On October 16th, 2025, bpe search hosted a thought-provoking and inspiring roundtable titled “Neurodiversity at Work: Unlocking Untapped Potential for Future-Ready Leadership.”
Led by Andy Young and Paul Bendelow, the event gathered a rich mix of senior leaders—managing directors, HR professionals, and CMO’s—for an open, forward-thinking discussion on how businesses can better support neurodiverse talent and why doing so is key to innovation, inclusion, and long-term business performance.
When senior leaders and talent experts come together for an open conversation about inclusion, the dialogue moves beyond policy; it becomes personal, practical, and deeply reflective.
The session encouraged honesty, empathy, and insight. What emerged was a shared understanding that neurodiversity isn’t a specialist HR topic; it’s a leadership strategy that touches every part of business performance, innovation, and community.
Across the morning’s open dialogue, five standout themes surfaced as practical, human, and deeply relevant to the future of work.
Five Key Insights on leading neurodiversity at work
1. Neurodiversity needs to be a leadership strategy, not a side note.
Inclusion must move beyond awareness campaigns and token programs. True progress happens when leaders embed neurodiversity into the heart of business - from recruitment and performance management to leadership development and innovation strategy.
The discussion underscored that organisations too often treat neurodiversity as a “nice to have” or as part of a seasonal conversation, rather than as a strategic driver of creativity, problem-solving, and decision quality.
One participant captured this sentiment perfectly: “inclusion is not a department; it’s a mindset.” And like any business priority, it needs ownership, structure, and accountability from the top.
Leaders were encouraged to think of neurodiversity in the same way they would approach digital transformation - as a long-term investment in capability and resilience. When neurodiverse individuals are recognised and empowered, they bring distinct perspectives that strengthen how organisations adapt, innovate, and perform.
2. Difference fuels innovation.
The roundtable’s most resonant theme was clear: difference drives progress.
Neurodiverse thinkers often approach challenges from unexpected angles, breaking conventional logic and sparking ideas that others might not see. Several shared stories illustrated how seemingly “unusual” thought processes, pattern recognition, deep focus, visual reasoning, or systems thinking had led to breakthroughs in marketing, product design, and customer experience.
These weren’t isolated stories; they were examples of what happens when difference is permitted to thrive.
As one participant reflected, innovation rarely comes from sameness. Creative tension, the respectful friction between diverse viewpoints, is what unlocks new thinking. The discussion emphasised that businesses must stop striving for cultural conformity and start designing teams for constructive diversity: assembling thinkers who complement, challenge, and expand one another.
That means shifting recruitment from a “culture fit” mindset to a “culture add” one. Instead of hiring people who blend in, leaders should look for those who bring new energy, fresh perspectives, and different ways of seeing the world.
3. Efficiency ≠ effectiveness.
A powerful reflection emerged around the tension between efficiency and creativity, a challenge faced by many organisations that prioritise metrics, processes, and short-term gains over long-term impact.
Participants discussed how the modern corporate obsession with efficiency, tightening processes, automating decision-making, and chasing quarterly returns often comes at the cost of originality and differentiation.
True effectiveness, the group agreed, doesn’t come from doing things faster; it comes from doing things better, bolder, and differently.
Neurodivergent thinkers frequently thrive in this space. Their ability to connect dots others miss, challenge assumptions, and imagine alternatives makes them invaluable in driving innovation and brand distinctiveness.
Yet too often, the systems they work within are designed for linear thinking, prioritising order over creativity. Leaders were challenged to balance efficiency with curiosity, creating conditions where reflection, experimentation, and individuality can coexist alongside performance.
As one insight summarised it: “You can optimise processes, but you can’t optimise imagination.”
And imagination, the group agreed, is what drives long-term growth.
4. Psychological safety starts at the top.
Inclusion isn’t simply a policy; it’s a practice, lived and demonstrated daily through leadership behaviour.
The discussion reinforced that psychological safety, the ability to express ideas, admit mistakes, or show vulnerability without fear, begins with leaders. When leaders are open about their own challenges, share their learning journeys, and invite different perspectives, they give implicit permission for others to do the same.
