About this talk
This talk covers the concept of neuroinclusion and how systems can be designed to accommodate neurodiverse individuals. Matthew Saunders, the speaker, emphasizes that neuroinclusion is not about fixing individuals but about improving organizational systems that often inadvertently exclude them. He discusses his own experiences with neurodiversity, including autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, and explains the significance of understanding strengths associated with different cognitive styles. The session also highlights the importance of universal design in creating environments that are accessible to everyone and explores concrete strategies for organizations to foster an inclusive culture. These include rethinking hiring practices, ensuring psychological safety, and maintaining clarity in expectations, all aimed at enhancing workplace performance by valuing cognitive diversity.
Full transcript
Well, hello. I am really glad to see such an amazing crowd here. This is this is fantastic. Um, welcome to Designing for Difference. I am incredibly grateful to be spending some time today with you and talk about something that's really close to my heart, which is neuroincclusion. Um, most of the images in this slide deck are decorative. For those that aren't, I'll explain the important parts. This
is the fourth talk in this series of talks that I've done about neurodiversity. You don't have to have seen the other talks. You have don't have to have attended those other talks in order to get something out uh you know valuable out of this one. So don't run out the door because this is number four. Um but they comprise uh the core of a book that I'm
currently writing with the working title of unmasking Today we're going to talk about how organizations can build systems that are neurinclusive. And that doesn't mean carving out a special class of people. It means designing for the largest number of people possible so everyone can wholly participate. My name is Matthew Saunders. I'm a white male. I'm wearing an Amaze AI t-shirt with a sport jacket on top. I
have a gray hair and I have got a gray beard. I currently work for Amaze.io IO as their AI ambassador and with Next for Autism as a mentor, advisor, and curriculum editor. I'm openly neurodeivergent. I'm autistic. I have ADHD and I'm dyslexic. For most of my early life, we did not use the word neurode divergent. We use the word disabled. And I qualified for formal uh accommodations
in Canada because my learning differences were considered severe enough to require government support. In 2019, I began speaking publicly about this journey in a talk called Pivot Points. That was at Drupal Con in Amsterdam. And that talk focused mostly on navigating a neurotypical world without fully understanding my own wiring. Later, uh, I gave a talk called my neurode divergent brain and most recently the neurode diverency superpower
where I made the case that neurody divergent minds are not deficits. their their assets. Diverse cognitive styles make teams stronger. Those talks were about lived experience, the economic need for companies to embrace neurodiverse workers and values. Those talks were community building talks and they were designed to break down silos. They were to let neurodiverse people know you're not alone. So, I'm going to assume that if you're
in this room right now, you already believe that neurodyiversity matters. You're either neurody diverent yourself or you're an ally. I'm also going to assume that you've moved beyond seeing this as just an ethical issue, although it really is. You understand that organizations need cognitive diversity to compete. They need difference. They need what I sometimes call spiciness that creates edge even when it feels uncomfortable. So today is
not about convincing you that nerd divergent people have value. It's not about whether it it's about whether your systems are designed to actually retain and unleash that value. Neurincclusion is not about fixing people. It's about fixing systems. So let's just start with what is neurodiversity or neurode divergence. Harvard health publishing's definition is neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in
many different ways. There's no one right way of thinking, learning, behaving and differences are not seen as deficits. So when we talk about a spectrum, we're talking about a vast variety of ways we are. And when I talk about these differences, I approach them from a strength-based lens rather than focusing on deficits. Each of these differences brings with them a host of strengths. For example, those on
on the autism spectrum are often known for concentration, fine detail process, topical obsessions. People with ADHD are often able to hyperfocus, are creative, um, and, uh, and and authentic. Dyslexics are visual learn thinkers and learners who are often also very creative so on. Sometimes this is called spiky profiles. In my previous talks I've spoken openly about being autistic, about ADHD, about dyslexia. I've talked about the strengths
that often come with those differences. But what I didn't talk about enough was masking. Masking is the act of suppressing or editing your natural cognitive and social style in order to fit expected norms. And for years, I've had senior leadership roles in large corporations in in big companies, enterprise scale work, crossf functional teams. I've made big decisions and I've performed well. I've delivered results. I've built teams
and launched giant initiatives. I've helped manage multi-million dollar budgets for projects that span multiple years. And I've built a reputation of pulling victory from the jaws of defeat. And I was masking. Before meetings, I rehearse my tone. During meetings, I monitor facial expressions, eye contact. After meetings, I replay conversations to decide whether I've been too direct. Sometimes after a meeting, I'll reach out to a trusted confidant
who's there and ask for feedback. And sometimes that leads to me apologizing to somebody because I've been too direct. I've been I've come across too harshly. So, I'm constantly running through scenarios to figure out the best possible path to the outcome that I think is optimal. My analysis and counsel has been valued in every job I've ever had in my career, but my delivery is often edited.
