Neurodivergent Corporate Survival Guide: Part 2
I’m diving into more neurodivergent lessons learned about surviving (and even thriving in) a corporate job! Check out Part 1 if you haven’t already.
These three points are all about strategy. “Playing chess instead of checkers,” as they say. Many of us neurodivergent professionals fall into the trap of thinking our work will speak for itself (it won’t). The following hard-earned lessons are pillars of success in any work environment, and most people who succeed in these environments are doing these things automatically, even unconsciously.
Unfortunately, as far too many of us have experienced, these unspoken rules of the road are often invisible and counterintuitive to us. But when we don’t know the game we’re playing, we don’t stand a chance of surviving it, never mind winning it. So, let’s dig into some hard truths about what it takes to survive and thrive as a neurodivergent professional.
Build leverage rather than demand fairness
Many of us have a strong orientation toward fairness and justice. We may have deep convictions that the mere presence or reality of unfairness is sufficient reason to change a process, rule, or set of circumstances. The professional working world comes with a rude awakening: no one cares about what is fair.
This may sound extreme, but consider this conclusion I’ve reached after a decade of researching and consulting on corporate culture: the only problems most managers will recognize are those that have become problems for them personally. For most managers, if they see everything moving smoothly, deadlines being met, praise coming from their higher ups, and impressive measures of productivity and efficiency in their teams, guess what? They won’t care when you tell them, “Hey, I’m doing twice as much work as Michael.” That’s not a problem. “Hey, I’m burning out over here; can we distribute this workload more fairly?” Where’s the problem?
Don’t waste time or energy pointing out what’s unfair — you’ll just get a reputation as a complainer, maybe even a lazy one.
Until you drop the ball or make a big mistake, that manager doesn’t have a problem on their hands, and once you do mess up, the problem is obvious: you. You’re not careful enough, you’re not committed enough, or you’re not detail-oriented enough. Higher ups want someone to blame, and you are the obvious scapegoat.
How can you navigate this harsh reality? First, don’t waste time or energy pointing out what’s unfair — you’ll risk earning a reputation as a complainer, maybe even a lazy one. Instead, focus your efforts on two fronts: your reputation with key players, and moderating your level of effort according to the visibility of the work.
Establish a good reputation with influential people in your organization by figuring out how you can demonstrate your intelligence and ability to them. What institutional knowledge or information access do you have that they lack? What’s a skill they’re missing that you have in spades? Find those sweet spots where you can offer them that extra support or insight when they need it, and make a habit of checking in regularly. You may even set a monthly 1:1 where you come prepared with some ideas, offers, or information they’d be interested in. These people will soon become your advocates, passionately combating negative narratives about you in public and in private.
Moderating your level of effort according to the visibility of the work means aiming for average (to me, this means C+) quality on everything that isn’t highly visible and doesn’t build your “brand.” I know that likely sounds impossible to many of us neurodivergent perfectionists. But our perfectionism and pride can be our biggest catalysts for burnout. Think of it this way: if you’ve been an A+ student aiming for excellence your whole life, you’re used to getting that grade by making everything excellent. In this new environment, however, an A+ is not awarded for excellence: it’s awarded for for speed and consistency, reliability, perfection in the moments that matter, and delivery with a smile. By saving your highest quality work and energy for only those highly-visible assignments and accepting “good enough” for everything else, you will quickly rediscover your star student status.
Forge meaningful alliances
Being neurodivergent in the workplace often comes with a pervasive feeling of being unsafe and unseen. Alliances with strategic partners in the organization are indispensable for your survival and safety, especially if you don’t have a competent manager. Neurodivergent people tend to be more sincere and truthful, and for all the sticky situations this can land us in, it’s also an advantage on this front. In my experience, neurotypical people associate transparency and truthfulness with intimacy and closeness, so a small amount of authenticity with them can go a long way.
This is a simple way to develop affinity and trust with neurotypical colleagues because they rarely experience this from one another.
Find at least three people to get close to: a peer on your own team, a peer on a different team, and someone senior to you who you do not report to. Choose people whose opinions and organizational influence will have some bearing on how your performance and reputation are assessed in the organization. Take the time to get to know them, their work, the way they think, and what their values are. Our spiderweb thinking enables us to collect and connect novel information with speed and ease; use this skill to reflect back to them in your own words what you hear them saying and observations you make about their approach and what’s important to them. This is a simple way to develop affinity and trust with neurotypical colleagues because they rarely experience this from one another.
