Should I Tell My Boss & Team That I'm Neurodivergent?

Welcome to the Autistic Techie podcast.

I'm your host, Shea Belsky, an autistic software engineer and tech lead.

We're going to dive into the world of tech careers from a neurodivergent perspective, interviewing guests from all different corners of the industry and empowering you to be a

better self advocate.

Welcome back to the Autistic Techie podcast.

In our last episode, we talked about your first day on the job and what it means to find yourself in a brand new environment, brand new people, brave new world, and everything

that that even means to you as a neurodivergent person.

We briefly touched on the subject of "how do you talk to your team or to your manager about neurodiversity?" And I kind of glossed over it.

because that is a discussion that could spawn multiple hours and years of discussion that could go on for almost forever.

For the purposes of this episode, I want to talk about what it means to you in a new job talking about neurodiversity to people who you don't know, and what it means to discuss

neurodiversity with people who don't know what neurodiversity is, who do know what neurodiversity is,

and people who think they know what neurodiversity is.

a really interesting dynamic when it comes to people who don't know anything, who do have a genuine understanding of it, and people who think they know something.

And I'm going to also add people who know something that is different from who you are.

What I mean by that is think about people who you know, who are neurodivergent.

People in your life, friends, family,

people you know from the internet, people who you've seen on the web, famous people, celebrities, they all have unique individual profiles.

The question is, do they have something else going on at the same time that has a medical clinical definition?

That could be dyslexia, autism, ADHD.

The problem that tends to happen is that when we put those sorts of labels or names to things, the clinical definitions on them, society comes in and tries to group people

together into distinct categories or buckets or stereotypes based on those labels.

Even if those labels were never meant to do that, we have this habit of doing that anyway.

All autistic people

do this, all ADHD people do that, all epileptic people do this, all Down syndrome people do that, so on and so forth.

The problem that tends to happen is that as a society, we lose the nuance, the definition of the individual when we get lost in saying, this person has autism, here are these top

10 things you instantly need to know, disregarding all else about them.

As a society,

We have to get away from this idea that every single autistic person, every single ADHD person, every single dyslexic person, and so on, has exactly the same set of support

needs, exactly the same strengths, and are identical to each other.

Do they have some commonalities and some shared traits?

Yes, absolutely.

But by no way, shape, or form should they all be tied together with a rope and said,

"All these people need all the same things.

Give them all the same medicine, or give them all the same label, or all the same IEP, or accommodations," or whatever it is.

That doesn't work in modern society.

And we, as neurodivergent individuals, as people, need to recognize when we are being stereotyped, grouped together, and looked at for the forest and not for the trees.

You are a unique individual tree, and maybe your colors change differently in the fall than everybody else's, as they should.

When you look at the top of the mountain, and look out into a big forest with all the leaves changing colors, each tree might look the same to you from a distance.

When you go up to it, there's a lot of nuance, a lot of differences between you, that tree, and the one right next to you.

On the surface, things might look a little bit similar, but

Pay close attention, and there's so many different things about you as a neurodivergent person.

You might have different strengths.

You might be a great communicator.

You might have the easiest time in the world making new friends.

You can eat whatever foods you want to.

Maybe you just struggle with noise.

Maybe you struggle when it comes to executive functioning.

Maybe you struggle in standing up for yourself.

The tree right next to you, the person right next to you, they might have the exact opposite set of things going on.

they might be great at executive functioning.

They might really have weird taste buds and struggle with eating new foods or have different dietary restrictions.

You can't look at individuals as having all the same set of needs just because you've seen one or two people who do have the same set of support needs and do need that help.

That's true in society.

That's true in the workplace.

And no matter how many trainings that are out there,

no matter how much things get discussed about neurodiversity, people still have biases.

It is hard to completely eradicate bias.

And I have taken many of these anti-bias trainings and they are effective.

We are still human and we are susceptible to bias, whether we like it or not.

