Leading a team can be hugely rewarding and helping then succeed through your guidance/mentoring and coaching can give you the ultimate job satisfaction. Following on from my previous article on supporting your team, you may find yourself in a place where you have team members who are neurodivergent and this can require a whole new set of tools and techniques. You may even not be aware of any of your team who identify as neurodivergent, and in this scenario, of course you would be none the wiser. But a good leader would ensure the support for each of their team is bespoke and specific to them and not a “cookie-cutter” approach to the whole team.
How to React If they Tell You
Firstly, be self aware! Think about what face you may be pulling, try to look interested, but the key aspect is don’t show pity or sorrow for the team member. They may be coming to terms with it themselves and the last thing they need is a “oh I’m so sorry to hear that”. Offer encouragement and solidarity for them. They will most likely not know at this stage what they need from you, unless they have been building up to this for a while. So the first suggestion would be to suggest that you both do some reading up on the condition and come together in a few days time and work on possibly two things:
- A plan for any alterations to ways of working
- A plan for how we would communicate to the rest of the team and any relevant stakeholders (if they wish to let anyone else know)
As the leader, genuinely take some time to learn what you can about how to support ADHD, Autism, Dyspraxia or whatever their neurodivergence is and think about what you can do to ensure you enable them to not be held back.
Supporting them Day to Day
As a leader of people, you should be checking in regularly with those you are responsible regularly. It may be that after the initial discussion where they disclosed their neurodivergence to you that you check in more regularly to understand how they are coping, not just physically but mentally too as they may be at a stage of realisation of some of the “quirks” they thought they had are all suddenly making more sense.
There may be a need to suggest they look at their calendars and add some breaks into their day. You may need to suggest they look at what meetings they attend to avoid too much context switching. You may also want to give them a heads up early if meetings are changing or a change to the routine of the day is happening (maybe a fire drill etc – if you’re in an office and not at home).
Ask them if there is anything they need? It may be they need some ear defenders or noise cancelling headphones. Allow them to find ones that are right for them and if possible ensure the company covers the cost (possibly a chance to show equality across the team and enable anyone who needs them to get them).
Where possible, look at limiting the need for multi-tasking. Grow an expectation that it is better to complete 1 task well before moving onto the next and have regular discussions about priorities and help them shuffle their backlog.
Avoid pushing for instant responses to emails or instant messages, as they may be in the zone on one task and have not seen their messages. Encourage them to carve a time out during the day to go over their emails and messages and respond as necessary.
Encourage the use of flow charts and timetables next to their desk to remind them of key activities. Support with post-it notes too. I infact have a whiteboard next to my home desk for exactly these reasons.
Suggest they put movement breaks into their calendar and give them the power to reject meetings that clash with their routine breaks. Your support as their manager may be needed to back up any challenges they get for time. Speaking as a neurodivergent myself, if I can’t have my breaks at the time I set, it can be quite anxiety inducing as it will be ingrained in me that my breaks are at those times.
Deadlines can be a real challenge for those with certain neurodivergences such as Autism/ADHD, so work with them to define deadlines that work for them. Where possible, don’t impose deadlines without their input. Then coach them on strategies to break the work down into smaller chunks and milestones to get them to the end goal.
It might be about suggesting things like white noise apps, scheduling apps or voice-to-text software to help individuals. Also would recommend buddying them up with someone who may be better at organisation or time keeping and enable them to work together.
If you are together in the office, try to ensure the team can sit together and work together, but also enable employees to find a quiet space if they need to and keep it casual so that they don’t need to justify why they need a quiet space.
Communications
As everyone with neurodivergence is different, some of these may or may not apply, but it is also good for your own self-awareness to look at how you communicate with your whole team and others outside your team:
- Pause and Pace
- Remove unnecessary words (such as “I mean”, “actually”, “to be fair”)
- Think about disappearing sounds (“D’ya wanna”)
- Give clear instructions
- Short concise questions
- Think about whether you intend something to be a closed question (only requiring ‘Yes’ or ‘No’)
- Be specific with what you’re asking
- Start instructions by addressing the person
- Specific about times (not “later”, “ASAP” )
- Remove ambiguous language
- Think about your use of idioms (“pulling your leg” etc)
- Consider a more direct style without too much fluffy politeness
Productivity
It can sometimes be very easy to compare a neurodivergent team member to a neurotypical one and see a disparity in performance. This may be an unfair comparison and ultimately, rather than jumping to performance related conversations with the ND employee, it may be a case of looking at how they approach their work and considering the following:
- Have they been given enough information to enable them to do the tasks?
- Are there tasks or parts of the role which they are struggling with and how could you support them and the wider team to get the tasks done?
- Are there other roles or types of tasks which we could look at to incorporate into their role (once other parts have been removed)?
It helps if you can look holistically at what the team needs to deliver as a whole and then look at whether the individuals are set up to enable success. There isn’t a black and white answer here as everyone is different, but it’s key as the leader to open your mind to enable all team members to achieve. If you can set the role up for the ND individual effectively and give them the support they need, there would be less need for any kind of major performance management.
Should We Treat Them Differently?
It’s important that as a leader it doesn’t look like you are giving team members favouritism just because of their needs, this may create resentment in others, but it is important that everyone in your team feels like they have the support they need from you.
Some of the things mentioned above will help all members in the team if it can help build a more open culture across your team where everyone supports each other and everyone feels open to share their needs.
Unlocking the super powers in your team can be a really powerful way to help your team reach the stars.
Simon Prior 