Women at Work - Navigating Your Career When You Have a Disability

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Meredith Koch and Nicole Bettè are engineers who’ve bonded over conversations about their apparent and non-apparent disabilities. They recount how at different moments in their careers they’ve gotten the understanding and assistive technology necessary to do their jobs—and when they haven’t, all with the hope that you’ll be able to better advocate for yourself and your colleagues.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. It's always really interesting. Like whenever my colleagues have seen me for the first time with a wheelchair, they usually ask, what happened? And it's hard to answer. It's like, literally nothing happened to me. I did not have any accident. Yeah, it's just, I don't know how to answer. I will say something like, oh no, I'm OK. I have a connective tissue disorder and leave it at that. People are naturally curious. I get that. Yeah. And when I'm like out in public, I don't have this happen in my actual office, but I can be out and someone's like, oh, were you in a car accident? And I just look at them and either A, no, and I wheel away or B, actually had a piano fall on top of me and then I wheel away and then they just don't even know what to say

and who's uncomfortable now. Nicole Bette and Meredith Koch are engineers who our podcast team met at a Women Impact Tech Conference here in Boston. Over the past few years, they've bonded over conversations about disability, a topic that Meredith feels a lot of us are scared to talk about, including at

work. I think because it's so personal and there's so much that you just don't understand about it. While I'm very open about sharing that I'm an incomplete paraplegic, how I got hurt, when people start being like, oh, what's wrong with you? Like, that's not the right approach. Get to know someone as a person. And then over time, it's like you begin building these like partnerships. Like I've got a couple people at work that like I need something. I can text them and they will come help me and there will be no questions asked. This sort of goodwill is one of the perks of cluing in a close colleague or two. That's how 58% of employees with a disability cope, according to a 2020 global survey done by Accenture. 24% are transparent with everyone. Another 18% keep their condition or conditions a secret.

Secrecy is an understandable choice, given the bias still out there. Even though one in four adults in the U.S. have some type of disability. Disability and health conditions, they are just so wide-reaching. You ask 10 people with spinal cord injury, 10 people with autism, 10 people with a stroke, everyone's had different experiences. Right. And there's a tendency for someone to say, oh, well, I know a person that got hurt this way. And after two years, they were walking. And I'm like, congratulations to them. That's amazing. And yoga worked for them. Have you tried it? Yes. Yes. That are like, oh, have you heard of this clinical trial? I'm like, yes, I know of that clinical trial, but I'm not eligible for that clinical trial. Unsolicited advice.

You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. Approximately 10% of working women have a disability, according to McKinsey and LeanIn.org's Women in the Workplace study. Meredith and Nicole advocate for that 10%, as well as all employees with apparent and non-apparent disabilities. They're here to share their experiences,

getting the understanding and environmental changes or assistive technology or both that makes doing the job possible, or at least so much more manageable. They'll share how they've refined the ways they disclose their conditions and how they've asked for accommodations and either gotten them or not. In their stories are also lessons for managers about responding to team members' requests and coming up with ideas when they're not sure what they need.

Nicole, I want to start with you because I saw a post of yours on LinkedIn where you talked about Meredith having an important role in your journey to accept your disability and use a wheelchair. Can you tell me about that? I was working on a project with Meredith's company, and I had spoken with Meredith on Zoom calls in different meetings, but I didn't know much about her. And I could only see her torso, so I didn't know if she was disabled or if she used a wheelchair. Got it. I forgot about that part. I interacted with some of your colleagues in person. And so they saw me with leg braces and forearm crutches, but I wasn't using my wheelchair in the office for them. But you were on the remote side of that project wanted to get involved in disability advocacy. And also, separately, I was considering using a wheelchair. And one of my managers, she said, you know, I think you should talk to Meredith. I think she would be a really good resource for you. And yeah,

I reached out to her. I had never met another apparently disabled person in my industry so I decided to reach out to Meredith and ask her not only about her experiences I learned about her TED talk and her advocacy she showed me how to best advocate for accessibility in the workplace in general and as we got to know each other more, we got a little bit more personal. And I asked her about my own disability and my own exploration of using a wheelchair and coming to terms with that choice. Yeah. Meredith, when you were talking to Nicole about your experience, what were you drawing on to give her advice? By the time Nicole reached out, I had been paralyzed for about five and a half, six years, I think. And I had gone through my own journey of coming to terms with my disability. I acquired a disability at the age of 25,

