Crossover Episode with Neurodiversity in the Workplace: Don’t Just Survive - Thrive On The Job

Hello, welcome.

So depending on where you're listening to us from, you're either welcomed to the NITW podcast or the Autistic Techie podcast.

uh Today is a really exciting crossover episode for us.

um For those following the Autistic Techie, I'm Sean Gill from NITW, Associate Director and host of today's show from our side.

And I am delighted to be joined by Shea Belsky.

Thank you so much, Sean.

I am Shea Belsky.

I am the Autistic Techie.

I talk about neurodiversity in big tech industries.

Listening to your episode, just took a car over here about, my gosh, what does it mean to be neurodivergent in the tech industry in these big jobs is really what I talk about as

far as making it for the interview process when you're on the job and being more of your original self in the job.

Totally.

And our whole team is a big fan of Shea, you know, kind of through his whole career.

And especially with this new podcast, really good opportunity to, to, think we've been trying to learn from your, your episodes and your approach and all that.

But as you mentioned, we just did an episode on the job searching and job application process.

And, uh, one thing that we didn't really cover is the interview process that was recently covered in an Autistic Techie episode, but.

we wanted to kind of join forces here and have an episode where we talk about, uh, the neurodivergent perspective in the interview.

What is that experience like both as applying, you know, what are some of the barriers?

What are some of the things that you or others can use to try to work around them?

What have we done to kind of coach organizations on being more responsible, being more inclusive in those steps?

So, um, shape, maybe you can just give us some background on like your experience of like.

job searching, job applying, what has been challenging for you and what have you learned in that process and things that others can learn from that.

Yeah, set up some background.

am an autistic self advocate.

I'm pretty open about my being autistic and people ask me like, would you ever talk about autism in an interview?

And I'm like, well, it's on my LinkedIn and like everywhere has my name attached to it.

So I can't not talk about it.

But in the past, when it was not so like stapled to my name, I would ask myself, do I disclose my neurodiversity in an interview?

And I've done like thought experiments where sometimes I'll say, I'm not going to mention neurodiversity here.

and I will mention neurodiversity in other interviews.

And seeing how recruiters, senior interviews interact with me before and after or if I don't make that statement has been an interesting experience to say the least because I've

noticed that when I say that I'm autistic, people's behaviors change often for the better but not always as far as how they interact with me, what they say, what accommodations do

I need, and I think some people kind of respond almost robotically like, oh, because he said autism I have to remember to do these things.

Right, I have to tense up.

They have to tense up and they have remember, okay, here's the script that I have to follow or here is the set of things I have to do to make sure this interview is accessible

to him and other people.

And it feels a little bit less organic.

What I've experienced in some companies better this than others, some interviews are like really accessible from day one where I don't feel like I have to mention it because the

way that the interview is structured or the people who I'm in touch with or the recruiter or the...

interview schedule or whoever it is are just really supportive and in other situations it's very robotic, very rigid and it's a lot more inflexible.

That's really, really interesting.

I'm glad you brought that up.

Disclosure likewise is something that I get a question about very often, pretty much anytime I'm doing an event with job seekers is like, should I, shouldn't I, if I should

win?

And it sounds like there's no correct answer.

It's very personal.

For some people, I'm very confident talking about it, but not everybody is.

So I'm not going to sit here and say like, yes, you should.

In the past, I may have said, yes, you should always, but we also live a different day and age, unfortunately, where the subject of neurodiversity has become a little bit more

political and in the spotlight than it has in the past.

And people's perspectives on neurodiversity have changed and we have to address the times that we live in.

And when I think about

other people disclosing their own neurodiversity, I say like, well, what do you want to gain from disclosing it?

What change do you need to affect in an interview or on the job that disclosing would allow you to happen?

When I think about an interview, it's like...

If I was going to go to an in-person on-the-job interview, some component of this is like a lunch interview.

Like you go to a social setting and you have a chat with somebody.

And I might say, hey, I'm autistic.

And if we go to this big, loud cafeteria, I may have a hard time having a conversation with you.

Can we take our meal or whatever and just go somewhere quieter?

And I've never had anybody say no to me when I asked for that.

But I need to preface that.

with me being autistic so it is more of a reason to do so.

Not that I think they would say no if I didn't, but it makes it a much more specific reason for why.

Yeah.

Yeah, that there needs to be some right ear, you're weighing pros and cons.

There has to be some pro to justify sharing that information that otherwise, you you have a choice whether or not to, ah I, I, it sounds like you and pretty much anybody I know

wouldn't just lead with that disclosure without some kind of like pro on the other side of it, whether it's an accommodation or just being better understood.

