Neurodiversity and Leadership

[Music]

most of us assume many roles in our

lives

i’m an engineer i was a corporate

executive for many years

now i’m a university management

professor but above all

i’m a dad and i am what some may call

an autism dad meaning one of my children

is on the autism spectrum

one survey of parents with children on

the spectrum found that 70 percent of us

worry about how our children will

achieve adult independence

and lead full lives and many parents

with children on the spectrum myself

included

value the uniqueness of our children and

see them as gifts to the world

a society more accepting of autism in

the workplace

could both address this concern for

adult independence

and empower our children to contribute

their gifts to the world

this is a challenge i’m going to ask you

to undertake

i’m also going to offer some help in

meeting that challenge

several years ago all of these roles of

my life converged in having a discussion

with a family member about his

difficulties at work

it occurred to me that this bright young

man was having trouble with his

supervisor

because his supervisor had no idea how

to manage someone on the autism spectrum

and it occurred to me this is part of

the why

this is why there is such a high

unemployment rate among people with

autism

unskilled supervisors have no confidence

in their ability to lead team members

with autism

so they simply avoid the uncomfortable

situation

they don’t hire people with autism

and i thought well this is something i

can fix i can make a contribution here

and i set out to do so my goal was to

build a workshop

that would help supervisors and managers

understand how to change their approach

so they could more effectively lead

team members with autism i was pursuing

a doctorate in management at the time

so i went to the university library to

learn everything that we knew

about effective leadership of employees

with autism

this didn’t take very long i found

nothing

zero this had not been researched

there’s been some progress since then

but nowhere near enough

well it would seem that my idea of a

workshop to help

supervisors learn to effectively lead

team members with autism

was dead in the water there’s no

research to base it on

but i can be pretty stubborn and what

does a good chief engineer do

when faced with a problem but there’s no

data

we guess well no we don’t guess we

develop an informed hypothesis and look

for ways to test that hypotheses

yeah we call that a scientific guess my

search for this informed hypothesis led

me

to the work of autism researcher

francesca hoppe

who argues that the autistic mind is

often characterized by deep specific

skills

like innovative thinking or attention to

detail in repetitive tasks

but that these deep specific skills are

often combined

with weak central coherence or

difficulty in getting the gist of a

situation

this is the key to connecting what we

know about the practice of management

to the challenges of effectively leading

team members with autism

i held robust discussions with my

graduate management students

about what techniques simply assume

that the employee gets the gist of the

situation

any approach with this assumption baked

into it

is likely to fail when applied to an

employee with autism

the supervisor will use a flawed

technique and when it doesn’t work

assume that the employee is flawed

rather than their management approach

i believe this is a big part of the why

why people with autism have such

difficulty

being successful at the workplace

based on this insight i developed my

workshop on how managers and supervisors

could use

common tools like delegation and

accountability

to more effectively lead team members

with autism

and then one of my students gave me an

amazing opportunity to test

the workshop she was the executive

director of via of the lehigh valley

an agency that works with people with

autism

she made her entire staff available to

test the workshop

the workshop passed the rigorous

scrutiny

of this experienced group of people

ultimately giving me the confidence

that i had made in connecting this

concept of francesca hoppe’s

to the challenge of effectively leading

team members with autism

this insight and workshop

is also the basis of the class and

leadership in neurodiversity

that i developed for my students at

temple university college of engineering

and it is the basis of the offer that i

will make to you

before we’re done here today

by some estimates 85 percent of people

with autism

are unemployed or underemployed despite

any value that they might bring to the

table

it doesn’t matter if they have earned a

college degree

it doesn’t matter if they’ve earned a

sought-after college degree

like computer science they are excluded

from our economic life

because they are almost hardwired to

think differently than most of us

they are excluded even though these

differences can be shown to be valuable

to employers let me put this in

perspective

this 85 percent unemployment rate is

equivalent

to three times the entire workforce of

the city of philadelphia

so from the top of the comcast tower to

