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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
This population really challenges us as human resource professionals to almost take a universal design approach to how we think about kind of a strategic HR system. You know, we're not just serving neurotypical folks, we're serving everyone.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative. Bulletproof Background Checks with Fast and Friendly Service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow, rate, and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast.
Mike Coffey:You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com. Early last year, David Aspinall joined me on the pod to discuss hiring neurodiverse talent. Then last year, doctor Maria Aguilar at the University of North Texas turned me on to some interesting research about the obstacles even companies who want to hire neurodiverse talent face in recruiting and onboarding that talent. Joining me today to discuss their research and what it means for employers who want to attract and help neurodiverse employees succeed are doctor Ginny Lopez Kidwell and Nikki Drader. Ginny is an associate professor in management and director of professional graduate programs at the University of Texas, g Brent Ryan College of Business, and she is the faculty advisor to PhD candidate Nikki Drader.
Mike Coffey:Before beginning her doctoral studies at UNT, Nikki spent a dozen years at Goldman Sachs where she ended her tenure as a vice president in change management and business intelligence. Their article based on their research is the double empathy problem and person environment fit, Mutual Understanding and Bidirectional Adjustments in Autistic Talent Acquisition. It was published last fall in the academic journal Human Resource Management. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Jenny and Nikki.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Good morning. Yeah. Thank you.
Mike Coffey:Well, thank you for being here. And we'll get into your findings in a bit, but, Nikki, give us the high level view of your research and what drew you to that topic.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Sure. So I had spent, 12 years at at Goldman Sachs, and while I had always wanted to go back and get my PhD, I was never quite sure what that one thing I wanted to kinda commit the rest of my professional life to until around right after the pandemic began, actually. It was during that time that that the firm, started to invest in hiring neurodivergent employees. And at the time, I was an operations manager. I oversaw 2 organizations within the consumer and wealth management division at Goldman, both of which were, you know, project management driven and, business intelligence.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:So very data data heavy roles, but in the operations division with some connectivity to, like, institutional stakeholders and other stakeholders even within the firm. And it was at that time that Goldman decided to pilot, their neurodivergent employment initiative with the operations division. Historically, like many other firms before them, beginning in, you know, the kinda 20 tens, this program was available only to those in the engine engineering division of the firm, and what was really significant to me about them moving into operations was that, you know, historically, what I had known about autism at the time was that folks had issues with social interaction and communication, and I thought it was really profound that when they had historically hired for roles in the engineering division that had very limited connection to the firm's stakeholder groups, they were now expanding into the operations division, where individuals would now be connected with stakeholders. And that was a really meaningful kind of point, in the evolution of the program to me because it it demonstrated to me that perhaps their you know, my own thinking about autism and what it meant to be autistic may not be accurate. And so I raised my hand to hire a bunch of folks onto our team.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:We actually only had one spot, like, allocated to us through that program, but we had 3 exceptional candidates. And we can talk a little bit because the the research speaks to kinda how they came into the program. But there were 3 exceptional candidates that presented to us, so I reached out to the managing director, asked if we could reallocate, you know, traditionally neurotypical headcount to the neurodivergent employment initiative, and the managing director at the time reallocated that headcount. And when I left the program in 2022 to come start my doctorate, those candid, those candidates who are now full time employees were not only still at the firm, but many of them had been promoted. So I actually reached out to Ginny and said, you know, I have this really interesting experience with these exceptional people that have a really interesting story to tell, not just about their own personal journey to the firm, but kind of how they changed the practices of of hiring within our organization.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:And Ginny, being truly a visionary at that time, agreed to take this project on. I had kinda socialized this with some other professors in the field, and the overarching kind of sentiment at the time was, well, perhaps this is just a change in context. So I owe a lot of kind of this work that we do now and and my PhD journey and how it started really to to Ginny, and her advocacy and investment in taking on this project. And so that's kinda how we began over coffee one day at a a Summer Moon in Frisco, Texas.
