David Seargaent

What is your neurodiversity?

Combined ADHD with Autism. That means I've got the inattentive and the hyperactive- always nice to have an interesting combination- and I've got autism as well. I also have mild dyslexia- I jumble some of my words too.

Tell us about your neurodiversity and how it has shown up during your career?

How has it helped you? What have been the challenges?

Firstly, it has always been there - as a kid I was hyperactive and disruptive and struggled at times with school regimes and formal etiquette - nothing has really changed other than I now understand it. I also struggled with learning to write properly, and was the last child in the class to progress to a fountain pen. 

I have had quite a varied career from being a royal Engineer in the British Army and a plant operator mechanic including serving in several war zones. I eventually moved to the prison service, as a prison officer and worked on all sorts of things. (Of course, a lot of people in prison are neurodiverse and having been entirely failed by the education system, but neurodiverse people are actually quite clever). After 11 years of working in a range of prisons and some very shocking environments I successfully became a prison governor. Thirteen years later I started work for the cabinet office, a lot of what I do brings my operational knowledge and systems thinking to security issues. 

My problem-solving skills and systems thinking helped me make some big changes in prisons. In one prison, the governor said to me we don't have a staff mess, can you create one for me. The prison was in the middle of nowhere and often people left site a lunch and this could cause operational problems. My approach to this was to really understand how and why things work- on the high street, I found a space to operate it from and discovered 2 things that make money- coffee and pizza, so that is what we did. We made a really good profit and also got the prisoners working on their catering education. It all fell apart when I left as people didn’t understand the concept, how it worked, or how to best utilise it.

My hyperfocus and analytical brain also helped me as head of security in a prison. I could see patterns in data, and I could read intelligence and visualise how, why, where and when - in the prison system this led me to being able to disrupt the prison's black economy. It meant I knew where the security weak spots were- once I even dropped onto a prisoner who was trying to run around the prison with a mobile phone, purely from reading the intel. I also built strategic defences to frustrate ingress of illicit items, deployed staff in the night in certain spots to collect packages and entered into a theoretical arms race with the prisoners.

Now I am in the Cabinet Office, I love working on big problems and systems at scale. It really suits my brain. For example, I had an algorithm in my head, I had worked out about how much a team can produce in a certain time and to what quality and how to pull that together as a delivery plan. I shared this with some of the people in my team, who were amazed that following a big piece of work, they could come up with the same answer but set out as a fully-fledged delivery plan. In operation it worked really well too, halving our delivery time, and I can already see more efficiencies in the idea. 

But the challenges have been huge. One challenge I have is rubbing with people, and I can often take oppositional positions, more to odd or strange circumstances, and when I see people doing stuff that is irritating. It can rub against the way I read the world, and I sometimes have to fully appreciate that, and so do others. One area of rub is selfish people who treat others unequally, and are only in anything for themselves. I can struggle with that, and it scratches that ODD element of my ADHD.

One of related challenges I have is that some people just don't always naturally warm

to me, I can be a bit marmite for some. But love or loathe me, I have never nailed what it is exactly. I can be very direct, and bypass all normal conventions of conversation, I come from a working-class background, and naturally my ND is quite visible, perhaps more than I cared to admit when I was younger. Although, those relationships that stay the course, last, and I have been married for 32 years. I don't see grades, I see people - which can be problematic for people who see their grade as their power. When someone like me is grade blind and doesn't see their power, they just see a person.

Having random elements where defocusing and distractions play a part can be unhelpful too - in some ways my brain will just wander off if a subject, discussion or something else just isn't engaging. I have little control over it, and it does lead to my yawning and other negative traits that can upset some people. Thankfully its less obvious on virtual calls as I can switch the camera off, or I can fidget and keep myself on track to a lesser degree. 

What are your strengths and how do you use them to lead others?

Strong Human response, I love to see the people around me enjoying their

work, given the creative freedom to explore solutions, and generally around enabling

people to be at their best, and feel at their best. I always say my role is to create that

environment for the people who are around me.

Complex Problem Solving - most people with ADHD are great problem solvers, often

arriving with innovative solutions. And can work through really complex problems,

distilling information in ways others are often unable to. The best bit is gently working

through solutions with my teams, and getting them to engage in the journey we go on. I am able to conceptualise in a way others cannot. In that I see problems in a holistic

way, and can work in a way that is beyond being trapped inside the box, construct

that others tend to suffer with. It also works that I have a growth mindset that always

sees a possibility.

Being able to visualise where I think we need to go on any given job, and then finding a

way to chart a route to that has always been a skill. I can find the potential answer,

and then show others specific steps that should get us all there.

I do have periods/episodes of intense bravery - I have bravery awards for things I

have done, but explaining how, why or what possessed me to do, is beyond me. It

seems that my ND can go on some form of autopilot where doing the right thing,

however risky, is far greater than doing the safe thing for me. As a leader this can

galvanise the people around me, more so in challenging situations.

What has helped you get to where you are today?

I think the most important thing has been sheer bloody mindedness. I am used to failing at stuff, so failing at normal is just normal for me. Therefore I have a slightly more resilient layer, that allows me to get things done, and that in turn often leads to me getting on.

I have a “can do” mentality, and will try to make the best out of even the worst situations. This has led me to work in some truly appalling scenarios, and help the people around me find a way to improve what we initially found.

My ability to bring people together around a common theme and get the best out of them. Creative conversations are the most invigorating, and rewarding when you resolve problems and the people around you see the success.

I dont want to go back where I came from - trust me nothing like a little motivational push to keep you on track. I left home with a suitcase with all my belongings in it at 16, and joined the British Army - but the suitcase is still with me – it has my Christmas decorations in it, and it reminds me of where I came from.

What does hyperfocus look like for you?

If something can get my intention, it really engages me and I struggle to switch my brain off. I dial into a subject, then I can just absorb every nuance of it. This means I can learn in bed and my brain will be taking over, I don't sleep properly and when I wake up the problem will have moved so far down the line. Sometimes hyper focus can also be really fun and I can do things that other people will never think of because I am not hampered by thinking Inside the box. So I can actually get outside of a problem and actually come at it from a really unique angle no one else will do, there's just no one else will come up with the idea or try to.

An example from the job I do now in Government Security Group, is that I managed to take work on a spreadsheet and thinking through how to turn it into a fully operationalise system (can't say much more) but I used all my operational experience from prisons and how systems work and applied it across to create something entirely new. To me it is related but others wouldn’t understand the connections or come up with those system wide solutions. 

Inspire us: Please can you share some inspiration- favourite leadership book, story

of someone who has inspired you ....

Wanting - by Luke Burgis, it's about mimetic theory and models of desire - but introduces you to a transformational leadership style. At the end of it you will understand what drives your desires/wants etc and if you really get it, you will understand what you want - it's like reading Simon Sineks Understand your Why for the first time, and suddenly finding your own why.

I have two inspirational characters who have mentored me in my life to positive

effect. My late grandfather Eddie Seargeant, who passed in 2019 at the age of 98, I do miss

his words of wisdom. He served with the RAF in WW2, as did my late Grandmother,

who was a WRAF. He worked his way from being an office clerk to being quite high

up in Northern Gas (or the old fashioned Gasboard). He was full of advice, and ideas,

and was always interested in what I was doing career wise.

Also my late father in law Patrick Toole, who passed in 2021 at the age of 86. He left

school at 14, and started with Lloyds of London, when he retired in his 60’s, he was a

syndicate director, and had basically done the organisation from the bottom to the

top. He has inspired me to never give up, believe in me, and to keep going.