This is not the post I started to write.
Sometimes the truth – what you realize is accurate – hides right in front of you.
That initial post was going to be about picking your gay ally with caution and a grain of salt. It was inspired by a colleague’s post on social media in honor of LGBTQ+ Pride Month and their gay child.
All good except the colleague is a Trump supporter; the Trump administration’s record has been horrendous on LGBTQ+ rights. While I have friends who hate Trump, I also have friends who support Trump. No issue with the Trump support apart from the disconnect with Trump’s record on LGBTQ issues which infringe on their son’s rights.
And my colleague’s thoughts on diversity and inclusion in other areas have been less than supportive, describing proposed hiring goal targets for women execs as “divisive” and quipping that an internal company piece on Ramadan was “controversial.”
They are a colleague who boasts that 90% of their communication is email (with emails that are legendary for being “aggressive” and inflammatory) and who has stated that they are “low EQ.” They carry spare plastic straws to tease people who think single use plastic is environmentally damaging.
In short, they can act as a real pain in the butt if social grace is your cup of tea – not usually the sort of person many would want to sit next to on a long distance flight .
If you’re looking for an ally for promoting inclusion for gay folks in the workplace you’d like them to have low baggage to tarnish that support. It’s the same optics as the male company CEO supporting women’s rights who has never had a senior female exec on their leadership team; it erodes credibility.
The signs of the colleague’s broader behavior though upon reflection – a lack of EQ, a certain brittleness and missing of social cues (the colleague no-showed when needed on a project because they “never received an Outlook calendar invite”) and the strong preference to deal with people in email, not in person – went off like a fire alarm bells.
The insight? My former colleague was likely less of a purposeful jerk than an accidental one; hunch is they are someone on the autism spectrum who is highly functioning. The lack of social clues and skills is hardwired; not the garden variety “oh they can easily change how they act” behavior that is the sweet spot of coaches like me who work with execs.
Like some other spectrum candidates who are highly functioning – Bill Gates, Dan Akryoyd, Albert Einstein, Darryl Hannah – my former colleague has some exceptional gifts accompanied by some off-putting behaviors.
And unlike the person with the limp, the obviously pregnant colleague, the overly anxious co-worker, the person in the wheelchair – all disabilities that you’d spot, this suspected disability is more subtle, camouflaged by offsetting skills in some areas.
If you believe a workplace that is diverse and inclusive is that path to higher performance, as I do, it means a workplace with a variety of people, backgrounds, cognitive learning styles, etc. – not just smoothly functioning, high EQ individuals. It includes people who are bumpy; who make contributions in some areas but maybe not in others. People like my colleague.
A former boss used to kid that his spouse targeted him as having Aspergers, a spectrum disorder. He is bright, funny, hard working and kind. And at times quirky, over focused to the point of being oblivious at times and thickheaded, the attributes that likely gained his wife’s attention. He fortunately knew his blindspots, and asked for help with them. He is unlike a neighbor I’ll call George who is legendary for skills like a rusty Cusinart in the social areas of a legal practice but brilliant in his understanding and interpretation of his legal domain. George has yet to say “hello” or ask how I’m doing in 20+ years and conversations with him mean you fully carry the conversation. But in his areas of expertise he is amazing.
My son, who is fully abled apart from the normal adolescence of being a teenager, went to a wonderful full inclusion preschool that by design has kids with a variety of challenges. The staff was better for the fully abled kids by their work with kids with disabilities and I know my son’s strong social skills come in part from that experience dealing with a diverse set of peers who were warmly included and embraced.
So while it’s great to celebrate Pride Month and the increased acceptance that those of us who are in the LGBTQ+ community have experienced, we still have work to do in moving forward to accepting and including folks who have a challenges that may be hardwired such as Aspbergers and high functioning spectrum disorders.
We’ll all be better for it in the end.
I am a San Francisco-based executive, leadership and startup team coach More about my 30+ years of work in the field can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar at the Back West blog. Now welcoming new and known clients.