And nothing in my job description said, "Spend a third of your time uh cog cognitive energy managing perception." But that was the unspoken requirement. it was probably not understood as being a requirement because my bosses just didn't understand this. They didn't know. And really until I started speaking publicly about my own lived experience, I completely hid this struggle because I was scared of what the reaction would
be. So here's an uncomfortable question. If someone operating successfully at a senior level still had to mask constantly, what's happening to the analyst two levels down or the early career hire or or the person that simply doesn't have the stamina to perform all day? Until I started digging into these issues and learning from Dr. Prisova, Dr. Dunn, Nancy Doyle, Tanya Martin, Kalin Partllo, I thought masking was
a positive personality trait. Actually, to be truthful, I didn't even know what masking was. I didn't have a vocabulary for it. I just knew that I was doing something. But let me be clear, masking is not a positive personality trait. It's a structural tax that bleeds the person and the organization of value. When organizations reward conformity over style, over clarity of contribution, they quietly filter out difference.
And that is not inclusion. And it's exactly what poorly designed systems do. Masking costs energy. Constantly translating yourself costs energy. Monitoring tone costs energy. Trying to decode vague expectations costs energy. For neurodeivergent people, that energy drain compounds across the day. And when that tax becomes too high, people leave or they burn out. They simply stop contributing at their full capacity. Workplace culture and social expectations can be
tough and confusing. Unspoken rules, office politics, and networking pref uh pressure can be confusing and exhausting. Executive dysfunction, common with people who have ADHD or autism, can make time management, prioritization, deadline tracking challenging. And masking, masking to fit in can lead to burnout and anxiety. Dr. Dunn writes, "Nurody divergent people often engage in the arduous task of processing of an arduous task process of fitting in also
known as masking where enormous energy is expended through superficial impression management and deeply felt stress to hide neurode divergent traits. This is the pattern we see again and again. Masking creates friction. Friction creates exhaustion. Exhaustion leads to burnout and burnout leads to attrition. Organizations often just treat this as an individual resilience problem, but it's not. It's a design problem. And that brings us to the core idea
of this talk. Neuroincclusion is not about fixing people. It's about fixing systems. And if your systems require masking to succeed, they're poorly designed. 15 to 20% of the population is estimated to be neurodeiverse in some way. The CDC reports that one in 36 children are diagnosed with autism. Likewise, the CDC reports that 9.8% of children are diagnosed with ADHD. 20% of people have dyslexia. What this means
is that roughly 20% uh uh of the population is neurode divergent in some way. This means that one in five people you meet may be living in a world that's defined by systemic exclusion from opportunities to reach their full potential in our society. As an example, in grades seven and eight, uh, in an attempt to sort out my learning difficulties, but also cater the fact that I
was pretty bright, I ended up being enrolled in both the gifted uh, and talented program and the remedial program at the same time. Can you imagine what that does? Meant that I didn't fit in anywhere. Remedial kids didn't want to have anything to do with the brainiac. Uh, the the uh, the the kids in the Gizing program uh, called me things that were just awful. I didn't
I didn't have much in common with kids in regular classes either. I was bullied, teased. It was an extremely lonely time that ran all the way through high school for me. But that exclusion doesn't end after the playground, after high school, even after finishing university, because it's endemic to the way our system is set up. I was forced to comply to systems built for three different kinds
of youth that I didn't fit into at all. So what does better design actually look like then? And that's where universal design comes in. Universal design is a concept that involves designing products and environments to be usable by as many people as possible regardless of age, size, ability, or disability. The goal is to maximize usability without the need for specialized design or adaptation. Universal design can be
applied to many things including building, services, tools, learning strategies, and physical spaces. It focuses on equity in design. The idea is simple. Design environments so they work for as many people as possible from the start instead of forcing individuals to request accommodations later. And you've already experienced universal design in the physical world, curb cuts, automatic doors, closed captionings like the one in this presentation. These features were
originally designed to support specific groups of people, but once they existed, everyone benefited. Parents with strollers, people with heavy luggage, and people in loud environments. Universal design works because it removes friction and it helps the maximum number of people. The idea translates directly into organizations. Instead of designing systems for narrow set of behaviors and asking everyone to adapt, why don't we design systems that reduce friction for
the widest range of people possible? Because when we do that, we don't lower our standards, we just increase clarity. There are a few very positive results that occur almost immediately when an organiza organization starts applying universal design principles. The first thing that happens is it begins to solidify feelings of psychological safety. Team members feel safe to take risks, ask questions, express their thoughts without fear of ridicule
or punishment. For neurinclusive teams, this is even more critical because many nerdent individuals have experienced past exclusion, misunderstanding, or negative workplace interactions. And as this sense of safety settles in, a few key principles begin to naturally emerge. Neurlusive organizations are not built through awareness. They're built through system design. And in most organization organizations, three systems matter more than any others. Hiring, leadership practices, and team operations. So,
we're going to start with hiring Most organizations unintentionally screen out nerd talent before they are even hired. Dr. Ludm Miller Preslova writes, "Current hiring practices often rely on style over substance. Style-based hiring presents barriers for many neurode divergent job seekers and leads to shockingly high levels of unemployment. They aren't screened out because of their ability. They're screened out because of how hiring systems are designed. Many companies