Mike Coffey:I know Summer Moon well. And so just to recap, Goldman, just like a lot of other companies, was using neurodiverse and autistic employees for engineering, software coding, those kinds of things in kind of the back office where they weren't interacting with customers or internal customers and things like that so much. The social interaction wasn't as necessary. It was mostly the hard technical skills that didn't really require a lot of social interaction, probably had a project manager between them and the customer who would solve those issues. But Goldman was actively looking for ways to move those employees as they evolved in their careers, were into, I guess, you know, things like project management roles or other things, into more visible roles, and that's where your experience came in.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:That's right. I mean and I just thought that was so profound, and they they really, from my perspective, were a a leader in that space. I hadn't seen that done before. And, you know, most of the folks I hired sat in the business intelligence organization, and very often, they worked directly with institutional clients of the firm to develop, you know, dashboarding tools and and different mechanisms for those clients to, you know, have access to information we were housing at the firm. So, you know, like you said, historically, this was a very back office deal and and technically, you know, operations is still back office, but the individuals that we hired really did have the opportunity to interact with some of the clients of the firm, and I just thought that was incredible and, like, a story that needed to to be told and, you know, look at what they were doing and how they went about doing it, especially because, you know, in the late 20 tens, early even early in the 20 twenties, you know, autism knowledge from an organizational standpoint is still pretty low.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:A lot of firms are making an effort to increase the representation of individuals that identify as neurodivergent in the workforce, But how do we how do we do that in the most effective way, and are there economies of scale from that? And so I think, you know, what we were doing kinda at Goldman in, you know, 4 or 5 years ago was really a big deal.
Mike Coffey:And so, Jenny, Nikki mentioned that that she kind of pitched this idea to, you know, multiple potential advisors, and they they kind of the response was this is just a shift in context, which is probably an academic term because I don't understand it. So maybe explain that, and then explain what you saw in this topic that saw that that made you realize there's something unique here.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:For sure. So first of all, let me step back and kind of explain how a PhD program works. So you are there for about 4 to 5 years. Some program may be even longer, but at least 4 year. And the goal is to pick some research topic and try to write research paper, learn how to do research, and publish them, and then eventually find a place as an academic yourself, in addition of learning how to teach and so forth, taking class and and all of that.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:So you're you're very busy, but you are concentrating toward, research. So that's your typical, PhD. You usually will work with, different faculty so you can learn how to do research because it is a multiyear, usually, process, and it takes a lot of time to to learn how to do research and being able to then publish that research. So when I meet with 1st year doctoral student, you know, I I find out in my experiment that it's better to support the initial interest of the doctoral student just because it's a lot of work and it's gonna be very challenging, especially that 1st year. So versus me imposing a topic that I think may have the best chance of being publishing at the time, having that passion from the doctoral student, I think, helps a lot in how much effort and and how much, you know, adversity that they can encounter and still wanna publish, that paper.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:So probably some people when, Nikki may have approached and say, oh, what about neurodiversity, neurodivergence? When people say, well, is it just a change in context? They're saying, well, what is new? What is it gonna change to a theory? Is it really gonna make any difference how we treat employee, how we onboard them, how we trend them?
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Maybe it's just, you know, a different application. However, you know, what really strike me of interesting in, Nikki's story is how much it felt impacted her. So we know that employer are gonna do various initiative to onboard and hire, great range of, you know, employee, people with disability, and so forth, which I guess, you know, diversion would fall in. But it's was really interesting to me how it felt like it impacted her as a leader, as a as a manager, a supervisor, and also change her into become an advocate. So that part was really interesting.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:And then the other part is that she asked actually a very interesting question at some point. So during the summer, she started to review some literature on socialization, since we were going toward at least that kind of broad direction. And she asked those those theory apply to people that are neurodivergent. And I thought it's a very especially for somebody that is just starting their PhD, it's a very profound question. And all our theory have a lot of assumption.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:And, in in my mind, I think we assume neurotypicality. So if it's true, I think, there is worth to try to figure out if those, theory are gonna hold when you look at people that are neurodiversion. So just to start. And then the second part of it is that, in order to, you know, advocate, we have to understand how can we, hire those people, onboard them, trend them so that they add value to the organization. Right?
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Organization information. They have to be profitable. They wanna grow. So why would higher neurodivergent employee, be beneficial, and how do you do so? So that change of context where, they decided, hey.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:We're gonna bring those people and put them in a more, socialized environment. We have a lot of theory about socialization, but we know from how the brain work for, neurodivergence and here, particularly people with autism, they process social cue differently. So not differently doesn't mean worse or or better, but it's different. Right? So there was an interest into studying that, understand, why Goldman Sachs was so successful with it.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:You know? So that that part, that was my interest and also how, it turned Nikki into an advocate so much that she wanna research it now.
