So this morning, what we’re looking at is coaching neurodivergent leaders.

And today, before I really start, what I’m gonna start with is a story.

Now this story I heard quite recently, and it stuck with me. And so I wanted to share it with you. The story is called empty your cup. It’s a zen parable.

I am going to use a slight bit of artistic license in here. So if you’ve heard this before, I might put a bit of a spin on it so I apologise to anybody who, you know, likes things to be just so.

A university professor known for his deep knowledge and strong opinions went to visit as a master.

He was hoping to gain insight into the art of mindfulness and enlightenment.

And when he arrived, the master welcomed him and invited him to sip tea.

The master began pouring the tea into the professor’s cup, and the professor continued talking, sharing everything they already knew and had learned about philosophy, mindfulness, human nature, and he spoke really confidently, so certain of his expertise, and he was really eager to impress the zen master.

And the zen master listened quietly, nodding as he poured the tea, but he didn’t stop. The tea filled the cup to the brim and then began spilling over the sides onto the saucer and eventually onto the table.

Alarmed, the professor interrupted. Stop this cup. It’s full. It can’t hold anymore.

And the zen master paused, smiled, and replied.

He said, exactly.

Like this cup, you are already full of your own ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. And if you wish to explore something new, you must first empty your cup.

So onto who am I? I am an avid lover of Facet5. I’ve been stalking them for years. I mean, appreciating them for years.

I am very privileged to, get to be an associate for Facet5, but as well as that, use it in my own practice, which is Neurodiversity in the Workplace Consultant.

I work with organisations to look at how do we create neuro inclusion, an environment where everybody, regardless of how their brain works, gets to come to work and have a great day at work.

And that’s me offering coaching, facilitation, and keynotes like I am today.

I just I think that when we look at Facet5 and the way that we can see how people are different from that very nonjudgmental, you know, everything is a valuable asset perspective, it fits perfect.

I came to work in the neurodiversity space on the back of my own brain.

I am what we would call neurodivergent myself, and that term neurodivergent is somebody whose brain differs from the majority.

For me, my labels, if you like, my identity sits with ADHD, I’m autistic, and dyslexic.

And so that gives me some insight, but, actually, I’ve also got about two decades worth of research into neurodivergence and what that means for people. I don’t think you can be an expert in this field because how come we’d be experts in people? It’s a bit like being an expert in the bottom of the ocean. We’ve seen such a tiny percentage of it. There’s so much still to explore.

So let’s come back and think about that emptying the cup.

Now I share that because when we coach, it’s really easy to arrive with our own full cup.

And when we explore what coaching is, whether we are a seasoned coach offering coaching as a main business, or whether we’re somebody who’s working within an organisation offering coaching as a manager, we get taught things about coaching. We get taught that, you know, we don’t wanna come in with our own assumptions or our own agendas, our own ideas.

But we do also get taught some other things about what it means to coach, what coaching could or should achieve.

And, actually, that’s part of our our cup. But, also, we have the things that we don’t quite realise are in a cup, our biases, the thoughts that are less conscious to us. And guess what? That’s part of our cup as well.

So as we work through, I’m gonna gonna ask you to be expansive with the idea of leaders.

Actually, what is leadership? Each and every one of us leads ourself every day. You’ve led yourself to arrive here today.

And, also, to be expansive about that word coaching.

What is coaching really? Well, it’s conversation, isn’t it? And so thinking about the conversations and the interactions we have, how do they work?

So I want you to just take a second to think what assumptions could, one, not necessarily you, but one, bring unknowingly into coaching neurodivergent leaders. And I’d love to see some ideas coming into the chat.

Maybe you’re imagining certain traits might come up, maybe specific personality types if you’re already a personality practitioner.

What are your thoughts? What assumptions might we bring unknowingly into coaching neurodivergent leaders?

Give you a second to see what we get through in the chat.

Yeah. I love that. Thank you very much, Shay. An expectation that someone will see, reflect, and problem solve in the same way and at the same pace as you.

Definitely. And we are all very different, aren’t we? But there’s so much nuance in those those points that you made that they all fit the ADHD bracket. We overgeneralise the language and therefore how they like to be led or communicated with.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, if we look at one person who has ADHD, one person who is autistic, and learn about that person, we can then think, oh, well, this next person has the same diagnosis, therefore, it’s gonna be the same. We could assume less empathy.

Absolutely.

I am autistic, and that surprises people sometimes because I’m also hyperemacetic.

