Did you know that 53% of Gen Z, the rising workforce, identifies as neurodivergent? If that’s the future of work, what does it mean for how we lead, collaborate, and connect? It means if we don’t learn how to lead for the needs of neurodiverse employees, we could be facing a huge hiring and unemployment gap.
Julia Armet, people and culture strategist, workplace facilitator, and proud neurodivergent leader, is on a mission to humanize work.
Julia shares her own powerful personal journey navigating her own neurodivergence, and we discuss why relationship-building is the heartbeat of modern work. She debunks myths around autism and empathy, and introduces the concept of the “double-empathy problem” – reframing how we see inclusion and communication across differences.
You’ll also hear why listening to neurodivergent voices elevates everyone, why the outlier is often the source of innovation, not friction, and how empathy can activate systemic shifts in the workplace and beyond.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- Different ways people exhibit and experience empathy.
- Approaches to unmasking neurodiversity and empowering neuroinclusion.
- What you may be missing/misunderstanding about your autistic coworker’s social differences.
- The importance of planting new seeds and redefining modern leadership through empathy.
- How to integrate your team’s outliers to unlock greater levels of empathy.
“Solving for empathy for the most marginalized populations is what’s going to actually benefit all populations.” — Julia Armet
Episode References:
The Empathy Edge podcast:
- Molly McGrath: Fix My Employee! No, Fix My Boss!
- Parissa Behnia: How Badass Leaders Convert Raw Power into Real Influence
About Julia Armet, Founder of Higher Playbook
Julia Armet, PCC, ELI-MP, is a people and culture strategist, workplace facilitator, and proud neurodivergent leader on a mission to humanize work. As Founder of Higher Playbook, she partners with visionary leaders and progressive organizations to design workplace cultures where all people — and all minds — can thrive.
With a career spanning media, technology, and professional services, Julia brings deep expertise at the intersection of relationship-building, leadership development, and culture transformation. From scaling a mission-driven tech company to leading global leadership programs, she empowers organizations to foster psychological safety, unlock talent potential, and drive culture change.
Through experiential keynotes, leadership retreats, and high-impact workshops, Julia equips leaders with socially innovative approaches and relational strategies to cultivate inclusion and conscious leadership. Her signature programs — Unmasking Neurodiversity and Empowering Neuroinclusion — harness the power of empathy to activate systemic shifts in the workplace and beyond.
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Connect with Julia:
Higher Playbook: higherplaybook.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juliaarmet
Facebook: facebook.com/julia.armet
Instagram: @higherplaybook
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/higherplaybook
Check out her signature neurodiversity programming: Unmasking Neurodiversity and Empowering Neuroinclusion: higherplaybook.com/leadership-programs
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Did you know that 53% of Gen Z, the rising workforce, identifies as neurodivergent? If that’s the future of work, what does it mean for how we lead, collaborate and connect? It means if we don’t learn how to lead for the needs of neurodiverse employees, we could be facing a huge hiring and unemployment gap today. I’m joined by Julia armet people and culture strategist, workplace facilitator and proud neurodivergent leader on a mission to humanize work as founder of hire playbook, Julia partners with visionary leaders to design cultures where every person and every mind can thrive with experience spanning media, tech and professional services. She brings deep expertise in leadership development, relationship building and culture transformation, from scaling a mission driven tech company to leading global leadership programs. She empowers organizations to foster psychological safety, unlock talent potential and drive culture change today, Julia shares her own powerful personal journey, navigating her neurodivergence, and we discuss why relationship building is the heartbeat of modern work, she debunks myths around autism and empathy and introduces the concept of the double empathy problem, reframing how we see inclusion and communication across difference. You’ll also hear why listening to neurodivergent voices elevates everyone, why the outlier is often the source of innovation, not friction, and how empathy can activate systemic shifts in the workplace and beyond. This was such a great conversation. Take a listen. Welcome Julia to the empathy edge podcast. I am excited to have this conversation with you about empathy and neurodiversity and all the different ways that empathy shows up for people. Because as we were just talking before we started recording, I was saying how I get this question a lot lately. So welcome to the show.
