Navigating Neurodiversity in the Proposal Industry
Whether or not you know individuals on your team are neurodivergent, the best course of action is to prevent burnout by supporting your team with resources, direct communication, and trust.
As a certified disability-owned business, Once Upon an RFP is committed to fostering a culture of acceptance and support in a neurodiverse world.
Proposals and Burnout Go Hand in Hand
Proposals are a pressure cooker. They’re a potent mix of tight deadlines, long hours, constant communication, strict attention to micro and macro details, and collaboration across organizational boundaries. Add a neurodivergent individual trying to stay focused while blending in with their peers and staying fine-tuned to everyone and everything around them to the pot, and, eventually, the lid’s going to blow.
Neurodiversity is not in itself a negative. Neurodivergent individuals are often hypervigilant for fear they’ll make a social or professional mistake that results in exclusion or teasing by their neurotypical peers. Many neurodivergent individuals’ hypervigilance, mimicking, and heightened observation manifests the ability to adapt to change quickly.
Like a chameleon altering its coloring to blend into its surroundings, the ability to instantly adapt to change and the focus gained from hypervigilance can make neurodivergent people great at jobs such as proposal management.
However, the resulting burnout is inevitable when the need to be a hypervigilant chameleon becomes too overwhelming.
Burnout can happen to anyone, regardless of neurodivergent or neurotypical status. However, burnout is almost inevitable for neurodivergent individuals.
You might not even know you’re seeing neurodivergent burnout. Neurodiversity is, literally, individual neurological diversity- i.e., there’s no one way to be neurodivergent. If you’ve met one neurodivergent individual, you’ve only met one. Additionally, many neurodivergent individuals will not disclose their neurodivergence for fear of not receiving promotions, losing jobs, or social exclusion.
Some burnout triggers include:
- Sensory overload from loud noises, bright lights, unpleasant smells, or overstimulating input, such as people talking over one another.
- Trouble navigating social challenges such as office politics, inferred social cues, forced proximity, or confusing interactions.
- Executive functioning difficulties stemming from poor communication, unrealistic or unclear timelines, vague explanations of responsibilities, or uncertainty with task prioritization.
- Navigating discrimination and stigma which manifests as masking to fit with societal expectations and dealing with direct bullying or microaggressions in the workplace.
These examples and more can lead to exhaustion, stress, social withdrawal, selective mutism, anxiety, meltdowns, and poor performance. Read on to learn some tips for supporting colleagues—both neurodivergent and neurotypical—and preventing burnout.
1. Maintain - and Grow - Your Team
The best way to avoid burnout is to ensure your team has enough availability to handle its workload. Adequate capacity benefits your customers, your team, and your company’s bottom line. All proposal staff are subject to burnout. When this happens, you risk them quitting. It can cost up to 50% of an employee’s salary to replace them, not including the investment in training and the impact on employee morale when someone leaves.
Ask for additional staff or a temp to cover vacations, holidays, and busy periods when necessary. You can even hire an external proposal agency support to handle lower-value RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, prequalifications, and vendor registrations to balance your team’s workload.
2. Be Direct and Transparent
If something isn’t right, don’t withhold the information, and don’t try to soften the blow. You’ll only make it worse. Many neurodivergent individuals are empathic, and some struggle with indirect communication. Be direct: “The Director reviewed the progress on this bid last night and wasn’t happy. They think it’s behind schedule. You need to pick up the pace.” (True war story).
3. Give Clear Instructions
If you expect a particular method or outcome, say so plainly and explain why—especially when the method or outcome differs from typical expectations.
For example, though a client brand guide might call for Montserrat body text, it may be necessary to use a space-saving font such as Aptos or Calibri when adhering to page limits and minimum font sizes. In this example, it is helpful to explain why deviating from the brand guidelines is necessary.
Unproductive Instructions:
“Use 12-pt Calibri to write this response.”
“But the client’s brand guide calls for Montserrat, not Calibri.”
“Just do it.”
Clear Instructions:
“Use 12-pt Calibri to write this response.”
“But the client’s brand guide calls for Montserrat, not Calibri.”
“Yes, and in most cases, we should stick to the brand guide. However, the RFP has a page limit and requires the minimum font size to be 12-pt. Unfortunately, Montserrat is a very large font, and we need to keep the response within the RFP’s page limit and font limitations.”
(Are you curious about how to save space without sacrificing compliance or readability? See this article from UX Design Bootcamp for more on space-saving fonts.)
And remember—asking for clarification does not always equate to arguing. For some people, unsubstantiated change can be stressful and confusing. Sure, many neurodivergent individuals are great at pivoting, but no one likes lacking context. Give context to procedures outside the norm to help team members understand and prepare for current and future change.
4. Acknowledge and Consider Different Approaches
Conscientious management requires recognizing and listening to neurodivergent and neurotypical proposal professionals alike. Be open to new and alternate ways of doing things outside the tried and true. As such, don’t dismiss an idea because it’s not standard operating procedure or hasn’t worked in the past—who knows when an unconventional or once-ineffective idea can transform the team’s processes.
5. Trust Your Team - and Yourself
Many neurodivergent individuals thrive on structure. However, needing structure does not require sacrificing autonomy. A productive and functional team should run on trust and mutual respect. It can be tempting to micromanage or overextend support. However, this fundamental lack of trust can breed insecurity and resentment in both neurotypical and neurodivergent colleagues—and, as we’ve established, these negative feelings can lead to burnout. Stick to designated roles and delegate as necessary. For example, a colleague trying to be a department manager, capture manager, color team leader, and proposal writer simultaneously is overwhelming and unnecessary.
If the team does not trust their colleagues or themselves to handle their assignments effectively, there are more significant problems at work that will not resolve themselves through further mistrust.
6. Ask for Clarification
Neurodivergence manifests in countless different ways. Some neurodivergent individuals struggle with verbal communication, while others struggle with visual or spatial processing. Even neurotypical people vary in their processing abilities and preferences.
The best course of action for neurodivergent and neurotypical people alike is to ask questions. Ask for clarification before reacting strongly or assuming the worst, and don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions.
If the team does not trust their colleagues or themselves to handle their assignments effectively, there are more significant problems at work that will not resolve themselves through further mistrust.
Key Takeaways
Navigating the intense environment of proposal management can be especially challenging for neurodivergent individuals. The pressure of proposals paired with sensory and social challenges can quickly become overwhelming and lead to friction or burnout. As such, organizations must foster supportive environments for all workers, whether neurodivergent or neurotypical.
By ensuring adequate staffing, providing clear and direct communication, acknowledging diverse approaches, and building a foundation of trust, businesses can embrace neurodiversity, champion a culture of acceptance, and mitigate burnout risk for all team members.
Unsure where to begin your RFx journey? Let Once Upon an RFP’s proposal experts help position you for success with proven processes and tools. Contact us.
Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash
Written in collaboration with Proposal Team Manager Cris Miller