And what we can see in autism is hyperempathy and hypenpathy.

And if we assume that somebody would have hyperempathy, that lack of empathy, well, we make the wrong judgment there.

An assumption that they may be black and white in their thinking.

Definitely.

Again, now I’m autistic, and that’s not the case for me.

Can assume they find people difficult to be with, so less approachable.

Absolutely. I wish having a mind reader to understand how a neurodivergent thinks and how they organise their lives. And, you know, this is imagine mind reading anybody. How do they think?

And and, you know, essentially, somebody who’s neurodivergent is just another human. That’s all. Assumptions on preferred communication styles, nonverbal cues, feedback preferences, approach anxiety through the fear of unknown. Yes.

Yes. Such a great point there. Thank you.

Thank you all for some really, really good points. And I think it’s really helpful for us to just be really open with the fact that, you know, even the very best of people, the very best of coaches, it’s easy for us to come up with assumptions. Our our brain are wired for assumptions, aren’t they? You know? That’s what’s got us to this point.

So let us continue.

Now I mentioned really quickly in my introduction, what is neurodivergence?

Now this is a term that’s kinda evolved over time. Now really simply, it means somebody who differs from the majority in how they process, experience, or interact with the world.

Often, this may relate to communication styles, sensory preferences, problem solving approaches, energy regulation, and emotional regulation or emotional control.

That’s not all of them, but it’s a fair fair chunk of difference.

And when we first started having a conversation around neurodivergence, we were very, very set on what we meant. We had very small umbrella.

And under that umbrella, we had ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and Tourette’s.

And that was really it.

Occasionally, we might kind of flirt with the idea of it being OCD as well, but that was where it stopped.

As time’s gone on, we then said, well, yeah, let’s let’s bring OCD into the umbrella, and let’s bring PDA, pathological demand ward, into the umbrella. And let’s put things that aren’t diagnosed. So, misophonia.

Misophonia is when we have different sensory experiences to sound, and that can create a really volatile reaction in response to quite small sounds.

Something called aphantasia, an inability to visualise, that could come under this as well. And then we started to say, well, actually, if we look at this and we say that it’s somebody whose brain differs from the majority, well, what about what about somebody with generalised anxiety?

Does that differs from the majority? Does it fit under that neurodivergent banner?

What about somebody who has multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s?

Actually, what about somebody who has reached perimenopause?

When a person reaches perimenopause, we see changes in their cognitive function. We see increased anxiety, perhaps. We see sleep dysregulation.

And so suddenly, this umbrella is not the succinct, very small, almost child sized umbrella.

But, actually, we’ve kinda got you know, maybe you know the ones you put on your patio over a table?

Maybe it’s a bit more that size. Maybe it’s even bigger than that.

Maybe there’s lots of different umbrellas.

And I say maybe because there isn’t a one answer to this.

So when we’re considering neurodivergence, we have the really clear cut simple version. Somebody like myself who has been assessed and diagnosed and definitely fits under that banner.

But then we have the gray areas that sit outside this where we could argue one way or another.

So when we’re thinking about coaching somebody who is neurodivergent, we wanna kinda try and think to the most expansive version of that umbrella.

And, actually, we then get to the point of just saying people.

You know? We’re just people. We’re just people who have different ways of processing, different ways of interacting with the world, different preferences with our communication.

And that’s what we’re really looking.

So takeaway, neurodivergence is a thing and isn’t a thing.

And, you know, we could go back to our zen master and get incredibly philosophical about that. But instead, I’m gonna move along, and I know that it’s really helpful for people to have something to look for that tells them that perhaps they might want to adapt. Perhaps they might want to look for something differently.

And so the next slide almost needs a bit of a drum roll. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you will know that on Monday night, I posted a what is this a picture of? Because rather than actually completing these slides, I decided to draw a picture to go into the slides.

And so I took a photo of a small portion of it, and so there’ll be some people who perhaps have got a bit of curiosity about what’s coming next.

This, for those that couldn’t get it, is what I’ve drawn. And for those that haven’t seen it, I had, taken a picture of just Popeye’s alarm and the kryptonite over here. It wasn’t colored in. So we had mountains, Dorito chips, you know, all sorts of things.

But, anyway, what we might look for is spinach or kryptonite.

Now spinach is what energises and strengthens somebody, and kryptonite is what drains or depletes them.

It’s very, very often said that somebody who is neurodivergent has what we call a spiky profile, And that is if we were to map out the way their brain performs, the way their brain functions, that they have bigger differences between what’s easy and what’s difficult for them.

