Person-Centered Workplace Manual
Enhancing Regulation, Communication & Inclusion
Introduction
Organizational structures of today demand too much from a few,
and not much at all from everyone else.
~ Gary Hamel
Being an ally in the workplace may involve assisting others with their sensory and emotional regulation. For all people, life can present times when our brains become so overwhelmed that we may experience emotional dysregulation. Sensory aspects of the workplace can also cause dysregulation, especially for employees who identify as neurodivergent. This is often due to differences in how neurodivergent brains process sensory input. The following will explain elements of emotional regulation in the workplace, increasing awareness when giving feedback, building psychological safety, and how person-centered leadership is applied in all of these circumstances to improve organizational success.
This manual will provide skills and strategies to promote a more copassionate, understanding, and inclusive work environment through regular check-ins, individualized support, mentorship, and empathetic communication. The person-centered approach prioritizes each employee's unique needs, well-being, and professional growth. This includes recognizing and nurturing the potential of each team member.
The concept of psychological safety is covered herein, with good reason. In a psychologically safe workplace, most employees feel safe expressing their opinions, sharing their ideas, and taking calculated risks without fear of negative consequences. The information contained here will explore why psychological safety is crucial for sustaining creativity, innovation, and open communication in inclusive workplaces.
Emotional regulation, person-centered leadership, and psychological safety are not just buzzwords; they are fundamental to the success of people and organizations. By developing these skills and practices, organizations can enhance employee satisfaction, promote collaboration, reduce conflicts, and increase productivity.
Readers will gain knowledge on how to improve success through tools and techniques to navigate the complexities of emotions in the workplace, lead with empathy and compassion, and create an environment where every employee feels valued, heard, and safe in expressing their feedback and ideas. Let's embark on this journey together to create a workplace where everyone can thrive.
Manual Summary
Emotional Regulation in the Workplace
Emotional regulation is the ability to manage one’s emotional responses constructively, especially under stress. It’s foundational to effective communication, teamwork, and maintaining a positive workplace culture. Neurodivergent individuals may experience heightened challenges with emotional regulation, requiring supportive strategies and inclusive practices from leadership.
Key practices include:
  • Teaching self-awareness and emotional control techniques.
  • Developing empathy and active communication skills.
  • Providing sensory-friendly environments (like sensory rooms).
  • Offering real-time regulation support (e.g., grounding exercises, calming presence).
  • Affirming job security and offering feedback post-regulation, not during.
Person-Centered Leadership
This leadership style focuses on the individual needs, experiences, and contributions of each employee. It creates a culture of compassion, ongoing support, and inclusion.
Core practices include:
  • Regular check-ins and clear communication.
  • Mentorship programs, especially during onboarding.
  • Adjustments for equity (e.g., tech tools or workspace changes).
  • Leadership that listens, adapts, and models empathy consistently.
Giving Feedback with Care
Feedback should not only guide performance—it should strengthen trust. For neurodivergent employees or those with past negative experiences, feedback can trigger anxiety or defensiveness if not handled thoughtfully.
Best practices:
  • Start with empathy and acknowledge past experiences.
  • Offer reassurance of job security and time to improve.
  • Provide written or voice follow-ups to reinforce clarity and reduce stress.
  • Avoid overwhelming the recipient—use clear, compassionate language.
Understanding Rejection Sensitivity
Rejection sensitivity involves heightened emotional responses to perceived criticism or exclusion. It can lead to social withdrawal, emotional outbursts, or internalized negative self-talk.
Support strategies include:
  • Framing feedback to avoid triggering emotional distress.
  • Reinforcing the employee’s value and contributions.
  • Creating consistent moments of belonging and positive reflection.
  • Encouraging open-ended check-ins to surface and address concerns.
  • Setting Clear Expectations Clarity prevents confusion and empowers action. Many employees—especially those who are neurodivergent—may struggle with interpreting verbal instructions or multitopic meetings.
  • How to improve clarity:
  • Use written expectations alongside verbal directions.
  • Break tasks down and specify collaboration tools or partners.
  • Offer space for questions to normalize help-seeking behavior.
  • Emphasize outcome descriptions and examples of success.
Fostering Psychological Safety
Psychological safety allows employees to take risks, speak up, and show vulnerability without fear of embarrassment or reprisal. It’s vital for innovation, retention, and true inclusion.
Core strategies:
  • Leaders model humility and openness to mistakes.
  • Use inquiry tools to draw out ideas and show respect for differing perspectives.
  • Frame meetings clearly to reduce anxiety and promote contribution.
  • Train teams in listening skills, inclusive language, and conflict resolution.
  • Reward behaviors that promote openness, not just outcomes.
Who is this for?
