Dr Carla Groom

When did you first realise you were neurodiverse and what did you learn?

I found out very late. At the end of 2017 when I was 41 and already running a division, I went out with my best friend for lunch and her son had just been diagnosed with Autism. She’s a doctor and explained to me the things that led her to consider if he was autistic. I said ‘I do all those things but I am not autistic’ and she said ‘because you’re empathic? That's not exclusionary’. I can still remember where I was sitting, and what I was doing as that was the day my life changed beyond all recognition. After some research, I started to self- identify as autistic. I was lucky as there was another woman in my team who was very similar to me and we went on the journey together and both had an academic assessment which supported what we suspected. I didn't get my actual diagnosis until the end of 2020 (and I had to fight hard to get it). I have been in leadership positions for a long time, and leading since I was 16 - having this diagnosis helped me understand why I did things the way I do. It explained why I find something extremely easy and others very hard.

How does being autistic help you in your work to improve government decision making?

Autism and system thinking go together- it's a natural engineering mind. My brain doesn't put boundaries around things, it doesn’t do what I think a neurotypical brain does which is to say ‘ah for this type of thing let's think about it in this way’. Instead it thinks of all the things that I can verbally or visually connect to something and brings them all together. I will see the knock-on consequences, all the steps to the side, all the steps forward and below through to implementation. This is a practical application of autism to policy making or what we would now call systems thinking. Government Operational Research Service, which is the profession that owns systems thinking, has been one of the first to adopt neuroinclusive hiring policies as they know a lot of people coming into the service may have brains that work in this way. 

Tell us about the role you do as Deputy Director and Head of Human-Centred Design Science?

One of the reasons I am in such an unusual job is because I designed it around me. In 2015 I had been leading on a piece of work for the Executive Team and one of the Directors General thought that the project had delivered some of the department’s best strategic work. So the hypothesis was that this was at least partly because I was a psychologist (I wouldn’t have a clue I was autistic for another two years), so I was asked to set up a behavioural science team. The DGs wanted us not only to do this work but teach others to do it - apparently they wanted more people like me! This led me to look at my hiring process because if the department wanted more people like me, I couldn't put them through a process I wouldn't succeed in. So I ended up designing a neurodivergent friendly hiring process even before I knew I was autistic.

How do you create a neuro-inclusive team?

The values of my team are curiosity, empathy and openness- I also think these are the values of the work of the future. These values are really good for people who do things differently.

To support my staff (neurodivergent and neurotypical) I think about development differently. Instead of thinking that ‘Bob’ did this role before and you have a development need to become ‘Bob’, I think no- the role has a development need to become a different role and you are fine as you are. That's not to say that you don't need to learn, but the idea of changing yourself to become more like a homogenised thing, I rule that inadmissible- so we don’t have any development needs. Instead people have learning goals around what would you like to be known for and what would you like your expertise to be and what would you enjoy learning about. Then the piece that has a bit more edge to it, but I make no apology for this, I ask what are your de-railers and what are your workarounds. So if there are things people find really hard, there are options to reasonably adjust if that is right, but sometimes doing these things can make people stronger and help them do better. Avoiding things entirely can leave you vulnerable to situations where that isn’t an option, so figuring out how to manage those things occasionally is a huge asset to have, even if you don’t deploy it very often. And sometimes the things you avoid can turn out to be some of your greatest strengths. 

I also pair people up, this is an easy win as we tend to treat people as islands. So I pair someone with ADHD who has that wonderful big picture and thinks wow there are so many options here, with someone with autistic traits who go right, we will put this structure over it so we actually get things done. I would love to see a time where people could actually move around together so they could bring with them the person that completes them. I don't think we do this enough because two people with different skills working together can do far more than two well rounded people can do.