use rigid application processes that prioritize social skills, eye contact, conventional communication over actual job performance. Unstructured interviews favor charisma and quick thinking over skills and work ethic. Applicant tracking systems applicant tracking systems may screen outnard divergent applicants due to non-traditional resumes or gaps in employment history. And even worse, they have no empathy. So, it doesn't really matter how talented that person might be. But none of those
things actually measure job performance. If your hiring process rewards comfort under social pressure, you're not measuring competence. You're measuring social fluency. Many neurode divergent people struggle with self-promo promotion and networking, which are critical for career advancement. Literal thinking and difficulty with abstract questions can make answering vague or hypothetical interview questions challenging. Dr. Preslova goes on to write, "Many autistic individuals have high levels of educational attainment and
skills and are more than capable of performing the work. However, few excel at making small talk with strangers. However, being hired for most of these jobs requires an interview and neuronative small talk expectations in the interview subject autistic applicants to style over substance negative judgments by evaluators quickly and largely outside their awareness that are then justified by the poor fit statement. The US has an overall unemployment
rate at hovering at about 4.4% right now. For those who are disabled in some way, we're talking about it could be cognitive, it could be physical like blindness, deafness, could be paraplegia, it could be any number of things, but that at that point um this for for all working adults regardless of education level that jumps to 7.2%. However, when you look at college graduates who are neurode
divergent in some way, it jumps to 30 to 40%. And when you look at those on the spectrum with a college degree, it jumps to a whopping 85%. Why do you think that is? Is it because neurode divergent people are inherently less talented? Is it because they have a poor work ethic? Our social inf infrastructure of customs, habits, institutional protocols and technologies creates a society that can
be hostile to people who are autistic, adders, dyslexic, depra, dyspraxics, synthesites, hyperlexic, dcalculic, tourettes and a host of other cognitive It can make it difficult for them to find meaningful work and whether you do find it difficult to keep. So simple things like lighting, noise, crowds, these can all feel pretty hostile. Um, for example, in this room, I can hear the constant buzzing of the of the
projector. I can actually hear the fluor fluorescent lights and it's very very difficult. They have a tone that just puts me on edge. So imagine that you're in an open uh concept office and every conversation around you distracts you and leads to a lack of focus and the noise becomes overwhelming. This stimulation can feel like hundreds of people asking you questions all at once. Imagine that crowd
around you feels like it's closing in and that you feel trapped and you can't escape. Simple things can feel like that. Now, imagine what happens when you start to add complex social interactions, unspoken rules that vary depending on context. Right? The rules that you have when you're in the office are different than the ones that you have at the at a conference. And they're different than the
ones that you have when you're when you're out with friends, uh, you know, from work at a bar or a restaurant. They're all different. So, you end up having pressures to perform on the spot when you process stimulation differently than other people. So, no wonder 40% of us are unemployed. And no wonder such a huge percentage of folks on the spectrum are left out because the system
as a whole filters us So we can redesign hiring systems. It's actually not that hard. You can provide interview questions up uh in advance. That is an amazing thing to do for everybody who's interviewing. It doesn't just help people who are neurode divergent. You can use structured interviews with consistent scoring. Include skills demonstrations or work samples. Write job descriptions around outcomes instead of personality and reduce the
reliance on culture fit. These changes don't lower standards, they improve signal quality. They help organizations measure what actually Hiring is when many people get filtered But even when the neurode divergent employee gets hired, the next challenge begins and that's how the team actually operates. So we're going to talk a little bit about team operations. Now I want to talk about friction. Many organizations run on implicit symbols
and they don't even realize it. So, I'm going to go through a few bullet points here, and I want you to think about, does this sound like any of your organizations? Meetings without agendas. Put up your hands. Yeah. Uh, decisions made inside conversations, right? Okay. How about vague deadlines? Uh-huh. Feedback delivered through implication. Unclear expectations around communication style. Right? This leaves teams guessing. Teams shouldn't run on
guesswork. The good news is again the solutions here aren't actually that complicated. Um many of the p practices practices that support neurode divergent people are simply examples of good system design. So you could do things like have clear meeting agendas. Don't have a meeting unless there's a clear meeting agenda. Written summaries of decisions, explicit definitions of what done means, async participation options for people who might find
it difficult to be in a Zoom call or be in a space with other and for for goodness sake document team These practices reduce cognitive task of interpretation. So people spend less time decoding the system and they spend more time contributing. But even well-designed teams can struggle if leadership behavior sends mixed signals. I want to say this again. These are not accommodations. What I'm talking about here
isn't accommodations. It's rebuilding a system that works for everyone. So perhaps the most important of these leadership practices because this is the part that determines when whether any of this happens because p because teams don't become clear on their own. They don't become predictable on their own. They don't become safe on their own. They behave exactly the way they are designed to behave. And if you haven't
designed it, it's going to behave however however the uh the leadership in your in your organization behaves uh to to to the folks in that organization. Leaders design them and many inclusion efforts fail because leadership behavior contradicts stated values. Leaders will say that they value diversity of thought but then they re reward confformity of style. Leaders say they value psychological sa safety but then they punish questions.
