To celebrate National Inclusion week, education actuary Sally Calder has written a blog series on neurodiversity, with a focus on autism. In part five, she explains the ‘spiky profile’. The six-part series covers self-identification, diagnosis, stigma, and strengths and challenges. She also highlights what we, in the spirit of inclusivity, can all do to support neurodivergent individuals.
In part three, I explained how and why autistic people can, and need to be, creative. In part four I touched on the difficulties associated with a diagnosis. This time I’m going to say a bit more about my specific traits, and explain the ‘spiky profile’.
The utterly excellent Alicja Nocon of ‘Expand the Circle’ is an autistic actuary I’ve worked with on a professionalism case study about neurodiversity. She has done a lot to increase awareness in the profession.
Alicja refers to the ‘spiky profile’. This is a concept which recognises, for a wide range of skills such as communication, creativity, analytical skills, or eye for detail, that neurodivergent individuals will either significantly ‘outperform’ or significantly ‘underperform’ neurotypical people. Because neurodivergent people are all different (for example autistic, dyslexic, ADHD), a group of neurodivergent individuals, if assigned appropriate tasks to suit their strengths, will significantly outperform a group of neurotypical individuals.
For example, dyslexics tend to be better at communication and seeing the big picture, but not so hot on detail or spotting patterns. Autistic people tend to be better at detail and patterns, but not so hot at communication and seeing the big picture. So, if you assigned a dyslexic individual in your team to focus on the big picture, and an autistic individual to focus on detail and patterns, you’d have a team that outperformed two neurotypical individuals.
This is a sweeping generalisation. However, we all know that good team management is about assigning the best person for the job given their skills, characteristics, and preferences. The spiky profile takes this concept a step further. It shows us that having neurodivergent individuals in a team can significantly enhance the performance of the team. It’s a benefit to be tapped into, rather than a challenge to overcome.
Hence Greta Thunberg’s belief that her autism is her superpower.
Here’s a warts and all show-and-tell of my spiky profile, starting with what I really suck at:
On the positive side, some of the things I’ve achieved over the years can be attributed to my autism:
I can’t quote statistics about incidence of autism among actuaries, but consider the tired old joke that ‘extrovert actuaries stare at your shoes’ (sigh). That’s a common trait among autistic people. Actuaries love attention to detail and spotting patterns, and we excel at mathematics. So it makes sense that autistic people might gravitate toward an actuarial career.
And I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal remarks such as ‘most actuaries are on the spectrum.’ Sadly, it’s more often phrased negatively, to poke fun at actuaries, instead of to recognise the benefits that autistic people can bring to the profession.
20 years ago I was in the British team. Unlike Call of Duty, target shooting requires you to shut out the world and hyperfocus on a single object (a bullseye the size of a 5p piece 50 yards away) for a sustained period of time.
Sport at any elite level requires obsession and hyperfocus. I spent as much of my training time on mental exercises and meditation as I did on target practice at the firing range.
After a year on the team, my interest waned: I’d achieved what I’d set out to do. That’s another autistic trait, where we obsess about a topic until we’ve achieved our goal, then move on to something else.
My youngest child, who is also on the spectrum, has recently achieved success in the sport and is being trialled for the national squad.
The creativity has come out in novel writing where I spend my spare time living in imaginary worlds and making up plots. Many authors and editors I know are on the spectrum, as are copyeditors and proofreaders, where attention to detail is essential.
And I now realise why I gravitate to writing characters who are misfits! A novel in my current series will feature a heroine on the spectrum, which my publisher has encouraged. My youngest child is also writing in their spare time. They have created a rich and complex fantasy world with their best friend who is (yes, you guessed it) also autistic.
I can obsess over a topic and research it to the nth degree, irritating everyone around me. I once failed miserably in my teens in a quiz where we were asked to name as many US states as possible (I named about six). So that weekend, I got out my atlas (there was no internet then, not even email), looked them all up, and memorised them in alphabetical order just in case. Once memorised, I lost interest. But, if hard pressed, I can write them down alphabetically.
So now you know what kind of alien I am! Next time, in the final part of this blog series, I’ll explore how we, as individuals, can help to create a more inclusive environment for autistic people.
National Inclusion Week is a week dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces. Learn more at National Inclusion Week 2022.
