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Episode transcript from the Close It Now podcast with Sam Wakefield.
Well, all right. Welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield here, and I am honored to introduce my guest today. This will be there's several big milestones today. First of all, this will be our highest academic episode that we've ever had out of almost 300 episodes.
So my guest today is a PhD in Organizational Communication from the University of Colorado. And also I get the privilege and honor of having him on his first podcast as a guest as well. So we get to have some fun there. But this is Matt Vorell. Awesome.
Got it. Nailed it. Matt Vorell, he is a professor at the Judy C. Pearson Department of Communication Studies at St. Cloud State University.
And I am super excited to talk to you today because one of the things that has been a pattern and a trend in this podcast is psychology and how does the brain work and brain science and all of the components of that. And what we've realized is there's a huge amount of conversation and discussion around the difference in neurotypical and neurodivergence in society and in the workplace. So I'm super excited to dive into our conversation today. But Matt, before we get into anything than thanks for being on the show, man. It's an honor to have you today.
It's an honor to be here, Sam. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful and kind of a crazy journey of people having more and more interest in neurodiversity, autism, adhd, dyslexia, and everything in between. And so being able to get out there with some information, some science backed information, along with my own journey through it, is something that if I can help individuals and move more attention to that population, then I'm a happy camper. I love it, man.
Well, you definitely know what you're talking about. So for everybody listening, we did a met here. It Was been a week and a half ago or so and to just discuss, see if this might even be a viable episode. And the second we started, I instantly knew, yes, everyone needs to hear what this gentleman has to say because you are studied and you come at it from a very different perspective than I do. Mine has always been through the school of hard knocks and just whatever about the brain and about psychology and about all those different components that I could pick up through watching TED talks and educational stuff and self educated.
But you come from the academic side. So I'd love to give everybody a little bit of just history real quick of what was your journey going through. Of course you started in communication and then you started to get into more of your specializations. So let's give everybody a little bit of context there for sure. I was a kid who I was, I mean I'll show my age.
I grew up in the 1980s and in the 1980s I was always in school. The kid who would never stop talking, the kid who would blurt things out. I was always labeled as socially rude. And one time when my mom took me to a speech pathologist when I was maybe nine or 10, the pathologist said to her, your son's brain is like a roulette wheel. It can spin at any moment and you never know what topic it's going to land on.
Well, we know now that that is related to what is called associative thinking in that oftentimes individuals who are on the autism, with autism, they think on relationships of things that they've experienced. So it's very personal. Whereas somebody else may have more of a linear approach where it's like first A, then B, then C. Traditional problem solving. So that's where that roulette wheel approach came from.
And so I always did well in school, but I was never invited to birthday parties outside of my family. My sister, God bless her, said that I have the common sense of a goat. And that is something that as I've gotten older is really true. Things that other people may take for granted. I have to, as you say, learn through the school of hard knocks.
Learn through making. You know, all organizations, all companies have politics stepping inside of those and so. But really autism wasn't even on radar until as I remember in the 2000s. I just got. Yeah, I mean I grew up really very similar eras and you know, I was the classic kid too.
That 100% would have been the kid running around the, the class that they had they been prescribed would have thrown me on Ritalin and So it's one of those cases that I just, thankfully my mom never did, but I've always fallen into that a little bit as well. And I think so many entrepreneurs and people that do outside sales and technician work, we do this type of work because we can't handle that being locked in a cage type of feeling. Well, what I love that you said there, Sam, and I've been thinking about this since our last conversation, is that being a professor, being an entrepreneur, have a very key element in common, and that's autonomy. In that you don't feel, I'm imagining, micromanaged. You have a lot of freedom to a degree on what it is that you can do.
Because one of the big arguments that I have is that individuals who are autistic, they're existing in a world that wasn't designed for them and they are not guided through that world. They have to stumble through it. And I mean, the numbers don't lie. 90% Of autistic individuals are either under or unemployed. So really, what's the other option other than to go work for yourself or to work in a position where you have a lot of autonomy?
And so it really, it makes a ton of sense. And I was. We are thinking about stories and how we relate to this topic. I remember I just gotten married and honestly, romantic relationships are another area where autistic individuals struggle. 75% Of autistic individuals are either divorced or have never been in a relationship.
Hmm. What an interesting statistic. Yeah. And once we get into a little bit more, it'll make sense. Well, congratulations, by the way.
Thank you. Yeah, we've celebrated 22 years. I love it. Yeah. But when we had first gotten married and back in 04, the talk about autism was starting to get into the public conversation.
You were seeing it on the news, in the newspaper, but it's kind of like that ghost you don't really know. Oh my gosh. What is that? Right? I imagine polio in the 1940s.
I imagine like tuberculosis back in the late 1800s. Whatever. Well, I'd gotten my first professor job and it was a 45 minute ride from my house. This is in rural Ohio. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio.
But as I was going down the country road to get to my prior university, there was a billboard, and I'll remember it, and said, One out of 150 kids will be born with autism. And I was in my late 20s and you know, you're family planning. And I'm thinking to myself, my God, that'd be the worst thing Possible, like. What, what hard weight that would be. On a new family.
Right. 20 Years later. Irony. Right. And that was kind of like my first notion and really where it started was with my son, my oldest son, he's 15 now.
I'll just keep the names out just for privacy reasons, but he's 15, going to be 16. And within the first year, two years,. There were red flags. He wasn't as social as the other kids were. He didn't like transitions.
When people would come over or friends would come over, he would throw himself on the floor and have a bit of a fit. He would. And so we realized that he also was diagnosed with autism. And so when you look at your kids and you realize there's a lot of similarities there, I decided in my. Mid-30s to get tested as well.
And lo and behold, behold, the results came back that I had have. I don't like this phrasing, but high functional autism. I don't like high functional because if there's something's high functional, then that means there's low functional. And really part of the problem that we're trying to get away with is. This kind of stigma that you know.
Somebody different, not less. Right. I love that too. And that's 100% what I wanted to touch on today as well. And I'm glad you mentioned the stigma because, you know, my parents generation and my in laws generations, you know, they, they, there's been this interesting journey and I'm so glad that it's becoming more aware now.
