Creating Neurodiversity-Friendly Work Cultures: Simple Workplace Adjustments Matter

And I do want to point out, if you ask neurodivergent people what is the one thing that makes the biggest difference in whether or not they're going to thrive at work or not, if we could just do a titch more of that, it would have a huge effect on our world. Because, you know, if you say it's really hard for me to do meetings before 8:00 AM, I'm just not on, you know, firing on all cylinders, knowing that and asking for it and having a counterpart at work or at school or whatever who says, How about we start at 8:30? You know, could make the difference. Or, you know, I'm no good after lunch, or I can't go back to back online all day. I need a break. And so I really want to start to normalize just being willing to give a little to help make other— our counterparts shine more.

I would love us to talk about what we can do in the workplace as managers, as neurodiverse people, as neurotypical people, what do we do here?

But if you can minimize the— we're picking on 8 AM meetings here, but if you could minimize the thing that makes you perform the least bad, whether that's have fewer 8 AM meetings, not have a job that has 8 AM meetings, etc., it makes a huge difference. And I do want to point out, if you ask neurodivergent people what is the one thing that makes the biggest difference in whether or not they're going to thrive at work or not, It's their manager. And so if you lead people, just go in with a mindset of being a bit more open, that things might be harder for them than they are for you. Be curious about how people shine and thrive. Normalize having that conversation in the office and be willing to be a touch more flexible. The research shows that the accommodations in the workplace that enable someone to be much more effective cost less than $500. No one's asking to work from Fiji. We're talking about noise-canceling headphones, a cadence in the day that's maybe not quite so back to back. So some recovery time, things that are perfectly reasonable if you're a reasonable person.