And so one of the things that we may look for is, does this person have what feels like a bigger chunk of kryptonite in their way?

But, also, does this person have what might feel like a bigger tin of spinach in front of them too? So some things that are much more challenging for somebody and perhaps and, again, let’s go back to majority and perhaps they would be for the majority, but, actually, some of the strengths as well. Now to put this into practical context, it might be one of the things I see so regularly is emails.

Somebody’s level of difficulty with emails is absolutely a huge, great, big pile of kryptonite to them. It totally disables them from performing their role.

And that means that we might spend an inordinate amount of time looking at where that’s come from, what it needs, strategies around it, how to move forwards.

And we might end up with some really heavy duty strategies to help them manage what, again, from a majority perspective, can feel more simple.

So rather than looking for traits of ADHD, traits of being autistic, traits of being dyslexic, what we wanna look at is who is this person in front of me?

What are the things that are really easy for that person, and what are the things that are a bit more difficult for that person or a lot more difficult. So let us continue to talk about whether something is neuroaffirming or neuroinclusive.

Now I would love to know from you your thoughts on what neuroaffirming and neuroinclusive might be. So, again, pop it into the chat for me. Highlight it with whether you’re telling me about neuroaffirming or neuroinclusive.

There isn’t a right or wrong. This is an understanding of words, so you can’t get it wrong. You know? It’s about our perception.

And, actually, I I need to check this, but I’m not even sure there are words that are yet in the dictionary. So you definitely can’t get it wrong. I will give you my version of what I think neuroaffirming and neuroinclusive is.

But until then, I’d love to know your thoughts on this.

Oh, Steve straight in with a really good one. It’s okay to be different versus we are all welcome here.

I love that. Thank you.

This reminds me, you know, when we first started talking about diversity and then we added diversity and inclusion, and then we added diversity, equality, and inclusion, and then we changed equality to equity, and then we added belonging and amend justice, and now it’s become, like, the longest acronym in the world, which for a dyslexic is hilarious.

Yeah. And it’s that, isn’t it? It’s all of the different things. Affirming is accepting them and inclusiveness supporting them. Oh, Ken. I love it. Thank you.

Neuroaffirming, uplifting neurodiversity.

Thank you, Bobby.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Whilst these are still coming in, I’m gonna tell you a little bit of a story.

Oh, look too quickly. I want to show you the picture of the lighthouse. Every anybody that knows me well will know I love a lighthouse.

It’s one of my special interests. It’s something that I find very fascinating. And so when I saw an opportunity to weave in lighthouses into this, I I couldn’t skip it.

I want you to imagine a lighthouse.

And the lighthouse in the evening, in the night, is casting that warm steady light across the water.

Now the light is symbolising in this instance recognition and valid validation.

The light is acknowledging that each wave, each person, each ship is unique, is different, and the light doesn’t try to change them.

It doesn’t say, I’m not gonna turn on because I don’t like the way that this ship is coming across the ocean. It says, I see you as who you are, and, you know, I’ll shine this one light on you regardless.

And that’s the focus here. With neuroaffirming, it’s about seeing people as who they are, accepting them, validating them, and just saying you’re enough. You’re already enough. You don’t need changing.

It doesn’t judge. It doesn’t say this is the right way for you to be, and that’s the whole point of neuro affirming.

Then if we move on and think about the neuro inclusion, Now our light is there, and it’s always there, and it’s always on, and it doesn’t turn off. However, is the light alone enough to help a ship ship get safely into the harbor?

And it’s not necessarily.

If the conditions are working against that ship, just having something saying, you, I accept you. You are enough.

That isn’t quite enough to support the ship in the moment.

Actually, what we have is buoys and markers in the sea.

We have walls around harbors to give the space for calm water.

We have different docking points, and they’re built to accommodate the vessels of all shapes and sizes.

This is inclusion. This is saying, actually, you may need something to help you become here, to belong here, to be safe here, and you might need some adjustment. You might need some adaptation. It’s not enough to just say I see you and I accept you.

But, actually, you know, I might need to to do some stuff to make it so that it works really well for you.

Having just the light isn’t quite enough.

However, if we didn’t have the light, would the inclusion be enough on its own?

The both of them together, that’s when that ship gets back to the dock safely.

And what does that mean for people?

Now here’s my last picture.

Can you have one without having the other?

Affirm something, it’s a verb. You know? You have to you have to to do something, and you have to think something. You have to mean something.

