The Elephant in the Org
The "Elephant in the Org" podcast is a daring dive into the unspoken challenges and opportunities in organizational development, particularly in the realm of employee experience. Hosted by the team at The Fearless PX, we tackle the "elephants" in the room—those taboo or ignored topics—that are critical for creating psychologically safe and highly effective workplaces.
The Elephant in the Org
ReThink Ability Episode 3 - They Built the System Without Us — And It Shows
They say the system is broken. But for many of us, it was never built with us in mind in the first place.
In this raw and powerful episode, we explore the realities of invisible disability in the workplace — the ones you can’t see, the ones people don’t believe, and the ones we’ve been forced to explain, downplay, or hide to get by. From masking and microaggressions to inaccessible processes and performative allyship, our guests share what it's like to navigate work in a world not designed for them — and how we can do better.
Featuring:
Dr. Angela Young – A deaf, queer, non-binary, multiply disabled accessibility strategist and educator. With a doctorate in education and certifications in accessibility and leadership, Angela helps organizations design for equity and inclusion through bold, human-centered strategies.
Deb Haas – After 24 years in corporate HR, Deb was laid off — and set free. Now the founder of The Unexamined Mind, she helps people and companies reimagine work for the AI era, blending behavioral science, rebellion, and radical transparency.
Jessica Donahue – A trauma-informed leadership strategist and mental health advocate who helps organizations move beyond performative culture toward psychologically safe, purpose-driven workplaces.
Hosted by Marion Anderson and Danny Gluch of The Fearless PX, this conversation offers a no-BS look at what happens when systems are built without input from the people they’re meant to serve — and why the future of work must be intentionally inclusive, not just compliant.
Rethink Ability is a limited seven-part podcast series that explores the often unseen dimensions of disability in the workplace — and what it takes to build environments where everyone can thrive.
Brought to you by The Fearless PX and the team behind The Elephant in the Org, in collaboration with ReThink Ability, Invisible Condition and The Performance Innovation Collective, the series centers the lived experiences of disabled employees, HR leaders, and workplace change-makers. Across seven honest, human, and action-driven episodes, we unpack the gap between intention and impact and explore how to bridge it.
This is a call to rethink assumptions, redesign systems, and reshape culture.
If you’re tired of one-size-fits-all policies and hu
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Subscribe, leave a ★★★★★ review, and help us bring more elephants into the light.
🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024.
Get ready for even more fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.
🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson
⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.
Episode 3 - They Built the System Without Us - And it Shows. (Visible vs Invisible)
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Danny Gluch: Awesome welcome, everyone. I'm Danny Gluch, your host, and I'm joined by my co-host, Marion Anderson.
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Marion: Hello!
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Danny Gluch: And our lovely panelist, Jessica Donahue
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Jessica Donahue: Hi! There!
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Danny Gluch: Deb. Hawes off mute Hi and Dr. Angela, young
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Angela Young: Hey! Everybody.
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Danny Gluch: Welcome everyone. This is such an important topic, invisible disabilities. It's it's, you know, even the the handicap, disability placards and signography has wheelchairs and canes.
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Danny Gluch: but not everyone has a visible sign that you have a disability, and just the experience of it being invisible is part of the experience.
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Danny Gluch: Tell me who has an interesting, or a surprising, or funny, or sad or scary story about how the invisible disability showed up for you, especially as you were early on in navigating and understanding what it was like.
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Jessica Donahue: I can speak to that a little bit. So I have complex Ptsd, which is what I would consider to be an invisible disability. There's no physical signs that you could necessarily tell just by looking at me. And I went many years without understanding that that is what was happening. I thought for a while it might have been anxiety, disorder, depression, some kind of
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Jessica Donahue: of the 2, but really for me, like the hallmark of my disability, is that I struggle with emotional regulation. I struggle to feel safe even at times when
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Jessica Donahue: arguably, I am safe, and and all of that is kind of wrapped up in old stuff, right? Stuff that happened in the past. That is no longer happening now, but my nervous system hasn't quite caught up to understanding that. So for me. I think you know the bulk of my career. I was going out of my way to just make sure that
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Jessica Donahue: not consciously, that nobody knew about it, but that nobody would be inconvenienced by it, I think. And so for me, kind of going through getting my diagnosis and understanding more about kind of the condition overall has just been really a lot of unlearning a lot of the Ableism that I've even internalized personally, and that
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Jessica Donahue: that has been a surprise, I think, more than anything else. So that's something that's an ongoing work in progress for me, and probably will be forever
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, absolutely.
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Marion: You know, what I think is really interesting is that we get very. I say, we. I'm going to talk for myself, but
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Marion: having a
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Marion: well, having a fairly invisible slash, slightly visible disability with Ehlers-danlos where? My joints dislocate really easily. But looking at me, you wouldn't know right.
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Marion: But there's a weird thing about when your disability is invisible. You almost feel like you have to go over and above to explain it to people, and something that our good friend Leah sat mentioned when she appeared on the elephant in the org.
