As with mental health, neurodiversity inclusion is going to become a very present focus for UK businesses in the wake of the recent welfare reforms.
Neurodiversity is also a deeply complex aspect of inclusion, which typically requires a tailored approach designed with individual businesses - not only is every neurodiverse person different, with different sensitivities, skills, competencies, and accommodation needs, but so is every workplace.
The Productive Pessimist Ltd offer a range of inclusive design and practice consultancy services, ranging from £15 one off costs to £8,000 yearly service support; reach out to us by email at theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com, or check out our services page to find out more.
For this blog, will be addressing a few common questions and challenges on neurodiversity, and neurodiverse inclusion in the workplace.
Isn't everyone neurodivergent, though? It's just about "seeing things differently", and no two people see things the same way!
Neurodiversity isn't "just seeing things differently. That's unfortunately become the common understanding, when it was intended to be a shorthand introduction to wider conversations (which, like many conversations, didn't happen.)
Yes, everyone has their own perception of the world, and their own ideas on how things should work. That's simply the diversity of human experience, and we refine that down into general categories of "diverse agreement" through creating ethnicities, countries, regions, cultures, and families, shaping individual differences into generally cohesive similarities, which enables us to mostly get along with the people we're likely to spend most of our time with - if we all just remained centred in our unique way of understanding the world, as diverse individuals, it would be very difficult to achieve larger goals, which require us to work with others!
Neurodiversity goes beyond individual differences in perception and working style, and is, at its heart, stress as constant. Now, I know what you're thinking - "but EVERYONE is stressed! I'm stressed! It's stressing me out thinking about how I'm supposed to deal with all these people who shouldn't really be in the workplace in the first place!" - but that's not stress as constant. That's stress as circumstance - if the government were to turn around and say "Good news, folks - we've found £60billion down the back of the sofa, so we're going to cut the NI contribution increase, and also invest in supporting people with neurodiversities, mental health challenges, and disabilities outside the expectation of employment!", your stress would ease. Once you got home, and could forget about work, your stress would either disappear, or be replaced by a different stress - the laundry not being done, the cat having thrown up in your slippers, your kids being feral.
That's stress as circumstance - you can point to something (or many things) and go "THIS is making me stressed!" - and you'll usually expect someone else to do something about the thing that's stressing you.
Stress as constant is exactly what it sounds like - there's nothing you can point at and say "THIS is what's causing me to feel stressed", which means, equally, there's no possibility of anyone doing anything about your stress - you have to try and figure out how to handle that yourself, whilst navigating a world that is often too loud, too smelly, too contradictory, and too focused on never saying what it means. You know you are stressed, but you don't know what is causing the stress - because what's actually causing it is "existing as a human being", which is not something that can be easily addressed.
Neurotypical people can be stressed by repeated circumstances, to the point where it feels as though they're experiencing stress-as-constant, but they aren't, in fact, stressed by the mere fact that they are alive, and living in a world they had no say in.
You know how it feels when you're in a high-stress state; equally, you know you can work in that state, you just need others to do or not do certain things to help take the edge off.
That's the very beginning basis of neurodiversity inclusion - neurodiverse people, experiencing stress-as-constant, can achieve, and can excel in the right role - but they need you, and others, to do or not do certain things to help take the edge off.
Look, I don't want a bunch of entitled brats telling me they can't follow our processes because "it doesn't make sense to them"!
Why don't your processes make sense? We can actually help you with that, in our leadership guidance remit, if you'd like.
While processes should make sense, including to the inexperienced new hire, at first glance, sometimes that's not possible, even with the best will and the best wordsmiths in the world.
And, for most neurodiverse people, that's actually okay. The whole "I can't follow a rule that doesn't make sense to me personally" isn't actually neurodiversity - it's entitlement, often entitlement from someone who has no diagnosis of neurodiversity, and is predominantly trying to gain internet clout.
What is neurodiversity is a desire for consistency - so, a rule which says "We don't discuss politics in the workplace" might not resonate with a neurodiverse individual, but they will be able to accept that they need to follow it, and that they may need to seek clarification on what is considered "politics" - however, they will not understand how the rule can be in place, and why they should follow it, when a colleague is allowed to rant about "all these immigrants!" or express their opinion on "people getting sex changes, and saying they're whatever they feel like!" - which are, undoubtedly, both "talking about politics", and in a particularly offensive way.
If you have a "no politics at work" rule - define, publicly and visibly, what "politics" means, in that embargo context. For The Productive Pessimist, for example, a lot of government policy isn't "politics" - it's our day job.