broke my back and was paralyzed from the waist down, was able to learn how to walk partially again, thanks to Spalding Rehab. But it took me two years to get to a point in my own job of being comfortable using a wheelchair. I would force myself to go into hospitals as a medical device rep on forearm crutches and using lower leg braces. And by the end of the day, I was in so much pain. And it just got to a point where I said it's more important for my quality of life and for me to be able to do my job the best I can, as opposed to really caring about other people's perceptions of me. And I had this thought in my head that as someone who was younger in the field that I was in, working with world-class

electrophysiologists and cardiologists, that they would think less of me if I was in a wheelchair as opposed to if I was using crutches and leg braces. And that's part of why it took me so long to be comfortable being in a wheelchair in the workplace. Nicole, what were your concerns about people's perceptions of you at work? It's hard to answer. I don't know. I guess part of my job, I'm a human factors engineer, part of my job is to do usability studies. So I would go into places like simulated OR settings or simulated clinics or simulated home environments and study people using medical devices. And I would have to stand a lot of times in OR settings. Every now and then I did need to

use a cane or crutches or something if I had a subluxation or a dislocation that I'm prone to. Yeah, but at the end of the day, I was just so exhausted. I just couldn't function. I was wasting all my energy just walking. And I was worried, I think, of having to ask for accommodation. I was worried that I would be thought of as not being able to do the job, not being able to be in that room. I couldn't envision, because I had never done it, I couldn't envision how can I actually observe participants use this system if I can't easily maneuver around them.

And then if I can't envision it, can my leadership envision me being able to do this? What about Meredith's story or her advice changed your concerns or helped you make the decision to use a wheelchair at work? I think it made it feel like less of a big deal. And not only Meredith, but other amazing professionals using wheelchairs and being successful in technical careers. That makes any sense. Makes total sense. When you have fears about something, seeing someone do it without fear or overcoming their fear, right, I can see how that would encourage you to make a different decision, right? Meredith, I want to talk about your TEDx talk for a moment.

In 2018, you did this talk, which was fantastic. Everyone should watch it. But you mentioned that after your accident, you sort of redefined your hopes and dreams. I'm curious how your career aspirations fit into that. Did you rethink those as well? There was a lot that I thought about. There was a lot that I doubted. I have this distinct memory of being in my inpatient bed at Spalding Rehab. So this was maybe three weeks after I got paralyzed. At this point, I had learned how to roll and I could get into quadruped. And I think I was crawling and learning to stand again. I mean, we are like so basic on activities of daily living. Hadn't even learned how to do all my independent self-care. Right.

And I had an emotional breakdown because one, I didn't know how I was ever going to pump gas again. That's an interesting task. Two, I thought I would never walk down the aisle to get married. Yeah. And three, I said, who would ever want someone in a wheelchair in an operating room? Don't ask me why pumping gas was so important to me other than like, your car is independence. And it was starting to meet those people. So just like Nicole met me, I met individuals with different types of disabilities who have full-time careers,

who are married, who have children. And I was able to talk to them. Yes, and they pump gas. And talk to them and say, so is this possible? What did you have to do differently? I was in a job that I absolutely loved, but it was very physical. And I had to learn how to put electrodes onto patients' chests and arms again to be able to check their pacemakers and not fall in their laps when doing that because I was the first. I couldn't ask my coworkers, hey, has anyone ever done this sitting before? Hey, how else can you move this 35-pound programmer other than just carrying it?

So I refer to myself as adaptively abled, and I take that from adaptive sports. Yep. I don't see myself as disabled. I just adapt how I approach things. And that's really how I've approached my career as well. So I did my job in the field for four and a half years, totally loved it, and got to a point where my physical health was taking a hit. I just couldn't get to my PT appointments. And I said, okay, it's time to shift gears, pivot. So I switched to clinical systems engineering. And now I don't have that physical element every

single day. Nicole, I want to hear how your career aspirations have shifted or not based on your disability. I have always been interested in the medical world ever since I was a kid. I didn't know if I wanted to be a doctor, but all I knew is that I just I wanted to to help heal somehow. I was also very creative. Everything that I did was all about problem solving. Engineering felt like a very natural career to pursue for me. And I went into human factors engineering because I noticed, this is before I understood my disability or had a diagnosis or anything.

I understood that you can have a technologically perfect product and it could fail for reasons that are not technical. It could fail because they're not easy to use. They're not culturally sensitive. I mean, there's a million reasons. They're not, it's not. I mean, think about the example of automatic soap dispensers that weren't recognizing darker skin. Exactly. Exactly.

