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The Agency Edge: Neuroinclusive Workplaces: Are You Missing Top Talent?

Are Your Best Performers the People Most Like You?

supporting neurodivergent employees


Most agency leaders have an unwritten idea of what a high performer looks like.

We tend to reward people who respond quickly, speak confidently, handle clients well and adapt easily when priorities change. Those qualities can be valuable. They are also easy to see.

The danger is that this recognisable working style becomes our shorthand for high performance. When people process information, communicate or solve problems differently, their contribution may be harder to spot, even when the quality of their work is high.

For agency leaders, this raises an important performance question. Are we creating the conditions for different people to do their best work, or are we overlooking capability that does not look the way we expect? This Neurodiversity issue is at the heart of the latest edition of The Agency Edge.

How neurodiversity challenges our view of high performance

Think about a typical meeting:

One person thinks out loud, responds quickly, speaks a lot and builds on other people’s ideas.

Another listens, processes internally and says less, but subsequently identifies something everyone else has missed, which significantly improves the course of action.

Who is more likely to be perceived as impressive or high potential? And who actually added more value? They may not be the same person.

Visibility isn’t the same as value. Confidence doesn’t always mean competence. Speed of response does not equal quality of thinking.

As managers, it’s easy to develop an unconscious picture of what a strong performer looks and sounds like. We may then inadvertently reward people whose communication, personality or working style fits that picture. Neurodiversity gives us a good reason to question those assumptions.

A useful starting point is to look at everyday management practices and ask how well they help your people perform.

Five ways managers can create a more neuroinclusive workplace:

  1. Create clarity. Be explicit about outcomes, priorities, deadlines and what ‘good’ looks like.
  2. Ask, don’t assume. Find out what helps each person in your team do their best work and what gets in the way. Create an environment where people can say, “This is what I need to do my best work” without embarrassment or fear of being judged. Encourage managers to ask, listen and adapt rather than expecting everyone to work in exactly the same way.
  3. Make small workplace changes. Small adjustments can make a big difference: quieter working areas, headphones, flexible hours, different ways of participating in meetings, or breaking larger tasks into clearer stages.
  4. Play to strengths — Focus on what each individual brings to the team. Neurodivergent colleagues may have particular strengths in areas such as creativity, pattern recognition, detailed analysis, problem-solving or sustained focus.
  5. Be clear and unambiguous with feedback. Say what you’ve observed, why it matters and what needs to change.

Be flexible about the route, not the standard

None of this means lowering expectations. Quality matters, deadlines matter, client outcomes matter and accountability matters. But the route to achieving them doesn’t always need to be identical.

One person may want to talk through a brief while another prefers it written down. One may brainstorm ideas out loud while another does their best thinking independently.

Same expectations, different routes to success

One of the most useful questions any manager can ask themselves: “Is this genuinely what the role requires, or simply how I would do it?”

Good people management isn’t about creating one ideal way of working. It’s about being clear about what needs to be achieved and creating the conditions in which different people can achieve it.

Leading Neurodiverse Teams

Our Leading Neurodiverse Teams training approaches neuroinclusion through a practical people management lens. It helps managers consider how different thinking, communication and working styles may show up at work, challenge some of their assumptions about performance and explore practical approaches to communication, meetings, change and feedback.

The aim isn’t to turn managers into neurodiversity experts. It’s to help them find ways to adapt working practices to get the best out of people, while maintaining high standards and accountability.

For more information, contact our people development specialist, Liz Baines at elizabeth@ambergroup.net.

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