Gillian Nycum is a leadership coach, consultant, and former Registrar at McGill University.
Her work sits at the intersection of leadership and neurodivergence, and she's currently in the midst of writing a book on those subjects.

CRI: What's one assumption institutions are still making about students that's becoming outdated?

Gillian: The assumption I'd question is that our systems are actually capturing what matters in a student. I don't think they always are.

My work is about leading well in complexity and one of the lenses I use to think about this is d neurodivergence. Through my experience raising an autistic and ADHD kid, and becoming an ADHD life coach, I’ve learned quite a bit about different neurotypes – including neurotypical brains – and how they work together. 

When I look at the world through a neurodivergent lens, I notice how narrow my own way of operating is. That comes from my neurotype, the school system, and the values I grew up with. My brain has been trained toward a rational, analytical way of working. When I compare my own ways of being and knowing to my son, I see not only the edges of my own thinking, I also get access to a whole other way of understanding the world.

That matters for anyone leading an organization or a classroom, because what you actually want is more information about people’s experience. We run on assumptions and stories we're barely aware of. In education, when we talk about different neurotypes, we usually mean inclusion and accommodation: helping people with non-dominant neurotypes adjust to the dominant one. That's giving someone a seat at the table. I'm more interested in what those people can see from their seat that the rest of us can't. Instead of asking them to fit our frameworks, we could start from their experience and let it shape what we build.

So when I say we're not capturing what matters, I mean we're leaving talent, insight, and intelligence on the table by requiring everyone to fit into the dominant ways of knowing and being, in both classrooms and workplaces. And this isn't a small group. I did some rough math recently. If you count everyone who experiences the world in a way that aligns with the nervous system functioning of the non-dominant neurotype – perimenopausal women, people living with long COVID, people living with trauma and some mental illness, the full range of neurodivergence – my rough estimate comes to around ~60-70% of the population. Building our systems around one narrow way of operating leaves a lot of people, and a lot of capability, out. And we're up against some hard problems right now that the dominant ways of thinking and being doesn't seem to be solving well.

"We're leaving talent, insight, and intelligence on the table by requiring everyone to fit into the dominant ways of knowing and being."

CRI: On the subject of systems, you’ve spoken about how investing in the process of institutional change up front makes the change itself much easier later. Why do organizations underestimate that, and what does doing it well look like? 

Gillian: A lot of it comes down to circumstance. When things feel urgent and the stakes feel high, that's exactly when we skip the part that makes change work. When we think we have time, we set it up properly. When we think we don't, we rush and expect everyone to fall in line.

Investing up front really just means working through the change with the people who'll have to carry it out, enough that they feel genuinely heard. Then, even when you don't take their advice, they understand the decision you made. That's what earns you the room to make unpopular calls later. You've put something into the relationship first.

The trap is that people think they can't spare the time, so they announce the change and push it through. And then it takes longer, or it fails, or it never really happens, because nobody relates to it in a way that means anything to them. There's a lot written about change as a kind of loss, and people need space to feel that before they can move.

Here's the version I keep coming back to. If you have six months to make a change and you spend the first two weeks talking it through, you'll probably be done in four. If you have six weeks and spend none of it talking, it may never happen at all.

CRI: What's one piece of well-intentioned conventional wisdom that you've found often backfires in practice?

Gillian: "Just communicate the expectations more clearly." It sounds right, but it misses how people actually work. What's perfectly clear from my point of view, is that the people around me don't see what I see. If I explain it well from my side but hear nothing back about what they see or what they think is needed, I haven't actually engaged them. And I have no idea what landed, because it's all my language and my ideas.

So instead of clearer expectations, the better move is usually a real conversation about the problem itself, and then agreeing together on how to handle it. Curiosity tends to work better than clarity. People implement the solutions they think they came up with. Even when the idea started with you, if a colleague comes to feel it's theirs, they'll run with it, because now they're excited about their own idea. And if they're not excited about your idea, chances are they don't fully understand it yet.

