Getting the management basics right

If you’re having a good day at work, a good manager can make that great – helping you to understand what your work is for, why it matters, and appreciating the good you’re doing. If you’re having a bad day, a good manager can help you work out what’s going wrong, correct slips without blame, provide security from more senior people getting involved, and stand up for you if you’re mistreated. If you’re autistic, those things are doubly or triply important. I need to have my communication slips corrected (I speak “people” like I speak French – with mistakes) but in such a way that I won’t feel humiliated for something I can’t help. I can find it difficult to identify the right problem, particularly if it’s to do with how I feel, and a bit of security and understanding at work can give me space to do that. I also experience a fair amount of unintended aggression or rudeness because of my autism – and a good manager and colleagues will stand up for me – possibly taking the colleague who said the wrong thing aside and correcting them politely so it doesn’t happen again. Having a manager who is an ally is an immense gift.

“Much-needed reform”

I want to talk about the need for reform and change and improvement and ideally what I’d like to see happen in 2023. “Autism” is not and must not be a dirty word. It is not a shameful thing to be autistic or to have an autistic family member. It is becoming a normal thing to have autistic employees, managers and leaders. Autistic people can be clever and strong and brilliant or complete and total prats. We don’t have superpowers – we are people who have strengths and weaknesses just like all other people. Some of us need round the clock care, and some of us don’t need anything much. If around one to two people in a hundred is autistic, then you know a lot of autistic people. We need to be boring, unremarkable and “meh” if we’re to have true equality. But how to achieve that?

Speak its name!

I would like to start 2023 with the assertion that “autism” is not and must not be a dirty word. It is not a shameful thing to be autistic or to have an autistic family member. It is hopefully becoming a normal thing to have autistic employees and, quite possibly, managers and leaders. Autistic people can be clever and strong and brilliant or complete and total prats, just like anyone else. We don’t have superpowers – we are people who have strengths and weaknesses just like all other people. Some of us need round the clock care, and some of us need holding back from annihilating crass people on Twitter with our wit (Greta, I’m looking at you). Most important of all – we are everywhere. If around 1-2 people in a hundred is autistic, then you know a lot of autistic people. Everyone does. Some people are autistic. I hope to spend this year helping the world get over it.

A language people can understand

On 31 December one is inevitably going to take stock of the year just past. As regards current events in 2022, there’s no way I’m going to attempt to summarise them here. Many things appear to have happened. A very small thing that’s happened this year is that this blog started in August. My idea was to write about my experiences as an autistic professional to spread the message that autistic professionals exist, to demystify autism, hopefully taking some of the fear and stigma out of its image, and to share the things I’ve picked up in my working life that may be helpful to other autistics. It’s been really nice that a lot of people have read these posts and some people have found them useful.

I’m clearly not the first person to write about autism – there are a great many excellent authors out there. I don’t know many who write about management and leadership from the perspective of being autistic, though. The different perspective that gives me is that my whole working life is built around interacting with neurotypical people but from a position of influence. If I’m to be an effective manager I need to be able to adapt to the people I’m trying to lead, as much as expecting them to adapt to me. That means I’ve put a particular amount of emphasis on trying to communicate my autistic experiences in language that will make sense to non-autistic people.

Who will rid me of this turbulent autistic?

There are important people, and less important people, right? There are people you look up to and whose authority you respect, and people you expect to do as you tell them. This is expressed by rank or grade hierarchies (such as we have in the Civil Service) or by some people having power and others not, or indeed by The Class System. Neurotypical brains seem to navigate these hierarchies instinctively – they can calculate the correct level of deference due to (say) someone rich or famous or in charge, and adapt their behaviour accordingly. Autistics not so much. My autistic brain is a bit of an egalitarian absolutist, treating everyone as an equal, which can be great for mixing it up and challenging authority, or can lead me to being a right pain to those whose position leads them to expect respect.

Suffer the little children

In the days before Christmas, I wrote posts based on the seven O Antiphons which gave a nice structure, and the days after Christmas are mostly Saints’ Days so I’m bouncing off them, but today’s a tricky one. The 28 December is the feast of The Holy Innocents; this is the little boys of Bethlehem who were killed by King Herod in his attempts to kill Jesus as a baby. There are a number of autism-related subjects I could dip into here and they all come with a trigger warning because there aren’t very many positive places one can go from mass toddler murder, even if it was 2000 years ago. And there are some nasty things in the world today. I’m going to do this as carefully and briefly as possible but even so some may prefer to skip.

Teacher’s pet

Is a teacher’s pet a good thing to be? It depends on your attitude to life. If you value independence and rebellion, you probably regard conformity and trying to please authority with horror. So do I – intellectually – at least some of the time. But suppose you have to deduce the rules the world works by; you might cling on to them as a fixed point in a confusing wilderness of sensory overloads and social slips. As a child at school, you might have come to realise that you’ll always be rejected by your peer group, so the best thing is to try to follow the “rules” as precisely as possible in the hope of at least the teacher liking you.

I’ve written that rather starkly, but there is definitely a tendency for autistic children – particularly girls possibly – to attempt to be perfect as a strategy to be liked. I certainly tried to do that through childhood, admittedly with muted success.

Speak up for what is right

It’s easy to intend to be an ally to a minority group, but not quite so easy to put your money (or words) where your mouth is, because there will be consequences. It’s a cheap kind of allyship if there aren’t. It costs nothing to say “I stand with autistic people” but what actually will you do if you hear prejudiced language against autistic people like me? If Uncle Kevin has, for example, just observed that his neighbour’s kid’s autistic and you’re nothing like them so you can’t be autistic and it’s a made-up disability really anyway, who will speak up?

Not one day but every day

“A dog is for life, not just for Christmas.” Everyone probably knows that slogan discouraging people from giving pets as gifts without preparation. If you’re the kind of person who finds themself in church at this time of year you’ll also have heard “God is for life, not just for Christmas” or similar. That’s encouraging you to build your Christmas religious faith into the whole year rather than just giving it a good go once a year. Special days are hugely important for humanity, but the really powerful things in life – whether caring for a dog or living your beliefs – have to be done every day and not just on the high days and holidays.

What’s this got to do with autism? I wanted to write about something really special for Christmas and the most special thing I can think of is my dream of how I want the world to be. And what I want is for autism to stop being special and rare (like Christmas) and start being boring. I want autism to be accepted as a day-to-day thing in the same way that many other characteristics have come to be over the years. Not interesting at all and certainly not worthy of comment. If I may, I’ll illustrate with some examples.