Coaching Neurodiversity at Work

Coaching Neurodiversity at Work is a dynamic, justice-informed training program that offers a holistic foundation in neuro-affirmative coaching for professional contexts. This course blends practical skill-building with critical inquiry to support ethical, inclusive, and future-forward coaching with neurodivergent clients in the context of work.

Learners can expect a deep developmental experience designed to expand your mindset, language, and tools for working at the intersection of identity, systems, and work. Through multimodal engagement—texts, podcasts, dialogue, and creative exploration—you’ll examine how topics like dignity, masking, accessibility, and disclosure show up in the coaching relationship and within organizational life. Self-inquiry and practical application of reflection, dialogue, and lived experience are all valued as pathways to more inclusive, justice-aligned coaching in this course.

Whether your goal is to coach more effectively, influence organizational change, or lead with cultural competence, this course will equip you to support, elevate, and co-create with neurodivergent talent—across the arc of a working lifetime.

By the end of the course, you'll be able to:

• Apply the Integrated Coaching Framework for Neuro-Affirmative Coaching (ICF-N) to understand how neurodivergent clients navigate work, identity, and well-being within complex systems.
• Coach with confidence using neuro-affirmative, ethically grounded approaches aligned with globally recognized competencies (ICF) and client-defined success.
• Recognize the impact of culture, policy, and power on workplace inclusion, and support clients in navigating these dynamics.
• Reflect critically on your own practice through the lens of neurodiversity and intersectionality, identifying areas for growth and transformation.
• Integrate insights from research, lived experience, and creative expression into forward-thinking coaching and leadership strategies.
• Design inclusive, collaborative and courageous practices that honour cognitive diversity and promote sustainable, dignity-centered performance.

The Integrated Coaching Framework – Neuro-affirmative Coaching (ICF-N) offers a systemic lens for understanding client experience in the context of work and provides scaffolding for dialogue within the coaching relationship. The model positions physical and mental health alongside behavioural health as foundational, frames executive functioning as six interrelated domains and considers the client’s sensory experiences - all within organizational contexts.

Who is the course for

This course is designed for those who support neurodivergent adults in the context of work—and for those who seek to do so with greater confidence, insight, and care. If you’re neurodivergent yourself, you’ll find a welcoming learning environment that values lived experience and invites reflection.

Participants who will benefit from this program include:

• accredited coaches and coaching students
• career counsellors, advisors, and practitioners
• facilitators, trainers, and career development educators
• human resources professionals, business partners, and employee resource group leads
• organizational learning and leadership development practitioners
• career services professionals in post-secondary and adult education
• community and Indigenous career services professionals
• disability employment consultants and neuro inclusion program managers
• employee wellness, mental health, and accessibility specialists

Meet your instructors

Deborah Shukyn-Plageman and Alexandra Baltodano are credentialed ICF-PCC coaches with deep expertise in adult education, equity, and inclusive coaching practice. Together, they bring advanced training in Mentor Coaching and Competency Assessment, Credentialed Supervision and Reflective Practice, and Credentialed Advanced Team Coaching, along with graduate degrees in adult education and specializations in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

As a collaborative teaching team with lived experience and intersecting identities, they are known for their thought leadership in neurodiversity and coaching. Deborah and Alexandra are frequent educators with ICF chapters and guest speakers across professional and academic settings.

The course also features guest instructors and speakers with lived experience and subject matter expertise—including leaders in neurodiversity advocacy, inclusive design, disability justice, and organizational transformation—who offer diverse perspectives and deepen the learning experience.

Course Outline

Pre-Work

Connect with the online learning platform and course orientation information, complete pre-work reading and introduce yourself to your cohort of learners.

Week 1: Introduction to Principles of Neurodiversity

Explore foundational neurodiversity concepts, key thought leaders, and the field’s evolution. Learn how these principles align with the ICF Core Competencies and guide ethical, inclusive coaching.

Week 2: Intersectionality in Neurodiversity Coaching

Examine how neurodivergence intersects with race, gender, class, and other identities. Learn how these dynamics influence the coaching relationship through an ICF-aligned, equity-informed lens.

Week 3: Neurodiversity Coaching in the Context of Work

Explore how communication, executive functioning, health, and lifespan experiences shape neurodivergent clients’ workplace realities—and how coaches can respond ethically and effectively using the ICF Core Competencies.

Week 4: Understanding Neurodiversity in the Workplace

In this session, explore how neurodivergent clients experience the workplace. Engage with research on systems and norms to inform your coaching stance and better support clients in complex environments.

Week 5: Coaching Toward Workplace Inclusion

Support clients navigating disclosure, inclusion, and visibility. Co-create agreements that honour client values, autonomy, and context—while strengthening trust and clarity in your coaching relationships.

Week 6: Coaching Toward Workplace Success

Explore career development strategies like job crafting, values-based planning, and alternative paths. Support neurodivergent clients in defining success and setting meaningful goals across the career lifespan.

Week 7: Strengths-Based Coaching and Emerging Tools for Neurodivergence

Explore strengths-based coaching alongside responsible AI use. Learn to amplify client strengths and reflect critically on AI’s role in supporting autonomy, inclusion, and decision-making at work.