So let’s bring it back from lighthouses, and let’s think about it in a coaching practice.

You are coaching somebody, and they come in and they say, it’s really challenging for them to process verbal conversation, to process verbal instruction, and you respond with empathy.

You validate that. You know? You accept it. You don’t judge it, and you help them to figure out the ways forward in your work and, you know, However, few more coaching sessions go by, and you’re having these amazing conversations, but not a lot’s really changing.

And, actually, if we take a step back, you’ve affirmed them. You’ve said, you know, it’s perfectly valid for you to find this difficult. It doesn’t make you a bad human that having verbal instructions is tricky.

But you don’t provide written follow-up notes or encourage the opportunity to make written follow-up notes.

This client leaves the sessions, and by the time they’ve walked, you know, into the next room, those things that they thought they might want to reflect on, they’ve they’ve left their brain.

So you’ve affirmed them as a human, but, actually, you haven’t included them in the true opportunity of coaching because those steps to change, those steps to say, you need something different, and I will provide that for you, weren’t that?

Let’s flip it around the other way.

So this time, you’re all about being inclusive.

You have thought about adjustments right from the start. You send session reminders.

You make sure that the Zoom link is sent a couple of different ways so that somebody can find it really easily.

You keep your scent your space around you from a sensory perspective really well. You have choice between virtual sessions, face to face sessions.

You will have walk in sessions if that works for somebody. You offer notes following a session. You offer the opportunity for somebody to record it. You will coach with your camera on or your camera off. All of those things, you’re really happy to adapt, to include that client, that leader into that coaching conversation.

Wonderful.

One day, a client comes in, and they sit in front of you.

And they just happen to mention They have ADHD, and concentration is a challenge. And they often have to sit in quite long, quite dull meetings. You know? You know the ones. I know you all know the ones. And often we find the more senior you get, the more of those quite long and quite dull meetings seem to pop up.

And for this individual, they figured out a strategy.

What they do is they have candy crush open on their computer, and they put it just underneath the camera so that when they’re concentrating on Candy Crush, it looks like they’re looking at the camera, and that is how they get through the meetings.

And you listen to this, and you’re a little bit shocked. And, you know, you are doing your very best nonjudgmental, but your eyebrow goes.

And it’s really clear in that moment that you’ve just cast a teeny tiny bit of judgment.

You didn’t mean to. You had absolutely no intention to, but they see it.

And you know what? They recognize it. They recognize it because they’ve seen it over and over and over again. You as a human being are not good enough.

Your strategies are not neurotypical enough. They’re not widely accepted enough.

We don’t want people who have to stand up to get through face to face meetings. We judge people who, when we look over at their notepad, have been doodling.

We’re certainly not gonna accept somebody playing candy crush.

They’re limey, and they see it.

All of a sudden, all of that inclusive stuff that you did, all of the efforts you put into place are utterly diminished because you have not affirmed them as a person.

Affirming somebody gives that level of psychological safety.

It allows somebody to show up as they are.

If inclusion is opening the door and welcoming somebody in, affirming somebody is, you know, chucking them a blanket when they wanna sit on the sofa. It’s it’s really saying you are absolutely, unapologetically welcome here to just come and be you.

And if we don’t have that in our coaching conversation, can we bring the vulnerability that so often we need to to explore.

Folk who are neurodivergent are so much more likely to be told that they’ve got it wrong or they’re getting it wrong Over and over again, there is a piece of research cited, and I am not a hundred percent of the validity. However, anecdotally, I think it’s true enough to be worth sharing.

And it says a child who has ADHD will receive twenty thousand times more criticism than a child that doesn’t.

Twenty thousand.

When we look at things from a transactional analysis perspective, we look at life script.

You imagine what your life script ends up with if you’re told over and over again that you’ve got it wrong?

And why is this so relevant? Well, if you are hypervigilant to being told that you’ve got it wrong, It is those really tiny, subtle little things that will make you feel like you’ve got it wrong again.

I remember being coached by a wonderful coach a number of years ago.

And all she said to me was, at the end of the session, are you not gonna write that down?

Now I’m not a big writer.

It’s not my style. I would prefer to take it away and percolate it.

And just that tiny question, that was enough to make me think, oh, I’ve got it wrong. I’m not very good at this coaching thing. But how can you not be very good at being coached?

You know?

So can you truly be one without being another? What do you think?

See some some shakes of the head. No. I would agree with you. I don’t think that you can be.