Mike Coffey:So how much I'm guessing there's not a lot of research out there. I mean, the the topic of neurodiverse employees hasn't been out there that much. I mean, I've spent 30 years in HR and probably had never really heard of it, except for in the context of progressive discipline for an employee who didn't fit in the organization or something like that, until maybe a decade ago and even then, it wasn't very a big strong topic. So, how much research is out there already on, just generally, you know, autistic employees in in the workforce and, you know, what what you know, I get the feeling that this is gap you know, this is bringing, you know, gap you know, bringing a bridge over a big part of that gap.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Yeah, Mike. There is a lot more in the last couple of years. We got into this kinda domain at the same time as a lot of other folks, but it's still fairly in its infancy. In fact, most of the research you will see is qualitative in nature, and that's be that is typical in a kind of burgeoning new area, of study. And so we haven't seen a ton in that space.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:There are some reviews out there, on autism and employment, and there's a lot of research. I mean, there's an entire journal devoted to to autism. And kinda speaking to that point, most of the literature focuses on autism as compared to things like ADHD, Tourette's, dyslexia, and other forms of neurodivergence. But in management specifically, there really wasn't that much and that's how, you know, we came to be part of this special issue that showcases kind of research specifically on workplace neurodiversity, but that's really the the first of its kind. So we were kinda right place, right time.
Mike Coffey:Now, the title of your paper is
Nikki Drader-Mazza:A mouthful.
Mike Coffey:At first glance, word salad. Okay? I mean, there's a ton of big terms here. And, for somebody who barely graduated high school science, you know, there's a lot here. But, the double empathy problem and person environment fit.
Mike Coffey:Let's just start with that part. What is double empathy, and how does that relate to the research?
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Sure. I'm actually gonna start with person environment
Mike Coffey:fit,
Nikki Drader-Mazza:and then I will layer on the double empathy problem, because I think person environment fit is the thing we're most familiar with. In fact, you talked about fit just a moment ago. Mhmm. So in, you know, traditional talent acquisition, what we're trying to do is assess whether or not the candidate is a good fit for the organization, the job, that kind of assessment. And, historically, we've done that with things like through recruitment, you know, job specs are posted to job boards, and they include a list of required skills.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:And in the nice to have section, everything but the kitchen sink. Right?
Mike Coffey:Right.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:And then, you get to the kind of screening and selection phase, and, you know, we've all probably been through at least one face to face in interview. And there is this kind of traditional approach to talent acquisition, all intended to assess whether or not someone fit is going to fit at the organization. The problem with that and what that kinda takes for granted is this idea that, well, we're assuming we all interact in the same way, that my norms of behavior are your norms of behavior. And what happens, the double empathy problem, is effectively when, you know, perhaps I am from a different cultural background, perhaps I'm neurodivergent, my norms of behavior, though they intend to convey that I have the skills required to do the job, if they're not, if I don't perform that interaction in a way that aligns with your norms of behavior, I may incorrectly, you know, then make the assessment that you are not a good fit for the organization. Conversely, you know, it it can happen in both directions.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Right? The norms of behavior or the norms of the the folks doing the hiring may not, you know, be my norms of behavior, and that that is the double empathy problem. I just kinda wanna emphasize it's not something unique to neurodivergence. It can happen between any 2 individuals with different norms of behavior.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And I've there's been so much conversation, especially in the last 5 years, but even, you know, well before that about diversity, equity, inclusion, and my argument has always been that the key point that we need to make about diversity is broadening our recruiting pool to bring in as many qualified candidates objectively qualified candidates as we can, and mitigating all the biases, you know, that liver quiver we sometimes have just when we meet somebody and and they're different than we are, and so we just say, well, there's probably another candidate out there, and we discount them for no reason other than, oh, they wouldn't fit on this team. And by that, I mean, you know, we often mean not that they're not gonna be a team player, be cooperative, be supportive of the team's objectives. Oh, they won't like to go fishing on Saturday mornings with us or something like that. They're just, you know and so I think there's a lot I think we've done a lot in the last 10 years to make employers, you know, hiring managers more aware that it's not a bad thing to have people who are different than you and who see the world differently on your team, as long as you can foster an environment where, first of all, they're already competent, and second, that they can, you know all these different people can operate in the same organization and feel supported, heard, valued.
