Tea, coffee, and how not to confuse your autistic employees
““I thought you’d know that by now!”
This is something I have heard too many times from managers. It’s a common struggle; they will set me a task, and I will follow my interpretation of their instructions to a T.
And, all too often, fall short of expectations. Because here’s the thing: while I’m busy doing exactly as I was told, my manager will inevitably be expecting me to instinctively know the aspects of the task that I wasn’t told.
For me, as an autistic adult and employee, one of the hardest things about getting by in a neurotypical dominant workplace is the autistic/neurotypical language barrier. I, like many autistic people, will follow the processes I know and the instructions I’m given. If I am explicitly asked to do something, I will do it. If I’m not, I won’t.”
Following my talk for the Health and Wellbeing at Work conference in March, I was recently asked to contribute an article to the latest edition of the H&W@W Newsletter: Neurodiversity articles that will get you thinking. Click the link below and read on to learn how to bridge some of the most common miscommunications between autistic employees and neurotypical managers: https://healthwellbeingwork.co.uk/guest-blogs/tea-coffee-confuse-autistic-colleagues
Beyond 6 Seconds Podcast: Different in more ways than one (or two)
Back in April, I had the honour of featuring on the award-winning Beyond 6 Seconds podcast! The Beyond 6 Second podcast features the real life stories of neurodivergent creators, advocates and entrepreneurs, and is hosted by Carolyn Kiel, an instructional designer of employee training programs. Here’s her summary of my episode:
“As an autistic gay woman of British and Taiwanese heritage, Grace Liu often felt, in her words, “different in more ways than one… more ways than two, even.” For years she struggled with disclosing her autism and sexuality, for fear of being ostracized and rejected.
On my latest episode, Grace talks about finding the courage to come out and share her life experiences more publicly through her long-running blog “Unwritten Grace Writing,” in her book “Approaching Autistic Adulthood: The Road Less Travelled,” as a public speaker, and with her family and friends — and in the process, how she has found acceptance from others and from herself.“
In this episode, we covered the following topics:
- How moving countries and being mixed race masked my autism in the early years
- The struggles of navigating social dynamics at secondary school as an autistic teenager
- Racial stereotyping and assumptions
- Lesser known autism struggles in the workplace
- How I got into blogging and autism advocacy
- The stages of coming out as a lesbian
We also covered:
- The day I made penguin feet at kindergarten
- My African bag with a snowman design
- How it is, in fact, rude to show someone your knickers
For the full story on any of the above points, please listen to the episode here or on the Beyond 6 Seconds website. While you’re at it, please follow Carolyn and the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and multiple podcast platforms listed on the website, such as Spotify, YouTube, Apple and many others. Don’t forget to follow my blog: https://unwrittengrace.wordpress.com/ for more autism-related content and updates, and in the meantime, I hope you enjoy the podcast!
Potty Mouth Podcast Episode 3 – I talked to a former university course mate about my experience as an autistic adult
The Thoughty Auti podcast episode 17
I talked to autistic YouTuber and podcast host Thomas Henley, about being mixed race and autistic, moving from Taiwan to the UK at a young age and dealing with change as an autistic person.
Stories from the Spectrum interview
I talked about assumptions I have dealt with about my race and being autistic, and also about my creative projects at the time.
Artistic Autistic Grace 