Social Skills Training for Adults

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It is not a weakness. It is just what NTs are. If dollars and profit where the sole purpose of existence, your argument for maximum efficiency would have merit, but nobody that I know, aspie or NT builds their life on that foundation. The 'waste of time' of which you speak is people actually LIVING, and not just existing.



As in the way you missed it when I said "Oh. I get it now. This is an aspie pride, super human next step in evolution thing."?



You contradict yourself. You say that NT socializing in a business setting is a weakness then you state that 'better' is irrelevant. Then you dismiss the contradiction by saying it is irrelevant. Since the origins of human behavior are evolutionary, how is it irrelevant?

Why is the OP going through this torture? While I can't know for sure her state of mind, kfisherx recognized some things that hold her back professionally. It turns out that those things are the very ones you seem to think a waste of time. And yet she works for a very successful, top tier technology company. All that NT "crap" you despise is in play within the corporate culture that she deals with every day. How do you argue with the success of her company? It is a social organization just as much as a business. The social part is what holds it together. Remove all this "time wasting" and you change the very heart of the company.

You also seem to think that the 10 minutes of time in question is wasted taking about cricket and stout, or Lindsey Lohan and Lady Gaga. But it could just as likely be things like congratulating a colleague for a recently completed and excellently executed project.

What really strikes me is how completely Aspie your take on this is. You have an apparent singular emphasis on a single detail regarding corporate culture. You need to step back and look at the trees.

I am not arguing that that kind of corporate culture doesn't work, I am arguing that it works because NTs are defective. If they didn't waste all that time during the day, they could go and spend time with people they would choose to spend time with. The point of work at intel is 1) to develop exciting new technology and 2) to make money, any time that isn't spent contributing to those things, is wasted time, and having a neurology that forces you to waste time is a defect.

The reason Intel is successful, is because all companies (including their competitors) have to deal with this same human nature problem. It doesn't take 10 minutes to say "Congratulations on that project, that was a good job". As usual, because NTs are competing against mostly themselves, weaknesses that they all have don't disadvantage them in the competition, because so many other people have them.

I don't have a singular emphasis on a particular aspect of corporate culture at all. I am simply talking about that aspect because it happens to be what came up in this thread.

I did not say that "better" was irrelevant I said that whether something was the next step in evolution was irrelevant to whether it was better and the debate about whether AS is evolution was irrelevant to the thread.

WTF? How do you inject the word defective into this and not come off as totally arrogant? NTs are so defective that they dominate this world. And you claim this is not an adpies are better thing?



You take ONE STATEMENT by a psychiatrist and beat it too death. Again, completely focused on a detail, then over generalizing to make a point. Intel is successful - but it is RUN BY NTs. How did that happen if NT processes - which includes their socialization - is so defective?



As usual? This is sophistry. If this weakness is so glaring, why don't aspies rule the world? Apparently, even if your aspie efficiency is a huge advantage, you are deficient in enough other areas that it leaves you just another cog in the machine, or are you large and in charge and just not telling us?




You are taking an important aspect of corporate culture, one that you dislike, and presumably are not good at (you ARE aspie, after all), and rationalizing it away, building an argument about a so called weakness in NTs that doesn't exist. The EVIDENCE is plain. Use your aspie efficiency and logic and look at it. NTs rule this world because their way WORKS. Part of what makes the NT world actually work is this very socialization that you claim is defective. Your denial of this actually demonstrates your autism. Not only do you not understand socialization, you don't even understand its worth. Worse, you adopt the very NT attitude that your way is superior. Instead of looking at the evidence (NTs are at the top of the food chain), you rationalize facts away, participating in the very same irrational behavior that drive the social aspects of the NT dominated world.

Just because I think that THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF NT OPERATION is a defect, does not mean that I think that NTs are inferior OVERALL. GENERALLY NTs do better for a number of reasons. You are jumping on what I think about one aspect of the way NTs do things and assuming that I think that way about everything NTs do differently. I don't.

As for NTs running things, given that they make up more than 99% of the population, that would be the case no matter how inferior they were, because they have the advantage of being in the majority. They also do a lot of things better than we do. But THIS isn't one of them.

You are viewing this in all or nothing terms, when I am not making an all or nothing case. I saw an example of NTs being privileged because they were in the majority rather than because their way of doing things is better, and I responded to it and defended my position. That does not mean that I think AS>NT. I don't. 100% of my friends are NT, 100% of the people I respect are NT, and I've never met (in person) an aspie/autie that I liked. You are the one generalizing my point to make it NT v Aspie, I am not.