It's helped me be able to articulate and to say, this is what I'm asking for and this is why.

I think something that I've heard a lot is like, oh, why does such and such need an accommodation or an adjustment to this process?

And my response is, well, it's because it helps them.

Succeed in the interview it helps them succeed in their job not to give them an advantage But to put them on a level playing field of other people in this interview like you want

to be able to have a conversation with this person and so if you can't have a conversation you're not evaluating them fairly as an interviewer right and you as an interviewer it

should be the responsibility to make that process as equitable as possible and if you can't you interview isn't fair

I try to tell people all the time that interviewers want you to do your best and so whether it's you know asking for an environmental change or asking to you know share your

portfolio give it like present share your screen present examples of past work like

As when I'm an interviewer, I want the candidate to do anything they can do to share their best selves.

And I think that's hard for a lot of people to uh kind of allow themselves to do because you feel like it's you against the interviewer all the time.

I'm not sure when that got imbued into our societal perception of interviews that it's, it's combative, but it shouldn't be in most cases.

I'm curious.

You mentioned the variability between sort of the, the cultural perception and response.

whether it's, you know, very open and relaxed and accepting or kind of rigid and robotic.

And I feel like it is ideal if you know what you're walking into, if you can um kind of know what the response is going to be and base your disclosure decision based on, you

know, I'm interviewing at, you know, ABC finance and I have information that tells me I think they're going to be

negatively respondent if I disclose ah or positively and I'm gonna make my decision based on that.

What are in your experience maybe some factors that you would try to evaluate or think about to kind of predict what that response is gonna be?

It helps to, I think.

every company's a social media.

It helps to say, do they celebrate Disability Pride Month for neurodivergent people?

Do they celebrate Neurodiversity Celebration Week, Autism Acceptance Month?

What are they out and proud and loud about on their social media?

What is the public fixture of how they operate in the world?

And do they make a point of celebrating their employees or their customers who are neurodivergent or disabled or autistic or whatever it is?

Do they have ERGs?

My current company, we're in the middle of

building a disability ERG, which is a huge thing that I'm super excited about, that I get to be a part of that.

And that is a fixture of me being really happy where I am today.

And I've been at other employers in the past, or I've interviewed at companies who don't have...

those disability communities or they aren't out and proud about celebrating this employees and disabilities.

even when I'm in the middle of an interview and like I asked for something early on and I don't get a response or they're dismissive to my requests or it just like is giving me

like the red flag.

Like I feel it.

Then that's uh a negative indicator that I would want to disclose it.

But at the same time though, if I do disclose and I do get a negative response,

Why am I bothering?

Why am I continuing to interview at a company that I sense is going to negatively hurt me?

That it's gonna have a bad experience for me as a job seeker, as an employee?

Why would I work for an ableist employer knowingly?

And if that is the experience in just the interview phase, even if you got the position, chances are a year in you would be forced to mask or just kind of work against your work

style, your communication style and you know, are more likely to either not succeed or just like burnout trying to succeed.

I've been really open about my autism internally in my current company and people have been really open back to me.

And I think it helps that number one, we have the emotional safety to be able to do that.

And also people aren't afraid to talk about it.

And they're also really articulate about like, hey, like I have ADHD and this is how it affects my ability to work with people.

um On my current team, I have what I always call like a working with me document or like a personal operating system document, which kind of describes me, my working style.

And I talk about me being autistic and I tell

people like this is what you should expect when you communicate with me when you talk with me I might not make eye contact I had something in my hands like this is what you should

expect and it helps them set their expectations appropriately and not pull an image of autism from somewhere else but it makes it very clear this is this is Shea and this is how

his autism operates and this is what you need to know the way they don't imagine or hallucinate something that is

so incredibly valuable and really amazing to hear to for, you know, anybody that hasn't heard about this from any of our previous material, a big component of something that we

try to educate and equip employers with is a work style profile.

That's something that is universally beneficial for all these reasons you just mentioned, whether you're autistic, whether you're a neurotypical, whether you have a chronic health

condition, whatever it might be, setting expectations.

in terms of environmental preferences, workflow, the way that you schedule your day, the way that you collaborate with others, the way you respond to your environment.

Like just setting and communicating those expectations clearly upfront benefits the employee and benefits the manager to know how to set an employee up for success.