But the stigma was if anybody is not the normal, then they're broken. And so what's coming from that place and now into okay, well the sentiments, well, maybe they're not broken, but boy, they're odd. And so it's like, how do we normalize this conversation to. It's just a different. The brain is wired differently to function differently, but there's both superpowers and kryptonites there, just like someone who is, you know, would be considered neurotypical.
I think normalizing the conversation is the big task, right. In communication background. Many people, unless you have a communication studies background, when they tend to think of that, they think of public speaking. But as we study it more, what. We do as a discipline is we.
Study how we manage meaning. And what that means is if you. Call something odd and I call something odd, we have a similar definition of what odd looks like. The more and more people who agree. What odd is, that becomes the larger definition.
But then when you have individuals who go against that trend or against that definition. Now they're. We do what people do. We ostracize. We define the other.
Right. Well, that kid is socially awkward, says weird things at weird times. I don't want my kids interacting with them. I certainly don't want them to go on a date with such and such individual. So we have to, using the frame of normalizing this conversation, we're doing the.
Most important thing and that is talking. About this getting out what definitions are. Because, I mean, the, the notions of autism. If you look into the historical references, the first reference we get is back in Russia in the 1920s. Right.
When I have a citation here that I just wanted to bring out quickly with this, as I was going through, I put aside some of my points that I wanted to mention that it said, okay, a Russian doctor in the. 1920S published a detailed case where autistic. Symptoms in children that largely match how we diagnose autism today. But this was largely overlooked outside of Russia for the next two decades. And then in the 1940s, autism was often associated.
You may hear the phrase Asperger's syndrome. And that is probably the most famous case there, everybody knows is Elon Musk. Right. And he wore that proudly, thankfully. And to.
I think that was a huge pivotal moment in starting to, you know, for people to get a little bit more used to the conversation and, and to realize that, well, that doesn't only ever mean that someone's going to have to be dependent on other people. They can be successful also. Absolutely. And I think along with Elon Musk, we take a look at other historical oddballs who in the eyes, not calling him an oddball, but in the eyes. Of history, we can see people like.
History has proven them to be intelligent. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, if you want to even go further back, even Einstein. Wasn't engaging in language until 3. Einstein failed math. If you want to go into the specifics.
Even Michelangelo, if you take a look. At how he's described, he's seen as. Antisocial, as being very opposed to the. Larger norm of the society at a time. And so what this goes into is like we have this notion of Asperger syndrome.
I mean, if we look at the numbers back in the 1980s, the number. Of people listed as autistic would be 1 out of 2,000. If we jump to the early 2000s,. That number jumped to 1 out of 150. As I mentioned earlier, today, it's anywhere between 1 out of 28, 1 out of 31.
Now somebody hears those numbers and they're. Just freaking out because, like, well, is it something in the water? And we play. Yeah, I want to camp out on this for a minute because of the misinformation that's out there. And if you're listening to this podcast, I hope you at least somewhat believe that science is real, because it is.
We can measure it and it's not fake. And so definitely let's camp out on this because the generalized. There's the different camps. We've got this concept that autism was such a small part of society, then all of a sudden, and people are confusing, I think correlation with causation. Causation.
And so this is a really important piece of this conversation. I think we need to camp out on in this normalization of this topic. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. And so if we take a look at today where you would see that it's 1 out of 31 kids will be autistic.
Well, what we have to realize is,. Is the way that we have diagnosed. Autism has come a long ways. There is no definitive blood test right. Now to declare autism.
It deals with behaviors for kids who come in and they are observed over multiple sessions. And so those devices, those measure, those. Graphs, those interview charts, all those things. Have become much tighter and much more accurate, more valid. And the other thing you have to keep in mind is everybody's like, well, is it something on the Y chromosome?
Because all the people with autism tend to be male. Well, that's because the kids who had. Autism who are acting out and getting. Attention, who are loud, who are violent,. Who hit, who get and show frustration,.
Well, that's largely male behavior. And so the original tools that were designed were for boys. Right. And girls. That explains why I have so many very late in life diagnoses for.
For females and for women, along with. The fact that women tend to be acculturated, to be much more observant of what's happening around them and then to fit in. And so that's where we see that the female diagnosis is becoming. It's becoming more. We're being better able at identifying female autism, but we're getting better charts.
And something that looks like a large. Spike is actually kind of like a little bit of a flat line. The other thing we have to realize is that with autism, it's not just one gene. Right now, scientists have identified over 100 different genes that contribute to what we label as autism in different individuals. We think that could be as high as 400 and more individual genes that all kind of get turned on, don't get turned on that make each individual.
Person with autism autistic. And this is the really important piece. If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person. Because you. I, I my.
One of the qualities of autism is. That individuals can often develop deep interests in topics from 12 to 30. I loved professional wrestling. I could tell you every champion of the wwe, formerly the wwf. I could tell you the different types of wrestling.
I could tell you people's finishing maneuvers. Strangely enough, that skill didn't win me the friendship and admiration that I thought it would. But you may have another person who could be exceedingly interested in trains and could tell you the same part. It's because of those different genetic variations. It's kind of like the word love.
If you have the word love, we use it to say, I love this,. I love that, I love you. Right. But we know that you probably love. Your dog differently, hopefully than your wife.
We say that somebody who isn't verbal is autistic. And we say that somebody who is. Very eloquent, who can speak very well, is also autistic. We got to get into the nitty gritty. Yeah.
And you know, maybe this is a good moment to. I'd love to hear you actually define this a little bit because I think a lot of the stigma is around this idea that if the word autism comes up that it strictly defines this whole concept that like I mentioned earlier, that there's some key characteristics and some handicaps and some different things. So someone has to be on that high functioning, low functioning scale that you referenced. And for a lot of people's minds, autism doesn't start until somebody is a certain place on that scale. But I think we're missing the bigger picture that of it's really a much broader spectrum than anybody realizes.