Leaders say they want innovation but they expect people to read the room. If feedback depends on reading between the lines, it's not feedback, it's politics. So neuroin inclusive leadership includes outcomebased performance evaluations, explicit promotion criteria, clear communication expectations, direct feedback cultures, and permission to ask clarifying questions. Psychological safety is not a personal personality trait of a team. It's a system reinforced by leadership behavior. When organizations design
hiring team operations, leadership systems this way, something really powerful happens. You remove the need for constant You reduce friction. You allow for different cognitive styles to contribute fully. And that leads directly to Back in 2019 when I started doing these talks, I was most concerned about using my lived experience to let people know that they weren't alone. I talked explicitly about my journey as an often confused
neurode divergent person who didn't have the vocabulary or structured tools to navigate in a neur neurotypical world. Those talks were designed to give people hope. Um, my second talk was designed to help people understand the kinds of tools and strategies that I was able to create, construct on my own that helped me become a confident and I believe successful uh believe successfully navigate that neurotypical world. Last
year, my talk was designed to make the argument that companies and organizations needed to make a shift to embracing neurodiversity for survival and advantage. And this has brought me to a this thesis a thesis that inclusion is not a personality trait. It's system architecture. Neurinclusive teams don't emerge emerge accidentally. They're designed. [clears throat] That system architecture is supported by leaders. And there are three leadership behaviors that
matter most. The first is The second is predictability. And the third is psychological safety. Culture is not what leaders say, it's what the system rewards. So, let's start with probably the simplest uh concept of these three. Clarity. Most teams believe they're clear. No, they're not. Most teams are not clear. They may seem consistent. They might seem familiar, but they are not clear. Clarity means that expectations are
explicit. No one should have to sort out expectations that are implied or inferred. If we need to sort out expectations through trial and error, Most organizations actually define success through a social lens. A neurotypical per person will figure out that by watching who gets rewarded. They'll listen for tone. And that works great if you're wired that way. But if you're not, you're burning cognitive energy just trying
to decode what's expected. When I finished high school, I wasn't ready to go to university. I didn't understand people well. They didn't understand me. I mis I misinterpreted intentions all the time. Led to my being lonely, bullied like I was talking uh about earlier. I was alone largely without a tribe. And I was baffled, absolutely baffled by how people reacted to me. So I wanted to figure
out the why. What was I missing? And ultimately what worked for me was in the moment journaling. So I literally every time I had an interaction with a person, I would write down what happened, what I did, what that person did, what the what the uh what the outcome was, and I would start to try to figure out, is this a good outcome? Is this a bad
outcome? And I just kept on documenting and documenting and documenting. I kept that small notebook with me. Um I probably have five or six of them at this point for a significant time and it helped me figure out cause and effect. So I needed to pinpoint why why in those interactions I felt angry or happy or sad. And I literally delayed going to university until I was
20 because I needed to figure out as much as I could. Uh I needed to figure out and identify those self-destructive behaviors that made it really difficult for me to function. Um and I began short circuiting them. I used reason rather than instinct. And this was my first real exercise in consciously masking. I hacked myself. Even today, when I'm in a new social group or a job,
I take the time to journal my interactions with people. I learn by collecting data and adapting how I should behave. I modify my behavior to match that new environment. And that journaling uh evolved into a system I use today that I call the contextual person framework. I'm going to show you a mini version of this because the big one is ridiculous. U this is a simple simplified
version of my worksheet which uh that worksheet has got roughly 40 rows in it. Um so we're just going to go through a little bit of this but let's say that we're talking talk what you'll see across the top is category observation prompt what you notice interpretation possible adjustment. Then you see down the left side which are the categories energy and state communication style social expectations thinking
style and my adjustment. All right. So, energy and state. What What do we notice? You might notice that somebody that somebody that you're engaged with is energized or engaged. Maybe they're neutral. Maybe they're just going through the motions. Maybe they're disengaged. Maybe they're distant. So, when you're looking at that, after you figure out what you notice, you might you might uh you might uh start to go
into your interpretation and think about adjusting or matching your energy levels. One possible adjustment could be okay, I'm going to I'm going to have lower energy levels and I'm going to observe see what happens and see whether I need to keep keep uh um going through that cycle of of uh of making making this interaction better. All right, I got a question for the room. Who thinks
this is a great idea? All right, who thinks this is a terrible Okay, fair. Fair. I I actually don't know whether it's a great idea or a terrible idea, but it was self-preservation and it still is. It's a masking tool, though. And remember, I said at the very beginning, trait. It's a survival mechanism, but it's not a positive uh uh personality All right? So, also imagine how
exhausting this is, right? Um, a year ago roughly, I started a in a started working for a new company, Amaze, and I had 50 people that I needed to figure out like it. And lucky for me, it's an incredibly uh neurlive company, and it made it easy on me. But every new job, every new sort of social interaction, every one of them, I go through this process.
