Dyslexic employees may soon have an added advantage in the workplace. Technology is rapidly changing our business landscape as more traditional employment positions are becoming obsolete or have been automated.
From accounting to software engineering, companies are using programs to create systems faster with fewer employees.
As a result of these changes, demand for creative professionals with strong problem-solving skills is in high demand. George Andres’ article Revenge of the Philosophy Majors in the August 17, 2015 issue of Forbes talked about how tech companies are seeking professionals with a liberal art background to build their companies because “creativity can’t be programmed.”
Andres’ article demonstrates how the business environment has finally caught up with the dyslexic brain.
In 2009, Thomas West predicted in his book, In the Mind’s Eye, how the demand for dyslexic employees would increase driven by technology and the need for visual outside-the-box thinkers. He believed from his research and findings that dyslexics would thrive and help drive our economic engine.
Daniel Pink also wrote, in his book The Whole New Mind, about how dyslexics would have a huge advantage in our new economy.
Pink talked about how future job growth would be in non-technical jobs that require employees to have emotional intelligence, imagination, and creativity. For most dyslexics, these characteristics are our strengths and talents.
For employers, understanding how dyslexics can benefit your business is important.
Visualization
Most dyslexics are visual thinkers. We create mini visual movies or 3-D images in our minds to create new products, solve problems, or develop marketing campaigns. I interviewed dyslexic professionals for my latest book.
Every person mentioned how they create the final product or image in their mind, and then back into it. We see the finished product and then build it.
The dyslexic brain loves visual input and often dyslexics are faster at recognizing patterns than non-dyslexics. Our ability to connect unrelated dots of information and then quickly grasp the big picture is an invaluable asset.
Dyslexic employees can help your business in three areas:
- finding the customer’s real pain point,
- search engine optimization or analyzing market data, and
- finding patterns that indicate subtle market trends that are not evident.
Big Picture Thinking
Dyslexics are often big picture thinkers. We use this skill to view and absorb significant amounts of data and then quickly distill the information to find the answer.
Dyslexics can provide a benefit by analyzing the information to determine what matters most and if needed, how the team’s resources should be allocated. In our data-driven world, businesses that can find meaningful relationships in this data will have a market advantage.
Sales
Professor Julie Logan, of the Case School of Business in London, England, conducted a study researching the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurship. Her findings again confirmed the link between the two. More importantly, she found characteristics and traits that explained why dyslexic professionals also excel in sales.
Dyslexics are more verbal and generally are more emphatic to others. We learned in school how to build informal teams and delegate tasks. The dyslexic sales executives I interviewed mentioned how they built strong teams by finding the right people for the right job and then let them do their jobs.
For all businesses to remain competitive in today’s global village, hiring creative, dyslexic problem-solvers will become a necessity.
Photo Credit to London Vizthink group
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