I want to tell you about a manager I worked with. She had a team member who was brilliant at spotting patterns in data that nobody else could. He delivered work with a level of accuracy that frankly put everyone else to shame. But in team meetings, he rarely made eye contact. He answered questions in ways that sometimes felt abrupt. And when she introduced a last-minute change to a process, he would visibly struggle with the shift.
She came to me because she did not know how to manage him. She was not unkind. She just did not know what she did not know. And somewhere in that gap between her good intentions and her lack of understanding, a genuinely talented person was quietly burning out while spending enormous energy trying to fit a mould that simply was not made for him.
That story sits at the heart of why I wanted to write this blog.
Around one in five people are neurodivergent. That means in any team of ten, you are statistically likely to have at least one or two people whose brains work differently, whether that is autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia or something else entirely. Yet research suggests that unemployment among neurodivergent people can reach as high as 80%, and data indicates that fewer than three in ten autistic adults are currently in work.
That is not a talent shortage problem. That is a management and communication problem.
And that is squarely in my territory.
So, what does neurodiversity actually mean?
Neurodiversity simply refers to the natural variation in how human brains work. Most people are neurotypical. They think, communicate and process information in ways that broadly match what society considers normal. Neurodivergent people have brains that work in ways that diverge significantly from that norm.
This is not a deficiency, it is a difference. And that distinction really matters.
Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia. These are all examples of neurodivergent conditions. Each one comes with its own profile of strengths and challenges, and critically, every single neurodivergent person is different. No blanket assumptions and no one-size-fits-all approach. Just genuine curiosity and a willingness to understand the person in front of you.
It is also worth knowing that the language around autism has evolved. Many autistic people have moved away from the idea of a spectrum, which tends to make people think in terms of high or low functioning, and prefer to describe autism as a constellation of traits. Each person has their own unique pattern, and that pattern can shift depending on the environment, circumstances, and the support around them.
That framing feels more honest to me, and more useful for managers trying to understand the person in front of them rather than trying to fit them into a box.
The umbrella of neurodivergence is broader than most managers realise, too. It includes people with acquired brain injuries, epilepsy, and those whose differences do not come with a formal diagnosis at all. Which means the people on your team who are navigating a differently wired brain are likely more numerous than you think, and more hidden.
The masking problem for Neurodivergent and why it should concern every manager
Here is something that does not get talked about enough. Many neurodivergent people spend significant energy every single day suppressing or concealing the ways their brain naturally works, so they appear normal to those around them. This is called masking, and it is exhausting in a way that is genuinely hard to overstate.
Think about what it takes to constantly monitor yourself, your tone, your eye contact, your responses, and your social cues in a bid to avoid standing out or being judged.
Now think about doing that for eight or nine hours a day, every working day. Over time, masking leads to burnout, anxiety and depression. And the really painful part: many people do it because they do not feel safe enough not to.
Research suggests that roughly two-thirds of neurodivergent employees do not disclose their neurodivergence at work. Some are not even aware of it themselves. But many simply do not trust that sharing something this personal will be met with understanding rather than quiet judgement, awkwardness, or being quietly sidelined for opportunities.
This builds directly on something I talk about constantly in my work around difficult conversations: psychological safety. Creating a workplace where people feel safe to be honest, whether that is in a performance conversation, a conflict, or a disclosure, is one of the most important things a manager can do.
And yet only around a quarter of managers genuinely achieve it in their teams.
If your team members do not feel safe, they will not tell you what they need.
And you cannot manage well what you do not understand.
There is a helpful way of thinking about this that I would encourage every manager to sit with. The social model of disability suggests that people are not disadvantaged by their condition itself. They are disadvantaged by the barriers that organisations and systems create around them.
In other words, the problem often is not the person. It is the environment they are trying to function in. That is a genuinely important shift in perspective, because it moves the responsibility away from the individual having to cope and places it squarely with the manager and the organisation to do better.
The strengths being left unused from Neurodivergent People
Let us talk about what neurodivergent employees, and particularly autistic individuals, bring to a team, because the business case here is genuinely compelling.
