Building Inclusive Workplaces Through Emotional Awareness

And also an autistic life coach, Paul. Welcome to the Inclusive Shift.

Paul (00:28)

Thanks, Nic.

Nic (00:28)

Paul, many of our listeners may already know you from Autism from the Inside or even the Autistic Lift Experience Summit that you just held here in Melbourne. But for those that don't know you, how do you like to introduce yourself in the work that you do?

Paul (00:40)

Yeah, so I guess very briefly, I'm an ex aerospace engineer and my passions are for neurodiversity and emotional intelligence. So my work at the moment centers around life coaching. It's a really big part of speaking and training around emotional intelligence with an understanding of neurodiversity.

And soon to be published author as well. I'm about 80 % of the way through my first book manuscript and that should be out next year sometime. So that's also very exciting.

Nic (01:11)

awesome. The book itself, I think you mentioned to me when we were having a conversation prior to this was based on emotional intelligence in neurodiversity, is that correct?

Paul (01:22)

Yeah, it's an idea that has been in my mind for over 10 years now. Ever since I was working as an engineer, I wanted to teach emotional intelligence to engineers. So even before I discovered my own autism, I kind of diagnosed myself as an engineer and that explained a lot. And then when I eventually found autism, that explained even more.

The original idea was emotional intelligence for engineers and that's evolved over time to really drill down into what I mean and what I really want to say. And so the new title is Unlocking Your Emotional Brain. And it's all about teaching emotional intelligence and laying out a really structured systematic framework that my engineering brain

needed to understand our emotions and our brain as a system.

Nic (02:10)

Awesome. So what does that mean to you personally though? obviously you've touched on that you really started to think about this when you were an engineer, but reflecting upon how that's changed and how you've evolved the manuscript over time, what does that mean to you now?

Paul (02:27)

Well, I feel like I had to learn all of these people skills the hard way. So it really started personally for me, very, very young. Like I can remember in preschool trying to figure out what the other kids were doing and thinking and, know, for the purpose of how do I get them to play with me basically. And what I realized reasonably early on was that emotions are the key.

to understanding human behavior. So when I asked adult questions around me at the time, they just didn't have satisfactory answers. The answers would be something like, you do this because that's what you do, or because I tell you to, or because it's polite, or those types of things. But that was just propagating what was normal, right? And which I now understand.

That's the neuro normative standard and culture that is mainstream. Right. But there are other ways to understand what's going on at a much, much, much deeper level, which empowers, especially autistic people to come up with their own solutions to those kinds of problems. And lots of different cultures come up with different solutions, right? Not every culture shakes hands. Not every culture looks you in the eye. Right.

There's lots of different ways to solve these kind of social problems of how do we communicate and how do we interact with each other. so, yeah, I am very excited about the framework that I've created and I really wanna share it with other people because it took so much effort to create and I just wish someone told me it could be this simple.

Nic (04:07)

I'm looking forward to hearing and reading a little bit more about that. You touched on obviously that different cultures and societies use different ways of communicating and interacting. It reminds me so much of Erin Meyers work on the cultural map, and understanding the differences. that can vary even dependent on kind of what side of the bell you're on with respect to that culture as well, right?

I guess from a neurodivergent perspective or even from an autistic perspective, the way that you communicate or interact with someone may be vastly different to another individual that has a similar condition to you. But I guess from, I've also experienced those challenges with EQ and misunderstanding how people maybe want to interact as well.

how do those traditional kind of definitions of EQ become a bit of a misunderstanding for those that are neurodivergent?

Paul (04:56)

So the traditional definitions have an underlying assumption that is often not questioned, which is the underlying culture and the social norm of whatever the culture is like. So this analogy of culture is actually really helpful. And because I had to figure out from the ground up how to communicate in my own culture, it gave me these kinds of superpowers to communicate cross-culturally.

and to different age groups and different ethnicities and nationalities and backgrounds and people with different experiences because I was coming from a much deeper place rather than this is the cultural norm, how do I fit into it? It's much more nuanced than that and much more powerful to work cross-culturally. So a lot of, and this is a problem with a lot of traditional social skills training.