That's a perfect example. Exactly. There's even medical devices that use optical sensors, and they don't work as well for people with darker skin, like forehead thermometers, pulse oximeters. So I got into human factors engineering to try to make things more usable, safer, effective, and to reduce the risk of medical mistakes. When I got diagnosed, like the process of getting diagnosed, not just the actual day that they say,

oh, Nicole, we think you have this. No, it was the whole journey of having to go to medical appointments and seeing the clinical side actually was helpful for me. I learned a lot. It was weird. It's like, okay, I'm learning about myself, but I'm also learning about medicine. It's like it gave me a huge amount of exposure and empathy into clinical care. Like there's not enough knowledge and research on disabled people. So when a company is making a medical device, they don't think about disability. So most medical devices are inaccessible to people, for example, who are blind. Sometimes people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

They don't consider different body anthropometrics, meaning sizes, heights, weights, if you use assistive devices or not. So in a way, yes, my disability shifted my career in the sense that I realized there's a huge issue with inaccessibility. And so that's what I've been focusing on. I'm both at work and outside of work advocating. Right. I mean, it sounds like you were already drawn to this field, but then your own personal experience just probably makes you so good at what you do. It enhanced it a lot. I feel like I have so much more awareness and empathy when I'm working on this and I have to think about risk and have to think about different types of people. There's

no way that I can account for everyone. All I can do is think, okay, don't forget to consider these people. Let's get participants that use a wheelchair in here. Like, let's get participants that are colorblind. Like, let's really include more diversity in our pool of participants when they're testing medical devices so that we have a better understanding. When you think about employing individuals, you want that diverse perspective of thought. And individuals with disabilities, chronic health conditions, we see the world and spaces completely differently. That means how we interact with products. We are used to adapting and overcoming challenges. When I was working as an engineer, when I was working in the field as a sales rep and now managing a team I say okay

well if we can't do this then can we do this and then that and then that and people go oh we didn't think about it that way right because oftentimes people see how it's done and they say we have to keep doing it that way yep and when you have a disability or a chronic health condition that you are dealing with day in and day out, you are so used to saying, I may not have a roadmap on how to do this, but I'm going to figure it out. So at work, I think the competitive advantage is that you have this whole source of innovation and people who are not afraid to adapt, to be resilient. And when we look at companies and they are promoting gender equity of pay, when they are talking about being ethnically diverse, that's wonderful.

But oftentimes when you dig into annual reports or DEI reports, you don't see a metric of how many employees have a disability. Because either one, it's such a small number that the company doesn't feel that they can disclose that without potentially breaching confidentiality of an employee. Two, employees are scared to self-identify for fear of retaliation. Or three, maybe they would be willing to disclose, but they don't know that things like ADHD, depression, autism. Anxiety. Anxiety, right? Like all of these things, they don't know that that actually qualifies as a disability. So they aren't disclosing that.

Right. So then the numbers are so small and you don't get a sense. So you don't have a true reflection of it. Yeah. Let's talk about the experience of disclosing or not disclosing. Nicole, how do you think about disclosure of your disability and how people will respond and how they do respond? For me, it depends on the disability that we're talking about. I have multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses. So the ones that are more prominent that I think disable me the most and affect me the most are Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, hypermobility type, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which is an autonomic nervous system dysfunction that causes lightheadedness and fatigue among other things and neurodivergence

in my case I have ADHD and autism level one which is high functioning autism but yeah in terms of disclosing is tricky if I'm not using a wheelchair that moment or an assistive device people can't see they may not be able to tell for for example, that I'm in pain, that I have fatigue, that I have hives. I have another condition where I have vibratory urticaria, so when I walk, it triggers hives, so my feet get itchy. Yeah, so they may not see all of those things that are not apparent. Now, in terms of disclosure, there's not a lot

of disclosure that happens in terms of the assistive devices. Like when they see me, they ask questions and I can choose, you know, how to answer them. It's always really interesting. Like whenever my colleagues have seen me for the first time with a wheelchair, they usually ask, what happened? And it's hard to answer. It's like literally nothing happened to me i know i did not have any accident right it's just it's interesting and i will say something like oh no i'm okay i have a connective tissue disorder and leave it at that it depends on you i kind of try to gauge by what how the person asks whether they're interested in hearing more sometimes it's like a passing are you okay and sometimes it's like tell me your whole life story and it it depends on how comfortable people are sharing i am pretty open i'm an open book because

i want to be an advocate so i'm putting myself out there but not everyone is comfortable and that's okay yeah and then for the neurodivergence it's tricky i just got diagnosed with autism last last thanksgiving so this is newer to me. But with ADHD, I've decided to be pretty open. But I've changed my approach. Instead of disclosing and saying, oh, I have ADHD, I just say, hey, I have ADHD and sometimes this happens. And this is what would be helpful.