Julia Armet 02:51
Thank you so much. I’m really honored to represent neurodivergent leadership on the empathy edge, and I feel like so many neurodivergent leaders will say that they lead on the empathy edge, because it is just our natural capacity to really see and understand. So thank you for having me.
Maria Ross 03:10
Oh, absolutely. So before we get into all of it, I want to start where I always start, which is, how did you get into this work? What’s your story? What drives this passion?
Julia Armet 03:20
I think, to frame the conversation, I am a twice exceptional autistic leader in the transformational learning and leadership development space. So I feel it’s important to acknowledge both my educational journey along with my professional journey. In an educational sense, I am, like I said twice exceptional, but to clarify what that means, when you are twice exceptional, you are both intellectually gifted with a learning difference based on the state criteria. So if you’re thinking about a bell curve, you are on both edges and without that language, growing up, it had a very confusing experience. It was everyday challenge. When I was a elementary school kid, I was pulled out of class multiple times a week. Though, as I went through adolescence, I exhibited asynchronous development, and I ended up graduating valedictorian in my high school class. And so through that experience, I feel I developed the capacity to deeply empathize with those who are highly struggling, along with those who are highly successful and those who are both highly successful and highly struggling. So with that in mind, I ended up pursuing a non traditional educational journey in college at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, I was exploring identity and media and looking at this idea of, well, how do I pave a path that is authentic to me? Now, at the time, I didn’t realize I was autistic. A lot of women don’t get identified until much later. In life, and I’m very grateful, because at a very young age, I found an incredibly aligned opportunity to work in the relationship industry, which is where I could really deeply understand who people are. And by the age of 25 they promoted me to direct the operations, and as I was at the forefront of the gig economy, with hundreds of contractors working remotely. And I’m questioning, how do I serve this remote workforce and actually see them? We’re not really in the same physical space? I ended up creating relational spaces and operationalizing relationship building with the workforce, and through that experience, I started to see that true transformation happens when we really invest in the relationship building of people at work. And that was really the path that I followed ever since today I have my platform higher playbook, which is really looking at the importance of cultivating our relational intelligence and relational capacities at work, and empathy is very much one of the most critical competencies of a modern leader. Absolutely.
Maria Ross 06:11
Yeah, the data show, and several studies show that empathy is going to be the defining leadership trait for the 21st Century. And my theory is because our problems are more complex than they ever were, and we cannot solve them alone. And so the ability, like you’re saying, that relational intelligence, that ability to build connections and build bridges, and, quite frankly, do it quickly, do it with people that maybe you know, your team is being brought together to solve a particular problem or to go after a particular opportunity. How can we do that in the fastest way possible? So I’ve often talked on the show about the fact that with the coming of AI, these skills are going to be more important than ever, because those leaders who have struggled with that, who have hidden behind the work, won’t have anywhere else to hide, because the work, a lot of the work will be done for them. So what are you left with? You’re left with those people like you’re talking about, who have that ability to connect and engage and even see things from a unique vantage point, a unique point of view. So I love everything that you’re saying. I want to talk quickly about your standpoint on the social evolution of work, right? Like I said, we’re seeing all this data. We’re seeing all this research that humanity at work is shifting. Obviously, the pandemic accelerated. A lot of that in terms of, Oh, these are human beings that we’re bringing into the workforce. They’re whole people. And I know that you have said that there’s recent stats that have shown that 53% of Gen Z identifies as neurodivergent. So what does that mean for the Well, first, what do you think is behind that? And two, what do you think that means in terms of the evolution of work
Julia Armet 07:52
when it comes to visibility and the conversation about neurodiversity? What happened was a lot of these 90s kids had kids, and the language of neurodiversity became much more commonplace. And so we’ve always been here, and yet more and more people are using that term, and as we see with Gen Z, very clear on their emotional and existential needs. So what’s really significant about 53% of Gen Z identifying as neurodivergent is we look at the now in our modern workplaces, if 76% of neurodivergent professionals are not disclosing and 85% of autistic talent are either unemployed or underemployed. We have a disclosure gap and an unemployment issue that makes it so that if we don’t solve for the psychological safety of neurodivergent people, along with creating workplaces that are able to serve this rising generation who has very distinct needs, desires and aspirations, it’s going to be a mismatch between our workforce and our organizations and so ultimately, those divides are really the crux of where our relational skill set becomes more and more essential, and I feel as though solving for empathy for the most marginalized populations is what’s going to actually benefit all populations.