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Marion: Was, there was a time where she bought a cane. She didn't need the cane, but she felt that she needed a visual cue for people on the bus to see that she had a disability, and that, you know she couldn't stand for the entire length of the bus journey.
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Marion: and that stuck with me because it is something I'm really cognizant of myself. Sometimes I find myself over explaining myself, and I shouldn't have to. But it's almost like I'm apologizing for being invisible. Isn't that crazy? Is that your experience too?
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Angela Young: I can absolutely speak to that. So one of the invisible disabilities that I have and there are several is that I'm deaf, and
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Angela Young: I often found myself, if I needed someone to repeat themselves, I often found myself saying, Hey, I'm really sorry I'm deaf. Can you please repeat what you just said, and and needing to, as Jessica was saying, you know, compensate for inconveniencing them.
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Angela Young: And you know, people don't usually know I'm deaf. Number one, because I'm really really good at reading lips, but then also masking and getting through a conversation where you'll think I hear and understand everything you've said. But I actually haven't, to the detriment, of course, of myself, because then I'm
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Angela Young: you know, I'm at a different level of understanding of what's just transpired than the person who talked and knew a hundred percent of what they said. I might have only caught, you know, 70% of what they said.
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Angela Young: and I don't have a deaf accent, and I don't sign. So in the deaf community I'm not deaf enough because I don't sound deaf or have that deaf accent, and also because I don't sign. But what is surprising is that only 10% of the deaf and hard of hearing communities use sign language, whether it be, you know, American sign language, British sign language, or what have you?
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Angela Young: And so there are a ton of us, 90% that don't have any sign language experience, and that doesn't make us any less deaf than anyone else in the community.
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Angela Young: And you know I was. I was 3 years old before I learned how to speak.
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Angela Young: and the joke is I've been making up for it ever since. But what happened is, I realized that people could not understand me outside of my family, and when I was little kids would call me grunt, grunt, because
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Angela Young: to them all I was doing was grunting, so then what I would do is, I realize, like, what's going on here. Nobody else can understand me but my parents can, and at home I have no problem.
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Angela Young: But you know what happened was when you have 2 hearing parents who don't necessarily have the tools and the advocacy themselves. You know people haven't been advocating to them about what they can do, you know, for their child. So what I did notice, though, is that my mom
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Angela Young: to this day absolutely loves watching the news. The news is her favorite show besides investigative discovery, and and you know, wives that murder their husbands. But anyway, so
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Angela Young: she loved to watch the news, and I'm from Philadelphia, and what would happen was, I noticed that the Philadelphia newscasters were in the frame. Much as we are right now, where you could really see their head to their, you know, to their mid chest, very visibly, and I would watch the way the newscasters formed words, and I would go into the bathroom, and I would practice for hours and hours and hours.
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Angela Young: And this is kind of how I taught myself to talk. And and what's also. Funny, then.
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Angela Young: is that when I'm upset, or angry, or crying, or mad, I have a Philly accent really thick.
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Angela Young: and it's because I kind of learned that Philly accent, you know, from watching the news, and people, you know, not only reporting, but people they were speaking to, and I got very good at speaking. But then what happened? So now I'm not grunt grunt anymore. Okay, but I am grunt, grunt the robot, because now I sound very robotic, and everything that's coming out has a very flat tone, and it sounds like this, and there's no intonation and no one understands why.
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Angela Young: So then I'm like, okay, something else is going on here then. So now we've got the speaking down. They can understand me right. But there's something that they they are doing that I'm obviously not picking up on. And then it was when I realized, oh, there's tone.
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Angela Young: there's inflection. There's ways you say things. So then I had to learn how to do that.
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Angela Young: And now, when I'm stressed, or nervous or overwhelmed, tone for me is the 1st thing to go. So, even as a speaker, you know as a disability advocate. When I'm up on stage, I have to remind myself. Oh, don't forget there's tone, there's inflection. There's intonation, you know. Make your voice, go up when you ask a question, make your voice go down when you're trying to be very serious, or when you're excited, you need to like project your voice and put excitement in your voice, and then you're, you know, utilizing those upper octaves as you speak.
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Angela Young: So these are all the things I had to kind of learn, you know, to to be sure that I wasn't inconveniencing someone, or to be sure, that people weren't focused on my disability, or maybe that I didn't even need to tell them that I had one. In the 1st place, you know, so as not to inconvenience people, or, you know, call attention to that, or to be to be different, right?
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Marion: One that's incredible.
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Marion: absolutely incredible, but too exhausting, especially for a young child like I wanna I want to go and give Dr. Angela a big hug from when she's younger, because that's a lot but
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Marion: makes you an incredible advocate today, because what a story you can tell and how you can support others. It's really remarkable
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Angela Young: Have you heard the quote that life isn't really what happens to you? Life is how you handle what happens to you
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Marion: Yeah.
