Rebranding the Brain With Neurodiversity Expert Dave Thompson

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2:31What if you got to design your ideal workplace from the ground up, from the lights in the bathroom to the colors on the wall to the when, how, why, where and what of what you did every day? Well, my guest today got to do just that. And he helped design a business for people working there who are neurodivergent, and many of whom had quite high needs. What he learned creating that social enterprise, which went on to become hugely successful, has informed his life's work. and also through his work consulting and guiding other companies, how many other businesses from very, very big to small social enterprises create workplaces that work for everyone.

3:25I'm Maura Ahrens-Mele, and this is The Anxious Achiever. And today we've got Dave Thompson, who is author of the great new book, Brainstorm. Dave is a visiting scholar at the Frist Center for Autism at Vanderbilt University. He's the third guest from the Frist Center on the show. I just can't get enough of them. They're so smart. We've got, in previous episodes, Dr. Kayvon Stassen and Dr. Jessica Shonhot-Stasik recently. Dave has ADHD and dyslexia. He, like many of us, grew up feeling like he had been raised as a person who couldn't do all the things. But through his life experience, through his transformational work, he can and does and has so much to teach everybody about how to create workplaces that bring out the best in us, no matter what our neurotype is.

4:29So I hope you enjoy this really funny and warm and super duper helpful conversation on designing work that works with Dave Thompson.

4:42David, so good to have you on the show. It is an honor. I am a longtime fan and first time caller. I was thrilled that you reached out. Thanks for having me on. um well you know i uh i love your book i love i love your linkedin presence i love your drawing i love everything about how you talk about neurodiversity and neurodivergence at work and um i wanted to i wanted to ask you a question one of the things that really resonated with me in your book brainstorm is right up front you're kind of like i'm not a scholar i'm not a clinician I'm not a doctor, but I'm kind of an expert. And I have so much imposter syndrome around this stuff.

5:29Maybe it's because I live in Boston and everyone here has 10 PhDs, but I loved how you opened the book with that strong statement. Why did you start the book with that statement of who you are? Well, yeah, I think it's important to talk about who you are and who you're not, right? One of the most empowering things about taking a strengths-based approach to thinking differently is making peace with some of my gaps, right? And it's funny you mentioned scholar because since I finished the book, I am now a visiting scholar at the Vanderbilt's First Center for Autism and Innovation. You are a scholar.

6:08Yes, I am quite literally a scholar on paper now. But yeah, I think, you know, it's equally empowering to say, you know, I don't do spreadsheets and I don't want to do payroll. And I've been blessed for the last 15 years or so to write my own job descriptions and talk about who I am and who I'm not. And, you know, what's interesting about this movement, I've been involved in neuroinclusive employment since before we were really even using the word neurodiversity or neuroinclusive. and I've evolved along with it, but we've all come at it from such different angles, like the kind of main street mission-driven social enterprises that have been started by, you know, eager self-advocates and mostly parents with some social and financial capital who don't want to give up on, you know, on their kids just because the world of work didn't work for them.

7:01And then, you know, folks that come into this identity later in life and otherwise have very successful careers in certain areas and use those skills and connections, you know, leverage those to change the world of work. And I have colleagues, you know, my boss at Vanderbilt is an astronomer. And you had Dr. Stassen on the show and Dr. Jess as well. And I work alongside people with their master's in public policy and organizational psychologists. And so my position within all of this is a, of course, lived experience, but B, that I've been doing this stuff boots on the ground, you know, from the ground up for a long time.

7:43And I'm good at it because of how I think not in spite of it. And so yeah, I think I like to own what I am not just as much as I own what I am. I love that so much. I have a whole chapter in the book about owning what you're bad at. And one of my famous quotes is from Francis Fry at Harvard Business School, who also identifies as neurodivergent. And she's like, you know, we have to own what we're bad at so we can be incredible. You know, I call it being kind of boldly bad. And one of the things that comes across so powerfully in your book is that, you know, we don't have to be superheroes to be great at our jobs.