For me (Ash) personally, disability welfare reforms aren't "politics" - they're an impact on my life. The same is true of discussions around transgender experience, and, as the son of an immigrant, to discussions around immigration. The reason I don't tend to talk about these things in public, or when I've been in past jobs, is I come armed with a lot of objective, evidenced facts, and a very passionate position - which typically makes me the problem in that scenario!
Neurodivergent people are typically fine with rules - they just need them to be clear and consistent. (Which actually helps everyone, anyway.)
But people like that don't get on with other people! I need people who can work as a team!
Everyone has different styles of working. Plenty of neurotypical people work best on their own, while many neurodivergent people thrive working in groups.
The issue is never someone's preferred working style; it's always the attitudes of the people they have to work with, and whether everyone in a group is actually doing their fair share of the work.
(In my professional experience, they're not - the people who coasted in group work in high school are still coasting on your "team"...and the people who did an entire project by themselves, despite being "part of a group" in a high school are still having to do that now, whilst being constantly reminded that their success "is a team effort!")
Neurodivergent people may be less able to articulate their feelings when they're struggling
It can help to allow written responses, and to stick to closed questions; rather than "How do you feel about that?" Ask:
"Do you feel worried?"
"Is that worry about whether you'll be able to complete the work on time?"
"Would it help if you worked on your own from home on this project?"
"Would it help if you worked with someone else during your shifts?"
"Is there a particular colleague you'd like to work with, to help you feel a bit calmer about things?"
Neurodivergent people need to be told that they need to alter their behaviour or approach
It's not "obvious" to a neurodivergent person when they're being "too loud", "not participating enough", "wasting time", or "not being relevant" - especially with relevancy, neurodivergent people can struggle, because their communication can include a lot of tangents, which are relevant, but in a very indirect way. It can help to say "Everyone will only get to speak for 5mins, so, if you'd like to take some time before the meeting to write down your thoughts, try and get it to five fairly short lines - then you should be fine when we're in the meeting!" (accommodating an hour of meeting prep is actually good practice for everyone, and it really makes you think whether the meeting could actually be an email.)
Time-blocking is really helpful
For everyone, but especially for neurodivergent people, who often struggle with self-initiating, and with transitioning between tasks. For example, rather than people having blank online diaries unless they have meetings, encourage people to block all their time.
As an example, when I don't have client calls, my time for The Productive Pessimist is typically blocked like this:
Neurodiversity is also a deeply complex aspect of inclusion, which typically requires a tailored approach designed with individual businesses - not only is every neurodiverse person different, with different sensitivities, skills, competencies, and accommodation needs, but so is every workplace.
The Productive Pessimist Ltd offer a range of inclusive design and practice consultancy services, ranging from £15 one off costs to £8,000 yearly service support; reach out to us by email at theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com, or check out our services page to find out more.
For this blog, will be addressing a few common questions and challenges on neurodiversity, and neurodiverse inclusion in the workplace.
Isn't everyone neurodivergent, though? It's just about "seeing things differently", and no two people see things the same way!
Neurodiversity isn't "just seeing things differently. That's unfortunately become the common understanding, when it was intended to be a shorthand introduction to wider conversations (which, like many conversations, didn't happen.)
Yes, everyone has their own perception of the world, and their own ideas on how things should work. That's simply the diversity of human experience, and we refine that down into general categories of "diverse agreement" through creating ethnicities, countries, regions, cultures, and families, shaping individual differences into generally cohesive similarities, which enables us to mostly get along with the people we're likely to spend most of our time with - if we all just remained centred in our unique way of understanding the world, as diverse individuals, it would be very difficult to achieve larger goals, which require us to work with others!
Neurodiversity goes beyond individual differences in perception and working style, and is, at its heart, stress as constant. Now, I know what you're thinking - "but EVERYONE is stressed! I'm stressed! It's stressing me out thinking about how I'm supposed to deal with all these people who shouldn't really be in the workplace in the first place!" - but that's not stress as constant. That's stress as circumstance - if the government were to turn around and say "Good news, folks - we've found £60billion down the back of the sofa, so we're going to cut the NI contribution increase, and also invest in supporting people with neurodiversities, mental health challenges, and disabilities outside the expectation of employment!", your stress would ease. Once you got home, and could forget about work, your stress would either disappear, or be replaced by a different stress - the laundry not being done, the cat having thrown up in your slippers, your kids being feral.
That's stress as circumstance - you can point to something (or many things) and go "THIS is making me stressed!" - and you'll usually expect someone else to do something about the thing that's stressing you.
Stress as constant is exactly what it sounds like - there's nothing you can point at and say "THIS is what's causing me to feel stressed", which means, equally, there's no possibility of anyone doing anything about your stress - you have to try and figure out how to handle that yourself, whilst navigating a world that is often too loud, too smelly, too contradictory, and too focused on never saying what it means. You know you are stressed, but you don't know what is causing the stress - because what's actually causing it is "existing as a human being", which is not something that can be easily addressed.