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Angela Young: And I think all of us here. Our superpowers are not the things we've lived through. It's what we've done to leverage the things we've lived through to support other people.
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Angela Young: and you know I sit here as someone who again is not just deaf, but has 17 disabilities, you know, and to honor what you and Marion have shared, Jessica, someone who has severe anxiety. Adhd Cptsd. You know, from things that have happened. But our superpower is the way we leverage these experiences, and how we don't allow them to define us, but we utilize them to define
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Angela Young: who we are and the purpose that we serve, you know, in this world. So. And I'm so sorry I have talked a ton. So now I would love to hear from you, Deb, and I'm gonna shut up. So you can do that.
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Deb Haas: Oh, gosh! I don't even remember what the original question was. I was so involved in the stories, which is probably has to do with what I, you know, was recently diagnosed with Adhd and executive function. Deficits.
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Deb Haas: I realize all of these things from my past are suddenly like, Oh, my God. This now makes sense the fact that I was diagnosed with hyperactive, impulsive Adhd, which, from what I understand, is not very common for women. Usually it's men that are, you know, diagnosed with that, and you would never guess that it was hyperactive, because I sit on my behind most of the time. But my brain is constantly going, and I didn't realize that other people didn't have that.
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Deb Haas: And so I'm looking back on things that events that happened in my life now with this new diagnosis, like the fact that right after I graduated from college, I was out with some friends, and they were talking about how they'd love to move to Texas. I live in Minnesota, by the way.
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Deb Haas: and how it would be so cool to move somewhere new, and whatever. And they talked about it, and then, of course, that stuck in my head, and I was like man. It would be really nice to move somewhere warm. So in the space of a month I found a job within my company in Hr. Moved from being an executive assistant to an Hr. In the space of a month, packed up my entire life, put it in a car, drove to Houston.
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Deb Haas: and with no people that I knew there, and simply a job, and that was it. And then, like 15 years later, 2,008, 2,009. The economy's crashing. I'm losing my home. I've lost my job because of the economy and everything. I have some friends that I met online in Belgium who are like, Hey, Deb, come, live with us. And I was like, Okay.
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Deb Haas: and and so I win a singing contest online. Take that money to purchase an airplane ticket to fly over to Belgium. So you know, all in the space of like a month, you know, and it's like, Gee! Maybe this impulsive part of the Agd has something to do with that.
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Deb Haas: And the thing is is that they all worked out like there's either I either have an angel looking out for me, or the universe likes me, or something, because these could have gone horribly wrong.
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Deb Haas: And yet, somehow I've always managed to come out of it, you know, actually having an incredible experience and learning so much from it.
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Deb Haas: So I don't know if that answered the original question or not. But just that, this Angela, what you were saying about the superpower part of it. I feel like having gotten this diagnosis at this part of my life.
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Deb Haas: Well, there's a part of me that's like, oh, if it would have been 20 years ago. What would my life be like now? You know those moments when I had to take medication for depression or the anxiety got so bad, or and I'd been masking at my job for my entire life. You know what would be different, but
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Deb Haas: the reality is at my current age. I feel like I have so many more, so much better perspective, so much better lived experience, and and that I can take this diagnosis and freaking run with it and make it just the superpower that it could really be
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Danny Gluch: Wow, thank you. Yeah, it's it's so interesting. Hearing all of your stories. It
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Danny Gluch: it took so much skill and and determination intelligence to navigate. And there's also this, this play between like masking and not wanting to inconvenience. And there's this care. But also.
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Danny Gluch: you know, I don't know. Maybe maybe some sort of of shame or responsibility that you felt. But what are some of those emotions, or or help me find words of what that experience was like, because it's it's so hard. Deb, what do you
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Danny Gluch: explain it to me?
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Deb Haas: Okay. So to give you a little background about me, I'm adopted, born and raised in Minnesota. My parents adopted me when they're in their forties. They were part of the silent generation. So we're saying, born during the depression.
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Deb Haas: and all of my brothers, you know, my, they who were their children were the youngest, was 9, 10 years older than me, so I was essentially raised as an only child with parents from the silent generation. So I had this weird kind of upbringing where I had, you know, learning these ways of talking or learning these ways of behaving
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Deb Haas: from that generation. But in, you know the eighties and nineties kind of thing, and learning how to behave with that. And so there were a lot of things that I learned unconsciously. For instance, mental illness is bad.
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Deb Haas: We do not talk about it now. My mom was bipolar, and you know, but she couldn't talk about it, you know, and she had all these horrible things happen in her life, and taking medication, her entire life, and all of these things. So you know, there were times in my life when I probably could have asked for assistance, but did not, because there was this understanding that if you're this generation and Generation X, you don't ask for help.
