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