Companies like SAP, Microsoft and Dell have been running dedicated neurodivergent hiring programmes for years, specifically because they recognised the talent they were missing out on. SAP’s Autism at Work programme has created hundreds of opportunities for autistic professionals, finding them exceptional in roles that require focus, pattern recognition, and precision. (An overview here)
One autistic employee at SAP reportedly identified a technical solution that saved the company a staggering amount, not because they were superhuman, but because they thought differently from everyone else in the room.
Autistic people often bring remarkable focus and accuracy, a high degree of reliability, and the ability to think in ways that challenge assumptions and notice what others walk straight past.
People with ADHD often bring creativity, energy and unconventional problem-solving skills.
Dyslexic thinkers often excel at big-picture thinking and three-dimensional reasoning.
One company’s research showed their neurodivergent testing teams were significantly more productive than their neurotypical counterparts, not despite their differences, but because of them.
Every neurodivergent person is different. Their strengths, challenges, and what they need from you will vary, too. The single most useful thing you can do is stop assuming and start asking. That principle sits at the heart of everything I teach about managing people well.
The Neurodivergent conversation that changes everything
If you want to go deeper on this, I covered the specific dynamics of having challenging conversations with neurodiverse employees in an earlier podcast episode on The People Mentor. In it, I walk through real scenarios, condition by condition, and share the practical approaches that actually work when the conversation itself is the challenge. You can find it here.
What I want to focus on here is the moment that sits before any of that practical preparation even becomes relevant.
One of the most critical moments in a neurodivergent employee’s experience at work is the disclosure conversation, the moment they choose to tell you something deeply personal about how their brain works.
Get that conversation wrong, and you can close a door that may never fully open again. Get it right, and you can transform someone’s entire work experience.
What does getting it right look like? It starts with curiosity rather than assumption. When someone discloses, the instinct is often to immediately problem-solve, to think, right, what do I need to do now?
But that is getting ahead of yourself. What the person in front of you needs first is to feel heard. They need to know that sharing this has not made things worse, that you are not now viewing them through a lens of limitation, and that their privacy will be respected.
From there, it is about asking rather than telling.
- What do they find challenging?
- What helps them do their best work?
- What do they need from you?
These are not questions to ask once and file away. They are the foundation of an ongoing conversation, one that evolves as trust develops and circumstances change.
This is exactly where my COMPASS Conversation Model becomes practical.
When I work with managers on difficult conversations, I always start with C: Create Safety. Before you can have any meaningful discussion, you need to make sure the person in front of you genuinely feels safe enough to be honest. That is even more important when the conversation involves something as personal as how someone’s brain works.
From there, O is Observe, looking at what specific behaviours or patterns you have noticed that you would like to understand better, without judgement.
M is the Motive Check, getting honest with yourself about whether your intention is genuinely to support, or whether there is an agenda underneath it.
P is Present Impact, being truthful about how things are landing, without blame or assumption.
A is Ask for Perspective, the part most managers skip, and often the most important part of the whole conversation.
S and S finish the conversation: Suggest a way forward together, and secure a clear action plan so nobody leaves the room unsure what happens next.
The COMPASS model is not just for performance conversations or conflict. It is a framework for any conversation where something meaningful is at stake. And when it comes to neurodivergent team members, the stakes are very high indeed.
Practical steps you can take right now in the Workplace to support neurodivergent individuals
This is the part most blogs skip over, so I want to be specific.
Because intention without action does not change anything for the person on your team who is quietly struggling.
Start with how you communicate. Written instructions alongside verbal ones make a real difference for many neurodivergent employees. Not because they cannot listen, but because processing information in their own time and at their own pace removes a significant layer of pressure.
Send meeting agendas in advance. Make expectations clear and direct. Avoid figurative language, idioms and sarcasm in written communications, particularly in formal settings, because they can be genuinely confusing rather than just mildly irritating.
Look at your physical environment. Is your office a loud, open-plan space with no quiet space available? That environment is actively hostile to some neurodivergent employees, particularly those who experience sensory overload.
