Rethinking leadership for a neurodiverse workforce (with Ben Brooks from PILOT)

Work is changing faster than leadership models can keep up. In this episode, Nathan Friedman sits down with executive coach and PILOT CEO Ben Brooks to unpack what’s broken and what leaders must do next. From the rise of nonlinear careers to the growing expectations of a neurodiverse workforce, they explore why traditional structures around performance, communication, and development are falling short.

Ben shares practical insights on building clearer expectations, separating performance from potential, and designing workplaces that work better for everyone. The conversation challenges leaders to move beyond outdated norms and embrace more explicit, human-centered approaches to management.

• Enjoyed this conversation? Listen to Nathan on Ben’s podcast, The Lift.

• Check out Understood’s 2026 Neurodiversity at Work survey.

Nathan Friedman: Welcome to "Minds at Work," the podcast for leaders who embrace neurodiversity in business. I'm your host, Nathan Friedman, co-president and chief marketing officer of Understood.org, the leading nonprofit focused on helping those who learn and think differently thrive. Each week, we're here exploring how neurodiversity sparks innovation and how we as leaders across industries can create a more inclusive future for all.

Today with me in studio is Ben Brooks. Ben is an executive coach and the founder and CEO of PILOT. His company focuses on helping everyone to feel more powerful at work, including employees, HR leaders, and executives. Ben is also the host of his own podcast called "The Lift," which I've been on recently, and today we're talking about how we can better support employees and develop leaders in a way that supports a neurodiverse workforce. Ben, welcome to the show. So happy you're here today.

Ben Brooks: Glad to be here.

(00:59) About PILOT

Nathan: Before we get started, can you give us a quick snapshot of PILOT, what it is, and why you started it?

Ben: I'm an accidental entrepreneur and I started the company about 12 years ago, put my life savings into it, and we're focused on helping develop leaders at all levels and shape cultures that help accelerate strategy at companies and nonprofits around the world.

Nathan: Nice. And what types of companies are in your portfolio?

Ben: We work with large insurance companies, consumer packaged goods companies, beverage companies, water utilities, banking, construction, public health nonprofits, etc. And we work across five continents.

Nathan: That is amazing and I think probably one thing you've noticed is there's consistencies across all these industries. Are there any big patterns you've recognized?

Ben: Work is definitely broken. I think we can acknowledge that the employee — employer contract is frayed. The contextual changes around how technology is affecting work, where we work, economic inequality, market changes are really changing how companies need to operate, but the sense of how we support employees against new strategies is lagging.

Nathan: And tell me more about that. Are you referring to just AI or more than AI?

Ben: Way more than AI. I think the pace of change basically has gotten faster every year for the last 20 years, and technology is a part of that, globalization is a part of that, more efficient markets, competitiveness, etc. And so companies have been struggling to adapt on just the strategy element — where to play, how to win, how to capture value — and the employee experience has not been adjusted. We have very lagging mindsets and behaviors and pacing around how we create cultures and manage employees.

(02:40) Career pathing

Nathan: There's also something to be considered relative to career pathing. Some of our research shows that neurodivergent people are more likely than others to follow a nonlinear career path. Are you seeing any increase in people following a nontraditional job path over the past few years?

Ben: Yeah, I think there was an assumption, especially the baby boomer generation, that you want to be in that corner office was the career goal. And as we've gotten a more representative workforce from all kinds of demographics, turns out people from different walks of life often want different things, and it's not always to be in that top job, but yet the career pathing was always based upon vertical ascension. So you think at a consulting firm or a professional services firm, there was these levels and these tiers and it was always about getting to that next one or you have an up or out.

Nathan: Up or out. Yeah.

Ben: Exactly. And so that model often isn't working and a lot of people don't want to be up, but they also don't want to be out. And so that is really testing some of those models. And then differently, other companies say, "Hey, we're going to hire you for your job. We have no idea what the jobs are going to be in a few years, and in some ways, you have to figure that out."

Nathan: Which is true because an individual does own their future career path.

Ben: Yes. But the company isn't always supporting that because I think you can't just say — it's not a survival mission, go camping and figure it out — but I think the balance because there's a paternalistic sense that we still have about employment, and employees have this that we often subconsciously look at our managers as Mom or Dad or our companies in that sort of way.

