Communication Skills For Neurotypical Managers 101
Communication in the modern workplace is hard work. No-one understands that better than us neurodivergent folk. We’ve been adapting our communication to fit in with neurotypical communication styles ever since someone decided that was how things worked.
A funny thing happens when you go through life thinking you’re not good at communication thanks to countless awkward situations. You work hard to get good at it. You observe, you analyse and you draw conclusions and bring them together in a sort of a blueprint.
You end up carrying the load for everything that goes wrong in interpersonal interactions. Meanwhile, everyone else is off the hook because, well they’re just normal people doing things the normal way, right?
Yet, chances are you’ve heard that people who are autistic and/or have ADHD have poor social communication skills and that this makes us unsuitable for many types of work.
We thought that too, until we learned about something called the double empathy problem, a theory that explains that communication difficulties arise from differences between autistic and neurotypical communication styles, not because we have inherent communication deficits.
