ADHD. Autism. AuDHD. Autistic Spectrum Condition. Neurodivergence.
The words have become a jumble. Social media influencers insist that so many behaviours are "obvious neurodiversity traits!", that if you "did XYZ (relatively common) thing as a kid, you're definitely neurodivergent as an adult!" that it's become a meaningless fog, with some people questioning whether autism and ADHD are actually "real" conditions at all.
Whether it was their intention or not, the "Neurodiversity Influencers" have brought us right back to the "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often" attitudes, only now they're expressed as "Self-absorbed Millennials and Gen Z who lack resilience and don't want to work". (And sometimes still as "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often.")
There seem to be so many "behaviours" that are "clearly undiagnosed neurodivergence!" that, if we were to believe all of them actually are evidence of neurodivergent conditions, then the only objective reality would be that everybody is neurodivergent - which leads to, in practical, support accommodations and accessibility terms, nobody is neurodivergent, because "being human" doesn't give anyone rights around enhanced accessibility in the workplace.
And that accessibility is vital for people who actually are neurodivergent. Who genuinely do have barriers, beyond fear of failure, anxiety, depression, perfectionism or, in fact, straightforward laziness, to engaging with adult expectations in typically demanded ways.
Autism and ADHD Aren't About Behaviours
They're not even about the absence of behaviours.
Someone doesn't have ADHD because they talk too fast, about too many topics at once, they forget things all the time, they "can't self-motivate", or they ditz between points of focus constantly.
A person isn't autistic because they keep to very strict, often somewhat obscure, routines, they have no awareness of when they're "boring" other people, and they lack basic social skills.
All of these things are behaviours or traits that anyone, neurodivergent or otherwise, can have, and which actually can be worked on, to be less intrusive to others, and less of a barrier to success for the individual exhibiting them.
Neurodivergence isn't the behaviours; it's the reason for the behaviours, and that reason is stress.
But Doesn't Everyone Experience Stress? You Can't Expect Workplaces to "Accommodate" People Being Stressed! People Just Need to Learn to Handle Their Own Stress Better!
Neurodivergent stress isn't the same as the stress we all encounter to a greater or lesser extent.
For neurotypical people, 'stress' can be pointed at. It can be named.
I can say "I'm stressed out from trying to achieve my ambitions without any real capital or connections to help me."
You can say "I'm stressed by the way my family just keep demanding things from me, and never actually seem to see me as a person who needs things myself."
Someone else can say "I'm stressed because I've got too much on my plate, and there's no one I can ask to help me with any of it."
Even if the thing we're stressed about seems trivial ("I'm stressed out because my washing machine never actually seems to get my stuff really clean!"), or vague ("I just can't see how I'm ever going to achieve what I want from life"), we can name it, and it is a singular thing (or several individual 'single things', which may or may not be connected.)
For neurodivergent people, the stress doesn't come from something they can point to, ask for help with, learn more about. The stress "just is." It's not even that the stress is "life in general", which is still an identifiable thing. Neurotypicals may find that life is stressful. Neurodivergent people find that life is stress. Simply being alive, even in comfortable, positive, 'safe' situations, is to experience what should be a state as a constant.
When we are stressed as a state, we know, however faintly, that it will end. Often, we can identify ways we could cause it to end (although they may not be viable in the moment, as they could result in different forms of stress.)
Stress as a constant, however, is more equivalent to be conscious - we can't identify ways to stop being conscious that aren't extreme, and usually harmful - even sleep isn't really a pausing of being conscious, because we dream during sleep, we are often aware of changes in ambient temperature, even if these changes don't rouse us, and, of course, alarm clocks, sudden noises in the house, the sounds of others waking, can end our sleep very promptly and easily - you can set as many alarm clocks, and make as much noise as you like, around someone who is unconscious, and it won't bring them to consciousness.
Similarly, because neurodivergence is essentially being stress (rather than being stressed), the only options for ending the constant of being stress are extreme, and often harmful.
The "clinical symptoms" of autism, ADHD, etc are its behaviours - and those behaviours are simply responses to stress, just as outbursts of anger, tearfulness, avoidance, use of intoxicants, etc are responses to the states of stress neurotypicals experience from time to time.
What Does This Mean for Neurodivergent People?