And so development and learning is one of the last unbundled aspects of the employee experience. We've gotten rid of company housing, you know, until the '90s that was — you got housing, you got equipment, you got a company car, you had a pension. We've slowly unbundled all that, but learning and development is still something that we all view as the company's responsibility. So there is a tension there.

(04:31) Neurodiversity in the workplace

Nathan: Yeah, and that tension exists for a few different reasons, right? I think the growth in the number of generations in a workforce has changed. We have Gen Z now outnumbering boomers, and Gen Z is identifying as more neurodivergent than any other generation in the past, around 53%. And that is yielding a different type of work environment. Have you seen environments catch up to where we are today in the expectation of the worker?

Ben: You know, is the prevalence of neurodivergence increasing? That's your domain, but obviously the diagnosis and the treatment and the societal openness to it — and I think that's one of the wonderful things that Understood.org has helped drive as a much larger societal consideration of it. But as it relates to the workforce, I think we're a lot more considerate around neurodivergence in educational environments like K through 12 or even higher education.

When it comes to the workplace, especially the knowledge worker, the sort of salaried employee versus maybe someone in a distribution center or in a trades job, I think we have largely not considered neurodivergence. And so you've got Gen Z who's had educators, hopefully parents, professionals, clinicians that have helped them understand, diagnose, and manage — plus social media and pop psychology and all these things. They're just a lot more aware and they're coming into a context that really hasn't had to consider this, talk about it, or manage it.

Nathan: Right. Well, I think there's also different employer — employee value exchange that's happening right now and a lot of people are coming into the workforce. If you have, let's call it six, seven years of experience, you've never worked in a pre-pandemic environment. You started your career working at home, most likely, and that creates a whole different atmosphere and expectation set for people coming into the workplace. Do you feel there's a different set of expectations that the companies have begun accepting and adopting?

Ben: Well, I think if you look at the last 40 or 50 years between capital and labor, capital has had the advantage, except for about two years around the Great Resignation where labor had the advantage. And we're back to capital having the advantage, essentially the employers.

And so you see a lot of this return-to-office mandates and these other things where it's "We're going to sort of hit the rewind button to go back to the way it was," which is creating a real tension with what people might have experienced in the last couple years or might expect.

And some of it is a healthy tension because if you're a young person, you're going to have a much better career if you're in an office. You've got to manage your environment and your accommodations, but you're going to meet more people, you're going to learn faster, you're going to help overcome proximity bias. A third of people in the United States meet their spouse at work. So there's a lot of really good things that can happen, but there's a tension where younger people are saying, "Well, I want to optimize around the fact that I have a pet or that I don't want to commute or these other different things or I have lower cost of living if I live further out."

So I think we're optimizing for very different things and there's not a right or wrong in this, but there is a real tension.

Nathan: There's priorities that have shifted as well because it's not about command and control as it was, call it '70s, '80s, '90s, right? You lead by understanding people who are in your workforce. How do you work with them more constructively and how do you get the best out of them by leaning into what they need? But there is a boundary on that. Have you seen different companies float with that boundary and test into it for different types of employees?

Ben: Yeah, I think when it comes to the labor market, companies that are more sort of talent-centric where people are more of the competitive advantage versus, let's say, a scientific compound like a pharmaceutical company or an algorithm with a technology company, they have to be more accommodating to get the talent and keep the talent and engage the talent that they want.

And so I think it varies very much based on the industry and the competitiveness for talent. So I think it's the ones where talent is really viewed as a strategic advantage in their strategies — or talent is ultimately what they're selling — tend to be on the more leading edge of accommodating and thinking more progressively because it's in their self-interest, not because they're nice or good. Not that they're not either, but the reason they're doing it from a fiduciary perspective is it drives their strategy which returns for their shareholders.

(08:57) Workplace accommodations

Nathan: Interesting statistic we saw going back to your accommodations comment is that nearly 85% of U.S. adults say employers need better education on workplace accommodations. And especially for neurodivergent employees. And I think most people — I think it's around 70% — don't really understand what accommodations they're entitled to and many people don't even know who to talk to in the workplace. Have you seen a change in that over time?

Ben: If you talk to an HR department, you talk to the benefits administrator, one of the most frustrating things is benefits uptake. That a lot of times organizations are paying for all kinds — not just medical or vision or dental — but employee assistance programs and an EAP. Most mid-to-large-sized employers, even my company at 50-plus employees, we provide one.