And so what qualifies? So, so all that context to ask you what qualifies for the spectrum? What can it look like and like some different variations there for sure by definition. And there are a lot of different definitions. I'm going to go with the one that I like to use.
One of the things that I do is I do workshops where I go into different nonprofit organizations. I go into for profit organizations and I say I'm an autistic man. Woo. Don't be scared. Here's what I experience life as.
And one of the first things we do is that definition. Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition. Neurodevelopmental, big fancy word that means it's. How the brain develops, it's how the brain is designed. Think of any laptop you have.
You design your screen to have certain. Files, certain places, because it works for you, right? Characterized by differences. And this is where it gets to be really kind of problematic in how. Somebody processes environmental stimuli, meaning how they react to what's going on around them.
Are the lights too bright? Is the shirt too itchy? Is the room just way too hot? That's environmental stimulus. You like?
Yeah. There are too many noises. I can hear the electricity going. All of these things. I need another element that's one is communication and that's huge.
Everything's communication. It's the norms. For a brief example, I told you. A little bit ago, I used to love professional wrestling. If I was in a conversation with someone, I would.
And if I, I would look for opportunities to spin the conversation towards that. And I would talk about it forever. Ignoring, not really even ignoring, but being completely unaware of the non verbals that my partner might be giving to me. Like, wow, I gotta get going, right? Or standing way too close to someone.
Not taking other people's. Needs into consideration. Right. So communication is the second area. The third one is being able to read social norms, behavioral dictations.
I'll give you an example. If you say to me, what is a friend? You might say and answer that question. Well, a friend is somebody who is interested in the same things you are. There's somebody who spends time with you.
Well, by that definition, Sam, you and. I are friends, right? Because we're in this, we're both interested in this topic. We've spent some time together. So can you lend me some money?
My dog has been having some digestive issues. Would you mind come over and, you know, work? Take care. What I'm saying here is that somebody who's autistic can misread scripts that other. So we've been using the word autism pretty liberally here.
If you're autistic, somebody who's not autistic, you might hear the word somebody who's neurotypical. Right. Neurotypical are just the other 82% of people in the world who wouldn't be listed as autistic. Another word for them is allistic, whatever. So somebody who's neurotypical is going to be born with that soft.
Is going to be born with the, the brain power to be able to pick up on those social norms really easily. So. That's the large definition. How do you interact with the environment,. How do you communicate and your ability.
To pick up on social norms and whatnot. This is really Intriguing. And honestly, I didn't realize what a difference it makes and how much of a struggle it is to function in life. Because if you don't know, you don't know. And so I remember growing up just thinking that I was just a high energy kid and boy, I'm a great multitasker.
And I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs and people fall into the trap is, boy, multitasking is my superpower. When everyone around them goes, dude, finish something. And that's what was happening to me. And so when I. It was two and a half years ago, I ended up getting medicated a bit for some adhd.
And all of a sudden, after two or three days, I realized, man, I was only ever functioning at about 70% and instantly went, wow, is it? Do most people really go through life and they're just able to complete a task without having 35 distractions along the way? And so that was my moment of realizing, wait a minute, I need to study this deeper, to first of all understand myself, to be able to function better. And then out of that came the awareness of, oh, there's plenty of people I communicate with that maybe I need to adjust my communication to match wherever they're at, meet people where they're at, to be able to communicate better. And so that's my journey into realizing I fall into this category here.
One of the things you may realize. And again, I can't give. Even though I've lived with autism and I've studied autistic trends and impacts, I'm not. And sometimes I joke if I see another individual, like, that's an individual who should be tested for autism Spectrum disorder, that person should be tested. That I can't do that with definitiveness,.
But I can say that one of the first elements is if you're interrupting. Somebody else, if you struggle with listening and you always have a point that you want to make because you're not trying to be rude, but because the piece of information you have in your head, you know, that might be a red flag if you're an individual, if other people can tend to pick up on it. Like, for example, if you know somebody who tends to dress much more for comfort and they wear the same materials. Like, the shirt I have on right. Now is one of my favorite shirts because it's like a polyester blend and it really does a nice.
It's lightweight and it doesn't absorb, like a lot of sweat. And so, like, that's. If I have my ability, I will dress for comfort much More than the notion of giving some kind of appearance, those would be factors. I'm like, okay, well that could be. One of the other things that you.
And I talked about that really got. Me thinking about is that one of the strong indicators is how somebody problem solves. And we talked about top down thinkers. Or top down processors or bottom up processors. Yeah, yeah.
I'd love for you to really go into this because I think it's a very. I've recognized this in the way that, you know, from working with thousands of people over across the last quite a few years now and doing trainings for so many different, not just people, but also specific positions within companies, I've recognized some trends, how this type of thinking has a likelihood to be centered around a certain position. And that's what makes people well suited for certain positions and not others. For example, technicians very seldom make great salespeople and vice versa. Only every now and then do you come across somebody who can do both at a high level.
And so I'd love for you to dive into this and really give, give a good this linear thinking versus associative thinking and this problem solving and all, all of this together. Absolutely. And so to give, I always like. To go with examples. My wife is someone who is great at problem solving.
If there is an issue and it doesn't even have to be like a. Problem, like bad problem, be like, where. Do we want to go on vacation? She is. As soon as that kind of question is formulated to her, she has a quick response.
Relatively right away she might say, oh, I want to go to Germany. Whereas for me, instead of being I'm not able to. Or I'll give you another example. She might ask me to take a. Look at a PowerPoint she's created.
What she wants me to tell about, talk to her about is, is the larger meaning she's trying to convey in that slide, Is it coming across? My brain is one that looks at the details first. I've got to ask, why did you choose that PowerPoint font? Who's your audience? Why did you choose that graphic?
I'm putting together these little Lego pieces and asking these questions. I'm not trying to be difficult. My brain works. I have to have a data driven path to clarity. But so let's step back for a moment.
My wife's approach is what in the literature is called a top down approach to cognition. She looks at the big picture overall and then works out the little details. I have, like many other autistic individuals, have to ask a thousand what may seem like a thousand questions to somebody like my wife before I can give my informed decision on what she originally. Asked me in the first place. Now where this can be a huge conversational block is that if I'm working with somebody who's a top down thinker who gets that big picture, all of those questions that I'm asking can feel like pushback.
