Ask a Manager: Update to "My New Manager Loves Ice-Breakers"

[minoanmiss]

3. New manager loves ice-breakers

So I spoke to my manager about being on the spectrum and how hard it is for me doing icebreakers and being called on like that is extremely stressful. She promised to stop and just didn’t. The very next day she called on me again for a “fun fact about you” so I decided to really make myself heard. My fun fact ended up being that I’m autistic and video chats and ice breakers are extremely stressful for me. The meeting ended very quickly and she then insisted on video chatting with me to apologize, still not recognizing my stated desires to communicate via email. She has slowed with the ice breakers and rarely calls on people now but still seems to think that she can change me. Ableism just seems to be her bread and butter, if she just ignores disability it won’t exist.

Comments

[julian]

I like icebreakers, to a certain extent. No, not the "bring in a picture of yourself as a kid" ones. (For so many reasons...) But in say, *monthly* meetings where they can be part of team building.

But this manager is ex-tra creepy with the writing private info down from both group and one-on-one meetings, which: No.

With an actual manager with boundaries who wanted to work with the LW and yet still have icebreakers, I would suggest emailing the LW the questions/activities ahead of time, to let them prepare for it.

[taimatsu]

Agreed, there are ways to ‘warm up’ groups which avoid triggering any specific sensitivities/meet people’s needs - but you have to put some work into learning what the group’s needs are and then choosing activities which work for everyone. (And an easy change is to have volunteers to participate or to share info, rather than forcing everyone to do it.)