INSIGHT: The challenges of building an inclusive culture

by Thomas Duncan Bell, Author of Spectrum of Success: How Embracing Neurodiversity Can Revolutionise Your Business

To gain ready insights in this area, I interviewed an inspiring man called Silvan Ruthenberg. Silvan has both an autism and ADHD diagnosis and used to put his neurodiversity to good use as a Senior Account Director at LinkedIn but is now more notably known through his role as the Global Lead for the Institute of Neurodiversity, managing 21 countries. So, initially, I wanted to know about what challenges he’d faced when it came to feeling included throughout his career and Silvan told me, ‘Once I finally had the proper diagnosis established, I guess, in terms of challenges in workplaces, the biggest one for me was always the hierarchy and narrowed approach to roles. Traditional requirements such as degrees, behavioural job interviews and the requirement to fit in, or not being a “culture fit”, were rife for me and left me feeling like an outsider. To put this into perspective, I spent 10 out of my 15+ years of work experience as a freelancer, before moving into the multinational corporate space only as of 2017, with LinkedIn being the largest company I’ve worked for.’ One thing Silvan noted along the way was that ‘neurominorities often tend to be multifaceted and entrepreneurial in terms of interest, expertise and areas they enjoy working in, but others are expertly skilled in a particular area and an equal amount are highly skilled but possessed with a less competitive nature. Same as the neuro-majority, really.’

He continued, ‘Overcoming challenges is about asking for help and gracefully accepting it.” Then paying it forward to someone else. With me being a deeply value-driven person, I stay true to values, particularly when things get tough. My career was also built organically, and I can intrinsically relate to a diverse group of personalities, having worked my way up from a dishwasher to becoming the Global Lead at the Institute of Neurodiversity (ION) where creating a culture of diversity and inclusion is at our core. I believe the world’s problems are based on either miscommunication or ignorance. One’s choice is to become part of the solution by solving the former or be the problem by remaining the latter.’ A sentiment I wholly agree with!

Silvan’s job as the Global Lead at ION is to empower, unite and support the global community in developing diverse and inclusive strategies, country support, scaling up business operations, fundraising, advocacy and by gathering voices to drive policies and changes on a governmental level.

Each of the 21 countries have their local chapter, supported by the global team with resources, programmes and constructive insight into their needs and challenges and how to overcome them. It’s all about co-creation and being intrinsically motivated by purpose.

ION also participated in the 2023 World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany. They were also represented at the World Economic Forum 2024 in Davos, where ION co-launched a hybrid ‘neuro-distinct leaders’ initiative, gathering 20 global senior neurominority leaders to discuss the year’s topics and how to make the World Economic Forum more accessible, diverse and inclusive. They also have a Research and Professional Development Unit in partnership with the University College Dublin where ION run monthly masterclasses and annual conferences on creating an inclusive culture around the subject of neurodiversity. To put this in perspective, all of this has been defined and executed strategically since their inception in October 2021… so they are cooking with gas! That’s the true power of a diverse neurominority team!

But I wondered, with all this success, when it comes to ION helping companies to evolve culture, how Silvan felt that companies could benefit most from building a more sustainable inclusive culture and strategy.

Silvan said, ‘It’s not a question of benefit, it’s a question of whether companies are aware of and willing to bear the competence of not building a sustainable, inclusive and accessibility-driven company culture.”

‘The world is changing at an increasingly accelerated pace with many unknown factors and variables influencing and evolving the status quo. Trying to keep things as they are and not injecting diverse perspectives, people and cultures into the business, in my opinion, inevitably will lead to challenges that, if insurmountable, lead to the eventual demise of the said business. However, in the short term, inclusive organisations will see improved efficiency and other metrics but, more importantly, in the long term it creates sustainable, iterative business models and approaches.’

Strong words, but words that I believe in too. So, I wanted to hear from Silvan, what his core advice was and when it comes to advising a company how to build an inclusive culture. Silvan believes that ‘it starts at board and leadership level by way of first assessing the status quo within an organization. Discovering and evaluating their own policies, processes, as well as built-in biases within the business, but also actively engaging with neurominority employees already contributing and adding value to the business, because, surprisingly, we neurominorities have been around since the beginning, too.

‘The sad truth is that a significant number of neuro-distinct individuals are struggling to secure employment. The ones who do succeed often mask, at great expense to their mental and physical health, and these are the ones who know best how to help you design an inclusive, diverse, accessible business by implementing universal design approaches. So, heed your recruitment process!’

Now, as Silvan manages and oversees over 21 countries’ representatives and neurodiversity initiatives that vary throughout each region, I wondered how he felt his difference, as an neurominority individual lends itself to that type of work. After all, this book is about how neurodiversity can revolutionize your business, right?!

What Silvan told me is, my particular cognitive differences help me excel in a few areas: my multilingualism, hyperlexia, adaptability and interconnected thinking on the one hand, with my innate relatability paired with an outgoing personality and above-average dexterity and perseverance on the other hand.

Hyperlexia describes people who have a tremendous reading  comprehension, often paired with hyper-intuition and eidetic or extensive memory. As an example, I can read, comprehend and retain up to 100 pages of a book within 60 minutes, provided the content stimulates or motivates me emotionally. And that can be very useful when I’m fighting a cause and wading through policy-driven red tape to help change people’s lives.’

Silvan also suggested, I think that by far my most interesting strength (as I came to realise through recent learning, reading and sharing experiences) is my conceptual synaesthesia.

Synaesthesia describes the process of experiencing a particular stimulus in more than one modality. Some of the most commonly known are traits like hearing and smelling colours, but it also extends to spatial sequence and differences in perceiving time or projecting and being able to rotate imaginary mental objects when thinking through creative ideas, and I’ve found that in exploring this it has truly helped me to really push my boundaries in a range of different projects and initiatives. But with things like this you have to test and trial it, kind of like Harry Potter working on his wizardry, because without practice and focus it’s wasted potential talent/value.’

With this in mind, considering his unique approach to company and self-evolution, I wanted Silvan to share with me some examples of the most interesting and innovative neurodiversity initiatives he’s seen, and why he thought they were effective against traditional efforts to tackle neurodiversity.

Unfortunately, Silvan suggested that ‘there hasn’t been much innovation in the last few years, but I feel that it is less about being the most innovative rather than ensuring those initiatives are co-created by and for the community, agile and open to changes and adjustments along the way.’

He professed that ‘one of the most important aspects to creating an inclusive culture shift is to have constant feedback loops, gathering and analysing data which you need to inform current and new approaches, while including diverse stakeholders from various under- represented and under-served populations. And with bigger organizations, global initiatives should be informing and supporting local approaches.

Organisations need to acknowledge that, rather than forcing an old structure into a new design, they need to be holistically decomposing, transforming and reconstructing new ones and emphasising that and including, actively engaging and acting upon the input of stakeholders with lived experience, not just using their presence as a token.’

Silvan also stated that the most important item to consider, in his opinion, is that ‘it is a co-creationary, constant, systemic effort that never ends and neither does the need to become and remain sustainable, inclusive, and empathic to pioneer a better future for everyone’.