By William Hughes
Please allow me to introduce myself…
It’s been a long journey to get from my first article in 2020 to this year’s piece. It all started when my managers committed an unintentional(?) oversight and invited the rest of the departmental staff to what would become a series of weekly virtual get-togethers at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I responded with an article about the importance of including everyone to such events as well as how to get through what was for the rest of the world a very isolating situation, but for me was the status quo as I had already been working remotely for a year before.
This year, I want to talk about the upcoming transition from PhD student to researcher. On August 17th, my OLM7001 will come to an end, and with that, the classroom portion of my PhD program at Indiana Tech will end. Since there is a residency requirement of 15 hours on campus for Immersion Weekends, and since I’ll be one credit short, I will either have to attend the weekend in September or write a 10-page paper on the chosen topic for the weekend. From there, I will start the research portion of the program, a qualifying paper, in January, 2026.
I’ve been around for many long years…
I have to admit, I have zero leadership experience, however, I have plenty of rejections dating back to fourth grade student council membership elections where I garnered zero votes. This has continued to the present day where despite my having a strong educational background, which should suggest that I can handle complex topics at the highest level, I can’t get a foot in the door for even an interview for such a position. The most recent rejection was courtesy of The Arc of the United States, an organization that supports developmentally disabled children and adults including autistic people. (Their local organization did the training for my stint at Specialisterne in 2013-2014.). This cemented the idea that I will never even be considered for a leadership role, which made me reconsider the idea of a leadership development program for autistic people run by autistic people (later to expand to neurodivergent people). Instead, I started to consider working with autistic leaders to find out how they were able to work around the barriers that exist for our community. Virtually all autistic leaders don’t find out or don’t disclose they are autistic until well after they become leaders, so the barriers for someone openly autistic like myself becomes all the more burdensome.
I have mentioned this problem with the head of my PhD program, and I hope to have a conversation with him during the next Immersion Weekend, which will be at the end of the month. My concern is that I haven’t made many connections in the time that I’ve been in the program, and the possibility of changing my research topic my prove to be time-consuming, meaning that my hiatus from the program will last for more than the originally planned four months.
Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change…
I recently met with an openly autistic leader in an executive role at an American investment firm. We talked for about an hour and determined these were the main problems I was facing:
- Organizational and corporate leaders are biased towards autistic people.
- The PhD studies are actually harming my chances of achieving a leadership role since many organizational and corporate leaders are intimidated by such people, whether they are neurodivergent or neurotypical.
- My presentation skills need to be worked on.
I agree with all three of these items, however, I can only work on item 3, as that’s within my control. That’s the reason Leadership and Neurodiversity even came into existence. At the same time, I can’t even get an opportunity to make a case as to why I should be given a chance to lead, so how do I improve my presentation skills other than through this project. Item 1 can only be addressed if an organization openly states that I was denied an opportunity due to my being autistic, and I’ve been open about it since 2015. I could delete item 2 from my LinkedIn profile and my resume, but what happens when I earn the degree and Indiana Tech announces it on their LinkedIn page?
On top of all of this, I have to consider my attitude towards people who have been able to achieve leadership roles with less experience, education, and/or credentials. I don’t want to seem resentful, but the fact that I’ve been overlooked time after time leads me to question what I’m doing wrong. Even with the three items I’ve mentioned above,
If I choose to continue my pursuit of the creation of a leadership development program, I face the issue of our community being a rather blunt group, therefore, the lack of leadership experience will cause potential participants to question my credibility, causing the leadership development project to fail. If I choose to change the project now, the time needed to make the case why I should do so and then actually create this new concept will likely lead to delays well into next year.
I watched with glee while your kings and queens…
I’m determined to make this leadership project work, but it will take three components to make it work:
- Education of leaders as to why we should be included, especially since there is empirical evidence we are over-represented in terms of academic accomplishments and under-represented in terms of vocational history. (Contact me via LinkedIn for link to the article I’m referencing here. I’ve referenced it in several of my class papers, and it probably be referenced in my qualifying paper and dissertation.).
- Encouraging our community to work together to let our voices be heard worldwide. There are plenty of people currently trying to improve the lives of autistic and other neurodivergent people, but there seems to be a lot of separation between us. Many of us are connected on LinkedIn, and I welcome all people to connect with me and network to find out what is working and what isn’t right now.
- Yes, my presentation skills need improvement, but I need to get my foot in the door first. When organizations that are supposed to help people like me reject me, then there’s it’s clear that I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that, since I’ve learned others have faced the same situation. I don’t think the solution is as simple as improving how I present, but I’m have to try it.
So if you meet me, have some courtesy…
All I ask for is a chance to prove my capabilities, to show what I can do, to provide insight and guidance with a set of experiences that organizational leaders might not see. The bias against autistic people seems to provide blinders that prevents many leaders from considering what may be different, but no less valid points of view. I don’t ask for or need sympathy, but we need opportunities to thrive in the environment that best suits us, and I call on the world to give us that chance. It just seems that I’m having a devil of a time making this happen, so I encourage leaders to help provide space to allow this to happen.
Indiana Tech’s PhD program prides itself on the idea of developing a global mindset, a concept where leaders listen and learn from others to improve or reconsider their own ideas. I use this as a guideline, but go a little bit further to the point where I think a combination of servant leadership (our actions speak louder than words), Ubuntu (an African approach that considers all people as equal contributors, it takes a village personified), Diskutera (A Nordic approach to leadership where the leader takes a back seat to hear what the followers are saying, resilience theory (Well, autistic people have to be resilient, don’t we? We keep getting virtually pushed around by a society that doesn’t accept us for who we are.), and of course, my concept of ARMOR (Self-empowerment where the participants, not society, determines what is successful). When combined, I think it’s a pretty powerful combination.
But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game…
The trick is going to be convincing people, whether participants or leaders, to welcome these ideas. One of the things I will be doing during the hiatus from classes is write out my theories in a book format, as if I’m writing for HR professionals and leaders alike. I’ve scattered my thoughts in many different places and it would be beneficial to put them all together in one document, even if the research project changes. I’m even thinking of self-publishing this document if it makes sense for me to do so.
In the end, what’s this all about? It’s about making changes in the way autistic people are seen in the workforce, classroom, and society in general. While I could do this with research on current leaders who are autistic, the impact wouldn’t be nearly as great, and besides, there are already a few researchers doing this already. I chose to pursue this PhD to make an impact as my career is starting to wind down, as I didn’t want to be known as someone who was “just there” in the world. I wanted to change how the world sees the autistic community, and to ensure that no one would ever have to deal with what I’ve had to endure in my life. If I can get a chance, and I can show what I’m truly capable of, then I want the rest of the autistic community to have the same opportunities.
So tell me, what’s my name…
I started this paper with the idea of discussing the upcoming transition from student to researcher later this year. Of course, life has a way of throwing curve balls, so I had to include the possible change to the research project. Leadership and Neurodiversity will endure regardless of which direction I go as it is a passion of mine to help change organizational leaders’ mindsets and gain opportunities for autistic people. It’s worth noting, however, that there are plenty of autistic people who are forced to be self-employed or unemployed as the corporate world shuns them.
To those of you who don’t know me, I’m not a puzzle piece, and I don’t need anyone to speak for me, because I can speak for myself.
Otherwise, I hope you’ll know my name (woo-woo!).