The model tends to look like here's how to behave, let's practice. Let's practice looking someone in the eye. Let's practice a handshake. This is what you should wear in the office. This is how we should conduct a meeting. This is all the norms of what you are expected to do. This is what you're supposed to do in a job interview. Let's practice that kind of stuff. Whereas if we take it a step back and go a little bit deeper,

What are we even trying to do with small talk, for example? What are we even trying to do in a job interview? What are we even trying to do? What's the purpose of a relationship? When you understand these things at a much, much deeper, like my brain goes to network theory, essentially. And so that's how I explain it all to myself in my head. And don't worry, I tend to.

simplified into simpler language in my book and other communications. But it's all like managing relationships, managing your connections, managing communication and your shared pool of knowledge. So we're speaking a common language at the moment, even though we've never met. I'm just assuming a whole bunch of stuff that you're gonna get the intended meaning of a whole bunch of my words.

and especially in a professional environment with a lot of technical background, sometimes there's not that shared understanding. Sometimes you're talking to someone outside of your technical expertise, or sometimes you're talking to someone with a lot more experience than you or a lot less experience than you. So yeah, it's a much more grassroots fundamental way of understanding what's going on so that we can then

apply it more powerfully in everyday situations.

Nic (07:28)

That's quite powerful. I'm intrigued. Are you able to give us a little bit more insight into how the framework might help those that are neurodivergent and neurotypical and engaging with each other?

Paul (07:39)

Yeah, so there's a couple of aspects to it. One aspect is, I've come up with a feedback flow chart, which helps us understand where emotions come from, where thoughts come from, where our reactions come from, the automated feedback loop.

that is my own emotional self-regulation that's happening all the time. And that helps us to identify where do I have control over the system? So it essentially models the whole brain body connection as a black box emotional system, a feedback loop that we don't need to know exactly what's going on inside. What's going on inside is incredibly complex.

what we can see from the outside, if we model it like a black box, we can see what, how can I affect this situation? And so that model is completely culturally agnostic, it's completely neuro-type agnostic. And what I find is that once people get a sense of how that feedback flow chart works, they can start to use it in everyday situations with others who understand to describe

their own experience. It's like, I have a particularly strong sensory reaction to this, which means when it's very bright in here, I start getting a headache and my emotional brain starts trying to retreat from the situation because I need a break because I'm getting overloaded. Oh, okay, that makes sense. And because it's so universal, it...

becomes much easier to create empathy tools to make analogies so that people can understand from a firsthand experience. Because it's very difficult to understand someone else's experience unless we have a similar experience that we can draw from our own. So the other part of the model is I...

started with Daniel Goleman's four quadrant model, which I found was really structured and really helpful. And I've modified that a little bit to show better how each quadrant relates to every other quadrant. So actually there's a direction of influence. The most fundamental level is emotional self-awareness with

emotional self-awareness, I can start to regulate my emotions. That's Goldman's second quadrant. When I am emotionally regulated, then I'm less filtered in terms of understanding what someone else is doing. I'm seeing them from a more objective place rather than projecting all of my emotions onto their actions. So it means I can more easily see what other people are doing.

And then finally, I can bring all of those four things together in terms of relationship management. So that's a very, very high overview, but you get the sense that the whole point is that there is no one best way to do things. It's more about understanding the system so that we can implement it in an everyday situation.

Nic (10:36)

I guess you can adjust the framework itself to align to your way of working or to the situation that you're in, right? Which I guess is the whole point, which is great.

Paul (10:47)

Yeah, so let me give you a quick example that I sometimes use to link all of these quadrants together. So the hypothetical scenario is I'm at work and my boss comes in and starts yelling at me about something. I haven't even figured out what. He's clearly really angry or frustrated or something. So if we just pause right there, the very, very, very first thing that happens in that situation is I'm going to have

an emotional reaction. I don't like being yelled at. I don't think this is appropriate. I don't think blah, blah, I'm suddenly in my own head reacting automatically to this undesirable situation. So with that awareness, the very first thing that I should do in that situation is manage my own emotions. Take a breath, recalibrate my thoughts, something like that.

so that I can actually reengage in the situation. And if I successfully do that and I reengage in the situation, suddenly I've got more information to process. Instead of just, someone's yelling at me, run away. I can start to realize what is actually going on here. he's not angry, he's frustrated. he's not frustrated at me. Something else has happened and he's actually coming to me for help.

with this external situation, okay, that changes things. I'm not in trouble. My help is being sought here. So now the difficult part of putting all that together, jumping in the ring, because sometimes it doesn't feel safe to manage those really, really highly emotional situations and let's go, how can we solve this problem?

