Play & Book Excerpts
Sanctuary's 4th Annual Autism Awareness Issue Proudly Sponsored By:
What to Say Next:
Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love with Autism Spectrum Disorder
(Tiller Press)
© 2021 Sarah Nannery and Larry Nannery
This excerpt is Reprinted by permission of Tiller Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Chapter 4
Navigating Professional Relationships
Chapter 4
Navigating Professional Relationships
“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous,
the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people
with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground.”
—Wilferd Peterson
the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people
with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground.”
—Wilferd Peterson
MEETINGS
The form and flow of meetings will vary greatly depending on the field or industry where you work, and the type of environment you work in. For the purposes of this book, I stick pretty closely to office working environments in western culture. I also endeavor to keep these references as broadly applicable as possible, while acknowledging they cannot possibly encompass all work experiences. Feel free to skip sections that don’t seem to pertain to your own environment, or take the pieces that do and tweak as needed.
Purpose, Roles, and Structure
When preparing for interpersonal communication in a work meeting, it’s important to set the scene: the overall purpose of the meeting, the roles you and others are playing, and the structure the meeting will take. The way you prepare for an information-gathering meeting, for example, will be different from the way you prepare for a collaborative information-creating meeting. Just as the way you prepare to lead a meeting will be different from the way you prepare when you are just a participant.
First, consider the overall purpose of the meeting:
Next, consider the roles that you and others will play in the meeting. These roles can be fluid, of course, or they could be static. Specific roles will depend somewhat on the purpose and/or structure of the meeting, and vice versa.
Who is leading the meeting, if anyone? If there is no clear leader, are there several people who will be responsible for moving the meeting along and making sure the participants of the meeting stay on task and on topic? I have found that when there is no clear leader, one of two things will likely happen:
The form and flow of meetings will vary greatly depending on the field or industry where you work, and the type of environment you work in. For the purposes of this book, I stick pretty closely to office working environments in western culture. I also endeavor to keep these references as broadly applicable as possible, while acknowledging they cannot possibly encompass all work experiences. Feel free to skip sections that don’t seem to pertain to your own environment, or take the pieces that do and tweak as needed.
Purpose, Roles, and Structure
When preparing for interpersonal communication in a work meeting, it’s important to set the scene: the overall purpose of the meeting, the roles you and others are playing, and the structure the meeting will take. The way you prepare for an information-gathering meeting, for example, will be different from the way you prepare for a collaborative information-creating meeting. Just as the way you prepare to lead a meeting will be different from the way you prepare when you are just a participant.
First, consider the overall purpose of the meeting:
- Is it simple information exchange (which can sometimes turn out to be not-so-simple)? An example of this type of meeting could be that you are writing a report or a proposal and you need various pieces of information from different departments, which will be easier to gather with everyone in the room together for thirty minutes. You or another party could also have information to share—an example of this could be a strategic positioning meeting, where senior leadership lays out the overall organizational goals for the year, or it could be a meeting you have initiated in order to provide your team or another team with some new information that will affect their work.
- Is it more about information-creation or coming together to collaboratively brainstorm, discuss and solve a problem, or begin/continue a project? An example of this type of meeting could be a new initiative launch. You have an opportunity to partner with another organization in a new way or to launch a new project or product within your own organization, and you need several different types of expertise and experience at the table. Another example of an information-creation meeting is idea gathering. Perhaps your team or several teams are facing a larger challenge that no one person can solve on their own, and you would benefit from the input of different stakeholders within the organization, in order to formulate a plan with multiple strands of ownership.
- Is it a regular weekly or monthly check-in meeting, where you meet together as a team to track progress against goals and hold each other accountable to ongoing tasks? These types of meetings might be with the same few people each time, and therefore require less preparation in terms of communication strategies, but more preparation of information or reporting.
Next, consider the roles that you and others will play in the meeting. These roles can be fluid, of course, or they could be static. Specific roles will depend somewhat on the purpose and/or structure of the meeting, and vice versa.
Who is leading the meeting, if anyone? If there is no clear leader, are there several people who will be responsible for moving the meeting along and making sure the participants of the meeting stay on task and on topic? I have found that when there is no clear leader, one of two things will likely happen:
- The person who called the meeting may be looked to as a de facto leader. This doesn’t necessarily mean they need to lead the entire discussion, but they may be expected to set the frame at the beginning (“Why are we meeting?”), raise the appropriate questions related to the purpose of the meeting throughout, and keep track of timing. This means that if you are the one who sent out the calendar invite, even if you are not the most senior person in the room or even particularly knowledgeable about the subject, you should be prepared to be the “structure-keeper” of the meeting, and to take an administrative role if needed.
- The most senior person in the room may be looked to as a de facto leader. This happens more often when very senior managers are present, like vice presidents or C-suite executives.
- If you are leading the meeting, you will need to consider not only your role, but also the role that you would like others to play. Do you want a co-leader? Do you want someone to provide a case study or a specific example from their own work to illustrate your point? Do you want someone to make sure to raise a specific topic or ask a specific question in order to lead the conversation in a certain direction? How much talking will you do, versus how the group amongst themselves? Will you need to take into account different communication styles? The roles and structure you create for your meeting will depend largely on what you hope to get out of it.
- If you are a participant in the meeting, and not leading, consider the role you will play with respect to the leader and the other people in the room. Is the leader your boss? If so, be prepared to be called upon in a potential impromptu support role. Are you his/her boss? If so, again, be prepared to play a support role, but be careful about how you do this, and ensure that any support you provide uplifts your supervisee, rather than strengthening the power imbalance or invalidating your supervisee’s role as the leader.
Sarah Nannery is Director of Development for Autism Programming at Drexel University. She holds a master’s degree in conflict transformation and was recently diagnosed with Autism.
Sarah is the co-author of What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life and Love--with Autism Spectrum Disorder. She reflects on her personal experience living as a professional woman with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Together, with her husband, Larry, she offers timely advice in this communication guide for anyone on the autism spectrum looking to successfully navigate work, life and love. However, her advice and tips, particularly those concerning the workplace, may be applied by anyone struggling with office politics, protocol and communication difficulties. |