Maria Ross 09:31
I love that, and it’s interesting that you say that, because it’s almost as if we put this label on it as neurodivergent, but when it starts to become the majority, then really, what’s the norm?
Julia Armet 09:42
Yeah, right, it is the natural evolution too. Because if we are looking at the role of technology in this digital age and how it just has impacted our neuro development and just our neurology, it’s quite fascinating, because our attention goes many places. Our intention gets hyper focused. Focus. So we are definitely, as a human race at large, becoming more and more neurodivergent, in my opinion, as well. So yeah, we can bring various lenses to understanding this phenomenon for sure.
Maria Ross 10:13
Okay, this is, oh, there’s, so there’s, you’re giving me like, six different questions I want to ask you at the same time. But I want to talk about this, something you’ve turned or you talk about which is the double empathy problem, and how it explains why communication breaks down between autistic and allistic people. And maybe you can define those actual terms for everybody, but maybe take a step back, not everyone’s heard of this. What is the double empathy problem, and how do we account for it to keep our organizations and our cultures and our culture at large running more smoothly and having better connections with people.
Julia Armet 10:47
It’s a term that, while it applies to the autistic population, specifically, it’s universal in that in this day and age, when we have cross cultural communications, there’s often a breakdown of empathy just based on different social norms and different nuances existing within distant cultures. So when we are defining the double empathy problem, it was coined by Doctor Damian Milton in 2018 to describe how communication often breaks down between autistic and non autistic people, and in that it defies this myth that autistic people don’t have empathy. In fact, there’s various different expressions of empathy. So if we’re thinking about what the double empathy problem looks like in the workplace, if we have a autistic or neurodivergent professional, that is saying the lights are too bright in here, I can’t focus. That’s their reality. And they’re not putting blame or saying to somebody, turn off the lights. They’re just acknowledging their reality. And then the manager could say back, well, it has to be on. I don’t make the rules here, and it becomes a source of tension. Yeah, there’s often a misunderstanding of intention, though, if we are kind of zooming out and realizing that if we can start to learn to see each other’s different ways of expressing empathy in extreme cases like that, what ends up happening is, as we start to have more globalized cross cultural conversations, we’ve expanded our capacity to engage with individuals who might just come from different cultures or upbringings or any dimension of diversity, right? So at the end of the day, I brought in that language when I was messaging you online, because I realized we are to really solve for empathy, and we are the really expand our capacity for empathy. We need to name the breakdowns of communication that are happening and ultimately not put the responsibility on one person or another, but said, really acknowledge the relational responsibility.
Maria Ross 13:00
I love that. I call that, you know, that we it’s required for empathy to flow both ways totally. And so there’s a couple questions in there. One, can you help us understand and maybe even dispel that myth? A little bit about what you mentioned right at the beginning, which is that, you know, oh, autistic people aren’t empathetic. I know that there are some conditions that kind of prevent people from tapping into their empathy or understanding what that looks like. But can you give us, like a primer on what does that look like in terms of the difference in how it’s exhibited, and maybe educate us or dispel some myths around that fact or that non fact? I should say
Julia Armet 13:40
I believe everyone experiences empathy distinctly. Though, if we think about people feeling into empathy from more of a emotional or effective standpoint, that might not be everyone’s version of empathy. I experience empathy on a sensory level, and a lot of what I experience, you could actually kind of bring into the category of telepathy as well, because there’s a feeling not just into but there’s a feeling outwardly. And so just to be able to look at empathy individually and get curious around. Well, what is empathy really? Asking that question in itself allows us to actually see the limits of our understanding and the conditions that we’ve put on empathy. And ultimately, for me, I believe that the most fascinating thing is to understand every person’s internal phenomena, and that’s ultimately for me, what has allowed for me to be seen as the empathetic leader. I’m deeply, deeply interested in seeing people for who they really are, and I’ve come to define empathy in my own reality as the capacity to truly see in a. Understand another
Maria Ross 15:01
