What If Naturally Inclusive Was Just… Normal?
We’ve been going down quite a rabbit hole over these past few articles. We’ve recognised that neurodivergent and neuro-complex people are around us everywhere, and are probably far more common than is immediately obvious. We’ve questioned where the hell all these people have been, whether they’ve actually been hiding at all, and how much of what we understand as “normal” has been conditioned into the world around us and reinforced through the Industrial Age.
Then we started pulling at another thread. If the old Industrial Age playbook is losing its grip, and if the world we’re moving into needs more of what it is to be human, more creativity, curiosity, autonomy, different ways of thinking and different ways of working, then eventually we have to move beyond simply recognising neuro-complexity and start thinking about the places we’re creating for people to actually live and work in.
How do we create a more naturally inclusive workplace and culture?
Not simply a workplace that knows how to accommodate somebody once we’ve identified that they’re different, but one that is naturally more inclusive in the first place.
And I’m going to share a story for this one, because I keep finding myself thinking back to the late 90s and one of my favourite managers. I didn’t know it at the time, but that experience showcased in so many ways how inclusion can simply be a natural part of an organisation. This was part of a large Australian national and international company, and looking back now, I realise just how deeply thoughtful and sensitive they could be about the way people worked. Quite progressive for its day, although nobody in the late 90s would have called it “being naturally inclusive”.
They probably would have just called it being human.
Sometimes it just worked
There are things about that workplace that I remember now and think, bloody hell, we were doing some of this nearly 30 years ago. There were different kinds of spaces for different kinds of work and different kinds of people. We had a service desk area for receiving calls. We had help desk areas that could be louder and help desk areas that were quieter. There were individual offices and cubicles where they were appropriate. There were workshop areas, and there were meeting spaces that were completely separate.
The nature of the work and the nature of the person helped dictate the space they used.
And it wasn’t just our department. When I looked at the accounting team, they would take turns doing different things. Somebody might spend a short amount of time doing data entry, then there was following up accounts and making phone calls, somebody would take a turn managing the main incoming phone number, and then they’d move onto something else. People weren’t necessarily expected to sit there doing precisely the same thing all day, and it just sort of worked.
Move forward through the 2000s, 2010s, & 2020’s, and we saw all kinds of other ideas come into the workplace. Hot desking, open spaces, moving away from cubicles (could have worked in the 90’s/00’s but we failed the idea, sorry Robert Propst), flexible workplace arrangements, working two days here and three days at home, hybrid work, remote work and all kinds of things. Some of those things have worked brilliantly for some people and some have been bloody awful for others.
And I keep reflecting back on those days in the late 90s because, in many ways, it just felt natural.
Perhaps there’s something in that.
Naturally inclusive doesn’t mean nobody needs accommodation
There’s an important distinction we need to make here because there are people, particularly autistic people with moderate and substantial support needs, where significant individual accommodations and support may be required. That’s important for us to understand and recognise. Naturally inclusive doesn’t mean pretending individual needs don’t exist, and sometimes somebody needs something specifically designed around them. We absolutely should do that.
But I’ve always found the word accommodation a little strange because it can make things feel like we’re isolating somebody out. Here is everybody else, here is the way we normally do things, and here is this one person who needs us to make something different especially for them. Sometimes that’s completely necessary, yet at the same time it can feel awful because it immediately makes somebody singular and separate. When there are potentially more neuro-complex people, we should not isolate or separate.
So what if a huge amount of what we’re calling accommodation could simply be baked into the way we work in the first place?
That’s where naturally inclusive becomes interesting.
We move away from this old idea of normality and start recognising that there are neuro-complex people with traits right across the board. There could be thousands of different combinations of those traits, along with thousands of combinations of personalities, capabilities, interests, strengths, weaknesses and ways of experiencing the world.
So what are we designing for?
One mythical normal person?
Or humans?
Because what I’ve discovered over close to 30 years of leadership, business and doing all sorts of different things is that we can be much broader than we imagine and still be incredibly successful. It doesn’t have to be an isolating experience, and it doesn’t have to mean designing every workplace individually for every single human being who walks through the door.
Start with the environment itself
Let’s start thinking about some of the building blocks and begin with something obvious. What is the environment like? We don’t all need the same thing, and even the same person doesn’t necessarily need the same thing all day.