Or if I do this, let me know. Like interrupting is something I do a lot. And it's an impulse. Yeah. And it's hard. And then with autism, it's a communication discrepancy. I used to think I have trouble communicating, but now my perspective has changed. I don't think I necessarily have trouble communicating.

I have trouble communicating with people who use a lot of nonverbal and implicit communication styles. So I am very direct and blunt in my approach to communication. I like everything explicit. I would rather everything be completely laid out. And when I meet people who are like that, there's no, absolutely zero communication issues. The expectations are clear and everything is communicated. But when somebody tends to imply things or expect me to read the room, that makes it difficult. And I have now accepted I don't think it's a me problem.

I think that everyone could benefit from our direct communication. That's all. Right. Yeah. And the choice to disclose or not, right? I can understand the choice to disclose because you want to be an advocate. That makes sense. But then there's also the choice of like, will it make this interaction go more smoothly

or help them understand better or maybe help them make an accommodation? But, you know, as I'm saying that, I'm like, well, then is it just you're disclosing to make it easier for them or does it make it easier for you? I like to think it makes it easier for me. Yeah. Especially when it comes to behavioral things. So interruptions or being very excited and speaking really fast or talking through my thoughts, like thinking out loud and then being like, oh, actually, no, that's not what I want to say. I'm going to backtrack. Like that thinking out loud can be annoying to people who

are not used to it to some people people maybe who are a little more impatient um and in that situation people can be very judgmental i i have found a lot more willingness to accommodate my physical disabilities than non-apparent than than my neurodivergence oh yeah and so i've had to be like, no, this is, it's part of my disability and I need this. Why do you think that is? I don't know. I think that

maybe people like to think that you have full control, you know, that we all have full control over our behavior, that if you just practice enough, like it's all in your control. Right.

You could overcome your autism or your ADHD if you just tried harder. Exactly. And the reality is that, no, it doesn't work like that. I'm always autistic and always with ADHD. If I'm feeling really good, like if I have slept well, if I've taken my meds, if I'm just having a really good day mentally, I can mask better and pay more attention. I have more bandwidth in my brain to pay attention to little cues in behavior of other people so I can adjust. Sometimes if I'm tired or like physically just

not feeling well, it's like my resources are taken up by that and I have a harder time changing my behavior and I'll be more, maybe a little more oblivious and I'll just, might interrupt more or blurt something out. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I want to hear more about the accommodations people are willing and not willing to give and how you ask for them in a moment. I want to hear from both of you. But Meredith, tell me a little bit about your feelings or thoughts around disclosure and how that's worked for you and your job. I can't show up anywhere without someone, unless it's virtual, without people seeing that I have some form of disability.

So it's really on like a need-to-know basis. When I got hurt and I was in the field, everyone knew what happened to me. I mean, I had a piano fall on top of me and paralyze me from the waist down. That is not a story that like just kind of gets swept under the table. I got a new manager recently and I met with her for the first time and she had no idea who I was. She was from a different part of the company and now I report into her and it's been a wonderful relationship. But in our first

meeting, I said, hey, just so you know, this is who I am this is my story it's not super private what my disability is because I've talked about it a lot at my company right but I was like I just want you to know this is what it is sometimes you'll see me in a chair sometimes I'm on crutches I do still do PT like are you okay with the fact that like like, I flex my hours a tiny bit. I schedule PT before work or later in the day. But there's some appointments I physically have to have in the middle of the day. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, it's totally fine.

Right. Right. So it's that need-to-know disclosure. Or if I need to ask for an accommodation, then that's a different story. But my favorite experience being in this, quote-unquote, new job that I've been on this team now for four and a half years. I used to use my crutches predominantly for commuting because I was able to walk and I loved the walk from the train. And then one day I chose to use my wheelchair. And someone says to me, hey, Meredith, it's OK if you don't want to answer.

