Occasions such as holidays, weddings, anniversaries or even memorials are ripe opportunities for your boundaries and your integrity to be tested by the unhealthy behavior habits of those around you. You can love your family, friends or co-workers immensely, but there is something about special events that can bring out the crazy in everyone. There might be a family gathering or an office party that you would rather bow out of, but you decide to go as one of your ‘shoulds,’ trusting your instincts that this is one you better show up at. But history may also have taught you that you have to be careful with your truth and your trust. Here are some think ahead pointers that you may find will ring your holiday bells:

1. Gifts: Be gentle on your bank account and spend within your budget. To keep to your personal limits, it might be best to buy a humbler gift rather than ‘go in’ with someone whose taste may not be in your budget. If you get into lavish or beyond your budget gift giving in order to please others, you are not likely to get any more appreciation than the economical, thoughtfully chosen gift.
2. Dinners: If you only feel like bringing the jello, only bring the jello. Some families and friends have expectations that do not match your capacity to give at this point in time. They don’t know your life like you do. Take care of yourself and promise only what you can comfortably do.
3. Spirituality: Do it your way. Sometimes our way of being spiritual grows away from what we were taught or what ‘everyone else’ is doing. Go where you feel you fit. Don’t go. Go inside yourself. Do go it your way.
4. The Gala: Go and keep it light. Gravitate to the people you are comfortable with. Smile, say please and thank you and talk about the weather. Stay out of the kitchen [where conversations tend to heat up] and you will keep your cool. Understay your welcome. Think ahead about predictable behavior patterns from your people groups and prepare for it. Leave before you lose it. Leave before you know they’ll lose it.
5. Traditions: Sometimes they wear out. Or they are just not uplifting any more. If you used to do something because it was an activity you enjoyed sharing with your grandpa and he’s not here anymore, maybe its time to retire that plan and celebrate life in new ways that fit your life of today. Create new traditions or re-create fondly remembered ones.
6. Friends: Incorporate friends into family holiday plans. Friends are great buffers to keep it light and keep the family charming. What is the definition of ‘friend’? These are the people you choose! They adore you. Take them with you to challenging functions.
7. The Children: Hang out with them. Kids are fun and interesting people at a party. Or just observe them. Enjoy their delightful honesty, their innocence and their ability to be themselves. Laugh with them. Let them be your models. You model for them healthy social relating.
8. The Mail: Leave it a mystery. If it is the style of your critics to write stuff that is not in the uplifting spirit of the occasion, don’t open the envelope! Do you open junk mail? If your instincts tell you that you may have to read a junk message that will be draining on your brain, and you decide to take the risk, be confident that you can dismiss it with an “Oh well that’s who they are.” And don’t dwell on it, move your thoughts onward.
9. Self-Talk: Your memories love to come out on special occasions and replay the negative experiences from years gone by. If holiday tension tends to wind up being “your fault” just remember: That is ‘their’ illusion. Because they talk does not mean you have to believe. You know what is right. You will get more respect for being who you are than for hopelessly trying to please.
10. You: Plan carefully so that your memories are most likely to store feelings of fondness after the festivities. Check in with your intuition. Do your best to go and be where you see joy and peace on the horizon.

You have just hired someone who has Asperger Syndrome, or perhaps you suspect so, and indeed he or she has very strong skills to match the job description. It is likely that you will be very pleased because people with Asperger Syndrome tend to have strong focus and commitment to a job well done.

To set up for office place success, you will find it pays off to invest in some training time, early on in some of those skills unrelated to the primary job, but fundamentally important to navigating the day at the office.

Here are seven straightforward strategies to help your new employee prosper and produce for your business.

1. Logical lists. As you see a routine or task that requires daily attention, log it on a list. Explaining the purpose behind the task may help it to become automatic. People with Asperger Syndrome like to make sense out of things.

2. Create a ‘cheat sheet’ for phone coverage. If want your employee to pinch hit on the phones, have a few generic phrases that work for your workplace, for example, “Can I have someone get back to you with that information?”

3. Be very specific about what you expect in general office matters. Help her to know where more and less flexibility is in order and appropriate in the daily flow of the work place. What routines must be done one way only? Observe, make notes and plan for periodic feedback time.

4. Be prepared to give your input with some of the smaller steps you may not typically think of stating. Gradually transfer responsibility and accountability to your employee, withdrawing your level of involvement as you see him catching on to the rhythms of your office place.

5. Help her become comfortable with the social culture of your workplace. People with Asperger tend to want to stay focused on tasks they enjoy. Being specific about when to go for breaks and lunch will be a guide for opportunities to personally connect with co-workers.