And they can help you with your parents' care if they have dementia, they can help you if you need family planning, they can help you — and the uptake on those programs is like 1 or 2% typically. So there's a lot of information asymmetry of what's even available and what's even someone's responsibility because most of the time, anyone with a certain degree of experience, kind of mid-career, when they think of accommodations, that is Latin for Americans with Disabilities Act and they get into just that framework, which that is certainly a form of accommodations, but there are other accommodations that are not related to that law or legislation that can help people do their best work from a place of equity.

Nathan: And tell me more about that.

Ben: Well, I think a lot of organizations, hopefully, are following the law and they do those things. But there's things beyond that and things that you all have research on or things people don't have to design their offices with universal design principles. They have to have a ramp for a wheelchair because that's the law, but thinking about environments maybe with less distraction or where people have flexibility in movement or less noise or visual things. That's not the legislation, but that is also a form of accommodation, and not just at an individual level — it actually benefits the whole.

Nathan: Correct. And I think some people are starting to find out about that — you know, what does office design have to do with employee morale or even the ability for employees to be productive? Moving somebody away from a window or away from an elevator that dings or having them sit in a more quiet space — some people need more noise. It's not everybody needs quiet. It's for the individual, having that flexibility is also important when you talk about workplace flexibility. It's not just where you work, it's how you work.

Ben: Absolutely. And even context switching where you go from writing a memo or building a deck to then paying your bill online or checking a prediction market and then going back. It lowers our IQ 15 or 20 points while we're doing that, and it's a major driver of burnout.

People, when you have those days you've been at the office for — or working at home for — 8, 10 hours and you're exhausted, you feel like you got nothing done, often the root cause is context switching. And distractions are part of context switching and where you work changes how you work. And so this isn't just for people with neurodivergence, right? This is for all employees.

Nathan: That's the concept of universal design, right? What helps those who are neurodivergent helps everybody. Then that context switching, how do people structure their day to lead to what is the most productive output for them as an individual? I am neurodivergent and I structure my day very purposefully. So at the end of the day I do things that are more — at least I try to — do more kind of remedial or operational, lower value but necessary work, transactional in nature. And in the morning before anybody gets to work, I do the highest value, highest cognitive capability work that I need to do for that day.

Ben: And I don't think we train employees — you know, I work with CEOs and C-suite executives and I talk about — just like on a train, there's peak and off-peak. I say, "When is your peak time?" For you, Nathan, your peak time's the morning. Other people it's midday. Other people it's late afternoon or it's evening.

Nathan: That's the difference between people.

Ben: Your opportunity cost is much different as an employee or an executive in those times, but we don't always think, "How do we optimize for doing our best work?" So there's a whole employee self-awareness and responsibility part of it.

But then there's also, you've got to look at the environment. If you're in a manufacturing environment or an operational environment, you're at an airline hub, you want to have a stand-up at the beginning of the day. And it's called a stand-up because you literally stand up in a circle in an industrial environment and you have a 15-minute meeting and you talk about the operations for the day and safety and other things like that because it kicks off your day.

But when we have knowledge work and this office work, we have a lot more flexibility that we don't always use. And it turns out where we work actually dramatically changes how we work, which is what most companies didn't figure out with the pandemic, which is why they're trying to get people back to where they worked because they don't know how to change how to work.

(13:38) Improving workplace communication

Nathan: A core element of that is around communication. What are leaders getting right, what are they getting wrong about communication nowadays?

Ben: I'd say more wrong than right. I think it's generally quite sanitized and sterile on the employee comms side, as if a lawyer had written it, so it doesn't feel very authentic or candid. And that's very typical, especially of mid-and large-sized employers.

So the accessibility part and the authenticity is often not there. But probably one of the biggest issues — and this ties directly to neurodivergence but to performance of all employees — is we are not being explicit enough. If I had to say one word that executives and leaders could listen to this and say, "If you can do one thing" — it's probably the thing that I work with most of my C-suite clients on — is being explicit.

Nathan: That's direct.

Ben: Direct. And with kindness and dignity and psychological safety.

Nathan: Can you give an example of what was not direct that you would say is now direct?

