Ever notice someone on your team seems to operate on an entirely different wavelength? Or maybe that’s you—juggling a hundred moving parts and still feeling a bit out of sync.
Is being “wired differently” a flaw, or could it be your hidden superpower?
Ops execs know what it’s like to keep things stable, even when the real challenges aren’t obvious. And let’s be honest, it’s often those unconventional minds—whether it’s a teammate or even yourself—that light up the room with fresh ideas, even if they don’t always fit the usual mold.
This episode, I’m talking shop with leadership coach and author Rachel Radway about how neurodiversity shapes teams, leadership, and everyday work life. You’ll get real stories, practical moves you can put to use right away, and maybe a new way to see yourself, your team, or that “different” colleague. Find the full transcript at yourfuturerealized.com/103.
Laura:
What inspired you to specialize in working with highly sensitive and neurodivergent leaders?
Why neurodiversity matters in today’s workplace
Rachel:
I have known that I am highly sensitive myself and I’ve known that since I was a child. There is a psychologist named Elaine Aaron who wrote a book called The Highly Sensitive Person. It came out in the late 90s. And when I first read that book just a few years after it came out and it opened my eyes and kind of shed light on a whole part of my life and my background that I really hadn’t known that there were other people who shared the same traits. I knew that there were a lot of things about me that were different. I thought I was alone.
I’ve come to understand that that is true for so many people who have these traits that when in fact, it’s at least 30% of the population who qualify as highly sensitive. And a lot of people think it’s just women. It’s not. It’s all genders. It is gender agnostic. When I first started coaching, I knew I wanted to work with leaders. I was particularly focused on women leaders. I hadn’t been any more specific than that. It turned out that the people who were drawn to me, almost without exception, turned out to be very highly sensitive. And most of them didn’t know that language. They didn’t know about the book. They didn’t know that it was 30% of the population, but they had those traits. So it was just a universal magnetism thing.
The more I have done this work and when I wrote the book, I learned more about the fact that actually highly sensitive brains are wired differently from “neurotypical” brains. And I do air quotes because I actually don’t think neurotypical is really a thing. But people can feel free to argue with me about that. In any case, highly sensitive brains are wired a little differently, which by definition makes us neural neurodivergent. And that led to an exploration of different kinds of neurodivergence and neurodiversity, which is something that I am really passionate about.
Laura:
I appreciate the statistic that 30% of people are likely to be highly sensitive or neurodivergent. What is the latest research on this?
Understanding the science behind being wired differently
Rachel:
Research shows that 30% of the population is highly sensitive. I’m very careful about the language because not everyone wants a label and words mean different things to different people. Since functional MRIs have shown that different parts of highly sensitive brains are activated at different times and for longer periods than brains that are not highly sensitive, our brain wiring is different by definition, which means we are neurodivergent or divergent from the neurotypical. Does that make sense?
Laura:
It does. One of the main questions I hear regularly, is: “I think someone on my team might be neurodivergent or a little different from everyone else. How do I approach that?”
Rachel:
I’m glad you asked about approaching and thinking about that as separate questions. There are a lot of people who choose not to disclose that they are neurodivergent, and others suspect they are but haven’t been diagnosed or talked to anybody about it. High sensitivity is not a diagnosis. There are a lot of doctors that don’t believe it’s a thing. It’s not in the DSM. ADHD and autism, and other forms of neurodivergence, are diagnoses, but not everyone is diagnosed, for a lot of reasons. Many people don’t want labels, and especially women in leadership, though I work with all genders, don’t always want to be labeled since they already face enough challenges.
How to approach neurodivergence on your team
Understanding that someone may think or operate differently is wonderful because there are many ways to support them. Directly asking, “Are you neurodivergent?” usually isn’t helpful and isn’t your place to decide. The best thing you can do is accept how they function and find out what they need to do their best work—without singling them out. Great leaders get to know all their team members as individuals, learning what motivates and inspires each person and what support they need. That way, you don’t focus extra attention on someone because you think they’re neurodivergent, but still show support and provide accommodations if requested.
Laura:
What’s coming to mind is someone with a team member who was doing the job on paper but having interpersonal issues. I’ve heard several similar situations—someone isn’t a cultural fit, but they’re getting the work done. What do you recommend in those situations?
Navigating social cues and cultural fit challenges
Rachel:
It’s a tough one. There are definitely some people who are neurodivergent who struggle more with social cues, and there are things like not looking people in the eye, which most of our culture requires to feel comfortable.
Laura:
In the West.
Rachel:
Thank you for adding that. Yes, it is a cultural thing too. There are things like some people might talk too much. They may not pick up cues about when to stop talking or how much detail to give in answer to a question. There are people who need a lot of structure and may have very specific ways of doing things that aren’t necessarily in alignment with the way other people on the team do things or the way the manager wants them done.
So, there are a lot of ways when there are a lot of ways in which someone might be brilliant and very talented and as you said, doing the job and still not be what we might call a cultural fit on the team. There is a really big controversy out there about whether cultural fit should even be a thing, whether people should be gauging or assessing for cultural fit when they are hiring and when they’re doing things like performance reviews.
I have an opinion on it. I don’t have an answer on it. And I think part of it is it really is going to depend on the larger organizational culture. In an ideal world, we would be able to tell people what outcome we expect from them and when we expect it by, and let them ask questions or get whatever information they need to support them and then let them do it their way in a way that is best suited to their skills and their style and their approach.
A lot of leaders, especially newer leaders, who don’t have a lot of experience with many teams or lots of people on a team, are very uncomfortable with this because. Because they just haven’t been there yet. They just haven’t seen this in action. And it may be hard to trust that it’s actually going to work.
