Why Neurodiversity Matters at Work (with Khushboo Chabria)

[Dana Skaggs] (00:01)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Khushboo Chabria. Now, when we think of workplace inclusion, we often picture diversity statements and training sessions. We rarely envision someone who truly understands neurodivergent experiences from both personal and professional perspectives. Today, our guest is dynamic in the neurodiversity space. She’s a specialist in this area, a career coach, a mental health advocate who is reshaping how organizations embrace neurodistinct talent.

[Dana Skaggs] (00:58)
Khushboo, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Khushboo Chabria] (01:02)
Thank you so much for having me, Dana. I’m so excited to speak with you.

[Dana Skaggs] (01:06)
This is fantastic. Now, you did say you work with Neurodiversity Pathways at Goodwill of Silicon Valley and you’re opening doors, you’re transforming entire workplace cultures. I’m really excited to talk to you about this. Neurodiversity, diversity in general and neurodiversity is really a hot topic these days and trying to protect and preserve these places. So I’m really interested to hear your story, how you got to be where you are, what your passion is. Let’s just fill my listeners in.

[Khushboo Chabria] (01:41)
Sure. Well, you know, I was actually diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 31 years old when I was a burnt out clinician and pretty much at a breaking point in my life where I just felt that I wasn’t getting anything right. I felt like people were misunderstanding me. And I just felt so underestimated in every area of my life. A lot of people say that getting a late diagnosis is not really that life-changing, that most people already know who they are. But for me, it was a lifetime of unanswered questions.

[Khushboo Chabria] (02:40)
And what’s ironic is I was already working in a space where I was serving neurodivergent children as a clinician. I had worked in home therapy. I’ve worked in school districts. I’ve worked in clinics. I’ve worked in social skills groups. I’ve attempted to start a dating program for neurodivergent youth. I’ve built a parent training program. I’ve built a cultural competency module for clinicians to be more aware of what they are doing as clinicians when they enter someone else’s home. I’ve touched neurodiversity in a lot of ways already. But when I got my diagnosis, it felt like everything that I doubted about myself had an answer for it now.

[Khushboo Chabria] (03:36)
I was thrilled. I thought, this is wonderful, I’m going to own this. I’m going to disclose and I’m going to find supports and I’m going to figure out my accommodations and everything is going to get worked out.

[Dana Skaggs] (03:53)
That’s fabulous. I want to jump in real quick and say, first of all, kudos to you for being a champion for the neurodivergent community, even before you knew what your diagnosis was. And also, I have talked to other people and have known people myself who were diagnosed as an adult. And what they said to me was, “Dana, I spent so many years in high school, in college, and I’m talking about super bright people, but they were like, I spent so many years thinking I was stupid, thinking something was wrong with me,” and they had ADHD that no one knew, they didn’t know it. So when they were finally diagnosed, it was like, oh my gosh, so many puzzle pieces kind of clicked into place.

[Khushboo Chabria] (04:45)
Absolutely. I was made fun of a lot when I was a child. I was told that I was very clumsy, or that I wasn’t focused enough, and a lot of sentences started with “if only you would…” blank. And I felt like I carried a lot of that with me. I remember in high school, I was failing AP biology, and I was waking up at like 3 a.m. every day to study. I would sit with my textbook and read the same paragraph over and over and over again, and it just wasn’t going through. I could not get it. And I kind of faced that over and over again, and I didn’t have a lot of people pointing out strengths in my life.

[Khushboo Chabria] (05:44)
And that is something that I’ve worked with so many parents to change, to really look at that child in front of you and say, I don’t want you to be perfect. I want you to be you. And I love you just as you are, this is what we need to hear. And true neurodiversity inclusion is about a switch in your mindset. It’s about seeing something, and even if it doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s saying, I accept you. I include you. I’m curious about you. I’m compassionate towards your experience. And that’s what we teach. So I get to do that now in my job.

[Dana Skaggs] (06:29)
I like that. I love that.

