“You are difficult to work with.”
Few workplace comments carry as much weight as this one. It is often delivered casually, perhaps during feedback, performance discussions, or even informal conversations between colleagues. Yet for many neurodivergent employees, it reflects years of being misunderstood, judged against unwritten social expectations, and expected to navigate workplaces that were never designed with their needs in mind.
The phrase itself is revealing because it focuses entirely on the experience of others. It says little about the challenges being experienced by the individual receiving the criticism. It assumes that the issue lies solely with the person rather than considering whether workplace systems, communication styles, or organisational cultures might also be contributing to the problem.
Many neurodivergent employees spend their careers adapting themselves to fit workplace norms. They learn to hide behaviours, rehearse conversations, suppress natural responses, and expend significant mental energy trying to meet expectations that come naturally to others. The effort involved is rarely visible. Colleagues see behaviour. They do not see the cognitive workload, emotional strain, or exhaustion that may sit beneath it.
This is particularly true for employees with autism, ADHD, AuDHD, and dyslexia. While each experience is different, many encounter similar patterns of misunderstanding that can affect performance, confidence, wellbeing, and career progression.
When Directness Is Mistaken for Disrespect
An autistic employee may quickly find themselves labelled as difficult because of the way they communicate. Many autistic people value clarity, accuracy, and honesty. They may focus on facts rather than social diplomacy and may assume that when someone asks for feedback, they genuinely want an honest answer.
Imagine a project meeting where a manager presents a new process. While others politely nod along, an autistic employee points out several flaws and highlights risks that could cause delays later in the project. Their intention is not to undermine the manager or create conflict. Their goal is to solve a problem before it becomes a larger issue. However, colleagues may interpret the feedback as criticism, negativity, or a lack of respect.
The situation becomes even more complicated because many workplace environments place significant value on social communication. Small talk, networking, reading subtle social cues, and understanding unwritten rules often play an important role in professional relationships. An autistic employee who prefers direct communication or who struggles with these social expectations may be perceived as distant, unfriendly, or disengaged, even when they are fully committed to their work and colleagues.
What is often overlooked is the amount of mental effort that may already be taking place. Many autistic employees spend considerable energy analysing conversations, monitoring their behaviour, interpreting social situations, and trying to avoid making mistakes. The colleague who appears calm and detached may spend hours afterwards replaying interactions and worrying whether they have offended someone.
When ADHD Is Mistaken for Carelessness
Employees with ADHD often face a different set of assumptions. They are frequently described as disorganised, forgetful, inconsistent, or lacking attention to detail. These descriptions can be deeply frustrating because they focus on outcomes without recognising the neurological challenges that contribute to them.
Consider an employee who arrives at work full of enthusiasm and ideas. They contribute creatively during meetings, identify innovative solutions, and bring energy to projects. However, they also miss deadlines, forget to respond to emails, lose track of tasks, or struggle to complete administrative work. Over time, colleagues may conclude that the individual lacks discipline or simply needs to try harder.
The reality is far more complex. ADHD affects executive functioning, which includes the mental processes responsible for planning, prioritising, organising, initiating tasks, and managing attention. The issue is rarely a lack of motivation. In fact, many people with ADHD care deeply about their work and become intensely frustrated by their own difficulties.
An employee with ADHD may spend an entire morning trying to start a task that appears straightforward to others. They may know exactly what needs to be done and fully understand its importance, yet still struggle to begin. Conversely, they may become so absorbed in one activity that they lose awareness of time and neglect other responsibilities. These challenges are often invisible to colleagues, who only see the missed deadline or forgotten commitment.
Without understanding, ADHD-related behaviours can easily be interpreted as laziness, irresponsibility, or a lack of professionalism. Such assumptions not only damage confidence but can prevent organisations from recognising the creativity, adaptability, and problem-solving abilities that many employees with ADHD bring to the workplace.
When Dyslexia Is Mistaken for a Lack of Competence
Dyslexia remains one of the most misunderstood neurodivergent conditions in professional environments. Although many people associate dyslexia primarily with reading and spelling difficulties, its impact often extends much further into areas such as information processing, working memory, sequencing, and written communication.
Imagine an experienced employee who consistently demonstrates excellent judgement, strong analytical thinking, and deep subject matter expertise. They can identify risks, solve complex problems, and contribute valuable strategic insights. Yet every time they need to write a report, prepare a presentation, or send an important email, the task takes significantly longer than expected.
The employee carefully reviews their work multiple times, worries about errors, and often relies on colleagues or software tools for additional checking. Despite these efforts, mistakes occasionally appear. Colleagues may interpret these errors as evidence of carelessness or poor attention to detail, without appreciating the additional cognitive effort involved.