It means that the unfortunate reality is that life won't be better, in a meaningful, long-term way, if you "just avoid things that stress you". Because neurodivergence is stress-as-constant, not stress-as-state, which means, unfortunately, that you are the stress. Not in the sense of "your mindset is what's creating these problems", but rather that your brain lacks the ability to alter the flow of stress that everyone encounters day by day.
Think of your brain as a radiator, and stress as heated fuel flowing through it.
With radiators, you can use a thermostat to alter the impact of heated fuel flow, or even to shut it off completely.
If it begins to feel too hot, you can dial down the thermostat, the flow of heated fuel will be reduced, and everything will cool down.
Neurotypical peoples' brains come with a physiological "thermostat", a way for the 'radiators' of their brains to be programmed to alter the 'flow' of stress (heated fuel.) They can dial it down when it becomes "too hot" (the stress is getting in the way of them functioning), and they can turn it up if it's "too cold" (engage in high-stress occupations and activities when 'normal' is so routine they also struggle to function effectively.)
Stress management is overwhelming based on neurotypicals, and the assumption that there is a cognitive 'thermostat', people just need to be shown how it works.
Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, the various common forms of talking therapy, and even things like electroconvulsive therapy, similarly, are geared to the idea that there is a cognitive thermostat present - it's just broken at the moment, and an 'engineer' needs to come out, tweak it, maybe replace a part, and then it will work effectively once more.
Neurodivergence is the absence of this physiological thermostat. Neurodivergence leaves no way for the 'radiator' of the brain to be easily set to a comfortable level of 'heated fuel provision.' There is no way to adjust the 'flow' of 'heated fuel'/stress to create a balanced, ambient 'temperature.'
Stress creates behaviours - in neurotypicals experiencing stress-as-state, as much as in neurodivergent people experiencing stress-as-constant - and neurodivergent conditions are based in the reality of stress-as-constant, the reality of stress without a thermostat.
It's not that neurodivergent people "can't see their thermostats", or that they "don't understand how a thermostat works" the thermostat isn't there in neurodivergence.
I'm registered blind. My right eye perceives light, and that's it. It doesn't 'see', in any meaningful sense. My left eye has a small circle of vision - there's no perception of anything in my peripheral field of that eye, and beyond a certain angle of my central vision on my left side, things get grey and blurred, and, beyond that, they don't exist at all as far as I'm aware.
It is not the case that I "need to be shown where my eyes are" or that I'll be fine if I'm "taught how eyes work" - I probably know more about the functioning of the visual cortex than most people reading this blog, but it doesn't alter the reality that the inner structures that create 'vision' aren't there anymore, in the case of the large swathes of my sight - all of the sight of my right eye, and at least sixty percent of the sight of my left.
I don't have the "engine" for vision, any more than a neurodivergent person has the "thermostat" for stress.
I can't "just get better at seeing", and they "can't just get better at managing stress."
Manageable stress is a state. Stress-as-constant always demonstrates the absence of a cognitive thermostat in the first place.
Even if your state-of-stress is a multiple, it is a state, because - if you operate your 'thermostat', you can name it, even if that looks like:
"It's my family taking me for granted, my boss not supporting my progression ambitions, my colleagues being lazy slackers who just expect me to pick up after them, the inconsiderate behaviour of other drivers on my commute, the fact that I don't get paid enough to have money to replace my fence, which came down in a storm last night, and the fact that my neighbours are complaining at me about the fence being down, rather than offering to help!" Neurotypical people can definitely be in the situation of experiencing many state-stresses simultaneously. But that is still very distinct from the neurodivergent "I opened my eyes, and things just were stress, in a way I can't describe, define, or explain. And I feel stupid saying that, because, objectively, everything should be fine - but it just isn't, and I don't know why!"
ADHD behaviours are stress-as-constant manifesting as hyper-reactivity to the stress.
Autism behaviours are stress-as-constant manifesting as varying degrees of 'shutdown' in the face of the stress.
ADHD brains report stress-as-constant with the commentary of "If we just do something, one form of something will be the right something to handle this! (ADHD Paralysis is when the brain tries to be "helpful", and adds "Here's all the possible somethings I can think of that we could do!" to the report. Just as it would be for a neurotypical being handed a physical situation report, it's too much, it feels too overwhelming, there's too many destinations and too few directions.)
Autistic brains report stress-as-constant with the commentary "I don't think there's actually anything we can do about this, so if we just create rules and routines, and focus on those, then someone else will maybe do something about the stress." (Which explains why autistic people can sometimes seem "disengaged from other people" - neurotypicals who shut down in response to their stresses-as-states can appear similarly distant and disengaged, until the stress passes, or they successfully adjust their 'thermostat'.)