Ben: So I talked to someone on the way here today who is at a Fortune 50 company and they had dinner with their boss last night. And they typically talk about future and careers, and the boss said, "If this job opened up" — the potential next job — "I would not be in a position to recommend you right now because of these reasons."

That was direct in a way that before they're like, "Yeah, you got a long future here" and there's a vagueness. So it's like, "Okay." And then that person now has a lot different information about do they stay, do they go, what do they need to be, where do they need to go.

People defining expectations, standards — particularly, I have some folks I work with that are on the autism spectrum and they do a lot better, as does everyone, when you are clear about what's expected and how we work together.

And this is the thing that PILOT works with companies to say, "Let's define these expectations that are kind of horizontal, cross-department, etc. How we're going to treat each other, what does professionalism look like, how do we follow up on things, how do we escalate things." Because when there's that standard, then they know — it's a norm — because especially if you're not as savvy in interpreting social clues, having some of this source code of what that should be is incredibly helpful for people to calibrate what's appropriate or what's needed. Whereas typically that's very implicit. I work with a customer right now, it's a private company, and part of their secret sauce is no one knows what's expected. And I'm like, "Well, this is totally dysfunctional."

Nathan: Also like when people say, "We're a family."

Ben: Oh, well, that — "family dysfunction" is redundant. And to say it's family is toxic. Organizations are teams. Teams trade players. Teams measure performance. Teams take care of each other and are kind, but the idea of exiting a family member, to excommunicate, would be horrific, potentially.

But I do think on the comms piece, and it's not just comms like in a town hall or in a memo, but it's communicating from the time you recruit someone to set expectations of what it's like to work there. Most people don't have a sense, they don't know how to diligence on their own as an employee in an interview process and they're so worried about just getting the job.

And then the employers don't do a very good job of talking about what's expected. When I talk to people that are interviewing and I'm hiring someone right now, I said, "People at this company like to work and they work a lot." And that doesn't mean they work a lot of hours, but within a normal workday, we don't do a lot of farting around.

So if you're someone who doesn't like that, doesn't like to get a lot done and have a lot to show for it and really be accountable to pushing things, this is not going to be for you. And we talk about that before they come to the organization.

Nathan: Yeah, those are all critical elements to build into an employee experience and set forth an expectation that can be measured against versus something that keeps changing over time. There's something that we talk about, which is there's the difference between kind and nice.

Ben: Of course.

Nathan: Right. And feedback is kind. Constructive feedback is kind. How do people give that feedback? I once thought it was just new managers that couldn't maybe give the most constructive, kind feedback, but I've now seen it throughout people's careers. Even up to most senior leaders oftentimes struggle, whether it's with conflict, whether with providing the kind feedback or understanding what the impact of that feedback might be, but saying it is critically important for the survival of the business.

Ben: And without explicit standards, the feedback becomes way harder. If we have a bar and someone isn't meeting it that we've all agreed on, that we've made explicit, that's documented, it's clear, we've trained on, we set expectations, the manager or executive feels much more empowered to say, "Hey, here's something we all agreed on that's not happening and that we can observe it and it's not my preference, it's not biased or stylistic."

"You don't speak up enough in meetings." Well, maybe because of thinking and learning differences and how they process information. That if that's not an explicit expectation, they shouldn't be getting feedback on that. But we typically are giving feedback around our own projections and our biases versus a set of objective standards.

And we sort of confuse developmental feedback with performance feedback. We put all that in a blender every year called your annual review, and there's a little bit about how you could grow in your goals, and it's mostly the rearview mirror and how things went on a performance basis. And then we throw money in there, and it's a hot mess.

And so when you think about, Nathan, you're on my team, here's your role, here's the goals of your role, here's your responsibilities, here's what you're authorized to do, and here's how we're going to hold you accountable. I'm going to evaluate your performance. Is it getting done or not based upon what we've agreed to, which is typically vague, needs to be a lot better.

But then there's the developmental part, which is more about your potential, not your performance, which says, "Nathan, here's what I see as possible for you in who you could be." And that's not a rearview mirror, that's about the future.

Most managers do not have that distinction between development and performance feedback and it's a thing we work on extensively with our company to develop managers to distinguish those things.

Nathan: Are you recommending separating all three of those? You've basically said three different types of conversations. The compensation is a separate conversation, and so separating those three things is actually pretty important.