They can feel like I'm not a team player. That's not the point, that's not what I'm trying to do. However, somebody who's that big picture thinker who doesn't allow me to ask all my questions, I feel like I'm paralyzed. I can't give you an answer because I can't give you an informed response because I'm not allowed to get the information I need to form that response. So if you relate to this, if you're a thousand question asker, you probably have a bottom up approach to thinking or to cognition.
Now that doesn't mean that you're necessarily 100% autistic, but there is a stronger correlation, as we talked about earlier, between autism and people who tend to be bottom up thinkers. You know, I love this conversation because when we think, when we apply it to the business world, we can see it very, very clearly. Because anybody's ever. When you study business, we know that in an organization you need both. You need someone who's the, you know, to use some different language, is typically the visionary.
The visionary is the big picture thinker. They're the ones that see the destination. And then you also need somebody who's the integrator or the implementer, which is the person that sees the like, okay, give me the destination. But then somebody comes behind them and goes, okay, here's the 5, 12, 350 steps or whatever components we need in place. And here's what the timeline looks like.
And let's build a calendar around our quarterly goals and our monthly goals and our weekly goals and all of the things that's going to be the foundation to get to that place that the visionary said, hey, we're going here and y' all figure it out. And so it's really fun to see both of those things come in at the same place. And there's a, it's necessary to have both or we have a lopsided organization and it's the same thing. When we're thinking about the roles inside of the organization, it's like, how are we problem solving here? How do we need to think about these solutions?
As with all things, you Sparked so many wonderful thoughts. Sam Another component when it comes to autism is that many individuals who are. Autistic can be what we call literal interpretation. What that means is that their instinct, our instinct, is to take everything that is said to us in a very literal fashion. For example, I need your absolute best effort on this.
If I hear that from somebody that I don't know real well, I'm going to think that I have to give 110%, even at the risk of burning myself out. If somebody says the get together starts at 9, I'm going to be there at 8:45, and I expect everybody else. To be there at 9:00 clock as well. At or before 9? Yeah, absolutely.
And I can't tell you how many times I've been to the first person to get together. And they're probably frustrated when people are streaming in at 9, 15, 9:30, 10 o' clock and they're like, everybody's late. Absolutely. And then they go, oh, no, I was just, you know, I just showed up fashionably on time. And so to put this back into the literature, this is what's called context blindness.
This is the confusion that happens, because oftentimes neurodiverse, not just autistic conversations, are mainly about getting information, understanding something, or problem solving. I hate socializing. I have no tolerance for the how are you? How's the weather? All of that other like that slight socializing that many people do to trust each other when they're first meeting for.
The first time with a handshake. I literally have to walk through in my brain like somebody reading a map. What have I used in the past that has worked? I'm going to use it now. What should I avoid?
I'm going to avoid that even though. I don't want to talk about that. Research suggests that neurodiverse individuals have a very low tolerance for what we see as nonsense. That means that we typically dislike indirect conversations. We don't really care about gossip or talk that we don't see that has a main point.
Small talk, all the things. Exactly. Yeah. It's super powerful. This is really.
You're making me realize a lot of things in this conversation as well. Things that I've studied loosely or intuitively have. Just have a strong feeling that it's the case or not. And so it's really great to have some academic validation coming from your side of the screen here. And this makes so much sense in the way that so for everybody listening, think about when you're in appointments, when you're in Sales appointments.
I don't care if you're a technician or salesperson or whatever, but think about you and also think about your team. And one of the big conversations, of course, is how do we build rapport with new people we meet and homeowners. How do we quickly build rapport? Because the goal is of course, to create a nice, safe container where someone trusts you enough to be able to make an educated decision. And some people are fantastic at shortcutting that process, building rapport, not in a slimy way or a fake way, but just authentically.
Rapport is built super quickly with some people where others struggle so hard to be able to go through or, and may not be able to do that very well. And so we have to navigate other ways to handle an appointment based on someone's personality. And so this, I'm just, I'm kind of thinking out loud here, but I'm seeing how every bit of this applies to what we do because of we're all navigating some level of. And the interesting part too, especially since, you know, 82% is neurotypical, that means what, 18% is neurotypical. Neurospicy as like, we like to call it.
Yeah, neurodiversy. To summarize, to shorten that a little bit, that's basically one in five. And so the other to add on. To that, Sam, of the 1 in 5 who could be listed as neurodiverse or autistic, half of em don't know it. And if they don't know it, they're.
Not asking for help, they're not advocating for what they need. Yeah. And so that also means that like at any given moment when somebody is running, you know, 300 to 5 or 600 appointments a year, then we start doing the math. Any given moment we could. If you're not the person, the person you're talking to could be the person.
And so understanding the dynamics of communication, really truly understanding communication better, I think gives us, you know, from a pure sales advantage of just being able to communicate better. Because people buy from, you know, are more likely to buy from people that understand them and what they're actually wanting to accomplish. It's all relationship driven, relationship formation, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, man, this is so good.
So I'd like to attack a couple things directly and truly address some of the misinformation. And then also because I know there's so to your point of what you were just saying is like half of the people don't even know it. And I was years and years and years don't know it. In fact, I'd love to hear your story of how you a little more in depth of how you recognize it too. But I'd love for you to give a list of.
And you've done a few. But let's get a little more succinct into like what is. So what are the top things that someone can look for in their own life or their own family's life to recognize? Maybe some of the aspects or components because like you now that I know I can look across society and literally be able to just grab. Based on characteristics and mannerisms and facial expressions, I can point out exactly who is or who isn't.
But until you know, you don't know. So. So two things real quick. These are fun. Let's.
Let's keep it fun and not, not necessarily political. But question does do vaccines cause autism? Let's just hit it on directly. No, absolutely not. Okay, unpack that slightly for us.
Have there. Like where does this theory come from? There was a study back, I think it was in the early 1990s by a British researcher whose last name oddly enough is Wakefield. And he deduced on a sample of. 12 Individuals, only 12, that because they.