I understand fully the value of socialization, in it's proper context. I wouldn't want to pay people to chat, and I think having people like m mother who spend 40-50% of their work time "building relationships" is a flaw in the system which wouldn't be there if NTs were willing to learn not to be responsive to constant stroking.

Louise... You are wrong about so many things in your statements that I am at a lose for where to start. Let's just agree that your perspectives are indeed very slanted due to your being dx'd against your will and the subsequent outlook of life since that time.

I think you are a bit slanted not only against NT ways in general but also towards small talk as well. It might also be useful to reiterate here that I distinguish between small talk and hallway conversations and you do not. Small talk is that sort of talk you do when you barely know someone or just getting to know them. I barely know this coworker for example (new team) and I did not know my customer at all from last week. Also when I am at executive management events where they bring their wives, I have to learn to get along with their wives. But this is different from what we call "hallway talk" or "watercooler chat" where I am conversing with people I know quite well otherwise.

One of the most valuable aspects of any corporate high-tech culture is what we call "hallway talk". In our environment it is not the case that we stand around talking about other people or current pop-culture stuff so much. We actually discuss pop technologies, latest tech news and if we talk about people it is in respect to our project usually or at least respectful. We will share some of our personal family stuff during this time which helps me (as a manger) to be aware of things my team needs. I keep a finger on the pulse of my team, new technologies and my company in these hallway conversations. I learn about products that are similar to my own and I even spur creative juices. As someone who has worked on many, many teams over the past 20 years I can assure you that this sort of conversation is very valuable beyond what you are comprehending about it and it is indeed part of the reason that Intel is the number 1 chipset manufacturer in the world. It is so important in fact that our company just revised it's interior decoration to make the workplace even more collaborative. We have more places to just sit around, play video games and chat about things. Intel's leaders recognizes how important this sort of thing is to our creative process and to our success. I could go on about the merits of this talk but you do not live this so cannot know it and you are very close-minded right now on the subject. So let's just agree to disagree on this topic.

I did NOT ask to be Dx'd either btw and am actually quite angry about it too. (just an FYI) The DX came flying at me during a grief counseling session with a shrink. I was perfectly content living in "my" world up until that point and very successful at it too. But it is out and done with and now I have to pick up the pieces and try to figure out what this means for me. Understanding the things I don't know is part of that process.

I am pretty sure that a push for 100% productivity and nothing else actually reduces productivity. I have read things to this effect before, but it sounds like the way Intel handles things is much more consistent with the human capacity for hard work combined with the need to step away occasionally.

Sure, you need to have the kind of work-place conversation chats ABOUT THE INDUSTRY AND TECHNICAL STUFF so that you can work creatively, that's fair enough. I enjoy bouncing ideas off people and have often found doing so a useful way to study or achieve a project, so we are agreed on that one, and I don't think I ever said that that sort of thing shouldn't happen. I wouldn't really call it small talk though.

Similarly, if you are out socialising and meeting people, of course you should want to build up a picture of them as a whole person and ask questions at a level that is appropriate given your lack of knowledge of them, I never said you shouldn't learn how to do that either.

What you don't need is to be doing the latter kind of stuff during work hours. If you are concentrating, someone shouldn't be walking up to you for a "chat". If they don't have business with you, they should save it for after work, and making it clear to them that you do not do chatting in office time is probably a good way to deal with that. I don't think you "owe someone 10 minutes" just because they happen to be there. That sort of culture is time wasting.

Again... You are not understanding AT ALL how large corporate high tech works and are making assumptions and ideas based on these wrong assumptions that you have.

1. Talking about stuff that is NOT work related is equally important to me as a manager. I can better serve my customers and my team if I know personal things about them. You're trying to draw this black/white line that doesn't serve the industry or my professional goals. I think we agree. This is not what we call "small talk". If that is so then I can assure you that there is very little small talk that goes on in my office.

2. A manager at Intel is often times double booked in meetings for 6-8 hours a day. The only time to get face time with them may be to interrupt them when they happen to be at their desks. We all have sufficient IQs that we trust each other to not do this completely randomly or to actually waste time. We also have signs to hang (do not disturb) if we wish to not be bothered or need privacy. My personal style is to keep my door open for when my team needs me. Sometimes their needs confuse/annoy me and that is what I am working on now.