Ben: Yes, because money is always — psychologists will say money is never about money. It can be about power, control, safety, survival, status, all sorts of different things.

And so having the money conversation while you're having either performance conversation or development conversation, there's only one thing people are listening for: their money.

But separating those conversations because if you have a conversation around money, safety is at stake. So people are in a survival part of their brain. They're thinking about what their spouse is going to say, they're thinking about can they afford the school for their kid, they're thinking about all these different things. They're not thinking about how they can grow and their open-mindedness to do something different.

And the money conversation should not be a proxy for telling people that they're below standard along the way. You have to lay track to say, "This is not what we're paying for or what we agreed to," which most employees from a safety perspective actually don't know where they stand, which creates a lot of anxiety and can exacerbate a lot of mental health conditions.

(20:51) Humanizing feedback

Nathan: Yeah, and I think how you say something is just as important as what you say. We've been talking a lot about different concepts so far today. How do you humanize the feedback so people can understand it?

Ben: Well, I think first of all you want people to be prepared. We have a model that we train employees and managers on called this EARS conversation. And the first thing you do is you establish.

And you say, "Hey, we're going to talk about your development in the future. We're not going to talk about the past," and you let them know in advance that that's the meeting and you calibrate for both parties on that.

Because if you say, "We're going to have to talk about your future," vague. Is this like — the anxiety provoking — if I send an email to somebody or a Slack saying, "Hey, do you have a second?" I try and not do that anymore because I realize it sets off a panic through people. So, "Hey, do you have a second to chat about the video we're producing for X? Had a quick question."

Nathan: Yep. And maybe the urgency around that, because do you need to talk immediately or can we talk later today? That also goes to how you structure your communication channels at work, right? Slack is more urgent, email's more long-form, etc. But there's way more norming that companies need to do around that, particularly for neurodivergent thinkers. I mean, we have a Slack channel here that had 17 different sub-threads and then link-outs to decks. I lost track and I was like, "Can someone just tell me what I need to know and when?"

Ben: Absolutely, but I think it's also about your own self-regulation and own self-management. And so it may be that you have a thought that's a quick thought that's coming out of your mind, but if you are always pinging your employees because you had a thought and you're not able to kind of regulate or control some of that, you're going to create a pretty tough context-switching environment.

And that's a part in some people based on their thinking and learning differences are going to have more of that going on. So that's a part of their own work to help regulate.

Nathan: Whether it's impulsivity or something around that — it can be part of their genius too, right? That can be part of their creativity, their energy. How do they funnel that to be constructive? "Oh, you've a thought. Write it down or keep a log or what not, Jira board, depending on what visual learning system."

Ben: Exactly. Let's bundle this for the one-on-one. So I think to your point about how do you set up the stakes in advance, both parties know what's happening in the conversation. If it's a performance conversation, you're clear about the "Hey, we're going to talk about how the last quarter went and here's how you can be prepared or here's how I'm going to be prepared, maybe there's something you bring this or prepare that," etc.

You know, I'm a person, I have a late-diagnosed pretty severe anxiety disorder that I've been figuring out the last couple years and it's really helped my performance to get that sorted. But, you know, the "we need to talk" — talk about you want to spin me out? Just send me "we need to talk." And point. So I've also talked to my team to say, "Hey, let me know about what" to your point.

So it's like me also on my side raising my hand for my preferences. I can't control anyone. I can't demand even as a CEO, so control's an illusion. But I can say, "Hey, if you want to get the best out of me, here's — I'm going to decode how to do that."

And so then I've made it easier for them regardless of their background professionally or their thinking and learning differences. I don't have to have them guess or read my mind. And so there's the organizational layer, but there's the team and manager and employee layer as well.

And so again, if you're an employee and you've got different thinking and learning differences, your manager, you should assume, doesn't understand that and is not very sophisticated about that. And frankly, that's not their job. It's their job to care and empathize, but it's your job to help figure that out and to advocate. It's two parties, but you have to meet in the middle.

Nathan: Managers oftentimes have never worked in an environment that acknowledges neurodivergent employees, never led neurodivergent employees. Can you chat a bit about some questions that we get a lot, which is, as a leader you might understand they have a learning difference or are neurodivergent, but they're not aware of it. How do you work with that type of manager, leader, or employee?