What Does This Mean for Those in Leadership Positions to Neurodivergent People?
Firstly, it means you need to stop thinking of neurodivergent people as a "problem", and realise that the actual "problem" for your leadership, your team, your organisation, is stress.
Next, you need to accept that you can't remove stress completely. No one can. And it's not actually helpful to have no stress, anyway - humans are still very much governed by our limbic systems, which, ancient and deep-rooted as they are, are programmed for stress. They like a certain level of readily-interpreted stress, which is why people often find that anxiety and depression improve when they participate in survivalist camps, or extreme sports - the limbic system basically gets to go "Yay! Cold/heat/lack of obvious sustenance/potential threats-to-life from poisonous plants and lethal animals! I know how to deal with this!" rather than its usual situation of "Huh...this is...weird. Nothing seems to be happening. But 'nothing' just means I haven't identified the threat, not that it isn't there....EMAIL!!!! THE SUPERMARKET!!! MAKING A PHONE CALL!!!! - these could all be threats! And I don't know what to do about any of them! I don't have a script for what's worked with these threats!!! HEEEEEELLLPPPP!!!" (only, instead of ACTUALLY helping, by going "It's okay - these are pretty new things, and I was actually brought about by neural connective patterning to handle these sorts of things, specifically, so don't worry about them, I have the script for them, I'll take care of them", the frontal cortex just responds "Why are you LIKE THIS??? I'm trying to f-king CONCENTRATE here, ffs!", which causes more anxiety for the limbic system, which now believes the rest of the brain has no ability to process the concept of 'threat', and so is actually itself a threat...) Even if your staff, neurotypical or neurodivergent, demand that you remove all the stress they're facing, you need to hold to the fact that it's not possible. All you can do is create processes for managing the predictable stresses, clearly signpost resources people can access easily when the stresses are less predictable, and remain calm, focused, and available for your team. Don't tell them "Everybody is stressed right now!" - engage with the way they are experiencing stress, and, rather than assuming they have a 'thermostat' to alter the intensity themselves, just listen through their communication about the stress, provide positive input where you can, and give them the sense that, on the rough seas of this particular experience, you're a lighthouse they can steer by. In the days when lighthouses were occupied by humans who were responsible for getting the lights showing, it was never the case that those lighthouse folk never felt anxious or stressed themselves - they simply understood that their priority, regardless of their own experience of stress, was to create the 'process' by which Those Out There could navigate the stress-as-state of sailing in difficult conditions.
Lifeguards, similarly, aren't "people who aren't stressed" - they are people who can hold to processes and protocols to bring people through stress-as-state which has become too 'hot' for their cognitive thermostat to cool down quickly enough for them to be safe.
Telling someone who is talking out their stress that "everyone is stressed" doesn't remove their stress - it actually adds another stress-as-state; the stress-as-state of "I can't even talk about this to anyone, because it's just going to make things worse for them." To return to our thermostat analogy, telling someone who communicates that they are stressed that "everybody is stressed" is the equivalent of saying to someone who is unsure how their thermostat works that they're not allowed to go online and ask other people with the same thermostat about the issues they're experiencing, or the most effective setting, because "You'll cause everyone's thermostat to break!" (It sounds ridiculous when you put it in those terms, doesn't it?)
The words have become a jumble. Social media influencers insist that so many behaviours are "obvious neurodiversity traits!", that if you "did XYZ (relatively common) thing as a kid, you're definitely neurodivergent as an adult!" that it's become a meaningless fog, with some people questioning whether autism and ADHD are actually "real" conditions at all.
Whether it was their intention or not, the "Neurodiversity Influencers" have brought us right back to the "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often" attitudes, only now they're expressed as "Self-absorbed Millennials and Gen Z who lack resilience and don't want to work". (And sometimes still as "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often.")
There seem to be so many "behaviours" that are "clearly undiagnosed neurodivergence!" that, if we were to believe all of them actually are evidence of neurodivergent conditions, then the only objective reality would be that everybody is neurodivergent - which leads to, in practical, support accommodations and accessibility terms, nobody is neurodivergent, because "being human" doesn't give anyone rights around enhanced accessibility in the workplace.
And that accessibility is vital for people who actually are neurodivergent. Who genuinely do have barriers, beyond fear of failure, anxiety, depression, perfectionism or, in fact, straightforward laziness, to engaging with adult expectations in typically demanded ways.