Had vaccinations early in life that they were more inclined to have developed autism. Ever since, the study has been rebuked by both the cdc, by different presidential administrations as well as by the larger scientific community that there is no large standing correlation between vaccinations and autism to. Give you a little bit of a fert. And I get it. Human beings want the best for their kids.
And when something happens that is unpredicted,. We will do anything to try to. Figure out what is going on. Wasn't that long time ago that if there was an illness that came into the village, we think it's evil spirits. Well, is it evil spirits?
No. Is it because there are fleas that carry the bubonic plague that get carried on rats? Yes, that is what is spreading around. And why a third of Europe is dying. Yeah, germ theory, absolutely related to autism.
It was originally thought back in the 40s or hypothesized that refrigerator mothers or mothers who didn't love their children enough caused autism. We have since blamed circumcision. We have also if you remember earlier in the year blamed Tylenol. That was actually question number two. Is there anything there?
Absolutely not. And so easy question to answer. Perfect, perfect. And thank you for clearing that up because I think a lot of the through exactly what we were talking about earlier. If enough people say something, then we start to believe it is true.
And because of the herd mentality and social like somebody that's the power of influence says this, so surely it's got to be true. And we've got case after case after case after case in history of a million different things that were very untrue. That was just propaganda is what it turned out to be. Yep. Something that can be a soundbite because you piggyback on the love that parents.
Or voters have for their kids and the motivation that fear can create. Because communication discipline shows that if you want to persuade people relatively easy, fear's a really good motivator over the short run. But it doesn't last that long. But to point out to the notion. Of.
Just like over the history of the fear that people have associated individuals with autism. We're here, we're running the businesses. We're supporting the businesses. We are your kids, we are your daughters, your sons. But what we've been made to do is we've been made to mask, to fit into a world, to make other the neurotypical community more comfortable.
And that takes a toll. Dude. Having to mask. I constantly in my mind when I navigate in my classes, I have to measure. Have I talked about a topic too much?
Am I standing too close to a student? Is the off comment? Is the humor that I thought was funny received well? And here's another point. Many individuals who are autistic, we hate uncertainty.
And now nobody really likes uncertainty. I get that. But uncertainty to autistic individuals can be so paralyzing that we develop what are called scripts. Scripts are mental routines that we know we can rely on the food that. We eat in the morning.
I eat the same three breakfasts cereals because I know I'm going to like those cereals. I watch I when I know I have to engage in small talk, I have the same small talk. How's the weather today? How is. How is your drive in that I know are safe, right?
I know. Those are scripts that I developed through past experience. I develop those scripts through humor. I developed. I'm sorry.
I developed those scripts from TV shows, movies. My sister has a wonderful partner who is very good in consulting and HVAC industry. He's very business minded. When he and I interact, sometimes I struggle because our scripts are so different. My background's the academic scripts.
His are kind of like industry boots on the ground. And so I find myself trying to. Do the dance and I have to. Adjust my scripts so that Our interactions are smooth, or I think that they are. So that's another component that fits there.
But you talked about appearance and facial expression. One of the things that I remember growing up in high school is I was always told, why do you look so serious? Why are you always standing up so straight? And one of the things that I realized as I've studied and gone through autism awareness, right. As I said earlier on, my 15.
Year old presented with some red flags about autism. And so I decided to get tested myself. Part of where that testing came from is there was a point where before I was diagnosed, we had some friends come over to our house and they came over unexpected. And so I opened the door. I was doing something else.
And so I opened the door and. I said, not in a mean way. Not in my mind, not a mean way. I said, what are y' all doing here? And they said, oh, we were just gonna stop by.
I was like, well, I'm doing this other thing. I said, we can wait in the car. And I said, great. So my wife comes home later on,. My non autistic wife, and she says,.
What did you do? Because I was so rude, perceived as so rude to these friends of ours. And so then you ask kind of like, what are some other elements along the way that made me realize, hmm, why am I having these struggles? I'll give you another example. When I was first hired at a.
Professor at a university in Northwest Ohio, small school, 3,000 people. I had just gotten my PhD and it was on Halloween. The president of the university was having a breakfast for all new faculty members to mix and mingle with all of the veteran faculty members just to build relationships. Right? A social.
Yeah, beautiful. Because it was Halloween, I had a pair of devil horns that I just wore. Had my suit on, and I just wore those. That. Those horns, because it was Halloween.
And in my mind, I was like this. I'm going to come across as somebody who's approachable, who's. Somebody who's. Yeah, whimsical. Surely somebody other people will be dressed up.
I took off the horns after I sat at a table. I had them on maybe 15 minutes. Well, after the breakfast, I went back. To my department and my chair said,. The chair of the department, I got to see you.
He's like, so was it your impression to fly above the radar? Especially, like, at your first big get together? What were you doing? So my intention of spreading goodwill was actually seen as a negative component because I wasn't following the norm of what was expected at that more formal Event. Right.
So it's elements like that that really kind of made me want to understand this even more. We talk about other elements to get into. Autistic individuals can have a very strong sense of social justice. We often are unable to lie about things that we feel are wrong. We tend to be honest and direct, which means that we don't really do.
White lies, which is why we tend. To be blunt and direct or as some people say, see rude or insubordinate. And this, I think is super important, especially in a business sense, is we don't recognize social hierarchy. We tend to see everybody as pretty much equal to us. It makes it really hard to play.
Politics, especially politics in businesses and companies. So many of those rules are just assumed. There's nothing written down, there's no code. And every organization's going to be slightly different with it. So if it's just this unknown thing floating in the ether, how are we supposed to pick up on it?
If you don't know, you don't know. And one of the elements that strong. Organizations or strong companies are doing is they utilize that buddy system where somebody who may already be identified as autistic. And here's another thing, and I know there's a ton of numbers on these,. But when it comes to people who disclose whether they're autistic or not, 75%.
