Open Letter to all the Frightened NeuroSpicy Leaders Still in the Closet

(Cross posted to both newsletters if you're both in Technology and HR Leadership)

Hi there, you ok??

Can you believe it? They have a name for it all. The unfitting. The eternal hardship. The awkwardness. The uncertainty that we ever do the exact right thing or worse, the inability to do but the exact right thing. The reason we saw stuff faster than others and wanted everyone to run as fast and as hard as we did. The reason we struggled with these ever-changing rules of “how to be” in society in a way that pleases it. The cause behind why we had to overthink everything. The reason why we needed the word to make more sense and we had it stuck on this insane difficulty level whilst others seemed to waltz on by.

We’re Autistic. On the spectrum. Neurodivergent. Think Differently.?

There are many flavours of diagnosis and no one person is autistic in the same way as another, we all know that by now, but how many of us have had to go through life without knowing or without talking about it in the corporate world is an ever staggering realisation for me.?

When we first stepped into the business world some 20 or even 30 years ago, this was not a thing. We could not be that. Only unruly boys in primary schools were ADHD. Only some quirky programmer colleague had Aspergers. Only some distant cousin was Dyspraxic. Girls hadn’t had the mystery vaccines and/or the refrigerator mothers who had apparently caused this, as they were never diagnosed. Safe a couple of comedy-fodder characters nary a representation in the media of other Autistic people. And none of those were even remotely connected to our workplaces. Because you see, to our insanely unknowing minds, that minority was infinitesimal and we needn’t worry about them if we were already in the workplace. That was them. Not us. We were already here and achieving.?

Or as it were, surviving. Because we have to wonder, can one truly achieve whilst not knowing who they really are??

“You have to be strong and you have to be Neurotypical”

You don’t. That last part is absolute BS, and you know it. Your NeuroSpicy brain is just as needed -if not more so- than any of the “normies”. Its different abilities are invaluable and inimitable by neuro-typical neurological set-ups in most cases. So it’s not that you want to “not think differently”, you’ve always known this hard-to-navigate-brain of yours is top-notch. That’s not the issue. The problem is this strength requirement.?

If you’re at the top you were of course, first and foremost taught that you must show no weakness. Being strong is a value. Heroes, protectors and by extension leaders are expected to be strong. It is in a sense, their main job in the eyes of their communities.? Being different in any way than the norm has always been seen as less capable - weakness. The ever-most-feared-ailment of the ego-driven.?

With Autism, considering the lack of information and the stigma, the weakness could even be perceived as intellectual or skill-based and business schools around the world keep insisting on teaching the strong -micro-manager leadership Taylorism model so how and where would execs learn the courage to deal with this without being convinced we are endangering our very existence?

I can only imagine, over the past 20 years, the number of execs who walked into a meeting with their team, one day and announced “BTW guys I’m autistic it turns out and I need to work in a different, way, I’ll help you see what I need if you meet me half way and tell me if you too need to show me what you need” because they knew that doing so is a sign of the beautiful strength that vulnerability really is, can very well be close to zero. No one. For years they wouldn’t have even had the worlds. If there were some and you witnessed such a display of bravery PLEASE tell us about it somehow.?

And it may well happen from hereon - it will do so, the world has immutably changed in this respect and whilst slow AF we are not going backwards to living in the shadows.?

Awareness, diagnosis, understanding the immense numbers of undiagnosed NeuroSpicy humans we have in the world and in the workplace in particular, all of this is new and it is exciting (hopefully) and sorely needed new stuff. But there’s so much to understand and learn and accept. In particular accept, eh? That’s the hardest bit perhaps. ?

And, they have new names too. So many new names and acronyms. Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Autism, ADHD, RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria); Hyper-activity; Lack of emotional regulation capability; Social and communication issues;? Sensory-seeking/avoidant; the list goes on and it’s not a list we can ignore because it’s about us. All these things we conquered as fears or avoided as impossibilities are now no longer our individual dirty secrets but all of our realities and they have labels, triggers and strategies to make them all work differently.?Better.

Why should you learn, grow, disclose, mentor, self-improve or simply educate yourself and others??

What good can it possibly still do you now, half-way (or more) through your career when not knowing or not disclosing had been your reality all along?

Firstly because it’s the right thing to do and it’s a betterment challenge and let’s face it, we have a compulsion to do both of those us NeuroSpicy ones. ?