Autism and ADHD Aren't About Behaviours
They're not even about the absence of behaviours.
Someone doesn't have ADHD because they talk too fast, about too many topics at once, they forget things all the time, they "can't self-motivate", or they ditz between points of focus constantly.
A person isn't autistic because they keep to very strict, often somewhat obscure, routines, they have no awareness of when they're "boring" other people, and they lack basic social skills.
All of these things are behaviours or traits that anyone, neurodivergent or otherwise, can have, and which actually can be worked on, to be less intrusive to others, and less of a barrier to success for the individual exhibiting them.
Neurodivergence isn't the behaviours; it's the reason for the behaviours, and that reason is stress.
But Doesn't Everyone Experience Stress? You Can't Expect Workplaces to "Accommodate" People Being Stressed! People Just Need to Learn to Handle Their Own Stress Better!
Neurodivergent stress isn't the same as the stress we all encounter to a greater or lesser extent.
For neurotypical people, 'stress' can be pointed at. It can be named.
I can say "I'm stressed out from trying to achieve my ambitions without any real capital or connections to help me."
You can say "I'm stressed by the way my family just keep demanding things from me, and never actually seem to see me as a person who needs things myself."
Someone else can say "I'm stressed because I've got too much on my plate, and there's no one I can ask to help me with any of it."
Even if the thing we're stressed about seems trivial ("I'm stressed out because my washing machine never actually seems to get my stuff really clean!"), or vague ("I just can't see how I'm ever going to achieve what I want from life"), we can name it, and it is a singular thing (or several individual 'single things', which may or may not be connected.)
For neurodivergent people, the stress doesn't come from something they can point to, ask for help with, learn more about. The stress "just is." It's not even that the stress is "life in general", which is still an identifiable thing. Neurotypicals may find that life is stressful. Neurodivergent people find that life is stress. Simply being alive, even in comfortable, positive, 'safe' situations, is to experience what should be a state as a constant.
When we are stressed as a state, we know, however faintly, that it will end. Often, we can identify ways we could cause it to end (although they may not be viable in the moment, as they could result in different forms of stress.)
Stress as a constant, however, is more equivalent to be conscious - we can't identify ways to stop being conscious that aren't extreme, and usually harmful - even sleep isn't really a pausing of being conscious, because we dream during sleep, we are often aware of changes in ambient temperature, even if these changes don't rouse us, and, of course, alarm clocks, sudden noises in the house, the sounds of others waking, can end our sleep very promptly and easily - you can set as many alarm clocks, and make as much noise as you like, around someone who is unconscious, and it won't bring them to consciousness.
Similarly, because neurodivergence is essentially being stress (rather than being stressed), the only options for ending the constant of being stress are extreme, and often harmful.
The "clinical symptoms" of autism, ADHD, etc are its behaviours - and those behaviours are simply responses to stress, just as outbursts of anger, tearfulness, avoidance, use of intoxicants, etc are responses to the states of stress neurotypicals experience from time to time.
What Does This Mean for Neurodivergent People?
It means that the unfortunate reality is that life won't be better, in a meaningful, long-term way, if you "just avoid things that stress you". Because neurodivergence is stress-as-constant, not stress-as-state, which means, unfortunately, that you are the stress. Not in the sense of "your mindset is what's creating these problems", but rather that your brain lacks the ability to alter the flow of stress that everyone encounters day by day.
Think of your brain as a radiator, and stress as heated fuel flowing through it.
With radiators, you can use a thermostat to alter the impact of heated fuel flow, or even to shut it off completely.
If it begins to feel too hot, you can dial down the thermostat, the flow of heated fuel will be reduced, and everything will cool down.
Neurotypical peoples' brains come with a physiological "thermostat", a way for the 'radiators' of their brains to be programmed to alter the 'flow' of stress (heated fuel.) They can dial it down when it becomes "too hot" (the stress is getting in the way of them functioning), and they can turn it up if it's "too cold" (engage in high-stress occupations and activities when 'normal' is so routine they also struggle to function effectively.)
Stress management is overwhelming based on neurotypicals, and the assumption that there is a cognitive 'thermostat', people just need to be shown how it works.
Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, the various common forms of talking therapy, and even things like electroconvulsive therapy, similarly, are geared to the idea that there is a cognitive thermostat present - it's just broken at the moment, and an 'engineer' needs to come out, tweak it, maybe replace a part, and then it will work effectively once more.
