Asperger Management: Newsletter No.5

Hello again. After a break for the Christmas period, please find attached the first newsletter of 2008.

Case Study: Assertive Communication

The Case Study this month is about a subject that I have found highly relevant to my own personal development as a manager: Assertive Communication.

Assertive Communication is not about simply responding to others assertively when challenged in a (perceived) unfair or unacceptable fashion – though the piece certainly is applicable in such scenarios as well – but about being internally assertive in communicating to others what you need as someone with Asperger syndrome so that they can assist you!

Drawing on his experiences as an administration Assistant in a small company, John highlights how he has taken personal responsibility in this area to bring about changes in others that have significantly enhanced his own performance.

Inherent within this approach is actively seeking the assistance of others, having the confidence to do so and communicating in the correct way to bring about the desired effect.

http://www.aspergermanagement.com/assertive-communication-conveying-inte...

Viewpoint

The subject of my Viewpoint this month looks at Procrastination. Throughout my career I have had a tendency to procrastinate about undertaking and commencing tasks.

Related to the issue are facets such as Anxiety, Delay and lower Tolerance levels. However, not prevaricating has meant that I have been able to instigate working practices that have significantly enhanced my personal work productivity.

I’ve outlined some of the practices that I have found useful. I would be interested to hear of yours too!

http://www.aspergermanagement.com/overcoming-procrastination

Features

My Feature section this month contains two contributions: Firstly, Some Thoughts on Interviews: Insight for Applicants with Asperger syndrome by Roger Meyer and an overview of a research project being undertaken by Martina Buckley at University College Cork into the communication process between Neuro-typicals and people with AS.

Roger Meyer is widely regarded as one of the leading commentators on work placement and Asperger. As interviews involve one-to-communication with others, and other related issues such as hidden meanings, the interview process can be a real challenge for any AS applicant.

Roger talks through some of the issues that I have posed and provides some invaluable insight into the techniques that he believes can enhance performance.

http://www.aspergermanagement.com/some-thoughts-interviews-insight-appli...

I was attracted to the work that Martina is undertaking – again – due to its high degree of relevance to the workplace.

I have always been conscious of the fact that the way I communicate with work colleagues has – sometimes – not been fully effective from their perspective.

Martina’s work will involve discourse conducted via interactive mediums such as e-mail and attempts to find a “common language” whereby NT’s and those with AS can communicate effectively.

As she says in her covering documentation: “The communication problems and its solutions are, in my opinion, well known to the Asperger and ASD communities, but hardly understood by employers”.

For this reason I am sure that you will find her submission of great interest at - http://www.aspergermanagement.com/search-common-language - and I hope that some subscribers to Asperger Management will consider participating in this hugely important research.

Book Review

Finally, my book review under Publications this month is Planning to Learn: Creating & Using a Personal Planner with Young People on the Autism Spectrum.

I have to concede I thought hard before submitting this review, given as it is, written for very young children. But it was an invaluable read!

I have always found the relatively simple task of effectively planning my workload and timetable difficult for some reason as a manager. However, Keeley Harper-Hill and Stephanie Lord have produced a simple template from which an effective structure can be developed.

http://www.aspergermanagement.com/planning-learn-creating-and-using-pers...

That’s all for this month. As always, if you have any comments on the above content I would love to hear from you. In the meantime any contributions via the Forums or offers of content submissions would be very welcome.

Kind regards

Malcolm Johnson