I’m commonly told I’m brave for speaking up about neurodiversity and autism.
To me, it’s not brave. The feedback, if anything, is confusing.
I speak up because as a society we are needlessly wasting huge amounts of human potential. And organizations are missing out on much-needed skills and traits.
In being diagnosed after 37 years in leadership across the military, Fortune 100 companies and entrepreneurship, the patterns for what works and doesn’t seem obvious now.
In elementary school, I was completely mute in kindergarten and selectively mute until third grade. The classroom environment wasn’t right and often spent time alone in the nurses office to calm my nervous system. The nurse was kind and maybe more importantly, she didn’t try to fix me. She created a psychologically safe space for my nervous system to regulate.
Without her, I think it could have gone very bad for me.
In my experience, being undiagnosed autistic is being told by nearly everyone in authority (my mom, neighbors, teachers, managers) that my way of doing things was wrong. Lack of eye contact. Not responding properly when someone talked to me, etc.
Over time this takes a toll.
And it extends into adulthood and the workplace.
I now see that no one was being evil. They were coaching/correcting me to fit in with how their brains work assuming mine was the same.
I call this the Projection Fallacy, which is the assumption that we each experience things the same and the systems are designed as if we are.
If the system is designed for you, you don’t see where it creates headwinds and barriers for others. You really only clearly see the hierarchies where you are at the bottom.
Just look at executive leadership at many organizations and you can see who the systems work for and more importantly, look who is not represented.
The system is elegant in that it creates a team where culture fit means people like us and those who are different are filtered out to where no one is like them in the room where decisions are made.
Take the interview process. It is designed for a certain profile which plays to the greatest weaknesses of an autistic person. Ironically, it plays to the strengths of toxic and narcissistic people who I would suggest should never be in charge of anyone.
The fixes are quite simple. Make the systems explicit.
For an interview this includes providing an interview schedule, the questions ahead of time and removing eye contact, presence, etc from the scoring. Research shows structured interviews like this as being much more effective.
None of us chose where we fall on any social hierarchy. Or how our brains are wired.
Evolving to structured interviews reduces the impact on the performance aspect of an interview and places more emphasis on the ability to do the job.
Isn’t that the purpose of the job interview?
Sadly, it’s more often the case the interview process is more like the question that was asked in choosing a President: who would you rather have a beer with?
He’s a blast at the company party, let’s give him the economy and nuclear codes!
None of us chose our brains or that they run on ancient software. Neurotypical people have been shown to subconsciously make negative assumptions of autistic people within seconds of meeting us. We are instantly classified as being in the out-group.
Research shows that when neurotypical people reviewed the transcripts of what autistic people have to say the negative views disappear.
Removing the implicit aspects is the only way to overcome our biology and subconscious automatic bias.
I navigated a career where I didn’t understand myself however was successful because I built environments that worked for my nervous system.
Psychological safety the nurse taught me has been invaluable as has been explicit systems.
It turns out they work better for nearly everyone.