To 80% of autistics, they'll say it. They think it is too scary, too much risk to mention their neurodiverse status. So again, they're not saying or are advocating for the help that they need. But organizations that can get past that,. Establish a mentoring program or if you want to call it a workplace buddy, where you are intentionally given an individual who knows your status, who already knows going in that you're going to ask some questions, that you're learning the culture.
And so that's one of the things that we see that can definitely be beneficial. Yeah, man, I can see that being just a really incredible culture builder. No matter. For the conversation of. Absolutely.
For the conversation of neurotypical versus neurodivergent. But just generally speaking, as a culture builder for an organization, when any new people come in to have a connection, that is your safe space to be able to ask questions to help understand how this organization works. So, man, that's just a massive. For everybody listening, that's gold right there. That's a massive tip for all of your new employees.
How can we make it a better entry into your organization? Just because they're good at the skill doesn't mean they can acclimate easily or well into your organization until we teach. And honestly, the traditional interview process is. Absolutely built against autistic individuals. Because remember I said earlier, I'm going to tell you what I think.
Literally I'm going, if you say it. Is a joke, right, it's raining cats and dogs, I'm going to be thinking that there's poodles to step in, whatever. Yeah, right. I got the joke a hundred percent thought that before in the past. I visualized it in my mind.
So it's funny that you say that,. But if you ask an autistic person, tell me about yourself, they're either going to freeze up because that's huge, where do I start? Right. Or they're going to share something that is too informal for a formal situation. And so one of the other techniques that some companies are doing is they are sharing the interview questions ahead of.
Time. For the autistic individuals so that they have that extra preparation component or they're focusing much more on the task of what you're being hired to do. Right. Not so much how well you gel. With who the office mates are and whatnot.
Companies are also putting together what I like to think of as kits, ASD kits. And these kits can include such things as noise canceling headphones, a screen for your computer screen so that it's not overly bright, the ability. And you can find this on am, you can find this on Amazon. They're called cubicle screens where I hate fluorescent lights. Yep.
They drive me nuts. And so I can get a screen that's on a stick that is on a pole that I can put between me and the fluorescent light right above me. So it's all of these tricks. And you and I talked about one. Time in our last meeting that I put my pen in my mouth.
You got it was a hack because. Again, you're allowing me to talk about something that I'm passionate about. Me. And so listening is hard. So as a reminder to self putting that pen right into my mouth so that I have that verbal feedback reminding me not your time to talk, all of those other elements.
And I mean. Oh, sorry, go ahead. The same thing. It's funny you mention that because Monday night I teach a course for some people that signed up for a training course that I'm doing. And I actually was talking about this as a ninja trick.
So for everybody listening, if you have that habit of you cut people off, you finish their sentences, you talk over them. Well, one we know that is one in society that Is rude. That tells your client that you're talking to. What I have to say is more important than what you have to say. Which, of course, no one wants that for that to happen.
So a ninja trick. And you may not necessarily. And I love how Matt does he. If you're watching on YouTube, you get to see it. If you're listening.
He actually puts his pen in his mouth and holds it. Um, one way to get around that. If you're so, like in a. A house situation, you're doing a sales appointment, those types of things, you can very, you know, get the pen to like, I'm really thoughtful look. And just almost have your pen, like just on your mouth.
It's like something. Or actually a good friend of mine, he was a top sales. There's a organization I was involved with called Dr. Energy Saver for a long time. And this guy named Rick, he was one of the best salesperson salespeople I've ever known in my life.
He would always do his water bottle trick. He would have. He was like. He would know there was this very specific. And he mostly had gotten pretty good at not talking over people.
But he knew there was this one question, one, two or three questions that he would ask that the answer always took longer from the homeowners than his brain wanted to allow. So he had this horrible habit and tendency to start talking over him. And so he would ask this question and immediately grab his water bottle and take a drink. And so slowly taking a drink while he's listening. And then he would literally hold a small amount of water in his mouth until they finished.
Then he would swallow the rest of it. And that was his own reminder. Don't freaking talk right now. It's important for them to finish what they are saying first. And so for all of you listening, one or both of those tricks may be the way to help you navigate some of this.
I think another element to add on to what you just said, Sam, is. I am a note taker because not only does it help me, I don't take just notes on the important ideas that you say. I take notes on even words or images that you say that help me stay in the moment. And I find that that helps me to be much more able to refer back. Because one of the things we didn't mention is that there can often be a strong correlation between people who are autistic and who have ADHD at the same time.
Yes, absolutely. That can. Cause for me is maybe you can experience. Come attest. I daydream.
And so I'm going out into here. So by taking the notes it helps me to have and it helps me to have that pathway back to what the person I'm speaking with was at. So that I don't get too far away. Now, if we're talking about I try to be all about the help for organizations. If you feel that you are working with somebody who's autistic, one of Another tip that you can do is ask them when you if you have to ask them a question, pause after asking them a question, don't multi barrel your questions towards them.
Because if you ask me a question without enough detail, my brain is going to go into overdrive. It's like asking me to solve a puzzle with half of the pieces missing. I want to give you a correct answer, but I need that full picture, right? And remember, uncertainty or ambiguity isn't just annoying to me, it's paralyzing. And I'm either going to ask you 10 other questions or I'm going to freeze up entirely.
Because guessing what you might mean to me is like walking blindfolded out into traffic. So I'll give you an example. Don't give me the instructions of can you clean this up soon? Because I guarantee you that the word clean and this what I think are going to be different than what you mean. So instead being clearer, please file any loose papers, wipe the desk surfaces, put folders in the cabinet, finish by 3pm and let me know when you're done.
Another example don't tell me Help the client with the intake. Help the client intake process. Okay, what does it mean to help being much clearer? Something like please review the forms, highlight any missing information, call the client if the signatures are missing, and return the file by 5. Now in both of those examples, something that can level up your game is utilizing what we in communication called anchors.
Anchors are things like finish this by 3pm because that is a reminder in my head I'm going to put that in my calendar. Or that's a reminder in my head, make sure I return the file by 4pm I know I have to do if I do this, then this having that anchor doubles down and makes sure that the thought gets much more nail down. And I heard this one time in a presentation that if you're talking with. Somebody who's neurodiverse, here's the one takeaway. Say what you mean, but do not say it meanly.