Also, be aware that most neurode divergent people are doing this all the time. even if they haven't gone to the point like I have of building a framework. And by the way, if anybody wants a copy of the worksheet, I am absolutely happy to share it. It's in Google Google Drive and I'll I'll make it public. Um, but we're labeled as high functioning, which is kind of
like really you calling me high, but really what we are is high masking. we pay the cost of the cognitive instructional tax in an organization that's designed to be inclusive. This isn't needed. So, this sort of brings me back to the topic at hand. We were talking about clarity, right? Um, and this demonstration was simply to express the day-to-day chaos neurody divergent people experience isn't clear. So,
how can we be clear? What could that look like? We need to define work in advance. What does what does done mean for a set of tasks? What does good look like? What matters most? Is it speed? Is it quality? Is it collaboration? Something else? I think it's super important to understand that clarity doesn't mean removing flexibility, but what it should do is remove When expectations are
explicit, people spend less time interpreting the system and more time contributing to it. That's not just better for neurody divergent people. It's better for everybody. No one likes stumbling around in a fog of unclean unclearness. Clarity answers questions like what does success look like? Predictability answers a different set of questions. What happens next? In a lot of organizations that uh that that answer is also really really
unclear. Decisions happen in side conversations. Priorities shift without explanation. Processes exist but only some people know how they actually work. This means that people start trying to track the system. Who do I need to talk to? How do I get this approved? Who why did that decision get made? And if you're if you're wired to read those patterns, you actually adapt pretty well. But if you're not,
you spend a ton of cognitive energy trying to reverse engineer the organization. So if you thought my people context framework was exhausting, imagine applying decision-m with lots of people on top of that. In a lot of organizations, people are not walking on a path of predictability. They're trying to figure out where the path even is. And that creates unnecessary friction. And sometimes that friction can turn into
conflict. And in times of conflict, who's the person that comes out on top? It's the one that fits in the best. Predictability is not rigid, but it is about making systems, people, and tasks all visible to the entire team. When we make it completely clear, we understand how decisions are made, who is involved, what are the steps, what's the timeline. When these things are visible, people don't
have to guess. They can plan, prioritize, and contribute with confidence. And once again, this is not about neurodeivergent people. Inclusive systems help everyone. Unpredictable systems slow everyone down. And that leads us to psychological We first need to understand what psychological safety means. So team members need to feel safe to take risks, ask questions and express thoughts without fear of ridic ridicule or neurode divergent individuals have experienced
past uh exclusion, misunderstandings or negative workplace interactions. By fostering psychological safety, companies unlock creativity, innovation, and productivity while making sure every team member thrives. The Gifts of Imperfection is a self-help book by Dr. Bnee Brown. Read it. It is so so good. She's a research professor known for her work on vulnerability, courage, shame, authenticity. And she writes, "Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who
you need to be." Word is really important. who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we Traditional work environments don't support neurode divergent people to be who they are. Psychological safety is not about comfort. It's not about coddling. It's not about infatilizing team members. It's about support. It's about
whether it's safe to struggle, whether it's safe to ask for help, whether it's safe to say, "I don't have this yet." Because if it's not safe, people don't stop contributing, but they start hiding where they're struggling. And that's where masking lives. So, how do we solve this problem? There are a few things that you can do. The first is foster a culture of respect and understanding. Educate
the team on neurodiversity by providing neurodiversity awareness training so colleagues can understand cognitive Set the expectation of inclusion. Make it clear that think all thinking styles are valued and lead with empathy. Encourage managers and team leads to listen first. Seek to understand. If you're a leader of a neuroinclusive team, make it clear that on this team we recognize that everyone processes information differently. Let's make sure everybody's
voice is heard. Provide multiple ways of communicating. Some neurode divergent people prefer writing over speaking. Others need extra processing time. Allow for anonymous feedback because some team members initially may not feel um but they may feel safe giving input anonymously. Give extra processing time. So in instead of expecting immediate responses in team in meetings, allow for time for thought for for follow-up thoughts via email or chat.
