Just One LEARNING Bite

Book: ‘The Power of Neurodiversity’

In this week’s Leadership Learning Bite, I’m sharing more about the book I mentioned above, because I kept recommending it to people as I was reading it.

👉️ Title: The Power of Neurodiversity
👉️ Author: Thomas Armstrong

One quote I loved:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw

Five ideas that stood out to me (and I marked so many):

1. “All progress depends on the unreasonable man”. The idea I got underneath it: shape the environment to fit the brain, don’t force the brain to fit the environment. Applicable in how we learn, work, live!

2. The ‘systemizing-empathizing’ continuum. Some minds run on predictable systems, others run on reading people. A lot of what looks like team conflict is really two different operating systems talking past each other, not one person being difficult.

3. The ‘weak central coherence’ reframe: when a trait usually described as a deficit (missing the big picture) gets reframed as a strength (enhanced perceptual functioning, seeing detail others miss). That reframe is a powerful engine in strengths-based coaching conversations I have.

4. ‘Heredity, shmeredity!’ – quoting Reuven Feuerstein and his case that intelligence itself is trainable, not fixed. That belief has to sit underneath any coaching, learning or working practice (especially in this AI world).

5. The eight-part model for building a ‘positive niche’ and look at practical approaches to build ‘strong muscles’ in our diversity.

As a learning designer and coach, this acted as a great reminder of why I don’t want to be creating learning or coaching experiences for one kind of mind.

So I’ll be more consciously designing around ‘choice’: I believe people need to have options to choose from and decide which one will be the most impactful for them and for how they ‘work’ best.

Leaving you with the line at the centre of this one:
‘It’s not how smart you are, it’s how you’re smart.’

Lead Different. Lead for Different Minds.

Game On: what’s a learning bite you’d like to share?

Roxana