But can I ask why you're in a wheelchair today? I said, honestly, I wanted to wear cute shoes and my braces do not fit in these shoes. okay if you don't want to answer but can i ask why you're in a wheelchair today i said honestly i wanted to wear cute shoes and my braces do not fit in these shoes and it is 90 degrees out and i just wanted to wear sandals so i'm in my wheelchair so i can wear sandals right it's like it's a great reason to me and then three engineers walk in the room they go oh that's snazzy what kind of wheels are on those how much does that weigh what's it made out of and i was like this is so engineers the best experience of my entire life of just like feeling so supported and they engage with my disability in a way that made it seem like someone just wanted to talk

about like what i'd done that weekend and just like nerd out over the technology right i was like i have found my people right right nicole you were you were nodding throughout tell me does that resonate yes uh multiple things resonate um i've definitely experienced the nerding out um and then i also related to the heels thing because um i thought i would never be able to wear heels again i just i couldn't handle it. Like, it hurt my feet and my legs. And my ankles were unstable because of the other zelnos.

And I just gave up on it. So I literally was wearing the exact same shoes that are, like, made for nurses. Yeah, for, I'm talking years. Like, I was wearing the same shoes. And when those would wear, I would buy the same shoes. And it was sad. I was like, I would wear would wear these like fancy suits and stuff and just wear those sad shoes yeah and then when i got my wheelchair a friend of mine invited me to go to a concert and then i still had i hadn't thrown away my heels i had these like boots with heels and i was like i had this moment of realization just i was so excited.

Wait, oh, my God, I can wear heels. I can wear heels in my wheelchair. I was I was pumped and I felt so feminine and like everyone can express their gender how they want to. I feel I've identified with that, you know, and just wanting to feel feminine and project myself like in a feminine way and being able to wear the cute heels and the dress and the skirt and all these things. And so I was pumped. That is a perk of a wheelchair I've never thought of. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future

and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey, listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor, Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own

life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that I hear over and over women talk about getting feedback about at work is executive presence and this idea that you will have gravitas, how you're perceived. And I know one coach who even calls it your book cover, right? But it's very much about physical traits or physical presence, like how you stand or how you hold your body or what cues you send or whether you can look someone directly in the eye. And so I'm curious, first of all, do you think about executive presence? Maybe not even that term, but sort of how you will be perceived as a leader or as a professional.

And what thoughts or reactions come up when you hear about that? I think it's hard not to think about it. If you're in an industry where you are trying to grow your career and that you're in the room with people who are senior or much more senior to you. I've actually never thought that my wheelchair or my crutches makes me seem less professional. I really think it's about how you hold yourself. And I sometimes do choose to stand up to shake someone's hand or to meet them. That's a choice that I am very blessed to be able to make. But I met the CEO of my company sitting in my wheelchair and I wasn't thinking to myself, oh, yeah, he's probably wondering, like, what's she doing?

No, not at all. He's like, so nice to meet you. I was like, it's nice to meet you, too. You know, we had this great conversation. And it's more, I think, about being engaged with someone. Right. In terms of how I dress. Right.

I have a whole two pairs of shoes that my braces fit into. And it's just one of those things. I'm like, this is who I am. Right. I'm comfortable with it. And if you aren't comfortable with it, then you probably shouldn't be evaluating my performance or my capabilities. Yeah. Nicole, how do you think about executive presence and how people perceive them? It's something that I've had to give a lot of thought and practice to. I have attended seminars on public speaking, gravitas, branding, how you come across, especially in the world of consulting. I've done consulting and you mentioned eye contact and I laughed because I have autism and eye contact is something that's hard for me. I practiced a lot.

So my dad, since I was growing up, would tell me you have to make eye contact because he would notice that I didn't. And I felt that light were coming out of the eyes of people. Like I didn't want to look at people's eyes. I felt like light was, it was like distracting. It's like if I had to make eye contact, I could only focus on making eye contact. It's like imagining as if there were lanterns, like just like these bright lights

shining from the eyes of people. This is when I was a child. That's how I could describe the feeling of, I can't focus on what you're saying because I have to hold eye contact. And I've seen now that I'm older and I understand more and have the diagnosis, I've paid attention to the autism community mentioning similar things. Anyway, my point with that is that if somebody is a little bit awkward, maybe they don't make as much eye contact or their facial expressions don't match what you expect and you can't quite put your finger on it.

They may be neurodivergent. So don't judge too harshly. There's other ways to show presence and engagement that don't have to fit precisely the mold that you think. That just reminded me of the fact that we have diverse interview panels. So you have to have representatives from other teams interview your candidates. And within the last six months of doing this, I was interviewing someone and then the whole interview panel came together and someone made a comment about this person not engaging in great eye contact and not being as sociable. And I said, well, does that matter for this job? And it took some people aback that I said, this person was able to give specific examples about what they did. They were able to answer the question. Sometimes it diverged a bit, but you were ultimately able to take away theable and able to have small talk necessary? I don't think it is. This person seems like the most qualified individual for the job. And I think it's a good way to also test our own bias. When we find ourselves questioning, will she be up to the task? Or does she have what it takes to be a leader? Will her

team take her seriously? Will our client take her seriously? It's like, well, does what I'm concerned about affect the ability to do the job? If you hadn't been in that room, maybe they wouldn't have given more thought. They might have been focused a lot on the social aspect. So this is why it's important to hire disabled people. The business case, right? We have made the business case. Episode over. Thank you very much.