8:32We don't have to be superheroes to be worthy of respect and care and attention as neurodivergent people. And that often we are sort of valued, maybe not those of us who sort of like mask as normal or typical, but like people who are sort of in neurodiversity work programs and sort of, you know, have been brought into the workplace in that way are often used as symbols and tokens and celebrated more for why they're there theoretically than what they're good at. Talk about how you came to that position and why it's so important to talk about. Yeah, I think it's a critical part of this conversation.

9:20Everyone enters this conversation as a beginner, right? And usually that's because of an inspiring news story, maybe in April, right? And it's like, you know, local man defies the odds. And even though oh, blah, blah, blah. He managed to start a, you know, a soup business or whatever. And we want to focus more on changing. Our friend Haley, who is, who was like the first autistic lawyer called to the bar in Florida or something like that. Exactly. And so, you know, we want to focus more on changing the odds and less on people who managed to operate within systems that weren't designed with that mid-mind, right?

10:02And so I see it as two different things, kind of the tokenism inspiration porn thing, which is like, look how cute this employment opportunity is, or look how cute this, or inspiring this story is that even though this person is non-speaking or has certain access barriers that they managed to blah, Or we do, you know, we're clapping for the people who give them the opportunity more than we're celebrating their actual strengths. And then on the other side of that is more of like the Haley narrative, which is, and I've been a friend of Haley Moss's for a long time, which is that whole superpower thing.

10:49And what I say in the book is there's a doodle of a woman who's kind of based on Haley because we've had a lot of these conversations. But it's it's someone with a cape on their back, but it's attached to a flagpole. And it says a cape you didn't ask for is a red flag. Right. So, you know, disability, superpower, whatever. I don't care how people identify individually, but don't put don't put limits on us. And that's what happened to me growing up. I mean, more, I had more barriers that were external to me and put on me because of presumed incompetence and being raised through this, you know, deficit based model than what was actually going on in my brain, you know.

11:30So, um, and when, when you, it was never the superpower thing though, by the way. Um, but, but what other underrepresented historically marginalized group would we ever do that to where we say, listen, you got to get some of these blank people over here because they're going to work 10 times as fast. They're going to work 24 hours straight. They're going to cure cancer overnight. They're going to invent the next big app. And it's like, you know, if we're really seeking to include people, don't raise the bar for those people. We want it at the same height. You know, we might want to change the bar and widen the door for everybody.

12:09But that doesn't, basing it on these often imaginary, you know, superhuman strengths is no good. And it's no good for a wide majority of the neurodiversion population. A lot of us are worker bees. Let us come in and do okay, like everybody else, you know, like, let us be mediocre. Right, right. And to take that a step further, then, you know, so much of this conversation is about the why for for businesses. And I say that it's right, of course, it's right, you know, but and it's also smart. But it's not smart based on the performance of individual contributors. It's not that, hey, let's put 10 butts in seats in our cybersecurity department, because blah, blah, blah.

12:52It's that when you adopt these, when you design around everyone, when you adopt these best practices, and you provide that environment to everybody, then yeah, productivity and engagement and innovation and all of the good things we want to see, they all go up, but they go up for everybody, right? Including us being able to tap into our spiky profiles and, you know, to outperform in a lot of ways, you know? It's such an interesting debate, you know, and I will say that I have a lot of anxiety about it. My book, The Atypical Achiever is done, but it won't be published for another year. And I have this weird thing where I'm new to the neurodivergent community and yet have been writing about it and speaking about it and talking about it for almost 20 years.

13:44I just didn't have the language and it wasn't my community, but I was banging on about not being able to work under fluorescent lights in 2009. I just didn't know. And I, I, I still feel that way. Like I'm gonna, like I'm gonna misuse language or I'm gonna mess up, you know? And I think another thing I love about your approach is that you are you are sort of like we all come to this with our own story we're we're all we're all right um i in my research study you know it it boggled my mind that 80 i think it was 80 percent of people who identified as neurodivergent these are all pretty high performing professionals said they had superpowers.

14:35Whether that's a learned behavior or they truly think they do, I don't know. I mean, to be clear, on a personal level, identity is personal, whether you identify as autistic or ADHD or a superpower or disabled or both. To be clear here, in defense of the superpowers, I would not trade my brain for anything. On the days I've accomplished the biggest things I ever have, I didn't forget the ADHD dyslexic part of my brain at home that day, right? Like, and I've done some awesome stuff. Like, and I know that I am, not to toot my own horn, but toot, toot. Toot it. Like, I have, I know that I'm better at the majority of the population at certain things.