Neurodivergence is the absence of this physiological thermostat. Neurodivergence leaves no way for the 'radiator' of the brain to be easily set to a comfortable level of 'heated fuel provision.' There is no way to adjust the 'flow' of 'heated fuel'/stress to create a balanced, ambient 'temperature.'
Stress creates behaviours - in neurotypicals experiencing stress-as-state, as much as in neurodivergent people experiencing stress-as-constant - and neurodivergent conditions are based in the reality of stress-as-constant, the reality of stress without a thermostat.
It's not that neurodivergent people "can't see their thermostats", or that they "don't understand how a thermostat works" the thermostat isn't there in neurodivergence.
I'm registered blind. My right eye perceives light, and that's it. It doesn't 'see', in any meaningful sense. My left eye has a small circle of vision - there's no perception of anything in my peripheral field of that eye, and beyond a certain angle of my central vision on my left side, things get grey and blurred, and, beyond that, they don't exist at all as far as I'm aware.
It is not the case that I "need to be shown where my eyes are" or that I'll be fine if I'm "taught how eyes work" - I probably know more about the functioning of the visual cortex than most people reading this blog, but it doesn't alter the reality that the inner structures that create 'vision' aren't there anymore, in the case of the large swathes of my sight - all of the sight of my right eye, and at least sixty percent of the sight of my left.
I don't have the "engine" for vision, any more than a neurodivergent person has the "thermostat" for stress.
I can't "just get better at seeing", and they "can't just get better at managing stress."
Manageable stress is a state. Stress-as-constant always demonstrates the absence of a cognitive thermostat in the first place.
Even if your state-of-stress is a multiple, it is a state, because - if you operate your 'thermostat', you can name it, even if that looks like:
"It's my family taking me for granted, my boss not supporting my progression ambitions, my colleagues being lazy slackers who just expect me to pick up after them, the inconsiderate behaviour of other drivers on my commute, the fact that I don't get paid enough to have money to replace my fence, which came down in a storm last night, and the fact that my neighbours are complaining at me about the fence being down, rather than offering to help!" Neurotypical people can definitely be in the situation of experiencing many state-stresses simultaneously. But that is still very distinct from the neurodivergent "I opened my eyes, and things just were stress, in a way I can't describe, define, or explain. And I feel stupid saying that, because, objectively, everything should be fine - but it just isn't, and I don't know why!"
ADHD behaviours are stress-as-constant manifesting as hyper-reactivity to the stress.
Autism behaviours are stress-as-constant manifesting as varying degrees of 'shutdown' in the face of the stress.
ADHD brains report stress-as-constant with the commentary of "If we just do something, one form of something will be the right something to handle this! (ADHD Paralysis is when the brain tries to be "helpful", and adds "Here's all the possible somethings I can think of that we could do!" to the report. Just as it would be for a neurotypical being handed a physical situation report, it's too much, it feels too overwhelming, there's too many destinations and too few directions.)
Autistic brains report stress-as-constant with the commentary "I don't think there's actually anything we can do about this, so if we just create rules and routines, and focus on those, then someone else will maybe do something about the stress." (Which explains why autistic people can sometimes seem "disengaged from other people" - neurotypicals who shut down in response to their stresses-as-states can appear similarly distant and disengaged, until the stress passes, or they successfully adjust their 'thermostat'.)
What Does This Mean for Those in Leadership Positions to Neurodivergent People?
Firstly, it means you need to stop thinking of neurodivergent people as a "problem", and realise that the actual "problem" for your leadership, your team, your organisation, is stress.
