Will Companies be Ready, or Too Slow, to Effectively Embrace Neurodiversity?
Neurodiversity Pathways
Helping neurodiverse adults with college degrees find meaningful, rewarding, and sustained employment.
In the two decades I spent working in politics and government service, I often used the phrase “slow, slow, quick, quick” to describe social movements. Borrowed from the timing of dances like the foxtrot and Texas two-step, ‘slow, slow, quick, quick’ was a way to explain the pace of societal change.
Societies don’t change on their own volition. Whether it is voting rights or marriage equality, successful social movements are frequently built upon decades - if not centuries - of grueling, unlauded work. For those who dedicate their lives to this work, the pace of progress seems excruciatingly slow, until it’s suddenly not.
2008 marked the 10th year I had been working on the issue of marriage equality, spending the better part of a decade traveling the country meeting politicians and working with advocates on this issue. With as much progress that had been made to that point, the right for same-sex couples to legally marry across our country still seemed to be decades off. The pacing of change was ‘slow, slow’.
Then, it was ‘quick’.
In the summer of 2015, I stood outside the U.S. Supreme Court as it ruled that the 14th Amendment guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry in every state. As families and friends hugged me and cried on my shoulder, the pace of history at that moment felt unexpectedly quick.
As it pertains to neurodiversity (the understanding that variations in thinking are a normal part of the human condition), the work to build acceptance and support for those with conditions like autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, and many others, has felt measured, and moderate, like a slow, leisured dance.
THE PACE PICKS UP. Are Companies Ready?
As a neurodiversity advocate who has worked in other social movements, I often caution patience with those pressing for change. “These things follow a rhythm,” I’m regularly heard to say, followed by me repeating the phrase “slow, slow, quick, quick”.
However, my tempered caution has begun to ease as the pace in which our society embraces neurodiversity has begun to pick up.?
Two recent articles highlight the quickening of this pace.?
In the first, author and inventor John Elder Robinson (who is autistic) presses the urgent need for businesses to take “the next step” on neurodiversity lest history pass them by.
“Neurodiversity programs are everywhere,” Robinson writes in ‘Psychology Today ’ . “But, what have they accomplished? It’s time for neurodiversity programs to stop looking for a few ‘interns’ and focus on the millions of neurodivergent students and workers hiding in plain sight all over America. Help those people, and you help everyone.”
Amen.
What Robinson refers to is the traditional approach of ‘Autism at Work’ (or, alternatively ‘Neurodiversity at Work’) programs that recruit and segregate autistic employees into programs and internships which provide limited opportunities for career growth - let alone wholly fail to address other neurodivergent conditions or opportunities for those who require higher support needs. While these programs have been welcomed as necessary first-steps to support the employment of neurodivergent individuals, history is now quickly shaping the necessity of a new approach.
By recognizing that companies with existing ‘Autism/Neurodiversity at Work’ (NaW) programs have many existing employees outside of these narrow efforts, Robinson argues that NaW programs can reposition themselves to scale their impact and secure their growth. Specifically, Robinson notes that such programs - rather than being discarded as outdated - are uniquely positioned to leverage their cultivated relationships with non-profit organizations and state disability agencies to dramatically reshape the employment landscape for neurodivergent individuals.?
“The real benefits will come when corporations construct programs to empower the thousands of neurodivergent staff they already have,” writes Robinson. “A NaW program that serves everyone will benefit the entire company, in much more substantive ways than current internships.”
Indeed, neurodivergent employees have already proven this point. When I first met with employees like Chris Williams , Claudia Ng, and Chris Ereneta at Square (now Block ) just a few years ago, they were among the first people in the country to organize themselves into a neurodiversity employee resource group (ERG). Today, neurodiversity ERGs exist in a rapidly expanding number of organizations, from government agencies to corporations like PG&E . Oh, and the Neurodiversity Community at Block - which started with just a handful of employees - now has over 1,350 members which include employees with various neurodivergent conditions as well as colleagues who are parents, families, and allies of neurodivergent loved ones.
