Neurodiversity, Public Speaking and Toastmasters

In September 2022, I presented to the Neurodiverse Leadership Toastmasters club (https://www.facebook.com/NeurodiverseLeadersTM/), an online club which was started by their New York City based founders.

Neurodiversity

At this Toastmasters club, participants from around the world meet to not only further develop their communication and leadership skills, but additionally with the purpose of discussing neurodiversity in society.

Anyone is eligible to visit this club and become a member.  People who participate include people neurodivergent, people with neurodiverse family members, and people other enabled.

It is estimated that 20% of the world population is neurodivergent. Another quantity has a friend, a colleague or a loved one who processes information in an atypical manner.   While a web search indicates many successful people are neurodivergent, estimates indicate 85% of those neurodivergent are unemployed (North American statistics).

My Speech to the Club

I was invited to speak because of my role as past president and board chair of L’Arche Saint John (https://larchesaintjohn.org/), part of L’Arche International. The mission of L’Arche is to make known the gifts of people with intellectual disability. I spoke to the club on the topic of not-for-profit leadership, a valuable topic to assist in organizing teams to achieve results.

Improved Communication, Leadership and More

There is great power when motivated people meet regularly in a Toastmasters club with goals to not only further develop their communication and leadership skills, but to advance shared goals and ambitions.

Neurodiversity Defined

Neurodiversity is a framework for understanding human brain function and conditions such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, among others. The framework indicates that diversity in human cognition is normal and that some conditions classified as mental disorders are differences and disabilities that are not necessarily difficult to manage. (Definition adapted from The World Health Organization https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-disorders).

 

Link to Recording

Below is a link to the 75-minute recording of the meeting. The club has performed some editing of the content. The meeting presented is typical of any Toastmasters meeting with prepared speeches, impromptu speaking practice (table topics) in this example exploring questions on public relations, inclusion, teaching empathy and more, and group and individual feedback.

https://youtu.be/mUaxZioVkUw?si=MVsmoM56bpdnJ17y

For Further Interest

 

https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2022/06/10-highly-successful-people-you-didnt-know-were-neurodivergent/

 

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-neurodivergence-and-what-does-it-mean-to-be-neurodivergent-5196627

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

69% of Managers Won’t Communicate With Their Team?

I’ve been reading The Song of Significance by Seth Godin. The book is organized into 144 very short chapters. He writes so well and offers such thought provoking material.

Chapter 92 is titled Work to Be Done where Godin quotes Lou Solomon from a Harvard Business Review study that indicates 69% of managers are uncomfortable with the essential need of communicating with their employees. Godin writes that he believes many of the other 31% are lying.

My Early Experience Leading Teams

My memory of early experiences leading teams is imperfect, but I do recall being particularly uncomfortable getting started with team communication. How should one organize an initial meeting?

I found, or created, a simple model that I’ve used ever since for beginning team meetings. It’s effective for grounding teams on shared goals, and promoting behaviors and habits we want to see repeated.  The model focuses on Goals-Progress-Behaviors (GPB).

After pleasantries and recognizing significant personal achievements or circumstances, I always start meetings with this model;

1.  Goals and Why

a.  These are the team goals and why they were selected or assigned

2.  Progress

a.  This is the team’s progress toward these goals.  This usually involves looking at a scorecard of some sort

3.  Behaviors

a.  These are actions or behaviors that specific team members are taking and are contributing to goal achievement. The not too subtle message is that this is the sort of effort that will be recognized, and we’d like to see team members do more of this type of activity.

4.  Next steps

a.  A discussion of what actions and behaviors will help the team reach the scorecard goals

5.  Anything and everything else

 

I’ve been invited to speak on this topic several times. Once after presenting I decided to document the process further in a book. I wrote and made available an e-book available here on Amazon sites worldwide including at this link https://a.co/d/6szUOEt

I also wrote a blog post on recognizing the opportunity to write the book https://gycz.blogspot.com/2022/05/listening-paying-attention-opportunity.html

 

Conclusion

The estimate that 69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their team members seems high to me. But Godin has written 78 books and sold million of copies, many more than me.

As in most situations, some simple, repeatable models and approaches can make this task easier for developing managers.