I just finished reading a great book by John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye, about his life with Asperger’s syndrome. I’m fascinated with autism spectrum disorders because, in the absence of “normal” communication and social interaction skills, people with these afflictions can tell us a lot about how we define normal communication and social interaction.

It intrigued me how John questions the social conventions most of us take for granted. Looking people in the eye when talking to them; expressing sympathy for the hardships of strangers; telling “white lies” instead of the truth to protect others’ feelings — these societal behaviors are often taken for granted, yet when I look more closely at these it’s easy to question whether these conventions are necessary, or merely arbitrary.

The other thing I found interesting is his exploration of the relationship between genius, focus, and social skills. There’s a stereotype that highly focused, highly intelligent people often don’t do very well socially. I’ve been around the science and high-tech field long enough to know that this stereotype holds true sometimes! I’ve met people who are absolutely brilliant at math or engineering, but sometimes forget to put their shoes on before they leave the house.

If you look a little further down the spectrum, you’ll meet people who struggle with focus and concentration; who are bright but not necessarily an expert in any one discipline (I like to call them “snorkelers,” as opposed to the specialist “divers”). Yet many snorkelers are warm, affable, highly social, and love people. Coaches tend to fall in this category, I’ve found.

Is there a correlation here? Certainly there are exceptions — highly sociable people who are experts in a narrow field, as well as misanthropic generalists — but by and large I’ve found that that being a “snorkeler” without a lot of focus opens you up to noticing social cues and subtle signals that the “divers” might miss. It might also be the difference between being focused inward and focused outward.

The good news in all this is that, as a snorkeler myself, I’ve decided to be OK with not being an expert in any given discipline, by reframing that I’m an expert in human behavior. That being a good listener, a rapport-builder, and an avid conversationalist is in itself a specialty.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under General blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.