Many of your autistic individuals, we think we're doing the best we can in a world that was not built for Us and I want to give you the right information, but that means that you have to, if you're a neurotypical or holistic, you have to take the other your responsibility. And you know, don't just expect me to read between the lines as you. I'll give you another example that really kind of touched my heart on these presentations. I was working with. A county government.
HR as I mentioned earlier here in. Minnesota and one of the women who. Had attended one of my presentations asked. Me to come and do a larger workshop. And she had said that she was in charge of her county's housing department.
Individuals who had low income, this was where they publicly could apply for housing and whatnot. Well, she was getting complaints from one of her housing unit managers that they weren't paying attention, they weren't social, they weren't getting things done that people were asking. So initially she thought, oh man, I'm going to have to give a PIP for this person performance improvement plan. But then she remembered my presentation and she had said that I wonder, I. Want to have a conversation with this person first.
Now it can be hard. You cannot just come out and ask. Somebody are you autistic? That's along the same lines of asking them what their religion is and what their political thoughts are. Right.
But if you can create enough of environment where individuals may have their own comfort and trust to share that. She realized that this individual was autistic. And so she remembered some of the tips and techniques that we talked about like build routines, reduce ambiguity. And this individual who was her lowest performing employee two months later became her top performer. Yeah, and here's the other important piece.
That person that she, her employee, their own housing depended on their ability to do their job well. So if she hadn't reached out and been able to help them, that would have been another person homeless. That's so powerful and I'm so glad you covered some of the so great examples for sure. And this goes in like in my mind, my brain instantly associates it and files this under a leadership category. And so we can see this both in.
For all of you listening that are owners, managers, leaders in your organizations think like this because. And one of the main reasons why I have Matt on The show is Dr. Varel by the way, is exactly this conversation because with what we do in home services, in the trades, there is a. I'm guessing at this and I wish that we could study this. Maybe I'll undertake it at some point in time.
But I have a very strong suspicion that because of what we do and how we do it, we have a higher percentage of likelihood for people that are neurodivergent within our workforce because of all. For all of those categories and all those reasons. And so being able to navigate this from a leadership perspective and have these kind of conversations, this is why, for all of you listening SOPs within a company are so important. What is our standard operating procedure for each task? And when I'm helping companies write those, most of the time, if the leader is neurotypical, they'll write one and it's still missing half the steps because they don't think in all of the.
They assume the understanding of a lot of components. So we have to go back in and backfill a bunch of the steps along the way. And so as a leader, think this way. And then for all of you who are not leaders, but you are, technicians and salespeople, et cetera, it's the exact same thing when you're in a home with your clients because you're the leader of the appointment. So in your communication to your homeowners, the details have to be much clearer or we're left with what is this uncertainty?
People don't buy uncertainty. People buy certainty. And so clearly communicating all of the steps. So go back and listen to the episode on show youw Work. Go back and listen to the episode on, you know, describing what happens the day of install.
Go back and listen to some of those episodes because we walk through this. But now it all. This is the perfect bow on all of that. And so it's such a good conversation. Sam.
I mean, one of the things that I talk about in some of my. Workshops is that if you're going to be working with a Neurodiverse team and you're conveying through email, you're conveying through text messaging, right? There are simple strategies that you can do to help your Neurodiverse employees. Number one, if you're doing emails, always use that subject line. But in that subject line, make it task focus.
For example, what is it that you need done by when then in the body, is there a change? You know, make these your bullet points. What's the change? What's the why, who's the next owner, and when's the due date? If you utilize those simple bullet points.
Because if I get an email from students, that will be a. I call it a brick of text. It's a single paragraph. You wrote me an essay. What's going on here?
I. My brain, I don't get past the second sentence. I literally will have to tease it apart. One of the other things that I like and I try to champion this for neurodiverse individuals is use AI, because I can use AI, ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, whatever, and I can use it to translate between neurotypical talk and autistic talk. So if I write an email to somebody who I know is neurotypical and I know that I may come across as too direct, too wordy.
I have told AI, make this convert. I'm an autistic academic who is sending. An email redoing this to a director of human resources for a small business. Make this appropriate. It does a beautiful job.
Yeah, reformatting like crazy. And at the same time it can tell me if I was going to do an interview. I'm doing an interview for a marketing position and I'm an autistic male. Here are the interview questions, here's the job profile. What are some puddles that I might inadvertently step in and that it tells.
Me that it can help me to. Oh, this is such a beautiful conversation. So there's so much, thank you for being on. This is so much gold coming, coming across. So I hope you're taking notes as you're listening because that is super powerful.
I've never thought of it in this context. I've mentioned AI in the past for the sake of if you're given an emailing proposal or a follow up type of emails and those kind of things and feeding it to AI and having them describe the avatar of the person we're talking to. So say it's a couple, a boomer couple in there, this age and this income bracket, et cetera, et cetera. It's going to change it to the language versus a millennial couple or a single woman of this age or a single male of this age, et cetera. But using it for business communication like this makes so much sense as well.
That's what I love about the tool. It's this incredible Swiss army knife that's only limited by our imagination. But wow, how powerful is that to make sure that the communication goes across the way it needs to land and not how. And really at the foundation of this, I think it goes back to this place of for everybody listening especially we have to get past this place of thinking, well, this is how I communicate, so everybody else just has to deal with it. That's a very close minded way of thinking and you're only going to be moderately successful in life.
I have an analogy for that. It's called the double empathy problem. I Want what it, what that argues is that especially in the autistic realm is that the responsibility for good communication should only fall on autistic individuals. Well, imagine this. Let's say you're walking through a park and you see a group of squirrels squirreling together.
They're climbing trees, they're digging nuts, having a great time. You keep walking in that park and then you see a group of beavers beavering together. They're swimming together, they're building dams. Now what happens if that squirrel and that beaver come together? Right.
They. On the surface it looks like they. Should be able to interact. They both have fuzzy tails, they both have big teeth. But the squirrel is going to expect.
