimination until I developed the seizure disorder. All of a sudden, it was, “You need the camera off? Too bad for you.” I do fine with the camera most days, but there are days when being on camera is not happening. It’s going to cause a seizure. No, thank you for that. That’s when I started noticing people. People like the mania side of my bipolar.

It was a little weird. I got backward-discriminated against. People liked the mania. They’d be like, “Where did that go?” I’m probably a lot more energetic when I have the mania. A lot of people will be confused at first. Now I tell people. Everybody knows I have bipolar so they understand those different situations. I got reverse discriminated against, but I didn’t have a lot of that until I got the seizure disorder. It was, “You’re not going to be capable of doing this project. You’re not going to be able to do this or that.” People assumed that because I would need to take 2 hours or 3 hours off to rest, my workload wouldn’t get done, but I always did because I was me. It never not gets done.

I know how to schedule things. The biggest thing that I started experiencing was not in my executive function, though there are some adjustments there. Especially with the seizure disorder, I had to relearn. Early on in the depressive cycle, I had to relearn some executive functions. The biggest struggle for me was the social disability, which was other people assigning disability to me. That’s what social disability is.

When society says you’re disabled, it has nothing to do with what you can do or not do. That was the roughest part. I said, “What is that? You don’t you don’t know anything about this. I got this. Go over there. You do you. I got this.” People will not believe you. Sometimes they do it out of concern. They think that you’re trying to overwork or overdo it. “No. I need you to stop, but I need you to trust me that I know how to take care of myself. Thank you very much,” and I keep going.

“When society says you're disabled, it has nothing to do with what you can actually do or not do.” – Katherine McCord Share on X

That social disability is the hardest thing to get over. A lot of people don’t like to talk about this, but it’s huge for a lot of people. It’s your own need to squash that social disability. A lot of people in the neurodiverse and physically diverse groups will overcompensate and will delay doing things that they need to squash that social disability. I don’t want to deal with it.

It’s not that it’s an embarrassment or anything. We don’t want to deal with it. You’re saying, “If I have this, everyone is going to treat me differently, and it’s going to be super annoying.” You then don’t do the things that you need. Case in point, there’s a post about this going up. I posted that I finally have my handicap placard when I drive and I waited seven years to do it.

It had nothing to do with stubbornness. It was that I didn’t want to deal with how people were going to treat me once I got it. It’s ridiculous that I let that stop me for that long. I am not that young, but young enough that people look at me funny. I don’t have a visible disability most days. I was like, “This is going to be such a hassle. I’m not going to like it. Even my family and friends and the people I work with, if they see that placard, that’s going to shift that mindset,” and it’s true.

If you go and park even at a store and you have your placard and you get out of the car and you walk fine, people are like, “What is she doing with it?”

I’m like, “COVID took my lungs away, and now I can’t breathe well. That’s one of the reasons I need this.” If it’s a seizure activity day, the less I could walk, the better. I don’t drive that, but even if somebody has to take me somewhere and let’s say there’s not a way to drop me off or something like that, or if I need their help to get in and they have to get out with me, then we need that.

It’s funny because I’m very public about all of it. That’s what my husband finally said, “It is because you tell everyone anyway.” I know, but there’s something different about seeing them, and I had that in my head. I did. I don’t think that was a real thing. That’s the thing that people do. I know other people who have done it too. It’s the social disability and having to accept it, that it’s going to happen, and it’s stupid, and it’s dumb, and we have to work to overcome it. It’s irrational, but we have to overcome it. The best way we can do that is to show up and let the benefits fly and let the pros of us be seen.

I tell people, “Occasionally, I’m going to forget this or that,” or “I might be five minutes late to a meeting,” or “I might work way fast faster one day than I do another day.” I might need to use a PDF reader, or I might need to use Grammarly or whatever. It works. When you can accommodate yourself, you can still be highly successful. Why let it stop you? I think that’s the hardest thing to overcome.

I love everything that you said. Recognize what your needs are, get to know who you are, and how you can still be successful despite all of your neurodivergent skills. I love that. That’s awesome. Katherine, this has been a wonderful conversation. I have learned a lot. Thank you for sharing all of your experiences. Is there maybe one actionable tip that you want to leave the audience with if they were experiencing something that they don’t know what it is?

Get to know yourself the real way, not the way society told you that you needed to, not the way that everybody else told you to read or not the way everybody else told you need to organize or the way everybody else told you that you needed to go into the workforce. Stop. Realize who you are, and what feels natural to you.

