I have several years of industry experience either by working indirectly in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields or by directly holding academic and professional positions within these fields. I have worked in academia, public and private sectors. As with everything in our society, we interact with people of different personalities, opinions, etc. I believe these differences could leads to conflicts. Then those conflicts can then lead to unproductive learning and working environments. This is why we need to understand each other.

…because most IT people works in the shadows and rarely interact with the public, we become complacent in tolerating poor workplace ethics!

Neurodiversity Matters

You may have heard the term “neurodivergent” to describe someone who thinks different from the rest of the group of peers (a person who is “out of sync”). It could be at your workplace, within your family, and in many other social settings. The term neurodivergent is kind of a misnomer. The term describes people whose brain differences affect how they behave or act. In other words, it can be used to describe what we consider as positive attributes, such as good with math equations, or negative attributes, such as being anti-social. There are clinical terms that we can used to identify so called “out of sync” individuals. They include, ADHD, Dyslexia, PTSD, bipolar, autism, etc. But at the end of the day, we all have different neurological or mental abilities. Just because you and I are not clinically diagnosed with a specific neurodivergent condition, doesn’t mean that we are not somewhere on the spectrum of clinical conditions. Sometimes, we describe these traits of people as “personalities” and those who do not fit the definition of norms, we called them people with odd personalities or out of sync personalities. Some, may adopt and fit well within the confines of modern social, cultural and/or religious constructs. Others may even go further and user their neurological abilities to excel within those constructs. For example, not everyone can be a politician. Not even politician is intelligent but not even politician is unintelligent either. Some maybe good with academic studies but poor with ability to communicate and grab attention of others. Others maybe poor with academic studies but excel in communication and grabbing the attention of others. The complete opposite would be people who are both poor at self-improvements such as academics studies and poor with communication and grabbing the attention of others. If you think that most high-profile STEM professors and innovators are only good at academics and research, you are dead wrong. Most high-profile successful individuals in the STEM field are also good with people. In other words, they have a well-balanced grasp of social concepts as much as academic concepts. The idea that outspoken Scientist or Politician is somehow better than the quite one is rooted in false logic.

Now why this even matter? Well, in our modern society we use different KPI (Key Performance Indicators) or metrics to evaluate individuals or groups (teams). A good Management personal should know how to separate emotions from facts when these evaluations are done. A good Management personal should also be able to pick out manipulative behaviors of employees, supplies, contractors, etc. Just because someone is “out of sync” with the rest of the crew, doesn’t mean that person is a bad professional. At the same time, this individual should not disrupt well-established workplace cultural environment. Instead, the person who stand out from others or the person who often disrupt others can be managed by the Management personal to benefit the company. I been in situations where different personalities at the workplace translate into unproductive workflows. For example, I like to solve problems using the scientific method and logic. However, when things don’t work out the way it supposed to, I just find the best solution path and complete the task at hand. I will put the understanding the logic behind a solution in the back burner. This is because in the IT industry, time matters. Longer the downtime, longer the clients will remain unable to work. Not everyone thinks this way. Some of the IT professionals I worked with wants to follow an exact route, find exact reasons behind a technical problem, document everything before proceeding to fix the issue at hand. While this is actually the recommended method, this may not always be the best option an organization should follow. I do go back and document what I found later but not in that instant. But how can the Management and other employees work with people of different personalities like this?

Compassion and Empathy

It is not OK to make fun of a client who could not find the mouse on a large screen and send a ticket to you.

The lack of compassion and empathy can be attributed a lot of workplace conflicts in some STEM fields than the others. In Medicine for example, most people would practice compassion and empathy. If they don’t, they would make bad doctors, nurses and health care workers. In the IT field, the same principle applies but because most IT people works in the shadows and rarely interact with the public, we become complacent in tolerating poor workplace ethics and behaviors. I believe as IT professionals, we should practice and learn how to be compassionate and empathetic towards others. It is not OK to make fun of a client who could not find the mouse on a large screen and send a ticket to you. It is not OK to make fun of someone for asking help with rebooting their iPhone or Android device. It is not OK to try to control your co-workers or talk down on your co-workers because you think you are more senior or educated than the people around you. Since majority of the IT work done in the background, I feel we hardly talk about compassion and empathy. Working in the back-end of business and corporate society means that most Scientists and Engineers don’t think much of interacting with the public with respect to their work. I don’t remember the last time I had to explain an IT infrastructure concept to public face-to-face (not counting my YouTube channel). Contrast that work environment with a front-line retail worker. The front-line retail workers have more experience in compassion and empathy even when they face harsh customers than most IT professionals and Engineers. Majority of IT professional and Engineers have tunnel vision. We interact in bits and bytes, black or white and we lose our ability to humanize technology experience. This could lead to workplace conflicts between co-workers, clients, supplies, third-party service providers, etc.

The best solution to make our workforce work together and to make people respect each other is to teach people compassion and empathy. This is an Eastern concept rooted in Buddhist philosophy. In Buddhism, we teach people to look at issues from others point of view. Have empathy, in other words understanding of how others react to your behavior, your words, your interactions, etc. With compassion, in other words a caring kindness, you become more sensitive to others concerns. It could be a simple IT problem like how to reboot an Android phone or a complex situation like a client needing to subnet and configure a network with multiple ACLs. At the end of day, compassion and empathy can go a long way to building healthy and happy workforce environments. It is important to highlight that someone being “out of sync” or neurodivergent should not be an excuse to make others feel less important. Instead, these individuals should seek help in cultivating empathy and compassion. In some situations, these individuals should seek professional medical help and therapy. Just like cultural and religious diversity in our society doesn’t mean we should allow one culture or religion to enforce rules on others, the same should be applied to neurodiversity of our communities. That is my two cents for today!