15:23I know that. I see it. I see it live. And I didn't see it live before I started, you know, before this flip. you know, whereas a lot of late identified folks come into the neurodiversity movement at the same time as they come into their identity. And I can't imagine how powerful that feeling is. Me, it was like a period of it was a period of unlearning for me, right. But when that happened, I mean, it's like night and day, not only did I find out that I was good at stuff, but I became better at stuff because I was unmasking and exploring my strengths and exploring what set me up for success. Whereas I was just kind of like, no, that, you know, the whole like being good at life thing isn't for me before that, you know?

16:04Talk about, talk about your unlearning. You were diagnosed early. Talk about your unlearning. I want to hear, how did you unlearn? What, what sparked it? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I was a special ed kid, uh, uh, like a lot of five-year-olds that looked like me and acted like me. I was, you know, uh, identified in kindergarten. and it's really interesting to look at my incredible sister and I who's she's three years older than me she is also neurodivergent but she was in the gifted classes while I was in special ed and she was not identified as neurodivergent until early 20s at Columbia so so I think it's good to look at it through this thing called the Pygmalion effect which is like you know if you tell people that they'll perform really well then it's a much higher likelihood that they'll perform better than if you tell them they'll perform badly or don't tell them anything at all right um and so I was like a chronic underachiever and a lot of that was it's not just because of that internalized ableism but also just because of like what I was exposed to and what I was offered to do.

17:15You know, there was electives in my high school that I didn't take because I had a resource room, which was like the part of the day that I went to special education. I've been through that. It's heartbreaking. Right. And so like, I wanted to take, like now I know that like photography is for me. But back then I just thought, no, that's for like the other 90 % of the students that don't have to do this. I get to go take photography. And like, I, so I didn't get that opportunity. Right. So to, to answer your, actually answer your question, um, came out of college eventually as like a, a, an idealist, like many of us do just wanted to help people.

17:56It was very broad. Uh, I didn't know the word neurodiversity then. Um, it wasn't really being discussed. Um, but ended up in New York city, working with various populations through, um, office of mental health, through the juvenile justice system, uh, through department for people with developmental disabilities. And I was thrilled to be doing that. And it was a very person centered, live, you know, holistic kind of role that I was taking on wherever I was. But I was just so disappointed with the lack of meaningful opportunities being provided to any of these groups. And so I came across a mission driven startup, social enterprise.

18:39uh it's called Spectre Designs it's apparel decorator in New York so it's a non-profit screen printing and embroidery company uh with the majority of their workforce is autistic and we were operating out of one room making shirts that said like happy birthday grandma for the employee's parents when I first started and now they have uh over 100 employees and 65 percent of them are autistic and they make shirts for the New York City train system and tons of Fortune 100 companies. And, you know, they're known all over the world and it's incredible. And so what happened for me during that journey is I was given a blank slate to say, shape the world of work the way you want to see it.

19:24So literally within certain confines, within, you know, a thousand square feet or so when we started, what color should the walls be? How loud should the hand dryers be in the bathrooms? What does hiring really look like for this population? What does management look like and career pathing? And what does feedback look like for this population? And so we got to make the workplace visual and, you know, empathetic and flexible and understanding. And we were seeing that experts from the actual field, the screen printing and embroidery field were coming in and saying, how do you turn around jobs so fast eventually?

20:01and we were realizing we weren't just good at like this very niche thing we were good at the industry because of this and so i ended up getting on the phone with that was extremely empowering to be able to help shape the workplace in that way and then we ended up getting on the phone with some of the earliest adopters in the corporate neurodiversity at work movement many of whose names you'd know well and they were asking us how we do it and me with imposter syndrome who the heck am I? You know, maybe I'll get some free software from your company or something. I don't know. They were, they were thanking me for, for my time.

