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‘Dyslexia is not like other learning disabilities’: Kevin O’Leary

Entrepreneur, Investor and host of Shark Tank, Kevin O'Leary joined Yahoo Finance's Alexis Christoforous to discuss how growing up with dyslexia has impacted him.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Welcome to "A Time for Change." I'm Sibile Marcellus here with Kristin Myers and Alexis Christoforous. What does Richard Branson, Keira Knightley, Barbara Corcoran, and California Governor Gavin Newsom have in common? They're all dyslexic, which means their brains process language differently than most. It's a learning disability. Today, we're going to focus on those types of invisible differences and how best to navigate them in the workplace.

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KRISTIN MYERS: But first, a quick lesson in the term that is at the center of today's conversation-- neurodiversity. So we're all different, right? We know that no two brains, no two perspectives or personalities can be identical. Well, that's basically neurodiversity, the wide range in which we all think and act. You're a linear thinker. I'm more out-of-the-box. You take information in best by reading. I prefer listening.

Well today, more and more companies are making room for those differences, including pushing to hire and support neurodivergent people, those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or other differing characteristics that don't fall neatly into one category. These conditions, once thought to be inhibiting or distracting, are now being valued by companies looking to foster unique thinking or harness invisible superpowers. Neurodivergent people make up an estimated 20% of the population, and many say they succeeded not despite their differences, but because of them.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And business mogul and "Shark Tank" host Kevin O'Leary is one of those people. He is dyslexic and calls dyslexia his superpower. But that doesn't mean it's been an easy road for him. Even to this day, he gets very emotional about what it was like to face his learning disability and to overcome it. Here's our conversation.

KEVIN O'LEARY: Well, dyslexia gets misdiagnosed all the time. But the way it manifests itself with a young child is when they start to fall behind in reading and math testing. That's the first time it usually shows up in a concerning way, because it's not a small delta, it's a large one.

I think I was about seven years old when it became a real concern to my mother who was wondering why I was falling behind in school. And our teachers were saying, look, he's just not focused. He's not concentrating. But that wasn't really the only issue.

Dyslexia was starting to manifest itself. And for most families, even today, that's where it starts. It's the teacher seeing them that they can excel in other aspects of school, but in reading and math scores there is definitely a big delta that starts.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So you're about seven years old. How did you-- did you go to a doctor? Or how did you know that you had this condition?

KEVIN O'LEARY: Well, obviously, the angst my parents felt was palpable. They were really concerned. And they were wondering, what was the learning disability? And I went through a battery of tests, I mean, just everything. But that's what parents do. They try and solve, and they go to different specialists, et cetera, with what could it be?

I was extremely fortunate at that time, maybe serendipitous luck, but I was living in Montreal, Canada. And there was an experimental program at University of McGill with Marjorie Golick and Sam Rabinowitz, who've become legends in the work around dyslexia. Their research is everywhere. But I was in that first cohort of students.

It was really tough, because what they tried to teach is they said, look, we know what this is. This is dyslexia. That's what it is. And it manifests itself in each of these students-- I think at the time there was 12 of us in the program-- and it's different for all of them. For example, one of the things that happened to me, I'd be walking down the street, and all of a sudden the universe would shift 90 degrees, and I was lost. I didn't know where I was.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Ah. I mean, it was many years ago, Kevin, but you still get real emotional about it. Henry Winkler, the actor, has talked about how it caused a lot of friction in his house. There were lots of fights because his parents thought he was being lazy, and they just didn't understand why he couldn't focus.

KEVIN O'LEARY: Yeah, that is a problem. But the solution to this is to have-- dyslexia is not like other learning disabilities. It's completely its own issue. And the reason you know that is there are very high-functioning people that are very dyslexic. You know, the founder of JetBlue is dyslexic. Many others have dealt with it.