Week 8: Cultivating Presence and Focus in Coaching Conversations

Strengthen your capacity for presence, attention, and focus. Learn techniques to co-create inclusive coaching spaces that respect diverse processing styles and deepen client connection.

Week 9: Reflective Practice and the Integration of Learning

Take a reflective pause to explore your growth and deepen your understanding of reflective practice as a vital, ethical tool for coaching neurodivergent clients toward meaningful, sustainable change.

Week 10: Voices and Views: From Deficit to Dignity

Begin engaging with creative media while challenging compliance-based inclusion. Explore how cultural, environmental, and organizational norms impact neurodivergent visibility, wellbeing, and the design of truly inclusive systems.

Week 11: Voices and Views: Understanding the Lived Experience

This session centers the embodied, sensory, emotional, and mental health experiences of neurodivergent individuals. Explore how invisible barriers impact wellbeing—particularly for women and gender-diverse clients—in workplace coaching contexts.

Week 12: Voices and Views: Coaching for Strengths and Self-Realization

Explore what “good work” means for each client. Use neuro-affirmative frameworks to support autonomy, identity, mental wellbeing, and strengths-based goals aligned with sustainable, meaningful career paths.

Week 13: Voices and Views: Teams, Culture, and Leadership

Examine how leadership, peer dynamics, and organizational culture shape neurodivergent experiences. Explore how coaches and leaders can support inclusion, safety, and behavioural health in diverse workplace systems.

Week 14: Voices and Views: Designing the Neuroinclusive Future

Synthesize course insights and envision neuroinclusive futures. Use systems thinking to explore how environment, coaching, policy, and leadership intersect to shape equitable outcomes for neurodivergent individuals at work.

How am I assessed?

Learning in this course is grounded in reflection, creative engagement, and practical integration. Rather than traditional testing, assessment is designed to honour different ways of thinking, processing, and expressing insight.

Throughout the course, you’ll be invited to:

• Take part in ongoing reflective practices that help connect ideas from readings, discussions, and lived experience to your coaching or leadership context.
• Contribute to asynchronous conversations through written posts, replies, or creative media responses to course themes.
• Complete a final integrative reflection using a format that best suits your learning style—such as a short written piece, podcast-style audio, or visual artifact—that illustrates how your perspective or practice has evolved.

Facilitators will review your contributions based on depth of engagement, integration of key concepts, and connection to the ICF-N framework. Learners who successfully complete the program will earn a Certificate of Completion for the Specialization in Coaching Neurodiversity at Work, as well as a Certificate of Completion from the University of British Columbia Extended Learning.

Expected effort

To get the most from this course, plan to invest approximately 4.5 hours per week over 14 weeks, for a total of 63 hours of learning. This includes attending live weekly 2-hour sessions, engaging with course materials and creative content, participating in reflective practices, and contributing to asynchronous discussions or group activities. The course is delivered fully online in a facilitated format, with flexibility in how you engage between sessions.

Before registering for the course, carefully read and understand the program handbook.

Technology requirements

To participate in this course, you’ll need access to:

• an email account
• a computer, laptop, or tablet with a working video camera and microphone
• a reliable internet connection
• the latest version (or most recent major release) of a web browser

This course is intentionally content-rich, offering a wide range of readings, frameworks, and curated perspectives to support your development as a neuro-affirming coach or leader. Written materials are emphasized to allow for flexible, self-paced reflection and low-pressure engagement—particularly supportive for those who process best in solitary or asynchronous ways.

You're encouraged to engage with the material in whatever way feels most accessible and sustainable for you, including:

• Using screen readers or text-to-speech tools to listen to readings instead of scanning visually.
• Downloading PDFs and uploading them to AI tools (like ChatGPT or your preferred summarizer) to help surface key ideas before diving deeper.
• Skimming first, then returning later to sections that resonate or challenge your thinking.
• Reading collaboratively—whether that means sharing ideas in our sessions or discussing informally with peers or AI assistants.

Course format

This course is delivered fully online to support flexibility, reflection, and accessibility. Core content—including videos, readings, microlearning activities, and reflection prompts— are available asynchronously, allowing you to engage at your own pace and in ways that align with your energy, focus, and processing style.

Live weekly online sessions are held Fridays 11:00am to 1:00pm Pacific Time, and are recorded. These sessions are reserved for dialogue, applied coaching practice, and community connection. This intentional structure reduces the pressure of real-time performance and is especially supportive for learners with anxiety, slower processing speeds, or executive function differences.

You’ll also have opportunities to:

• Participate in learning triads or small groups for practice discussion and peer feedback.
• Contribute to ongoing conversations in a private online forum.
• Access curated tools, case studies, and creative resources to enrich your learning and support integration into practice.

Live attendance at the live weekly online sessions is required, to foster presence, belonging, and shared learning.

Textbook

This course includes a combination of free and paid materials. Each session includes required readings that are free and accessible online. In addition, the course requires the purchase of the following textbooks, which are available in a number of formats:

Doyle, N., & McDowall, A. (2024). Neurodiversity coaching: A psychological approach to supporting neurodivergent talent and career potential. Routledge.

Praslova, L. N. (2024). The canary code: A guide to neurodiversity, dignity, and intersectional belonging at work (First edition). Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.