20:36And so I started moonlighting for the corporate world and it kind of went from there. But yeah, it was really not just the neurodiversity movement, but the neurodiversity at work movement, that lens really lent itself well to me taking a strengths-based approach to my stuff. Well, so you're also an entrepreneur. What about work design stands out most? You mentioned hand dryers, you mentioned colors on the wall. What are the top three things that someone listening, if they could say, poof, I'm designing a brand new workplace, what would you advise them or what questions should they ask first? Yeah, I'm going to go big on this one, if that's okay.

21:18So I'm going to talk about what, what why when where and how so okay if you look at those those questions any questions that start with what why when where and how the what and the why are mysterious and they're not always aligned with what it says on your job description right so what am I expected to do what do we do here Why do we do it? Why do we do it this way? Why does it matter? Like that's an incredibly intimidating thing to walk into. And also a lot of it's broken. A lot of it is suboptimal. What do we do and why do we do it? Right. And so we want to be really generous with that information, with that context.

22:01And it also, people don't like to do it just like they don't like to like update their handbooks and stuff like that, because it forces you to ask hard questions about like, why do we do it this way? Why does it matter that this person at, you know, an entry level position does this this way? And how does it fit into the broader mission of the company? Right? How does it fulfill our mission and vision? That's big. It's bigger than people think. And then when, where and how that that part's easy. We need to be we need to show as much flexibility in when people work, where people work, and most of all, how people get things done.

22:39Right. And I know it gets harder as companies get larger and depending on the industry. And I've worked in them all from finance to technology to aerospace to all different kinds of companies. So I see the implementation barriers of this because we've dug in. And the reason why those companies were thanking me for getting on the phone with them back then is they were saying, well, you're starting from the ground up. and creating this air quotes here, utopian, like this perfect scenario of what you think the world of work should look like in this finite space. Whereas we're a company that's been around for 75 years and we operate on six continents and across borders and belief systems and all that.

23:27And so it's more like turning a cruise ship, right? Like it's really complicated. but on an individual level with a social contract between a manager and an employee on a bigger level wherever possible like these companies that are coming out and saying we'll never go back from remote work not everyone has positional power but every single person has relational power to affect neuroinclusion at work and neuroinclusion lives and dies in parking lots and elevators and break rooms and Slack channels and email chains every single day. And so think about the what, why, when, where, and how. It's great.

24:10And listeners, Callie Yost, who is the woman on flexibility at work, she's been on the show a bunch of times. Look her up because she drills down. We drilled on very much into those questions. I think, you know, I think Amy Edmondson would say, so much magic can happen at the team level, you know, that even at a giant company, the team is still often more flexible. Right. And the what of what we do is, it should be obvious, but I think for a lot of people, for a lot of teams, it actually might be worth hashing out. I bet you get a lot of different answers. Yeah. Yeah. A simple question could be one of the hardest ones, just writing on a whiteboard, what do we do?

24:57What do we do? I ask myself that every day. What do I do? That's not a short meeting. I'm telling you, it's not. That'd be really cool. That's funny. That's really funny. This is an ad for a book, but not just any book. It is a book that will change the way you think about business and maybe how you run your business. It's called Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus. I want to tell you about one of my favorite concepts in the book. It's called the abyss. You've all seen the visualization from Anthropic, right? It's a big blue blob of what jobs AI could wipe out, including finance, management, computer science, legal.

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29:18Go to heypolo.com slash achiever or use code achiever and get 40 % off your first year. Enter code achiever at heypolo.com. One of the things I love about your book is that you have these questions at the end of every chapter. And I wrote a couple of them down and I thought I would ask them of you at appropriate junctures. And this seems like a good time for this question, which I loved so much. I forget what, don't ask me what chapter it's in. What is something I do differently that helps me succeed, even if others don't understand it? Hmm, good question. It's cool. It's cool to be asked my own question.

30:05I'm going to try to concentrate on one that people don't understand. I mean, people don't understand why I need to be the first one in the office and what I do for the first hour of my day. Like, and I'm pretty rigid about that. And even if there was a situation where everyone needed to come in an hour earlier one day, I'd come in at 7 a.m. instead of 8, right? Like I... Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like my routines matter, but also my work systems matter. And every day is a fresh new day. I think I talk about it in the book, but I've never been able to successfully replace paper. I really should start donating to like a plant a tree type organization to offset what I'm up to.