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Deb Haas: And and one thing that I am so thankful for. Oh, my gosh! So thankful for the the recent generations, the millennials, the generation Z. For making these
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Deb Haas: disabilities more public and more acceptable, because it's given me permission to do that. And it made a huge difference for me, so I always get irritated when people are like Oh, and I'm like, you know. No, no, y'all don't even start with that, because these people are freaking awesome. What they've done for all of us. We've all benefited from it, so I'll get off my soapbox, and there we go
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Danny Gluch: Thank you. That like made me tear up. That was just that younger generation. I have the same, you know, not as much of a personal experience, but recognizing that in that generation, I hope people share that more. It's really, really amazing. I'm glad that had an impact on you, Jessica. What would you like to share
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Jessica Donahue: Yeah, I was going to kind of jump in and and kind of speak to the the same topic that Deb did, and and kind of thinking about it through the lens of shame and the shame we carry, and and how that might drive us to hide certain things. And I just was thinking of it in terms of my my lived experience. Right? So I grew up in a household where there was, you know.
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Jessica Donahue: undiagnosed mental illness. There was addiction, and so my childhood was filled with some neglect and abuse. Really, at the end of the day, and when you think about what that does to a kid. I mean, the reality for me is that acting like everything, was good
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Jessica Donahue: and staying out of trouble
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Jessica Donahue: and focusing on achievement and achievement only is what helped me survive my childhood. Now that I'm an adult, right? And I don't maybe need to do those things in the same way doesn't mean, I can just wake up tomorrow and say, Okay, and no more of this masking or no more of this, that or the other thing, because it's ingrained so deeply in me that this is how you stay safe, and for someone who struggles to feel safe.
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Jessica Donahue: you can see how that spins quickly, you know, out of control, and you feel like the only option is to hide it. So you know, for me it's been a lot of unlearning old stuff like what worked in the past, what I needed in the past I don't need today.
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Jessica Donahue: but that's a process of unraveling those beliefs, for sure.
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Marion: It's always jess every time that we talk, and we get on this subject like you and I have very, very similar backstories. Sort of parentify, child, and and that need to always
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Marion: push harder. Be better, you know, to to not carve out the same path as as maybe how you were brought into the world and and it, the root of all of that is is shame, and it's 1 of those emotions that if you could nuke an emotion that would be top of my list, because it's the most damaging, the most toxic.
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Marion: It does have a purpose, of course it does. You know, we need, we need a checks and balance. And we need a conscience, obviously. But yeah, it's so. It's so much more than that. And it and it does such irreparable harm. But I also love, you know Deb's point on the generational shift as well, because I I think that if anything is going to help us recalibrate what shame should be, and how it should manifest. It is
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Marion: our younger generations that are coming through that have less
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Marion: tolerance, less space for it, more understanding of it that we didn't have being the products of a silent generation. So it does give me a lot of comfort, a lot of hope that things are going to be.
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Marion: Maybe not. It's not Utopia. We're not going to cure things overnight, obviously, but certainly things are moving in a positive direction, and that's a nice way to at least view how we may leave the world in a better state than how we found it right
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Danny Gluch: Is it? Is it just waiting for the younger generations to be in charge of teams and organizations? What
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Danny Gluch: what is it that teams and companies are able to do to help navigate and support the disabilities as a whole, but also these invisible ones that aren't so so obvious. So Dr. Young
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Angela Young: This is this is something I talk about a lot, and what I tell people is
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Angela Young: long story short. Assume that every single person on your team has multiple, invisible disabilities period, because if you are ensuring that the way you communicate is inclusive.
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Angela Young: that the way you treat your employees is inclusive.
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Angela Young: You know that 1st and foremost you have established a safe space for everyone to bring their whole selves to work, you know, without question, and and knowing that they are safe and they are protected. That makes anyone feel better.
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Angela Young: right and in accessibility we talk about how accessibility is essential for some people, but it's helpful for everyone. There's nothing you can do to make something more inclusive and accessible that will not help everyone.
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Angela Young: And that that's what it really comes down to, you know, it comes down to how are we changing ourselves first, st and and what we believe? First, st because the change starts here?
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Angela Young: You can't affect a culture. If you yourself aren't embodying the change you would like to see in that culture.
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Angela Young: and we know when we do something performatively right. So if you're not doing it authentically.
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Angela Young: you might as well move aside because there are people who will do it authentically, and who are waiting to do it authentically, and it's because they feel safe and that someone else. So it's really a pyramid, right? It's because they feel safe and that people have created that foundation for them.
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Angela Young: You know. And along those lines we need to start.
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Angela Young: we need to stop saying to be an ally or allyship. We need to cut that vocabulary out, because what I tell people is, you're either an ally or you're an asshole. It's 1 or the other there is no in between.
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Angela Young: and I hate allyship as a term. But if we are going to talk about allyship, let's at least make it authentic, and let's at least make it actionable.
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Angela Young: because I can say I'm an ally. But what I really mean is, I'm an ally, and sure I'm fine with whatever until I get uncomfortable, and then all of a sudden, I'm gonna shut up. And I'm not gonna say anything. And that's not
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Angela Young: realistic. And that's not helpful. And that's not.