3. We fly regularly in private jets from Intel site to Intel site. When we do this, we will arrive at the visiting site around 7:30AM and the shuttle back to the private jet will leave the building at about 3:30PM. This out-of-town team member did not have the option of waiting until after work to "socialize" with me in a more appropriate (to you) manner. When you are at a visiting site, it is common practice to get some face time with people if you see them. This guy was walking around the lab and doing just that. Personally I do not do this when I visit but rather I schedule formal meetings and agendas to do the same thing. But I am more senior so actually have agendas. He needed to connect to the team in Oregon. Nothing wrong with that IMHO now that I am connecting the dots wrt this small talk thing and the "emotional" aspect of it. So again, your black/white rules of social engagement are not really applicable here as we are often in different states or even countries and do not have the liberty of getting to know people well enough to hang out with them after work... In fact we are often not there after work. We are in the air to the next place...

So again I will stress to you that your view point of how my life is, doesn't match up to the reality of how my life is. I appreciate your stance and your opinions but those simply do not match my reality in any intelligent way. I cannot speak to your experiences or how they match. Mine are VERY, VERY different from everything you are envisioning and speaking to.

It may be interesting though to hear of how you manage teams with your rules and values. Do you have any experiences to share to that end?

Sorry to interrupt but I just had to say that the conversation after this most recent post has been... interesting.

I too have just started Celexa - I've been on it before and I am not a fan of it. I am only two days in and the disorientation can be overwhelming to the point where my vision blurs and I can't drive. My brain begins feeling like it is fighting back - it's really the only explanation that describes it accurately. And I've been thru the same exact effect with each SSRI I've taken. I have little choice in the matter - this is the only antidepressant I can afford that doesn't give me extreme reactions. If I had the prescription coverage to make a choice, I would have taken Cymbalta - as it handles depression and fibromyalgia pain. As an SSNRI, it hasn't given me ANY of the side effects or 'zombification' that SSRI's can. On the up side, the zombie effects of Celexa do tend to calm down once you acclimate to it. For me, it can take up to two weeks. So, hang in there. Those of us with these uncommon reactions usually will know within the first week if it's going to work or not.

When I saw your therapist call them 'social lies', I felt vindicated. Maybe he was just using that wording to placate. I'd assume many Aspies see this 'social nicety' as lying. I just got into it with my own therapist although she was politely offended that I'd call it lying. And it comes so easily for him, I'm sure. In fact, it is 'normal' despite a cultural abhorrance of the word and outrage at having found out that someone has lied to you. When people asked me questions, I just answered with the truth. I'd try to frame it in the least offensive way possible but even that isn't good enough. On one job, I had resorted to asking the women if they wanted the truth or if they wanted me tell them what they wanted to hear. Oddly enough - women vocally opted for the latter and had their ego fed EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW IT WAS A FALSEHOOD.

Still don't get it. Not sure I ever will. I think I would have the strong urge to ask your therapist where the hidden camera was... if it was some sort of punk'd thing.

But, I do agree - the small talk, as time wasteful as it seems on the surface, does serve a greater overall purpose. I managed upwards of thirty five people in my last position. A little bit of thoughtfully applied small talk does invoke greater productivity in the long run. Making that connection does build a cohesive team that helps one another and more freely shares ideas instead of a bunch of hard working strangers prone to keep to themselves.

Not getting 'them' really isn't some sort of failing. I have very often witnessed them not getting them either. There are some basic rules Aspies seem to be able to learn but, honestly, it isn't a perfect system. The rules are constantly changing and even the ones who claim to make these unwritten rules often have a hard time following them themselves. I think maybe the overly creative type Aspies might excel at this. I can also see where the more technically minded Aspies would definitely struggle. Social rules are, at best, abstract. There is nothing 'fixed' about any of it.

I find it interesting that the conversation on the social age of Aspies took the turns it did. Honestly, what kind of gauge is a test written by an NT? Surely, the NT doctor can measure where we may fall short of their standard but, at the same time, I'm not sure that accurately pin a label on the functioning of an Aspie. We function differently, in ways many NT doctor's just don't seem capable of comprehending. It would be easy to say - 'you have the social skills of a 4 year old' based on the NT model but that test doesn't incorporate the strategies and methods an Aspie may have worked out themselves. The test shuold be designed to test ALL social methods - just the NT ones. There may be more than one way for an Aspie to be socially successful - our methods need to be accounted for and incorporated into our social skills training rather than trying to force Aspie thinking into the NT mold. That right there is my personal problem. I can NOT fathom some of the things they do and tend to want no part of the inherent drama in NT functioning. I think they need to approach it from a different perspective if they truly want us to 'get it'.

Interesting as usual.

Still no update on my supposed straw-man arguments? I see. That's because there are none. Care to retract that statement now would you?