There is a question in the chat around unconditional positive regard. And, yeah, there absolutely is the link there to unconditional positive regard. And I think the build on that is how aware we need to be of ourselves, of our backgrounds, our history, the things that have got us as people to where we are right now and how unconditional that positive regard, you know, really is. Is it utterly unconditional?

And I love that you’ve got a light bulb moment. I really hope that it is a lighthouse shaped light bulb moment for you.

I got to go up a lighthouse this year last year. And, actually, I was really surprised. Modern light bulbs in lighthouses are really small.

I thought they’d be so much bigger, but they’re not. It’s all clever, LEDs, mirrors, and refractions. And if anybody wants to chat about that on another time, hit me up. I’m here for it.

But before I get too stuck into telling you about light houses, which, by the way, red and white ones are best. You know? Just FYI.

I’m gonna move on. So adapting your approach.

Each and every one of us will have a way that we show up. And, you know, actually, for some of us, there are things that are really tricky for us to adapt.

I’m gonna take us through some of the things that you might want to consider. And, again, I come back to the biggest point here.

This is not saying every neurodivergent person is gonna need this particular thing. I just need to to carry on.

So first of all, ask with an almost empty cup. Anyone know why I might say with an almost empty cup?

K.

Nothing quite yet. I’ll see if anything comes in in the chat. The reason I say with an almost empty cup is because, actually, unlike Zen, I think here, being mindful of some of the things we’ve already spoken about, having that as the teeny tiny bit at the bottom of our cup reminding us to check-in with the unconscious stuff is probably gonna be really helpful.

So yeah. Absolutely. I I seeing things come into the chat now. Some baseline knowledge is always good. They might not know how to open or share, and it might be too much pressure on somebody.

Perfect.

So we can ask the questions. We could say, what would help you to feel most supported in our sessions? Or we could say, is there anything I could adjust to make our conversations more effective for you?

We can experiment with how that question lands, and we can rephrase it if it doesn’t feel like it’s landed well. But, ultimately, it is about not second guessing what’s gonna work really well for somebody.

So how are you today?

Simple question. Right?

Yeah. That all the time.

Imagine you ask it, and this is what goes on.

What are you supposed to say? When somebody says, how are you today? Like, what do they mean?

And, actually, if you’re somebody who has that really expansive brain that gives you all kinds of details, That feel like a very big, very broad, and very overwhelming question.

And as Ken’s put in the chat, what you may end up with saying is fine, because all of this has gone on. And you’re like, do I tell you that my toe hurts? Do you wanna know that cow popped into my head? Do you wanna know that I’m hungry? Do you want me to actually I need to wash my hair and it feels a little bit do you wanna know any of that? No. Probably not.

Now when we look at any coaching guide, one of the biggest things that shines out is that use open questions.

Because if we have an open question, it stops you leading the person. It gives that person an expansive space to consider all of their options.

But, actually, for some people, that’s really, really tricky.

Now I have clients on all ends of the spectrum here. I have clients where somebody will say, I just need you to basically give me a word, and I will go off in my brain with a whole rabbit warrant of thoughts and come back to you with this is this is the thing.

But I have other clients where, actually, if I were to ask, how are you? What would you like to focus on today? And what would be good for you?

They won’t know what to come back with because, you know, their their brain, their cognitive hyperactivity is just projecting everything.

So what we might like to do is we might like to look at something a bit like a decision tree where we ask questions that are a bit more this or that.

And we can be at it with, you know, there’s always a third option.

There’s always the thing that I haven’t said. However, would you like to look at this or that? OK?

You wanna look at this. Super.

And if we look at that, would it be number one or number two that’s gonna be most helpful to you? That’s number one. Okay?

And if we look at some options of how that might work, would it be a or would it be b?

B sounds better. Okay?

Do you think that you’d like to do e now or at a later time?

You wanna do it now. Okay. So what you’ve said is you’d like to do this.

You’d like to look at it from the perspective of one. You’d like to take action on b, and you’re gonna do that around about now.

And so we give that summary.

We’re not saying this is better or this is worse, but what we are doing is just narrowing the field that can feel a bit overwhelming. We’re making it a little bit easier for somebody.

And, you know, this does. It challenges so many of the thoughts that we have about coaching because we so often hear that we don’t wanna be directing. We don’t wanna be leading.

But, actually, what we really wanna be doing is we wanna be serving the person in front of us. We wanna be adding value. We wanna be giving that person an opportunity for them to take what they need to take.