And there is the idea of unconscious bias, which applies to a great variety of different people and applies to us too.

neurodivergent people experience unconscious bias, whether we want to recognize it or not, people project unconscious bias onto us when thinking about people who are ADHD, who are

hyperactive and can't focus and can't sit still and are always tapping their leg.

That does not apply to all ADHD people.

Does it apply to some people?

Maybe.

But saying that every single ADHD person has those characteristics is inaccurate.

and is harmful to anybody who has ADHD.

Same thing for autistic people.

Not all autistic people are good at math.

Not all autistic people are superhuman intelligent.

Not all autistic people are socially awkward.

There are people out there who are good at all those things.

There are people out there who are not great at any of those things or mix and match.

When you're in the workplace, you might experience that.

And you as a neurodivergent person can't just take that lying down if you are experiencing that.

Or if you're seeing something in your environment, in your workplace, that you realize and say, "hey, this needs to change.

This needs to be different.

And I have a responsibility to myself to do something about it." And you might ask yourself, you might say to yourself, "I don't want to be a burden.

I don't want to make people treat me differently, and I don't want my manager or my boss to look at me funny or make me think I'm the weird person or the special person because

I'm asking for something that people don't have." And I cannot stop you from feeling that guilt.

It is a weird feeling, guilt, to feel as though you're being treated differently because of who you are.

But at the same time, if you do not ask for something to make your environment

better, where you are able to thrive, where you are able to really get your job done, you are doing yourself a disservice.

And nobody can figure that out except for you in the workplace.

If you had an IEP in school, if you had a 504, if you had people around you who could accommodate or advocate for you on your behalf, that was their job.

It was their job to make sure that you're being taken care of and understand

"Are you doing okay?

Are things going well?

If they're not going well, what should we be doing differently?

What should we be doing differently to fix things?

And if things are going well, what's working so we can maintain that as part of your support system?" That's not really the case in the workplace, in the real world.

You have to stand up for yourself.

And when you're asking for something from your manager, from your team, you

shouldn't think of yourself as being the special person who's treated differently.

In reality, every individual in the workplace needs something different about their environment, some adjustment, some accommodation to help them work better.

Whatever they call an accommodation or adjustment or not is up to them.

For neurodivergent people, there's a more explicit term for it because it's what is more clinical and more

easily understandable from the outside community and from people within the workplace as well.

You should not necessarily think of an accommodation for yourself as a cheat code or an advantage that you had someone else doesn't that they can't have.

If they have the same sort of support issues or the support struggles, they should have just as much rights to the same accommodation or the same adjustment as you do.

Take for example,

If you are autistic, I am autistic.

One of the number one things that I struggled with in my very first job was communicating.

It was getting up there in front of a bunch of people and doing a presentation.

Now, a lot of people struggle with that.

And in my first job, I said to my manager, I really struggle with presentations and I want to take special time.

for us just to work on my ability to communicate and to articulate and give a presentation, read from a PowerPoint, and run a slide deck.

The reason I talk about neurodiversity there is because the needs of an autistic individual and presenting can be different from the needs of a regular person and

neurotypical person doing presentation.

Doesn't mean there can't be similarities, but when I use my autism, when I discuss my autism as the

context for that conversation.

It gives them a better idea about why I might be struggling with it.

It gives them a better idea of what support system I could use to help me address that and grow in this capacity.

And it helps them understand that why, "why does Shea struggle?

Why does he speak fast?

Why does he sometimes stutter with all of these things that are happening?" I'm talking on a podcast right now.

So you have no idea that a couple of years ago, I would struggle with any of this.

And I still do struggle with this to an extent.

When you communicate

with your manager, you have to ask yourself, "is there something that I could be doing better at in my job?

And is there something that I can ask for to help me close that gap?" For me, that thing was speaking and presentations, which is a common thing in my career as a software

engineer.

You could be a product manager and your entire day is filled with presentations, calls, and

talking to other people and leading other people.

As a software engineer, maybe presentations aren't my bread and butter.

Maybe it is for a product manager.

Maybe it is for a designer or a researcher or an analyst or other roles where you find yourself on the phone with customers.

