What
A checklist of best-practices for neuroinclusive communication
Who
Most common use case: Managers can use this checklist as a self-check guide to ensure they are doing their best to communicate effectively with their team.
Managers and/or employees can also use this checklist as a reference or a conversation-guide for a discussion about communication challenges and potential solutions.
Why
Effective communication is key to individuals' and teams' success. Often times, poor communication is at the root of difficulty meeting project/performance expectations.
Using this guide may help either an employee or manager identify communication strategies that would clarify expectations, procedures, technical instructions, or other critical information that will enable success.
How
Use this list as a checklist to ensure you are following inclusive best practices. Alternatively, use it as a reference if you need to request adjustments to your team's communications to be more accessible.
Case Study
Both Michael and his manager had become frustrated over the past few months as Michael has had difficulty completing projects on schedule. After a few conversations with both parties, a career consultant was able to identify the weekly team meetings as a focal point of frustration. It turns out that these weekly meetings are where the majority of Michael's assignments and instruction are delivered, and the format of these meetings was causing some difficulties for Michael. This resulted in project details being missed as there was no fallback for Michael to reliable capture his assignment instructions.
In a meeting with the career consultant, employee, and manager, the team walked through the Communications Checklist and identified certain best practices that were not being followed in the team meetings and that could be easily remedied.
The team meetings had no documentation element, camera-use was required (exacerbating stress and distraction for Michael), and there were no deliberate pauses for processing and/or question asking.
By addressing these few minor flaws in the weekly meeting as well as incorporating a recurring cadence of employee-manager check-in's, Michael was able to more effectively capture his instructions and complete his work as expected.
Bottom Line Benefits
Many workplace practices and procedures default to omitting inclusive communication practices. This often causes undue challenges for folks in neurominorities and unfairly sets them up to struggle. Using this checklist as a consistent reference can ensure that all team members are set up for success.
For deeper dive into individual communication style and workstyle, check out our Employee Workstyle Profile.
ND Community/Research Highlights
[link to external blogs/resources that amplify ND & intersectional voices]
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