Neurotypical people can be stressed by repeated circumstances, to the point where it feels as though they're experiencing stress-as-constant, but they aren't, in fact, stressed by the mere fact that they are alive, and living in a world they had no say in.
You know how it feels when you're in a high-stress state; equally, you know you can work in that state, you just need others to do or not do certain things to help take the edge off.
That's the very beginning basis of neurodiversity inclusion - neurodiverse people, experiencing stress-as-constant, can achieve, and can excel in the right role - but they need you, and others, to do or not do certain things to help take the edge off.
Look, I don't want a bunch of entitled brats telling me they can't follow our processes because "it doesn't make sense to them"!
Why don't your processes make sense? We can actually help you with that, in our leadership guidance remit, if you'd like.
While processes should make sense, including to the inexperienced new hire, at first glance, sometimes that's not possible, even with the best will and the best wordsmiths in the world.
And, for most neurodiverse people, that's actually okay. The whole "I can't follow a rule that doesn't make sense to me personally" isn't actually neurodiversity - it's entitlement, often entitlement from someone who has no diagnosis of neurodiversity, and is predominantly trying to gain internet clout.
What is neurodiversity is a desire for consistency - so, a rule which says "We don't discuss politics in the workplace" might not resonate with a neurodiverse individual, but they will be able to accept that they need to follow it, and that they may need to seek clarification on what is considered "politics" - however, they will not understand how the rule can be in place, and why they should follow it, when a colleague is allowed to rant about "all these immigrants!" or express their opinion on "people getting sex changes, and saying they're whatever they feel like!" - which are, undoubtedly, both "talking about politics", and in a particularly offensive way.
If you have a "no politics at work" rule - define, publicly and visibly, what "politics" means, in that embargo context. For The Productive Pessimist, for example, a lot of government policy isn't "politics" - it's our day job.
For me (Ash) personally, disability welfare reforms aren't "politics" - they're an impact on my life. The same is true of discussions around transgender experience, and, as the son of an immigrant, to discussions around immigration. The reason I don't tend to talk about these things in public, or when I've been in past jobs, is I come armed with a lot of objective, evidenced facts, and a very passionate position - which typically makes me the problem in that scenario!
Neurodivergent people are typically fine with rules - they just need them to be clear and consistent. (Which actually helps everyone, anyway.)
But people like that don't get on with other people! I need people who can work as a team!
Everyone has different styles of working. Plenty of neurotypical people work best on their own, while many neurodivergent people thrive working in groups.
The issue is never someone's preferred working style; it's always the attitudes of the people they have to work with, and whether everyone in a group is actually doing their fair share of the work.
(In my professional experience, they're not - the people who coasted in group work in high school are still coasting on your "team"...and the people who did an entire project by themselves, despite being "part of a group" in a high school are still having to do that now, whilst being constantly reminded that their success "is a team effort!")
Neurodivergent people may be less able to articulate their feelings when they're struggling
It can help to allow written responses, and to stick to closed questions; rather than "How do you feel about that?" Ask:
"Do you feel worried?"
"Is that worry about whether you'll be able to complete the work on time?"
"Would it help if you worked on your own from home on this project?"
"Would it help if you worked with someone else during your shifts?"
"Is there a particular colleague you'd like to work with, to help you feel a bit calmer about things?"
Neurodivergent people need to be told that they need to alter their behaviour or approach
It's not "obvious" to a neurodivergent person when they're being "too loud", "not participating enough", "wasting time", or "not being relevant" - especially with relevancy, neurodivergent people can struggle, because their communication can include a lot of tangents, which are relevant, but in a very indirect way. It can help to say "Everyone will only get to speak for 5mins, so, if you'd like to take some time before the meeting to write down your thoughts, try and get it to five fairly short lines - then you should be fine when we're in the meeting!" (accommodating an hour of meeting prep is actually good practice for everyone, and it really makes you think whether the meeting could actually be an email.)
Time-blocking is really helpful
For everyone, but especially for neurodivergent people, who often struggle with self-initiating, and with transitioning between tasks. For example, rather than people having blank online diaries unless they have meetings, encourage people to block all their time.
As an example, when I don't have client calls, my time for The Productive Pessimist is typically blocked like this:
8am-10am: Personal start-of-day processes
10am-12pm: Research, opportunity search, connections (I'll usually have a focus for "research" for each week.)