For a lot of people, when I give that example, they say, there's no way I could do that. I would just freeze. If someone was that aggressive, I would just shut down and go into people pleasing mode and disengage from the situation. And that is a completely valid response. It's a self protective mechanism. It's dangerous. It's socially dangerous. It's emotionally dangerous. I'm just gonna run away and hide. And...

while that might be okay for a short-term survival strategy, it's not great in the long-term because if you don't, if you run away from danger all the time, you never get used to actually dealing with it in a competent way. developing those skills, having a strategy, having practiced my self-regulation skills and emotional awareness and those types of things, then

I've got more confidence to engage and by engaging more, I can practice more and develop my competency dealing with those very, very difficult emotional situations.

Nic (13:22)

Hmm, it reminds me very much of fight, flight and freeze. And if you're in that environment, your amygdala kind of goes, my God, the world is ending like it's gone crazy. And then it's if you build out your own resources to be able to handle those types of environments going forward, then you have those resources continually to be able to handle those situations in the future.

But I guess at the same time, it would be difficult for any individual initially to be able to be in that situation because they'll not have those resources initially and they have to be able to build them. Because us as humans, we leak information and resources all the time. So we need to be able to maintain those ongoing to ensure that it's something that we can keep and use on a regular basis.

Paul (14:07)

Yeah. So if you're building up to a difficult situation, you start with an easier situation. You start with a safer situation. it might be being honest. Look, I need to leave five minutes early to pick up my kids today. Right. Pick something that's relatively low stakes. or it might be, look, I know that we normally go to for drinks on a Friday night, but I'm too tired today.

in fact, if you ask me one of the hallmarks of how can you tell if a culture is healthy is what's the level of safety? How safe do people feel telling others what they need, for example? Or do they have to make excuses instead of being direct about this is what I need

Nic (14:50)

I've not thought about it that way before. Psychological safety, obviously, there's many different things that come into it, but that's a great way to kind of start. It's yeah, how safe is it? And you can base that on how open or how many excuses do you need to make?

Paul (15:05)

And that's where part of my mission is to raise the bar in mainstream society of the emotional intelligence level. So at the moment, because the average EQ is pretty low, if you want to get by as a neurodivergent person, you need like a superhuman degree of EQ to manage all these other people around you. Because when I say something about my own needs,

they might feel uncomfortable. Or if I'm a bit too direct, they might feel uncomfortable. So I'm constantly managing everyone else's needs because they don't know how to manage their own needs. Whereas if we can sort of have the tide come in and raise all the boats, right, as the analogy goes, then that means I have to do less work explaining myself because I'm being met halfway with that emotional labor.

Nic (15:57)

Yeah, and then you don't have to continually explain yourself, which reduces obviously your mental fatigue at the same time.

Paul (16:04)

One of the reasons that a high degree of autistic people just withdraw either socially or emotionally sometimes, it's because of that additional level of emotional labor that is required to participate. So if we make that level even less, and I run a lot of autistic-friendly events, and that's the very, very first thing we do.

Participation is optional. You can participate a little bit or a lot or not at all, or a lot and then not at all. It's completely up to you. And that means that you don't have to push yourself to engage and you don't have to explain yourself either. It's easier for me to make an excuse and not go to after work drinks than it is to go there for 10 minutes and then leave because

all the questions I'd get, why are you leaving after 10 minutes? We just got here. Well, actually, I just wanted like the first 10 minutes is the best for me. And then I get tired and then I want to go home. So this is the best of both worlds for me if I can come for a short amount of time. But having to explain that, I might just boycott the whole thing because it's too hard.

Nic (17:09)

if we take a step into the workplace, then that can be that can be useful in another number of different different situations. one of them would be for me how you engage in inside of a meeting. All right. So as someone that's neurodivergent, you may not feel confident or you may feel a series of fatigue from being on camera for eight hours a day because that's a real thing.