And it's interesting, I feel like we are always trying to sell people on this idea and convince people to, from kind of a top down direction,

implement this as a practice, but it sounds like, I'm curious to hear specifically that you kind of take the initiative on this.

You prepare it yourself and you hand it upwards to say like, before we go any further, here's everything about me.

Not everything, but here's the guide sheet, my character sheet.

yeah, so you've developed a level of comfort with taking that initiative, I guess.

I think it's because in the past I've talked about, I've had a chance to iterate.

on my, I call it my elevator pitch about me being autistic.

And over time I have realized that if I am not upfront and honest about what my autism means, that people will come to their own conclusions and those are very hard to unwind

and work backwards from.

Again, one of my first companies, one of my first internships, I would talk about it, but I wouldn't say much.

I would say, I'm autistic, period, end of sentence.

But what does that mean?

Like they might know somebody who's autistic, have like seen a movie.

Like they leave it up to their imagination and it's not.

my intention, but that was what happened anyway.

And I discovered iteratively over time that the more specific I am without going into too much detail, as I get more specific and clear about what they should expect, it not only

helps me, but it helps them because then they can be more confident and more understanding of what to expect when.

they work with me, if they're my manager, if they're my teammate, it makes their lives a lot easier and it reduces a lot of that ambiguity because it's like, okay, this is Shea,

this is what he struggles with, this is what he's great at, here's what I can do to best support him so he can go off and do his thing and I don't have to worry about it or

agitate over it because the other things that I might think are a concern actually aren't.

Yeah, so validating to hear, because yeah, I feel like we're always trying to convince people to adopt this, and I think you describe it so well, um both in its practicality for

both sides of that equation.

It's beneficial for neurotypical people too.

I've read my teammates' documents as well.

Some of them might have kids, some of them might have their kid taking care of a film member at home, or they might be training for something or have something else going on

where their work day is a little bit flexible.

So it's beneficial for them to be able to articulate, this is my working style, or my working day, or something else.

And it's helpful for me to know that way if I see that they're offline for some reason, I need to get in touch with them.

Like, oh, they're picking up their kids at the bus stop or something.

Yeah, amazing.

Awesome.

And okay, so we've covered disclosure.

We've covered work style profiles in our terminology, um, which I, I, I love all of that.

I wanted to maybe zoom out a little more and just in your applying and interviewing experience, you know, you dove right in on disclosure, which is absolutely huge.

I'm curious if there are any other maybe common barriers, cause it seems like you have developed a lot of confidence and, and internal, kind of

reasoning as to what I'm going to share when and why.

Um, I'm wondering if you can point out just any other common pitfalls that I think organizations make in terms of inadvertently, usually, uh, creating barriers that, that

tend to disadvantage neurodivergent folks and people who communicate differently or, or any other things that you've observed.

I think the number one thing that I have gone up against is inflexible hiring processes.

I hear often, like, if we do this for you, we have to do it for everybody else too, whether it is on the job or in an interview.

I think there is a one size fits all mentality where everybody has to fit for the same interview process, the same shape or whatever.

that's damaging to, I would say it's damaging to everybody, not just neurodivergent people, but just in general.

That's a very tough thing to force people into a process that isn't designed for them or would cause

them great fiction and great pain.

When you mentioned coding interviews in the last episode, I detest coding interviews.

I will say that out loud.

They are a necessary fixture of my industry, software engineering, but I hate doing them.

It's just not how my brain operates.

I have done interviews before where they've given me the option of do a coding challenge.

or we can do like a take home thing or like another process.

And I think it's the flexibility, it's being able to be malleable about how you evaluate somebody as an interviewer, as a hiring manager, such that you may have different channels

for which a job seeker passes through, but you arrive at the same information, the same important data to make an informed conclusion, is this person a good fit for this role or

not?

When I was a hiring manager at my last job, I had different processes people could pick.

can do a synchronous call, we can talk about this, or we can take it home, or we can do something else.

And I had like a healthy distribution of people who picked each option, but people appreciated having the flexibility to pick whichever way worked for their way of working

in their brain style.

And I still got the same information that I needed to make a hiring decision, and I was able to evaluate everybody equitably and fairly, even though the channels for which they

passed were a little bit different.

Yeah, it's so amazing that you've been on both sides of that and you're right to call out.

I think, that a lot of people are hesitant to be flexible in hiring and interviewing because there needs to be, because they see consistency as a requirement for fairness, but

in your experience, you are fully able to be objective and comparative between different methodologies.

You're evaluating for the same skill sets among a variety of people in a variety of ways and.

successfully able to compare them and make the best hiring decision.

something else also comes up is like how much does the interview reflect the actual job?