All right. I want to get back to accommodations because I'm curious for both of you what accommodations have you asked for in your workplace and what was that experience like and actually Nicole since you referred to earlier about your autism and ADHD have you asked for accommodations around those specifically? Yeah and I will say I don't have like the best happy story. That's okay we'll learn from it either way. I mean, I have good and bad experiences. The first time that I remember asking was at a private company that I was working for.

And they had an open plan set up. Yeah. And I was having a really hard time focusing. So my little desk faced the open area and I could see the door. So anytime someone would come in, it was visually distracting. There were people moving around and I had no visual barrier. And the noise was bouncing off of everything. There was just very little noise absorption. Although there was carpet, I think that probably helped a little bit, but noises were just distracting. So I asked for

noise canceling headphones. That felt like a very tangible accommodation and they weren't that expensive. So I looked up how to best ask for an accommodation in the most official way possible. And I read that it's better to go to HR than to go to your manager for permission. It's both to protect yourself and for the company to protect itself. So if you ask your manager and they say yes right away without understanding the implications,

they could be putting themselves at risk because they already said yes, but maybe it's not a reasonable accommodation. Or if they say no, they could be putting themselves at risk because they already said yes, but maybe it's not a reasonable accommodation. Or if they say no, they could be making themselves liable because they're denying an accommodation. Right. So I didn't go to any manager. I went to the person who was representing the HR function. So I went to this person and they said it's not a problem.

They sent me, you know, the information about the noise cancelling headphones. And at some point later, I got called into an office of one of the leadership of the company, and they were asking me why did I go behind their back to ask for headphones, and that they didn't want to create an environment where people were isolated from the rest of their peers. And that's not why they started the company.

They didn't want people to be in their own world and not connecting with their colleagues. And they also said that my disability was not real, that ADHD was not real, and that I should be so grateful that I was hired at all. It was very, very difficult to deal with that. And I ended up just getting the headphones myself and paying for them out of pocket, which at that time was very, very expensive for me. But I decided that I just needed it to be able to perform at work and focus

because I just wasn't focusing well. And then I did leave eventually. I decided not to do anything about it. I just didn't feel like it was a safe environment for me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did anyone mention the headphones when you were wearing them? No.

No, no. Not even this leader who had been so adamant that it's not part of the company culture. That's a good way of putting it, but no. No, they didn't. Right. Because it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't.

It wasn't a big deal. Right. And then I asked later on in my career for other accommodations. At different employers. Yeah. I asked for things to be put in writing. Yeah. I asked for things to be put in writing.

So whenever I would have conversations with managers to or when there was any although feedback tends to be documented anyway but I just mean even in formal

meetings just have minutes somewhere and I could contribute to them as well. It could be a collaborative effort of having instructions in writing.

That was immensely helpful. Did you have a collaborative effort of having instructions in writing. That was immensely helpful. Did you have a good response to those requests? Yeah, I did. But I will say, though, I didn't always know what to ask for. I was having a hard time, I think, especially during COVID, having to switch from working in person to working remotely. It changed the whole structure of everything. I mean, everyone was struggling right but i just i remember really really struggling on how to structure my day

at work and the autism and adhd i felt were contributing immensely and it was a time where i remember that i was asked like so what what do you need yeah they asked me so what accommodations can we give you so you can perform your best yeah and I in that time I just didn't have an answer I didn't know what would be helpful so I ended up having one of my managers that was a sweetheart and she was an interim manager she sat with me and over multiple one-on-ones we just started making lists and thinking like engineers like okay yeah let's be more thoughtful about this let's think of you as if you are our client. And we have to collaborate on working out what's best.

And it was actually during those sets of conversations, kind of going back full circle, where I started coming to terms with assistive technologies and thinking about a wheelchair was because of those conversations. Yeah. I love that idea of like, let's collaborate on this as a problem to be solved. And also what you've just made so clear is that it's not always apparent to someone what they need. And sometimes they may be struggling to do their job and need a collaborator or a manager or a mentor to sit with them and think, okay, what would make this easier? And it may not always be the right solution. So maybe the noise-canceling headphones don't work, right? Or maybe the minutes need to be more detailed.

