I have hesitated to write and share this. While I am dyslexic, and there is no doubt dyslexia has presented its challenges over the years, talking about it feels self-indulgent. For my part at least, it is a long way down the list of challenges people face every day.

So why am I writing? In the most tired of LinkedIn tropes, it comes from a discussion with our team about career journeys and lessons learnt for good and bad. In the discussion, to highlight a particular example, I made a passing reference to being dyslexic.

I got the inevitable question. Why is being dyslexic relevant to your career? I did not have a coherent answer. This is a stab at coherence.

Dyslexia was identified in my early teens. The mid 1980’s in northern England was a different time and place. Dyslexia was “new” at that point and not part of mainstream discussion.

School years were not a resounding success. I have a very clear memory, and I know memory is an unreliable witness, of a teacher explaining that dyslexia was an excuse made up by the working classes to cover for stupidity. Just to rub it in, it was an English teacher.

Support in my school years was well meaning but not actually helpful. The best analogy I can come up with is when left-handed people were forced to write with their right hand (btw that sentence is enough to give any dyslexic the chills!).

Support was founded in a type of conformance. The focus was on correcting what you couldn’t do rather than developing alternative strategies. Lean into making you the same as everyone else. Force your right hand to do the work.

How does my dyslexia manifest? Yes, the word blindness, pattern recognition, information synthesis all feature, alongside their constant friend: a degree of social awkwardness. All of that was and still is true but the core, the real frustration, was an inability to articulate a coherent thought pattern that described a journey from question to answer and back to question.

I produced a series of statements, lacking in the cognitive links, the intellectual fibre, that’s the difference between statements and persuasion. My thinking process was never linear. Never from A to B. I could go around the houses drawing linkages and dependencies that I thought were obvious, but I could not explain.

I could picture it. I had all the pieces, the individual words, an analytical structure, but I could not assemble them.  The more frustrated I got, the worse it got and around that spiral there was no easy off ramp.

Looking back today I still recognise all of this. In some way or another, all of this remains. Yet, against all logic, I’ve built a career around the use of language, the importance of a well-constructed sentence. Precision in meaning, careful selection of words to convey tone and purpose are the tools I use daily. I like to think I’ve done okay work wise. I won’t restate it here. This is LinkedIn. Check my profile.

So, coming back to the opening question, why is any of this relevant?

Before attempting an answer, a caveat. I’m not blind to the unearned advantages that have shaped my career.  Being a middle-aged white guy requires no effort. A strong work ethic, that one I learnt at home. English accent that can move between broad Yorkshire and estuary English with a hint of private education. Yep. Got me again. None of this has hurt and has served as a distraction. Without these unearned characteristics, I don’t doubt having a professional career would have been much more challenging.

As for the answer. As time has passed, I’ve allowed my version of dyslexia to be my friend, to become the tool I use in my every day. To let my left hand do the writing.

I found a dictionary, a way of presenting, writing and speaking that flowed, that worked with me rather than against.  It became a set of tools. My process, the way I express myself and the way I approach problems is different. Dyslexia is part of that difference. It is not all of it. It is not dyslexia in the clinical definition. It is a process of leaning in and working with rather than against.

Here I think is the answer to the question. In accepting that dyslexia means I approach problems with a different set of tools, the inescapable logic is to seek the same in others. I’ve sought out the complex, the different both in the people I surround myself with and the problems we seek to solve together. There is truth in the adage that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual contribution. Dyslexia simply shapes what I bring. My career lesson is seeking out others who in sum are the greater part.

This is not intended to be universal. Nothing here about my experience of dyslexia automatically equals a particular set of outcomes. This is my perspective only. This is, in that most hackneyed phrase of all, just my journey. Hope it helps someone.

And remember – dyslexia rules Ko!

Best

PJ