This is particularly vital for neurodivergent professionals, many of whom have learned to “mask” their differences in traditional workplace cultures that reward sameness.
The group explored how conscious leadership, being intentional, empathetic, and inclusive by design, builds trust and authenticity within teams. It’s about more than empathy; it’s about modelling curiosity, compassion, and courage.
Leaders were encouraged to reimagine inclusion not as an HR framework but as a leadership competency, something measurable, teachable, and integral to culture transformation.
5. Communities drive change.
Perhaps the most energising outcome of the event wasn’t just the insights shared but the connections built.
Participants left with a sense that progress on neuro-inclusion will only accelerate when leaders stay connected, sharing challenges, solutions, and lived experiences in ongoing dialogue.
The consensus was clear: real inclusion grows through community. When leaders collaborate across industries and functions, they create ripple effects that extend far beyond individual organisations.
One of the most powerful takeaways was the group’s shared commitment to continue learning together to build a community that champions neurodiversity, not as a niche initiative, but as a business-critical capability.
Change, after all, isn’t sustained by one conversation. It’s nurtured by collective accountability and consistent action.
Neurodiversity as a Catalyst for Innovation
As the discussion deepened, it naturally gravitated toward innovation and the unique power of neurodivergent thinking to drive it.
Many leaders shared real experiences of how neurodiverse team members had challenged assumptions, reimagined creative strategies, or solved business problems in ways that conventional thinking couldn’t.
This wasn’t theoretical; it was tangible proof that neurodiversity fuels innovation precisely because it challenges the status quo.
Yet a recurring concern emerged: are organisations creating the conditions for this innovation to thrive? Too often, businesses over-index on efficiency, standardisation, and risk aversion, unintentionally stifling the very creativity they seek to unleash.
The message was clear: if we want the benefits of neurodivergent innovation, we must design environments that value experimentation over perfection, curiosity over control, and difference over duplication.
Inclusion, then, becomes not only a moral imperative but an innovation strategy.
Leadership and Community: Turning Conversation into Action
One of the most thought-provoking discussions centred around the concept of “spikiness.”
Borrowed from large corporate cultures, the term describes how organisations often “even out” individual quirks, distinctive traits, or unconventional thinking, shaping people into uniform “circles” that neatly fit the system.
But those spikes, those quirks, edges, and differences are precisely what drive creativity and challenge groupthink. The danger, as the group reflected, is that by sanding off the edges, organisations also smooth away their innovation potential.
Instead, leaders must learn to embrace and protect spikiness, recognising that discomfort often signals growth. A healthy culture doesn’t eliminate differences; it builds systems that allow them to coexist productively.
The takeaway was simple yet powerful: be brave enough to let people stay spiky. Because sameness might feel efficient, but it’s difference that moves us forward.
As the discussion drew to a close, one collective truth stood out: leadership is about creating permission. Permission to be different, to lead differently, and to redefine what “normal” looks like at work.
Neurodiversity is no longer a side conversation. It’s central to how organisations attract talent, innovate responsibly, and build future-ready teams.
By embedding inclusion into strategy and community, we move from awareness to action, and from action to impact.
Final Reflection
The conversations at this roundtable reminded every leader present that progress begins when we stop asking, “How do we fit people into systems?” and start asking, “How do we build systems where people can fit as they are?”
In that shift lies the real future of leadership, inclusive, innovative, and human.
Everyone in the room recognised that embracing neurodiversity isn’t simply about fairness; it’s about future-proofing leadership and unlocking competitive advantage through diverse cognitive strengths.
As businesses continue to navigate transformation, inclusion and innovation will be inseparable. And neurodiversity, long overlooked, may just be the key to unlocking both.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session. Thank you for your insight, openness, and expertise.
Your voices are shaping a new kind of leadership: one that’s more human, more inclusive, and more ready for the future.
At bpe search, we remain committed to helping organisations build diverse, high-performing leadership teams and to supporting talented individuals in finding workplaces where they can bring their full selves to the table.
If you’d like to reach out to start a conversation and discuss how you’d like bpe search to help your business move the dial when aiming to recruit, retain, and develop neuroinclusive leaders, please get in touch or visit bpesearch.com.
