The Cost of Working in Systems Not Designed for Cognitive Difference

For many neurodivergent professionals, work success depends less on capability and more on compensation (not the financial type).

Compensation looks like masking uncertainty, over-preparing to avoid mistakes, working longer hours to meet implicit expectations, and managing perception as carefully as performance. These strategies can work — for a while.

But as roles become more complex, visibility increases, and decisions carry greater consequences, the cost of compensation rises. Burnout often follows, not because performance drops, but because sustaining performance requires more internal effort than the system acknowledges.

This is not a personal failure.
It’s the predictable outcome of environments that assume one dominant way of thinking, planning, and executing work.

Neurodiversity shows up at work not because people are suddenly “more different,” but because workplaces still struggle to make difference workable.

What We Mean — and Don’t Mean — by Neurodiversity

Neurodiversity refers to the natural variation in how human brains process information, regulate attention, manage emotion, and engage with complexity.

In work settings, this often includes people with:

• ADHD

• Autism

• Dyslexia

• Dyspraxia

• Tourette’s

• Sensory processing differences

• Learning differences

• Brain Injury

• Burnout & Chronic Stress

These differences are not inherently problematic.
The friction arises when work is designed as though everyone processes information, time, and pressure in the same way.

Co-Occurring Neurodivergence: The Reality Most Models Ignore

Many neurodivergent professionals live with co-occurring neurodevelopmental conditions — meaning more than one neurotype or diagnosis is present.

ADHD frequently overlaps with autism, dyslexia, anxiety, or sensory processing differences. Executive skills, emotional regulation, and stress response do not exist in isolation, and neither do people.

This matters because:

• diagnoses don’t explain lived experience on their own

• support cannot be inferred from labels

• two people with the same diagnosis may need entirely different conditions to thrive

Neurodivergence is experienced holistically, not diagnostically.

The Limits of Labels

Neurodivergent traits exist on wide spectrums. Labels can validate experience, but they cannot dictate effective support.

What actually matters at work is:

• where cognitive load accumulates

• how decisions are made under pressure

• how expectations are communicated

• how much recovery is built into performance

At Ready Set Choose Coaching In., we acknowledge diagnoses — but we support people beyond the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categories, focusing on how work actually functions for the individual.

Where Neurodiversity Efforts Commonly Miss the Mark

Myth: Neurodiversity is primarily about accommodations
Reframe: Most strain comes from unclear priorities, unrealistic workload design, and inconsistent leadership — not the absence of formal accommodations.

Myth: High-performing neurodivergent professionals don’t need support
Reframe: High performance often hides significant internal cost. Sustainability is the issue, not competence.

Myth: Inclusion means lowering standards
Reframe: Clear standards paired with flexible paths to meet them raise performance across the board.

Myth: Awareness training leads to change
Reframe: Awareness without operational change becomes performative. Systems, not slogans, determine outcomes.

Neurodiversity work fails when it focuses on optics instead of execution.

From Individual Resilience to System Design

Effective neurodiversity support is not about making individuals more adaptable. It’s about making work more workable.

In practice, that means:

• Psychological safety grounded in clarity
  Safety doesn’t mean lack of accountability. It means people can ask questions, surface friction, and name limits without fear of penalty.

• Explicit expectations
  Neurodivergent professionals should not be required to infer priorities, success criteria, or decision rights.

• Context-aware executive skills support
  Executive functioning at work is shaped by environment, role complexity, and competing demands — not willpower.

• Leadership capability
  Managers play a central role in whether neurodivergent talent thrives or burns out. Support must include how leaders design work and give feedback.

• Permission to work differently — paired with clear outcomes
  Flexibility works when outcomes are well defined. Vagueness creates risk, not inclusion.

Neurodiversity becomes sustainable when systems carry more of the load, rather than relying on silent over-functioning.

When Support Helps — and When It Doesn’t

Not every challenge requires coaching or external intervention.

Support is most useful when:

• masking and over-compensation are driving burnout

• role complexity has outpaced existing support structures

• leaders want to retain talent without forcing sameness

• organizations want performance without extraction

Clarity must come before action.
Assessment helps determine what kind of support fits — and what doesn’t.

Start with the Coaching Fit Scorecard.