- Spaces that reduce stimulation.
- Spaces that allow more stimulation.
- Places where we can disappear and think.
- Places where we can talk, collaborate and be noisy.
- Brighter areas. Dimmer areas. Sound dampening. Quiet spaces.
Can the same person need several of those things during the same day?
Of course they can.
Think about light. Think about sound and sound dampening in large spaces. Think about having quiet spaces and spaces where people can talk and collaborate without everyone else having to join in. All these things can work for everybody, and there’s a funny little example here in fluorescent lights.
For decades we filled workplaces with fluorescent lights, and one of those strange things we’ve learnt is that some neuro-complex people could hear the pitch and hum of those lights and experience the flicker they produced. What’s exciting now is that lighting technology has changed and we can remove so much of that problem more easily than we ever could before.
We don’t necessarily have to wait until an autistic person walks into HR and says the lights are driving them completely bonkers and asks for an accommodation. We can simply think about the lighting when we create the environment.
It’s such a simple thing to do.
And that’s what I mean by naturally inclusive. We’re not necessarily creating something special for one particular person. We’re creating a broader environment that gives more people the opportunity to find what works for them.
Then we need to look at the nature of the work
The Industrial Age reinforced this idea that almost everything was attached to time. The more time you did the thing you were meant to do, the more that became the measure of the work and what you were rewarded for.
And sometimes time absolutely matters. If you’re working on a service desk, somebody needs to answer the call. If you’re operating a sales counter or service counter, somebody needs to be there. There are absolutely forms of work where a human being needs to be somewhere at a particular time doing a particular thing.
But in this day and age, we’re no longer simply human fleshy robots. We’re probably going to do three or four or five different types of things during a day.
- Some might be time-focused.
- Some might be customer-focused.
- Some might be deeply creative.
- Some might involve solving a problem.
- Some might require us to collaborate.
- And some might require us to disappear into our own brain for a while and do thinking.
That’s the nature of a lot of modern work, and it means we can start thinking about how we promote novelty and interest in our work, how we promote urgency so things actually get done in a timely way, and importantly, how we connect that urgency with accountability.
Because we can’t say a date is a date and then completely dismiss it when we fail to meet it, with no repercussions whatsoever. That doesn’t help anybody. I talk to people all the time who have deadlines that are completely meaningless. Something has to be finished by Friday; Friday arrives, it’s not finished, and apparently that’s fine because we’ll just move it by another month.
What kind of world is that?
If the date didn’t matter, why did we create all that pressure around it in the first place?
We can artificially create urgency, but that’s a short-term fix, and at the same time, neuro-complex people can absolutely thrive when the pressure is on, but not too much. Funny enough, that works for everybody. We’re not trying to create an environment of constant stress. We’re trying to create wholesome, appropriate accountability.
The human condition craves accountability. It craves accuracy and completion. Notice how all these things start going together, because these are also things that some autistic people need. Things being organised, sorted out, precise and completed.
And if the goalposts change, that’s okay too, but communicate it. What changed? What matters now? What doesn’t matter anymore? We negotiate and navigate those moving priorities instead of silently moving the bloody goalposts and wondering why somebody is still working towards where they used to be.
Again, none of that is particularly radical.
It’s clarity.
And then there’s ADHD
We also need to think about people with ADHD, for whom novelty can be incredibly important. We have this strange tendency to reward novelty at the end of a project. Finish all the boring stuff and then, eventually, you can do the interesting thing.
But why?
Why can’t novelty be part of the work itself and keep some of that excitement and passion rolling? Reward early and often; keep momentum and flow happening.
An ADHD person might be working across multiple projects. They might do a little bit of customer service for a short period and then move over to a project. They might work with a few different cross-functional groups during the nature of their work. It doesn’t necessarily mean throwing work around chaotically. It means recognising that the nature of somebody’s work can include different things, and that can be enormously powerful.
This is where one of the biggest shifts we can make is moving towards outcome-based objectives. What are we actually trying to achieve? What does done look like? What is the outcome? Then, where the nature of the work allows it, we can stop obsessively measuring every bit of time in between and let some of the process unfold.
- Let some of the silliness happen early in the piece.
- Let some of the strange internal process happen.
- Let somebody think.
- Let them wander around the problem.