Mike Coffey:And so, I like the idea of the double empathy because I think a lot of I spend too much time on Reddit, and a lot of the candidates out there, they sound like some of the worst hiring managers that I've ever encountered because they have really strong opinions about how this manager presented themselves in an interview or across, you know, on a Zoom interview or something, and they're making a lot of gut decisions, just like they would but that they wouldn't want a manager to make. So that double empathy, that two sided sword there, that both both sides are bringing their own perspectives to these conversations. When we're talking about autistic individuals, what are the unique challenges that they face in understanding, you know, reading the body language or understanding the context of, you know, having that empathy to understand what the other person's thinking, what they're feeling?
Nikki Drader-Mazza:So I can kinda walk you through how this becomes an issue throughout that traditional approach to hiring. So let's think about, you know, when you're looking at a job requirement. Most neurotypical folks will look at that job requirement, say, I have, you know, a handful of these skills, maybe not all of them, but I'm gonna shoot my shot. Right? For individuals that are autistic, what we found in our study is that actually not having every single skill, you know, deters them from applying to that job or embellishing our resumes.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Right? We all make our resume look good. We all use fancy language to make us sound like we've done this exceptional, you know, thing and, really, we, you know, just kinda are answering emails. Right?
Mike Coffey:I call resumes polite lies.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Yes. That
Mike Coffey:we all we all agree we're gonna allow for this.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:The the population in our study, they do not polite lie. They are they are very honest about their skills, and if they don't have all of the skills for the role, then they they were deterred from applying. So what we actually found, you know, for those folks and and the organizations, how would the organizations adapted to serve that population, was we tailored some of the requirements in the job, specs to more clearly list out what was required versus, you know, what might be a nice to have. Similarly, you know, when you get to the face to face interviews and, actually, you'll see even in in HireVue, this isn't, an issue. Autistic individuals use fewer words.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:This came out in some recent research. It's actually not even published yet. It's through the neurodiversity micro community that Ginny and I are a part of, and they were looking at higher view, but it it translates to kind of face to face interviews as well. Individuals that are autistic use fewer words, when they give interviews, and they are rated, like, categorically lower than their neurotypical counterparts in both HireVue and traditional face to face interviews. And some you know, for for several reasons.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Right? Let's say I don't pick up on some nonverbal social cues. You know, I can tell someone's kinda done with me talking about a a particular experience. They may not pick up on that and that perhaps turns off, you know, the the hiring manager. And as, you know, also when they get into the organization, right, they have different kind of uses for social interaction we're finding.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:Ginny and I are are doing a follow-up study to this one where we look at social capital development, in newcomers to an organization. And, you know, our theorizing is that the the networks will be smaller. You know, initial findings suggest maybe that's not true. But if you if you talk to anyone that's autistic, they will tell you, you know, our we make smaller networks. We we don't have, you know, 15 friends.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:We have 3 to 5 close friends. Like, those those sorts of things. So you see all of that come through, which can really present problems, in a traditional kinda hiring and onboarding schema.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. At Imperative, we have 3 core values, one of which is always act in the best interest of our client. To ensure we do that, we focus on keeping 3 promises. 1st, we choose our team's competencies over technology, AI, or algorithms.
Mike Coffey:Our research and the information we provide our clients is always guided by our professional analysts, augmented by, but never substituted with technology. And second, because our processes are thorough, our compliance is strict, and our staff cares, our clients can fearlessly take action based on the information we provide. And finally, when the phone rings or the email chimes, our team answers and solves our client's issues immediately with fast and friendly service. These are our promises to our clients and it would be an honor to extend them to you. You can learn more about how Imperative serves our clients at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been preapproved for 3 quarters of a recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit good morning hr.com and click on research credit. Then select episode 182 and enter the keyword autism, that's a u t I s m. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com. And now back to my conversation with doctor Jenny Lopez Kidwell and Nikki Drader.
Mike Coffey:If it's true that neurotypical folks have especially non autistic because, like, I'm neuro you know, neurodiverse to the extent that I'm crazy ADHD. And, you know, I'm 55. It took me, you know, the first 45 years to even come to terms with what that really meant and how I performed. And then, I've spent the last decade trying to be more productive and more, you know, aware of how that manifests and how to utilize it to my benefit, but also be aware of how I'm perceived by others. But, I wonder if people who are neurotypical, you know, and have larger networks, if the quality of those networks and those relationships is really meaningful as far you know, how many I'd be curious how many of those, you know, if you've got a network in in in the organization of 15 people, how many of those are truly impactful on organizational performance and your, your own performance?
