For anyone who missed it, there was an interesting Twitter Q&A on the 17th February organised by @WeCops and Andy Rhodes (@DCCLancs), Lancashire Constabulary DCC and National Lead for wellbeing and engagement. Three questions were posed:

• Is it police work or other issues that tip us over in terms of stress / anxiety?
• If we agree great leaders prioritise wellbeing what stops many from doing so?
• When we recruit people how do we assess their readiness for policing at a personal resilience level?

Q2. If we agree great leaders prioritise wellbeing what stops many from doing so?

Please Remember #WeCops Q2 in replies

— #WeCops (@WeCops) February 17, 2016

The second question in particular generated some debate. The overall view was that despite senior police leaders’ commitment to a service which values its staff and places importance on welfare, there is still quite a harsh culture within the ranks, which can be summed up as “shape up or ship out”. Survival of the fittest. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I’m your boss, I can stand the pressure – why can’t you? Lunch (or at least a meal break) is for wimps – and so on. As with any organisational culture, this permeates through the whole workforce, but it is largely formed by the values of its leaders.

In our last blog, we touched on the police promotion process and its tendency to reinforce what could be described as “corporate thinking”. The process also tends to favour those who are good at self-promotion – people who aren’t afraid to use “I” rather than “we”, to “big themselves up” and to come across as charming and persuasive in that all-important 40 minutes. What the promotion system isn’t as good at identifying is a genuine concern for the welfare of staff. It’s not surprising, when it’s arguably easier to score points by robustly imposing performance management measures on a struggling officer than it is to try to understand, empathise with and remedy the underlying reasons behind attendance and performance issues. In the current climate of austerity and expectation from government to achieve more with less, there is additional pressure on police managers to take a hard line on performance.

In looking at issues around stress, sickness, performance and resilience, perhaps there needs to be a fundamental change of culture within the police service – a real move towards transformational leadership, away from the transactional model that tends to dominate front-line management. We need leaders at all levels who genuinely care about the welfare of their staff. We need a culture that doesn’t stigmatise stress, depression, mental illness or just “being different”. And in order to be a truly inclusive organisation, we need to recognise and encourage these values in future leaders.

The recent announcement by the College of Policing of the introduction of “Direct Entry” – recruitment of officers to the police service at inspector and superintendent rank – has caused a fair amount of comment on Twitter, mostly negative. The concept of direct entry to senior levels of policing brings to an end the long tradition of promotion through the ranks, when every senior officer started out as a constable. The argument most commonly used against DE is that candidates will not have the benefit of years of service at constable and sergeant level, essential for a job that depends on experience and common-sense.

It was therefore interesting to see the comments of Chief Superintendent Nicola Dale, the CoP Lead for Direct Entry. In her blog on the CoP website, C/Supt. Dale talks about the advantages that DE officers might bring to the service. In questioning whether there is a business case for DE at inspector rank, she says: “Is there an evidence base to build upon? The same positive principles apply to Direct Entry inspector as superintendent – new people, new perspectives, a wider breadth of skills that can arrive directly at the rank without waiting 10 years to travel the same corporate path by which time that fresh perspective would be lost, the external skills would be rusty and there is a good chance that they would have ‘gone native’. This is about increasing our diversity but in my mind that is about diversity of thought, background and experience.”

The view that spending years climbing the police rank structure might be a bad thing – at least in terms of lacking the fresh perspective that an external DE candidate would bring – is sure to stir up some controversy. However, when considering how the police service has traditionally run its promotion processes, C/Supt. Dale might just have a point. Promotion is primarily based on a structured interview, along with exams at sergeant and inspector level. Although the process is designed to test competence at the next rank by looking at past performance, success or failure depends on being able to talk convincingly about your achievements for 40 minutes, and other factors inevitably start to come into play: personality, verbal dexterity, and the mysterious art of “interview technique”. Officers in the upper echelons of the police service are veterans of promotion boards, often having failed as many as they’ve passed. It’s easy to see that over time the process acts as a filter, straining out those who don’t conform to the corporate ideal, and reinforcing the requirement not only to “talk the talk”, but to think how the organisation expects you to think.