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Angela Young: you know, helping our organizations grow and mature in this in this way. So
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Angela Young: get that vocabulary about Ally Chicago there.
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Angela Young: And just look at how we make inclusive experiences for everyone, no matter what they need, and it's none of our business, what they need, but because we've made things so inclusive they don't even need to tell us what they need. There are no such thing as workplace accommodations. If you make things accessible and inclusive for everyone, then all of a sudden, there's no need for accessibility. There's no need for accommodations. Because at our organization we say, Look, this is just how we do things.
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Angela Young: This is what we do. It's folded into all of our workflows. It's just there. It's not some extra initiative. It's not some extra work. It's just what we do to support our staff period.
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Marion: Oh, my God, if I could like! I'm sitting. But I'm in my head. I'm standing and giving you innovation after that one that if we could make T-shirts with that phrase.
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Marion: Yeah, if you're not, you're an asshole like with that would be perfect. But here's the here's the the other thing that that I just want to make from the the business case side of inclusion. You know, we obviously, we all know why it's important, and we want to educate the wider population as to why.
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Marion: but also for those who maybe don't look at it in the same lens. There's a real business case to this roi right, it makes sense. Not only are you able to obviously extend and expand your workforce and your talent accessibility.
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Marion: but also it comes back to our our north star on the elephant in the org is about psychological safety is what my research is in my Phd research. And you know, if you are inclusive. If you treat all employees, give them a fully inclusive experience at work, regardless of who they are and what they need, because to your point. It's none of our business right? We just want to make sure everyone feels supported
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Marion: that creates psychological safety, which supports innovation and supports creativity and supports productivity. And and ultimately, how companies make money? Right? So there's such a strong business case for it. If only we can help people join up the dots better. That's a big critical factor, I think
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Danny Gluch: Yeah. And I know Greer, who's, you know, one of our our big leads in this rethinking disability project would want to bring up that
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Danny Gluch: one of the things she likes to talk about is spoons like, you know, spoons is an analogy for energy that you have on any given day. You have a certain amount of spoons and different actions, take certain amounts. And when I was hearing Angela talk about.
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Danny Gluch: when you're really supporting everyone, you don't need to make accommodations because everyone's supported. But like.
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Danny Gluch: what are some of those questions or those things that you've seen in organizations that you're like? Oh, my goodness, I didn't even have to ask for that. It's already there, just so that we could see some of those actionable, tangible things in real life, because, you know, I've been in workplaces where it's like someone has to do a formal request for more comfortable shoes, because the dress code is you have to have very professional shoes, and I kind of get that, but
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Danny Gluch: that not everyone can wear really professional shoes all day. And so what are some of those tangible things that you all have seen, that have either helped you personally, or that you like you wish would have been there because it would have helped you and other people around you, with, you know, visible or invisible disabilities.
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Danny Gluch: Deb
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Deb Haas: This is actually kind of trailing on to what Angela had said.
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Deb Haas: Kindness.
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Deb Haas: you know it's such an over like. It's such an ignored. Is it a feeling, an emotion? Y'all, emotions are still kind of new to me because I didn't let myself feel them for a long time so, but like really behaving with kindness. And of course I was raised in a very like Christian like born again. Christian thing. But the whole thing about treating other people the way you would want to be treated
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Deb Haas: like really, like somehow getting people to realize you can be kind and stand up for other people, just because you're being kind doesn't mean that you're a doormat.
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Deb Haas: But it's also, you know, giving people the space to be themselves, giving them the space to just be human. However, that is for them.
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Deb Haas: and it doesn't seem like a really hard thing to do. And yet for some people it really is. And I think the more that people learn to be kind, the more that people learn empathy, because, again, this is something that we're not teaching anywhere, but it's vital to get by in the world is having empathy and really pinpointing that now, as far as things in the workplace that I didn't have to ask for
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Deb Haas: I'm trying to think of anything. I can't think of anything specifically. But then, again, like I said, I'm still fairly new to the diagnosis. I do know that
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Deb Haas: I appreciated it when some people started to like end meetings 5 min before
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Jessica Donahue: Cool.
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Deb Haas: The next meeting like where they made that a given because it's like you know, when I'm in 5 meetings back to back.
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Deb Haas: I might have to pee. But not only that like. I cannot remember what you all are talking about, because I can't take notes. I have tried so many times, but I either can listen to the conversation, or I can write down what I think is important, although, is what I think important, important, or do I need to think about what they think is important like this is, you know, the life that I've lived. So yeah, the the 5 meetings before, or the the making Fridays a day where there's no meetings
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Deb Haas: at all, so that, you know. So those things were kind of helpful
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Danny Gluch: And such a great example of helpful to you specifically for very specific reasons, but helpful to everyone. And that's exactly what Dr. Young was talking about
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Danny Gluch: Jessica. You seem to have some thoughts
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Jessica Donahue: Yeah, for sure. So I've been self-employed for the last 5 years, and it was during that time that I got my diagnosis. So I've never worked full time as an employee for a company that would have had something that I could kind of point back to. But in my consulting work. I think I've got some thoughts for sure, on practical things that folks are thinking about like, what can we be doing to be more accessible at the workplace. I think 1st and foremost.