One reason why I don't love coding interviews is because they don't accurately reflect the job.

When am I actually ever going to invert a binary tree as a front end engineer?

Hopefully never.

Hopefully you don't even know what that means.

But like when is this actually ever going to come up?

And I've been at companies before where they'll give me like a realistic coding challenge or evaluation of my skills that pertains to the kind of things I'm doing as a job.

I did an interview where we were like

talking about a project that I had worked on and I had a chance to pick something that I had done in my past and be able to have a discussion about it at a high level with like a

very senior engineer.

And that was a great way for me to discuss a thing that I had done, something that would be happening at my job that if I had gotten that role, I would be a good indication of the

type of work that I would be doing.

And that was a really positive interview process, it was for a different company, but I felt that that was an accurate reflection of

not only what I would be doing, but I felt that it was within my comfort zone.

I didn't have to like grind on lead code or hacker rank.

It was pretty natural for me to pick a project, but then I was able to pretty confidently talk about it and answer questions.

So, and I think it's notable to point out that in that example, we've talked about a few approaches to giving someone a technical challenge, whether it's on their own time or live

or in live discussion or in an actual IDE.

uh But the other format that you're talking about is not even doing a new challenge, but allowing a candidate to reference past work, present it as a live, current, relevant,

recent, and detailed example of experience.

But you're not asking someone to kind of carve time out of their week to do a new challenge Understand that iterate trial and error and then prepare a way to present to

present it ah Not everybody is able to do that and also that's that can be more work on the interviewers side to kind of pick out uh Best case what we're talking about is a

variety of challenges and formats for doing that.

So ah I do think that having ah an assessment again in any of these formats

we've talked about, but that is unique to the role, that is a newly handed off thing, is the best way to get information directly pertinent to the role, as opposed to saying like,

well, show me any past example that you've used JavaScript.

Like, you don't know exactly what you're gonna get there, ah but that is the lowest time commitment for the candidate.

So there's a lot of right answers, but I think going back to another phrase you used before, the absolute wrong answer is a one size fits all approach.

Yeah, and you have talked about like for job seekers, having examples of your past work, having whether it's a GitHub profile or portfolio, like being, think my experience as

neurodivergent job seeker, I am much more confident talking about things that I've done, things that I've worked on and parts of my history that are not imaginary, that are

literal, that have occurred to me.

And I can obviously like misremember things sometimes, but I can pick out like decisions that I made, choices that I made, I can justify them or go back and critique them.

But that's a very confident thing that I can do that I know neurodivergent people are good at being able to reflect and say, I wish I'd done this differently.

I wish that I could have done this other thing.

And I think being able to use a skill example or like a part of your portfolio in an interview is a great way to keep people's confidence up as it connects to a job.

Yeah.

So we're, we're enumerating a lot of interviewing adjustments that organizations can make.

And, know, I think you're speaking from your experience, which is super valuable as an implementer of these varied approaches and that it is beneficial.

And I just want to say like, in our work with numerous organizations where we have kind of in a small pocket of bought in interviewers and, folks that have, uh, you know, agreed to

with let's say, you know, a certain company's neurodiversity program and kind of pilot this as an interview method, a lot of times they come to the same conclusion of, know, I

had a one size fit all, we were giving everybody a hacker rank assessment beforehand, but now that I've seen a project based approach and given people time and space to do their

own work and present it back to me.

This is what we're going to do from now on.

So we've seen that feedback widely where once you kind of take the leap to abandon your one size fits all approach, ah the feedback is almost always, yeah, this is definitely

better.

We're going to do this from now on.

I'm also gonna add that we live in a world of like rampant, rampant's the wrong word.

We live in a world of ubiquitous AI usage.

And these one-time-spin-all models are starting to buckle under the pressure of AI models being able to like fluke these interviews or cheat on interviews for people.

I don't condone cheating, I don't recommend that at all.

But a lot of employers are struggling with candidates who are using AI tools to go for a leak code, go for a hacker rank, whereas it's not easy for them to do that for a personal

project, where do you have to have a human component?

it has to be a personal element to it.

And I think that's been something that I've, I use AI daily and I'm like, wow, it could automate these different things.

It can do these different crazy technologies.

But there's not just the neurodiversity side of the AI tools.

There's the human component to it as well.

Yeah.

And, since you brought up AI, I won't go down a huge rabbit hole, but I think it's worth mentioning if you flip the script on that actually for interviewers and we'll shift away

from interviewers for a second, uh, in a moment, but, for interviewers, you can kind of flip the script on that.