You don’t need to talk about your personal lives or hang out outside of work unless you want to. All that matters is that you are open and honest with them about your own work and perspectives, and you demonstrate active listening when they’re sharing with you. Where you can, offer them help, ask how they’re doing, and ask for their professional opinion. Over time, as you make it clear how much you trust, respect, and value them, they will do the same. As you get closer to one another, they will also provide invaluable insight about your blind spots in the organization and reveal the more subtle “issues” people have with you that might otherwise escape your notice.
Subvert biases strategically
This brings us to navigating the negative perceptions others have of us at work. One of the ways we suffer most as neurodivergent professionals is through our confusion, pain, and obliviousness toward others’ misjudgments and misperceptions of us. Those of us who are more sensitive and socially attuned may take the energy-draining route of extreme masking to contort ourselves into someone who seems more conventional, or “normal.” But this is a Catch-22: we will either be judged and misperceived for our differences or mistrusted and maligned for our inauthenticity. There is a way to thread this needle, but it takes practice.
Rather than resisting and arguing with feedback, go so far as to ask for it — frequently.
First, we must be students of the feedback we receive and the perceptions of us that others share. This does not mean we agree with the feedback or perceptions, nor do we allow them to affect our sense of self. All of this data is a tremendous gift, even if we don’t agree with it, because it gives us insight into the neurotypical mind and the biases, insecurities, and blind spots they are bringing into our relationship. So, rather than resisting and arguing with feedback, go so far as to ask for it — frequently. “How did I come across in that meeting?” “How could I have more effectively communicated that idea?” “What would have been a better way to ask that question?” Equipped with this data, we can engage in a dance with our neurotypical colleagues that subverts their misperceptions without compromising our integrity. As a bonus, asking for feedback about oneself shows flexibility and humility, automatically subverting the misconceptions of rigidity and arrogance we often face.
I once received feedback in a performance review that I was “too intimidating.” This felt subjective and unfair, but I swallowed my pride and went to speak with everyone on my team to learn where this was coming from. What I learned was that my capacity to think on my feet and always jump in first with an answer during meetings led others to question the value of their own contributions and sometimes bite their tongues. My behavior was clearly leading others to think that I thought my perspective was more valid and important than theirs. Since it was important to me that everyone’s voice be heard, I started pausing before jumping in and also actively inviting the opinions of others by name to demonstrate that I valued them. This easy shift wasn’t inauthentic; in fact, it allowed me to show up more authentically aligned with my values.
Once we have a sense of the perceptions and misconceptions that are holding us back at work, we can use that information to make strategic shifts that ensure we’re perceived more accurately. As another example, many neurodivergent professionals who discover their Slack or Teams communications are perceived as terse, annoyed/annoying, angry, etc. will start incorporating Emoji into their messages in order to assert their true feelings over any false ones being read “between the lines.” If people find you “intimidating” or “stand-offish,” try identifying things you admire about your colleagues and finding opportunities to share those observations with them. When I was younger, people thought I was mean because I was “brutally honest” and refused to lie. One day I realized: if I just start saying out loud all the positive and flattering observations I make of people in my mind, that perception will completely invert. And it did! In fact, people started lending my opinions and compliments a special gravity, finding them particularly transparent and honest compared to others’.
We have unique abilities as neurodivergent people that complement neurotypical ones; we just have to take the time to parse out what they are. Neurotypical perception and communication center the unspoken: body language, what’s not being said, what’s “between the lines.” I’ve learned that this is largely due to a deep discomfort with the vulnerability that comes with expressing feelings and truths out loud. The same reasons we don’t fit into the neurotypical world are tools we can use to succeed in it: we can all find ways to express explicitly, through words and actions, the realities about ourselves that are being misinterpreted. This all starts with seeing yourself as different, not deficient, and leveraging your unique type of intelligence to expand the norms of the narrow neurotypical world — to everyone’s benefit!
(By the way, if you’re interested in a free intro session of neurodivergent coaching or joining my free monthly office hours with other neurodivergent professionals, sign up here!)