Next, you need to accept that you can't remove stress completely. No one can. And it's not actually helpful to have no stress, anyway - humans are still very much governed by our limbic systems, which, ancient and deep-rooted as they are, are programmed for stress. They like a certain level of readily-interpreted stress, which is why people often find that anxiety and depression improve when they participate in survivalist camps, or extreme sports - the limbic system basically gets to go "Yay! Cold/heat/lack of obvious sustenance/potential threats-to-life from poisonous plants and lethal animals! I know how to deal with this!" rather than its usual situation of "Huh...this is...weird. Nothing seems to be happening. But 'nothing' just means I haven't identified the threat, not that it isn't there....EMAIL!!!! THE SUPERMARKET!!! MAKING A PHONE CALL!!!! - these could all be threats! And I don't know what to do about any of them! I don't have a script for what's worked with these threats!!! HEEEEEELLLPPPP!!!" (only, instead of ACTUALLY helping, by going "It's okay - these are pretty new things, and I was actually brought about by neural connective patterning to handle these sorts of things, specifically, so don't worry about them, I have the script for them, I'll take care of them", the frontal cortex just responds "Why are you LIKE THIS??? I'm trying to f-king CONCENTRATE here, ffs!", which causes more anxiety for the limbic system, which now believes the rest of the brain has no ability to process the concept of 'threat', and so is actually itself a threat...) Even if your staff, neurotypical or neurodivergent, demand that you remove all the stress they're facing, you need to hold to the fact that it's not possible. All you can do is create processes for managing the predictable stresses, clearly signpost resources people can access easily when the stresses are less predictable, and remain calm, focused, and available for your team. Don't tell them "Everybody is stressed right now!" - engage with the way they are experiencing stress, and, rather than assuming they have a 'thermostat' to alter the intensity themselves, just listen through their communication about the stress, provide positive input where you can, and give them the sense that, on the rough seas of this particular experience, you're a lighthouse they can steer by. In the days when lighthouses were occupied by humans who were responsible for getting the lights showing, it was never the case that those lighthouse folk never felt anxious or stressed themselves - they simply understood that their priority, regardless of their own experience of stress, was to create the 'process' by which Those Out There could navigate the stress-as-state of sailing in difficult conditions.
Lifeguards, similarly, aren't "people who aren't stressed" - they are people who can hold to processes and protocols to bring people through stress-as-state which has become too 'hot' for their cognitive thermostat to cool down quickly enough for them to be safe.
Telling someone who is talking out their stress that "everyone is stressed" doesn't remove their stress - it actually adds another stress-as-state; the stress-as-state of "I can't even talk about this to anyone, because it's just going to make things worse for them." To return to our thermostat analogy, telling someone who communicates that they are stressed that "everybody is stressed" is the equivalent of saying to someone who is unsure how their thermostat works that they're not allowed to go online and ask other people with the same thermostat about the issues they're experiencing, or the most effective setting, because "You'll cause everyone's thermostat to break!" (It sounds ridiculous when you put it in those terms, doesn't it?)
As a leader, you are going to have people who are experiencing stress-as-state, and people who are experiencing stress-as-constant. Your job is simply to not add more stress-as-states to either of these groups.
Identify those who are neurotypical - who are dealing with stress-as-state - and check in with them about how their 'thermostat' is going. Is it tricky to adjust, so they've worked out that they need to keep the flow at a particular level, and can't risk going above or below that?
Is it sometimes inaccurate, recording the 'temperature' as being hotter or colder than it is, and they therefore would benefit from being in close proximity to people whose 'thermostats' are more accurate?
Is it currently broken, and awaiting repair, and therefore the flow of heated air needs to be switched off for a while?
Then identify those who are dealing with stress-as-constant; your neurodivergent team members. Keep at the forefront of your mind the reality that these individuals do not have a thermostat. They can't alter the temperature they experience, and therefore it is your job to place them in a 'room' (situation) which is ambient for them. Where, even though they will still experience stress-as-constant, and thus still display the behaviours that are part of their individual stress response, they will be mostly okay. (For example, I will almost always feel a little bit cold; I may complain about the cold, I may visibly shiver, I may put on an impractical number of layers, I may conduct meetings, or write blogs, wrapped in innumerable blankets - but I know the cold isn't going to overwhelm me, even if I can't make it go away entirely.)
This 'ambient point' will vary from neurodivergent person to neurodivergent person, so it's vital that you truly commit to getting to know the people that make up your team as people. As "John, who breeds and races huskies, listens to Mozart, and only likes green apples." As "Keisha, who doesn't own a single item of monochrome clothing, is learning samba dancing, and plays the violin", as "Aslan, who walks everywhere, enjoys knitting, and is studying for a degree in architecture, just because he's interested in it." Get to know the skills and experience they have that aren't connected to their job role. Listen when they're talking to their peers about their "dream job", or what they'd do if they won the lottery.
Identify those who are neurotypical - who are dealing with stress-as-state - and check in with them about how their 'thermostat' is going. Is it tricky to adjust, so they've worked out that they need to keep the flow at a particular level, and can't risk going above or below that?
Is it sometimes inaccurate, recording the 'temperature' as being hotter or colder than it is, and they therefore would benefit from being in close proximity to people whose 'thermostats' are more accurate?