And yes, it might seem daunting to create a challenge for people to do create a scenario and exercise, whatever AI can be a tool for that.

If you, you know, take a little bit of contextual information from your organization to say like we are

a financial firm, we do stock model projections.

So create a, and a predictive modeling exercise based on the last two years of S and P 500 data.

If you enter that into, um, into an AI model, they will do most of the work for you, the manager interviewer, whoever to make creating an interview project super, super easy.

And then, you know, you're ending up with something that can't be, you know, as easily

kind of hacked or gamed.

uh

and it's still specific to the individual without feeling like you can game the system.

Exactly.

uh yes, shifting away from the, the, the, folks holding the power.

I'm curious for the job seeker side.

want to also address that and just kind of learn from your experience.

Cause you're not always going to be interviewing in kind of friendly territory.

Right.

So if you find yourself, you know, in an interview that is very traditional, like what are some of the things you've learned?

to do either before or during or even after that have helped make those experiences more successful for you.

I think it helps to be aware of what are the things that interview that are going to bother you that could cause someone to be dysregulated and what can you do to self adjust

either beforehand or during the interview.

My biggest thing has been my ability to articulate and to talk.

So I have done a lot of practice for interviews.

Tell me about yourself was just in my last episode.

I tell me about a time when dot dot dot.

I hate those questions and I've practiced those to death so that I feel confident going into those questions.

I still don't like them.

But being able to practice not only what I'm going to say about how I say it, my body posture, body language, being able to practice that hundreds of thousands of times, this

has helped me become a lot more confident in my response to those questions.

And even when you're walking into an interview itself, I think it's very important for neurodivergent people, myself included, to think about like, what's going to help me stay

focused in this conversation?

Is it what I'm wearing?

Did I eat properly?

Did I have a cup of coffee?

What am I doing going into this?

That helps as well.

I'm a big fidget guy.

I've got a million of them.

Like, can you bring a fidget thing if it's an in-person interview?

Like, is that okay for you to have if it's a

to work from home interview, can you do it at your desk, can you do it quietly?

What will help you stay focused and centered for a conversation so you can just focus on what the interview is saying and worry less about your environment, what you're wearing,

what you ate?

How can you achieve that equilibrium?

Right.

And then.

I think that's really, really valuable.

you mentioned preparation, uh, as you know, kind of your, your biggest tool for combating those things.

And, I think something else that is important to consider is we live in a modern world and the tools for preparation have really evolved.

know, you know, in where I sit, I've done a lot of like interview practice.

That's a service, a benefit that I can do for people.

People find that really valuable, but it is

a little bit old school and I think you have a lot of ideas that I've kind of seen and heard around, you know, how AI can be helpful for interview prep.

So even on your own, you can really inform yourself, really get meaningful reps in more so than just kind of talking into a mirror.

like how, what role does technology play?

How can people use that to prepare better?

We're still living in an AI-dominated world, and this is only going to change.

It's changed so much in the last five months.

It's going to change again in another five months, the rate at which this stuff is changing.

And you and Joe said it really well that it's important to think about AI as a function of job seeking.

Can you use it to help with resume, with the content of your resume, to critique your LinkedIn profile, to critique a portfolio?

Can you use it to generate example questions you might be asked?

Does it have good examples of questions that could come up?

you might be able to put in top interview questions at big tech company into an AM model to see where comes back with.

It might not give you exactly the questions, but it might give you the level or degree of difficulty for those questions that would be as good as a lead code hacker rank type of

question to actually answer.

I have definitely used those in my own job search to be able to say, like...

give me like a kind of a curveball question that's like a soft skills question that I might not think to look up myself.

And it's given me some like really curveball questions about like thinking with teams, working with people at my level in my career.

And I wish that I'd had this tool when I was like entry level for the first time going into it to be able to practice this stuff and be like, wow, now I feel confident.

But I didn't feel confident.

I was like just a fresh grad coming out into the world and not knowing what I was talking about.

Yeah, yeah, I think those are really, really great ideas that honestly I hadn't really thought about because I am kind of steeped in like old school interview prep.

I work directly with job seekers most often.

And so that's the interview prep that I do.

That's the role that I serve.

So I haven't given enough thought and I really want our listeners to hear and consider how AI can be a tool.

It's like having an interview coach that has all the information on the internet at their disposal to make better questions.

to give better feedback.

Here's a big distinction too.