And for us to empty our cup of those assumptions that everybody deals well with, a really open question.

So next point that I’m gonna raise is executive functioning.

When we look at coaching in the context of neurodiversity and neurodivergence, so often we see executive function coaching.

And very often, there’s a bit of a difference. If we were to look really purely at things like the ICF competency, There’s not a great deal of space for offering ideas, suggestions, techniques. It’s very much about that pure coaching, the allowing somebody to come up with something.

The challenge with that is if somebody has grown up in a world that wasn’t built for them, if they’re told that the way to be organized, productive, and disciplined is to write a list, and it means that they are so overwhelmed with their thirty five list that they’ve now got lists of the lists.

How are they gonna come up with a strategy that is having marbles in a jar and moving the marbles to the other jar each time they’ve achieved something. So they have a visual reminder of the activities they’ve done. Because they’ve never come across the concept that what they really need is something visual because their brain isn’t processing the achievement, and so they feel like they’re they’re unproductive.

They may never get to that.

And, actually, it’s okay to bring things So as long as we’re not saying this is the golden bullet, and guess what? Spoiler here. There never is a golden bullet or a silver bullet or a magic answer.

There’s all sorts of different options, but that’s just it.

So let’s have a look at each of these in turn. Now the reason that executive function is is so important is because it so often comes up in context of neurodivergence.

An ADHD trait is actually executive dysfunction, so a generalized difficulty with these.

Many autistic traits sit around executive function.

Many dyslexic traits that sit around executive function. So it’s really helpful for us to have a good understanding of what’s going on and how it might show up.

So let’s start with working memory.

Anybody here seen inside out? Give me a thumbs up if you’ve seen inside out.

Quite a few of you. Cool. For anybody that hasn’t, I’m gonna give you a really, really quick explanation.

Inside Out is a kid’s film. I think it’s a Disney Pixar one animated, and it’s set inside the mind of a child.

And if you imagine the brain as like this big room, like a control center, and they’ve got a big control panel, and they’ve got the different emotions that come and interact with the control panel. So Joy is trying to always make it nice, and she’s trying to bat away the other emotions, and then sadness comes on and splays herself over the control panel and just sucks the life out of everything, and Elliot comes along and bashes the control panel and disrupts everything.

And then there’s a a part of the brain that stores memories, and it takes them as, orb type things, and it banks them into the long term memory.

Now if you imagine that in that control room, there is a whiteboard on the wall, And it’s somebody’s job to jot things onto that whiteboard that might be pertinent.

So, you know, you’re you’re coming out of a meeting. You need to remember to send somebody an email. That might be pertinent.

You are doing some mental arithmetic.

What is sixty four times one thousand nine hundred and forty two?

You cannot even begin to answer that question if you not remember the numbers. So you have to have your little person in there jotting it down on the whiteboard.

All of these things, we use our working memory for.

Some of us have a working memory that is, you know, a beautiful three meter long color coded. We’ve got a designated person with really neat handwriting, and they section it, and it’s really easy to go find what you need.

I reckon I’ve got, like, an a three sized one. This is alright. However, it’s got a dodgy pen, and the person keeps going off for tea breaks. So it’s like, on a good day, I can remember all kinds of stuff.

If that person is there and they’ve got the pen at the right angle, we’re on fire. However, very often, we’re absolutely not on fire, and I’m probably gonna have to apologize for saying, yes. I know I said I would send you that. I’m really sorry.

I simply forgot.

We also have right at the other end of the scale, which is there is no whiteboard. There is no designated person. There’s a back of receipt in a broken pencil, and, hopefully, one of those emotions is gonna go and, pop it down.

And that’s our working memory.

Now if we struggle with working memory, if we’re constantly having to say that we’ve not done something, that can knock our confidence. It can knock our self esteem. We can make judgments by ourselves just as other people might make judgments by us.

And so there might be two sides of that that we need to unpick. We might need to think about, actually, you know, what does it say about you and what do you need to let go of? But, also, what strategies do you need? I’ve just started using, the AI notetaker.

Oh my word. It’s amazing. Like, why did I put that off for so long?

Wonderful.

It can be as simple as, you know, having a designated notebook that is your action notebook so that rather than having to fish through all of your notes, anything that needs doing immediately goes in one place.

It might be just say to people, you know, I’m not really open with it. My memory is terrible. If you haven’t got this from me, just remind me, please. Thank you very much.

Works.