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Jessica Donahue: curiosity be curious about the experiences of other people, because just because your experience looks different than theirs.
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Jessica Donahue: that doesn't make it any less valid or real right? I think transparency when it comes to processes, specifically, people or Hr processes, right? So don't leave it up to someone having to come to the Hr person's office to say, hey, what's the process? If I need to request an accommodation.
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Jessica Donahue: put it all out there, put it all out there, publicize it. I'm a big fan, also of publishing like how we work guidance. So very specifically.
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Jessica Donahue: specifically calling out, you know. Yes, it's okay, to step away from your desk. If you need to take a walk or a break, throw up a slack, you know, status, or what have you? Or it's okay to not respond right away. Or it's okay to schedule your messages for for different times of day. And then also, I've had clients that have embraced an idea of meeting free weeks and days. So I had one client that did a meeting free day every week.
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Jessica Donahue: Another client that does a meeting free week every quarter. And then very small thing that I just did, which I'll share.
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Jessica Donahue: adding a quick question to your you know, Calendar links. Do you have any accessibility? Needs really simple way to just kind of put it out there and let people know. Hey, I care about this, and I care enough to ask in advance rather than maybe getting on a call and finding out there's something we could have done to support that person better, but we didn't, because we never took the time to ask
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Angela Young: I'd also like to say, you know, the greatest gift I've ever received in the workplace is when I tell something. Tell someone something. They believe me the 1st time I say it. So if I say to my employer, Hey, I'm deaf. I need you to not talk over one another when you're having a meeting.
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Angela Young: and that's kind of instantly set as the the norm. Okay? So you know, for expect, let's level set expectations. We're not going to talk over one another. You know, we're gonna do our best to kind of take turns if I say, Hey, I'm having a really bad chronic Pain day, and I'm gonna be over in the corner of this conference room, stretching while y'all are talking. And my team doesn't
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Angela Young: like I'm over there like, you know Yogi myself into a pretzel, and they're not even. It's not even phasing my team, because this is an expectation that we've set, and it's cool, you know Dr. Young's over there doing their thing, whatever you know, and and half the time I'll be talking from, you know, upside being upside down also. So, you know, if you, if you set those expectations where it's like we are, gonna believe what our
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Angela Young: colleagues tell us, and we're not going to question it. We're just going to believe them. The 1st time, I think that really is the truly, the greatest gift you can give is to have that empathy and that humanity, you know, to know that we you know you can trust us. We are who we say we are. And then, secondly, I think you know.
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Angela Young: Don't ever worry, that someone else's needs are going to create more work for you from a sarcastic perspective dude. We have done all we could not to be a problem for you. Okay, we have lived our whole lives
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Angela Young: making sure that we as disabled folks are not a problem for anyone else. So don't worry. We've got you covered there. We are not going to be your problem. So please don't think that
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Angela Young: you know, accommodating any of our invisible disability needs are going to put a strain on you like we will. We will make it work as we've been making it work. You know, our whole lives and some of us who are older do know what it's like to be, you know, in a space where none of this stuff is talked about, and it's all taboo, and it all signifies weakness. You know. It is only until very recently that it wasn't
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Angela Young: I guess, optically presented that way.
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Angela Young: So you know. Really, that's the best thing you can do for us is, believe us, and and know that we're not here to create extra work for you. But you know that we are going to be, you know, taking notes and and utilizing our lived experiences to adjust our expectations of you, and you know what you may have to offer as an organization
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Marion: I love that I I'm I'm giggling about the bending yourself into a pretzel statement, because that's me, too, with having Ehlers-danlos like my joints
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Marion: seize up, and I have to move constantly. And it's not uncommon for people to walk past. If I'm in the office to walk past where I sit and see me on a yoga mat lying on the floor, you know, like you know, like feet at 90 kind of 90 degrees one. It's comfortable for me when I'm in a spasm but 2.
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Marion: I don't feel the need to go and lie, and I mean I could go and take my yoga mat into a meeting room and and hide away. But I actually choose to lie in the middle of the office to normalize it.
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Marion: to show people that it's okay. Like we all have our shit. We all have dodgy backs and dodgy knees and and things that we may or may not be able to see, and if you need to lie on the floor to get comfortable for 10 min, you do it right. And so I really appreciated that comment. I think one of the other things that I've talked a lot about on our podcast. And Danny and I have talked about is
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Marion: actually the comfortability of our own people. Hr, people in dealing with these sorts of situations. I know I've talked about this recently where I I've never had to ask for accommodations before, because I've worked at home for
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Marion: a long time, and so it's only been in the last year where I've had to actively ask for accommodations. And my my employer has been great.
