Aspies and Leadership

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I am not sure where to put this thread because it transcends through a number of topics.

I was wondering about something due to a personal experence the other day. Why is it that people with AS/autism are not picked for leadership roles or even allowed to be a part of the decision making process?

I see it in business, politics, church and community affairs. I sometimes feel like I have the intellect to run something, have been told a do a good job when I do, but again people do not pick me that often to lead things.

Any thoughts or experenice with this?

A leadership role is like gold - to acquire it, you have to snatch it, and when you've got it you have to fight off hordes of power-hungry people who want it for themselves. There's an ideal out there of the perfect leader who wins the trust to lead through great energy, integrity and selflessness, but I never met one of those. Mostly they seem to be no more able than I am, just more aggressive, arrogant and corrupt.

I did (kind of) lead a band of musicians once, but I've felt guilty about it ever since. There were comments about me not being democratic enough, and looking back I think that was correct. I was obsessional about our music and couldn't bring myself to take a back seat once in a while, I couldn't seem to trust that the others had ideas that would work just as well as mine. I wasn't particularly tyrannical but the power balance was skewed heavily in my direction and I didn't do much to devolve it to the others.

There was a second band in which I dominated to some extent....that was hard to avoid because the others were rather younger than I was and they tended to look to me for advice, as I'd done it all before. We got a bit more egalitarian towards the end. One or two of the guys were annoyed with my style but they left and I replaced them.

I've also taken control of emergency situations occasionally.......once I took a lady to hospital when she cut her hand at a party (she was on anticoagulants and couldn't stop bleeding), and I was very dominant with that, barking out orders and being obeyed, talking to the medics like I was a consultant or something. Leading in a specific situation can be different, as it's over pretty quickly, and if it's an emergency, there's no time for the niceties of collective decision-making.

Apart from that lot, I've not done any leadership. They tried to make me get bossy when they promoted me in one job, but they offered no training and they just tried to leave me to it without vesting me with any particular powers. And I hated the idea of screwing more work out of people just to get a bit more money and kudos, so I disappointed the management and gave the staff an easy ride.

It's an ethical thing with me. I think practically all leaders are fake, and I feel like smacking them when I see them trying to capture a bit of power for themselves with all their silly posturing. If I stoop to their level, I'm as bad as they are and my life is a waste.

I've turned down several promotions at work for leadership type of roles. It'd be living hell for me so I don't want them, but I have been picked for them before. Just say no. Life is better.

I have been forced into leadership roles brfore. In the military they made me a squad leader durring basic training since I knew my way around the base and I did what I was told to do as quickly as possible. When I worked in a resteraunt I was put in charge when none of the managers or there assisstants were in. I knew how to do all the jobs and was over 21 thats my only qualifications for leadership. I cannot stand telling people what to do or how they should do it. On every job I am the one they always ask to train people. The boss always apalogizes for it. They say I take the time to show how to operate the machine and all the saftey issues involved. I also tell the many ways they could break the machine and how to avoid them. When they laid me off the boss said he wished they would have made video tapes of me showing how to operate the machines safely.

There have been times when I have been asked to lead by default. That seems to be the only time that I have ever lead anything in my life.

I also have lead a community through a flood recovery process. I was asked by a then friend, who was the mayor of the community to assist him with the rebuilding, since he claimed that I was "one of the brightest people that he knew". I did some pretty out of the box things for him, got him in contact with others that helped his community. That particular community's recovery has been considered a model for future disasters. Sadly, my friend and I had a big falling out, due to intellectual and personal jealousy.

What I always run into is rarely, if ever being picked to be on committees, or in the decision making process. Yes, you can do the dirty work for us, but you can't lead us or with us. One of the things I think that causes this is that people with AS do not communicate that we want to be part of the process, so people don't know that we want to be. Also, leadership is very much playing along with others and appeasing certain people, which I can see people with AS having somewhat of a problem with. We see a situation as "mechanical" instead of "emotional" so even though we have original ideas on how to deal with things, we fail to compensate for the emotional and people elements.

As a kid, If I couldn't be the leader in games I refused to play. I think leadership is diffrent than pure bossiness which is clearly what I exhibited. I refused to interact with other kids if I wasn't allowed to boss them around. If people want to do a project about a certian animal with me as an adult I either dictate how it is done which never really is a problem because my expertise in animals is why they asked me to help them and plus they don't have to do any work. I practicaly did my neice's report on giraffes for her. My mum had to correct a lot of it because it sounded as if it was written by a univeristy professor and my neice was in fith grade at the time and my mum didn't think the teacher would think it was hers because my neice was not as advanced as me and the teacher would know it wasn't done my her. But if a project is about my special intrests, people know they had better let me take charge (and basicaly do the whole thing myself) or I will not help them.