31:05And I evangelize, you know, a lot of task management kind of applications and things like that. I've consulted on them. And now with Vibe coding, thanks to things like Claude, I'm actually designing my own. Will I stick with them? I don't know. but I'm very set in my ways with my work systems and my messy desk. Like my messy desk is not a mess. It's my mess. And the messier thing for me would be for you to clean it up for me. Like that would take me a long time to get over. I would never clean it up because I had been on general strike in terms of any house cleaning or any cleaning duties for many years as the mother of three messy ADHD kids.

31:54So, but what, why is, why is getting in early important? Is it because it's quiet? Is it because he gives you time? Like what, what do you do with that time? Yeah. And it's also funny, like just to make another related point, as far as the broad conversations, there's never been more, more understanding and attention around thinking differently as there is right now. There's a lot of things like memes and things like, you know, AI generated lists of best practices and things like that. And it's so important not to paint with a broad brush as far as how people operate. Because if you looked it up, if you asked chat GBT or something right now, when ADHDers are when their brains are when their synapses are firing the most.

32:40And or if you looked at memes about it, mostly people say later or at night, I am on fire in the first thing in the morning, like I, I am always excited about coming to work, no matter what I have going on. If I did anything else, besides what happens to be my passion and special interest, I would not be as good at it or as passionate about it. But like, I wish that feeling for everyone. I picture I was never a sports kid or anything. But I picture those movies where a football team is like beating on the lockers before they start a game. Like that's how I feel in the morning. And I just need that time.

33:21The easy way to say it is get organized. But I have a very specific system that I'd love to show you sometime as far as what that looks like. I'd love to see it. I love this stuff. You know, the old, you know, the old expression, put it on the back burner. Like, let's put that on the back burner. Of course you do. So I have this methodology I call the busy burner method, and it's basically a sheet of paper in landscape mode, you know, split up into quadrants, and it's big burner right now. It's big, small, big, small, and then it's now and later. So big now, small now, big later, small later. And every day those things shift, so it starts over.

34:05Oh, like a stove top. Yes. With the burners. That's amazing. And then I have my separate things need to be eliminated off that and go into like my pit of wild ideas that may see the light again and may not. But like, calm down, David. Like you have things to do, you know, because I always have these cool ideas, you know. And I want to save those. I want to save those and I want to archive those, you know. and they do come in handy, like for writing the book. I was like, let me get all my wild ideas all together and see what I can see what I can fit in here. Oh, my God. It's funny. I use a method that and J.

34:52Russell Ramsey, who I really recommend. He's he's a psychologist and he has he works with mostly the ADHD population. And I use his method. I didn't know it was his method, but I have three different kinds of places to write on. I have post-it notes or small index cards. I have a legal pad and I have a whiteboard. And so the post-it notes would be the things that I absolutely have to do in the next couple hours. And I can't do anything until I do them. The legal pad is for like everything that I need to get to pretty soon. And it's personal, it's work, you know, but it's like, it also has stuff that is not as important what's on the post-it and then i have the whiteboard which has a calendar and has space and i have a column on my whiteboard for my wild ideas and my big picture stuff and then i have a visual calendar so like that system is my system and all we all have our system and i think it's awesome so that's one of the things and why don't and people don't understand it that you get in.

36:01So are you introverted or extroverted, would you say? I'd say I like to chat, right? I'm fairly, fairly extroverted. As long as I'm, as long as I have the safety to, you know, show up as myself, you know, I prefer to be really kind of unmasked and honest in how I, how I operate day to day. And when I can't, you'll see, you'll see a, definitely see a change in me. I mean, I'm not performing to the best of my ability either when I can't, right, which is to be expected. But yeah, I'd say I'm pretty extroverted. What do you think? Well, usually people who like to go into the office every day are extroverts.