It's not going to judge you.

It's not going to get mad at you.

It's not going to tattle on you to somebody.

You can ask it as many silly, innocuous questions as you want to, and it will never clap back at you.

It's not going to wrap you out.

Ask it anything you want to your heart's content, and it will never leak anything that we know of.

love that.

That's, that's excellent.

Um, so one last kind of perspective stakeholder that, uh, I want to consider, uh, given, know, kind of who our audiences and, and who, you know, factors into the ecosystem of work

is kind of your average employee.

You're, you're not, an interviewer, not a change maker, not a business unit leader, but you know, I work at a company, I live in an environment and I don't have a lot of power,

but I want to make the

a more neuro-inclusive place, what are some of the things that you would just advise any old person to try to adopt in the work environment to make a more neuro-inclusive

environment?

I think the biggest thing that I have seen work well for advocates and neurotypical peers is to be mindful when somebody does articulate their needs, when they do express that they

are in a state of frustration, to support them in whatever way makes the most sense for them.

You may know an autistic person in your own life, but what this autistic person's needs are may vary from his co-worker's needs, and equating them could only lead to more harm if

you're not careful.

but if this employee is honest and open about it, it helps to ask them, hey, like, what can I be doing to help you better in the workplace?

Often, and this is more often the case, you may not know that somebody's neurodivergent.

They may not say anything.

And as a way of working, I think it helps to be mindful of if you do notice that something is bothering an neurodivergent person or that they are having a tough time at a process,

it helps to...

Talk with them and learn more about their working style, whether or not neurodiversity is in the picture.

It's harder when you don't know if it's ADHD or autism or something else.

But it helps to still be inclusive and be approachable about it and be willing to change what you're doing in response to something that is grinding gears the wrong way.

Definitely.

Okay.

Yeah.

So applying that flexibility, that open-mindedness and, getting to know individuals and, and their needs, their preferences.

Um, and what I was going to add to that is, you know, we've talked a little bit, we've, we've talked about how work styles are a great example of that's not a neurodivergent

situation.

That's an everybody's situation.

So I think, a really meaningful, but very small, very small, but very meaningful, very easy thing that people can do is just

normalize these types of mindfulness and flexibility and normalize it by, you know, making it apply to you.

If, know, you're not neurodivergent, you're a neuro typical employee, but you want to make neurodivergent colleagues of yours more comfortable, share your work style.

Um, you know, normalize that conversation, especially from the seat of, you know, a neuro typical employee, uh, make it normal to talk about the, how the environment reacts and how

you, how

you react to the environment, how you process information, how you like to communicate and collaborate.

And then, you know, hopefully your colleagues like, like you're describing that are up against these things and maybe struggling against them more than you are, will feel more

comfortable to share their needs.

Something that's also helpful that you maybe think of is the idea of social capital.

If you are on a team but you're not a manager but you have tenure, you've been around for a long time, and you have influence, you can swing around to affect change.

And maybe someone is struggling and they can't get this change to happen.

Maybe they're newer, maybe there's some other political factor, but you as an individual might have the influence or the ability to change something.

Go ahead and push that change through if you see that it could make a meaningful difference, not just for this person.

but for the whole team.

I've seen the effect of social capital in action and it really is eye-opening when someone can effectively change a team carefully without making it seem like a forced thing.

But one example could be a change in how you have meetings scheduled.

I am big on my focus time on my calendar, so I will block off time on my calendar for focus time.

And I know that if I have

a meeting, then no meeting, a meeting, then no meeting, I don't get a lot done.

But recently someone at a meeting brought up said, hey, we have these two meetings that have a half hour gap in between them.

Can we just put them back to back that way we can just go about our day and have that focus time back?

Great.

Nobody has been neurodivergent to be able to affect that change that benefits everybody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're, you're right.

That, uh, influence is not always dependent on hierarchy.

So no matter where you sit, you know, you have your circle of influence, your, your realm of control, that you can make these changes in, whether it's, yeah.

And just kind of opening the door for mindfulness and flexibility or kind of leading by example for self-advocating and showing others that that's okay.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I love that.

well, hopefully that's a really good call to action for anyone and everyone listening on.

either of our shows.

ah Yeah, really love the kind of audience crossover that we get to have here today.

And I just want to thank you for giving us some of your time and being on our show for the day.

It was an absolute pleasure getting to see you and chat with you again.

And yeah, hopefully we will I'm sure we'll cross paths very soon.

Thank you, Thank you for having me.

This has been an awesome time.

Thank you.