Mike Coffey:And is there a difference, you know, if that comes down to 5 and the neuroatypical or neurodiverse group has 5. Are those are those balancing out, or or is there is there a difference in the in the quality of those connections?
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:I can try to jump in for that, because my my training at the University of Kentucky was social networks. So that's what we do. We study the set of relationship that you have in a workplace. We call them network, because as you form relationship and other people form relationship, over time, you have certain dynamics that will establish. So you you have a great question.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Is it useful to have 15 friend in the workplace versus 10 friend? But the research suggests that when you have more connection, usually, it tend to be more helpful to your career. So, you know, these are not there will be different connection in the workplace. Right? You don't always need as deep connection.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:And we actually separate, relationship, but what we call strong ties, strong relationship. So think a close friend, somebody you would trust, somebody you can confide in, and weak tie. These are people that you're probably gonna tell them all about your personal problem, but they may be good to tell you how to who to talk to to solve that problem, give you some advice, connect you to another person. And we map all those relationship, and, you know, there's been decades of research. It does matter.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Your network matter. Now what would be interesting question for autistic people is that we think, at least from our very, you know, preliminary finding, that they still have the same needs socially. So once you're in a workplace, you must socialize. You may not need as as a as big of a network, but you still need those connections. So that will be answering kind of your question that, does it matter to have all the numbers, the breadth, or can we use the depth of those relationship?
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:And maybe they have a really good relationship with their hiring manager, with their direct supervisor, with 1 or 2 peers that they're working with, or one person across a different department. And that's enough because those people maybe are gonna vouch for that person or they only need to interact with them. So it'll be very interesting, and that's why we're doing that follow-up study because as Nikki mentioned, a lot of the research is more on the qualitative side. That's what happened when there's new question. And now we're trying to get quantitative data.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:So following up a large number of autistic people that join organization that may or may not have special onboarding. So we wanna look at both side and kinda track how their first free free to 6 months, their 1st year, if we can, even, how does this unfold? Then they're called newcomer, and it's very, it's a it's it's a very vulnerable stage from any organization. So you welcome people. You onboard them.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Your goal is to keep them past that 1st year. When you don't, the organization lose a lot. Right? They have to replace that person. They've lost all the training that they've put in it.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:So we want to look at specifically autistic people during those, you know, 1st year, through different survey, and we're gonna assess their social network. And so we'll be hopefully, you know, able to answer some of those question more in in more depth. But I think anecdotally, it sound that there is a difference in in their network. Now from what we saw for our data, I would say they have the same needs. So even if they may, process social queue differently, they're still gonna need to interact.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Right? Because, again, at the end of the day, there's very few job where you cannot, interact and still do your job. Right? And we know that those relationship matter. And I think to come back to something you were saying, you know, why is a double empathy is is really an interesting perspective because it doesn't put default on one party.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Right? It's just saying, hey. Maybe we're different here in term of how brand process information. Maybe if we give enough information to the hiring manager and people that work with that person, this is how their brand works and enough information to the person that is neurodiverse. And we're like, hey.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:This is some of the thing that how neurotypical process. This is probably why sometime you don't feel understood because that's how the then can we create a more harmonious relationship, then information tend to flow better, you have less miscommunication. You also what we have found, for those those that our first, case study that people feel like they're more accepted. Right? I mean, if people take the time to try to understand who you are, you get on the other end that you feel more understood.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:So there's a lot of, I I find it a very brilliant solution to how do we deal with differences and hear, you know, I know you know, how we process, information.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. I mean, I'm a big believer in the use of behavioral assessments when you're building a team and you're trying to get people to understand how I mean, even in neurotypical people, I mean, you've got people who have high sociability, you know, very take charge, very control, then there's, you know, but maybe those people tend to have often low conscientiousness. They work, at an unsteady, you know, pace, and then when they're working with somebody, and I tend to be that person, you know, that's somebody who's not going to read 15 paragraphs in an email. Right? They need, you know, bullet points, but they need to understand that there are people who are on the other end of that spectrum, who need all the detail every time.
