Dyslexia at Work: Coping Is Not the Only Option

Why does the freeze hit at work?

Simon Phillips has managed staff and taught adults to read. He says managers remember the software and forget the feelings. His colleague Maria seemed to struggle with some tasks. Later he saw it another way. She was freezing with fear, not failing the task.

Simon says many adults he meets were never picked up at school. Some were called lazy or stupid. Nothing in that story sounds like laziness to us. It sounds like a reading struggle that nobody named. That is the wait-to-fail system at work. A child struggles for years before anyone looks closely. Do those old words still sting? Here is why one harsh word about your reading lasts so long.

Our view is that old school fear comes back under pressure. A deadline does it. So does a meeting, or a page you must read out loud. To us, the freeze does not look like a slow mind. It looks like an old fear showing up at a bad time.

Do reading skills still grow for adults?

The old advice was to accept it and learn to cope. That advice treats reading as fixed for good. The field’s own definition says otherwise. In 2025, the International Dyslexia Association wrote this:

“Although identification and targeted instruction are important at any age, language and literacy support before and during the early years of education is particularly effective.”

Read the first half again. Teaching matters at any age, and that includes adults. One adult review (Vender et al., 2022) found reading training still brought gains. The studies are small. How much an adult gains is still an open question. Our page on dyslexia in adult life sets out what we hold.

A diagnosis describes where you are today. It does not predict where you will be. Simon’s brother was not tested until university. He now holds two degrees and teaches. See your own school years in your child? Read what adult reading struggles tell you about your child.

What helps at work, starting this week?

To us, the first support is not software. It is lowering the fear. These ideas come from Simon’s time with Maria, and most of them are free.

• Start with what already works. You got this job, so you have real skills. A good manager asks what you already do to manage.
• Ask the person. A mental health charity once gave Simon this advice about a colleague. Ask her. She will know what support she needs.
• Change the task, not the person. Maria found maps hard. So she drove to a new place a day or two early.
• Keep talk in short parts. Long meetings need breaks and a clear start and end.
• Send reading ahead. Do not hand someone a paper and ask for a view on the spot. Simon says it should go out early to everyone.
• Check in along the way. Clear goals with check-ins are fair. A surprise report due at five is not.
• Find quiet. Maria works from home now. With no noise, she rereads her emails and catches her own mistakes.

When you ask for support, Simon suggests a plain script. Here is what I am good at. Here is where I need support.

Maria brought something else, too. She found a way to teach budgeting by treating time as money. It became a core lesson. Simon was careful here. He was not sure people who struggle with reading are more creative. He said they tend to see things from a different angle. We see it too. We have not found research that ties it to dyslexia. Strengths like this are earned through the struggle. They are not a prize for it.