The beaver to know how to squirrel and vice versa. What I'm trying to say is the double empathy problem argues that the responsibility for solid communication cannot just lie on individuals who are already strugg willing to communicate in a world not built for them. It has to exist on both sides. Yeah, yeah. And you know, and it's, that's just growing.
I think that's really just growing as a human, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the word empathy. There's this really absurd war on empathy in our society right now. And that is the superpower of humanity. And to remove empathy from that, you end up with, you know, you end up with machine people that have zero care for others, which is not what society is built on. You know, we're built in, we are humans that in a, in this society that's built on at least the notion of caring for each other and so.
Sorry, no, that, that, that's basically it. No, I, I know that we need. Trades and I know that we have. A lack of, of individuals going into the trades. And that is scary to me.
I think what we're seeing is that individuals who are, I mean, we talk about the importance of being able to work together. One of the main, we talk about superpowers. If an individual is an associative thinker, like we mentioned earlier, that means they're going to be able to put together ideas that other people may not put together normally. That's creativity, that's innovation. And so I feel like things that I want to have remembered here.
Right. Yeah, yeah. Land this plane for us. What's some of the big picture stuff that if you could give people 1, 2, 3 ideas to leave this conversation with. I do not want autism to be the main thing that defines me.
Right. I want to be known as a. Professor, as a husband, as a dad, as a black belt in kung fu, which I just earned recently. But it's often the neurotypical population that puts the autistic identity front and center. And it's crucial that we remember that Neurodiverse employees, we're not seeking sympathy or lowered expectations.
We just want a level playing field for our strengths. Yeah, I think that's super valuable. Yeah. So thank you so much for this time. It's been awesome talking with you.
I can't believe so much time's gone by. Sam. Absolutely. Yeah, I think we could go on for days. We'll have to definitely do another.
I'd love to do another episode after the spring after your study. So for everybody listening, it's been an honor to have you on. Matt, I appreciate you being here. Do you have any resources or places to point people or connections to you or anywhere else that you want to know more about? Maybe somebody has some suspicions about themselves or family members or just how to incorporate more of these ideas and things into maybe their companies and how to help their communities and workplace.
Absolutely. One of the first and foremost leaders of autism and neurodiverse advocacy is a. Is a woman named Temple Grandin. She wrote, she's written several books. She was born in the 1940s and came of age in the 50s and 60s as an autistic female when there.
Was no such popular language about this. And she writes, she's. She writes very much. It's a beautiful. Her background is in animal husbandry.
If you've ever had a steak, I guarantee you that that meat went through. A processing plant that she designed. Wow. And what she talks about beautifully in many of her books, again, Temple Grandin,. Grand with the word G R A.
N D I N is different brains for different jobs. And that's where we get the phrase. Of different, not less. And then there's another book called Neurodiversity at Work by Theo Smith that goes into much more of the nitty gritty of how to adapt a workplace to be much more neuro inclusive. So those are two books that if.
You're looking for a place to start,. If you're social media inclined, I love TikTok. And on TikTok you can find some content creators. One is named Kaelyn Partlow. Kaylin K A E L K A.
E L Y N N Part like part and then low together. She was on Love in the Spectrum,. The United States in season one. She talks about. She's an autism advocate that shares insights.
On masking and neurodiversity in everyday life. Plus another one is a guy named Saul Smith. He's known as Professor Saul on TikTok. He is. He empowers autistic and ADHD individuals through.
Affirmative coaching, insightful videos and whatnot. And if you'd love to work with me, I'd love to get together with you. My last name is Verrell, spelled V as in Victor. O R E L l. You can.
LinkedIn and do a search for me there and I'd love to reach out to you. Love it. And for everybody listening, I'll also have all of this and Matt's LinkedIn connection in the show notes. So I know a lot of you are in Drive Time University right now, so don't wreck the vehicle trying to write this down. Pull up once you get stopped again, look in the show notes.
We'll have direct communication there for you. And man, it's been an honor. I appreciate it. Thank you for bringing this message to society. It's something that needs to be heard.
It's very front and center right now especially. And yeah, I mean, I definitely see you as a thought leader in this movement to normalize what's going on in a way that is healthy and we can definitely use it in the workplace for sure. And so for everybody listening, if you've ever gotten value from here, we'll give you a sec. If you've ever gotten value from the show, love for you to leave a review. That's how we're able to have more incredible guests like Matt on and so go search me on Google Search Close it now on Google.
It'll come right up. Apple Podcasts and reach out to me directly. net to find out more about the coaching and the training, sales training. We'll come to your location and train your people in person or have virtual programs as well as full business programs for if your company is. You keep hitting that one place that you just can't get past bumping your head up against that brick wall.
Well, what you know has gotten you where you are and what you don't know is what's keeping you there. And so we know how to help you grow and scale past that. So reach out for those conversations. Otherwise, Matt, you want to land the plane for us? Any parting words, quotes, quips, anything like that?
As we said earlier, you know, if you're interacting with somebody who's autistic or just socially maybe a little bit out there, say what you mean, but don't say it meanly. And I do this work for my kids, for my 15 year old who's going to be going into his junior year of high school, it's scary to think that he's going to be working in an environment that is not necessarily designed for him. And my younger son, my 13 year old is dyslexic. And the hard work he's put in, my wife who is a bcba, that's a behavior analyst. Individuals that work with kids who have behavioral disorders in school systems, they're really heroes.
Autism is not a disease. It is just a different way of thinking. It's a different way of. Here's the point, right? We think of tigers and lions.
Lions are very social creatures and king of beasts. Tigers are loners, both are cats, but their brains just built differently. So whether you're either different, not less,. That's a beautiful analogy, man. I love it.
Well, thanks for being on, Matt. It's been an honor. And for everybody else out there, this is, you know, we say this often on Close It Now. Work to become someone worth buying from. Work to create a business worth working at and worth being at.
And understanding this conversation and these dynamics is one more step for you to go out there and be that person worth buying from. You've been listening to the Close it now podcast. Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of HVAC and home improvement and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like, rate and review.
net find us on Instagram at thereal Close it now and on Facebook at Close It Now. See you next time.