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Marion: But I did
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Marion: I was on the end of some microaggressions from another Hr. Professional, which was really shocking to me. And it took me a minute to realize that they were what they were, that it was microaggressions, and and I got angry. But then it made me reflect on how poorly prepared and qualified
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Marion: we are as a profession. No one teaches us we aren't trained in Hr. School, or however, we learn about how to best support colleagues with any additional support that they might need to be comfortable at work. You know, through
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Marion: whether it be seen, unseen disability, whatever. We really aren't trained. So most of us are just winging it
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Marion: and I thought, based on my own experience of being the daughter of 2 disabled parents, I would be all right. I'd be pretty good. I would know what to do. But in fact, I realized I really didn't, and that was crap. And and it made me reflect on probably, how many times I might have made feel someone else feel crap without meaning to at all, but just from a place of complete ignorance and and not having that support to learn so organizations.
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Marion: we need to support our our people teams better
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Marion: to be able to do this in a really intentional way. And I think that we're missing a trick there. So yeah.
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Danny Gluch: So in the organizations where
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Danny Gluch: they're not just believing you the 1st time, you say, and they need notes from doctors or whatnot. What what is like a 1st step that those Hr teams can really start asking for from their leadership
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Danny Gluch: to where
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Danny Gluch: there is more curiosity there is more kindness. There is more empathy, there is more trust and belief. What are some of those 1st policies that these Hr teams can can really advocate and ask for, so that they
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Danny Gluch: they don't find themselves stuck
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Deb Haas: What Jessica brought up around is this? Okay? I don't. My
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, no, I I tried to to say, Go ahead, Deb, but I had already muted myself
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Deb Haas: It's all good, Danny. It's all good
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Deb Haas: what Jessica was bringing up around the transparency. Absolutely agree my personal opinion, and I swear I can see the future. Y'all. What we're experiencing right now in the Us. With all this crap that's going on.
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Deb Haas: It's the last dying gasp of that particular set of people and the future of work and the future of employment and the future of humans is going to be more human than ever, and part of that is going to be transparency, like being really transparent about your business, and if you can't be transparent, be really clear.
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Deb Haas: So get rid of all of these jargony words and everything. Just speak in weekend language, or
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Deb Haas: have it in such a way that it's accessible to everyone in weekend language, and make it as transparent as possible. What Angela was saying about. Just make that part of who you are and how you operate. You embed it in your culture, you know you design your culture with these in there and then. It doesn't become this separate thing called Dei, or anything else like that. It is simply how we are and what we stand for
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, absolutely.
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Angela Young: You know, I want to go back to
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Angela Young: what we talked about with regard to kindness
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Angela Young: and being kind. You know, we're in a country, or maybe even a world
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Angela Young: where there are bumper stickers that say, rookie driver, please be patient or baby on board.
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Angela Young: and we feel the need to make these declarations because we are concerned about potential for unsafe events. If we don't.
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Angela Young: you know. Hey, my! My 16 year old's driving? And they stalled the car in the middle of the intersection, because they're driving a manual. Oh, crap! Please don't you know? Scream at my kid? My kids are rookie driver, you know. So maybe it takes it from a road rage incident to just someone rolling their eyes, you know, but it's
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Angela Young: as a society we we shouldn't, and I use the word should on purpose. My therapist would have a cow. But we shouldn't
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Angela Young: need these things, because
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Angela Young: that just that understanding and that kindness and that empathy should be there. But it's not. Yes, I used it several times, Michelle. So so you know, we we
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Angela Young: we see this as a societal
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Angela Young: issue. We see this as a societal endemic, where you know this lack of kindness is just how things are, and we kind of have to roll with that.
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Angela Young: you know, to the point where, when we experience kindness, we're like, Oh, my God!
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Angela Young: You know this happened to me, and it stood out to me.
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Angela Young: and that's what's standing out. Because the opposite of that is what we experience all the time. And it's become what we're used to
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Danny Gluch: Wow, yeah.
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Danny Gluch: And it it reminds me of what Marian was talking about, where where Leah sate was mentioning that she got a cane just to act as if it was a child on board Bumper Sticker
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Danny Gluch: to to signal to other people.
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Danny Gluch: And what I'm hearing, and as we're wrapping up, I'd love to hear some final thoughts from everyone. But what I'm really hearing is, everyone has something invisible, whether it's just struggles or having a bad day, or disabilities that are more perpetual in your life, and
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Danny Gluch: you can't have policies for everything.
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Danny Gluch: But it seems like, if you have kindness and these other things that it's gonna cover, no matter what.
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Danny Gluch: And I really think that leaders and organizations should think about that when they are doing policies. Is this a kind way that we're treating our our people. It's just
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Danny Gluch: feel inspired like could run through a wall right now.
