This week I attended a three hour training session on networking skills. I’m a pretty good trainer but I am the world’s worst trainee. I sit there feeling mutinous and pretty quickly that feeling spills over into open rebellion. The problem isn’t just that I know the training material and techniques already — it’s the way training is developed and delivered without neurodiversity in mind.
On this occasion we were learning an ‘elevator pitch’ approach to networking:
- Say who you are (your role and org)
- Say what you do
- Describe the impact of your work
- Say what you’re looking for
First, this is a recipe for instrumentalising yourself efficiently. You don’t convey any of your personality using this approach. The goal is to establish as quickly as possible whether you can be useful to the other person.
Second, this is an example of what Gagnon & Simon (1973) called a ‘social script.’ Neurotypical culture practically runs on scripts — stylised forms of interaction which work because both parties have learned and internalised the script and recognise and enact it when cued appropriately in a social context.
One of the big problems neurodivergent people face is that we don’t necessarily pick up these scripts simply by participating in everyday life, which means the ‘rules’ of social interaction are often opaque to us.
There are two possible solutions to this:
- Teach neurodivergent people the scripts explicitly. All of them. Slowly and laboriously. Reward compliance and punish noncompliance. This is the ABA (‘Applied Behavioural Analysis’) approach that autistic people criticise.
- Encourage neurodivergent folks to interact in ways that feel meaningful and sustainable to them, and train neurotypical people to understand them and engage with them. (My focus in this post!)
The first approach treats neurodivergent people as the problem. The second approach is consistent with the social model of disability, which says that disability arises when society doesn’t accommodate the different abilities of disabled people in order to enable their participation in society and everyday life.
With all that in mind I wrote this LinkedIn post to encourage neurodivergent folks to network in ways that feel natural, comfortable and meaningful to them, and to enable neurotypical folks to understand that’s what we’re doing.
Rizz ’em with the ’tism
We talk a lot about autistic deficits and it’s time to consider some autistic strengths that lend themselves to meeting people and networking with them.
- Accepting the awkwardness. The networking training included the following slide and it occurred to me that neurodivergent folks live much of our everyday lives outside the comfort zone; we are experts in working through the awkwardness to establish real and authentic connection with people.
- Autistic folks often miss sarcasm and even when we get it, we don’t practice it ourselves — it’s a bit mean and a bit tricky. The result isn’t credulous stupidity but weapons-grade sincerity which — in small doses, at the right time — can be incredibly powerful for establishing rapport in professional communication.
- Sharing your special interests can be engaging — it demonstrates your passion and commitment. Just remember to pick one or two points to share, and give the other person chances to respond, rather than info-dumping indiscriminately.
Engaging focus and motivation
Often people respond to news that you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD with the saying ‘everyone’s a little bit ADHD’ and while this is dismissive, it’s not wrong. Everyone understands the struggle to manage your focus and motivation, even if they might not understand how all-consuming that struggle can become.
Developed by Dr William Dodson, the INCUP model describes factors that ADHDers often have to manage or manufacture in order to generate focus and motivation to take on a task. The factors are:
| Interest | The task must capture your genuine interest or curiosity. |
| Novelty | You’ve never tackled something like this task. |
| Challenge | The task is difficult enough to engage your creative mind. |
| Urgency | There’s a deadline to meet or a crisis needing to be solved. |
| Passion | The task connects to your personal values, goals and interests. |
These factors also apply to networking and policy advocacy. Pick one and craft a bid for connection (Gottman) that emphasises or focuses on that factor:
- ‘I was really interested to hear so-and-so talk about such-and-such — that’s a key issue in my work as well.’
- ‘I hadn’t though about XYZ and I’d love to hear more about it…’
- ‘I find the issue raised in that talk really complicated and I keep thinking about…’
- ‘I’m thinking about ABC and wondering how we can accelerate our response…’
- ‘I appreciated you mentioning 123 and I feel strongly about it too.’
Self-care and compassion
The factors and approaches I have listed in this post work best in combination. However, coordinating multiple communication strategies at once requires a lot of mental effort and for a neurodivergent person this can be exhausting, especially if we are also dealing with sensitivities (bright, loud, busy, scratchy, sick, etc) and/or masking (presenting as neurotypical) and burnout (deep long-term fatigue).
If these barriers are present:
- Fall back on simpler communication strategies. Maybe the elevator pitch?
- Consider flagging the exhaustion to the person you’re communicating with.
- Keep your interactions relatively short and follow up later by e-mail.
- Bailing on (leaving) the networking opportunity can be good self-care.
About me
I’m a health promotion practitioner and researcher. I live with an ‘alphabet of acronyms’ (AuDHD, bipolar, CPTSD, etc). I write about mental health and neurodiversity on my blog Boundary Objects. If you’d like to follow my writing please visit the blog and subscribe to my e-newsletter!