And instead of saying cameras on and making that mandatory, you could adjust the way that you engage with everybody and go, if you're feeling fatigued, you don't have to have your camera on. I'd love to love you to still engage and participate in the conversation. Or it could be this is a asynchronous meeting. You don't need to be here in person. We've got a miro board.

You can go and use that and participate that way instead of having to be here actively in the conversations. so there are so many different ways that we can accommodate neurodivergence or even just any neuro type, to engage with a conversation or a workshop without actually having them actively participate in that event at the time.

Paul (18:13)

It helps to realize that different people have different communication styles and some people are going to be much, much more effective at their natural communication style. So when I'm on a Zoom call, for example, most of the time, I just contribute in the chat. It's just easier for me, instead of saying,

I want everyone's attention and then everyone's attention's on me and then I have to be articulate in the moment. I can just type a short message. I can edit it if I need. I can spend 30 seconds collecting my thoughts if I need. I can stop for two minutes, sorry, two seconds in the middle and that's not gonna be a problem. Whereas if I'm trying to say a sentence with my words, if I have to stop for 10 seconds to think of a word, well, that's...

feels like it's wasting everyone's time. So you're actually getting more out of your workforce by allowing them to participate in lots of different ways. Some people are going to read the minutes, read every single word of that document and other people are gonna just skim it and say, yeah, yeah, I was there, it's fine. So by allowing people to contribute in their own way,

it improves engagement and you're actually getting the best out of people as well.

Nic (19:27)

I couldn't agree more. I'd love to get your opinion on how much emotional intelligence plays a part in being a leader and creating an inclusive environment.

Paul (19:36)

Yeah, good question. I've got an issue with this, which I'll come back to in a second, but let's take this in a positive way first. Leaders have an amazing role of setting an example. I would probably say the best thing you can do as a leader is your own personal example by handling situations, by being kind to people, by listening to people. When I was working at Boeing in the US,

There was a manager about four levels above me who I'd never had a personal interaction with. And he set aside one hour a week of unstructured meeting time where he said, I'll be in this meeting room. If you have anything you'd like to talk about, come and see me. And sometimes there were two people, sometimes there were 20 people. And I was just so impressed by the time management of that person.

to be able to do that and to prioritize that and to stick to it every week and to really be present and hear what's going on as opposed to being overloaded and just doing the next thing and not even thinking about the work we're doing. So that's how it comes across. If you can work on your own emotional intelligence, you will have a presence that is powerful that people will recognize.

and following that sense. On the other hand, one of my issues is that emotional intelligence as a concept has been co-opted a little bit to mean corporate leadership training. And emotional intelligence is so much more than that. So clearly, if you're managing 100 people, then getting

working on your own emotional intelligence and your own communication and your own persuasiveness and your own conflict resolution and all of those really important things, that's just a no brainer in terms of a business decision to invest significant resources in that level of skill. But what about the rest of us? Emotional intelligence is so much more than just managing people. It's managing myself, it's being productive,

while I'm sitting at home, it's managing my relationships with my colleagues, it's managing my relationship with my kids or my family or my partner or anyone like that so that I've got enough energy and resources and motivation when I come to work that I'm not constantly stressing about all these other issues in my life. I really believe it's incredibly important that we try and

lift up the average of the whole population, not just those key people where it's a no-brainer for a business to invest that.

Nic (22:13)

I agree. It shouldn't just be corporate leaders that are uplifted in being able to use their EQ. It's an important life skill that I think it's not just something that you can just develop once though. It's one of those things that you'll need to continually develop and adjust, isn't it?

Paul (22:30)

There's a concept that's pretty helpful with regard to this, which is consistency over intensity. Simon Sinek talks about this quite a bit as well. It's the idea that you brush your teeth a little bit every day. You don't just wait 10 years and then spend three weeks at the dentist, right? So emotional intelligence, just like a relationship, just like so many other skills, it's built

by daily practice and you can't learn the violin on a three day intensive weekend. You have to practice a little bit every day. And I think this is a bit of a sidetrack, but in terms of training your brain, sleep is a really important part of cementing those neural pathways. So actually practicing something and not quite getting it and then taking a break

and then coming back to it another day has benefits like that as well in terms of your brain.

