Unlocking the competitive edge of thinking differently (with Hiren Shukla from EY)

As businesses navigate AI, rapid transformation, and shifting workforce expectations, one of the greatest untapped advantages may already be hiding in plain sight: neurodivergent talent. In this episode, Nathan Friedman speaks with EY global leader Hiren Shukla about how cognitive diversity fuels innovation, adaptability, and business growth. 

Drawing from EY’s leading neuroinclusion work and global workforce research, Hiren explains why psychological safety, flexible systems, and strengths-based leadership are becoming essential for the future of work.

Nathan Friedman: Welcome to "Minds at Work", the podcast for leaders who embrace neurodiversity in business. I'm your host, Nathan Friedman, co-president and chief marketing officer of Understood.org, the leading nonprofit focused on helping those who learn and think differently thrive. Each week we're here exploring how neurodiversity sparks innovation and how we as leaders across industries can make a more inclusive future for all.

Today I'm joined by Hiren Shukla. Hiren is a global transformation lead at Ernst & Young and is the founder of their Neuro-diverse Center of Excellence. He has been at the forefront of rethinking how companies identify, support, and elevate neurodivergent talent and how that work translates into real business impact.

Today we're going to talk about how to unlock the power of neurodivergent thinking at work because we know that when organizations move beyond awareness and into action, they don't just create more inclusive cultures. They tap into entirely new ways of solving problems, innovating, and leading. Hiren, welcome to the show.

Hiren Shukla: Thank you, Nathan. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.

Nathan: Yeah, we've been talking about this for a few years now, and now we're letting other people in on our side conversation.

Hiren: That's right.

Nathan: So, you know, as we mentioned in the intro, we're going to talk about how to unlock this power of neurodivergent thinking. But before we get there, I want to name what this power actually is. So, in your own words, what are some of the proficiencies or what you like to call superpowers that come with neurodivergent thinking?

Hiren: Thinking about why did this journey start in the first place, it was really founded on the basis of cognitive intelligence. We know we live in a world of artificial intelligence — AI — today. But what really excited me, and frankly also disturbed me at the same time, is we have this amazing spectrum of neurodivergent, neuro-distinct capabilities: curiosity, creativity, agility, the way that you communicate differently. And all of those things was the basis upon what excited me and what I think is the opportunity to unlock in the world.

Nathan: And when you talk about this cognitive intelligence and artificial intelligence, that's an interesting dynamic. How did you come to that kind of yin and yang, so to speak?

Hiren: Nathan, it's so interesting because 10 years ago, I did not know that I'm neurodivergent, okay. And so, my ADHD and my dyslexia — as you know, you start connecting dots and you start seeing patterns. And if I'm honest, at that time, it was very intuitive. We're thinking about innovation. Innovation comes from people that think differently. And I think that was the opportunity that I saw of creating a safe space of belonging that begins to unlock that unique potential that we know exists in the neuro-distinct community.

Nathan: And in your work and ours, we're both seeing that while awareness around neurodiversity is up, neurodivergent employees are reporting a variety of factors that limit their capacity to thrive at work. From your perspective, what are some of those factors, and perhaps we can then bridge into what work have you done or can be done around those?

Hiren: Nathan, I think this is a really important question because people need to know what is holding us back from unleashing and unlocking or harnessing this power of thinking differently, and what do we do about it? And so, what I love about this question is we can be very specific now.

Lack of flexible work environments is an inhibiting factor. Nathan, it's like you and I. We both work very differently, so does everybody else. But we also know that leaders — and the language that leaders use, the maybe inadvertent behaviors that leaders use — could either cause me to mask and hide, or it can allow me the freedom to explore my curiosity and creativity.

So, everything from flexible work environment to process, policy, behavior, leadership language, all these things, Nathan, are the two sides of the coin. It's either going to help us if we can adjust it, but if we create a very rigid space, I think we're only going to have very few people that can succeed through there. And this is where we think the bigger opportunity lies.