And no apology for the "playing with you" comment? That really is quite shameless. I can see that the "social skills training" is really paying dividends here. I must remember to sign up

Well, I suppose most of the companies I have been in are UK based, (which doesn't require 3.30 flights) and international travel has always been something that involves staying in the country (and therefore having some leisure time), so my comments might not have been applicable to your specific situation. Although I still don't see what tangible effect on team synergy turning up and telling someone what you had for lunch is. Surely things would all work better if people didn't have to like people to work well with them. I do not have managerial experience (and don't particularly want it, as I'd find other people doing dumb things too frustrating)

My personal experience of "small talk" over business lunch most recently included the following:

- Discussion of the time someone got drunk
-Discussion of a couple caught having sex on a partner's desk
-Discussion of who went where, and why, and who they fell out with
-Slagging off of competitors teams
-Slagging off of former bosses' (lack of) qualifications
-Slagging off of company hiring choices
-Someone asking me if I knew that some other person had had a house built opposite her mother and had had no boyfriends in the 10 years he'd known her

These people were all Price Waterhouse Coopers employees (that's a top 4 accounting firm in the UK, so basically big corporate culture), in their late 30s-50s and vastly senior to me.

Experience of the kind of stuff my mom does:

-on practically every phone call, she spends the first ten minutes talking about hers/the other persons recent/upcoming holiday, some random other person they both know/family stuff, the second ten talking about the stuff she actually called about, and the third ten minutes bitching about how the targets are too high/she didn't get a promotion, commiserating with the other person about same.

-Drives out to places to meet people she could just hold a conference call with

-gives out waaay to much personal information

If this kind of childish crap is beneficial to corporate functioning, then there is a problem with corporate functioning. If this helps people function as a team, there really is a problem with people.

While I agree that the crap you describe is, well ... crap, you seem to forget that the measure of a corporation's success is its profits, not its capacity for gossip or lack thereof. You could possibly make the argument that less 'shallow' corporations would be more profitable, but it seems to me that much of what drives business is precisely the give and take under the unwritten rules of social interactions. Which includes gossip. I don't know of any organization that operates without a heavy layer of social 'time wasting'. Saying it is defective to allow social niceties to permeate a business culture flies in the face of the evidence that many many corporations make profits. You seem to think it is in spite of the social crap. I suspect that it is no small part because of the social crap.

No, I know that it is because of the social crap. But it isn't because the social crap gets anything done (product to sell made, system to produce product at a cheaper price created, new product idea generated) it's because it allows the company to make money out of the fact that people make irrational decisions. They buy from there store with the salesperson that makes them feel better rather than the cheaper product that does the same thing, or the higher quality product available for the same price. They give the contract to a mate instead of the person who is capable of making the best bid. They don't open up the opportunity to cut a deal to everyone available to do it, instead cutting the deal over dinner with someone they know. If people didn't operate in this defective way, capitalism would function better, more and better quality products would be produced, and we'd live in a fairer society. That's what pisses me off about it.

Yes, NT society is all about who you know and who you network with... hence the need for those of us without those inborn skills to learn them if we wish to succeed in their world. I personal detest the inherant soulessness in most corporate cultures (kfisherx seems to have hit the jackpot though!) and I steer far clear of it whenever I can because it usually clashes strongly with my personal values. But corporate is the way to go if you want a steady job, health care, retirement - some stability.

I don't think anyone suggested that this corporate culture was in any way fair. And one is perfectly within their right to choose to operate outside of that NT world for whatever reasons they choose. There are many more of them than there are of us - we aren't going to change them any time soon. The best we can hope for is awareness and acceptance. Or, we can become NT scholars and learn the tips and tricks of the NT Whisperer and develop some NT rapport on their level. It's a choice.

This is how they work and it how they have always worked. Doesn't matter if it's logical, or productive or ideal. This is the way they like it.

Yeah? So what? I eat cherries because I don't like grapes.

Basically, you don't like the way the world works. You think you know a better way? Then build a company that uses that way. But you have to COMPETE with all the other companies. That's the rub. You can complain all you want about NT irrationality, but unless you go out and do something to prove your way is better then you come across as a whiner. And if you say you can't because the NT world is stacked against you, you again sound like a whiner. That's the point of competition.- to separate the winners from the whiners. Humans compete with each other. They always have, like it or not. Compete or die. Or in a more civilized culture, compete and be successful or take you place among the masses.

Actually, Kfisherx is in a position to change (or at least influence) that culture, if she wants.