6. Have a set routine for evaluation and feedback sessions. Start the meeting by talking about the qualities you see in your new employee. “Here’s where your work is very well done.” Be sensitive to feelings of past failure with social and organizational issues. Your employee with Asperger is probably quite familiar with his weaknesses, having heard about them and struggled with them in some other past setting. You can say ” Here’s where we will work together:”

7. Don’t be afraid to be blunt. It will be helpful. There is a distinction between ‘blunt’ and ‘rude.’ He will appreciate and understand directness and clarity. If you are finding yourself repeating requests, you can say, “What plan can we come up with to help you establish routines that I have been reminding you about?”

Your new employee has the skills you were looking for and is dedicated to doing the job well. The challenging part for a person with Asperger Syndrome is the less structured, more social aspects of office culture. Small talk, picking up what others are thinking, and being imaginative about solving problems are challenging for people with Asperger Syndrome. Following are seven straightforward tips to help them thrive.

1. Be precise and specific with your instructions. Slang and expressions of speech may not translate to what you want to communicate. Details and examples help. “This is how it should look when it is done.”

2. Encourage your employee to come up with some process strategies for doing his job. For example, he might work well by recording tasks on a template he creates with visuals, spacing or organization that makes good sense to him.

3. Help her relax about asking for help on the job. Disability acts encourage people to discuss the modifications they need in the work place. However, there is often hesitation because of the fear that disclosure will be a stigma or put the job in jeopardy. You want to be receptive, should your employee want to ask for an accommodation that will help her work better.

4. Encourage co-workers to have a collaborative office culture when it comes to helping out each other. Your employee with Asperger Syndrome will have strengths that will be an asset to your team. Helping others in the office by lending a hand with one’s own talents helps him connect socially with office mates.

5. Don’t let the diagnosis ‘asperger’ or ‘autism’ be a defining characteristic of your employee; it is one aspect of who this person is. The diagnosis becomes important for you to know when it helps you to help your employee shine on the job.

6. Be open to someone who may be a support person in the personal life of your employee with Asperger Syndrome. Some parents stay involved a little longer in the life of their adult child, as an advocate in the background. Until your employee initiates the conversation about bringing in his advocate, remember to build trust through messages that convey you value his work. Some young adults with Asperger want to do it on their own, while others would welcome their support person to coach or advise to help them get independent with some of the more interpersonal aspects of being on the job.

7. Try to give a personal heads up if there is a schedule or routine type change, that he may not pick up on automatically. A person with Asperger Syndrome will need some extra cueing at times. Keep the focus on the gifts, which brought this person to your work place and motivated you to hire him or her!

After happening across an article on Asperger Syndrome, Jack wrote me about his new employee with whom he was quite pleased and also quite baffled. Jack talked about the similarities he saw between Al, his new employee, and the characteristics of a person with Asperger syndrome. Al was hired because he excels in understanding and managing the software systems this business uses. The problem arose with the more routine skills that did not come naturally to Al, but are crucial to work place survival.

Jack was not sure how or whether to suggest to Al that he explore a possible Asperger diagnosis, but what Jack was sure of, was that some steps had to be taken in order to keep Al on as his employee. We decided not to worry about what the diagnosis might be, if indeed there was one, and concentrate on helping Al with behavior change and independence.

Following are four specific and concise action steps Jack and I designed in a series of email exchanges:

Goal #1 Getting Comfortable with the Plan

Jack: “I don’t know how to talk to Al about doing this work with you, without risking that he will feel ‘singled out’.”

Ellen: I think you will find Al won’t be surprised and will be relieved that his weak spots are out in the open. Let’s do everything in consultation with Al one-step at a time.

The Plan: In a short conversation, Jack simply said to Al, “We both have a lot to remember and we need systems to help us get our work done.” Jack also explained he was working with me. Al was receptive, saying more structure would be good. Jack added a little extra assurance for Al, saying to him “If you have any questions about anything, I will try to be available immediately, please come see me.”

Goal #2 Remembering End of Day Routines

Jack: “Al stays late to finish projects several nights a week. I really like this! But he does not ever remember that the last person to leave puts the phone on night call forwarding to voice mail.”

The Plan: We established the Office Manual. Al set himself up with a small divided binder, with ‘To remember’ sections for End of Day and Beginning of Day. In his End of Day section he has a page for ‘Before I walk out’ where he enters the details he needs to remember about turning on the call forwarding. The first two times Al was last to leave, Jack had to mention the next morning that he had forgotten to look at his Office Manual the night before. Within two weeks, just the habit of opening his manual cued Al remember to forward the phones. By the third week, call forwarding became a habit for Al when he was last out.

Goal #3 Password Change Follow Through

Jack: “Al has the job of creating and routinely changing passwords used by others on the office. The procedure is that Al has the responsibility of recording them in the computer directory where everyone goes to access the updates. The problem is that Al forgets and people are getting frustrated and their work flow is interrupted when they can’t get into files.”