Just sort of treating it as an experiment with a goal of solving the problem together. I just love that. That's such a helpful way to think about it. Sometimes, honestly, it's about more explicit communication and just having more patience and kindness from the other party. Yeah.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash womenatwork. That's netsuite.com slash womenatwork. What's your experience been with accommodations,edith asking for them and getting them when i first got hurt and returned to work when i was in the field what's so hard if you are working

somewhere that your company does not own or lease that building it's not that they don't want to provide accommodations but like they physically can't provide accommodations sometimes for the work environment that you're in. So it really is that conversation with a manager of let's try different things. So when I was first in the field, we didn't document as accommodations. It was realistically, what accounts can you go to? The doctor's offices that require you going up half a flight of stairs is off limits because you can't carry a 35 pound programmer up stairs right and so we just kind of worked as a district and my manager

talked to the different people on the team and said hey would you be willing to cover that clinic and then merith will cover this clinic for you because she can get into that pushing a cart or like the equipment's already there that she needs people like yeah that's fine like let's mix and match yeah not a problem so in the field it was much more just kind of brainstorming or experimenting with how to do things yeah so i had a problem when i was in the field of like i needed to carry six boxes, three city blocks using a wheelchair. How do you do that? Right. Somebody who's fully able bodied is able to just hold six boxes and walk down the street. Yeah. I figured out if I took those reusable shopping bags, I could stuff three per bag.

I could not one through the other bag. And I kid you not, I looked like a dog. I had it in between my teeth so it wouldn't fall off my lap. And I'm you not, I looked like a dog. I had it in between my teeth so it wouldn't fall off my lap. And I'm like wheeling down the city blocks between the two hospital buildings. And I was carrying product back and forth and it worked perfectly. Right. So it was more about adapting versus accommodations at that time. Sure. Once I came to my engineering job, I remember asking the talent acquisition person who was like negotiating my offer through and I was like, hey, there's a couple accommodations that I think I'm going to need. Like I needed a power assist button to get in from the street into the lobby because the door

was very, very heavy. Funny thing is people have been complaining about how heavy the door was for years right right but it took someone having a legal reason to ask for it yeah what i will say about accommodations though is one a lot of people don't know what they don't know and especially in the neurodivergence world people are either a afraid to ask for an accommodation that it will be disclosed and get back to their manager that they have dyslexia or autism or ADHD or whatever it might be. And then they don't even know what to ask for. They can be like, well, I have a lot of typos in my emails because I'm dyslexic, but they don't know that there are programs out there that can proofread for you and help with that. And being like a hiring manager now, I just want the people on my team

and anyone I work with to feel comfortable asking me like, hey, could I get noise canceling headphones? Like, I will point you in the direction of the official policy. Like with these new hires, I'm going to share that policy on day one with them. Like they should know how to request an accommodation. They should know if they get sick or someone gets sick in their family. Like, what does our leave policy look like? Well, it makes me think you have the experience of requesting accommodation and now you're a people manager. So you now have a sense of what it's like to be on the other side of that request. And I wonder if one of the pieces of advice for managers is to familiarize yourself before the request ever comes in of what you would need to

do if there was a request for an accommodation of what you would need to do if there was a request for an accommodation so that you are able to guide your employee through the process, give an appropriate response and problem solve with them. Exactly. And it's one of those things that disability is, it fluctuates. I was having nerve pain, like really bad nerve pain flare ups and like my legs were going into spasms And I had to email my manager It was like 7 30 in the morning because I was supposed to be on the 7 40 train or whatever it was and be like I have to work from home today. This was like before the pandemic. I was like, I need to work remotely and they were like

That's fine. Do you want to have a conversation about like? How we could not make you worried about this in the future? I was like, what do you want to have a conversation about like how we could not make you worried about this in the future i was like what do you mean like well why don't we have a conversation about like you working from home one or two days a week and or just like a standing agreement that if you have a flare-up yeah it's fine nicole you've mentioned to us this similar experience of having to just leave work or stop working because of something going on with your health. Like even I think you told our producer you went to the ER, just had to go straight to the ER once. Did you have a similar react? I mean, it sounds like Meredith, you had sort of the ideal reaction from people.