Nathan: Part of it is also reducing stigma at work. A recent study that we did found that nearly 80% or eight out of 10 neurodivergent adults say there's a lot of stigma around their conditions and asking for accommodations at work. And you mentioned about masking. Significant numbers — north of 60% — of people feel they're masking at work. And while many people don't even know the accommodations they're entitled to, they don't know where to go. And accommodations can be a computer screen, it can be sitting away from a dinging elevator, it can be a keyboard.

Hiren: These are, Nathan — we think about almost performance accelerators, which I like much better than accommodations. I think accommodations implies, "Oh, well, we're going to try to accommodate that person to do what we need them to do." Performance accelerator says, "Do you want that person operating at their highest capability? Well, the headphones," — Nathan, as you and I know — "my goodness, that can do so much."

But I think that begins back to your point on stigma. As we normalize not just the conversation, but the environment and the actions that allow, frankly, all of us to start thriving, I think that's where I think that freedom of — I don't necessarily have to disclose if I don't want to. But if I get the right performance accelerators, wow, I really thrive at work and that kind of helps my mental well-being.

Nathan: And we often use the concept of universal design in a lot of our work at Understood.org. You help the most marginalized populations, it helps everybody. There's one school of thought that says, "Why don't you make performance accelerators or unique ways of working" — whatever organizations call them — "available to everybody, not just neurodivergent employees?" So, it's not an accommodation in general in the legal sense of the word, because there are different legal accommodations we want to put aside for some of this. But for the point of this, how do you work — how do you get the best out of your own work given your own style of working? Why wouldn't that work for everybody?

Hiren: This is it, and Nathan, you touched on it a little bit. But part of this stigma challenge is, "A, do I have to disclose?" "B," you know, we know, Nathan, that some people in some places and some populations don't have access to diagnosis as it is. So, why are we going to put an undue burden to have somebody raise their hand?

And as you and I know, if you've met one neuro-distinct person, you've just met one. It doesn't matter, frankly, what that diagnosis is. What we need to know is what does this person need to be successful? And frankly, what are those outcomes when they get what they need? Because I think, to your point, changing that organizational system in place — which is really hard to do — I think it starts coming where you start seeing what these outcomes are.

And frankly, that has been the 10-year journey that I've been on. And frankly, that's a lot of what this research that we'll talk about that we released last year talks about skills in the workplace in the age of AI.

(08:26) Workplace microaggressions and how the manager-employee relationship is the key to unlocking talent.

Nathan: Disclosing is a very personal decision, and at some organizations it's not possible because of fear of retaliation or you are actually retaliated against. Can you talk a bit about this stifled creativity and dissatisfaction? Because for those who don't and mask, there was a report that really underscored the issues with that.

Hiren: It's interesting, and I'll go back to a data point that we found in the "Neuro-inclusion as a Business Transformation Accelerator" research that was released in July of 2025. It's on EY.com. But we asked 2,200 people, neurodivergent and neurotypical, across 22 countries, eight sectors, from entry-level staff to senior director level.

"What do you see in the workplace?" And it was interesting, Nathan, the recognition of microaggressions that neuro-distinct individuals may find, interpret, experience. Dramatic difference than what neurotypical see in the workplace as microaggressions.

Nathan: And what are a few examples of that? Because that's fascinating.

Hiren: So, it could be — am I inadvertently interrupted when I'm relaying my thoughts or an answer? And Nathan, you and I both know people who think differently — and all of us think differently — we also communicate differently. And so, we may take longer. We may come from a very different angle to communicate something, and often if it's not in a common language that most people understand, what begins happening is you get interrupted.

And it's very interesting. We're not saying microaggressions are on purpose, but driving not just awareness, but then what do you do about that? How do you manage this? And I think a lot of it came down to, in fact, 42% of psychological safety and unlocking this power of thinking differently — 42% came from how I feel about my manager, how my manager feels about me. Do they give me space and air cover? Do they give me the ability to work in my best way? And I think that was the biggest portion of where we can get gains from.