exactly, and I talk about that a lot, as you know, which is really just about, especially from a workplace context, what is really accessible for people is calling it the ability to see, understand, and where appropriate, feel another person’s perspective. And that also includes getting curious. Like the first step is I actually care that you might have a different perspective or point of view, so I’m going to get curious and ask about it, and just that acceptance of the fact that your point of view might not be mine, I feel, is the beginning of empathy. I don’t have to be crying on the floor with you when you’re upset, but that cognitive ability, we talk about differences between cognitive empathy and affective empathy, and you can access the ultimate act of compassion through either of those routes. And some people are more whether it’s autism, whether it’s just you’re more left brain, you’re more analytical, you’re more data driven, you might be able to tap into that curiosity of someone else’s point of view, from the cognitive standpoint, versus just I have a feeling, or I’m connecting with you, or I’m, you know, awash with all these emotions, and I think, and tell me what you think about this, my theory is that that misunderstanding is what makes people uncomfortable embracing empathy in the workplace, Because if they’re not touchy feely, they’re not intuitive, they’re not emotional. They’re like, Oh no, I don’t I’m not going to engage in
Julia Armet 16:26
it at all, totally. So I find that I’d love to bring up a story here, because I do believe that an open mind is the entry point to the open heart, and I feel this context is more of an extreme case, but it really highlights how it’s not just okay jumping in, get touchy feely, but it’s much more of a process of opening mind, opening heart. I was leading a psychological safety workshop for a group of about 115 leaders at a multinational, and this was an off site that brought together people from 100 different countries, and I knew, because this was in the financial industry, and typically we are going to have a lot less touchy feeling, is there? Yeah, that I needed to kind of have my hidden agenda embedded into this kind of list of competencies, right? And so what I ended up designing was a two hour experience with the first half being an open mind Strategy Session, conceptually thinking about psychological safety. And then by the second hour, it was all about open hearts and one round of relating at a time I moved them through interpersonal connection rounds that by the end of it, I literally brought up Alanis Morissette on the screen, and it’s playing empathy. And if you would have seen the crack, that’s all we need. Wow. We need to create that one crack, because when we can crack people’s hearts open, that’s what allows for the capacity building to really happen. As I looked out in the audience, I saw grown men with tears in their eyes, and at the end of the day, it’s sometimes a matter of Yes, bringing people in and rolling them into the empathy work, though, at other times it’s really leading people to the edge. And when we can bring people to the edge, and as empathy disruptors make that crack, I know that we in that crack can then plant new seeds and begin to redefine what it means to be a modern leader.
Maria Ross 18:42
I love that the idea of planting new seeds when things crack open is amazing. I love it. I love it. It’s amazing. Can you talk a little bit more about maybe, you know, even helping us build empathy for the experience of someone who is autistic coming into the workforce and people making all these assumptions about them. Can you give us a peek? I know you can’t represent every autistic person in the world, but maybe from your own experience. What do we need to know about that? What is it that we can do as leaders and as colleagues to meet that person where they are so that ultimately, we get the best out of that person. We get the best performance, we get the best innovation, because there’s so many gifts they have to give, but when they’re misunderstood, and even their empathy, intention is misunderstood, can you talk a little bit? I know there’s a lot of questions in there, but can you talk a little bit about what that’s like, and what are we missing?
Julia Armet 19:34
The whole question that you’re asking, for me, hinges on the challenges that arise when there are so many assumptions. Made because of the social differences that might exist between an autistic person and neurotypical person, though, if we actually just see autism as a symbol of social difference, any candidate, any professional, can enter into their. Workplace experience and be judged by the differences that they bring. It’s exaggerated if we think about a person who might have challenges keeping their communications condensed, or might have challenges because environments are too bright or the smell of the cafeteria is too strong, or there’s background noise happening as they work, and it’s impossible to truly focus and do the deep work that would be possible if you work from home. So at every phase of the workplace experience, it’s up to not just the people who are in leadership roles, but any person who is a part of a team or an organization to be able to recognize the opportunities that exist, if they are realizing, you know what, I’m recognizing, the person who sits next to me is struggling a bit and is always wearing their headphones, but there’s this always staying later because they can’t get their work done during the day. We all ultimately have to simultaneously question our assumptions, but also really be able to keep our eyes open and have expanded lenses to notice not just what’s happening within our reality, within our performance, but in the broader culture of the workplaces that we co shape.