36:42I mean, just are, you know. I mean, in my experience, people who are on, you know, who might, because of their neurodivergence, need quiet and space and love to work at home. But people who are more introverted tend to love to work at home. And people who are more extroverted love to go into the office. And that, in my experience, has been a pretty true divide. I need both. I mean, I get way more tasks done when I'm here in my home office by myself. And I'm hybrid. I go a couple days a week to the office and I do travel a bunch. But you just have to kind of compartmentalize into buckets. It's like, what can I really expect my output to be when I'm, you know, and as far as, you know, obviously, networking, socializing, ideating, brainstorming, like there's nothing better than being in a room at a long table with some of your favorite people, you know, trying to fix this whole thing.

37:37That's nothing more exciting to me than that. But, you know, when I work with big companies like a, I won't name, but like a large tech company that everything is glass and, you know, there's everything is bright and there's like a burrito stand 10 feet away from your desk. And there's like a ball pit, you know, in front of you, no one has their shoes on and like dogs are allowed. Like that sounds really nice, but I would rather work in a broom closet. It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there, right? I'd literally rather work in like a dark, damp closet than work there. It's just how it works.

38:19That's so, that's so funny. I'm going to throw another thing that I hear all the time, which again is something people don't really like to talk about, is that when you're in the office, there's often food and yummy food and birthday cake and snacks. And that if you're the kind of person who has a lot of food noise, and you find food very distracting, that that is a real dampener on presence and productivity and that when you're at home, you can control what's in your pantry. And so, I mean, I just think this goes to the point of we all have an ideal way to work that allows us to work to the best of our abilities.

39:02Right, right. And sometimes there are things that we don't publicly love talking about. Not like I can't go into the office today because there'll be birthday cake and Snickers everywhere and it will distract me. But that's real. Yeah. And so much of this, it's so true for people, let's say, in positions of power as well. It's just a matter of whether or not you have the permission or the perceived permission to do what you need to be set up for success. I mean, think about, I talked to folks who are developing some tool or doing some training saying that a certain neurotype will just say it like that they think autistic people tend to be rude emailers, right?

39:45Like I had this conversation with this company that's working on something for this. And I said, but a lot of people are rude emailers. And some of my autistic colleagues are some of the nicest emailers that I know. So like, so like, I'm not against this AI widget that helps you helps niceify your email communication, but to pigeonhole it to a certain group like that is a little problematic. And I was like, how many of you know, like a CEO that would email you something rude when they didn't mean it from the golf course, like casually, right? Like, so A, you're limiting your market by doing that.

40:22And B, you're like, you know, painting with a super broad brush about a very diverse population of people. But back to my point, like everyone has their little things that set them up for success. And some of them fit more into the, you know, neuro normative expectations of what the world of work looks like. You know, like the fact that sticky notes and a legal pan and a whiteboard work for you is very corporate friendly, to be honest. Right. Like and somebody else who needs to like write on a window when they don't have access to a whiteboard like they need it so badly that they want to write on the fridge with, you know, that that's different.

41:00And do you have permission? It's different. Yeah. I'm going to ask another question, which is I want to get back to your unlearning. Who helped me feel like I didn't need fixing?

41:17honestly it was when I first started helping to run that social enterprise and a lot of the employees had fairly high support needs and were showing up every day and contributing in such major ways and you know some of them are non-speaking and some of them you know every once in a while when they hear a loud noise, they might have a real challenge, you know, and have to leave or maybe even drop to the floor for a minute or something, you know, and they were incredibly talented. They were trailblazers because they're putting themselves out there in a very vulnerable way to, you know, to be employed.

42:06And they were contributing in these major ways and they were doing it out loud. And, you know, I don't, I have different challenges, but I don't have all those. And so that was a really big, you know, talk about inspiration. I was talking about the negative side of inspiration before, but like, I want you to be inspired. But I, I want you to be inspired to do something, not just feel good about yourself, Right. Like, so that inspired me to own my differences in a really big way and to be able to, you know, I'm very lucky in that I work in this field. And so who should, who should be comfortable, who else should be more comfortable in talking about their needs than someone in this field.

42:52Right. But like, it took a lot to start self-advocating and being like, no, I need to sit here, not over there. you know something as small as that but that's what that's what it took is that other people doing it loudly and openly and um showing up like that every day was big for me that's beautiful did you find yourself looking back and understanding times when you were masking that maybe you hadn't consciously understood yeah yeah i mean to use school because that's really easy. I know, you know, education has changed. I think there's a lot of work still to be done, but some of the kind of arbitrary rules about school are really silly.