Nathan: And I think that support — if I could take it one step further after reading the report and applying my own knowledge — it can be as simple, because some of our listeners may not quite understand what this means, as how do you give feedback to people in a constructive way for all learners, not just people who are neurodivergent?

Hiren: I agree. And Nathan, it was interesting as we started looking at the intersection of neuro-inclusion — how do we include more individuals in a way that begins to allow them to bring their best skills, whatever that is, into the workplace? And how do we intersect that to the actual skills that we need in the workplace? And let's take AI, because that's always at the top of the agenda.

Found something really interesting. This transformational leadership agility on how to communicate exactly what you're saying, that now shows up in how a person communicates with AI, right. Depending on how well I adapt and communicate, I'm either going to get garbage or I'm going to get an amazing outcome from AI. And so, we're starting to see the more global application of this leadership skill showing up in not just for the neuro-distinct community but even in the work with AI.

So, I'll touch just on a couple of more things since we're talking about this skills piece. So, we looked at the taxonomy of the World Economic Forum's top skills of the future. And the World Economic Forum does an amazing job of breaking down these skills: AI, agility, cybersecurity, leadership, talent management, data analytics. They break all of these down.

Nathan, we found something really interesting. Neuro-distinct individuals in the workplace, on average, have higher proficiency rates in all 10 categories, but only 25% of these individuals feel safe enough to bring those to work. And so, the big lightbulb moment was we are leaving 75% of expert and specialist-level skills untapped, and they're literally hidden under our nose because people are hiding in plain sight.

And so, we're really trying to help organizations — and this is where I've been doing a lot of work — helping leaders who are not part of this neurodiversity conversation understand the relevance and why changes have to happen.

Nathan: What are concrete actions you've researched and you recommend for companies or leaders who want to start on this journey or make the workplace more inclusive?

Hiren: So, I'll add one piece before I get to some of those items. It was shocking to me to learn that 63% of transformations fail today. Not because of money, not because of technology, but because of a gap in skills. Okay, so it's easier actually to get funding than it is to get the skills to actually implement the change.

And you know, then that also means neurodivergent individuals, whether it be working through change, dealing with ambiguity, dealing with, like, uncertainty — those are a lot of the skill sets that people miss in these kind of transformation areas. And it's interesting because we broke down personas of these 2,200 individuals in the workplace. One of the personas was a changemaker: someone that has social influence, can rally others.

About a third of the neuro-distinct population are changemakers hiding in plain sight because most of them are sitting in individual contributor roles. We are under-utilizing them. And this took us to your question: "Okay, now what do you do about it?" So, there were a few things that hit the top, but a few of the key ones were we need to start thinking about a strengths-based profiling of individuals.

Nathan, you and I both bring different strengths and skills. And if we're on the same team, how smart would it be to pair your strengths to my strengths, and if they're complementary, all of a second, we're working at a higher level. And so, we even found this: that neurodivergent and neurotypical teams that are operating in a sense of psychological safety operate better than any other teams that are there.

So, strengths-based focus, transformational inclusive leadership — that means the language I use as a leader, how I get to understand how feedback is given to each person — and then lastly, I think part of what we found was you can have the greatest manager, the greatest team members, the greatest assistive technology. But if the systems in the organization, like the recruiting process, like your performance management system — if those continue to default back to a neurotypical profile, even the best managers who have the greatest intention cannot make a difference.

And so, we really wanted to highlight that there is a systems-level change required. And as you and I both know, 53% of Gen Z identify as being neurodivergent. In that case, you know, those organizations, public or private, for-profit or nonprofit, any that survive are the ones that will recognize this uniqueness and, frankly, it'll sound bad, take advantage of how do you create 

(17:42) The high proficiency rates of neurodivergent talent in critical future skills.

Nathan: I think that is a cornerstone. And I think, you know, curious to see, like, have you seen any companies that are actively doing this and actively engaged in this area?