Maria Ross 21:29
I love that. I love that I mean, and it’s so much about training ourselves and training our responses. You know, when I was younger and my my world was narrower. You know, it was like you’d work with different people, and your first judgment was, what’s wrong with them, right? Whether it was they have quirks about how they work or they just they don’t seem passionate about the work, just because they’re not necessarily as emotive or expressive as other people, right? And when you can train yourself to disrupt that thought of not what’s wrong with them, but what makes them tick, like, help me understand this person better, because they’re just different. I think we, hopefully we get to that as we get older, but it would be great if we could just, you know, do that from the start, and avoid a lot of conflict and avoid also just experiences that not only are detrimental to another human being, but if we’re looking at the organization and the organization’s goals, all the missed opportunity and all the missed contribution that the organization loses out on because they’re making an assumption that different is wrong, yeah, and, or they’re making an assumption that, oh, I don’t even want to know what the difference is, because I’m going to have to put all these accommodations in place, which, quite frankly, all of us accommodate every day, when we accommodate keyboard height and chair height and light, you know? So that’s a whole nother conversation.
Julia Armet 22:59
When you’re bringing this up, I would love to just say, in terms of really showing the simplicity of becoming more neuro inclusive, the reality of practicing open mind, that’s what I aim to cultivate. If, let’s say I’m going in with an neuro diversity training, I usually lead with unmasking neurodiversity, and the power of that is you have neurodivergent people sharing their lived experiences with people who wouldn’t necessarily identify as neurodivergent, being able to ask questions, and there’s genuine openness to dialog. And when people exit those experiences, they’ve been able to have shifts in their mindset that aren’t really learned through learn this skill, that skill, or that skill learn through the transformational power of conversation. So I’m a big advocate of not striving to check off all of these ways of operating so that you can serve the neurodivergent audience. I’m here to say, being open to actually see and hear the people who you work with, and creating those relational spaces can go a long way, because in every space, those micro level shifts that can happen. Have the capacity to change the way we hire, the way we manage, the way we lead, and that compounds over time to have very significant impacts. But it is quite funny, like, you’re very much like people. People ask these questions, like, well, you know, I want to be inclusive, but when people aren’t meeting deadlines. When do we draw the line? And those are questions that, of course, we are here to ask. Though, sometimes it’s less about thinking in terms of, how do we get people to meet our expectations? Instead, how do we evolve our expectations so that more people can. Succeed within our workplaces, our communities and our society at large, yeah.
Maria Ross 25:05
And to add to that, you know, I talk a lot about that being an empathetic leader doesn’t necessarily mean, quote, unquote, lowering expectations or being okay with bad work quality, right? But it’s like you said, it’s just a perspective shift of it’s not about you lowering down to a common denominator that’s not going to move your organization forward. It’s about what can you do to raise people up within their own natural capacities? And if you’re you’re thinking like a real, empathetic leader who’s going to drive change and results the shaming and blaming doesn’t get you what you want anyway, so, and it’s not about lowering standards or letting people slide, but it’s like, okay for that particular person to get the best that they can offer. What can I do to help them rise to the level of expectation in their own way? And that could be and we saw a lot of that through the pandemic, and unfortunately, there’s been a lot of snapback on this. But people work best in different ways. Some people work best in an office, in a crazy, Open Office environment with lots of noise going on. Other people need to be left alone. They need to be in silence. They need to, you know, be able to control their day and control their schedule. If the ultimate goal is not about you doing it my way, but doing it in a way that helps us meet the expectation, meet the KPI, if you will. Then that’s about a leader who’s seeing that something might be happening and then figuring out how to uplevel that person, not necessarily, oh, I’m not getting great performance out of that person or whatever, we’ll just lower standards for everyone, right or for everything. And I that’s another thing that I think scares leaders into thinking about their false narrative of empathy, is that, no, we’re not asking you to let quality slip. We’re not asking you to dial back your expectations. What we’re asking is that you have a mindset shift. Of my role as a leader is not to just like you said, check off the box and get things done. My role as a leader is to figure out what helps every person do the job we need them to do totally.