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Danny Gluch: But as we're wrapping up, what are some final thoughts that you would like to share with people who are navigating their invisible disability. Maybe a new diagnosis or leading people, teams or organizations. Jessica
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Jessica Donahue: Yeah, I think I want to speak to it just through the lens of people who are leading organizations or teams, because I think just listening to the conversation today. The thing that stuck out to me that I wrote down is that all of our stories like, if you are a leader or a head of a company, and you are looking for talent that is resourceful and resilient.
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Jessica Donahue: You've got. You're looking at, you know, a handful of them right here. Right? I mean.
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Jessica Donahue: people who have learned to live with disabilities are some of the most resourceful, resilient humans that you will ever come across. And gosh! That's what I want on my team. If I'm hiring, I don't know about you all. So I would just say that there's a whole lot of
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Jessica Donahue: soft skills for lack of a better term. That kind of get picked up along the way when you're navigating something like we have, and that has real real value. When you think about someone's critical thinking problem solving skills like
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Jessica Donahue: that's real. So capitalize on it. Why not
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Danny Gluch: Wow, yeah, Deb.
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Deb Haas: I request that we rename soft skills to power skills because let's be honest. Those are the most important skills I mean. Come on for me, I would say, representation matters.
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Deb Haas: There was a moment when I was in partial hospitalization for depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, where I had to make this decision like? Do I share this or not? Do I tell anyone about this or not? Because my history was like, oh, this is a shameful thing, you know. If you share this out there, some employers are going to be like blah. We don't want her. She's got something wrong with her. And then the other part of me that was like.
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Deb Haas: you know what, and I'm not going to cuss, but I'm extending some middle fingers, saying, You know what f you.
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Deb Haas: because if that's the type of company you are, I don't want to work for you anyways. So then, learning to be to speak up, learning to speak up and realize that your courage and your voice might make a difference for someone out there that that's all that they needed that day.
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Deb Haas: And so you know, one of our major human things is that we want to make a difference for other humans. And who would have thought that just speaking up and sharing your truth could be the difference for one human out there
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Angela Young: I'd like to come at this from a totally different perspective. And I'm going to talk about business value. Add.
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Angela Young: and what I want to say is that, like Dave, Dame of Microsoft says, I'm disabled, but my money isn't.
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Angela Young: and you need to kind of realize what you're projecting as an organization, because we will pick and choose where we spend our money based on how we feel.
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Angela Young: you know, from from from what you're doing and how it makes us feel
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Angela Young: that was a lot more eloquent in my head. But anyway, so you know, if you're not making us feel seen and validated, we will find
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Angela Young: someone who is, and that is where we will spend our money and the disability community talks. Y'all, I mean, we we talk to each other. Word of mouth is big.
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Angela Young: you know, and and the way we feel and the way someone makes us feel is is something that leaves a mark, and it's something that we talk about to other people
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Angela Young: especially for me, like within the deaf community. We know, you know, who will treat us like humans because we have certain needs based on our deafness and who won't. So you know, if you want to look at this from a business value, add
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Angela Young: what revenue are you losing, based on how you treat not only your colleagues, but your customers, your clients, your members. What have you? So let's look at it that way if you want to leverage, you know, being a kind person, look at what
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Angela Young: putting those protocols into place within your organization will gain you because it will gain you an audience.
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Angela Young: it will gain new clients. It will gain new customers. It will gain you free advertising when we're someone that works at an organization that values us. We tell other people, oh, hey, you're looking for a job.
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Angela Young: Come, work with us. You're gonna love our organization. It's all free advertising. It's all free marketing people, you know, and don't. Don't lose out on that, you know, because of the protocols you have on place and the limitations that you place on your your colleagues
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Danny Gluch: Wow!
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Danny Gluch: Marion! Any final thoughts.
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Marion: Had a mic, I would drop it like that was that was just
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Marion: so beautifully put. And and I mean everyone's perspectives. There are just absolute gold, and if I could put all of those sound bites and then send them to every Hr. Professional and every CEO in the country in the world. I would do it because that was some stellar Ivy League education right there in a few moments. You know it. It
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Marion: it's not rocket science, is it? It really isn't rocket science. It's just
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Marion: human to human behaviors. And we've lost sight of that somewhere along the way, and we just need to get that back. And just inject a bit of as we say, Danny, common sense, compassion, courage, and communication into the equation. You get all that in there. Sky's the limit
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, it's
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Danny Gluch: it really is. If if you're nice, if you're kind, if you're caring, you're going to have people who build loyalties to you, and not in a manipulative way. They are going to truly enjoy coming to you, interacting with you and coming back again and again.
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Danny Gluch: So thank you all for joining us. I got chills, I cried a little bit. I felt inspired, and I hope our listeners did as well. Thank you all for listening. Please join us for the rest of the series here, on rethinking disability, leave a 5 star review like subscribe, do all those things, and we'll see you next time
