Question: “I’m a guy from Poland in my mid-twenties, with Asperger’s. Do you have any advice on how to be a better person, and any leadership advice?”
Anna (to Brad): “Well, you’ve already given leadership advice, I suppose.”
Brad: “Yeah, I’ve already given leadership advice but you know, I have Asperger’s as well. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. Mild case of high functioning autism. Um, yeah - you just have to practice. You have to practice things that make you uncomfortable and squirmy and squishy, like being empathetic and emotionally connecting with people, which I think sucks.
You just have to force yourself to do it because if you can’t, being in a leadership position is going to be very hard, because you see people as objects, and then they become objects. So you need to see them as people, and then they become people.
So just train yourself to do that through repetition. In a way, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean just physical, it also means mental and in this case it’s emotional.”
- excerpt from Brad’s latest AMA