And the whole point is that at the end of the day, the way it was taught to me, the way I got over it was Sam Rabinowitz. Used to say to me, the professor, he'd sit me down and say, look, you're the only person in your class that can read a book upside down in the mirror. You have superpowers. No one else can do that. I can still do that. I can still do that today.

You have to take this like a superpower that's unconstrained and focus it. You have to use it as a tool. And I thought, wait a minute. I have a superpower? That's incredible. How can I use it? And that's really what started working.

All of a sudden, I blew through in reading, and I started scoring in the top quartile, because I felt that if I had to read the book upside down in a mirror, I'd read the book upside down in a mirror, because no one else could do it. And I said to Sam, listen, am I going to have to read in a mirror for the rest of my life? He said, no, no, no. Your brain's advancing. It's advancing. It's figuring things out.

And of course, he was right. I'm a ferocious reader now. I mean, I read everything, but I can still do it upside down in a mirror. That's an added-- it's not a bug, it's a feature. That's the way I started to think about dyslexia.

And I also excelled in math. I'm a balance sheet guy. I'm a financier. That's what I do now because of Sam and Marjorie Golick. My message to parents that have dyslexic children is you've got to work with them at that age to make them understand they're gifted. That's what they have. They have a power. And if they can understand that as a gift

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Kevin, what is it about your personal experience that still makes you emotional after all this time?

KEVIN O'LEARY: Well, it was very difficult for my mother. It really was. She was very worried about me. The challenges, parents don't know the outcome. They don't know what the future holds. They're not sure what's going to happen. And that puts a lot of pressure on relationships and families, particularly if one sibling has it and the other doesn't--

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Right.

KEVIN O'LEARY: --because then you have a situation where one's excelling right away and the other is falling behind. And it just puts a horrible pressure on any family. But again, I say to people that this is a unique learning disability. It's one of the only learning disabilities that can give incredible functionality as the outcome of solving it.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to talk a little bit about dyslexia in the workplace. I think there are lots of misconceptions that employers have about dyslexic people. And I'm just wondering, in your personal experience when you were starting out, did you let potential employers know about your dyslexia? How did you deal with it?

KEVIN O'LEARY: No. That is not a requirement. And I don't think you lead with that, because what they want are functional employees. And my attitude about people that have dyslexia is they are super function in many areas. They are very, very functional, and so they should be measured by that.

I don't like the idea that you should put that on your resume or even discuss it. If you've dealt with it and you can read and your math scores are above average again or even average, life is not just about math and reading. It's actually cognitive skills that matter in the workplace.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Kevin, what, if anything, do you think companies should be doing, maybe your own companies do, to support people with dyslexia or other neurodiverse conditions like ADHD, like autism?

KEVIN O'LEARY: I think it's, as a society, we deserve to support people that are unfortunate with those disabilities. And there's always, in a large corporation, even a small one, a place for people that-- there's a job that can be created that makes them feel important and gives them self-confidence. Dyslexia, however, to me, is a competitive weapon. I would hire lots of dyslexics, because I know they can excel in certain things in a remarkable way above the average.

And so I would argue to an employer that, you know, that this is not a concern, this is an opportunity. And I feel that way about many learning disabilities. People that have learning disabilities are often very, very motivated to perform for their own self-confidence reasons and to prove their worth.

And not every employee does that. There's lots of lazy people out there. And you will not find that in people that have learning disabilities. They want to be functioning human beings and provide productivity. And they're myopically focused on it, because that's what gives them their own identity.

And that's the thing that many employers have figured out. I mean, we're enlightened now. We weren't in the '60s and the '70s. We pushed those people out of the workplace, because we thought it would be a competitive disadvantage. That's not the case today. And where you often see companies really support this is in technology, because it's the out-of-the-box thinkers that make companies competitive, the crazy ones, the dyslexic ones.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And there you have it, a candid and emotional Kevin O'Leary, quite a different change of pace there. We usually see Mr. Wonderful being pretty gruff, have a rough exterior as an investor on "Shark Tank," talking about how dyslexia is his superpower and inspirational story, for sure.