Another example of that could be conflict aversion.

I describe myself as a conflict averse person and you might say to your manager, "hey, Mr.

or Mrs.

Manager

I want to spend some time, or I need help specifically in my own way of addressing conflict with other people, with coworkers, with peers." Maybe I'm on a customer call and

they're being really rude and difficult to me.

I need help with how I emotionally regulate myself there and how I come to the outcome of that argument or the outcome of this discussion.

Maybe you've had issues with this before and this is the first time you've had a conversation about it with anybody.

Maybe it's your 10th time, your 20th time, or you've never had a conversation in the first place.

Going back to the very first thing that I said, maybe your manager is hearing from other people, hey, this person seems to struggle in this kind of environment.

So maybe they're clued in already.

Maybe they have absolutely no idea if this is your first week or so on the job and you're telling them something

brand new before it comes up.

It is your responsibility, a prerogative, as an individual to work with your manager on these things before they come to you about it.

What I mean by that is when I opened up to my manager and said to them, hey, Mr.

and Mrs.

Manager, I know for a fact that I struggle with communication, that I

really need help with this.

I said that to them before they came to realize it later, and they did realize it later.

But the conversation that I had with them was so much easier because I led with it, because I said to them one of the first things that I talked about with them about a month

or so in was this communication trouble that I had.

There were other things that came up with my interactions with my manager that I didn't necessarily disclose upfront.

that would later become problematic, such as my ability to negotiate conflict and back off if I was wrong.

I had never done that before.

And I struggled with that in the beginning.

I never got mad or upset at anybody.

But emotionally in my mind, I was definitely like, whoa, this is an interesting thing.

And my manager and I spent a lot of time discussing this idea of conflict resolution and knowing when to back off.

And that happened.

after people had come to them about that.

Not in a way that was bad or anything, but just as a, you should know this thing about Shea Or this is an interaction that I had with him.

And that was still a really fruitful, honest discussion that two of us had.

And I'd wish that I had had the self-reflection, the awareness, the self-awareness to have had that conversation with my manager beforehand, but I didn't.

I wasn't aware of that.

The good news,

was that I was on a team that was really supportive and aware enough to talk to my manager about it from a place of caring and respect, not from a place of dunking on me and saying,

Shea did this really weird and awful thing.

He's a bad person.

But they're like, hey, I don't think Shea means to do that sort of thing, but this is what's happening.

Can you work on it with him?

And it was great from that point onward.

And that does rely on your team having an understanding that

Hey, these things might happen.

These behaviors might be things that Shea does not mean to do.

He's not malicious.

He's not trying to do anything bad.

He just might not know any better, might not necessarily have any control over some of these things.

That's where it gets into the idea of talking about it with your team.

What should your team know, if anything?

Maybe all they need to know is that you are neurodivergent.

This is what you should expect.

and this is what kind of support or accountability that you need from them to best support you.

When I talk about my autism with new teams that I've become a part of, what I say to them is I communicate my ideas differently, I express my ideas differently, and I emote

differently than what they might expect.

When I say different than what they might expect, that's different from what they might expect an autistic person to do or a neurotypical person to do.

They're going to have

A lot of different preconceived notions, ideas, stereotypes, what do they know about me?

Have they looked at my LinkedIn, my podcast, my websites, whatever it is?

What did I know about me?

What is their assumption about me coming into the door?

When I come in to them and I set the stage, I say, whatever you think you know about me, I'm going to ask you to put that aside just for the moment.

And I'm going to tell you what you should know about me, what you need to be aware of.

and what I need from you to help me do this job that I am here to do.

And typically, I as an individual don't ask too much from them other than just to be patient with me when it comes to communication.

Because sometimes I still might go on and on about something.

Sometimes I might not talk about the subject at hand.

Sometimes I might interrupt people.

I am, to this day, still not great.

about interrupting people.

If you know me, you know this is a big problem of mine.

I still do that.