“Get to know yourself the real way, not the way society told you that you needed to.” – Katherine McCord Share on X

It sounds weird, but we have practiced that a lot of times and practice doing the things that feel natural to us. If you realize that something is not healthy or not good, dial it back a little bit. That’s alright. That’s trial and error. Move forward in ways that are natural and comfortable to you, and never hesitate to accommodate yourself and take care of yourself.

Even if that means having a cute fun toy or if it means getting some earplugs like Loop or if it means even having people in your life that are there to help you work through things that are happening in your mind. Whatever it is, take care of yourself and accommodate yourself. Always work and function on a daily in a way that is natural, healthy, and comfortable for you.

Those are all fantastic things that someone can do to take care of themselves and still be successful. Katherine, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a lovely conversation.

Yes, it was. Thank you.

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That certainly was an extremely enlightening conversation that I had with Katherine. I’m going to talk about three different things that are my takeaways. The very first thing is we need to be able to understand what neurodiversity is and its benefits. Neurodiversity refers to the various ways in which people’s brains function and how they can process information differently.

We’re talking about different conditions such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, or being bipolar. Those are all conditions of neurodiversity. What Katherine is advising is that being neurodivergent, you have to think about neurodiversity as not being a deficiency, but instead it’s simply a different way of thinking that can bring your unique strengths and perspectives to the workplace. That’s important because you can embrace your neurodiversity and work with it instead of against it. That was the first takeaway.

The second takeaway for me is having that sense of self-advocacy and requesting accommodations. Katherine advised that it is very important to self-advocate, especially when you have neurodivergent individuals. She encourages people who are in the corporate world if they have neurodivergent conditions to make sure that they understand their own needs.

Most importantly, be able to communicate those needs to management in the workplace. This might involve requesting specific accommodations as well. The accommodations could be a variety of things. It could be as easy as a screen protector, maybe for the light. It could be flexible working arrangements or tools to manage your sensory overload.

She also points out that many of the accommodations are free and easy to implement. Finally, the third takeaway for me is the fact that as a management team, when you recognize, acknowledge, help, and assist people who are neurodivergent, you’re creating a more inclusive work environment, which is huge. Katherine discusses the significance of creating a supportive work environment. An inclusive work environment for neurodivergent employees is incredibly important.

She provided an example of companies like Hewlett Packard that have implemented successful neurodiverse hiring and cultivation programs. Those programs not only have improved productivity and employee satisfaction, but they also have fostered a much more inclusive corporate culture. Those are my three takeaways from my conversation with Katherine.

Katherine does leave us with one actionable tip. She advises neurodivergent individuals to embrace their differences and use them to their advantage. She suggests focusing on what you do best and communicating that to your employer. For example, if someone has ADHD, they might excel doing fast-paced tasks and they’re going to thrive in that thing because they have that ADHD.

By understanding your unique skills, neurodivergent individuals can excel in their careers and demonstrate their value to their organizations. That is not despite being neurodivergent, but it’s because of their neurodivergent conditions that they can do some pretty specialized things. Finally, if you haven’t done so already, please complete the Promotion Readiness Checklist and check out the Unlock the Leader Within membership. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.

Important Links

• Katherine McCord – Linkedin
• Loop
• Calmer
• https://www.TitanManagementUSA.com
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/titan-management-usa
• https://www.Facebook.com/titanmanagementusa
• Promotion Readiness Checklist: https://www.TryInteract.com/share/quiz/6526f787b315de001400d1e0
• Book a Strategy Call with Rosie: https://NoWomanLeftBehind.activehosted.com/f/2
• Unlock the Leader Within Membership link: https://Learn.NoWomanLeftBehind.com/unlock
• No Woman Left Behind website: https://NoWomanLeftBehind.com

About Katherine McCord

From being the little girl who sold shares in her “company” and played HR (even firing her own mother!) to the traveling People Operations entrepreneur and international speaker that she is now, Katherine has had quite a journey! She has multiple physical and neuro diversities, ranging from MCAS and seizures to Bipolar and OCD, and says, “I am successful WITH my diagnosis, not in spite of them”. Whether it is revolutionizing HR Tech, innovating DEI, Recruiting, and HR for clients, or founding the neurodiversity inclusion community, The Neuroverse, Katherine always brings everything back to her three missions: integrity, inclusion, and innovation.