At Enna, we believe an inclusive and productive workplace starts with understanding how each team member works best, especially when supporting neurodivergent employees. A tool we use a lot for this is our Working Styles Guide.
The guide helps neurodivergent people identify and communicate their preferred working styles to colleagues and managers. It gives everyone a reference point, which cuts down on misunderstandings and makes day-to-day work easier for the whole team.
If you’re autistic, have ADHD or dyslexia, or are neurodivergent in another way, the guide helps the people around you understand what support actually looks like for you.
What is the Working Styles Guide?
Enna’s Working Styles Guide is a personal template that helps you reflect on and share how you work best. Once completed, you can give it to your manager or team so they know how to communicate and collaborate with you in a way that suits your needs.
It includes prompts on topics like:
- Communication style
- Collaboration preferences
- Time management and productivity
- Task organisation
- How you like to receive feedback
Rather than relying on assumptions or one-size-fits-all working practices, the guide helps you and your team move towards a better, more individual understanding.
Why neurodivergent employees benefit from the guide
1. It promotes understanding and psychological safety
Many neurodivergent employees experience stress or anxiety because of unspoken differences in communication, collaboration or processing. By filling in the Working Styles Guide, people can clearly communicate their needs, from preferring written over verbal communication to needing extra processing time after meetings.
Once colleagues know these preferences, there are fewer crossed wires, and it becomes easier to build psychological safety for neurodivergent employees.
“I used the guide to explain that I find verbal instructions hard to retain. Now my manager always sends me a follow-up email after meetings. It’s made such a difference.” Working Styles Guide user
2. It helps identify and meet individual needs
From sensory sensitivities to executive functioning differences, neurodivergent people often have specific needs that are not always obvious. The Working Styles Guide gives space to explain preferences like:
- Needing quiet spaces to focus
- Working best with visual deadlines or reminders
- Feeling overwhelmed in fast-paced conversations
- Finding phone calls difficult
By sharing this information early, teams can make simple adjustments that lead to better wellbeing and stronger performance. Our list of reasonable adjustment examples for managers has plenty of ideas, and Acas guidance on neurodiversity at work is a useful reference too.
3. It boosts productivity and job satisfaction
People do better work when they’re supported to work in the way that suits them. The guide allows teams to spot potential barriers, like unclear expectations or distracting open-plan workspaces, and put practical solutions in place.
Small changes, such as adjusting communication methods or offering flexibility in working hours, can make a big difference to both productivity and job satisfaction for neurodivergent employees.
4. It improves communication across the team
Many workplace challenges stem from misunderstandings. For neurodivergent people, certain communication styles can feel unclear, overwhelming or even unintentionally excluding.
By completing the guide, team members gain insight into how their colleagues prefer to give and receive information, including how they like to receive feedback. That means less friction and fewer awkward moments.
It’s also helpful for neurotypical colleagues, who may not always be aware of how their communication style affects others.
5. It helps everyone reflect and grow, not just neurodivergent employees
The Working Styles Guide isn’t only for neurodivergent people. It encourages every team member to reflect on how they work, what they find helpful and how others can support them.
Teams where people understand themselves and each other tend to be more flexible and more respectful.
How to use the Working Styles Guide in your team
The guide is simple to put into practice. Here’s how to make it part of your team’s workflow.
Step 1: Download the guide
Use the link below to download and save your copy. It’s a fillable document that you can complete on your computer or print and fill in by hand.
Download the Working Styles Guide (Word document)
Step 2: Share it with your team
Send the guide around your team and encourage everyone to fill in their own version. If you’re a manager, lead by example and complete yours first.
Step 3: Complete it in your own time
Find a quiet space where you can reflect. Be honest: this is about your needs, not what you think others expect. You don’t need a diagnosis to complete it. If you’d like more help putting your needs into words, read our tips on communicating your needs in a job.
Step 4: Share and store team responses
Once everyone has filled in their guide, share them within the team. Create a shared folder or digital space where they can be accessed and referred to when needed.
Step 5: Hold a team meeting to discuss
Consider arranging a short team session to talk through your guides together. Focus on what you’ve learned, what support looks like in practice, and what changes could improve collaboration.
Step 6: Update it regularly
As new team members join or your working style evolves, revisit your guide and keep it up to date. It works well alongside our onboarding checklist for neurodivergent employees. For dyslexic colleagues, our dyslexia styles guide is a helpful companion.
Real-world example
A neurodivergent employee at a creative agency shared their guide with their manager after struggling with burnout. They explained that back-to-back meetings without downtime caused sensory overload and poor focus. After reviewing the guide, their manager introduced 15-minute “buffer breaks” between meetings and allowed them to block out deep work time. Their wellbeing improved, their project work got better, and they trusted their manager more.
Final thoughts
Supporting neurodivergent employees doesn’t have to involve complex changes or expensive tools. Sometimes it starts with simply asking, “How do you work best?”
Enna’s Working Styles Guide gives those conversations some structure. In our experience, it’s one of the quickest ways to make a team feel safer to be honest about how they work.
You can download the guide below.
Download the Working Styles Guide (Word document)
How Enna can help
If you manage a team, the guide is a good first step. Our neuroinclusive collaboration workshop then helps people put what they’ve learned into practice. Where someone needs more tailored support, our workplace needs assessments recommend specific adjustments. If you’d like to talk it through, book a call with us.
And if you’re filling in the guide for yourself and want one-to-one help working out your strengths and asking for what you need, workplace coaching with Enna can help. Plenty of employers pay for coaching, so ask yours.