Julia Armet 27:12
And I want to add another layer, imagine if the leader’s capacity to empathize empowers that individual to break the curve and defy expectations. Because when we think about the gifted population, I’ve been acknowledging the autistic lens, but I really want to bring in the 2e lens, which is when you have individuals who are gifted, and when I say they struggle to exist within the confines and the reduction in this ways of these workplace structures, that gifted individual is often the innovator, the one who’s going to transform the whole organization when you allow them permission to have greater flexibility. And so that’s just one use case. I do want to add that, though, because what if the opening of empathy is the elevation of what’s possible for that organization? And I believe that sometimes the most underserved are those who have some of the greatest contributions to make.
Maria Ross 28:18
This is so good. I love that perspective, of not it goes beyond even what I’ve been talking about, which is you’re helping that person rise to the level of your expectations. But what if you create the environment to elevate the expectations beyond what you even thought possible? We don’t think that way, and I admit I hadn’t thought of it that way. So I love that perspective.
Julia Armet 28:42
I want to share a story, and I feel like it’s pleased. Is it just for people to be able to see it? I’m a twoy autistic. I struggle with a lot of things that people don’t see though. I’ve been over identified with my giftedness my whole life, and when I entered the tech industry at 24 the reason why I was promoted to be the Director of Operations of that organization as they scaled is because I generated 60% of the bottom line. And when I was tasked with the responsibility to make other people work the way I worked, I took it with a grain of salt. What I did was I created relational spaces, knowing that if we could have people feel seen and understood, those autonomous contractors would have vested loyalty and great motivation to bring their purpose, bring their best ideas, bring everything that they had within their hearts to serving their clients. And to this day, the people who I served in the industry that I was in, many of them remain matchmakers. Many of them have developed these careers, and I’d say many of them would identify as neurodivergent the whole. Whole thing is the front line and then the top of organizations don’t have to be at odds, but it’s up to the people who are the people leaders, those who are often the hinge to be able to empathize with both sides, yes, at the end of the day, when we can create those lines of connection, where we have empathy for our bosses and our bosses have empathy for our workforce. That’s truly where we can create transformed workplaces that have such incredible capacity to make a contribution to our world, and that’s what I believe we’re all after right now in this day and age.
Maria Ross 30:37
Absolutely, I think that that’s so important that we understand that it’s a skill that can be embraced no matter where you sit within the organization, and that the more we talk about it, the more we model it, the more we invest in it as an organization and as a leader, and the more vulnerable we are with the fact that we’re working on it, right? We don’t. I always tell leaders that I’m working with like you don’t have to do this in the shadows. Tell your team you are working on your emotional intelligence. Share with your team the journey of trying to be a more empathetic leader, because it doesn’t make you weak. You’re modeling a growth mindset for your team. And then they’ll start to think, oh, where can I improve myself? This is encouraged here that wow, the leader who I look up to is admitting they don’t know all the answers, or they haven’t developed all the skills. I can do that too, and you just open up and you unlock, like you said, you elevate everything, and you unlock more innovation and higher performance. And I think often,
Julia Armet 31:37
especially if you’re looking at leaders who are neurodivergent, or leaders who might not know they’re neurodivergent, but they are grappling with misunderstanding, and they deeply do care, and they want to show their workforce that they care. And yet, let’s say their workforce has built up animosity. I believe that sometimes the greatest leverage that a leader has, is showing up and sharing openly with the people who they work with. And if I feel like, let’s say, or the way I would say it actually is if I’m to disclose my neurodivergence and be seen in my truth and allow myself to be visible. What does that do for other people? What does that do for people’s openness to be more curious? At the end of the day, our capacity to disclose what’s happening within our inner world is at the crux of what I know can help people better understand each other and at the end of the day, work better together.