So instead of putting someone on the spot in a meeting, a leader might say take some time to think about this and share your thoughts in Slack later. Create low sensory flexible work environments. Reduce sensory overload. Offer quiet spaces, noise cancelling headphones, remote work options. Respect work preferences. Allow for flexible schedules when possible. You may have a situation where an ADHD um employee might work better at
certain times. Um offer alternative meeting formats. Some back-to-back video calls. So maybe you can provide the option of asynchronous updates instead. Help your company create a neuroinclusive workspace by adjust by offering adjustable lighting and sensory friendly breakout areas. Sensory rooms are actually really good for everyone. Embrace strengthbased uh collaboration. So focus on what people do well. Assign tasks based on individual strengths rather than forcing everyone into
the same workflow. Allow different thinking and work working styles. Some thrive on detailed structures while others excel with big picture problem solving. Encourage mentorship and buddy systems. They're great. Don't force an ADHD worker into rigid processes. A neurinclusive manager allows creative problem solving using uh different ways of approaching tasks and model psychological safety as a leader. [clears throat] Normalize mistakes. Show that making mistakes is part of
learning. Encourage questions. Make it clear that there are no bad questions. Reinforce inclusive behavior. So call out positive team interactions when somebody makes an effort to be inclusive. An inclusive leader will openly say, "I didn't consider that perspective. Thank you for bringing it up to to encourage diverse viewpoints and implement clear inclusive policies. Provide reasonably uh reasonable accommodations without stigma. Make it easy for all employees to
request accommodations uh without fear. Like for example, you can just say everybody can have noise cancelling headphones. Make that easy. Like just don't don't make don't call people out because that's something that they're looking to use or sunglasses because they're they because they they find the lighting difficult to be around. Like there all kinds of things that can be done that are super super easy. Promote or
hire neurode divergent employees into decisionmaking roles and include neurodiversity in DEI strategies. Treat neur inclusion as a core part of your diversity efforts, not as an afterthought. When we design organizations this way, we're not creating special rules for neurode divergent people. We're creating environments where cognitive diversity can actually function. This means designing systems that support different communication styles and processing speeds. Other ways of interacting with information
and data. Organizations who do this intentionally notice something interesting happens. team strengthen because you're no longer selecting for narrow behavioral styles. You're selecting for contribution. So, let's close this by refraraming this a little bit because inclusion is often positioned as an ethical obligation. And make no mistake, it is. But if that's the only frame you use, it will always be deprioritized. Like it or not, in most
organizations, ethics competes with performance and performance nearly always wins. So I challenge you to look at this differently. Everything we talked about today, clarity, predictability, psychological safety, none of those things are actually inclusion strategies. They are performance Clear expectations improve execution. Predictable processes improve speed and coordination. Psychological safety improves problem solving and decision-m what nerdent people experience first. Everyone eventually feels when design for nerd when you
design for nerdent people you're not narrowing your system you're strengthening it. It's not about accommodating difference. It's about removing friction. And organizations that remove friction move faster make better decisions and retain better people. I'll leave this with you. If your systems only work for one type of mind, they are not high performing systems. Thanks for your time and attention today. I really really appreciate it. And um
I think we've got time for some questions. Yeah. Yeah. I think we got a little bit of time. What time are we supposed to go till? >> 220. >> 2:20. >> 2:20. Okay. We got a little bit of time for for questions. And I'm just going to go to this next slide um because this is the source material that uh that uh that I used and uh
these uh these authors are awesome uh and encourage you to uh to buy their books and and uh read them and I'll make these slides available online for folks. So questions anybody got questions for me? Yeah. >> Yes. Thanks. Um you you've talked about working in large scale organizations. Um do you have any tips or advice for folks who are working on small teams amidst you know
multi levels of team college university for example uh where you're not always guaranteed to get the leadership to behave the way you want at the higher >> Yeah. I think the lower level. >> I I the question was um how do you how do you uh and I'm going to paraphrase this so if I get it wrong um um you know throw your hand up and and
I'll try to do it I'll try to say it better but what I what I'm hearing is what happens when you're in in multi-tered organizations where where leadership itself is kind of not so great in this place. How do you how do you how do you um how do you deal with that at lower levels in the organization? Is that right? >> Okay. Yeah. So, I think
I think when you're talking about different tiers, um, each of those tiers is going to have their own I I hate this word because I think it's just terrible, but they're going to have their own hierarchy, right? They're going to be some people who naturally become leaders within that uh within that tier. And you can only control the things that happen within your immediate sphere, right? So,
you can you can model these kinds of behaviors at any level of a of an organization. What I'm what I will say is that almost never do things filter up, right? It's almost always filtering down. Um so so you may find yourself if the if leadership the the highest level of leadership in the organization isn't interested in in uh in inclusivity and uh and uh isn't interested