So that’s our working memory. Metacognition.

How do we know what’s going on inside our brain?

Do we know if we feel happy or sad? Do we know whether our tone hurts or not? Are we hungry? What’s that strange feeling in our our tummy? Is that anxiety, excitement, nervousness?

Do we just need a drink? Oh, we’re thirsty.

That’s what’s going on right now.

If we’re really good at metacognition, we’re really good at understanding what we’re feeling and what’s happening.

If metacognition is more difficult for us, then, you know, when somebody says to you, and how do you feel about that?

Does that feel like that’s good? You might be like, just feel feel kind of, red. I don’t know. Not sure.

And, again, we might just have to be mindful of that and adapt some of our conversations.

Planning and prioritizing.

It’s a very neuronormative activity planning and prioritizing.

It took me until quite recently to understand that for me, it’s like a whole task in itself. It doesn’t come naturally. You know? Like, we’re we’re gonna eat as a family for the week. There has to be a point at which I plan that so that we have food. Who knew that that was a thing?

And so sometimes it is that we need to spend more time on the planning, but we need to just go back to basics. You know, what is planning? What is prioritizing? How does that work?

And not make the assumption that somebody who is reasonably intelligent would know that that’s what you need to do to have food. Might seem so obvious, but it doesn’t come up in conversation. But, honestly, I kept being like, I just don’t understand why we’ve never got food. Why is this difficult?

Oh, have to kinda set a bit of schedule for this.

Task initiation, getting going on something. Now when I talk about this in context of DIY, people resonate, and they get it.

Task initiation is is tricky for so many neurodivergent folk just getting going. And sometimes it is. You know? Do you want do you want it while we’re talking? Just start writing that email so that you don’t need to put off starting it again. Sometimes that can be a great strategy.

Organization, kinda goes without saying impulse control.

What do people say? If they come up with something in a coaching conversation, is that what they really mean?

Emotional control.

Where’s their emotional regulation sitting? If you’ve not heard of RSD, rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, I implore you to go on the attitude website. Have a read of it.

Cognitive flexibility. How easy is it for you to change? I have clients who will get really upset if I were to move the time of a conversation, and that’s okay. That’s them. And so I do absolutely everything I can not do. And time management. What does that mean for you?

Attitude. It’s like attitude that’s spelled with two d’s. Attitude website for RSD. Thank you for for clarifying.

I once worked somewhere where we were asked, are you tasting the strawberry?

What does that even mean? What they meant was, are you living the company values? Now abstract con concepts can be wonderful. You know, and I use that one about, the lighthouse.

But be really mindful with them and offer the explanation.

Check-in where you are, a sensory perspective.

Is it virtual, face to face? What’s the lighting like?

What distractions are around us? What’s the sound quality like? The temperature?

Are we moving? Even if we’re virtual, you know, do we wanna be moving? We wanna just give that affirmation that, you know, if you wanna be on a walking path while we do our conversation, that’s absolutely fine.

Audio session. Audio settings. If you’re on Zoom or Teams, go in and check how, your audio is set up to suppress background noise, what a difference that can make, and it’s something that we just so often don’t think about.

Is it a pause, a silence, or a glitch?

Somebody was coaching me. Somebody I don’t know. It was part of an exercise, and they had these really extensive silences. And I was like, are you thinking of what to say next? Are you is the screen frozen?

Did I not answer the question correctly? I think what they were aiming for was for me to reflect. So just call it out. You know? Like, sometimes I’ll pause and give you that time.

And then you might say, I’m just gonna give us a moment to reflect on that.

And timing, one of our hugest I don’t think that’s a real word, but I’m going with it.

Our hugest, neuronormative biases is that, you know, professional people, good people, respectful people are really good at timekeeping.

If you ask somebody that turns up twenty minutes late, amazing. They made it.

They don’t respect your sessions any less because they find timekeeping difficult, and that’s okay.

So challenge anything that you hold inside yourself around timekeeping.

And just check-in with them. How do you wanna take this away? Do you wanna write it down? Do you want me to write it for you? We can record it. We can put the AI note taker on it, or do you just wanna let it percolate?

Because, actually, your value is so often what we take away.

Consider that not everybody loves a goal. There is an absolute continuum between those who love a smart goal and want everything written down really structured, and those who say, if you give me a goal, that is too much pressure. That is so much that now that you’ve said that, you know, should we should we set a bit of expectation that I’m gonna do something I’m absolutely not at all gonna do that thing?