And then because 64% of board directors and HR professionals believe that the fear of #AutismStigma and repercussions is hindering disclosure from neurodivergent business leaders whist 82% of respondents to a study commissioned by Heston Blumenthal OBE earlier this year, say they they would like to see more high profile neurodiverse leaders speak up openly about their journey.? So they need us.?

And then it’s because when you know, when you’re aware, awake and attentive, the world ought to be better, right? And it is.?

Since having started to disclose about my Autism and my lived experience of years in leadership in and out of the corporate world as a NeuroSpicy brain, I heard the same story over and again from the others who have embraced it too - whatever the price to pay the piper for the realisation that a late diagnosis should exist (and that doesn’t mean you need to necessarily get it, self-diagnosis is perfectly valid, -I assure you that most time, those of us with the “justifying papers” never get to whip them out and have the world work better for us because of it-), however astronomical that price may be, and to some it is as autistic burnout and its co-morbidities are genuinely crippling- it was worth it for the magical “A-HA! This is who I am and I am not broken or wrong, I am wired differently and I am awesome and it all now makes sense!”

Talk to late-diagnosed business leaders who are in the closet still, like I do all day, and you’ll start to see a pattern emerging. Once avoidance, fear, denial and RSD are out of the way and can check and acknowledge, the elation and relief of the “A-ha! This is me!” is universal.?

Getting diagnosed -or self-diagnosed, so often as part of your journey as a parents as your own children got diagnosed and you realised the genetic component- and then deciding to look deeper within- is just the first step of course, and if it’s self-improvement or even equanimity we are after, then we need to start the long and forevermore eternal slog of constant self-work, self-reflection and self-improvement.

And while yes, it’s an awfully hard endeavour, by and large, I am not worried about the autistic leaders reading this and their ability to undertake gigantic endeavours of betterment. I don’t believe any of them hasn’t done so in many different ways already.?

You see, to be autistic in the workplace in a leadership position is to hone your masking skills while simultaneously working on your own self every day and doing the job at hand too. No, not in January when everyone else takes out a new gym membership to shift the Xmas excesses only and not when we are performing for others only. No. Every day.?

Make no mistake about it, living as an autistic leader is having life stuck on extra-hard mode. This doesn’t only reflect in our mental wellbeing but consistently in our physical wellbeing too. Autistic people often perceive external stressors as extreme events and that can and will flood their bodies with a fight or flight response that inundates them with damaging cortisol and in time can lead to heart disease (second cause of death for the Autistic community after suicide - let that sink in!) aside from the constant battle with mental health issues.

So let me make this clear yeat again- life as an autistic leader (in particular one who like yourself reading this now, is “in the closet” both in terms of diagnosis and disclosure in the workplace is impossibly difficult, no one denies that. The beauty of it is that if you have even the slightest inkling that you are on the spectrum and have that confirmed, a lot will feel like it “falls into place”.

Disclosure - To “say or not to say”

I’ll be honest - not if you’re first. Not if you’re in a team where there’s zero psychological safety. Not if you’re middle management or anywhere where your position is not strong enough.?

But if you’re a company leader and you’re reading this - I do believe you more than “should” - you “ought to”.?

Shall we talk about the abject fear of disclosing neurodivergence at the top? Look around on LinkedIn and in your own organisations and tell me how many openly autistic leaders you see. That’s right. We’re still in this point in time. And the ones you do see, the names who fight for better? Either advocates who have accepted they will never fit in with any cookie cutter approach and simply need to put all their resources into advocacy or this brand new generation we thankfully have created who knows and wants more. The ones who will not be crippled by any fear to open doors clutching a “READ ME!” instruction booklet about themselves to allow you to treat them like you should.?

Those of us leading enterprises in our 40s and 50s and later, we’ve not had the easiest of rides to lead people and build technology whilst being these complicated tangles of “different” and we have come to believe that if “they found out” - our entire edifice of identity may crumble.?It’s generalised fear and it stops us from disclosing most of anything - after all how many of your peers know who you really are?- but when it comes to having found out you may be autistic the prospect of disclosing is often paralysingly life altering and fraught with extreme risk. Loss of status. Loss of income. Loss of employment and above all, loss of reputation that we are “normal” aka “neurotypical”. What if that invalidates all the masking we have so laboriously laid out to build what we believe is our work identity and we are then left exposed and incompetent??

