Managing difficult employees, diversity, equality, inclusion

People management must be one of the most difficult jobs. How well do you cope managing difficult employees at work? Can you imagine a magic elixir you could slip into your team's morning coffee and transform every member into a focused, cooperative team-player who gets along with everybody?

Managing personalities at work is no easy feat. The human ego is a fragile beast that many struggle to tame. But what, I hear you cry, has this to do with diversity, equality and inclusion?

Far more than you might imagine, as it happens.

I suggest to you that many ‘problem employees’ are actually neurodivergent. And the problem is most people don’t understand neurodivergence. Worse than this, they actively misunderstand it. And because of this, those trying to resolve or manage the issues go about it in a way that will never work.

• It starts with bruised egos.
• Tempers flare.
• Complaints are made.
• Warnings are issued.
• Attempts at tolerance dissolve into exasperation.
• And when you think you’ve exhausted all the options...
• Someone gets fired.

Sound familiar? Not only are autistic traits (for example) not readily recognised, even less so is it known that depression in autistic people can present as irritability, a reduced ability to control emotion, memory issues, struggles with concentration, and most important of all, an inability to mask their autistic traits. And that's on top of sensory issues without the presence of depression. Attitude problems may not be attitude problems at all.

And neurodivergent people aren't bad neurotypicals. Their brains work in a different way so, the methods adopted to manage most people, either won’t work or aren’t appropriate. If we are to truly embrace diversity, equality and inclusion in the workplace, we must first learn to recognise neurodivergence and second, recognise that managers need to adopt a different approach with neurodivergent employees.

Most managers wouldn’t want to fire someone who, in truth, is living, and working, with a treatable depression, but this happens far too often simply because we don’t recognise neurodivergent traits or the ways in which they differ from the majority. But we can do something about it.

Smash the Boulder is available through Amazon and will guide you through, not only the differences, but why those apparent differences are there: what they mean and the significance behind them.

We can't make autistic people neurotypical any more than we can change a gay person into a straight one, black skin into white, or force a one-armed person to grow another arm. Nor should we try. Because some things just aren't appropriate.

If you'd like to know more and make your job easier, or life at work more peaceful, please buy a copy of Smash the Boulder by Eliza Jane Blake, or read it through kindle unlimited. What you learn may surprise you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/BODHV5R15K  (link to ebook on Amazon)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1068762616      (link to printed book on Amazon)

If the links don't take you straight to Amazon, please copy and paste into your browser.