So I’d love to know from you one thing that you will do an hour from now, a month from now, and a year from now. Doesn’t have to be all of them. It’s something you’ll do to take away into your coaching practice, your leadership practice, your conversations, your friendships, your relationships.

One way that you will empty your cup, think of things differently.

If you wanna stay in touch, I’ve been very clever and put some QR codes on here. You can find me on LinkedIn, or you can sign up to my newsletter where I send you cool free stuff.

But now it’s over to you guys.

In true neurodivergent fashion, we have not got fifteen minutes of questions. We’ve got eight.

But let’s make them the best eight minutes.

What questions do you have that I have not already answered for you? None. Nailed it.

Draw on, Bobby. Give us a question.

Hello, you. Lovely to see you.

And you too.

Everybody else.

This I haven’t quite formulated the question in my head, so it might come out. And so let’s see what actually happens here.

I’m very mindful of what the personality profile report looks like for Facet5, which has so much wonderful information in it, but it’s really busy. So I’m just I’m just trying to think about not necessarily Facet5 having to go and sort of, like, create all sorts of different things. But for us as coaches, how do you how do you help somebody if you’re trying to give them all of that information, but to hone their mind into looking at something specific? I mean, you’ve got the decision tree, but I’m just wondering if that’s if that’s the best approach for it that so that you’re just concentrating on a busy page of words. How would you go about that?

Absolutely. It’s a really good point to make.

So if you’re working face to face, have a second sheet of paper so that you can cover some stuff up.

If you are working virtually, Zoom is amazing for this, Teams less so. You can share just a portion of your screen. And I’ve done that before where I’ve shared, just a section so that then I can kind of move the document up on my screen to show just the bit that I’m talking about at the time. You know, the the lines I can’t think of the word.

If anybody can pop it in the chat, but, you know, the, the kind of spectrum continuum type lines, I’ll just share one of those at a time. And then that gives you the opportunity to just talk through that thing. Or sometimes I might not share share it. I I might talk through it.

Just talk through that. Yeah.

Yeah. And then what I might do is share it at the end and say, I’m gonna gonna kinda talk you through so that you’ve got it to take away. And what I have done for people is get a Word document, use your cropping tool, and take sections and add a little explanation as to, you know, we said these things here just so that they’ve got something that’s a bit more broken down.

But it’s a really good question to ask. And, yeah, there’s a lot of different, a lot of different tools that are quite word heavy. They’re very visual. And so being really mindful of that is a really good way of doing that neuroinclusive practice.

Fabulous. Thank you.

Thank you, Bobby.

Seeing a question in the chat. I’m sure I have.

Was it around was it for being, appropriate for neurodivergence? Yes. So I I just think it’s perfect. I think the fact that we don’t pigeonhole, so we’re not looking at you are this or you are this. What we’re looking at is here is a continuum of positive affirming traits, and here is some things you might wanna build strategies on is a really great way to approach people generally.

I remember having my Facet5 debrief, and it may not surprise you that my control score is very far over to the left.

And, you know, I’d tried for years. Honestly, having got an ADHD diagnosis, I was still trying to go for those very admin heavy strategic type roles.

And I sat down and I looked at my Facet5 profile, and I went, oh my word. If you lined a hundred people up, I would be the least likely person to have an admin heavy role. Why? Why am I forcing myself into this weird pigeonhole of life?

And what it helped me to do is say, my strengths lay at the other end of this. How can I tap into them? The same with energy, you know, understanding that it’s not about being shy or outgoing. It’s really about what happens for you, in you, around you.

How good is it for you to be around loads of people? How does that work? And, again, what strategies can you come up with to support that is amazing. Absolutely amazing.

My, particular my WIL score is nonexistent, particularly my conflict score.

Now I do have RSD, rejection sensitivity dysphoria.

Again, having the understanding that other just about everybody else that I meet has a higher appetite for conflict than me helps me to be a bit more pragmatic about everybody is not shouting at me. Nobody hates me in this moment. They’re actually just having what is to them a perfectly rational debate, and to me, it feels like they’re hitting me over the head with words.

Absolutely wonderful. So and then exploring emotionality as well. You know, thinking about that kind of again, you know, you’re not wrong for being high emotionality. You’re also not wrong for being low emotionality, but here are some considerations around it.

I do think it is and I’m not saying this because Grant’s on the call. I do think that it is absolutely appropriate. Obviously, we might want to think about how we deliver certain things, what emphasis we put on. But yeah. Definitely.