The Manager's Dilemma: Your Employee Is Abrasive — And Might Be Neurodivergent. Now What?

The Manager's Dilemma: Your Employee Is Abrasive — And Might Be Neurodivergent. Now What?

A theater production manager has pulled the same employee aside multiple times: your tone is cutting people. The crew keeps filing complaints. So the manager asks Ask a Manager's Alison Green: can I quietly ask the team to be patient while I coach her?

Green's answer is clear-eyed and useful for any manager in this position. Yes, you can ask for patience — but frame it as a team investment, not a quiet favor. Tell colleagues Jane is working on her communication style and that their patience helps her improve faster. What you can't do is use suspected neurodivergence as a reason to delay accountability. Bluntness that wounds colleagues needs direct correction whether or not there's a diagnosis behind it. Tiptoeing around "she might be autistic" without evidence — and without a coaching plan — doesn't protect Jane; it just lets the problem fester until the team's morale cracks first.

The real trap here isn't abrasiveness. It's managers who confuse sensitivity about neurodivergence with avoiding hard conversations entirely.

Gobble's Take: Kindness and accountability aren't opposites — the most neurodivergent-friendly thing a manager can do is give clear, specific, consistent feedback instead of vague hints everyone else decodes but the employee never gets.

Source: Ask a Manager

Salesforce Built a "Negative Record" on an Employee Who Took FMLA Leave — Then Eliminated His Job

He took FMLA leave to care for his father, who had cancer. According to a lawsuit filed Thursday and reported by HR Dive, Salesforce allegedly responded by "engaging atypically" with one of his clients during his absence — specifically to establish a negative record against him. When he returned, the company moved to eliminate his position, citing "lack of work."

The lawsuit, John v. Salesforce, Inc., charges violations of both the FMLA and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiff claims Salesforce's stated reasons — poor performance and business needs — were pretextual. He says he exceeded his goals in the year before his termination, was given no assignments upon return, and had his attempts to find other roles inside the company blocked. The ADA prohibits employers from treating workers less favorably based on their association with a person who has a disability, including a parent with cancer.

The case illustrates a documented legal risk: employers who make termination decisions involving employees on protected leave expose themselves to significant liability. Courts have allowed FMLA-related firings to stand — but only when employers can substantiate legitimate, pre-existing performance issues. Salesforce has not yet responded to a request for comment.

If you're a caregiver relying on FMLA, document everything before you leave and after you return. A paper trail is your only leverage.

Gobble's Take: "Lack of work" is one of the oldest pretexts in employment law — and courts are increasingly skeptical when it appears right after protected leave.

Source: HR Dive

The "Accommodation" Frame Is Broken — Here's What to Replace It With

The word "accommodation" carries baggage. It implies the default way of working is fine — and that anyone needing something different is asking for a favor. Lindsey Mackereth argues that framing is exactly the problem.

Her case is direct: neurodivergent employees aren't fragile. They're early indicators of dysfunction. When something is confusing, overwhelming, or inefficient, they feel it first — then get labeled difficult for pointing it out. What they're actually doing is surfacing problems that affect everyone.

The examples she uses make the point concrete. Flexible and remote work started as an accommodation for people with sensory overwhelm or executive dysfunction — and turned out to help parents, caregivers, and introverts too. Clear meeting agendas help someone with ADHD or processing differences avoid the disorientation of an unstructured meeting — but they also help every attendee prepare, stay on track, and get things done. These aren't special favors. They're just better systems that got mislabeled. The deeper shift Mackereth pushes for: stop treating good design as something people have to prove they "really need," and start building it into how work functions by default. Inclusive design, she argues, improves safety, productivity, retention, and culture — for everyone.

Gobble's Take: If your "accommodation" turns out to help the whole team, you didn't make an exception — you fixed a bad default.

Source: Lindsey Mackereth Substack

Disclosure Is Not a Declaration — It's a Calculated Bet With Real Career Stakes

The advice to "just be open about your diagnosis" sounds empowering. Bridgette Hamstead's guide for neurodivergent professionals treats it as something closer to a salary negotiation: timing, audience, and leverage matter more than honesty in the abstract.

Her framework lays out the real costs — autistic workers have been rated measurably lower on "team fit" in performance reviews after disclosure, and promotion timelines can extend significantly once a manager has a label to anchor bias to. The benefits are real too: formal accommodations like flexible hours or written-over-verbal communication can meaningfully improve output and reduce burnout. But those benefits accrue on your terms, not on a generic timeline. Hamstead's advice is to disclose selectively, to allies first, and to document every accommodation request with a timestamped paper trail from the start. She also makes a point rarely said plainly: disclosure can be reversed. If the workplace turns hostile after you've shared, you can pull back, document the shift in treatment, and use it.

Hiding isn't failure. Strategic silence is a legitimate tool, especially when you're still reading the room.

Gobble's Take: Disclose when it gives you leverage, not when it makes someone else more comfortable — your diagnosis is information, not confession.

Source: Bridgette Hamstead Substack

Quick Hits

• Don't wait for disclosure to make your team work better: Proactive tweaks — noise-cancelling zones, written instructions, clear meeting structure — reduce burnout for autistic and ADHD employees and cost managers almost nothing to implement. YouTube
• Keep a weekly wins file, skip the medical detail: Neurodivergent Life Substack makes the case for tracking your own accomplishments in writing every week — not because you distrust your employer, but because performance reviews have short memories and retaliation cases need receipts. Neurodivergent Life Substack

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• UK Employers Are Losing Neurodiversity Tribunal Cases at a Five-Year High
• 6 in 10 Autistic Workers Won't Tell Their Employer. Here's Why That's Rational, Not Fearful.
• The "Ecology of Work" Argument That Should End the Coping-Skills Conversation
• What Accommodations Actually Look Like — And How to Ask for Them