Many dyslexic employees become highly skilled at developing compensatory strategies. They often excel at seeing connections between ideas, identifying patterns, and approaching problems from different perspectives. However, because traditional workplace cultures frequently place significant emphasis on written communication, these strengths can be overshadowed by an undue focus on spelling, formatting, or grammatical accuracy.
The result is that talented individuals may spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about how their work appears rather than being recognised for the value of their thinking.
The Unique Complexity of AuDHD
For individuals who are both autistic and have ADHD, workplace experiences can be particularly challenging because the two conditions can create competing needs and behaviours.
An employee with AuDHD may crave structure, routine, and predictability while simultaneously seeking novelty, stimulation, and variety. They may create detailed systems to stay organised yet struggle to maintain them consistently. They may become deeply focused on a task one day and find it almost impossible to engage with the same activity the next.
To colleagues and managers, this can appear confusing or inconsistent. One week the employee may be producing exceptional work at remarkable speed. The next week they may seem overwhelmed, distracted, or unable to maintain the same level of performance. This inconsistency is often misunderstood as a lack of commitment when it may actually reflect the ongoing challenge of balancing two very different neurological experiences.
Many individuals with AuDHD describe feeling as though they are constantly negotiating between competing internal demands. They are expected to operate within workplace structures that reward consistency and predictability while simultaneously managing a brain that does not always function in a linear or predictable way.
The emotional toll of this balancing act is frequently underestimated. Many AuDHD employees report high levels of stress, self-criticism, and exhaustion as they attempt to meet expectations that often fail to account for the complexity of their experience.
The Cost of Masking
One of the most significant yet least recognised aspects of neurodivergent workplace experiences is masking. Masking refers to the process of consciously or unconsciously suppressing natural behaviours and adopting strategies designed to appear more neurotypical.
An employee may force themselves to maintain eye contact despite discomfort. They may rehearse conversations in advance, suppress behaviours that help regulate stress, imitate social behaviours observed in colleagues, or hide difficulties they are experiencing. Over time, these adaptations can become so automatic that others assume the individual is coping well.
The problem is that masking requires significant mental and emotional energy. It is not simply a matter of making small adjustments. For many neurodivergent people, it can feel like performing a role throughout the working day while constantly monitoring their behaviour for signs that they may be perceived negatively.
Although masking may help individuals avoid criticism in the short term, it often comes at a cost. Prolonged masking has been linked to increased anxiety, stress, burnout, and reduced wellbeing. Employees who appear to be managing successfully may actually be operating at the edge of exhaustion.
When burnout eventually occurs, managers are often surprised because the signs have remained hidden for so long. The employee, however, may have been struggling for months or even years.
Creating Workplaces Where People Can Thrive
Building a neuro-inclusive workplace does not require organisations to lower standards or make endless exceptions. It requires a willingness to recognise that people achieve success in different ways and that effective performance is not always linked to a single communication style, working pattern, or social approach.
Inclusive workplaces focus on clarity, flexibility, and understanding. They provide clear expectations, minimise unnecessary ambiguity, recognise different communication styles, and evaluate employees based on outcomes rather than conformity to unwritten social norms. They create environments where people feel safe to discuss their needs without fear of judgement and where managers are equipped to understand the diverse ways in which individuals may experience work.
Most importantly, inclusive workplaces replace assumptions with curiosity. Rather than immediately asking why an employee is difficult to work with, they seek to understand what challenges that employee may be facing and whether adjustments to systems, communication, or expectations could improve the experience for everyone involved.
Looking Beyond the Label
Not every workplace disagreement can be explained by neurodiversity, and not every challenge is the result of misunderstanding. However, many neurodivergent employees spend years being judged through a lens that focuses on difference rather than understanding.
The employee labelled blunt may be trying to communicate honestly. The employee labelled disorganised may be managing significant executive functioning challenges. The employee labelled careless may be investing enormous effort simply to produce written work. The employee labelled inconsistent may be navigating the complex reality of living with both autism and ADHD.
Workplace culture shapes how these individuals are perceived. When organisations focus solely on behaviour, they risk overlooking talent, creativity, insight, and innovation. When they take the time to understand the experiences behind the behaviour, they often discover individuals who bring unique strengths, perspectives, and contributions that enrich teams and strengthen organisations.
Perhaps the question is not whether neurodivergent employees are difficult to work with. Perhaps the more important question is whether workplaces are prepared to understand people whose brains work differently and create environments where they can genuinely succeed.
About My Virtual Carer
Neurodiversity does not end when school does. Many adults continue to navigate the challenges of autism, ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexia, and other neurodivergent conditions throughout their personal and professional lives. My Virtual Carer app helps individuals and families manage routines, appointments, tasks, reminders, medications, and support networks, making day-to-day life more manageable and promoting greater independence and wellbeing.
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