Sarah Nannery - What to Say Next : Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love—with Autism Spectrum Disorder

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2021 by Sarah Nannery and Larry Nannery

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Tiller Press hardcover edition March 2021

TILLER PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Jacket design by Patrick Sullivan

Authors photograph by John Robert Hoffman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nannery, Sarah, author. | Nannery, Larry, author.

Title: What to say next : successful communication in work, life and lovewith autism spectrum disorder / by Sarah and Larry Nannery.

Description: New York : Tiller Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016765 (print) | LCCN 2020016766 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982138202 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982138219 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Autism spectrum disorderPatientsLife-skills guides. | Autism spectrum disorderPatientsLanguage. | Autistic PeopleLife-skills guides. | Autistic peopleLanguage. | Communication.

Classification: LCC RC553.A88 N364 2020 (print) | LCC RC553.A88 (ebook) | DDC 616.85/882dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016765

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016766

ISBN 978-1-9821-3820-2

ISBN 978-1-9821-3821-9 (ebook)

For Sirus and Emmeline

In pursuit of being your best self, never forget you are already perfect.

The truth of who we are is innate goodness, and the whole journey is really about removing any obstacle or false belief that keeps us from knowing that.

ALANIS MORISSETTE

Need your help with a work thing when you have a min

I typed feverishly into the open instant messenger tab on my work desktop as soon as I got back to my desk at the office.

This was the fourth such SOS message I had sent to my husband in the last week, and it was only Wednesday.

Whats up?

Larry typed back, prompt as ever.

Struggling to find the delicate balance between too few and too many details, I tried to give him just the right amount of information to make the exchange quick and useful for both of us, trusting that he would ask for more if he needed.

I met Deborah in the pantry just now, I explained through IM. And she asked me for more details on a report I sent yesterday. She needs them by this afternoon for a conversation shes having with a Board member tomorrow morning. This is going to take me away from the financial report that Adam needs by tomorrow for the Board meeting in two weeks.

Three little dots appeared next to Larrys avatar, letting me know that he was already responding. Deborahs need is higher priority, he answered simply. Are you saying this means you wont be able to finish what Adam needs by tomorrow?

YesI will probably need until Friday now for the financial report.

Anything that you can give to Tanesha?

I had to think about that one for a minute. Would she be able to help me with anything for either report? Shed only just started two months ago, and I hadnt trained her yet on either of these types of reporting. She wouldnt know where to look to get the data, she wouldnt know how to put it together the right way

No, I typed back, feeling a little defeated. It would take too long to train her to give me the kind of help I would need right now.

OK, Larry pinged back. So tell Adam that somethings come up from Deborah, and you need extra time on his report. Give him your projected timeline. He should understand.

Adam was my boss. Deborah was Adams boss. It made sense to menow that Larry had helped me think it through logicallythat a last-minute, time-sensitive request from Deborah would trump a previously known time-sensitive need from Adam, especially when Deborahs request was more urgent than his in terms of timeframe. I mentally reordered my priorities, stacking Deborahs report above Adams, even though I had already started working on Adams, and it was going to be painful to set it aside and switch gears to a new project before Adams was finished. I would just have to deal with that. But something was still nagging at the back of my mind.

Can I tell Adam in email? I asked, dreading the answer.

I could almost see the exasperated side-smile on Larrys face as he typed back. Would be better as a quick in-person. He needs to know sooner rather than later to adjust his expectations. And that way he also has a heads-up that Deborah needs more for her meeting tomorrow.

This one was tougher for me to grasp right away. I understood the value of Adam knowing now that I was pushing his timeline back, rather than by five p.m. today when he would finally get through checking all his emails. But that second bitwhat use was a heads-up that Deborah had asked me for more information? What did that have to do with him? Would it give him some advance notice that she might be coming to him next with another last-minute request? Or would it raise the stakes of Deborahs meeting enough in his mind for him to proactively go make sure she had everything else she needed? As I thought it through, it made more and more sense that Adam would be empowered with the passive information that Deborah was seeking additional support for tomorrows conversation with a Board member. He and I were both in the position to support her, so him knowing the support she was asking for, even if it wasnt directly from him, put him in a better position to support her, as well.

Larry let me process for a couple of minutes, then finished with the message, And make a note, for future reference, to get Tanesha trained on this soon when youre not in a time crunch.

Thanks, love. Will do. Right then and there, knowing I would forget otherwise, I opened my calendar and found an hour block of time the following week to meet with Tanesha. Then I scanned Adams calendar and saw that he would be between meetings in about fifteen minutesthe perfect time, I had learned, to catch him for a quick in-person heads-up.

This type of five-minute IM session with my husband was a near-daily ritual for me when I first started moving up in the workplace.

You see, I have Aspergers syndrome, or what is now known in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association as part of the broader diagnosis, autism spectrum disorder (ASD). None of the nuances of interpersonal communication come naturally to me as they do to people without ASD.

Now, years later, Larry and I have whittled down our SOS IM conversations to infrequent exchangesmostly when something new or big happens at work that I dont feel I can handle on my own.