Tag: remote work

Remote Work, Leadership, and Neurodiversity

“In face-to-face interactions, most of us are very easily swayed by the power of personality,” says Purvanova. “Virtually, we are less swayed by someone’s personality and can more accurately assess whether or not they are actually engaging in important leadership behaviours. People are more likely to be seen based on what they actually do, not based on who they are.”

Georgia Southern’s Charlier is not surprised to find a wide gulf between the behaviours of in-person and remote leaders. “In any leadership role, you’ve got to establish that trust. It’s trusting that the person is going to do things, and trusting that they’re telling the truth and being up front and honest. But how you go about doing that virtually is a little different – it’s a different skill set.”

Source: The surprising traits of good remote leaders – BBC Worklife

One of the best parts of distributed work is that it levels the playing field for neurodivergent people who can’t compete in rooms and one-on-ones with the peak, manipulative neurotypicalism that is often confused for leadership.

A Triptych of Triptychs for Designing for Neurological Pluralism

ANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer in the Netherlands named Martijn Dekker set up a list called Independent Living on the Autism Spectrum, or InLv. People with dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, and a myriad of other conditions (christened “cousins” in the early days of ANI) were also welcome to join the list. InLv was another nutrient-rich tide pool that accelerated the evolution of autistic culture. The collective ethos of InLv, said writer and list member Harvey Blume in the New York Times in 1997, was “neurological pluralism.” He was the first mainstream journalist to pick up on the significance of online communities for people with neurological differences. “The impact of the Internet on autistics,” Blume predicted, “may one day be compared in magnitude to the spread of sign language among the deaf.”

Source: The neurodiversity movement: Autism is a minority group. NeuroTribes excerpt.

A triptych of triptychs for designing for neurological pluralism…

The cave, campfire, and watering hole archetypal learning spaces:

The red, yellow, and green of interaction badges:

The three level communication stack of distributed collaboration:

 

Living Privately. - Building and maintaining a sense of what to show in each social environment. - Discovering and creating new environments in which we can show more of ourselves. - Assessing where you can grow new parts of yourself which aren’t (yet) for public display.

Source: On Privacy – Human Systems – Medium