The Plan: Al’s manual has a section for ‘Procedures’. Jack teaches Al the procedure and Al take over with the responsibility of referring to his book regularly. If a password is not updated, Jack simply says “Al please refer to the procedure I taught you for passwords.” Jack does NOT tell Al the action he needs to take. It is in the book and exploring for the answer will help Al establish the new habit sooner.

Goal #4 Involving Al in Creating his Strategies

Jack: There are so many details and procedures to keep an office running. As soon as I put one strategy in place there’s more to deal with.

The Plan: Encourage Al to look for ways to keep adding to and evolving the manual. Coach him to come up with more strategies that help him move toward independence.

Al’s Plan:

1. As part of his end of the day routine, Al placed his manual on top of his computer so he would come in and see it in an obvious place each morning. He reminded himself right in his manual to leave the manual on the computer, last thing!

2. On the front of the binder, Al printed in big letters Look here first. This cued him that he had resource on hand before getting overwhelmed.

3. Al reviewed his manual throughout the day at times he designated to spend working on absorbing the information.

Feedback

Al: It is great that I don’t have to wonder how to do something or worry that I am doing things wrong. There is less and less for me to remember as I review the manual. I liked being able to use my own ideas and strategies to further personalize this for me.

Jack: The time I was taking to explain and correct has dramatically reduced. I am getting my own schedule back on track! The best strategy is that once Al has the system recorded in his work manual, I can now just choose from one of two short comments. “Al did you look at your list today?” or “Al you have a list that tells you this procedure.” It’s working great!

Very important tip: Keep your plan firmly in place until you have given it a generous amount of time to settle into place. Then evaluate. When you think your strategies aren’t working, giving up is usually the reason why!

See companion articles by Ellen Mossman-Glazer~

Communication Tips to Help Your Employee with Asperger Syndrome Thrive in Your Work Place

Practical Tips to Help Your Employee with Asperger Syndrome Get Established in Your Office

We again visit the workplace of employer ‘Jack’ and his new employee ‘Al’ who has Asperger Syndrome. In this small informal office, Al felt discomfort and confusion with ordinary routines related to phones, break time and workplace jargon. In this next phase of our work together, we designed three customized action plans, which helped Al succeed with the more social side of office responsibilities.

Jack: “When it comes to the job he was hired to do, Al is outstanding. But when people skills are required, he flounders. He goes off topic or seems confused about what people do in ordinary daily situations.”

Jack decided he would work directly and discreetly with Al, to help him feel less ‘centered out’ for this personalized training program. Co-workers had ‘supporting roles’ but Jack was the one-to-one trainer and advocate for Al.

We created action plans for these three social aspects of office life:

1. Telephone Conversation Skills

2. Flexibility and Feelings of Fitting In

3. Expressions of Speech

Goal #1 Telephone Conversation Skills

Jack: “Sometimes we have to rely on Al to cover phones for parts of the day when the office is short on staff. Al tells me he has had some bad experiences trying to figure out what to say on the phone. I can see he is anxious about this.”

The Plan: Al and Jack created a phone answering ‘script sheet’ that gave Al the words and phrases for opening greetings, message taking, transferring calls, general comments about who to speak to for what, and a few social niceties. They role played privately in Jack’s office. Jack asked Al to keep his conversations business-like brief. Al’s scripted answer to
“How are you today?” was “Fine, thank you.” since Al was sometimes tempted to answer with enthusiastic details more appropriate for social conversation with friends. If someone’s question threw him a curve, Al’s SOS script was “Please hold for someone who can help you.” and immediately transfer the call to Jack or Jack’s assistant. Al’s phone skills grew and on his own initiative, he spent time sitting in areas where he could listen and learn from co-workers fielding phone calls.

Goal #2 Flexibility and Feelings of Fitting In

Jack: “Al gets fixated on his work. It’s a quality that turns into a disadvantage at times. Other things come with this job! Time is open ended for Al! I want him to know when to focus on something else that needs to be taken care of, or even just have lunch.”

The Plan: This was a two-step plan:
1. Jack worked with Al to clarify and prioritize tasks that could be done over time, and tasks that had deadlines that were more pressing. He explained to Al that it was important and encouraged to stop and take breaks on occasions that threw the usual routine off schedule, such as an office staff meeting or a birthday gathering.

2. Jack and Al collaborated on a set of guiding questions, which helped to steer Al into another activity, if necessary. To help him break focus and evaluate, Al set his watch to beep three times a day to remind him to review his questions list:

o “Is there something else I need to tend to right now?”

o “Is something going on that everyone else is a part of?”

o “What do I need to do before getting back to my work?”