Hiren: Yeah. We use some of our stats of our 10-year journey at EY: 93-plus percent retention, one billion dollars of value creation. This is top-line new revenue added. This is bottom-line process optimization savings. This is just amazing value.

Nathan: Oh wow. And this is what you have done just for Ernst & Young.

Hiren: This is just — just for us, okay. Wow. And so, where we have documented this, and as we begin working with the amazing folks at Procter & Gamble, Petronas in Malaysia, for example, the great work that our friends at Microsoft and SAP have done, who've been stalwarts in this area — how interesting, Nathan, that each have recorded things like 140% increase in productivity, right, 80% reduction in error rates. There are so many captured stats here. This is no longer a hypothetical good idea.

Nathan: Oh, it's applied in real-world instances. That should be — I don't know why it's so hard for leaders to comprehend, and maybe that's the stigma. But you just outlined some really big numbers from a pretty big company that yields probably pretty large impact for not only the company but the shareholders.

Hiren: I mean, and you know, at the end of the day, there is no value and price, you and I both know, that we can put on the inclusion of people is the right thing to do. But if we separate now the clinical, medical, diagnostic area, the treatment, the disclosure rates, which all these are very personal areas. And then if we move towards what is this cognitive intelligence opportunity and application and how do you get there, I think this is where it starts to engage those leaders who may not be as comfortable in this space.

And you and I both know, Nathan, you know, we may not be talking to a parent or carer, we may not be talking to a neuro-distinct individual. But how do we then bridge into changing systems because you said it so beautifully before — changing that system actually benefits everybody at the end of the day. And as you and I also know, transformation today is no longer a choice. It is imposed on every single organization.

Nathan: Yeah, I actually just said this in a different meeting the other day. I was like, "What got you to today won't get you to tomorrow," right. How do you continually evolve the organization and drive through an innovation curve versus, you know, stalling out or becoming a fast follower? I think there's a lot of organizations where they want to do this, but they may not know that they need to do this.

So, Hiren, thank you so much for being here today. This has been an amazing conversation. And every time we get together, I really look forward to those connectivity points to talk through where we are in life and what's happening in the world. You know, we get that opportunity, but not a lot of our listeners got the opportunity to talk about this. And so, what are a couple of things that people could do after listening to this, and we handed them awareness? Now what do people do?

Hiren: Nathan, if I were to think about that gap between awareness and action, I think the opportunity today is Understood.org has tremendous research. EY has put out research, Cogwill has put out research, Disability:IN has put out research. And the research is all data and evidence-based.

And I think for people today to say, "How do I take what could be a very personal individual conversation, and how do I convert that into a more systems or enterprise-wide conversation to engage people who are not engaged today?" I would say go and use this research. Use the data points because, frankly, it's all there. And I think that is probably one of the easiest levers to move right now to begin spreading and expanding this conversation. I think framing it in a way that begins to include respect and, frankly, help adapt systems that drive neuro-inclusion.

Nathan: Appreciate that and appreciate all you've done for the space and appreciate all you've done and continue to do for people who are neurodivergent everywhere.

Hiren: No, thank you, and likewise. It's an honor to have this conversation, and hopefully this will spark questions, ideas, and action from the listeners.

Nathan: Thanks for tuning in to "Minds at Work". I hope today's conversation inspired you to think differently about how to harness the power of neurodiversity in business. If you want to know more about our guest today or the work we're doing here at Understood.org, please check out the show notes.

For those looking for resources to better advocate for themselves and others, please visit u.org/work. "Minds at Work" is brought to you by Understood.org, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. To help us continue and expand our work, please donate at u.org/donate. That's the letter u dot org forward slash donate.

The show is produced by Julie Subrin, Alison Hochlander, Max Mackenzie, and me, Nathan Friedman. Mixing is by Justin D. Wright. Brianna Berry is our production director and Laura Key is our executive director. And I'm your host, Nathan Friedman. Please join us next time when we'll continue exploring how difference can spark connection and shape a more inclusive and creative future of business.