Mike Coffey:And so, you know, my team adjusts when they're talking to me and they want to communicate something to me, and I pay attention. Okay. These are people who are gonna make decisions slowly. They're gonna want to process it. I can't, in a meeting, say, hey, let's make a decision right now.
Mike Coffey:It's something really important. Here's all the facts. Make a decision. I need to let them go process and think about it and come back with with an answer. So when we're talking about, let's just say, autistic people in the process, what does your study say, your research say, employers should do to change their processes, so that both sides of that that interview equation, that employee selection process are getting what they need to make a good decision?
Nikki Drader-Mazza:So it begins with kind of recruitment and how we go out and source our talent. And the first thing that employers need to make sure that they're doing is writing a requirement that really speaks to the job that the individual is being hired to do. Then beyond that, our research suggests that in, you know, maybe in lieu or even as a supplement to traditional face to face interviews, skills based assessments may be a better predictor of performance, particularly, you know, if your job is not in sales and you're not gonna be interacting with a lot of individuals and have to have kinda on the fly conversations, you know, are we overemphasizing perhaps traditional interviews? And then, you know, we didn't talk as much yet about kind of what we found in the onboarding piece. We alluded to it with social capital.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:But in these organizations, where the neurotypical workforce is not you know, there's not a lot of knowledge on autism in general or other forms of neurodivergence. We have a lot of kind of labels and stereotypes and and anecdotes and things we think of when we think about this population, but in reality, you know, most neurotypical folks are still learning what it means to be neurodivergent. So in our study, what the organization that we study used was coaches, and this is where kind of the mutual understanding, part of our very long title comes from. These coaches were instrumental in in kind of reducing or mitigating that double empathy problem because they could speak to the needs of both sides and they kinda helped distill the norms of the organization for the neurodivergent employee and, you know, conversely, helped the hiring managers that actually, you know, like myself that needed to be educated on kinda re conceptually. Again, like, you know, difference, rather than defect, I think, is what we we say a lot when we we speak to the this population.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:They were instrumental in kind of bridging that double empathy problem. So as, you know, the training, is enhanced to target more members of the workforce to the extent that there are coaches that can facilitate kind of bridging that double empathy problem between, you know, manager and employee. These are all practices that can benefit not just the neurodivergent employee, but anybody, in an organization. And that is one of the really cool things we're seeing with some of the corporations now trying to make some of the initiatives that were rolled out as part of their neurodiversity employment programs enterprise wide solutions for talent acquisition.
Mike Coffey:So, yeah, we do tend to think of onboarding as something you do to the new employee. Right? And they're the, you know, they're the object of the onboarding. And I think what you're saying is and it's probably a really good practice all the way around because we, you know, this is a a good morning HR drinking game. We we we have people who are really good at a job, so we make them a supervisor.
Mike Coffey:You know, if we had a drink every time we said that, you know, I'd be smashed by the end of most episodes. But, I think that's probably a really good point is we need coaches for those new supervisors or existing supervisors who are bringing new people onto their team to help them understand, okay, here's how this person works. Whether they're neurodiverse or not. But, you know, it's probably most pronounced when they encounter somebody who's atypical and and, you know, it's not somebody that they've they've encountered before.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:It's 2 part of this equation. Right? 1st, there is the recruiting of the pool. And, again, if an organization wants to recruit autistic people, they must understand that they're probably gonna need, some consultant or some kind of understanding or look at the research themself to see how do I even advertise, my job. Because, again, the way that an autistic person will read those job opening may they may basically remove themselves from applying.