Quiet zones, desk partitions, or simply the permission to use noise-cancelling headphones are low-cost adjustments that can make an enormous difference. If you have team members working from home, ask what their setup looks like and whether they have what they need.
Reconsider how you measure performance. One of the most powerful shifts you can make is moving away from presence and process towards outcomes. When you focus on what someone delivers rather than how or when they deliver it, you remove significant unnecessary pressure.
You also create space for people to work in the way that genuinely gets the best out of them. That is good for neurodivergent employees and, honestly, for everyone.
Make your one-to-ones count. Regular, consistent check-ins give neurodivergent team members a predictable space to raise concerns, ask questions and flag when something is not working.
Use those conversations to ask open questions: what is going well, what is feeling hard, what do you need from me this week? And then actually listen to the answers rather than moving straight into problem-solving mode.
Review your onboarding and induction processes. Starting a new role is disorienting for most people, but for neurodivergent employees, it can be genuinely overwhelming.
Unclear expectations, rapid change, and an assumption that people will just pick things up as they go along creates anxiety and confusion from day one. Clear written guides, structured introductions, a named point of contact for questions, and a realistic timeline for settling in are not special treatment. They are just good practice.
Build awareness in your wider team, but do it carefully. Running internal conversations or training around neurodiversity and autism can help to reduce stigma and create a culture where people feel safer being themselves. But only invite a neurodivergent team member to share their own story if they have actively chosen to do so.
Outing someone, even with the best of intentions, is a serious breach of trust. Your job is to create the conditions for people to share if and when they are ready, not to decide when that moment should be.
And finally, when someone does disclose, resist the urge to immediately compare their experience to someone else you have managed or known.
Every neurodivergent person’s experience is their own.
Curiosity and openness will always serve you better than assumptions. Ask what they need, let them lead the conversation about their own support, and make it clear that disclosure has not changed how you see their potential or their value to the team.
The conversation you might be avoiding in the Workplace
I want to bring this back to something I see managers do all the time, and it is the thing that causes the most harm: avoiding the conversation altogether.
Maybe you have noticed someone is struggling, or you have seen friction in the team that does not quite make sense.
Perhaps you suspect that a team member is neurodivergent, but you do not know how to raise it, so you don’t. You tell yourself you do not want to label anyone, that it is not your place, or that you are worried about saying the wrong thing and making it worse.
I understand that. The fear of getting it wrong is real, and I do not want to dismiss it. But silence is not neutral. Silence is a choice, and its cost is borne almost entirely by the person who needed you to show up.
You do not have to have all the answers. You do not need to diagnose anyone or become an overnight expert in neurodiversity.
What you need is to be willing to start a curious, kind conversation. To ask how someone is finding the work. To notice what is happening and name it gently. To create the conditions for honesty, and to follow through when someone trusts you with something important.
As I have discussed, when it comes to performance conversations and conflict, the underlying dynamic is the same. When managers are uncertain how something will land, they tend to avoid it. And avoidance nearly always makes things harder in the long run. The conversation you are putting off is usually the one that matters most.
You do not have to be perfect in dealing with Neurodiverse Individuals
Managing neurodiverse team members well does not require perfection, it requires intention. It requires a genuine willingness to ask questions rather than make assumptions, to adjust your approach based on what you learn, and to create the kind of workplace where people do not have to spend half their energy hiding who they are just to get through the day.
The talent is already there. In your team right now, there are very likely people whose brains work in ways that could bring real, tangible value to your organisation, if only they felt supported enough to show up fully.
Think about what that means. Right now, you may be managing someone who is working at a fraction of their capability, not because they lack talent, but because they lack the right conditions. Someone who goes home every evening exhausted, not from the work itself, but from the performance of fitting in. Someone who, with the right conversation and a few thoughtful adjustments, could be one of the most valuable people in your team.
Your job as a manager is not to fix anyone or to understand every nuance of every neurological difference. It is to create the conditions where everyone can do their best work. That starts, as it almost always does, with a conversation.
If you are not sure where to start, that is exactly what I am here for. The COMPASS Conversation Model gives you the structure. What you bring is the willingness to use it.