43:40And so stop fidgeting in your chair. No hats in class. And meanwhile, now I know that I was blocking the fluorescent light from my eyes because the lighting in public schools is like really harsh. oh my god still is so like uh doodling in the margins of my my work um that helps me focus it doesn't do the opposite and like you know there's jokes about uh people um adhders looking at squirrels out the window like if there's a cool squirrel out the window i'm gonna take a second and i'm gonna look at that squirrel okay like and that is okay just like you know, when it starts snowing, and all the kids jump up and say, it's snowing, like, let them have that, right?

44:32Like, and I don't want to live in a world where I can't look at a squirrel and admire nature for a sec, or yell, it's snowing. And so, you know, a lot of these things are just, I understand why rules get in place. But then like, we're building these walls and these barriers that are just so, so silly. And in the world of work, you know, you carry that. A good example, it's not necessarily about neurodivergence, but I'm covered in tattoos. And I love that. The feeling of showing up somewhere in a dress shirt and tie and not being able to roll up my sleeves when I'm hot. Like that's a really good kind of metaphor for unmasking as far as neurodivergence, right?

45:15Like, and it gets into that old saying, Like if you want to roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty and get to work, like you should be able to literally roll your sleeves up in any environment. And who cares if I have ink on my arms? Right. That was an unlearning in itself. Like me, they're all they're going to think I'm a punk rocker. Well, I am a punk rocker. Like, you know, so and and guess what? I'm good at my job and it does not matter. um so yeah and and still i mean still i ask myself sometimes like i have a speaking gig or something i'm doing a keynote in front of hundreds of people and i'm like well what do i wear and i think well the ceo of this tech company that i'm speaking at wears t-shirts why do i want to wear a suit.

46:04I like t shirts. Like, but do I really he has permission, but do I have permission to go up there and be myself? And is this? Is this like an internalized thing for me where like, I should just be myself and wear a shirt? Or actually, I like suits. Like, I like dressing businessy sometimes. But is that me just trying to you know, so I still ask myself these questions all the time. Same with, you know, I'm not comfortable in this chair. I'm in a meeting with a bunch of people I don't know. I really want to stand up right now. Can I? And more and more, I do. Especially because we're doing this work.

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50:43Shopify.com slash anxious achiever to hear your first. It's a really, so I was just working on a chapter of my book a month or so ago about how to get what you need without losing status and power. Because, you know, that's the question to me. and it may seem so stupid like if he stands up in a meeting will people think differently of him I don't know maybe at some places they will maybe in some places they don't give a shit but I think that um we all right and data support this we all camouflage at work so much whether we're neurotypical neurodivergent whatever we all camouflage so much and I think we're all on this journey of unpacking a lot of it and this isn't just a neurodivergent thing I think this is this is a cultural shift and I think the pandemic had a lot to do with it and I think it's really awesome I always talk about the fact that when I was growing up when I was 21 years old and had my first job a very I read an article about if you wanted to be a successful woman you could not have family photos in your office because people would think you weren't serious about your work.

51:57And then I worked in this big company and I noticed that the senior executives who are female did not have family photos. The men did. That has totally changed, right? So I think that a lot of us are unlearning and yet we do need to mask sometimes to try to maintain status and we pay a price. To me, there's no easy answer. If people say, should I mask or should I not? I say, that's an impossible question. Sometimes you might make the choice that you need to. And hopefully there are many times when you don't have to. Yeah. But we live in the world we live in. Yeah, no one acts the same when they're by themselves or at home than they do when they're at work, right?

52:44It's all a performance. Totally. Um, and yeah, I, I just think that people do have some non-negotiables and not everybody has the privilege of not masking, you know, like, and so, um, if you have those non-negotiables, That's a really good point. That's a really good point. And it's something that people forget a lot in this neurodiversity at work conversations, especially within the corporate world that you're forgetting about a large group of people. Like, what about the non-speaking folks that I know that like are, you know, published in academic journals? I know a people manager of an all remote team that is non-speaking, right?

