Course Objective
The objective of this course is to help employers and an organisations’ staff communicate clearly with neurodivergent students.
Target group
Employers and employees in an organization
Learning Outcomes
After completing this course, the learners will be able to:
- Explain why clear communication is important
- Explain the double empathy problem
- List the core principles for Neuro-Inclusive Communication
Duration
15 minutes
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course
Presentation
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4
Optional Learner Presentation 1 (≤2 minutes)
Create 1–2 slides showing the preparation of a short accessible e-mail which you are going to send to your organisations staff in order to invite them in a weekly meeting.
Optional Learner Presentation 2 (≤2 minutes)
Create 1–2 slides containing a list with words/phrases that you believe an employer should not use because these show:
1. Sarcasm
2. Do not confirm understanding
3. Do not give clear instructions
Other Communication Games
1. Back-to-Back Drawing
This exercise is about listening, clarity and developing potential strategies when we communicate. In communicating expectations, needs, and more, it helps to clarify and create common ground. This can show what happens when we don’t…
For this activity, you’ll need an even number of participants so everybody can have a partner. Once people have paired off, they sit back-to-back with a paper and pencil each. One member takes on the role of a speaker, and the other plays the part of the listener.
Over five to ten minutes, the speaker describes a geometric image from a prepared set, and the listener tries to turn this description into a drawing without looking at the image.
Then, they talk about the experience, using several of the following example questions:
Speaker Questions
• What steps did you take to ensure your instructions were clear? How could these be applied in real-life interactions?
• Our intended messages aren’t always interpreted as we mean them to be. While speaking, what could you do to decrease the chance of miscommunication in real-life dialogue?
Listener Questions
• What was constructive about your partner’s instructions?
• In what ways might your drawing have turned out differently if you could have communicated with your partner?
Mimes
Here’s an exercise on the pivotal role of clarification. When it comes to tasks and expectations, it goes without saying that clarity helps us avoid lots of unwanted things. And clarity plays a role on a larger scale when it comes to our roles more broadly, in fact, it’s a psychological resource under the Job Demands-Resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007).
Succinctly, ambiguity contributes to stress, and clarity is empowering—something that is easy to overlook and which this game reminds us of.
Any number of co-workers can participate in this very simple mime game. You’ll need a list of topics for people to act out, then invite players to break off into groups of two. In these pairs, they will take turns being a mime and being an asker. The mime reads the card, then attempts to act out what’s on it (you’ll first need to decide on a theme, like weather, activities, or what have you).
While the asker can pose questions, the mime can only act out their answers.
It might unearth an awareness of implicit assumptions, bringing our conscious attention to the role these play in our judgments. Potential discussion questions will help you unpack this further:
• How did your questioning skills help you comprehend what was going on?
• What value do questioning skills have when we’re trying to understand others?
• What factors sometimes prevent us from asking questions when they might actually be useful?
(Source: 30+ Communication Games & Activities to Improve Social Skills
https://positivepsychology.com/communication-games-and-activities/)