in neurodiversity and so on that they they you you may find yourself in a place where you just don't want to be. Um but uh but that's what I would recommend. Start by start in the in the space that you can actually control. Other questions really. Yeah. Um so I mean there were there have so many comments I want to make. It was great talk. >> Um
so you were talking about um like making it clear what what requirements are to get promoted. Um, it made me think of like how how difficult it is to talk about salary. I think for anybody. Yeah. >> But probably for nerd divergent people even harder to to preach that subject. >> Um, >> do you have thoughts about that? I know some companies have like open public uh
like you know you can look up how how much everybody makes. Um, >> most companies don't do that. >> I know. >> Um, and and there are a variety of different reasons. Um um not the least of which uh um if you open that kind of stuff up, you have a situation where um unfortunately most women will find that they're earning 30% less than the men for
the same job. >> Like companies don't want to don't want that that that information to be opened up. And in fact, in some companies, your contract explicitly forbids you to talk about salary to anybody else in the company because they do not want that kind of friction. Um, a company's natural state of being is to want to pay as little as they can for the work that
needs to get done. [clears throat] Um, and uh um uh I think it's important for you as a as a as an individual to know what your value is. You may have to compare to other other uh other companies. You may need to, you know, sort of get a sense of what the what the uh the going rate is for the kind of work that you do
at the level that you that you that you work at in the region that you're in. Um and maybe that's the way that you open up that conversation. they are pretty challenging. Um and uh and uh and uh and a big part of it is because um neurodiverse people tend to be um uh conflict and risk averse and that immediately feels like a uh like a uh
like a conversation that could turn into conflict. Um uh but I I think I think it is worth talking about you know with your with your boss assuming your boss is uh is an open kind um person with with empathy. Um just what your value is right um and uh and that can start as sort of a more touchyfey kind of uh kind of conversation rather than
conversation around compensation. But I think it's totally fair each year to have a conversation about compensation. At very least, you should be you should be uh um getting getting um increases that match uh inflation, right? But it should probably be more than that. Um so I don't have a really good answer. Uh but the way that I would probably start it is to have have conversations about
what your value is and how it fits within the organization. um and and maybe not immediately about compensation and feel out how how that feels with the with your manager because your manager may be very open to having that conversation. You just don't know. And like at an organizational level, you're talking about like designing designing the system. And this is like Yeah, you could have a one-on-one
conversation to figure it out for you. >> Yeah. I mean, if if I were designing the organization, I would make all salary levels um completely completely transparent. Um what's the what's the low, middle, and high for a given pay grade? and and uh um you know, make it clear when I hire somebody into into you know, maybe a manager position, we're going to try to start you
at the lower level because we want you to be able to grow up to up to the up to that highest level during that period of time that you're in a man you're a manager. Um because we don't want to be in a position where the only way to give you a pay pay increase is to move you from manager to senior manager if if there isn't
headcount for that, right? Um so so I think a big part of that is figuring out how how do you how do you build out that scale and how do you make it easier for people to uh to understand um what the expectations are. I think that's a big part of it, right? Expectation management. >> Any other questions? >> So this is like zooming in on something
specific you said um with hiring practices you're suggesting providing questions in advance. >> Um my immediate thought of the push back to that is okay well then people will ask chat GPT and get a perfect answer and then they'll have that script and ready to go. >> Okay. So the the the uh the observation was that if we give questions in advance uh maybe people will use
chat GPT for the per perfect answer and uh and go from there. Well, I mean, in the old days, they might have gone to a dictionary, right? They might have gone to they might have gone to the web and uh and tried to uh tried to figure out what the what the best answer is. I'm going to say this. Chat GPT is awesome at giving you the
most average answer So if if you're looking to to excel, chat GBT probably isn't the best place to start, but maybe a place to actually start doing the research. Like maybe it's a good place for you to start um groing what what that best answer might be, but don't ever ever use chat GPT as the as the as the definitive answer for anything. Yeah. But yeah, I
I I I get that. But here's the thing. If you're if you're giving the adv answers in ad in advance, it means that people are who are uh neuronormative neurotypical have a chance have an equal amount of chance to think about how would I answer that question and you can make that the questions a lot tougher. >> Um you know when you when you when you go
into those kinds of situations and you can really dig into whether somebody really understands something or not. Um, I feel like when when uh when you're in most interviews, it's almost like a gotcha kind of thing, right? Did you answer the question right? I gotcha. Right. Like it it feels like that, which I don't know. That feels pretty icky to >> Um, just to go off of
that comment, we often at my organization share interview questions and I was just on a panel a couple weeks ago and um, we could tell you using >> And like some people, you know, clearly everybody everyone had the questions 24 hours in advance and was able to prep and I think everybody did better. Some people used chat and did not do well. But it wasn't like >>