- And then let them deliver.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done some of my deepest thought work while driving. Earlier in my career, I did a lot of travelling between sites, and during that travel my brain could be doing extraordinary amounts of work (Still does BTW). I’d turn the problem over, connect things, and do the mental gymnastics, and by the time I arrived at the site, I knew exactly where I was at. I’d solved half the bloody thing already and could action it far more powerfully once I got there.
Now notice something strange about that. We often don’t bill for travel in the same sense. Apparently I’m travelling, I’m not working, except there’s my brain sitting there problem-solving the thing I’m travelling to deal with.
Other times I’d do the complete opposite. I’d put on a podcast or an audiobook, completely distract myself with something else while driving, and the brain just comes alive. Something connects. An idea arrives. Something I’ve been wrestling with suddenly makes sense. Maybe I’m preparing for the next site visit without consciously sitting there saying, “Right Mike, you must now prepare for the next site visit.”
That’s brain work. That’s thought work.
And while we do a lot more work from home now and work in all sorts of different ways, there are still different activities that allow us to do that thinking. After all, one of the most powerful things we can do today is use our brains well and bring everything that is human to the work.
Because if something can be boiled down into a completely repeatable rule, we’re increasingly doing the work of a human fleshy robot. AI will probably do that work soon.
We’re so much more than that.
Stop expecting everybody to be good at everything
This also means we need to look honestly at strengths and weaknesses, because many neuro-complex people might be incredibly capable and not necessarily the strongest self-organisers in every possible way.
So why are we terrified of coupling people together?
A teammate. A group assistant. An administrator. A secretary. A personal assistant. An executive assistant.
These can be incredibly powerful ways of coupling people together to do great work.
At some point, we told the world that, as individuals, we should be able to do everything and anything ourselves, but that’s simply not true. On one hand we say it takes a team, then on the other hand we take away all the coupling of great people around us and expect everybody to do everything themselves.
Why?
It shouldn’t be a scary word to think about what roles people like secretaries bring to our world. A great secretary is wonderful. A great assistant is powerful. A great executive assistant can complement somebody else and allow both people to do extraordinary work.
One person brings strengths the other doesn’t have, and the other person does the same. They can keep things on track, create accountability and know what the goals, objectives and outcomes need to look like.
That’s a team.
And if we’re focused on the day-to-day achievements we make on the journey, or on the adventure as I often like to call it, then we start recognising that the value is in the human brain effort coming forward, not simply time.
But here’s the leadership paradox again, isn’t it? There’s a balance between the two. There is an appropriate moment for each, so we tailor the workplace for it rather than deciding that absolutely everything needs to be outcome-based or absolutely everything needs to be measured by time.
Use our brains in different ways
This is where I come back to that late-90s workplace again, because think about that accounting team. They might spend a short amount of time doing data entry, a short amount of time following up on accounts and making phone calls, a short amount of time taking the main incoming phone number, and people would take turns.
What a powerful way to use the brain.
I’m not talking about multitasking here. Psychology tells us that we can’t genuinely multitask in the magical sense of doing multiple cognitively demanding things simultaneously. But when we use our brains and use them well, we can work across multiple domains, multiple styles and multiple types of work.
We nurture that.
We cultivate it.
And our brains can work extraordinarily well.
So this isn’t just about creating inclusion. It’s doing both. It’s creating a great workspace and being inclusive at the same time, and that’s the bit I reckon we keep missing.
A naturally inclusive workplace doesn’t have to be a compromise made to make the workplace suitable for somebody else.
It can simply be a better workplace.
Now let’s talk about how we actually talk
We also need to think about our communication styles, and there are two really simple and powerful things we can do. The first is to take away unnecessary double meanings because double meanings only work when a few people, or ideally everybody in the room, actually understands them.
Inside a company or culture, everybody might explicitly know that something means something particular, and that’s fine. It might be an inside joke, it might be shorthand, it might be part of the culture. But day-to-day, any individual could be moving between multiple workplaces, multiple businesses, community groups, families, schools, clubs and all sorts of different contexts.
We can’t go around assuming that all the double meanings mean the same thing.
This is where simple directness can be incredibly powerful.
In the old way, I might turn around to a room and say, “Who’s hungry?”
What I actually mean is, “I’m going to get some lunch. Who wants to come with me?”
Those aren’t the same question.
