While doing some recent training with a group of employees with a colleague with Autism we did an exercise on values. Their top values were Empathy and Kindness. Values not shared by any other team members. There were some serious social communication challenges in this team. Ensuring we understand values is the first part of any training to improve communication. How can you communicate if you don’t share the same values?
During conversations our values underpin how we respond to others. One might approach an issue with kindness might mean we show concern for others, while honestly might mean we are frank in our opinion. Communication is most likely to become problematic when we either do not understand our own values or don’t know the values of others. I mean how often do we state plainly our values or do we even know them?
Maintaining good relationships with everyone but especially with people with Autism (ASD) which is a disorder of social communication needs careful attention to values to mitigate mis-communcation.
Get in touch if you want me to send you the Values exercise to use with your team.