[Khushboo Chabria] (06:38)
But I did want to continue that story after I actually got my diagnosis. I took that back to my workplace and I started noticing that someone was always looking over my shoulder and my reports started getting looked over very carefully, and I slowly felt like I was getting managed out. And that started about a two year period where I was feeling like I wasn’t in the right workplace. I wasn’t feeling like I was getting any accommodations. And I didn’t feel like I was being treated fairly, but I do have to say there’s also some fault in me in that situation, in that I didn’t know what I needed. So nobody knew how to help me with what I needed. I didn’t even have the language to say how I would like to be accommodated. What I’m really struggling with is not following the schedule, but the fact that I’m not sleeping because I’m doing my reports in the nighttime instead of during working hours. And these are the kinds of things that I help my clients with now, because I’m a coach now. I get to coach neurodivergent professionals who are either entering a career or trying to thrive in their careers. A lot of the work that I get to do is to be there with them in that moment and say, have you ever noticed that when this situation occurs, usually you deal with it in this way, and this is what ends up making you too tired to be able to focus on the things that you need to get done? How about we just try this for one week? I get to hold my clients’ hands as they’re navigating these challenges coming up within them. But after all of these years of struggling, going back to the story, I felt that I had to find my place in neurodiversity somehow. After several years of juggling jobs and doing all kinds of different things, which at the time didn’t feel like there was really any purpose for why that was happening or what was going on, I ended up hiring a career coach for myself. And he pointed out all the strengths in me that I was not even willing to acknowledge for myself. And it changed me. So I took all my experience of working with neurodivergent people and all my experience working with my coach, and I ended up being a coach for neurodivergent people.

[Dana Skaggs] (09:34)
That is such a beautiful story. I’ve been wondering, as I’m listening to you describe this, about my listeners, and for possibly some of the listeners that don’t really know much about neurodivergence, what would be something that you could share with them? Someone whose diagnoses or different behavior patterns, or something, maybe they have a friend or coworker who is neurodivergent, they’ve never really had a moment to educate themselves on what that means. Would you mind taking a few moments and just kind of explain it, take it way down to the basic elemental level. Neurodivergence, if you were running into someone like a friend or family member or co-worker, how can somebody tell? What are some common behavioral trends or patterns that someone might have that happens to be neurodivergent?

[Khushboo Chabria] (10:36)
Well, I will tell you one thing, Dana. We have to start with the premise that when you meet one neurodivergent person, you’ve only met one. Because every neurodivergent person’s traits and characteristics and strengths can be so unique. However, I will start with this: we have to start with the premise that neurodiversity is normal, right? Just like biodiversity is normal, racial diversity is normal, cultural diversity is normal, physical characteristic trait diversity is normal. We’re probably different heights. We have different hair color, different eye colors. Why is it that we can’t accept that our brains are not different from each other’s? That’s all neurodiversity is. So if we start with that premise first, that neurodiversity is normal, neurodiversity is important. Neurodiversity is needed for us as a human race to go forward and have the kind of innovation and transformation we want to see in the world. We need different kinds of brains. We need different kinds of perspectives at the table. And there’s a medical model of neurodiversity which looks at these labels: autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, Tourette’s syndrome. When we use these words, of course we need different labels for what are the differences between these actual conditions. However, the main thing that we want to know is that it’s not really about the label, it’s about the individual. And when we talk about these labels, we’re really saying that something is wrong, something is broken, something needs to be fixed, whereas they were actually before just labels for characterizations of these differences in brains. So neurodiversity is just differences in brain and behavior functioning, because we can’t see our brain. We can only experience each other’s brains from how we interact with each other, how we communicate, how we process information, how we make sense of what is being said to us, how we experience the physical stimuli around us, and how we regulate our bodies. It’s different from person to person. With neurodivergent people, their differences in those areas can be a little bit more different than the neuro-typical people who may not have that level, or that condition, or that diagnosis. However, it doesn’t make it something wrong. It doesn’t make it something that needs to be fixed or changed or adapted to. It’s just something we need to accept.

[Dana Skaggs] (13:39)
I love this. I love the way you’re describing all of this, and want to take a moment and just point out that diversity in general is a wonderful thing, because I’m imagining in a workplace, you have all these different individuals sitting around a table. If they’re working on a project, they’re going to come up with a much better solution if you have different points of view sitting around the table, different cultural experiences, different racial experiences, different intellectual experiences, because then you get to open up. That’s what I’m hearing you say, is just creating that space, opening up and acceptance, and really not only acceptance, but really celebrating the differences that we all have. And when we all come together, we can really create something wonderful when we are opening up to those differences in one another.

