Everyone’s favorite topic …
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Originally published 10 February, 2026.
Nothing earth-shattering today, just another plea to think about what it means to work with people whose brains work differently than yours, and how that should change our professional interactions.
I’m a very quick, external processor. Meaning, I work through information very rapidly and often do so via speaking–the act of talking is part of my process of understanding and integrating new data.
It was a revelation when I (finally) understood that not everyone did this. Or, better, not everyone did this this way. Some people need time away from the group to process. Some people need to validate their first reaction against further research. Different people shut down in response to different stimuli–that may be the size of the audience or the presence of their boss-cubed, or understanding that their (absolutely correct) insight has the potential to torpedo a multi-million dollar initiative.
And all of those behaviors are rational, reasonable, and fully consistent with impactful work. So, a revelation.
And when I say revelation, I don’t mean, Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, Oh, that means that if I’m serious about my commitments to leadership, to inclusion, to building the best teams I possibly can, I need to reconsider almost everything I do.
Here’s an obvious one: most organizations are meeting-based. Most meetings are dominated by people who process like I do–quick, external processors. We take up the most air in these (all too often, virtual) rooms. Hence, most organizations are dominated by quick, external processors.
But if I were to rattle off the smartest people I worked with; the best problem-solvers I worked with; the most insightful technical experts I worked with, well, that list is not dominated by quick, external processors.
And the distance between the prior 2 paragraphs represents a huge value loss and quality loss in most teams. At best, the team is constantly swimming upstream trying to compensate for something it doesn’t quite understand; at worst, it just misses the value in those other voices.
And that ain’t great. I mean, it worked really well for me personally at times, and therein lies part of the problem: we are all often rewarded for behavior that is actually detrimental to our continued growth.