53:25Like, and so not everyone has the privilege of masking. And also, even if you can, it's not always healthy to do so. And so, you know, sometimes the answer when I'm asked a similar question about like, should I disclose or should I mask or whatever, is like, sometimes the employer just doesn't deserve you. And I know that that's hard, especially in this, this current world of work we're in right now where, you know, employment and hiring and all that's kind of a mess. But sometimes, you know, it's just like interviews, like you should be interviewing them back. It should be a two way fit. And sometimes they don't deserve your talents, you should take them somewhere else.

54:09Hmm. Well, that brings me to the last question. And I wanted to end on this, because it's really fascinating. So I'm going to ask you a question. I don't think this is a question in the book, but you do talk about job descriptions and interviewing practices. And I want you to tell us what's wrong with job descriptions. And again, in work design, how you would design job descriptions differently. Oh, where do I start? Well, you can look at it through that lens of what, why, when, where and how, right? What am I expected to do in this position? Why? Like, so if I'm sweeping the floors, like why, right?

54:51It doesn't matter what the job is. it should make sense to the individual. And then how flexible are or like, what are the expectations around the when, where and how? That's as far as you know, the actual description. And then as far as requirements, where do we where do we begin? I mean, I'm sure someone has said this on on the pod before. But like, must be a strong communicator means absolutely nothing, Maura, like it means nothing. If you look at people's spiky profiles, and you look at, you click on communication as one of like the big eight or so things that we're looking at. That's interpersonal communication.

55:35It's presentation skills. It's written communication. It's and then even those can be double clicked on, right? Like so you are emails. Yeah, you, You are having people self-select out of roles by painting with that broad brush and saying must be a strong communicator, right? So I'm dyslexic. I also wrote a book. So that doesn't mean I'm not a strong communicator, right? some people might not want to give tours or or answer phone calls of strangers or have to be on podcasts and or or like answer loudly immediately in high pressure meetings and those things are all important talk about them say them just zoom in on what you actually mean um and and Same goes for pedigree.

56:36Ask yourself why it matters if someone has a degree or someone needs 10 years of experience in a software tool that's only been around for five. The expectations are wild when all you're looking for is someone to do the job and do the job well. And so one of my favorite things to do is to tear up job descriptions. And one of my favorite places to start are those job descriptions, because it really is when people understand what's wrong with the way they're introducing themselves to the talent pool. That is a great thing to carry forward throughout the the career lifecycle. Right. Like. Also, invite people in like Gen Z is not going to put up with.

57:30you need them more than they need you. Like they're not going to put up with this gatekeepy attitude from employers. They want to know what you're doing for them. Just like I said, interviews are a two-way street. Like the average resume is only, the average job description is only clicked on for like 36 seconds or something like that. You know, like how, be conscious of not just what kind of information you're sharing, what the expectations are. but how you're introducing yourself to the talent pool and what you're actually doing for them. And it has to be true, right? I tell companies, you know, if you're not doing anything around neuro-inclusion yet, Google the name of your company and a word like autistic or ADHD.

58:18And if the first thing that comes up is Reddit or TikTok, make sure you're sitting down before you click.

58:27because this is what we're looking at. It's a new reality, but it's been here the whole time. And it's time to make some really big changes to the way we operate. It's so time. The only reason I'm sitting here today is because I was a really promising corporate executive who couldn't work in offices the way they were. and fled. And, you know, that was in my generation, that's what happened. We just fled. We became entrepreneurs. We figured it out. And I would have been a really, really good like CMO or CEO. Like I would have been good at it, but it was those damn fluorescent lights. It's a lot more than that.

59:13Um, so I really, I appreciate your work so much. Thank you so much. and keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. I can't thank you enough. You bring on such, it's an honor to be in the company that I am with the kind of folks that you bring on across the world of work and research and all that. And your approaches, it's great. I hope to come back. Absolutely.

59:43That's it for this week's show. If you like the show, Follow us and tell your friends. And please leave us a review. It really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content. I'm your host, Maura Aarons-Mele. Lots more to come in the next episode.

1:00:16Thank you.