Al faithfully relied on his ‘guiding questions’ once he experienced how good it felt to fit in with the normal office rhythms.

Goal #3 Expressions of Speech

Office life had its own culture and early on Al was grappling with language that, for him, was a garble of confusing messages.

Jack: “Al is really mystified by phrases we all take for granted here. When we use expressions new to Al, like ‘shift gears’ or ‘hit the ground running’ I can see he is baffled. When a co-worker said “I am fit to be tied,” Al did not make the connection that his co-worker was feeling short of patience and frustrated.

The Plan: Al was encouraged to be honest and ask people to rephrase statements or instructions he did not understand. One of Al’s strengths was memory for information so once he understood he was on board when the expression came up again. His co-workers were very kind in helping him with work-place vocabulary and Al enjoyed that support. It was thrilling for him to experience the feeling of belonging in this office, so it got to be something of a game for Al to find new work related figures of speech.

In Closing:

These action plans took time and planning, but were successful because Jack saw the long-term value in the commitment required. And Al, who was painfully aware of his social skill ‘deficits’ was receptive to the program and delighted with the good feelings that come with support and progress.

This is a case study companion article to Help Your Employee With Asperger Syndrome Get into the Flow of Your Office Routines

The teenage years are a test, for parents and for teachers, but most of all, for the teens themselves. Teens are constantly being tested on life decisions, and they need a lot of guidance at a time of life when they least want to hear it. But much of the time teens are amazingly wise about the issues we worry they will not be able to handle. The trick is to guide them, while allowing them to hold on to that independence they so value.

You can guide your teens by coaching them to arrive at the smart and sensible answers they already know, and just have to discover within themselves.

Here are nine questions you can pose to your kids to develop the process of thinking through their life issues. These questions work in just about any situation, such as peer pressure, school achievement, and dilemmas that come with hard to make choices.

Pick one or two. Don’t overload. Sometimes one key question opens the gateway for your teen to reach that “Aha!” moment and do the right thing for his or her life.

Questions for your teen to reflect on:

1. Can you give your full commitment to this plan?

2. Where would you like this decision to take you?

3. What will you do when there are temptations to do something different from what you have planned?

4. What will it feel like to meet this goal?

5. How can you keep remembering that there is a better way to think about some things? [...when you feel yourself slipping.]

6. What will happen when / if you don’t follow through? How will you help yourself make a correction?

7. What can you tell yourself if your resolve begins to weaken and you need a confidence boost?

Final Tip: Sometimes teens need a mentor or an adult they respect, who is not their parent. It does not diminish your role as a parent. What is happening when your teens seem to respect the opinion of others though you would have said the very same thing? They are working on the normal adolescent process of growing away from you. The behavior of teens can be very confusing. Remember your teen is exploring how to be with and without you as an integral part of his or her life. If your child does work with a mentor type person, it is a good idea for you to know who the supporting adult is, but once you have trust in that person, stepping aside may be a great gift to your teen.
If you do decide to encourage your teen to find a mentor, here’s the question to plant:

8. Who is a person you feel comfortable going to, to talk things over when you need a sounding board?

Parents, don’t expect feedback, but welcome it. You will get your best feedback in the results you see.

Your success in working with people, and especially with your challenging loved ones, is tied to how emotionally intelligent you operate. Here is a quick primer to get you on your way to creating your own personal and productive Emotional Operating System.

10 Tips to Working With Your Emotions – Intelligently!

1. Know your feelings – and how strong they may be – before you get into action with your challenging people.

2. Make behavior decisions that you will feel proud of. Your style will be their style. “They” learn by watching you and listening to you.

3. Know what others are feeling. Understand that you may not agree.

4. Find the words to convey your feelings without denying someone else theirs.

5. Seek out the good things in a situation, even if they are microscopic or a real stretch.

6. Be persistent – appropriately! Stay on track. Back off the track when you know you will get nowhere right now.

7. Monitor your impulses. Reflect on your own thinking that won’t help in the bigger picture.

8. You may need to withdraw your approval. But in the process don’t withdraw the love.

9. Have tools to manage your emotions before you are swept away by them.

10. Think about how you deliver your message. What would you be feeling if you were on the receiving end? Care about the feelings of the other person. It’s just the good old golden rule.

Refer to and live these ‘process’ steps as you work with your challenging loved ones and you will begin to see the bonus you give to yourself.

Copyright Ellen Mossman-Glazer 2009. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share or reprint this article, providing it remains as written with all contact and copyright information included along with a link to http://artofbehaviorchange.com This content is coaching and education and not intended to take the place of psychological services, where advised and appropriate. Contact me at ellen@artofbehaviorchange.com