Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Does My Employee Even Care?
Jen Blacow
3rd December 2020
It is a rather sad fact that the things that most people value when it comes to building good working relationships, are the very things that autistic people often lack. Particularly, an inability to demonstrate empathy like other people. Note that this does not mean that autistic people lack empathy: they just don’t know how to show that they care.
Example 1: Andrew
Most of us have heard the phrase ‘look at me when I am talking to you’. Many people think that being able to look people in the eye is a sign of honesty, sincerity, and engagement.
Because of autism, Andrew may struggle to look his colleagues in the eye during a meeting or a training session. Instead he stares at his shoes, or into a corner of the room. This might be because if he does make eye contact, he cannot also concentrate on listening to what other people are saying. For some autistic people like Andrew, eye contact causes pain or causes them to feel overwhelmed. Colleagues may feel that Andrew is not genuine or is uncaring because of this.
It is actually quite ironic then that Andrew can be perceived as uninterested or insincere because he does not make good eye contact. Ironic because Andrew might be disliked for answering questions ‘too honestly’.
Autistic people usually mean no malice in their communications, but are unable to ‘stroke the egos’ of their seniors or to not say exactly what they think. Don’t ask your average autistic employee if you want an honest answer! But when you do want an honest answer, they might be the only ones who are prepared to tell you.
“Did you enjoy the training I just did with you?” A Manager asks Andrew “No, I lost interest part way through”, he replies. ‘How rude – he doesn’t even care’, thinks the manager.
So here we have a situation where the manager is offended by the honesty of the autistic person’s comments about their training. But at the same time, might sense the autistic person (Andrew) to be untrustworthy or disengaged because they are not making eye contact.
In a nutshell, employees with autism may often make up some of your most loyal and caring members of staff. But their autistic difficulties, such as being too honest and struggling to make eye contact, can unhelpfully give you the impression that they just do not care!
Examples 2: William
A group of employees have been put together as part of a team working on a project and one of the (autistic) members of the group, William, is extremely keen to share his ideas during the first meeting. He even sends lots of emails to the group after this meeting with his enthusiastic contributions. Great, the team leader thinks think, we have a good team player!
However, eventually everybody cannot help but notice that in meetings, William acts very impatient and bored with everybody’s conversations about what they got up to at the weekend. In fact, when one team member mentions the extremely recent loss of her cat, William makes a joke he heard recently about cat. He does not appear to care.
William only starts contributing to meetings when he wants his ideas to be incorporated into the project (and repeatedly refers to people as ‘he’, ‘she’, or gets people’s names completely wrong).
When the Team Leader organises lunch in the local pub, William is a no show. In fact, he completely ignores the group WhatsApp messages inviting them to come round after work on Friday for a team social. Yet, he has the audacity to send the group several emails over that same weekend complaining he is not being listened to enough in the meetings!
What might be going on in this situation?
It is likely William is simply keen to get to work and enjoys this part of the interaction with the group. He is not intending to come across as uncaring about others and rude. In fact, he cares a lot about the team members. He also cares about the job in hand and wants to get on with it.
It is just that he is not interested in the small details of everyday life such as what people did at weekend. If he started talking about his weekend hobbies (model boats), the group would all become as bored as William does during the pre-meeting chats!
He might have become terribly upset for the member whose cat died project, but had no idea how to respond. He thought making a joke would lighten the mood and make the person feel better. Moreover, he may be able to remember exactly what each team member said in the meetings, but is genuinely useless at remembering names and faces.
It might be that going to the pub is a form of torture for William because of the overwhelming noises and the dim lighting. He does not understand the purpose of small talk and social chit chat because he is autistic, meaning a night in with the team getting to know each other through chatting is too difficult for him to comprehend. His idea of a good bonding session would be for the group to go metal detecting together at the local beach – but knows from experience this suggestion is likely to be ignored by the team!
Essentially, there is much room for misunderstanding an autistic colleagues’ actions, behaviours, and intentions. It may be that the person is not even diagnosed with any form of hidden impairment. We would suggest that before jumping to certain conclusions about how much a certain colleague or employee cares about team members (for example), that the underlying reasons for their behaviour should be investigated.
If you come across a situation where a colleague seems to be acting in their own interest and not others, perhaps give us a call before assuming that the person simply lacks empathy for others (though it may be the case that there is no empathy and the person is not autistic).