12pm-1pm: Lunch, including walking the dogs
1pm-4pm: Content - blogs, socials
4pm-6pm: Emails, news reviews, prep for following day
This will vary when I have client calls, or if I need to go off-site, but this gives an example of what I mean when I talk about time-blocking.
In an office situation, meeting prep, breathing space, and email checks should all be included in time-blocks; you may quickly discover just how little time your team really have, and what's taking up so much of it...which, again, benefits everyone's wellbeing.
Neurodivergent people often can't completely tell the time
This doesn't mean they can't look at a clock, watch, or their phone and tell you what time it is - most neurodivergent people can do that just fine. But completely telling the time includes the step of "It's 7.30am now; I need to be at the bus stop by 9am, because the bus leaves at 9.05am. It takes me 10mins to walk to the bus stop, so I need to leave at the latest by 8.50am, which is an hour and 20mins from now. It takes me 20mins to get washed and dressed, 15mins to have breakfast and wash up from that. That means I have three quarters of an hour from having breakfast and showering to when I need to leave", and being able to keep track of time as we move through various tasks and distractions.
The challenges with this hidden "step" of "completely telling time" are often referred to as "time-blindness", which can kick in comprehensively, with a person struggling to parse how much time each of their core tasks will take, and thus ending up completely adrift, or partially - for example, someone may be very capable of keeping track of how long showering takes, but not even consider that they are unable to teleport, so not have any awareness that they can't leave at 9am if they need to be at the bus stop by 9am.
Time-blindness can result in neurodivergent people needing to be compassionately micromanaged when there is a fixed deadline - this is challenging for many managers, firstly because micromanaging is very much seen as bad management, and, secondly, because very few people know how to do it compassionately. The simplest explanation of "compassionate micromanagement" is to consider a sheepdog - it doesn't hate or resent the sheep; it could attack and kill them, but it instead channels that impulse into very precise direction. It doesn't fix errant sheep with a steely gaze, and stalk them into where they need to be because it's punishing them - it's keeping the sheep safe, and ensuring the shepherd achieves their "strategic objectives" - the sheepdog is a manager, the shepherd is executive leadership, and the sheep are the frontline team.
Intrigued by this quick overview of some basics of neurodiversity inclusion, and want to get tailored support to enable neurodivergent team members to thrive in your workplace? Drop us an email:
theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com
10am-12pm: Research, opportunity search, connections (I'll usually have a focus for "research" for each week.)
12pm-1pm: Lunch, including walking the dogs
1pm-4pm: Content - blogs, socials
4pm-6pm: Emails, news reviews, prep for following day
This will vary when I have client calls, or if I need to go off-site, but this gives an example of what I mean when I talk about time-blocking.
In an office situation, meeting prep, breathing space, and email checks should all be included in time-blocks; you may quickly discover just how little time your team really have, and what's taking up so much of it...which, again, benefits everyone's wellbeing.
Neurodivergent people often can't completely tell the time
This doesn't mean they can't look at a clock, watch, or their phone and tell you what time it is - most neurodivergent people can do that just fine. But completely telling the time includes the step of "It's 7.30am now; I need to be at the bus stop by 9am, because the bus leaves at 9.05am. It takes me 10mins to walk to the bus stop, so I need to leave at the latest by 8.50am, which is an hour and 20mins from now. It takes me 20mins to get washed and dressed, 15mins to have breakfast and wash up from that. That means I have three quarters of an hour from having breakfast and showering to when I need to leave", and being able to keep track of time as we move through various tasks and distractions.
The challenges with this hidden "step" of "completely telling time" are often referred to as "time-blindness", which can kick in comprehensively, with a person struggling to parse how much time each of their core tasks will take, and thus ending up completely adrift, or partially - for example, someone may be very capable of keeping track of how long showering takes, but not even consider that they are unable to teleport, so not have any awareness that they can't leave at 9am if they need to be at the bus stop by 9am.
Time-blindness can result in neurodivergent people needing to be compassionately micromanaged when there is a fixed deadline - this is challenging for many managers, firstly because micromanaging is very much seen as bad management, and, secondly, because very few people know how to do it compassionately. The simplest explanation of "compassionate micromanagement" is to consider a sheepdog - it doesn't hate or resent the sheep; it could attack and kill them, but it instead channels that impulse into very precise direction. It doesn't fix errant sheep with a steely gaze, and stalk them into where they need to be because it's punishing them - it's keeping the sheep safe, and ensuring the shepherd achieves their "strategic objectives" - the sheepdog is a manager, the shepherd is executive leadership, and the sheep are the frontline team.
Intrigued by this quick overview of some basics of neurodiversity inclusion, and want to get tailored support to enable neurodivergent team members to thrive in your workplace? Drop us an email:
theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com
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