Learning Case Study · Neurodiversity Education
Neurodiversity Unmasked
A one-hour facilitated experience that helps leaders move beyond vague definitions and diagnostic stereotypes to understand how neurodivergence affects real work. Historical storytelling, lived experience, workplace examples, and discussion make a complex subject concrete and actionable.
At a Glance
Audience: Professionals, project managers, and people leaders
Delivery: 60-minute live session with facilitated Q&A
Format: Delivered in person; adaptable to live virtual delivery
Purpose: Foundational understanding and practical workplace support
Initial delivery: PMI Professional Development Conference
My role: Needs identification, research, curriculum and slide design, storytelling, and facilitation
The Real Problem
At Inclusive Agile, we repeatedly encountered organizations that either had no working understanding of neurodiversity or treated it as another word for ADHD. Leaders were left to interpret differences in processing, communication, motivation, or sensory experience without useful context. Real needs could then be mistaken for poor attitude, weak performance, or a failure to fit the team.
The Design Question
How can a one-hour session make neurodiversity real and relevant without reducing people to diagnoses, stereotypes, or a checklist of traits?
The Response
I designed a narrative-led session using Henry Cavendish’s life as a historical throughline. His achievements, sensory intensity, unconventional motivations, and isolation make the subject concrete while challenging the idea that the underlying human differences are new.
Rather than cataloging conditions, the session establishes shared language and connects it to systems thinking, sensory sensitivity, motivation, masking, isolation, and workplace performance. It ends with practical behaviors leaders can begin using immediately.
Key Design Decisions
Start with a Human Story
Cavendish makes both exceptional capability and intense difficulty tangible. I chose him because his experiences resonated with my own and because his story creates an emotional and historical anchor for an otherwise abstract subject.
Delay Labels Until Understanding Exists
Recognizable experiences come before diagnostic categories. Labels are presented as tools for understanding and self-advocacy, not definitions that leaders should impose on other people.
Pair Strengths with Real Costs
Systems thinking, sensory sensitivity, and interest-based motivation can create significant value while also carrying real costs. Showing both sides helps leaders avoid deficit-only framing and the equally shallow idea that every neurodivergent trait is a “superpower.”
How It Worked
Surface assumptions. An opening word cloud asks what participants associate with neurodiversity. The same prompt returns at the end.
Build shared language. A visual distinguishes neurodiversity, neurotypical, and neurodivergent without equating difference with intelligence, ability, or worth.
Make the subject tangible. Cavendish and workplace stories explore systems thinking, sensory sensitivity, motivation, and how the same trait can create both strength and strain.
Show the cost of mismatch. Masking, isolation, social bias, the story of a high performer who quit rather than request slight schedule flexibility, and the Cavendish–Franklin contrast demonstrate what workplaces and society lose when difference is punished or overlooked.
Move to action. Treat people as individuals, create safety without requiring disclosure, seek clarity before judgment, ask what each person needs to do their best work, and keep iterating.
Evidence and Evolution
The first delivery was presented live to project managers at a PMI Professional Development Conference. Audience questions moved quickly into application: legal protection versus felt safety, supporting people across matrixed organizations, cultivating systems thinking, and beginning the conversation without pressuring anyone to disclose a diagnosis.
Session feedback:
“It could have been longer; the speaker was very engaging and educational.”
“No suggestions for improvement, just a commendation for easily the most impactful presentation I’ve attended at any PMI conference by far!”
This is an early-stage program with one completed delivery. The next iteration will protect more time for interaction, clarify why legal protection alone does not create psychological safety, and examine how vague judgments such as “team fit” or surface productivity metrics can push capable people aside. The discussion and participant feedback suggest the subject would benefit from a longer, more workshop-oriented version.
Inside the Work
Henry Cavendish Animation
His achievements come first, creating curiosity before the session explores the barriers that shaped his life and limited the reach of his work.
Opening and Closing Reflection
Repeating the same word-cloud prompt invites participants to notice how their understanding of neurodiversity has changed during the session.
Systems Thinking Sequence
A visual comparison moves from linear thinking to interconnected systems, followed by a workplace story showing both the business value and processing cost of that perspective.
How to Help Today
A complex subject resolves into practical behaviors centered on one question:
What do you need to do your best work?
Capabilities Demonstrated
Training needs analysis · Curriculum design · Story-based learning · Live facilitation and Q&A · Inclusive leadership development