Maria Ross 32:44
What would you say if folks are listening who are working in an environment with a leader, or if they’re a leader working with an employee, and they suspect that that person is neurodivergent, but that person has not identified as neurodivergent yet, and yet, that person might be having difficulty with connection, difficult relationships. You know, they’re seen as as problematic. Quote, unquote, yeah. What would you advise? I mean, I don’t know so much. If a employee can do anything about a leader. Yeah. What would you advise that someone seeing this play out? What can they do? I mean, obviously you can’t just tell someone. I think you should get tested for
Julia Armet 33:26
but here’s where you’re pinpointing something really, really important. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, there was an episode that you did. It was like, fix the boss. And that was really cool, because this whole idea of who needs to be fixed, it puts the responsibility on the person. But let’s see this experience and realize that the true opportunity is introducing frames of reference. So the reason why I lead unmasking neurodiversity workshop, sometimes with ERGs, sometimes for the entire organization, and that is to introduce frames of reference, because if you have 20% of your executive leadership team who is neurodivergent, that’s going to create with the executive leadership team many breakdowns of communication, yeah, because of the double empathy problem, and at the end of the day, the more that we can normalize and really vocalize these concepts. Double empathy problem, twice exceptionality, autism, neurodivergence. This is the vernacular of the modern workplace. And when we can have that language and those frames of reference, the self compassion is where it begins, and then that self compassion ripples out into our capacity for empathy. So sometimes that leaders responsibility is investing in the workshop or L D program people the better understand exactly is versus putting their responsibility on one person, let’s say invest in their leadership development. Yes, we can all. All benefit from individual leadership development, but what we can benefit more from is the relationship building so that we are able to truly see ourselves in each other.
Maria Ross 35:10
So what I hear you saying, and correct me, if I’m not reflecting this accurately, is that if, let’s say you are a leader with someone on your team who’s having some difficulties with the rest of the team, and you suspect there’s an element of neurodivergence at play, but that person has never identified as that. Whether they know it, you know, they might not even know it, right? Are you saying that one way to approach this is that that leader can build some professional development within the team? Yes, calling that person out, but just, hey, we as a team. We’ve got a lot of different personalities here. We’ve got a lot of different points of view. Let’s actually approach this from a neurodiverse standpoint. Where are we all coming from? And then you’re not putting somebody on the spot to almost, like you said, quote, unquote, fix them, but it’s how can you sort of lead them to that by actually leading everybody,
Julia Armet 36:02
I have a great story around this. Is there time for the story?
Maria Ross 36:05
Absolutely, yeah. But first I just want to make sure was that what I heard you saying, it’s
Julia Armet 36:10
exactly Okay, perfect, great. So there was a leader who brought me in. The team was having a lot of silos. And when I received the overview from the leader, what was going on, it was a general sense that there was one specific person who really just couldn’t integrate and was having a difficult time relating. And I thought to myself, Okay, because that’s generally the indicator of we’ve got their neurodivergent person, a gifted person, but somebody who’s an outlier. I see that as the seed for transformation. I see that as the source of innovation. And my objective then becomes, how do I foster a psychologically safe space to integrate that person? So when I showed up for that day, my objective was creating enough safety in that room so that people could integrate. And what I generally do is I disclose my neurodivergence Very quickly, so that the person who feels all alone in their experience potentially knows they’re not alone. Finally, by the end of the day, that person had disclosed their neuro divergence to the room, and the level of connectedness that existed where the go to perception of this person being difficult was no longer the case, and instead, there was this real desire to get to know what this person’s reality was, and I believe that that probably created much more of an impact on the organization than if you were to just hire a coach to serve that one person. Yeah, yes, see the neurodivergent person as the empathy disruptor. And if you wish to lead at the empathy edge, invest in integrating the outliers on your team, by integrating the most misunderstood, you are truly unlocking the capacity for empathy within your organization.