And especially on virtual calls, I struggle with knowing when somebody's done talking for me to interrupt, for me to add my two cents and I catch myself doing it and then I might

say, I'm sorry and go on mute or something.

In person, it's a little bit easier for me.

But the point is that I help them be aware of these things.

That way they're not surprising and

they feel less emotional burden, less emotional baggage if it comes up.

And I think that if in these situations it becomes problematic, I always say to them like, if you feel need to talk about it with me, please just let's come talk have a conversation

about it.

And if you don't want to talk to me, I understand that you can talk to my manager about it.

And so far I've been able to have really great and productive conversations with people who maybe

don't know a lot about neurodiversity or autism.

And with people who do know people with autism and are having their minds completely blown open being like, you don't behave like this person I know about who is autistic or my

loved one or someone I saw on TV.

That's a huge thing you can do on your team to advocate for yourself is to show them here's another perspective, here's another slice of life into somebody who's

neurodivergent.

Granted.

If you choose to do that, you should not make it your responsibility to be the Neurodiversity Champion on your team.

The Accessibility Champion.

Accessibility Champion on your team.

If you choose to do that, great.

You can choose to do that.

But you should not feel the burden of being the social neurodiverse champion for justice and peace just because you have discussed it.

with your team.

To you, the discussion of neurodiversity may simply be transactional.

You just need them to know about it so you can do your job and that's it.

You may not have a great passion for talking about neurodiversity like I do and that's perfectly okay.

Nobody is forcing you to talk about these things, to get up on a stage in front of a microphone and talk about it.

If that is not something that you want to do, nobody is making you.

You should not feel the burden from other people to feel as though you are the spokesperson in the spotlight for everybody who shares your diagnosis, who shares your

background, your intersectionality whatever it is, you should not feel an obligation to step up and say, this is my perspective for everybody.

Even on this podcast, I do not claim to speak for all autistic people, all neurodivergent people.

I'm talking to you, a neurodivergent person or somebody who knows somebody who is, who loves somebody who is, who cares about somebody who is, who works for somebody who is

whoever you are.

You're an individual too.

You're a person.

And you should not feel as though neurodiversity has to become the focal point of your being just because you choose to talk about it.

For some people, they can talk about it all day long and that makes them excited.

That makes them really energized and happy and eager and let's go talk about this really important topic to me.

And that is amazing.

I personally love talking about this stuff, but it's not for everybody.

For you, the neurodiversity thing may just be a part of who you are, but maybe you have other interests.

Those are the things that you could talk about a stage for for two hours if you had to.

Whether it's a sport, an activity, a hobby, maybe you're into Formula One, maybe you watch the Grammys, maybe you're into Broadway, maybe you're into Jiu Jitsu, whatever it is, your

interests do not have to center around neurodiversity.

And if it helps for you to say that to other people as well, to set expectations, to say, this is a part of who I am, but that is not my entire identity, that is also appropriate.

You want people to treat you with respect.

You want people to treat you the way that you want to be treated.

And part of that comes with asking them for help so that they treat you the way you want to be treated, but don't cross a boundary that you maybe think is uncomfortable to cross.

And to be fair, maybe you don't know what that boundary is until it's been crossed.

you may not be able to hold somebody accountable to that behavior until after it happens.

You owe it to yourself as a neurodivergent person to understand what are the things that make me tick?

What are the things that really get me going and excite me to energize me to help me do my job really well?

What are the things that are turned off to me?

What make it hard for me to do my job?

What are the environments where I can't operate or I have a really hard time operating?

What can I do without the intervention of others to create that environment for myself?

And what can I do that sometimes involves other people and definitely involves other people?

what do they need to know to be a part of that?

Because you can say something out there into the world and not know if people are listening, or you can sit down and have a conversation with people and say, here's the

story.

This is me.

This is what I need to be successful on this team.

This is what I need as a person to feel like I belong.

and can do this job.

And this is what I'm asking of you.

And the clearer you are about what your needs are, the better they'll be able to help you.

Thanks so much for listening to the Autistic Techie podcast.

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