This volume is geared towards individuals passionate about creating a person-centered workplace using the lens of neurodivergent best practices. They have experience and base knowledge of neurodivergence, allyship, and management of neurodivergent people.
After this manual
By the end of this section, you will understand the importance of emotional regulation and determine ways to create a psychologically safe workplace, reduce the regulation required, or assist when a teammate is challenged.
Key Takeaways
  • Emotional regulation, what it is, and its presence in the workplace. Strategies for effective communication, conflict resolution, and teamwork. Tips for regulating heightened emotions.
  • Strategies for providing feedback emphasize delivering it with care and empathy. Recognize how anxiety and past experiences play a part in the receiver's experience with feedback and why embracing compassion provides greater feelings of job security and feedback implementation.
  • Understand what rejection sensitivity is and its impact on how employees perceive interactions and manage emotions during feedback. Develop strategies to minimize rejection sensitivity, improve actionable feedback, and promote a positive workplace culture.
  • Basic understanding of psychological safety and its importance in the workplace. Learn crucial elements needed to obtain greater levels of psychological safety in organizational culture and leadership.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is a critical skill for success in the workplace. Emotional regulation involves the ability to recognize and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. This skill is essential for effective communication, conflict resolution, and teamwork.
In the workplace, emotions can run high, and it is common for employees to experience stress, frustration, and other negative emotions. However, when these emotions are not regulated, they can lead to negative outcomes such as decreased productivity, conflict, and even burnout.
Emotional regulation is essential for creating a positive and productive workplace culture. When employees can regulate their emotions effectively, they are better equipped to communicate, collaborate, and work efficiently with others, leading to increased job satisfaction, improved performance, and a more positive work environment overall.
Employers can support emotional regulation in the workplace by providing training and resources for employees to develop this skill, which can include workshops, coaching, and other forms of support. Additionally, employers can promote a workplace culture that values emotional regulation and supports employees when they may be struggling.
For employees who identify as neurodivergent, emotional regulation might present real challenges. Certain types of ADHD involve emotional impulses that might be hard to prevent or control. What might seem like a small frustration to some, may lead to an outsized reaction in others.
Key Strategies for Training Employees on Emotional Regulation
Sharing strategies with team members on how to practice emotional regulation, including sharing one's own personal strategies, is a terrific way to relate to employees and start building an inclusive and supportive environment.
Start with self-awareness
Begin by helping employees develop a greater understanding of their emotional states. Facilitate an exploration into when employees become stressed, emotional, or negative towards the organization or other employees. This can involve exercises such as journaling, mindfulness practices, or self-reflection activities. By developing a greater self-awareness of how emotional states impact behavior, employees can begin to recognize their emotional triggers and develop strategies for constructively managing their emotions.
Practice emotional control
Help employees develop strategies for managing their emotions in the moment. This can involve teaching techniques such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, or reframing negative thoughts. Employees can learn to practice gaining control of their emotional responses to respond more constructively.
Develop empathy
Help employees develop empathy by teaching how to recognize and respond to the emotions of others. This can involve activities such as role-playing, simulations, or case studies. Employees can improve their communication skills and build stronger relationships with colleagues and clients through developing greater empathy.
Communicate effectively
Teach employees to communicate effectively, even when emotions are high. This can involve teaching active listening skills, assertiveness techniques, and conflict-resolution strategies. By developing these skills, employees can communicate and collaborate more effectively.
Provide ongoing support
Emotional regulation is a skill that takes time and practice to develop. Provide ongoing support for employees through coaching, mentoring, or additional training. This can help employees continue to develop their emotional regulation skills and maintain a positive and productive workplace culture.
Tips for Calming Heightened Emotions in Real Time
Dysregulation, when the ability to regulate one's emotions is depleted, makes it difficult to think logically and rationally. Therefore, it can be helpful to try and pull someone out of an overwhelming mindset and aid their emotional regulation. Strategies for emotional regulation include encouraging one to think grounding thoughts, or thoughts that bring their mind back to the present moment and out of their abstract thoughts.
You can start by asking them to describe the sounds and feeling of the beach, what outer space might sound like, or what their favorite soft blanket feels like. Ask them to list all the items in their refrigerator. Maybe the person has a strategy to calm themselves down, but may be too overwhelmed to remember it, so ask what it is. Maybe they like to listen to music or scroll on their phone or play a certain app on their device. Questions can sometimes be intense during periods of dysregulation. You may need to try another tactic if the person finds responding difficult.
1
Affirmation
When someone's emotions or senses are all over the place, showing support for the positive aspects of their job performance is a good idea. Let's say an employee said something emotionally charged or negative during a moment of dysregulation. Instead of discipline, when possible, try to offer compassion in the moment. Let the employee know that you value it when they communicate professionally, and with less emotional emphasis. Explain why their negative reaction, what they said or did, was not ideal for the workplace. Give them a direct example of a better way to handle things the next time they feel emotionally overwhelmed. Affirm job security after the incident, but also make note of the reaction in the employee file in case it happens again.
