CEO transitions expose the hidden costs of narrow leadership archetypes for neurodivergent leaders
Published on 10 December 2025 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge
“Bring your whole self to work.”
It’s a phrase that appears on many careers pages, value statements, and leadership frameworks.
But what happens when your “whole self” doesn’t match the traditional leadership mold?
Three key takeaways
Neurodivergent CEO transitions reveal, in high contrast, a challenge felt by leaders at all levels: organizations welcome and want to enable diverse thinking and contributions, but inherited leadership expectations and working norms still pull people back toward a single, narrow, familiar leadership archetype.
Even the most senior leaders adapt their behavior when under pressure to prove, quickly, they can succeed, especially when they see that success is only recognized in one form. This suppresses the very strengths organizations urgently need in a complex, fast-changing world.
The solution isn’t more goodwill. It’s building the capability and infrastructure to support multiple ways of being excellent. Organizations need to redesign their leadership systems so they can recognize, develop, and reward diverse ways of thinking, deciding, and influencing. That’s how cognitive diversity becomes organizational impact.
“Bring your whole self to work.”
But what happens when your “whole self” doesn’t match the traditional leadership mold?
This is the question at the heart of the excellent MBA dissertation that Caroline Bixby shared with me recently. Caroline is an experienced HR leader, and her research explores the experiences of neurodivergent CEOs – autistic, ADHD, or otherwise cognitively atypical – transitioning into this new role.
The themes echo what I hear repeatedly across both corporate and research-intensive environments. But by looking at leaders at the very top, at the exact moment when expectations, visibility, and uncertainty are most intense, Caroline brings everyday neurodivergent experiences into unusually sharp focus.
Transition moments amplify what leaders at all levels already feel. They heighten the mismatch between the intent of the working culture and the practice of it.
Below, I bring together Caroline’s insights – drawn from in-depth interviews with CEOs, HR directors, Non-Executive Directors (NEDs), and executive coaches – with the patterns I see in my own work.
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1. People value diverse thinkers — but organizational leadership systems still expect one style
“Boards don’t talk about neurodiversity at all… just gender and race.”
– NED interviewed in Caroline’s dissertation.
Organizations increasingly understand the potential performance value of neurodiversity. They recognize the benefits of deep focus, unconventional pattern recognition, original insight, and strategic imagination. There is no lack of goodwill.
But goodwill doesn’t override inherited leadership expectations.
Caroline’s interviewees described a behavioural template of what a “strong leader” looks like:
Quick to build rapport.
Polished in presentations.
Charismatic under pressure.
Extraverted and socially fluent.
Confident through speech and eye contact.
These traits are not absolute requirements for effective leadership. They’re simply what we have historically labelled as leadership excellence, especially when people rely on quick heuristics – mental short-cuts – in high-stakes situations, such as when welcoming a new CEO.
This is the tension I see across sectors: organizations value cognitive diversity in principle, but their leadership and growth systems still implicitly reward one way of thinking and behaving.
This isn’t exclusion by intention. It’s a cultural design gap that limits who our systems enable us to recognize as a leader.
2. Neurodivergent leaders mask their natural style when organizational success only looks one way
“The most impactful leaders I’ve hired were exceptional in some areas and struggled in others. It’s time we normalised that.”
– HR director interviewed in Caroline’s dissertation.
Consider what early success looks like in a CEO transition:
Inspire confidence.
Build relationships fast.
Communicate dynamically.
Signal capability immediately.
Match what the Board expects to see.
If your natural cognitive style – how you process, communicate, and connect – sits outside the traditional mold, you face an internal conflict:
“Do I lead as myself, or do I match what the system is ready to understand?”
Leaders at all levels tell me the same kind of things:
“Early on, I focus on what feels safest – not what’s most effective.”
“I don’t talk openly about how I work unless I’m sure it won’t be misread.”
“I dial parts of myself up or down depending on what I think they’re looking for.”
This is not a reaction to hostility. It’s a response to systems that are not yet ready for success that looks different.
Transitions amplify this. When leaders have limited bandwidth, are under a high level of scrutiny, and feel they have no room for misinterpretation, they gravitate toward the safest visible behaviours – especially when the definition of success, that they see around them, is narrow.
The cost? The organization gets the familiar version of the leader – not the version that is most effective for leaders who don’t naturally fit this mold.
3. Short-term success over long-term impact: the hidden performance cost of unspoken leadership expectations
“Structured induction is more of an aspirational goal than a practised approach.”
– HR director interviewed in Caroline’s dissertation.
Most leadership environments do not make explicit:
How conflict should be approached.
How differences will be interpreted.
How decisions are expected to be made.
What effective communication looks like.
How leaders should share their interpersonal style.
So leaders instinctively default to what seem to be the safest behaviors:
Emulating the style of their predecessor.
Avoiding early disclosure of their working style.
Suppressing strengths that sit outside the norm.
Pretending confidence instead of building clarity.
Mimicking what “leadership” is supposed to look like.
This dynamic is not limited to CEOs. I see it with senior managers, heads of research groups, and emerging leaders in fast-moving technical environments.
The consequences are substantial.
Personal costs: exhaustion, emotional masking, reduced wellbeing.
Business costs: missed insights, falling engagement and motivation, slower problem-solving, weaker innovation.
Strategic costs: succession pipelines built around sameness; limited readiness for complexity, disruption, or tech-driven change.
Societal costs: a narrowing of which kinds of intelligence are welcome in and shape our workplaces, educational systems, and public systems.
If even CEOs feel unable to show how they actually think and work, we cannot expect people elsewhere in the organization to do so.
When even the most senior leaders feel pressure to conform, it’s a clear sign that the organization’s systems – not its people – are limiting which forms of excellence are seen, supported, and allowed to succeed.
➡️ Curious how neuro-inclusion boosts engagement, talent outcomes, and organizational impact?
Where this leads: redesigning our leadership systems to recognize cognitive plurality
Caroline’s work sharpened something I have been exploring with clients:
Neuro-inclusive leadership isn’t about willingness. It is about capability and infrastructure.
Most organizations already want and, in principle, welcome diversity in the cognitive styles of their talent thinkers. What they lack are systems that make cognitive diversity work for their employees and to deliver the organization’s mission:
Criteria that prioritise impact over familiar ways of delivering it.
Leadership models that recognize more than one interpersonal style.
Onboarding and induction that support multiple ways of processing.
Norms that make working preferences discussable – early and safely.
Development paths that don’t only rely on charisma, speed, or extroversion.
This is what I call The Culture–Performance Disconnect: the gap between what organizations believe they enable – and what their systems actually allow.
Organizations that want innovation, adaptability, resilience, and strategic clarity
need to build leadership systems that can recognize and develop multiple ways of leading – not just the familiar, traditional one.
What you can do
1. Look objectively at your leadership systems
Where do your frameworks, intentionally or not, assume one way of communicating, deciding, or influencing?
2. Notice the disconnect between systems and people
Are there talented people whose strengths fall outside your standard leadership templates? What is being lost because of that?
3. Share your insights with other leaders at your organization
Do they see the same constraints? What other examples have they noticed? How do you see the cost escalating if you don’t do anything? Which system could you start with adjusting?
➡️ Ready to go a step further?
Let’s consider together where your systems are losing impact by only recognizing one way of being excellent – and what that is costing you.
