A team member told me they’re autistic – now what?
How to respond – and what the disclosure might reveal about how the team works
Published on 14 September 2026 • Written by Joppe Quaedvlieg and Dr Lisa Colledge
Sarah* recently told me about Anthony*, a colleague she had been struggling to work with.
Anthony preferred email to face-to-face conversations. He often asked for written instructions rather than relying on the verbal updates Sarah preferred to share. Yet even when Sarah sent a written message saying she would like a quick chat, he sometimes arrived visibly flustered. That puzzled her. She thought she was communicating in the way he preferred.
Anthony was effective, sometimes brilliant, and often enjoyed work that no one else wanted to do. But he worked differently from the rest of the team, and Sarah was beginning to see him as a problem. She was considering whether to escalate the situation.
Then, after some work to improve psychological safety in the wider organization, Anthony told Sarah that he was autistic.
Her immediate reaction was relief. “At least now I understand why there is a challenge.”
Her next question was one I hear often: “Now what do I do?”
*Sarah and Anthony are not the real names of the people involved, but the situation is real.
Five practical steps at a glance
Start by saying thank you. Recognize the trust involved and clarify confidentiality.
Ask, don’t assume. Learn what autism means for this person and their experience of work.
Agree how to work together. Identify practical, reciprocal behaviors that will help.
Look for the wider design signal. Consider what the individual’s experience reveals about the team’s ways of working.
Turn insight into a shared team norm. Test changes that help different people contribute effectively together.
Step 1. Start by saying thank you
Any personal disclosure begins as a conversation between two people, and disclosure of an autism diagnosis is no exception. Anthony has shared personal information that relates to his identity and helps explain how he experiences work. It may also affect how other people perceive him. He reasonably expects Sarah to treat it with care.
A simple “Thank you for sharing this with me” is often enough as a first response. It acknowledges the trust involved without turning the disclosure into a dramatic moment or requiring Anthony to reassure Sarah about how she has reacted.
Sarah can also clarify confidentiality. She might ask what, if anything, Anthony is comfortable for her to share, with whom and for what purpose. Disclosure to one trusted colleague is not permission to tell the rest of the team.
The fact that Anthony waited until after the psychological safety work matters. He may have experienced negative reactions to disclosure before, be uncertain about how this information will be received, or simply prefer to keep this part of his identity private. Whatever the reason, Sarah should not treat his eventual disclosure as something she was automatically entitled to know.
Step 2. Ask, don’t assume
A diagnosis is not an instruction manual. It may give her clues, but it does not tell Sarah exactly how Anthony thinks, what he finds difficult, or what will help him. It does not mean that what may have helped another autistic colleague will necessarily help him.
Sarah’s next step is respectful curiosity. How does autism shape Anthony’s experience of work? Which situations work well? Where does he experience friction? What does Sarah currently do that helps – and what could she do differently?
If Anthony wants to recommend something to read or listen to, Sarah can use it to build her understanding of his experience. She can also learn independently and ask whether what she is learning feels true for him. Anthony should not have to become her autism educator, but a resource he recognizes may be more useful than assuming the first general account of autism she finds will describe him.
Most importantly, Sarah does not need to take over and solve the whole situation. She asks how Anthony would like her to support him and keeps the door open for further conversation.
None of this requires an immediate solution or decision. The first responsibility is to listen, learn and understand a little more. Respectful curiosity is available to anyone, regardless of their role.
Step 3. Agree how to work together
The first changes Sarah and Anthony agree are personal and practical. The aim is not for Sarah to conform to Anthony’s preferences while her own disappear. It is for both of them to become more intentional about how they work together.
Sarah agrees to tell Anthony what a conversation is likely to be about when asking for a quick chat. Anthony agrees to ask if she forgets or the purpose is still unclear, rather than arriving without the information he would like to prepare.
Sarah begins to capture critical instructions and decisions in writing and checks that they are clear. Anthony recognizes that Sarah also has communication preferences and that not every informal update needs to become a written brief. Together, they work out where written clarity matters most.
This is a two-way adjustment. Both people take responsibility for making the relationship work, rather than expecting one person to absorb all the change.
If Sarah is the team lead, Anthony may also be disclosing as part of a request for a reasonable adjustment. This is his right and should be discussed through the appropriate organizational process. The team-based approach described here complements reasonable adjustments and may reduce the number of avoidable barriers that have to be addressed individually. It does not replace adjustments or remove an employer’s legal responsibilities.
If Sarah is a colleague, her authority is different. She can change her own behavior immediately. Any attempt to involve the wider team must still respect what Anthony has asked her to keep confidential.