every neighborhood hoagie shop

for every person with a job there’s

three sitting at home just in the u.s

not worldwide they’re denied

the independence and the dignity that

comes from employment

even though they’re willing and often

able to make a contribution

this is not only unfair to people with

autism

this is a profound waste of human

potential

but recall that i’m coming at this not

just as a dad

but from the perspective of

organizational leadership

so as organizational leaders why is this

our problem

why do we care look obviously as family

members as community members

as neighbors we care but as

organizational leaders

don’t we have a responsibility to

deliver results for shareholders

or pursue our social mission for the

non-profit people who fund us

or be good stewards of tuition money

entrusted to us

by students and their families

so as organizational leaders why is this

our problem

i ask you to consider the compelling

story of john elder robeson

if you ever get the opportunity to read

one of john’s books or better yet hear

him speak

i would recommend that you do so john is

a very talented engineer

who invented some amazing engineering

projects

like the first circuit capable of

digitizing a human voice

yet john left the engineering profession

because he was afraid that people would

discover

that he was not a real engineer

john dropped out of school in the ninth

grade john

is on the autism spectrum asperger’s or

an aspie as john calls it

john had difficulty making eye contact

reading social cues

everything that would make life very

difficult in the ninth grade

but john’s parents were faculty at a

local university

so even though he dropped out of school

he was able to sneak into the

engineering laboratories at night

where he taught himself electrical

engineering

that sink in for a second he taught

himself electrical engineering

and then went on to invent some pretty

impressive engineering projects

yet john left the engineering profession

because he never finished his formal

education

because he didn’t feel as though he fit

in

i run a program at temple university

college of engineering

that helps prepare technical

professionals to grow into leadership

roles

i make sure my students understand the

challenges and the opportunities

of leading people with autism i make

sure that my students hear the story of

john elder robeson

and then i posed the question to them if

you ran the engineering department

what would you have done to keep john

from leaving your company

just last semester one student said i

would have done whatever it took

and she was absolutely correct well what

about you

what would you do to keep john from

leaving your company if you worked there

i’ll tell you what i would do if i was

president of that company

i would have told all of you

neurotypical managers and employees

that if john leaves and maybe walks down

the street to the competition

because you didn’t find a way for him to

fit in

then you have a problem with me

you may be leaving the company also

a few minutes ago i posed the question

is organizational leaders why is this

our problem

story of john elder robeson demonstrates

it’s not our problem

it’s our opportunity it’s an opportunity

to make our organizations

and ourselves more successful by

empowering people with autism

to make their contribution to their

employers and to society as a whole

my first project as a chief engineer was

a very complex u.s navy project

that required among many other things a

computer simulation of a flying vehicle

now the individual that could do this

simulation was the first person that i

ever worked with with autism

although i didn’t really understand it

back then

let’s call him bill bill had many

characteristics that today

i might recognize as potentially being

autistic

he didn’t make eye contact he kept to

himself

he preferred to work late at night when

management wasn’t around to bother him

you know actually i did understand that

one and frankly i was a little jealous

one of the other engineers on my team

must have had some personal experience

with autism

because he insisted that he manage the

communication between bill and myself

rather than having me do it this is a

little out of the ordinary

and frankly i was very hesitant to do

this i was chief engineer

it was my responsibility to make sure

that everything was working in sync

but this normally quiet engineer dug his

heels in and insisted

that he manage this communication so i

agreed

now i watched these communications from

a distance

and i’m not sure exactly what this fella

did

but i believe that he knew from personal

experience

what francesca hoppe later proved

through research

that bill had deep specific skills

but needed more help than most in

understanding the gist of the situation

bill was very comfortable with these

conversations

bill did a great job bill made a

critical contribution to this project

a contribution i could have never made

personally

so i benefited enormously from a very

small modification to my leadership

approach

a modification that let bill find a way

to comfortably fit in

to make his contribution to the project