Is it currently broken, and awaiting repair, and therefore the flow of heated air needs to be switched off for a while?
Then identify those who are dealing with stress-as-constant; your neurodivergent team members. Keep at the forefront of your mind the reality that these individuals do not have a thermostat. They can't alter the temperature they experience, and therefore it is your job to place them in a 'room' (situation) which is ambient for them. Where, even though they will still experience stress-as-constant, and thus still display the behaviours that are part of their individual stress response, they will be mostly okay. (For example, I will almost always feel a little bit cold; I may complain about the cold, I may visibly shiver, I may put on an impractical number of layers, I may conduct meetings, or write blogs, wrapped in innumerable blankets - but I know the cold isn't going to overwhelm me, even if I can't make it go away entirely.)
This 'ambient point' will vary from neurodivergent person to neurodivergent person, so it's vital that you truly commit to getting to know the people that make up your team as people. As "John, who breeds and races huskies, listens to Mozart, and only likes green apples." As "Keisha, who doesn't own a single item of monochrome clothing, is learning samba dancing, and plays the violin", as "Aslan, who walks everywhere, enjoys knitting, and is studying for a degree in architecture, just because he's interested in it." Get to know the skills and experience they have that aren't connected to their job role. Listen when they're talking to their peers about their "dream job", or what they'd do if they won the lottery.
One of the worst managers I've had literally threw a complete temper tantrum in response to a thread on the internal Teams channel dedicated to 'relaxed conversation' about peoples' dream jobs - he entered the chat himself, demanding that "If people have all these other f-king dream jobs they'd rather be doing, maybe they should man up, put in their notice, and f-k off!" - that's a really bad way to handle what was just "what-if" wishful thinking - not just for the team, but for the manager, too. If he'd engaged with peoples' 'dream jobs', he would have seen opportunities to increase engagement with the job his team were doing, opportunities to create new client engagement for the business, opportunities to move the business away from reliance on a single government contract, ways to develop the people he had into people the business could use beyond the servicing of that core contract... But, instead, all he did was cause the entire team, who were mostly already in various stages of burnout, to go into 'active shutdown' - the kind of shutdown that comes from "Well, f-k you, too, pal! I'm not going to do anything beyond what I absolutely have to do to not get sacked now!", rather than 'passive shutdown', which comes from "All of my resources have been used up, and I just have to survive this now." The office, already somewhat 'weird' to navigate, thanks to some big personalities, and more than a few dysfunctional ones, rapidly became toxic.
What About Neurodivergent Leaders?
If you are a leader who is also neurodivergent, then you need to recognise that your team are not the cause of your stress; they absolutely can add stress-as-state to the stress-as-constant that defines your neurodivergence, however.
This means your priority concern is to get a handle on calm communication, in particular around boundaries.
With open plan offices increasingly the norm, and the many curveballs working from home can throw, setting boundaries around other peoples' access to you as a leader isn't as straightforward as it was in the days when leaders were always managers, and managers always had their own office, with a door that could be closed to signal that you weren't available.
Your door should not be "always open". No one's should be.
In the absence of physical doors, and, increasingly, physical proximity, new boundaries need to be established. For example:
. A physical sign you can display on your desk - a folded sheet of A4 card, for example, with "not available for discussion, support, or problems" written clearly on it, which you can display when you need to focus.
. Blocking out specific times each day on your shared calendar when you are "available for support and problem solving" - make it clear that people on your team will need to wait until the next blocked time slot, but that they are welcome to approach their colleagues, explore all available resources in a self-motivated way, take "lateral thinking breaks", including out of the office/offline, to try and solve their problems themselves. Pin a link to documents of established protocols, and examples of previous problems encountered, and how they were solved, in your main Teams/Slack/Other channel, and make sure people are aware it's there, and what it contains. Don't be shy about reminding them, if they cross your boundaries.
. Liberal use of auto-response - if you know you're going to have a full-on day, which is going to add a lot of stress-as-states to your stress-as-constant...Set an out-of-office response on your email, Teams, etc to indicate that you're not available for that day, or between X and Y time on that day. "Owing to pressures of work/need for focused attention on specific tasks" are good ways to explain why you're "in work, but not available."