Maria Ross 38:11
I love it. I love it about that idea of like, seeing that as a catalyst for change, seeing that as a catalyst for connection, and not a source of friction. But I just I love all of this, because I think we all have those stories. You know, as we grow and as we try to improve ourselves and expand our thinking, we all can think back to those stories of people that we had frictions with in the workplace and look back with much kinder eyes of saying I wasn’t equipped at the time to interact with this person in a productive way. It not that they were broken, but that I maybe I didn’t know enough to unlock that as a catalyst for change. And what I have found, which is really interesting, and this is why, early on, I never called it empathy, until I did a Strengths Finder and realized empathy was one of my top five strengths. But when I was doing brand workshops or client workshops with people, and I always loved inviting the person that was sort of the negative critic, the one that was like, I don’t know if we want them in the room, because they’re always, you know, stirring up everything, and they’re negative about everything, I was like, bring that person, yes, because, and what I would do is simply listen, because I had no preconceived notions. I had no baggage. It was like no let him talk, let her talk. And the shift in just their perspective, the shift in their interaction with people, simply from the act of being heard and not silenced for the first time, was huge. And what I would say is, number one, those squeaky wheels were usually the ones that had the biggest epiphanies that they shared in those workshops. And number two, they become the biggest evangelists of whatever decision that group is making, because now they’ve seen transparently how it was made, and they know they had input into it. And so all the. Sudden, they’re not the Negative Nelly anymore. They’re the biggest cheerleader. Yeah, and I never
Julia Armet 40:04
transform that energy. You transmuted it. Yes, that energy was always there. It’s about, how do we relate to the disruptor? Right? This is the moment where so many people can reimagine empathy by simply questioning the limits and conditions around their empathy, if they don’t empathize with the innovator or disruptor, then it really shows you that you are actually restraining yourself from being more of an empathetic leader, and potentially restraining the organization from making the impact that it’s here to make.
Maria Ross 40:39
I love this. I have a colleague, Parisa Bania, who I know. Vanessa Parisa, yeah, so she works with badass leaders. She that’s the ones that are seen as disruptors and difficult problem children, right? And that’s her whole point. Is, there’s so much innovation and creative thinking to be unlocked when we learn how to interact and kind of harness that energy a little bit, rather than fighting against it all the time or forcing that person to conform totally. So I’m putting I’m putting on
Julia Armet 41:09
those are the ones who often are so highly empathetic when I think about the child who I was growing up in the Massachusetts public school system, I had to walk across the stage and win all these awards, and people hated me. They didn’t see the girl who went home and struggled so deeply with self injurious behavior and self destructive behavior, because it was way beyond my social and sensory needs to be in that environment. And so it just shows you that the capacity that we have to empathize with the outliers is the opportunity that we have collectively right. And I believe that’s what’s emerging within our collective consciousness right now. Right when do we turn off our empathy? And how can we remain open to truly seeing and understanding one another, even when it triggers us, it bothers us, even when they wanted to really just throw me out because my voice was too loud. In truth, I was always that seed for change in every environment that I’ve been in, and whether you see me as the top performer, the innovator, who’s here to add value, or you see me as the resistance, right, it’s the same exact power, right? And it ultimately is important to question ourselves and really build our relational responsibility. So all of this is something that I could probably talk about for hours.
Maria Ross 42:41
I love this. I could talk to you longer for sure, and we will. We will have all your links in the show notes. And you know, of course, we’ll talk about, I also will put a link to your signature programs that you have available for folks, and you have one about unmasking neuro diversity and empowering neuro inclusion. But I know you have others as well. We’ll put all those links. But for anyone who’s on the go right now listening to us, where’s the best place they can connect and find out more about you, you
Julia Armet 43:07
can go to hire playbook.com hire like the sky playbook, like the sports playbook, and the programs are on the leadership programs page. But what I will say is, if you’re listening and you feel really seen going you might be recognizing your own neurodivergence, or you might hear the language twice exceptionality, and you never had that frame of reference. If this moved you and you’d like to contact me directly, you can email me directly at Julia at higher playbook.com, because it’s an honor to be that mirror who’s able to really shed light on so many people’s lived experiences, and it brings me a lot of joy to be that validating influence Wonderful.
Maria Ross 43:49
Thank you so much, Julia, for your insights and your time today. Thank you, Maria. I loved it, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