Mike Coffey:So because they're so literal in how they should be.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Literal. Exactly. So in at least in that case study, they hired a nonprofit, and there is some of those non non you know, 3rd party nonprofit company that will come and and help, you know, organization to hire neurodiverse employee that we also have seen or heard of company that do it in house where they go or they partner with academics or or or so forth. But there is some kind of, help that need to happen to understand the population that you're targeting. So once you are able to attract people and they're applying, then they have to interview, which is the second part that Nikki was talking about.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:The typical process of where we interview is really how you come about interpersonally. So I teach undergraduate a class on, power and influence, and I always tell them, we're gonna practice how to interview, and I can teach you that. A waiver, you know, Novus are very powerful practice, and you can probably get the job, but you should only apply if you think you can do the job. Right? Because then you have to do the job.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:So so here, the the approach that they took for people that that were, autistic is and, you know, Nikki will talk more about it, but is more, instead of, you know, show me instead of tell me about what you can do and this kind of that skill base, you know, we're giving you a project, we're giving you a task to do, and you're actually, you know, engaging with it versus telling me I'm good at this or that. So that's second part. And then that third part of that, now let's say you wanna welcome that employee in that onboarding. Like, say, you know, the organization all organization have to onboard new new employee. This is where the coach come really handy.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Now they also have done some training. So I think Nikki had went for a training. You know, she volunteered to be part of his, programs. That's also an important component. I think you should not, you know, force people if they don't wanna be involved with that.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:You know, they should be like, this is something I wanna I wanna participate in. And then having that coach is really the to me, the way I looked at it is, like, is a translator. Right? So Nikki could go see the coach and be like, hey. I don't know if I'm communicating that well or I might she could ask for some input.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:And same thing for the employee. You could go and talk to the, coach and be like, I'm having some problem or some issue. And the coach can kind of you know, as that kind of little network that they create, that little triad, help, which I think then come to a better and facing a better fit and the double empathy problem. So there's a lot of, pieces that come into play. And I think, again, anecdotally, what we've heard from, over organization is that this could be scaled for neurotypical because as you mentioned, it's you know, we all come from different way.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:I mean, now we have different generation. We have different way of communicating. So one I remember one coach one, actually, hiring manager told me that they became a better communicator because of it, but not just with their neurodiver diversion, employee, but with everybody. And so I thought that's a great thing. It shows that there is you know, it can that's really investing into and she was telling me when I asked her why did you volunteer in in in being, you know, an hiring manager.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:She said, well, you know, I felt like, I didn't receive such a training. So, you know, there is really a two way street where the company benefit, the neurodiverse person benefit, but neurotypical person also benefits. So it's it's really something worth investing that I've I think collateral, you know, it will continue to improve the work environment for the people that are involved.
Mike Coffey:And what you're talking about in the job posting and in the evaluation of the candidate during the interview is something that a lot of thought leaders in HR have been saying for some time, is that we need to get to more competency based hiring, more demonstrable skills based hiring, and let a lot of the other things go. Let's focus. I don't care how good an interview you are unless that's your job. If you're in the business of giving interviews, that's one thing. But, you know, maybe it matters for a sales role or something like that, but for most jobs, I need you to put tab a and slot a, maybe at a high level and there was a level of sophistication and using certain tools, but I care about the output and the efficiency with which you can do that.
Mike Coffey:And so, if we can find better ways to measure that, that seems like that would be great for the, you know, the neurodiverse group, but it would be great for a lot of people who just maybe use different language, have, you know, other other language barriers, as far as communicating with this particular interviewer, and if we could just get to more of finding the skills this person has before we start really making assessments about how they're going to fit on the team.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:And, Mike, that's what I love about this, you know, quote unquote change in context. You know, when you think about individuals that are neurodivergent, and to to borrow a quote from Simon Baron Cohen, who has done a lot of, you know, the leading research on autism, he said, you know, it's it's the neurodivergent that drive human progress forward. This population really challenges us as human resource professionals to almost take a universal design approach to how we think about kind of a strategic HR system. You know, we're not just serving neurotypical folks. We're serving everyone.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:You know, I am low vision. It's funny you were talking about earlier, you were you know, you were saying you have ADHD, and you kinda didn't come to know that until you were 45. I believe that is easy I don't know how I was 37 before I identified as as having a low vision disability, but similar, kinda later stage in life. And and it was through that process and with kinda this exposure to neurodivergent employees that I realized, you know, we are designing our h our HR systems to really service one type of individual. If we take a more universal design approach to our talent, we can really, you know, transform HR at the strategic level.
Mike Coffey:And we are right up on time, but I think we've hit the high points. Is there any other big big issue you you think we've missed here that we should we should drive home to close?
Nikki Drader-Mazza:I don't think so. I think we've gotten home.
Mike Coffey:Such a good interview.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:You are great.
Mike Coffey:I mean, I tell you why. Well, that that is, thank you both for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Nikki Drader-Mazza:I thought
Mike Coffey:it was a great conversation.
Dr. Ginny Lopez-Kidwell:Thank you so much for having us.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Imperator's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time because her boss is so ADHD.
Mike Coffey:And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week. And until then, be good, do well, and keep your chin up.