and to the company the first time i told

this story

a listener told me that i had treated

the person with autism differently

and that that was wrong i suspect she

was concerned that i was

othering bill i have to admit this was a

different perspective for me

now when someone criticizes my thinking

i i try to take it seriously

i internalize it i examine it i try to

determine the validity of the criticism

this usually takes five maybe 10 seconds

and then i can counter attack but

seriously

i did reflect on this constructive

criticism about the development of my

leadership style

and this was a watershed moment in the

development of my personal leadership

style

i was being told by people whom i

respected

that now that i was chief engineer my

job was to give orders and chew people

out i was really uncomfortable with this

i was completely dependent on my team

for my personal success

barking out orders and yelling at people

who knew more than i

did seemed very risky

eventually i figured out that what i had

to do wasn’t to boss people around

it was to find a way for everyone to

work together

i had to manage the interfaces between

both the subsystems

and the personalities of the project

this was more difficult than i thought

it would be for instance

one of my team members was very risk

averse

his inclination was to ask for so many

of the project resources

to minimize his subsystem risk that it

would have put the other subsystems at

risk

now i could have just told him i could

have ordered him to take the risk

i was the chief engineer but that would

have alienated him from the project

so instead i worked with him i worked

with him to find ways to minimize

the risk to his subsystem without

monopolizing the project resources

i worked with him so that he was

confident in taking the risk

that i needed him to take there was

another manager

who was very very concerned about the

political ramifications on him

personally

if the customer mandated testing

methodology were to fail

i had to find a way to give him

political cover to get him on board with

the project

and as i reflected on this i realized

that almost

everybody on this team had some barrier

that prevented them from fully

committing to this project

and i had to take an action to remove

each of these barriers

so as i reflected on these incidents

where my intervention was required

it occurred to me that the criticism i

had received

about treating the person with autism

differently

was an accurate criticism i did treat

him differently

and i treated the people without autism

differently

i treated everyone differently so that i

could remove the individual barriers

that kept each and every team member

from fully committing to the

project and as i thought about this

i realized that i had not been given a

team where everyone just naturally fit

in

i did not have the round peg for the

round hole i did not have the square peg

for the square hole you know what

i’ve never had that team in fact i don’t

think that team even exists

what i had to work with was a team of

real people

and real people can be like puzzle

pieces

everyone not just people with autism

having them have amazing abilities that

are combined with their own

individual idiosyncrasies and rough

edges

and if everyone cannot fit in and make

their own unique and valuable

contribution

the quality of the overall picture will

suffer

so the job of a leader is like building

a puzzle

find a way for everyone to fit in

and make their valuable and unique

contribution

to the quality of the overall picture

i said earlier that i was going to make

an offer

and issue a challenge this is a

university

there’s many people here engaged with

the training and education of the next

generation of leaders

i would argue that if the next

generation of leaders understands the

opportunity and the challenges of

effectively leading team members with

autism

this 85 percent unemployment rate will

evaporate

my students at temple university college

of engineering understand the challenge

and understand the opportunity please

contact me

i will make all of my teaching material

available to you

the teaching material that’s based on

the workshop that i built

based on francesca hoppe’s concept of

weak central coherence

combined with deep specific skills use

this material

make sure your students understand the

challenge

and the opportunity make sure that

they’re prepared for it that’s my offer

all in all the picture that is emerging

is that effective leadership of people

with autism

is simply effective leadership for

everyone

both my personal experience and research

at places like microsoft

indicates that when we get better at

leading people with autism

we get better at leading everyone

my challenge to everyone in a leadership

position

to everyone who aspires to a leadership

position

embrace your role as a puzzle builder

find a way for everyone to fit in

and make their unique and valuable

contribution

make your organizations and yourselves

more successful

and help change the world for people on

the autism spectrum

and for everyone else who doesn’t fit in

thank you