One phrase in particular stands out in C/Supt. Dale’s blog: “diversity of thought”. This could have almost have been lifted from the pages of Neurotribes, the new book by Wired tech writer Steve Silberman on autism and neurodiversity. Silberman’s book has been widely praised within the business and technology communities for offering a fresh perspective on autism, formerly seen only as a debilitating disorder and a barrier to living a “normal” life. The key point Silberman makes is that people with conditions such as Asperger syndrome and dyslexia are often blessed with the ability to think differently: being able to focus on details, visualise solutions to problems, spot patterns and “think outside the box” to name a few. These skills, which are typically found in Silicon Valley high-technology companies, are of value to any organisation – an idea which is just starting to gain traction in the US and UK.

From the outset, the NPAA has championed the concept of neurodiversity within the police service: recognising that officers of all ranks should be valued for their individual abilities and encouraged to develop their full potential. C/Supt. Dale might have hit the nail on the head in identifying that the police service needs leaders who can think differently; however, in proposing to bring in ‘talent’ from outside the organisation to achieve this aim, the CoP may be missing the obvious: the police service already has original, creative thinkers within its ranks who will never be at risk of “going native”. That officers with Asperger syndrome, and (to a lesser extent) dyslexia are disadvantaged by a promotion system that values a neurotypical mindset is a waste of talent – not to mention money – and is something that today’s police service can ill-afford. Fortunately things are changing for the better, with the new National Police Promotion Framework using work-based assessment as the key factor in assessing suitability for promotion. The pioneering work being done by Hampshire Constabulary on developing an ‘autism-friendly’ selection process recognises that the policing leaders of the future might be better thinkers and doers than talkers – a radical concept indeed.

Is autism a disability? This is a question that’s been on my mind recently. I think the answer is – if you feel it is, and if it needs to be. More on the latter in a moment.

As autism is a spectrum condition, there comes a point where its severity would be classed as a disability. I once attended a sudden-death call-out involving a young man with severe autism – let’s call him Peter. Peter lived in a residential care facility. He was unable to communicate with the outside world at all – this was regarded as a profound learning disability – and he was also severely physically disabled, needing 24 hr care. Despite him being confined to bed or a wheelchair, Peter’s carers worked hard to give him a decent quality of life. They showed me photos of a day out in London they had organised for Peter and some the other residents. The staff remarked that they were sure that Peter had enjoyed himself that day – they thought he smiled, as he did from time to time, but no one could tell for sure. What went on in Peter’s head was a mystery known only to him.

One night as he slept, Peter got his neck into an awkward position on his pillow, and he stopped breathing. His short time in the world had come to an end. As I sat with him waiting for the undertaker to arrive, I reflected that although everyone would agree that Peter’s autism was a disability, would he have seen it that way? Who knew how he saw the world and himself?

I’ve since felt that compared to Peter, problems fitting into a social scene or needing somewhere quiet to work are not disabilities at all, just aspects of who we are. Unfortunately, the failure of some work colleagues and supervisors to accept this may require an employee affected by Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism to class it as a disability in order to be protected by the Equality Act. The Act defines disability as “a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term effect on the ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.” Aside from whether AS is classed as a “mental impairment”, the effect on normal day-to-day activities may tick the disability box for the purposes of the EA, but in practice may be entirely down to how others – and “the job” – sees the condition and reacts to it.

When explaining AS to a neuro-typical person, I’ve found it useful to compare the different ‘social wiring’ to a dislike of certain foods. Everything has something they don’t like to eat – let’s say you’re like me and can’t stand Brussels sprouts (ugh). Is this a problem for you? Would you like to be cured? What if your children grow up not liking sprouts? Now consider if every restaurant you ate in served up sprout entrées with the main course. The highly-strung chef (think Gordon Ramsay on a bad day) would come out of the kitchen and berate you if you declined their beautiful sprout ravioli. You start bringing in sandwiches to work because you don’t like the sprout lasagne that is always on the canteen menu, never mind the smell of them cooking (I’m starting to feel sick just typing this). This gets noticed by your sprout-loving colleagues, who think you’re a bit odd for not wanting to eat with them. Eventually you start being labelled as “not a team player” and passed over for career opportunities. How do you feel now about not being a “normal” sprout-lover? Is it your dislike of sprouts that’s the problem – or how other people react to it?

This is why I don’t consider AS to be a disability. Rather, I see it as DFPOW – Disabled For The Purposes Of Work.