To quote Ferris Bueller “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
BUELLER? BUELLER?
While John Elder Robinson lays-out in ‘Psychology Today’ the call to embrace the neurodiversity movement's rapid growth, and provides suggestions that organizations can embrace at-scale, a second piece by Ranga Jayaraman highlights what individual managers and colleagues can do to keep up with the rapidly expanding demands to foster neurodiversity at work.? In reflecting on neurodiversity in the workplace, Jayaraman offers three guiding principles for those wishing to quicken their pace.
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“Imagine that you are sitting in a stadium and you look around,” writes Jayaraman regarding the normalcy of neurodiversity. “You would find that there are all kinds of people around you. They are taller. They are shorter. They are thinner. They are a little bit heftier than you. Their skin colors are different. For those of us who still have a few strands of hair left in our head, their hair colors are different. Their eye colors are different. None of us think ‘Oh, this is really weird!’.”
“We have come to realize and accept that physiological characteristics vary and a wide variation of these characteristics is normal in human beings,” continues Jayaraman. “There is no reason to expect the couple of pounds of gray matter inside our skulls to be exactly the same from one person to the other…when we recognize, acknowledge, view, and respect that wide variation in brain function as normal, we begin to align with the concept of neurodiversity.”
It might seem a simple concept, but it is one that our society has been slow to understand.
Jayaraman also argues that humans tend to view each other through the lenses of expectation and judgment. More often than not, we expect others to be like us and judge them when they are not. Jayaraman states that compassionate curiosity can enable us to encounter others as they are, leading us to embrace others’ differences.
“With acceptance,” writes Jayaraman, “We can progress even further to offer others encouragement, accommodation, and whatever levels of support one might need, so that their strengths and abilities - regardless of levels - can contribute meaningfully within that setting.” If only we approached all of our colleagues and coworkers this way.
In his third point, Jayaraman argues for the fostering of psychological safety for neurodivergent individuals in the workplace. To do this, he quotes Hari Srinivasan , a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and current PhD student at Vanderbilt University , who is autistic and minimally speaking.
“At the end of the day,” says Srinivasan, “anyone who is regarded as ‘different’ is living in a world that is not really accommodating of them or built for them. So, it’s a constant state of trying to fit in which is very stressful and can lead to burnout.”
Our colleges and universities are filled with neurodivergent students, some like Srinivasan, and almost all under-supported in how they think and process the world. In his piece for ‘Psychology Today’, John Elder Robinson urges our educational institutions to recognize that fact.
“Colleges can step up and show the way,” writes Robinson. “Most already provide more mental health support to students than regular workplaces offer their workers. It may be a shorter step [then] for a college to go from supporting neurodivergent students through their counseling centers, to offering college-wide support programs.”
‘LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST’
The advocacy of students like Srinivasan, and employees like those at Block and PG&E, are quickening the pace when it comes to neurodiversity in our workplaces. And legislators like State Representative Jessica Benham in Pennsylvania and State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou in New York (both openly-autistic) give further evidence to just how fast things are now moving when it comes to neurodiversity at work. And the speed of this work is matched by its depth, with neurodivergent students, employees, and elected officials arguing that more must be done to support those with various neurodivergent conditions and those with varying levels of support needs.
‘IF YOU DON’T STOP AND LOOK AROUND…YOU COULD MISS IT’
Our initial efforts to foster neurodiversity in the workplace - namely through NaW programs - were an appropriate starting point. I am so thankful that they have been there. The fact that the pace of neurodiversity has picked-up is no fault of any of these efforts. It’s simply how the tempo of societal change progresses.
“Slow, slow, quick, quick.”
Our pace has now quickened. That is nothing to fear. Unexpected? Yes, but entirely normal. It’s how these things go.
The fast pace of the neurodiversity movement is suddenly here. Companies must now ask themselves how they'll keep up.
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John Marble is the founder of?Pivot Neurodiversity ?and is a training partner and instructor with Neurodiversity Pathways.?
He is autistic.