The first version might be shorter and apparently more efficient, but it only works if everybody genuinely knows what I mean. Wouldn’t it be better to simply say, “Hi everybody, I’m hungry and I’m going to get some lunch. Would anyone like to come?”
After close to 30 years and hundreds of organisations and hundreds of thousands of people I’ve interacted with over those years, I know one thing.
No such thing as a safe assumption.
So clear, radically candid, loving, direct language helps.
That doesn’t mean being blunt or rude, and it certainly doesn’t mean saying “Well, I’m just a direct person” while using directness as an excuse to be an arsehole.
We can be direct and kind.
Those things can absolutely exist together.
Listening to understand
The next thing we need to do in our communication is build what it means to actually listen. Different people do different jobs, in different ways, in different places, with an enormous array of different contexts surrounding them. A lot of neuro-complex people need more information so they can feel confident and comfortable with what they’re doing and understand how their role is valuable to what is going on, and that means they might ask questions. Sometimes a lot of questions.
This is where I reckon listening to understand is a graduation from active listening.
Active listening is largely about reflecting. I listen to what you say, perhaps use similar words back to you and demonstrate that I’ve heard you, and that’s useful.
But listening to understand goes further because it’s about translation.
We can both speak English and still need to translate English into English.
Our brains work differently, and our contexts are different. What’s completely obvious to you might not be obvious to me, and the little detail I’m asking about might look utterly irrelevant to you while having an enormous impact somewhere else you can’t see.
So rather than getting frustrated that somebody is “hung up on the details”, ask them, “Can you please help me understand how that detail is going to impact what we’re talking about?”
And the answer might simply be, “Oh! Okay. No worries. Let me expand that for you.”
There.
Understanding.
That’s where the Double Empathy Problem gets really interesting in ordinary life, because it’s not necessarily that one person can’t communicate and the other can.
We’re translating.
We can’t assume that because somebody said something, what we heard is precisely what they meant. We can’t assume the double meaning landed and we can’t assume the context inside my head exists inside yours, so we ask each other questions inside each other’s context.
There’s a deep kindness in that kind of inclusion. It’s not about labouring every little detail, and it’s not about being blunt. We all have a responsibility for each other’s emotions and feelings, as well as what we’re trying to achieve together, and these are things we can learn.
We can learn to be direct and kind.
Not direct and negative.
Everybody has a role to play in that communication.
And now I look back nearly 30 years
It’s 2026, and I think back to those moments in the late 90s and wonder how great it would be to keep building those kinds of spaces and rooms for people. Maybe that team was just hyper-progressive, and there is probably some truth in that.
I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses around the world since then, and I do feel blessed that I got to experience what they created. I do think there was something special about what that manager and that organisation brought to the way they worked.
But that’s also why I keep coming back to it, because none of it felt like some giant diversity programme. It wasn’t a special room for the different people. It was people doing different work, in different spaces and in different ways, while being clear about what needed to happen.
- There was accountability.
- There was clarity.
- There was variety.
- There were people complementing other people.
- There was room for the brain.
- And there was room for the human.
So I look at that experience and ask how amazing could our world be if we brought more of that into the way we create workplaces now? That level of inclusion, that level of clarity, that level of accountability, being heard and doing great things together.
Because I reckon you’ll agree, as you’ve been reading this piece, that it really doesn’t take that much more to be naturally inclusive.
- Different spaces for different kinds of work.
- Novelty where novelty works.
- Accountability where accountability matters.
- Outcomes where outcomes matter, and time where time matters.
- People coupled with other people whose strengths complement their weaknesses.
- Clear, direct and kind communication.
- Listening to understand.
None of those things require us to know who in the room is autistic, who has ADHD, who is dyslexic, who has a diagnosis, who suspects something, who might discover something about themselves in 20 years or who is completely neurotypical.
They’re simply ways of recognising that people are different.
And perhaps that’s the point of this entire rabbit hole. We don’t need to identify every different person and then create some separate world around them before we can become more inclusive. There will absolutely be times when somebody needs individual support and accommodation, and we should provide it, but we can also create workplaces where difference was expected in the first place.
Maybe that team in the late 90s really was hyper-progressive.
Or maybe they understood something incredibly simple that we’ve somehow managed to make extraordinarily complicated since.
People are different. Create the space for them to do great things together.
It really doesn’t take that much more to be naturally inclusive.