I was forced into the leadership role, many times, in my past. I hated it.

I am not sure if people with ASDs usually are or are not picked for leadership roles. If they are not, I would assume it is because of the poor social skills. Most people are not going to pick out the quiet awkward person in the corner or the geek who talks everyone's ears off about *insert obsessive interest* as the leader. The poor social skills also lead many people with an ASD to have little confidence in their ability to interact with people, and most do not want an obviously insecure leader. Also, the people with asperger's or autism I know (myself included) who do like to lead, tend to go a little OCPD about it.

I used to insist on leading because I did not believe anyone else could do anything right. I usually still feel this way, but I try to let other people take part in activities and to take part in activities that will require me to do what other people say.
Lately, I find people do not turn to me to lead right away, but in group situations that last a while, I am usually expected to start figuring everything out and telling everyone else what to do before whatever it is we are doing is over.

I was sort of an unofficial back-up to my supervisor at one job. I really cared about the job & I took pride in it. I was working over 55 hours a week when I could & I never goofed off. I also brought up suggestions on how to do & improve things. My advice would be if you want a leadership position you should have a great work ethic & you should bring up ideas & try to do extra when you can & be willing to help your coworkers & give em tips when you are able. Let your superiors know that that you can be relied on because you fallow true; you mite could become their go-to-guy

A leadership role doesn't just require intelligence but often needs people skills. Good managers are not only those with the appropriate intelligence but also those who are able of coordinating and uniting the people below them.

Granted there are managers who have neither of those qualities.

However, I would imagine that aspects of "popularity" are also involved in choosing leaders. And if auties, as is too often the case, are not popular then they may be less likely to be chosen as a leader than others with lesser qualifications but who are more socially oriented.

I know my father (an undxed Aspie) always used to complain to my mother that he continually got passed over for further promotion despite that he had the intellectual capabilities for advancement. However, he always made the mistake of assuming that his work would speak for itself. He did brilliant work, but it wasn't enough. Whenever he complained about this, my mother would say the same thing time and again: "Steve, the squeaky wheel gets the grease."

I.e., work and intelligence don't always speak for themselves.

I actually enjoyed leading shifts in the role of a staff nurse with up to five support workers in my team delegating certain tasks to them and supporting them in what they do whilst also fullfilling more specialised tasks such as administering medication, writing or creating care plans and daily records. OR providing support during crisis situations as we had a number of service users who had autism + mental health or personality disorders. So there were times were we had quite serious incidents of assualt or would have the police out and I found I had quite a lot of respect and admiration from the support workers who expressed to my line manager that of all the nurses I was the only one they felt truly listened to what they said and would try to re-assure them what they were doing was the correct intervention or politely point out errors in their practice.

So I think in direct leadership roles AS is not neccesarily a disadvantage if you have an expertise and an aptitude for the role.

Were I have stumbled is my most recent job were I have gone up to managing entire homes with 12+ tenants and a staff team of nearly 20 people. The schemes with a large staff team where also in 3 differnt geographic locations which didn't help and it also didn't help that I was office based, I hate offices. I found the kind of politics and negotiating you have to do at this leve of management incredibly difficult and it sadly lead to me suffering from burnout at the beginning of this year and as of 2 weeks ago I've left the job to try and return to direct practice like I did before. That is my niche and were im most comfortable.

I think AS is not a problem at supervisory level or at ground level team leading, but put an aspie as the one in charge were you have everyone coming to you with all their problems. And your basically everyone's b*** to blame when something goes wrong to save their face. Some of the problems you deal with staff arn't even related to the job. You have to learn to understand what motivates people, I perhaps am too idealistic i expect people in this field of work to be here for the right reasons, not just because theres a recession and no other jobs were out there. It's given me a very low opinion of people in general having to deal with that kind of BS.

I had a talk with my middle son about this when he was diagnosed with AS. He asked if he would make a good leader. I told him maybe not, that leaders usually need better than average interpersonal skills and that isn't really is best strength. Maybe if he with a team of scientists he might be the lead scientist, but in general he'd probably be more useful as a resource person for a leader. He has excellent insights, can keep track of a lot of facts, can think objectively and fairly which are all good leadership skills. He might make a better advisor for another leader because he could let that person do the icky interpersonal stuff while he helped them make good decisions. I told him that he shouldn't rule it out, but he might make a better advisor. He's held onto that and says he's a good advisor.

He has good social perception but gets really flumoxed about what to do with it. Then he becomes withdrawn and overwhelmed.