[Khushboo Chabria] (14:38)
Absolutely. I’ve been in teams where people thought that my strengths were nice-to-haves. And I’ve been in performance evaluations where my manager sat down and said, “We need the strength in our team, and how can we put that to use? What do you think? Let’s work on this together. I would like to see you doing more of this.” And there’s a huge difference between that. I work in a neuro-inclusive team now. My manager knows I have ADHD, and even though it might make it that I do my job a little bit differently than other people who’ve done this job before me, the way that I do it is my way, and he appreciates that and he welcomes that. And he was the first individual in my life who said, I don’t want you to keep trying to prove to me that you can do all the things. I want you to do what you do well. I want you to master yourself. I want you to know yourself. I want you to tell me what you need and be open about it. The door is always open. And it really transformed me, Dana. Really did. I’ve flourished into the person I believe that I was always meant to be. And I get to do that for other people.

[Dana Skaggs] (16:12)
Isn’t that so wonderful that you get to do that? I’m so happy. What do you feel like are some of the more common misconceptions in the workplace about neurodiversity?

[Khushboo Chabria] (16:27)
I mean, there’s many. If we start with the premise of understanding that not everyone who’s neurodivergent is diagnosed and knows about it themselves, or knows that they are coming across a certain way at all, then there’s probably a lot of misunderstandings that are possible. Some people might think that people who don’t understand or keep up with the office humor are rude or stuck up or think they’re better than other people. But let’s talk about even outside of neurodiversity. There’s someone who speaks another language and English is not their first language in that meeting. There’s someone in that room who doesn’t understand popular cultural references because they don’t watch TV, or they didn’t watch the Super Bowl, or whatever’s going on. There might be someone in that room who’s the only woman in the room, and maybe the joke was off-putting to her. We have to think about it, but there’s a lot of different misconceptions that can happen when we look at everyone through the lenses of expectation and judgment. So one of the things that we teach in our trainings to organizations is that we all walk around with these lenses of expectation and judgment. Immediately when we see someone, we’re already making, oh, they’re probably this or they’re probably that. We might not say that out loud, but we all have a tendency to do that internally. What we ask companies to do is take off those lenses and put on the lenses of compassionate curiosity. And what we’re saying is that when you see something that doesn’t make sense, or seems a little odd to you, or you’re confused by it, instead of jumping to a conclusion, get curious, ask why, have compassion for you not knowing that person’s journey before that moment, and give them a little bit of a mic to share what it is that they meant, so that you are giving them the chance to explain what they meant. I think we kind of lose that in the workplace, and it’s because we want everyone to be a certain way. We want everyone to show up in meetings a certain way. We want everyone to dress a certain way. When we talk about company culture, we have to ask ourselves, what do we mean by that? Is that culture based on principles? Is it based on a mission? Or is it based on these other things that don’t have really anything to do with work?

[Dana Skaggs] (19:35)
Well, and that brings to mind, you hear people talk about the good old boy network. And so even with women trying to work in areas that are historically predominantly male, they struggle, and even in 2024, women still kind of struggle when you talk about what is the cultural environment in the corporate space. Like you said, is it based on a mission statement, or is it something else going on behind the scenes?

[Khushboo Chabria] (20:20)
Mm-hmm, correct.

[Dana Skaggs] (20:20)
I really like the way you talk about compassionate curiosity because it reminds me a lot of when I’m seeing patients, being a psychotherapist. I see patients a lot, I have a private practice, and I regularly encourage them because they will come in and I will find that they will be judging themselves. And I would say, would you mind taking off that judgment cloak you have wrapped around you and hang it on the hook on the wall, please? And instead, let’s just look at your behavior patterns from a point of curiosity. I love that, because you’re like, well, isn’t it, I am in fact doing this, because we need to be honest. We don’t need to be sugarcoating everything. Let’s just look at something honestly. But then, well, isn’t it curious that I do this or I do that? Yeah, it is curious. Why do you think you do that? I do that so much in my practice. So I’m very happy to hear you say that you’re really putting that out there and encouraging people to look at the environment and looking at other people with that extension of, instead of judgment, looking at other people from the point of curiosity: isn’t it curious that they do it this way, or they wear this, or they talk this way, or they bring up certain topics repeatedly, that kind of thing. I love that so much.

