What Leaders and Managers Can Learn from Unmasking Autism
Marcus prided himself on being an approachable manager. He memorized which employees liked small talk and which preferred silence, adjusted his tone for every one-on-one, and spent his commute rehearsing how to deliver feedback so it would land as encouraging rather than critical. After a long day of calibrated warmth, he often sat in his car unable to summon energy for his own family. He assumed this was just what management cost. Then, during a leadership workshop, a colleague mentioned a book about masking and exhaustion, and Marcus realized he had never actually asked whether his team's quietest, most "difficult to read" employees were struggling the way he was, just without a manager title to explain it away. He wondered whether some of what he called low engagement was something else entirely, and whether his own performance of leadership was part of the problem.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The manager's own performance tax
Unmasking Autism's reframe of masking as exhausting labor applies directly to leadership's constant emotional calibration. Reading a room, softening feedback, and projecting steady confidence in back-to-back meetings is real cognitive work, and the fatigue that follows is not a personal failing to fix with better time management. Recognizing this cost in yourself is often the first step toward recognizing it in employees who seem simply "reserved."
Some situations, like delivering hard news calmly, genuinely require managed composure regardless of the toll.
After one full day of meetings, name specifically what you performed versus what came naturally, and notice the pattern.
Why quiet competence gets overlooked
The book explains why adults, women, and people of color are diagnosed later, often because they learned to compensate so well that struggle became invisible to others. In workplaces, the same dynamic shows up as competent, quiet employees being overlooked for support because nothing looks visibly wrong. A manager unaware of this pattern may mistake fluent compensation for effortless ease.
Assuming every quiet or unusual employee is compensating for something risks its own kind of stereotyping.
In your next review cycle, ask what support an employee might need that they have never explicitly requested.
Building teams that need less performance
Leaders control meeting formats, feedback norms, and communication defaults more than almost anyone else in an organization. Offering written agendas, direct rather than implied feedback, and flexible participation in meetings reduces the unnecessary masking many employees do simply to seem engaged. The book's point translates well here: accommodation is not lowering the bar, it is removing friction that has nothing to do with actual performance.
Some roles have real client-facing or safety requirements that limit how much format can flex.
Offer one standing meeting this month in both a live and written-response format, and let people choose.
Leading without a performed persona
Many leaders believe authority requires constant polish, leaving little space to model the kind of honest self-acceptance the book describes. A manager who occasionally names their own limits, rather than performing effortless composure at all times, gives their team quiet permission to do the same. This does not mean abandoning professionalism; it means building a team culture where people can connect over real shared experience rather than a shared performance of having everything permanently under control.
Reducing masking on your team can conflict with maintaining the consistent, composed leadership presence organizations expect, since visible struggle is still often read as weakness at review time. Holding both means choosing moments carefully: modeling honesty in lower-stakes settings while still protecting the steadiness a team genuinely needs during real crises, rather than treating every moment as equally safe for disclosure.
Name one thing, honestly
- Which parts of your leadership style are performance rather than preference? - Who on your team might be masking exhaustion you have mistaken for disengagement? - What would one meeting look like with less required performance?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Offer one standing meeting this month in both a live and written-response format, and let people choose.