I didn't feel tricked. You know, we felt like, oh, some people really prepared and brought thoughtful answers and some people just use a lot of buzz words. >> And they're like, they don't know what they're talking about. They're just saying words. So, >> um Yeah, it not really a question but just to add on to >> so so there the comment was um there's a lady in
the back here whose company was just going through interviews and they had provided the answers rather the questions 24 hours in advance and uh it just made for for uh for clearer clearer uh conversations with uh with prospective employees and they could tell which ones were were uh trying to game the system using something like chat chat GPT because all they were getting is jargon and buzzwords
that uh that didn't show an actual understanding of the uh of the of the concepts that were being asked. And I think that's completely fair, right? Like I I think that um uh if you're smart, you you you uh you'll you'll prepare prepare for an interview anyway, right? You'll spend time looking at the company, figuring out what the company's values are. Um, I'll usually take a look
at the board of directors, figure out uh figure out whether those values are going to match my own values or not. Um um and uh and uh you know, you you look at their mission, you look at the the anything in public that relates to the job that you're applying for. Um and that makes a huge difference when you when you get into those interviews. But um
if you if if we if we give people questions, they know what we're looking for, right? They know they they they're they're being given a very clear path. This is what we want. And and I I I don't know that seems we we want to do we do that with our kids, right? We do that. It's it's it's it's not an unreasonable It's not an unreasonable thing
to do. >> You had your hand up first. >> Um I have a question about navigating and accommodating like variety of communication skills. >> So, we have some people on our team who in a inerson meeting will stay quiet, but then they'll hop on Slack and be very comfortable getting their opinions out on Slack. >> Yep. >> I'm the other way. I feel more comfortable speaking verbally
and then we get on Slack and I start and then I rewrite and then I reorder and then by that time the whole conversation's gone by. Yeah. >> And there's no point in hitting at that point. So, like How what what success have you had with like navigating >> at the same level or different levels people with with very different communication skills? >> So the the the
the initial comment for the question was um um some people are way more comfortable in in something like Slack uh versus verbal and vice versa. And those who are more in or are more comfortable with verbal verbal communication often find themselves um um falling behind when they are uh in Slack conversations. And how do you how do you uh navigate that? Um so there are a couple
of things. Um you can set up norms within your within your organization that each each that people should not put a wall of text in Slack, right? Um, I've been in situations where it's clear somebody has spent 20 minutes putting together a Slack message, uh, maybe maybe in in in in Google Docs or in textbad or something and they've just grabbed it, copied it, and pasted it
in. And that is incredibly difficult for people to actually actually navigate. So, in most in most organizations that I've worked with um recently that deal with with uh with chatbased communication, um there's a there's a set there's a set expectation. One paragraph, that's it. And and if you've got something more to add to it, then you write the next paragraph. >> And if you've got something more,
write the next paragraph. Behave as you would speak. don't don't uh don't just sort of vomit everything out in a single in a single message. Um because that people people don't have the have the uh the uh attention span uh let alone the time to to get through that. So I think the shorter the smaller the more concise you can get um the easier it'll be for
for uh for a person like yourself that would pre prefer to be uh speaking. I would also say this, don't overthink your uh your answers, right? Like um it's it's okay to have spelling errors and it's okay for for for for uh for there to be a little mistake. You know, you can always go back and do a quick edit if you need to. Um but don't
be don't be don't be focused entirely on getting it perfect because it's it's not worth your time, right? It really isn't. If you can get the idea across without being a jerk, that's that's the goal. >> That's true. But it's easier said than done, right? >> Yeah. practice it. >> You could you could [clears throat] actually practice it with well chat GPT. >> Thank you. >> So,
you talked uh about about like the history of masking throughout your career. >> what does it look like for you now? >> I'm masking all the time. >> Yeah. So, so for example, remember how you and I had dinner um in uh I think it was Florida, right? >> Uh >> was it Florida? Providence. >> Was it Providence? Okay. Um, so so um you you probably noticed
that I was the first person at the restaurant. >> You know why I was the first person at the restaurant? >> Because I needed to uh scope out the space. I need to figure out what uh what uh what the space sounded like where where different uh different um distractions were going to be coming from. I had to figure out how I was going to navigate those
conversations. I also sat myself in the middle of the table because uh for me if I'm on one end uh I've got I've got tonitis and uh and hearing hearing loss from chemotherapy when I was uh in my 20s and uh I I need to be I need to be in a space in a place where I can actually manage to um uh uh process all of
the things that are going on around me. U but even when I get into those situations like I didn't go out with you guys after that. I went back to my hotel room. Why? because I was done, right? I I I had used all my spoons. I had none left. And it's not because I didn't like y'all. I did just I just needed to needed to not
be in a in a big noisy environment any longer. So, yeah, I'm >> That was very helpful. Thank you. >> All right. I think I need to give up the podium. Uh but thank you so much for everybody everybody for coming. Really appreciate it. [applause]