Step 4. Look for what the experience reveals about the team’s ways of working
The standard response to disclosure often stops with the individual: ask colleagues to email Anthony rather than approach him, for example, or record decisions from meetings when he is present. These changes may help. But they may also introduce other problems.
➡️ I explore these limitations in more depth in Stop waiting for a diagnosis: why neuro-inclusive design beats traditional accommodations. Two are particularly relevant here.
First, Anthony risks being seen as “the autistic employee”. Future concerns he raises may be attributed to autism, whether or not that is the underlying cause. Colleagues may interpret flexibility towards him as special treatment while their own preferences remain invisible, and they may start to feel resentment.
Second, individual arrangements become harder to navigate when several people need different things. One person may need more advance notice and predictability; another may work better with shorter planning horizons and rapid feedback. A team cannot be usefully designed around a growing set of fixed and potentially conflicting exceptions. It needs a fair way of balancing different needs around the work to be done.
I therefore encouraged Sarah to move beyond “How do I accommodate this individual?” and ask a different question:
What can we learn from Anthony’s experience that might help the whole team to be more successful?
The details Anthony shares are more than a list of personal preferences. They reveal where the team’s everyday norms may be creating unnecessary friction: important information is often verbal, meeting requests lack context, and people have limited opportunity to prepare.
None of these conditions affects only autistic people. Clearer information might also help someone experiencing anxiety, carrying a heavy caring responsibility, going through perimenopause, working under sustained pressure, or simply thinking more effectively when they have time to prepare.
When I shared a shorter version of this story on LinkedIn, Gitte Espenhain Anker connected it with her experience of leading a culturally diverse team (see repost here). She had tried to recognize national and religious differences, but reflected:
“While I tried, I also failed sometimes because I relied on people telling me.”
Gitte Espenhain Anker
That is the weakness in any model of inclusion that depends entirely on people identifying themselves and explaining what they need. Good intent cannot respond to needs that people cannot, or do not want to, articulate. But one person’s experience can help us notice conditions that may be making work harder for others too.
Step 5. Turn the insight into a shared team norm
The approach that Sarah and I discussed was not to rebuild the team only around Anthony. Nor does she announce anything resembling, “Anthony needs us to do this”. She uses what she has learned to open a wider conversation about how people prefer to receive information, prepare and participate.
Sarah might begin informally by mentioning what helps her prepare for meetings and asking about other people’s preferences. If the opportunity arises, she can suggest using part of a team meeting to explore what enables different people to contribute effectively.
The team agrees that meeting invitations will normally include the topic, purpose and any decision needed. Important instructions and decisions will routinely be captured in writing. Meeting transcription tools make this easier, although someone still checks that the record is accurate and useful.
This is what I mean by a FIT™ response:
Fair: everyone’s ability to contribute matters.
Intentional: the team designs its working norms rather than improvising around one individual.
Team-Minded: friction experienced by one person becomes insight into how the group works.
The aim is not to turn every preference into a rule. The team tests small, repeatable changes that remove avoidable friction without making the work less effective. It reviews what happens and adapts the norm when necessary.
Anthony still deserves support based on his own experience and how he is best able to contribute and grow. The wider team norm also considers how Sarah and other team members work best. It does not require everyone to work in the same way, but it provides enough clarity and flexibility for different preferences to coexist around the work that needs to be done.
Leadership does not depend on authority
Nothing in this process depends on Sarah being the formal leader. She is practicing important, in-between leadership behaviors: building trust, translating individual experience into shared understanding, and helping a better practice travel through the team.
A team member can ask a better question, change how they communicate, or suggest a conversation about what helps people contribute. A formal leader retains greater authority and structural responsibility; distributed leadership does not remove either. But leadership is also expressed through everyday acts of connection, influence and shared responsibility.
Belonging should not depend on disclosure
When Amelia Flood responded to the LinkedIn precursor of this article, she described it as follows:
“This is such an insightful and practical roadmap for teams... Your premise speaks to belonging as a given and optimizations that impact the entire team for the good.”
Amelia Flood
Positive intent is not enough if people must repeatedly identify and explain the conditions they need. A disclosure may reveal friction in the team’s systems and norms that had previously gone unnoticed. The opportunity is to respond at both levels: support the person who trusted someone enough to share their situation, and use what their experience reveals to make it easier for more people to contribute.
The goal is not a workplace that works well only for people who disclose. The goal is a workplace where more people can succeed without needing to.
➡️ If these ideas resonate, explore how I work with leaders and teams to design the systems, norms and ways of working that turn difference into collective capability.