Emotional intelligence as a phrase is potentially a bit of a misnomer because it's more like a skill set and with the four quadrants it's more like four sets of skills that we work on and improve and they all benefit each other.

Nic (23:42)

That definitely makes sense. Interestingly, you touched on the example of learning the violin over a three day period. My son is currently learning the violin and I have to keep encouraging him to just practice a little bit every day so that he can continually build those skills and build the strength in his fingers.

And he doesn't understand why, but then he seems to gradually gets better and he gets to be able to play the full song. And he's like, Oh, I can now play the song. I'm like, that's what practice does for you.

Paul (24:10)

Yep. So, yeah. I'll add another example from my personal life. I do rock, some rock climbing, mostly indoor stuff and finger strength takes a long time to develop. It's not something you can just, you know, lift weights at the gym and, and, and get better over a couple of weeks. It takes months to develop to a significant degree, which is frustrating because there's, there's not much you can do other than

daily practice or at least regular practice.

Nic (24:36)

Yeah, no, I can definitely see that. I used to run marathons about three years ago. Haven't unfortunately been able to run one in a couple of little while because I damaged my knee running down Mount Macedon. But it does, it takes that time to gradually build up your resistance and your ability to exert that amount of energy for a period of time. And then that's something that you need to maintain otherwise.

it does that that ability just goes away.

Paul (24:59)

And if there's anything I want to emphasize here, it's that most people underestimate the exponential compound effect. So there's a saying that people will overestimate what they can get done in a day and be way too optimistic and radically underestimate what they can get done in say 10 years. So even though

It doesn't feel like progress. A tiny little bit of progress is actually huge in the medium to long term. So that's the difference between a graduate employee and someone who's been around for 10 years. They've been practicing and getting that experience. And when we do that on a deliberate basis, we can really leverage that as well.

Nic (25:43)

I couldn't agree more. I've got a couple of employees that keep, reflecting and going, ⁓ how are you so good? I'm like, I'm not, it's not that I'm good. It's that I've had practice and that I've got the experience and the, the scars to prove that I've done the work and it does take time, but you will get to the same level, but it's, it's helping them, be guided on that journey to go.

It's okay if you're not at a certain level today, you will get there through practice and through your ability to learn over time.

Paul (26:12)

And here's where the framework for emotional intelligence really comes in. I remember at university, we learned a whole bunch of physics concepts and uh aerodynamic fluid, fluid dynamics and load paths and chemical reactions and all of these kinds of stuff. And it was taught as a framework so that you could understand what you were seeing around you.

And it meant that we could create a model and run it on a computer and do things much more quickly to get an answer. So where is that framework? We're just not taught that framework when it comes to social stuff and emotions. by understanding the core principles, suddenly what looked like random chaos

that only make sense. Oh yeah, it's not exactly a law of physics because it's a completely different system. But when I am misunderstood in this situation, I can actually understand, okay, this is where the disconnect was coming from. A really common example, people ask, I get told off for providing solutions when someone just wanted me to listen. Do ever get that?

Nic (27:22)

get that all the time. As a manager, it's challenging, right? You instantly want to go into solution mode instead of just listening and understanding the problem and helping or even coaching the employee to get to their own resolution instead of giving them the solution.

Paul (27:39)

So this is one of the things that really cemented for me in my life coaching training is that there is a place for solutions and there's a place for listening and there's a place for giving advice sometimes. And there's a place for, there's a place for all of these things. And there's, there's a right answer in any given situation, depending on which part of the process you're up to. So in the beginning, you probably need to address the emotional impact first.

before you get to solution mode. Very often, the actual problem in terms of a technical problem is not that difficult. We can probably come up with an easy solution if we sat down and thought about it for five minutes. But the emotional impact, I just need to vent to you about how frustrating it is when months of work have the goalposts changed at the last minute.