AutisticStigma at the top is a cocktail of imposter syndrome and extreme need for safety - the antidote: opening up to your team.

We have all lived in this society where there’s more “autistic shame” than there is “autistic pride” and we know we will be looked down on, be ridiculed, possibly passed on for work and opportunities or even pulled down the career ladder and God forbid- cancelled.?

How many of us around our age only really found out when realising our kids needed a diagnosis? Considering the hereditary component and the number of diagnosed teens and young people, there are millions of people everywhere in the workforce who took those tests online and read those books, listened to those casts and maybe eventually got a diagnosis. Millions.?

As a leader, if you know you’re Autistic and no one else around does, it feels so much safer, I know. I so know. And if we’re being objective, those of us who are already reasonably successful professionals have little adaptation to hope for. In fact, the more CxOy type you are, the less adaptation for being NeuroSpicy there will be to be had in some sense. And we’ve all sure seen what happens to those that are “too honest”.?

Here’s the kicker though, this is genuinely the one change our kids sorely need, that starts with nothing else but a hefty dose of your own courage. This is not one that requires massive budgets or any shred of infrastructure. Anything a ballsy Autistic leader needs to make solid change in their own enterprise already exists in place once the heavy weight of fear is lifted - it’s the willingness to share and have genuine empathy.

It’s not so you get something out it and you’re not expecting an easier ride in any way, you can make your own adaptation and if we’re honest we have done for years otherwise we would have never survived this far, but you can start changing that into thriving instead of hanging by a thread through new behaviours that would model courage and empathy to all your other neurodivergent employees by disclosing to your top team and adopting some of these strategies:

- Conscious and Considerate unMasking through Coaching and CBT to unlearn Impression Management and learn powerful reframing capabilities the entire team can share;

- Build a Tribe - Tell the story of your lived Autistic experience and foster the spaces where others can all share and include adaptation hacks into it -such as asking all to share their ReadMe or doing regular EQ increasing work-;

- Be prepared for your existing thought patterns and frameworks to be under scrutiny -from your own self and your tribe- and be open to embrace that as a fun discovery journey not a deplorable deterioration of capability that triggers RSD;

- Replace “autistic shame” with “autistic pride” in your own team at least. Eff this, you aced the hard level, let’s be honest. It’s been a hell of an awful -and sometimes heavenly- journey and you’re probably adverse to boasting, but your anecdote of success will carry those around you when someone somewhere needs to know it’s doable and that’s sorely needed not only to others but your own self.?

None of the horrible consequences we fear need happening and in most places, where there is some shred of corporate decency and lack of HumanDebt there is no retaliation in lieu of celebration when a leader “comes out as Autistic” -which of course doesn’t call for banners, full company emails or a “launching our CEO’s Autism” party - just start opening up to your immediate team because the likelihood of them being in the same boat in some way, is gargantuan. ?

And if I can ask some things of us all:

• If you're openly disclosing and reading this newsletter - Come speak to me about your lived experience on www.neurospicyatwork.com so we give that 82% of people waiting for it the real true stories of our NeuroSpicy journey that maybe we shold have never kept from them;
• If you're at the top and in the closet - think about coming clean - stop creating anonymous profiles as Autistic Leaders - it’s the opposite of my plea above and it will make it worse for all;
• Stop bickering about having a formal diagnosis or not, much as some would like to dismiss the swathes of us who have “yet to be seen” as a fad or a false epidemic, that’s poppycock - we as humans have a collective gargantuan backlog of people who are still expecting the explanation and help society should have given them;
• Stop debating exact labels when we have extreme intersectionality;
• Allow people to slide wherever they choose on the “I am an Autistic Superhero and loving it” versus “I am disabled and need assistance to function in your aleatorily arranged neurotypical reality” whenever they choose and however they choose as they are both valid and needed;
• Stop ignoring yourself and others - be the kind of kind that takes the time to rest and care and decipher and connect without ego or fear but with curiosity and empathy instead;
• Let this new generation teach you how to do any of the above if they don’t come easily and ask them to be genuine partners in designing workplaces that don’t need “adaptation” because they are built right with people’s differences being celebrated at the centre.?

You’re magically awesome and I believe in you - the day we all drop masks, shun ableism and genuinely see each other whilst building our best life’s work is maybe far still, but it will be worth it.

And well done you, WELL BLOODY DONE! It hasn’t been easy to make it this far, now we have to find the energy to start the work to land it for all.

With hope,

-D