Take a marketing manager with ADHD who can lock onto a complex campaign brief for six hours straight, producing work colleagues call brilliant, then spend two days unable to start a five-minute expense report.
Same person, same brain, wildly different outcomes depending on context.
It is tempting to read that inconsistency as low engagement. It rarely is.
A strengths-based approach to neurodiversity starts from a different question. Rather than asking which category someone fits into, it asks what they do well, what energises them, and the conditions in which their strengths are most likely to translate into performance. Explore the foundations of a strengths-based approach
Why Context Matters More Than Labels
Many widely used workplace personality frameworks were developed long before our current understanding of neurodiversity.
That does not make personality science irrelevant. In fact, modern longitudinal research on personality stability and change suggests something more nuanced than the idea that personality is simply “fixed for life”. Personality traits show meaningful stability, but they can also change across the lifespan and in response to experience.
The bigger problem arises when an assessment profile is treated as a complete or static explanation of the person.
That matters particularly for neurodivergent talent, where attention, energy, behaviour, and performance can vary significantly depending on context, environment, task demands, and level of interest.
Type-based personality tools and dimensional trait models are not the same thing. But either can become limiting when the output is used to put someone into a box rather than as one source of information about a complex individual. TalentPredix has explored this distinction further in our comparison of strengths assessments and traditional personality tests.
As AI reshapes work, this distinction may become even more important. Creativity, judgement, novel problem-solving, and different ways of seeing patterns are increasingly valuable alongside technical skills.
Masking Complicates the Picture
Self-report assessment also needs context.
Research into self-report personality measures in autistic adults is still developing. A 2015 study using the NEO-PI-R with autistic adults noted that validity in autistic populations had been under-researched, although importantly, its own results supported satisfactory reliability and validity in that sample.
Separate research into autistic camouflaging has shown that people may deliberately mask or compensate for traits in order to fit social expectations.
That does not invalidate self-report personality assessment. But it does raise an important question: how much of any self-report reflects the person, and how much reflects what they have learned is acceptable or expected in a particular environment?
People who have spent years compensating may not always answer “what is naturally true of me?” in a vacuum. Context, trust, and psychological safety matter.
The Deficit Problem
There is a second issue, harder to measure but easy to feel.
Many traditional approaches to neurodivergence have started by identifying impairment, difficulty, or deviation from a neurotypical norm.
Some workplace assessment frameworks also use explicitly risk-oriented language. Hogan’s Development Survey, for example, assesses what it calls the “dark side” of personality across eleven scales, focusing on characteristics that may derail performance under pressure.
There is a legitimate purpose behind understanding risk and derailment. Hogan itself notes that qualities can become problematic when overused under stress.
But framing still matters.
For someone whose neurodivergent characteristics may already have been interpreted primarily through what they struggle with, another assessment conversation centred on what might go wrong is not always the most useful starting point.
A Strengths-Based Approach to Neurodiversity
A growing body of work is challenging that starting point.
Dr Lawrence Fung and colleagues at Stanford have developed a strengths-based model of neurodiversity, exploring how characteristics associated with neurodivergence can function as strengths or challenges depending on the person and the context. Read Stanford’s explanation of the strengths-based model of neurodiversity
Persistence can become an asset when sustained attention is valuable. Attention to detail can become a major advantage in work that demands precision. Hyperfocus can be highly productive when the task aligns with an individual’s interests and strengths.
The point is not to romanticise neurodivergence or pretend that support needs and barriers do not exist.
It is to stop assuming that difference automatically equals deficit.
Emerging workplace research is moving in the same direction. Strengths-based approaches to neurodiversity are increasingly being explored as a way to identify, use, and develop neurodivergent employees’ strengths while creating working environments in which those strengths can actually be applied.
That is a very different starting premise from asking how far someone sits from a predefined norm.
A Gap in the Research
Here is the honest bit.
There does not yet appear to be a well-established evidence base directly comparing strengths assessments and personality assessments head-to-head on neurodivergent workplace outcomes.
So the argument for a strengths-based lens should not be overstated.
Gallup’s research on neurodiversity and CliftonStrengths found broadly similar strengths profiles across neurodivergent and neurotypical respondents. Neurodivergent respondents ranked only modestly higher on themes including Ideation and Strategic, and Gallup cautioned against generalising these differences to individuals.
But another part of the research is more revealing.
Neurodivergent and neurotypical employees reported many of the same workplace challenges. The difference was often intensity: where neurodivergent respondents found something difficult, a subset tended to experience it as substantially more difficult. Gallup’s analysis of neurodivergent employees’ workplace experiences
Gallup also found that 37% of neurodivergent employees surveyed had not disclosed their neurodivergence to any coworkers.
That matters.
It suggests the central issue is not necessarily that neurodivergent people possess a fundamentally different set of talents. It is that the environment may make those talents harder to recognise, express, or use.
Framed this way, strengths do not need to replace personality tools. They help surface something those tools can miss when used too rigidly: what a person can contribute, what gives them energy, and the conditions in which that potential is most likely to emerge.
What This Means for How We Assess People
A strengths assessment does not need someone to explain away what makes them different.
It starts by exploring what they can do well, what energises them, what matters to them, and how those qualities can be applied more effectively.
For a neurodivergent adult who has spent years being interpreted through categories that may not fully capture how they actually think and work, that shift matters.
If you are building talent processes for a genuinely diverse workforce, the question is not only whether an assessment is validated.
It is what it was validated to find, how its results are interpreted, and what decisions those results are then used to make.
If your current assessment process treats a personality profile as a fixed explanation of the person, it may be worth asking what it is missing, and who.
TalentPredix™ is built on a strengths-first, non-boxing philosophy. TalentPredix™ Standard reveals Strengths, Motivations, Values, Career Drivers, and Limiters to help people and organizations understand where talent is most likely to thrive and how to develop it.
Want to Look Beyond Personality Labels?
Explore how TalentPredix™ Standard uses a strengths-first approach to uncover what people do best, what drives them, and what they stand for, creating a more positive and practical starting point for talent development.
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Author: James Brook
James Brook FCIPD is the Founder and Managing Director of TalentPredix™, a business psychologist, executive coach and talent and strengths assessment expert with more than 30 years’ international experience. He previously founded Strengthscope® and held senior HR and talent leadership roles at Yahoo!, NatWest and Novo Nordisk.