"I'm more interested in what those people can see from their seat that the rest of us can't. Instead of asking them to fit our frameworks, we could start from their experience and let it shape what we build."

CRI: How can leaders tell the difference between a student who's genuinely disengaged and one who's simply navigating an environment that wasn't designed with them in mind?

Gillian: I'd start by admitting you probably can't tell, and then building an environment where it's safe to talk about it. In a classroom this may be less loaded, though for some students it's a real barrier. In my own family it hasn't been an issue; my son is very open about his neurotype. But I've watched adults at work hide theirs even when they know it, because they're afraid of the stigma. The autistic adults I've interviewed say the same thing again and again: the moment they disclose, their mistakes get more scrutiny and their successes stop getting noticed. So people keep it to themselves, and you can't blame them.

One of the quieter payoffs of the work I do is that people start wanting to know their neurotype, because they see value in it, instead of treating it as something to hide. That's the goal: make it safe to be open, maybe even an advantage. And it isn't only about neurotype. Sometimes it's mental health. Sometimes something happened at home and you just don't have your usual capacity for what's being asked of you.

CRI: Looking back at your time as Registrar, is there a conversation you'd approach differently today, given what you've learned since about people, relationships, and change?

Gillian: I'm not sure "learned" is the right word. After more than ten years in this work, what I keep noticing is that the things I know about my own capacity, about how to communicate effectively, for example, I still can't always do them in the moment. When you're in the jar, you can't read the label on the outside. Even when you’ve worked a lot on your leadership development, everyone sometimes needs support. I've had conversations where I wish I'd just said, "Can we slow down?" But I wasn't slowed down. I was a little activated, and I couldn't see that slowing down was the thing we needed.

Conflict is the same. When two people on my team clash in a meeting, I might sometimes freeze and quietly hope it passes, which is a missed chance to build connection and to show what good leadership looks like. So this isn't something you learn once and keep forever. People need reminding of how they want to show up, so that at least someone in the room can catch the moment and slow it down. It doesn't have to be the most senior person. It can be anyone willing to say, "There's a lot going on here, can we take a breath?" That one line gives everyone room to check in and respond the way they want to, instead of the way their nervous system is pushing them to react.

Noticing that you're activated does get easier with practice. And even then, some days it's still hard. So the thing I try to hold onto is to give yourself grace for failing, because failing is part of it. You should expect to, and even celebrate it.

CRI: What's emerging in academia right now that you think needs more attention – something that may matter sooner than most institutions are ready for?

Gillian: I think we're at a real turning point, culturally and economically, and it's going to reshape the job market. Some of that is AI. Some of it is generational: a shift in values, and in what younger people want from a career.

What strikes me, as someone who studies leadership, is that outside a few management programs, we teach future leaders almost nothing about how people actually operate. We teach time management and career readiness, which are useful and sometimes open the door to something deeper. But the skill that's going to matter now is human knowing: being able to read what the person across from you is actually thinking. Analysis is quickly becoming something a computer can do. Reading and communicating with people isn't.

People are already questioning the value of certain degrees, and they'll do it more. This comes in waves; it's not the first time. Interest in computer science surged, then AI arrived and it dropped off. That kind of swing is hard on an institution trying to plan its resources, and I'd expect more of it. Which brings it back to the same question: what value are we actually creating?

CRI: Any final advice for someone trying to create change within their institution right now, from an enrolment perspective?

Gillian: Enrolment was one of my areas  of responsibility when I was at McGill, so I'll answer from there. It connects to everything we've been talking about: get clear on what a good student actually is for you, for your institution and your specific programs, and then ask whether that's what you're really capturing in how you admit people. Academic criteria alone are carrying more weight than they should. But the more holistic approaches carry real risk too, as we've seen play out in the United States. I don't have a clean answer. The question I'd hold onto is this: if a university's job is to create value, who are you creating it through, and what does that person look like? My hunch is that there's more talent there than your admissions process is currently picking up.

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