[Khushboo Chabria] (21:40)
Right. And, you know, we’ve moved away from mentoring people to just managing people. What happened to those conversations where you’re like, I really want to see more of this and I really appreciate you doing this, that, and the other? Is there something going on why you’re not sharing in meetings? And the manager who asked that question is going to hear all kinds of responses. “I feel like no one’s calling on me. I never know when to jump in. It feels like if I share something, it’s going to get ridiculed.” These are things that happen in the corporate workplace. And the manager who is bringing that compassion and curiosity, whether or not they know if someone’s neurodivergent, they don’t have to know. They are being inclusive. That’s all it is: including people for their abilities and accepting them for their differences.

[Dana Skaggs] (22:50)
I like this. As I’m listening to you talk, I’m certain we have listeners now that are neurodivergent in some kind of way, because like you say, we’re all divergent in all kinds of ways, and we’re all diverse in all kinds of ways, which is fantastic. But like you’re pointing out, sometimes people that have a neurodivergence in the workplace and the corporate space do get treated in ways that aren’t particularly very friendly or kind. What would you say to a listener who feels like they fit in this category? How can they be their own best advocate? What would you recommend that they do if they’re in a situation where they feel like they’re meeting this criteria that we’ve been chatting about and they’re not comfortable in their workspace?

[Khushboo Chabria] (23:52)
The first thing I would ask that person to do is to give themselves a lot of compassion, because living in a world that isn’t designed for how your brain works and for what it needs is a very, very sad and scary place. So give yourself the self-acceptance, the validation, the trust, the ownership, and the confidence to know that there’s nothing wrong with you at all. You just are not in the right environment. You need to figure out if asking for the things that you need is going to work in that environment, and if you feel like it isn’t, then remove yourself from that environment and find people, find teams who are willing to work with how you work. Learn the words, more than anything, to say what it is that you need, so that you can show up most authentically as yourself, whether that’s in a work setting, a community setting, or a personal life setting. And I would also suggest to that person to check out our book, “Neurodiversity for Dummies,” which was actually published this year by my team, and to share this book with people in your life who you want to make sure understand you better, because this is not just for neurodivergent individuals. This is also to support parents, educators, policymakers, researchers, managers, colleagues. There’s a lot of heart and love and energy and patience and effort that went into this book. It is actually a culmination of all of the times when I was doing all those different jobs and nobody knew why I was doing so many different things. This is a product of that. And I hope that it can help someone feel empowered to live a life that they can thrive in, regardless of their diagnosis, regardless of their differences, and knowing that they absolutely deserve to take up space and to belong where they want to belong.

[Dana Skaggs] (26:34)
I love that. I’m resonating so much with what you’re saying, because I actually had a patient a while back that described it that way. She said, “I don’t feel like I am allowed to take up space. I feel like I shouldn’t be taking up any space” is how she worded things. So I really like the way you’re encouraging people that if they are in an environment that is not compassionate, it is not receptive to how they think, instead of thinking, oh, well, that must mean something’s wrong with me, instead to think, I haven’t found my people. I’m in the wrong place. I haven’t found my people. My people are out there, and these aren’t my people.

[Dana Skaggs] (27:29)
And that’s a very different mindset, knowing that they are out there. And in an odd sort of way, it kind of reminds me of a keynote presentation I did recently, and you get the feedback from keynotes, and it’s funny when you review all the responses. I don’t know the statistics, but there’s going to be a percentage that think you were amazing, you were God’s gift to them that day, and they’re so glad, they needed everything you had to say. And then there’s going to be others that are like, I really didn’t like her, what was she even talking about, we didn’t need to know anything she said, it was boring. It’s so funny to hear such diverse responses. So I think it’s neat to realize that our people are out there, and it may not be the people that we’re working with right now, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. That’s what you’re saying: if your current situation is not positive, it’s not encouraging, then look around and think, where might I fit better?