2
Shame
Nobody likes feeling out of control, and sometimes during moments of dysregulation, employees may exhibit behaviors that make them feel embarrassed or ashamed after regulating their emotions. During this vulnerable time, try not to add to the negative self-image the employee may be focused on, as it might take them longer to bounce back. Try to move them to a safer space where they can calm down and regain control over their emotions, privately, to reduce the potential for shame. Due to a potential for a reduced ability to think rationally in the heat of the moment, hold off on providing any immediate feedback. Most of us can't make sound decisions or learn new things when overwhelmed. Wait until the employee is in a better emotional state before addressing the situation.
3
Turnover & Performance
Emotional and sensory dysregulation can be so intense at times that it negatively impacts job performance. If shame and embarrassment are part of the mix, affirming job security and reassuring the employee that everyone feels dysregulated at times can help reduce intentions to quit after the incident. Take care in how you approach the offer to go home during dysregulation. An employer may feel that a helpful solution would be providing an offer to go home for the day to the dysregulated employee, and it might be helpful. However, be sure to provide compassionate context about the offer to go home and affirm job security. That is because some employees, especially those who identify as neurodivergent, may feel uncomfortable, ashamed, or scared about what employment will be like for them after the incident. The fear or shame may be so intense that they may start thinking in binary terms, feeling unwelcome, and that it would be better to quit their job than go back the next day. Less shame or fear might result if the employee stays at work, has an opportunity to regulate their emotions in a sensory-friendly space, or by taking a walk, and return back to work instead of going home.
Person-Centered Leadership
Successful person-centered leadership approaches have become increasingly important in today's workforce, especially in those workplaces that strive for true inclusion. Person-centered approaches prioritize each employee's unique needs and well-being and strive for a more compassionate and understanding work environment.
Regular Check-ins
Person-centered leadership styles involve providing employees with regular check-ins which serve multiple purposes. Check-ins may involve breaking down large projects into manageable tasks, tracking progress, and hearing any concerns. Check-ins can also ensure everyone is on the same page and provide clarity for any uncertainties or questions along the way.
Feedback Loop
Employees can provide input on adjustments made to create equity in their workstation, or the effectiveness of any assistive technology introduced to support them. This feedback loop is essential in tailoring the work environment to individual needs and ensuring continuous improvement.
Compassion and Understanding
Person-centered leadership styles prioritize compassion, patience, and understanding. Recognizing that every employee is unique, these qualities allow managers to provide the necessary support and empathy that acknowledges the diverse needs and circumstances of each team member.
Mentorship
Whenever possible, person-centered leadership would include a mentor for new employees. Mentorship is most effective when integrated into the onboarding and training processes. Mentors are a valuable resource offering guidance, answering questions, providing clarification, and unwavering support for their mentees. Having a mentor from the outset can help new employees navigate their roles and the workplace more effectively.
Understanding Psychological Safety
People with similar backgrounds often share common norms and assumptions about behaving, setting priorities, and approaching their work. However, these unspoken norms can collide when team members come from diverse backgrounds. The definition of "evidence" to support an opinion can vary widely across fields. The outcome of these clashes is often misunderstanding and frustration among team members.
Creating and sustaining psychological safety is a shared responsibility involving employers and employees. The benefits are significant when employers and employees work together to promote an environment where everyone feels safe to express themselves, take risks, and grow.
Tool - Cultivating inquiry
Genuine inquiry involves drawing out others' ideas and listening thoughtfully to their responses; it is a powerful tool for increasing psychological safety. The need for inquiry is heightened in diverse teams due to the various perspectives represented in diverse backgrounds. Each team member brings unique experiences and insights to the table.
We all have blind spots, areas where our knowledge or understanding is limited, and we may not even be aware of these gaps. In diverse teams, these gaps become more pronounced. Cultivating a culture of inquiry involves asking the right questions and genuinely listening to the answers. It is a practice that promotes understanding and demonstrates respect for each team member's contributions.
Tool - Framing
Framing is a great way to make sure employees understand the goals of any project or meeting. Many team meetings are implicitly framed as judgment and decision-making encounters. This type of meeting design can make employees less willing to speak up, share questions or concerns, or offer new ideas. To overcome this common practice, outline meetings by explicitly stating what the goal is, for example, to share information and ideas. This shift encourages openness and reduces fear of judgment. Systematically invite employees with different perspectives to join the conversation, listen to their input, and consider their viewpoints before making decisions. This inclusive approach builds a sense of belonging and value among team members.