Ben: Well, I think there was an article in the New York Times recently, an advice columnist was like, "I think my employee has ADHD, should I tell them?" And the advice from that column — unless you're a clinician and even if you were, unless you're their clinician — was that's not your role.

And so I think part of it is to help the employee understand for themselves, to mirror back. We can say, "Hey, I notice when we're in these kind of environments, you tend to do this thing or when this happens, your response is that. Do you notice that?"

They may or may not even be self- or situationally aware. If they are, "Do you have a sense of what that is or what's your goal when you do that? Or is that something you're consciously doing or subconsciously?"

So you don't want to get into projecting because most people have pretty unsophisticated understanding of neurodivergence, mental health, cultural competencies. You don't want to be typecasting and pathologizing and labeling.

But if you can be in a place of curiosity and discovery — but it's a part of again, everyone likes to have autonomy. So part of it is the manager is not controlling, but through appreciative inquiry, they're curious and they do more listening than speaking. That's the best way to start to explore that.

And also as a manager to say, "You know, we have some resources." And that could be introducing them to someone internal as a mentor, having them have a conversation with someone.

I'm LGBTQ+. Sometimes people will just say, "Hey, here's someone else that's been in this industry that's LGBTQ+ and there's not a lot of people in this industry that are. Would you ever want to talk or build a network?" And that's been incredibly helpful.

Nathan: Neurodivergent conditions, majority of them are spectrum disorders. They all do not manifest the same. There's different severities. That also has to be taken into account when you're leading somebody. Just because you know one person with dyslexia does not mean you know every single person with dyslexia, ADHD, etc.

Ben: Yes. And I think it's important to say, "Hey, I have a limited familiarity." You basically want to assume that you don't know much, but you can also from the safety perspective signal that it's something you're curious about and you care about, which is a fine line because I think some people say, "Oh, you've had this? Yeah, I know someone!"

And you have this sense of you're trying to empathize, but you're basically saying, "I understand because I know this totally separate situation and person in a totally different context," which is sort of reductive and lacks curiosity versus saying, "I have some familiarity and it's something I care about, but like can you explain this? Can you help me understand?" And again, that's the appreciative inquiry.

(27:25) Final tips for listeners

Nathan: Any final thoughts or tips you want to leave our listeners with?

Ben: I think often from a universal design perspective, start with raising the water for all boats. If expectations are unclear, make them clearer for everybody. Awareness of our resources and benefits, dedicated conversations about people's future, asking them how they're doing. All these things.

And let's do that for everyone. And that's something you can build in and scale and agree to, and that becomes a very sticky part versus one manager happens to have someone with a disclosed neurodivergent employee. Then it becomes very case-based rather than systemic.

And when you think about equity, equity is a sort of defensible strategy that is about systemic changes in design. So I think think about what can you do to make a better experience for everyone and it's typically in the fundamentals — or if you need to rebrand it, the "elegant essentials." That's immediately addressable and incredibly high ROI to a lot of it is both parties being clearer about what they want and what they need.

Nathan: Well, thank you so much for being here today, Ben. Really enjoyed the conversation. And tell us more about where people can find you on different platforms.

Ben: I am findable. We'd love to have you join Nathan's episode on "The Lift," theliftpod.com. We come out with episodes every week. And then Pilot.coach is our website for our leadership development and culture company. And you can find me on LinkedIn. We share a lot of good content there. And Nathan, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me here.

Nathan: Thanks for being here.

Thanks for tuning in to "Minds at Work." I hope today's conversation inspired you to think differently about how to harness the power of neurodiversity in business. If you want to know more about our guest today or the work we're doing here at Understood.org, please check the show notes. For those looking for resources to better advocate for themselves and others, please visit u.org/work.

"Minds at Work" is brought to you by Understood.org, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. To help us continue and expand our work, please donate at u.org/give. That's the letter u.org/give.

The show is produced by Julia Subrin, Alison Hoachlander, Max McKenzie, and me, Nathan Friedman. Mixing is by Justin D. Wright. Briana Berry is our production director and Laura Key is our executive director. And I'm your host, Nathan Friedman. Please join us next time when we'll continue exploring how differences can spark connection and shape a more inclusive and creative future of business.