Did you have similar reactions from those you work with? I have to say, I rarely have a podcast interview where I so badly wish we had a video because you're so expressive. Like your cringe face is like the cringey. It could be the model of cringe face. So you cringed at that. Tell us. I think it's because I'm Latina. So I'm very expressive.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so one day, so with the postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, the acronym is POTS, P-O-T-S, it can flare up sometimes, especially if I haven't slept well, or just randomly, or there's a lot of heat, or in that case what was happening is that I was home hunting. I was looking for, I was visiting houses. You were at home hunting.

You were home hunting. I was home hunting. House hunting. House hunting. You were home hunting. I was home hunting. House hunting. House hunting, yeah. House hunting with my partner. Yeah, we were looking for houses. So every now and then, I would have to go into these houses and climb stairs and ladders sometimes. There was one with a ladder that you had to take a ladder to go to the bedroom.

It was beautiful, but impractical. This was before I really had accepted my limitations. I can do a ladder? Yeah, yeah. It was just brutal on my body. Yeah, no, no. And so all that physical activity took a toll. And I was in the middle of a very important project with a new client.

We were trying to establish ourselves in a specific area business area that we hadn't explored before so we were very excited about it like the company was very excited about presenting their best image to this new client and so there's a lot of pressure on the team yeah to do their best to be to be super super on point and I was literally falling asleep at meetings because the hypotension that reduced blood pressure causes sleepiness sometimes so I was I was struggling even to stay awake during meetings and it was this was not voluntary it's not something I could control it was just it was happening and so in the morning when I woke up I stood up and I tested my heart rate and it was high 140s. If it's 150 or above your risk for supraventricular tachycardia, SVT, you can have a heart attack.

You can have a dangerous complication. So I said, okay, I have to go to the ER and I'm leaving. It's like I have to leave my team. And so I sent them a message and I said hey I've been feeling ill for the past days um so I yeah I just took off and went to the ER because I had to I had to put my health first no matter what fires were happening sure at the company yeah and were your colleagues understanding it was there was a lot of non-verbal communication i don't think they were happy um they were concerned yeah i think probably concerned about me making sure that i was okay but to me this was nothing new this has been my reality for all my life but for them it was like

oh my god what can we do you know like yeah and also i'm assuming that they were concerned about the project a lot. There was definitely tension that I felt. And a lot of it, right, is unless people explicitly say directly what they mean, it is speculative and it's based on changes in tone and facial expression. I can't, it's hard to. But no one expressly said, we're glad you're okay. We've got this project under control yeah nobody said oh don't worry just take care of you we'll handle it like there was not that it was

more like oof but there was also no chastisement nobody made nobody went out of their way to make me feel like that was inappropriate but no one went out of their way to make it feel like it was appropriate exactly right choice yeah Yeah. There was something you said in telling that story, Nicole, that really stuck with me because you said it's not something I can control. And I think back to what you were saying earlier, especially with non-apparent disabilities, there is a sense, I think there's a perception that you're just not controlling it enough implying that people are lazy or incompetent you both are making it so clear to me how damaging that can be if you if you create an environment where people don't even feel safe bringing things up or taking time for

themselves right if you make a culture of workaholism, you're inherently going to make people not want to even seek accommodations or disclose or they're not going to feel safe coming forward. I mean, someone that you see maybe falling asleep, for example, at their desk, they could have a severe sleep disorder. Right. That is not because they're lazy

or they don't care about their work. It could be they have something else going on. I mean, it should be addressed. I'm not saying ignore it. But I'm just saying that just a little bit of patience. You say when someone, honestly, like the thought that comes to mind when I'm like thinking about seeing someone fall asleep. I'm like, oh, they were up playing video games all night. You know, like you do find yourself making these presumptions about why people are behaving certain ways and the importance of questioning those assumptions.

You're putting such a fine point on that. I think it's really helpful. All right. Thank you both so much for joining us today. This has been such an enlightening conversation for me, and I'm hoping our listeners learn a lot from it, too. Thank you. Thank you for having us. It's been a great day.

Agreed. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. That's our show. I'm Amy Gallo. Next week, we focus on one type of neurodivergence, ADHD, a disorder that's long been underdiagnosed in women and can make work quite difficult. If you are an accomplished woman, there is a huge probability that your clinician will look at you and say, you can't have ADHD. You went to Harvard. You can't have ADHD. You're a lawyer. You never

would have gotten through law school. That's not true. HBR has more podcasts to help you manage yourself, your team, and your organization. Find them at hbr.org slash podcasts, or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Tina Tobey-Mack, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Rob and Moore composed this theme music. Subscribe to our free newsletter by going to hbr.org slash email hyphen newsletters. Every month, we send you a mix of resources, practical advice, and personal stories aimed to lift you up and move you forward.