The importance of clear expectations and inclusive communication
There are also teams that can be really close. I was on a team once where everybody went out to drink together all the time. And if you weren’t one of those people, you would find it difficult to progress either, you know, socially on the team or, you know, career development wise.
There really is no one solid answer. I think what’s most important for that leader to get across to the person is what the expectations are and how that person may not be reaching them. It’s also important, and some leaders, depending on level of seniority, have more control over this than others to understand that some expectations may not be fair for all people.
Some people expect everyone to speak up in a meeting, for example, and if you don’t speak up, the leader may say you’re not participating. Not everyone’s comfortable speaking up and some people need more processing time than others. I would say it’s the leader’s responsibility to make sure that everyone has access to the information they need before they’re going to be called on to respond to a question or to a conversation. So don’t just spring things on people.
If you have a meeting coming up where there’s an important conversation and you want people to participate, give them all as much advance notice as possible and do it multiple ways. Do it in writing, do it in your one-on-ones. Not everybody processes information the same way. So, you can help set everyone up for success and then assess those expectations and how realistic they are for people who do think feel process a little bit differently.
Laura:
Not everyone wants to be labeled or has been labeled. Neurodivergent is a new term, not around when I started in the workforce. Some clients say, “I got my diagnosis at 52 and now so much makes sense.” There are so many new resources—even your book. Can you share some examples where a leader or team experienced a breakthrough by embracing neurodiversity?
Real stories of embracing neurodiversity at work
Rachel:
Absolutely. I have many examples. One nonprofit leader learned about these traits and made enormous changes, like asking for and receiving a 25% raise. She also reported sleeping better, losing weight, and hearing from friends and family that she seemed happier—all in a couple of months. W
hat made the difference was understanding more about her wiring, embracing it, and redesigning and realigning aspects of her life and work so that they aligned with her preferred ways of working and being. And not only did it make a huge difference for her, she was able to start orchestrating some change in her organization and reported back that people were communicating more effectively with each other, not just with her, but she was modeling a different way of being. She was more comfortable in her own skin, and she was approaching work differently every day when she went in. That has so many ripple effects. It was really, really beautiful to hear.
Another client really just started re-planning her day. She took back some time in the morning because for her, having some peace and quiet as she started her day allowed her to focus, clear her mind, do what she needed to do without jumping straight into meetings. And she had been afraid to ask. She was a partner in a firm and had been afraid to ask her colleagues to move this meeting because she thought that that was an imposition. We talked about her agency communicating with her partners and telling them what to she needed. A lot of the people that I deal with are very wary of sharing their own needs and of asking for things and have asked.
Building confidence and finding your voice as a neurodivergent leader
When she learned more about that and we worked on building her self confidence and finding her voice, she made huge changes that really changed the way that her day went, which enabled her to be a lot more effective in all aspects of her job and her life. And the stories go on. Those are just a couple of them.
Laura:
How does your coaching provide something different from typical coaching? Are there challenges your clients face that most coaching doesn’t address?
Rachel:
I can’t speak to “typical” coaching since every coach is a little bit different… I just had a client this morning, for example, who had been misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder. This is so common in people who are highly sensitive and people with ADHD in particular. And there are a lot of reasons for that that I’m not going to get into. But working with someone who understands, not only understands from a clinical perspective, because I’m not a therapist, but understands from a sort of scientific and objective perspective how different brains work and that there are differences that do show up in certain ways and there are certain patterns and there are certain traits that. That are common, even though we’re all different.
Why lived experience matters in neurodivergence coaching
I also have personal lived experience with this. As I mentioned, I’ve been highly sensitive all my life. I was diagnosed in my early 50s with ADHD. I also have some autistic traits that would be considered subclinical. Like, I probably wouldn’t get a diagnosis of autism, but they very much inform my way of being in the world. So I consider that I have what’s called ADHD, which is a combination of ADHD and autism. Working with a coach who is not familiar with these things or has not experienced them personally is a completely different experience because. So, let’s just use boundaries as an example. It’s very easy to tell someone how to develop boundaries. It’s a whole different thing when you know why the person struggles with boundaries and you can deeply feel it and you can empathize with that person.
I have clients cry with me regularly, like it happens in lots of sessions because they tell me no one has ever seen them the way that I see them and supported them the way that I support them. And it’s not about therapy. A lot of people are concerned. Like, I have a therapist. I don’t need a therapist from my coach. I don’t do therapy. I’m not qualified to give diagnoses. I work with you where you are now and figure out where you want to go and support you in developing a blueprint to go there. Given your specific way of thinking and feeling and being in the world.
Laura:
You wrote a book, Perceptive. What do you hope people take away from it?
Seeing your full self as a source of strength
Rachel:
My main hope is that people who have grown up with messages that they are broken or crazy or alone come away with it with an understanding that they are none of those things and can start to really recognize and embrace the strengths and the gifts that they have. Because I promise, they do have them.
One of the things that’s common to a lot of people who are highly sensitive and neurodivergent is we tend to be very aware of our challenges and not necessarily of our strengths. We tend to think that everybody can do the things that we can do. Well, that’s not special to us, but the challenges are special to us. I know how easy it is to feel that way, and it’s not true.
I want people to understand that the things that they do really well are gifts and strengths that not everyone else has. The gifts and the challenges are two sides of the same coin. And I talk about that in the book several times. When you can start embracing your full self, you can actually leverage those strengths to start handling the challenges a little bit more effectively too. And you can really start to thrive.
Connect with Rachel Radway on LinkedIn.
Perceptive by Rachel Radway is available on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes and Noble.