Make sure, however, that you do create time when you are present for, and engaged with, the stress-as-states your team will experience. If that's 10am-11am daily? That's fine - if it's a genuine emergency that happens at 2.15pm, and really can't wait until 10am the next working day, chances are it's going to be so obvious, and so impactful, that you'll be caught up in it anyway. Perhaps schedule the first 20mins of any all-hands meeting for "mutual aid" - a space where people can vent and present their problems, and their colleagues can offer insight and input. (Don't schedule this for the end of the meeting - no one will say anything, because they're all keen for the meeting to be over!)
In Summary:
Autism, ADHD, and other genuine neurodivergence conditions have long been "addressed" in relation to the behaviours displayed by those with the conditions, and the behaviours are seen as "the reason these people are neurodivergent."
"Neurodivergent behaviours" are actually stress responses - just as certain types of behaviours are stress responses in neurotypicals.
Neurodivergence is about the quality of stress.
Neurotypicals experience stress as a "state" quality - an identifiable, point-at-able situation that "makes them feel stressed."
Neurodivergent people experience stress as a "constant" quality - even in "ideal" situations, this quality of stress remains present; they are not "feeling stressed" so much as they "are stress (noun rather than adjective deliberate.)"
Managing neurodivergence, therefore, is not about "controlling or managing behaviours", or "replacing X behaviour with Y behaviour", but about working with awareness of the stress-as-constant that is the reason for neurodivergence.
What About Neurodivergent Leaders?
If you are a leader who is also neurodivergent, then you need to recognise that your team are not the cause of your stress; they absolutely can add stress-as-state to the stress-as-constant that defines your neurodivergence, however.
This means your priority concern is to get a handle on calm communication, in particular around boundaries.
With open plan offices increasingly the norm, and the many curveballs working from home can throw, setting boundaries around other peoples' access to you as a leader isn't as straightforward as it was in the days when leaders were always managers, and managers always had their own office, with a door that could be closed to signal that you weren't available.
Your door should not be "always open". No one's should be.
In the absence of physical doors, and, increasingly, physical proximity, new boundaries need to be established. For example:
. A physical sign you can display on your desk - a folded sheet of A4 card, for example, with "not available for discussion, support, or problems" written clearly on it, which you can display when you need to focus.
. Blocking out specific times each day on your shared calendar when you are "available for support and problem solving" - make it clear that people on your team will need to wait until the next blocked time slot, but that they are welcome to approach their colleagues, explore all available resources in a self-motivated way, take "lateral thinking breaks", including out of the office/offline, to try and solve their problems themselves. Pin a link to documents of established protocols, and examples of previous problems encountered, and how they were solved, in your main Teams/Slack/Other channel, and make sure people are aware it's there, and what it contains. Don't be shy about reminding them, if they cross your boundaries.
. Liberal use of auto-response - if you know you're going to have a full-on day, which is going to add a lot of stress-as-states to your stress-as-constant...Set an out-of-office response on your email, Teams, etc to indicate that you're not available for that day, or between X and Y time on that day. "Owing to pressures of work/need for focused attention on specific tasks" are good ways to explain why you're "in work, but not available."
Make sure, however, that you do create time when you are present for, and engaged with, the stress-as-states your team will experience. If that's 10am-11am daily? That's fine - if it's a genuine emergency that happens at 2.15pm, and really can't wait until 10am the next working day, chances are it's going to be so obvious, and so impactful, that you'll be caught up in it anyway. Perhaps schedule the first 20mins of any all-hands meeting for "mutual aid" - a space where people can vent and present their problems, and their colleagues can offer insight and input. (Don't schedule this for the end of the meeting - no one will say anything, because they're all keen for the meeting to be over!)
In Summary:
Autism, ADHD, and other genuine neurodivergence conditions have long been "addressed" in relation to the behaviours displayed by those with the conditions, and the behaviours are seen as "the reason these people are neurodivergent."
"Neurodivergent behaviours" are actually stress responses - just as certain types of behaviours are stress responses in neurotypicals.
Neurodivergence is about the quality of stress.
Neurotypicals experience stress as a "state" quality - an identifiable, point-at-able situation that "makes them feel stressed."
Neurodivergent people experience stress as a "constant" quality - even in "ideal" situations, this quality of stress remains present; they are not "feeling stressed" so much as they "are stress (noun rather than adjective deliberate.)"
Managing neurodivergence, therefore, is not about "controlling or managing behaviours", or "replacing X behaviour with Y behaviour", but about working with awareness of the stress-as-constant that is the reason for neurodivergence.
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