For example, it's like, can totally get those new goalposts, but it's just really frustrating. And I just need to deal with that emotional problem in that situation. And so with the framework of what are we doing at the moment, we are helping each other co-regulate this frustrating situation. So that after we regulate ourselves, then we go back into the situation into problem solving solution mode.

and we come up with a technical solution. It's just a different part of the process. And when we recognize all of the parts of the process, it helps us to be cognizant of which part we're supposed to be focusing on in the moment.

Nic (29:05)

I get that. So for someone then that is having that trouble with their emotional regulation at work, what would be some of the best ways that they could either get support from a team member or a line manager or to help them re-regulate themselves?

Paul (29:20)

It sounds like a bit of a cliche, but everything comes back to self-awareness. So I like to say it's not a basic skill, it's a foundational skill. It's the kind of thing where if you improve your self-awareness, it improves everything else passively. So if I had one suggestion of where to start, it would be just notice. So what that might be is,

at the end of the day, just have a dedicated reflection time. And if you're feeling like you're noticing and you wanna do something about it, then notice that you wanna do something about it.

And by sticking at this noticing level for just a little bit longer, it allows us to notice more, which gives even greater benefits in the long run. So we do wanna move on from the noticing to the doing at some point, but a lot of people don't spend enough time in that noticing phase. It can be a big psychological shift to just name

something that's going on for you. In terms of self-advocacy, for example, I also have a model of self-advocacy with graduated steps everywhere from just noticing your own feelings to doing everything in your power to get what you need and everything in between. And one of the stages is just tell another person what your experience is like. These lights

are really difficult for me.

You know how I go to after work drinks every Friday? Well, that's really draining for me actually. That's it. You're not asking anyone to change their behavior. You're just sharing a little bit more to allow people to help. A strategy that I have come to use more and more is to do that in a nonverbal way. So for example, instead of saying the sensory environment is a little bit

over stimulating, I might just put my head in my hands and leave them there for 30 seconds. And inevitably, that's going to have a much, much bigger impact because people see it and feel it at an emotional level and they don't have to understand what's going on. In fact, they might even come over and say, are you OK? What's going on? In which case, I can say, it's just these lights are really getting to me.

Nic (31:30)

Visual

cue, almost.

Paul (31:31)

It's a visual cue, but more importantly, it's communicating the emotions, which are easier and simpler to understand than communicating the detail of exactly what's going on.

Nic (31:43)

Yeah, absolutely. So Paul, turning over the mic to you then. Do you have any questions for me?

Paul (31:47)

Yeah, what excites you the most in your work?

Nic (31:50)

I guess it depends on the work that I'm looking at. So if I look at the podcast and the work that I'm doing here, it's getting a better understanding of neurodiversity from everyone's perspective, not just what's kind of put in the mainstream or into all of the books that I have read. It helps me

really enjoy being able to sit down in a workplace and go, hey, let's maybe look at adjusting a few different things based on everything I've learned as well. If I look at it from a workplace perspective, having the capability of taking what I learned, not only from my podcast, but from every angle of life, it's

the ability to adjust my leadership style and to help guide and lead a team and get feedback from them if I'm doing something wrong so that I can adjust the way that I help and facilitate engaging and supporting them in the long run as well.

So what I typically love to do then is just ask if there's anything else you'd like to leave our listeners with today.

Paul (32:56)

So what I would like to leave you with is a sense of hope and encouragement that you can get better at these skills. So if you're anything like me, you find them difficult naturally. And so I can tell you from my experience that when, like I can promise this with basically a hundred percent certainty, if you practice a skill, you will improve.

How much? Well, that depends, but I guarantee if you practice, you will get better. And as a compound effect over time, with every tiny little step, the next step becomes easier and then the next step becomes easier and then the next step becomes easier. So I want to leave you with a big goal of imagine emotional mastery. It's so powerful. And at the same time,

it's completely achievable with little steps. So I guess if anyone's like really interested to do that, I do have an online EQ 101 course that goes through those four quadrants, which is completely self-guided. So you can do that at any time. And yeah, so, and I guess also if you're feeling like this would be good for your organization, I also do trainings.

usually for technical organizations like IT and engineering and people who appreciate a bit of a structured approach to the emotional message.

Nic (34:16)

Paul, thank you very much for your time. I do appreciate it.

Paul (34:19)

thanks, Nic.