Leading Effective Team Meetings in the Neurodiverse Workplace

How to Communicate to Support Neurodiversity in the Workplace

Team meetings can be exhausting for employees in the neurodiverse workplace. Employees with ADHD or dyslexia may feel that they’re unprepared or that they’ve missed important information.

Have you ever led a meeting and seen one of your employees tune out? Do you struggle to get a team member to join impromptu standups? Do some team members seem to understand the task you give them in a meeting, only to forget the assignment or not know how to do it?

Understand that neurodivergent employees don’t tune you out on purpose. They may just need some simple accommodations, which are helpful for neurotypical employees, too — and can make meetings much more effective for everyone.

Is the meeting necessary?

Meetings are an effective way to share information with several people at once. They can help teams solve problems and find breakthroughs to meet their objectives. They build a sense of camaraderie and remind employees of the company’s purpose and mission.

Meetings can hinder progress when misused, especially in the neurodiverse workplace. Excessive and over-long meetings can have a significantly negative effect on neurodivergent employees. The structure is essential to maintaining a neurodivergent employee’s sense of security and ability to perform job functions successfully. Unscheduled, disorganized meetings can torpedo their productivity and cause them to lose confidence in their abilities.

A frequent joke in today’s office and work-from-home environment is, “This meeting could have been an email.” And in some cases, that’s true. If you can solve an issue with a brief email exchange, there’s no need to assemble the entire team in person to discuss it.

Provide a schedule before meetings.

Providing a meeting agenda can be incredibly helpful for everyone, especially neurodivergent employees. Knowing that there will be a specific number of topics discussed, what those topics will be, and even how long the team will discuss each item can help employees stay focused on the meeting.

The easiest way to share a meeting agenda is to add it to the email invitation — in Google Calendar, for instance, add the schedule to the Details field. In Outlook, type it into the body of the email at the top rather than underneath the call-in information.

You can also create a shared agenda in Google Docs or, if your team has a Microsoft Enterprise account with sharing enabled, in Word or Excel. Instead of typing in the schedule, just share a link to the plan in the invite.

The most significant benefit of this is the live editing feature — you can add notes under each agenda topic, and everyone who accesses the shared document will see those notes as they’re created. Some neurodivergent adults can’t take notes (write or type) while listening. This way, employees will listen to what you are saying and feel confident they can review the notes after the meeting.

Limit meeting length and frequency when possible

Team standups are a popular way to help everyone gear up for the work day or week. But they’re called standups for a reason: they are quick meetings — initially just a group meeting at the edge of the cubicles — of 5 to 15 minutes. Their purpose is not to solve problems right then and there but to ensure everyone is on track and that nothing is hindering their work.

A team meeting is most effective between 30 minutes and one hour. After that, most people’s focus begins to break down. It’s better to address one issue per meeting and then plan future meetings as part of the “next steps” part of the problem-solving process.

Take “brain breaks” during long sessions.

Every company is different, and sometimes, longer meetings are unavoidable. Government contractors are significantly affected by this — day-long and even multi-day conferences are required regularly.

So, in addition to maintaining meeting structure and providing a time-based plan, keep the team focused by scheduling 10-minute breaks at the end of each hour.

Incorporate reinforcement exercises

An excellent reinforcement and refocusing activity is “Think/Pair/Share.” If the team is getting unfocused or chatting with each other, or if you are sharing information that you want everyone to retain and understand, build this exercise into the last 15–30 minutes of the meeting.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Have everyone think individually for a couple of minutes about the information or problem on the agenda.
2. Pair everyone up and have them discuss their take on the problem (or their understanding of the information) with their partner.
3. Have each pair share their thoughts with the rest of the team, and then discuss. (If there isn’t time for a broader discussion, write the shared ideas on the agenda and table them for the next meeting.)

These techniques work for daily meetings as well as for employee training sessions. They are being taught in management programs and as part of project management best practices. And while they’re highly effective for all employees, these strategies are critical in the neurodiverse workplace. Everyone benefits from well-structured, purpose-driven meetings.

Neurodiversity Definition

Neurodiversity: this term refers to a general diversity of minds. It includes people who are neurotypical and neurodivergent. When I talk about promoting neurodiversity in the workplace, for example, I am referring to creating a diverse workforce representative of the broad spectrum that exists when it comes to ways of thinking, processing information, communication, and learning. Some employees may be “normal” or neurotypical while others may have ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, or trauma impacted ways of thinking. I am not referring to any particular label or diagnosis, but rather, the concept of an environment where a diversity of minds coexist.

Neurodiverse: This word is pretty much the same as neurodiversity, but should be used as an adjective. You can say, for example, that your workplace is neurodiverse.

Be careful though, because you should never describe a person as being neurodiverse. Individual people should be described as neurodivergent.

Neurodivergent: This word describes an individual whose way of thinking falls outside of society’s defined version of normal. Oftentimes you will see it abbreviated as ND.

Many times, neurodivergent people will have a diagnosis or label you may recognize, like autism, dyslexia, or ADHD. But neurodivergent people are also those with epilepsy, different kinds of brain trauma, or simply a unique way of thinking that may not have a specific diagnosis.

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Photo – Hubspot Free Stock Photo

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