HBR Presents.

I'm Yario Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Presents Network.

I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful

leaders who fit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying

their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little

more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing.

Today's guest is someone will call Victor to protect his confidentiality.

He's spent much of his career as an attorney and is also neurodivergent.

I'm originally from Latin America and came from a very competitive immigrant background

growing up with dyslexia, which was not diagnosed until I was 14 years old.

Thanks to the tenacity of my parents, with both academics, and didn't let me give up.

Through tutoring, I was able to go forward, and especially because there were no possibilities of helping people,

even dyslexia wasn't really the term that was used.

Victor identifies as Hispanic and immigrated to the United States to pursue his undergraduate studies

and eventually attained his law degree from a prestigious university.

My language abilities, I'm fluent in four languages.

I also was very well traveled and formally trained both as an undergrad and in grad school that went parallel with law school in international affairs.

And that training and my natural abilities, dyslexics, like any other person who has a

disability, you can develop much more, much keenly if you can't read that well, but your hearing

is excellent, coming out from a very elite institution, parachuted me into great opportunities.

The issue has been that as an attorney, especially in large law firms,

my ability to show value, which translates into profits through the conventional means of measuring

...