[Khushboo Chabria] (28:54)
Correct. And one more thing I wanted to say about that is, when you’re in that position, it’s very easy to feel like you’re all alone. Find community. That’s what I would ask these people to do. There’s a lot of neurodivergent people out there, a lot of people who are making content about neurodiversity, about autism, about ADHD. Find those people. It’s very healing to feel seen and heard and understood. We all need that. It’s not just a nice to have. We need that to live. So I just wanted to add that tidbit there.

[Dana Skaggs] (29:41)
Yes. That’s amazing and so, so true. Do you have any suggestions, any websites or organizations that come to mind, if I have someone that’s listening right now that’s thinking, my gosh, what Khushboo is saying is what I need, I need to find community, I feel like I’m all alone. Where would you recommend that they go?

[Khushboo Chabria] (29:47)
There’s a lot of different advocacy groups around autism. A really important one in the Bay Area that we’ve been connected to for a long time is ASAN. There’s also neurodivergent people that are out there online, a lot of people are finding community online right now. But locally, you can find meetups, you can find parent groups if you’re a parent, if you are dealing with supporting your education you can talk to an educational advocate, you can go to your disability office. There’s a lot of different things you can do to find community, but you have to want to find community. And it’s very easy when you’re in that moment to just want to isolate. Especially speaking for me, that’s what I do when I’m feeling completely broken: it’s very easy to just kind of shut in and not even know how to take the first step. But register for that event, go to that meeting, find that meetup, call that friend, and really do one thing for yourself. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot. Do one thing for yourself that day, and then wake up the next day and say, today I’m going to do two things for myself, and then the next day, five. You kind of have to build that momentum for yourself. And it’s much, much easier when you have people around you that get it.

[Dana Skaggs] (32:08)
And you’re worth it, you know, to know that we’re worth it. We deserve this. We deserve belonging. We deserve to be seen. We deserve to be heard. We deserve to have space. That’s awesome. So, Khushboo, I know that my listeners are thinking, oh my goodness gracious, I need to get more of her, I need to know more about what she has to say, what she has to offer. She’s absolutely amazing. Now, what I have down here is the website, N as in Neurodiversity Pathways, ndpathways.org.

[Khushboo Chabria] (32:41)
Correct. So if you go on our website, if you are a neurodivergent job seeker or someone who’s struggling with your career, we do have a program called Career Readiness Training. It’s a 17 week training. We’re actually enrolling for our spring cohort, which starts in February of next year, February 11th to be exact. And if you’re an organization, if you’re a team manager, if you’re a leader, if you work in HR, if you work in diversity inclusion, if you’re interested in bringing learning and development options and offerings for your company to increase their awareness and understanding and acceptance of neurodiversity, we have a lot of different things we offer in that regard. We do neurodiversity in the workplace awareness sessions. We do highly interactive workshops on things like executive functioning, how to have inclusive meetings, how to give and receive feedback. I believe that the future of the workforce is neurodiverse. So I believe that organizations need to do a whole lot more, because we are in trying times right now. We need to think about diversity inclusion more, and we cannot forget about neurodiversity. It’s here. It’s always been here. Albert Einstein was dyslexic. So let’s remember that there’s a lot of things that we need in going forward, on this journey of building a better world, for which we do need people who will bring new and fresh and different perspectives to the table.

[Dana Skaggs] (34:43)
100%, that’s it, that’s it, that’s fantastic. Khushboo, we thank you so much. I know you’ve taken your precious time and you brought your expertise and your experience and your wisdom to my listeners, to Phoenix in Flame. Thank you very much.

[Khushboo Chabria] (34:49)
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you, Dana.

[Dana Skaggs] (35:06)
Listeners, I know you have heard numerous things in this podcast that Khushboo has said that you’re thinking, you know what, I have a best friend, I have a relative, I have coworkers, I have a manager, I have direct reports that need to hear what Khushboo has to say. Take this podcast episode, copy and paste the link, send it in text, send it in email, post it on your favorite social media sites so we can grow our Phoenix and Flame community so we can reach out and people can know you are not alone. Thank you so much for spending your day with us. I hope your day is going great and that the rest of your day is going to be fantastic. I’m Dana on Phoenix and Flame.