You know that feeling, a meeting that feels like a group chat with the sound on? We tend to get irritated quite quickly by the behavior of others. Someone who talks too much. Another who is not engaged enough. A third who always responds off-topic.
In reality, it’s usually not a behavioral problem, but a structural one. The solution then isn’t feedback and coaching, but a better meeting design.
Not every brain functions at the same rhythm, seeks the same stimulus balance, or thinks in the same direction. Yet we often design our meetings as if everyone thinks, listens, speaks, and decides in the same way.
With BRAINwise, we don’t look at “difficult behavior,” but at design choices that make room for different brains — in meetings, in projects, in teams. This way, you make neurodiversity the norm.
The Misconception: It’s about Behavior
When a meeting stalls, we almost automatically look for the cause in people.
- “They’re not engaged.”
- “He’s not listening.”
- “She never says anything.”
We forget that behavior is always embedded in a context — and that context literally takes shape in the choices we make and the structure we create.
Teams that do realize this often search for the meeting model: shorter, standing, with or without an agenda. But there’s no universal formula. What works well for one team fails miserably for another.
The key lies in freedom of choice within clear frameworks.
BRAINwise: Neurodiversity beyond Labels
A good design allows for differences — in stimulus processing, thinking style, self-direction, communication, and information processing — while providing recognizable support.
That’s why BRAINwise doesn’t offer a checklist or universal script, but five reflection points that help you design your meetings to suit different brains.
Balance: the Art of Alternation
When we talk about the B of Balance, we’re talking about stimulus processing: how people deal with all the sensory stimuli that come at them throughout the day. We often think about overstimulation, but understimulation is just as much of a problem.
A meeting is an exercise in stimulus balance. Too much chaos, and some brains disengage; too much predictability, and others doze off. But balance isn’t about “rest” or “action” in itself – it’s about the alternation between the two.
A clear backbone brings calm: a recognizable sequence of start, content, decision, and conclusion. Within that structure, there can be room for movement – literally too.
In a brainstorming session, for example, it can help to start with a short silent opening round — everyone notes down their first thoughts — followed by duo conversations where ideas further mature. Then you can invite people to harvest their ideas on a flipchart, getting them out of their seats. Finally, you can bring back calm by briefly reviewing all ideas as a group.
The alternation between silence, movement, and conversation makes the whole more lively without overstimulating – both in content and sensory terms.
Reflection point: How do you bring clear structure and room for movement into your agenda?
With BRAINwise we don’t look at “difficult behavior”,
but at design choices that make room for different brains.
Reasoning: Two Heads Know more than one.
What annoys you the most? The person who’s ready to make a decision after 2 sentences? Or the one who still asks for thinking time after 2 hours of discussion?
The reality is: both thinking strategies have value. How you combine them in your meeting depends on the goal you have in mind, and can differ per agenda item. By making that clear, you already remove a lot of tension. And to fully utilize the hive mind, you can share information beforehand and allow feedback up to a few days after the meeting.
The same applies to thinking from the whole, or thinking from the detail: both can be relevant, but know what you want to use for what, and how to keep people on board when their personal preference doesn’t match what you expect in the meeting.
When we let different thinking strategies “play” together, we often see that the discussion slows down at the beginning, but saves time at the end — because decisions are better thought out.
Reflection point: How do you build in a thinking sequence that clarifies before it allows judgment?
Effective: Better to Switch Together than to Persevere Individually.
When we talk about the E of Effective, we’re talking about self-direction, and that’s much more than personal discipline. Self-direction is about the interplay between energy, recovery, impulse control, and concentration, to name just a few elements. And when we’re talking about a meeting, that means the interplay of all these factors for each of the participants. Complex, therefore.
A meeting that acknowledges this doesn’t expect everyone to stay focused constantly, but ensures that participants can quickly re-engage when their attention wanders. That’s a different mindset than “preventing someone from getting distracted”. No one can stay sharp permanently.
Concretely, this means:
- Work with clear signal moments (“we’re moving to the next point”) so people can cognitively restart.
- Use a visible structure (e.g., agenda on the board) as an anchor for those who temporarily lose track.
- Name what is still open, so people can refocus their attention.
This way, self-direction becomes a shared skill: the team supports the individual, instead of correcting the individual.
Reflection point: How do you design your meeting so people can quickly re-engage?
What we often see as “difficult meetings” is rarely a personality problem.
It’s a design problem. And design is malleable.
Interpersonal – Relationship before Content
Collaboration is not purely rational. People differ not only in communication style, but also in the need for connection. Some people go straight for the goal; others need contact first to feel safe. Both styles are valuable, but clash when there’s no room to land with each other first.
A short check-in helps — not about focus, but about presence. One sentence per person, for example: “What are you bringing with you today?” or “What do you need to be fully present?” This isn’t about sociability, but relational attunement. It ensures that people see each other before they judge each other.
Reflection point: How do you ensure relational attunement before diving into the content?
iNformation – Playing with Forms
Not every brain processes information in the same way. Some think in words, others in images. Some process better what they hear, others what they see. Numbers and stories don’t come equally easily to everyone either.
If you pour all information into one channel — only spoken, only text — you automatically lose part of your audience. That’s why it pays to offer information multimodally:
- a summary beforehand in text and a visual diagram,
- during the meeting a visual that emerges together (on flipchart, digital board or shared document),
- afterwards a verbal and visual recap of the decisions.
Such a design not only helps neurodivergent brains, but actually everyone: different forms make information more robust and better remembered.
Reflection point: How do you make your meeting multimodal?
When it all Comes Together
An organization with twelve team leaders noticed that their monthly meeting felt heavy. The same three people spoke the most, discussions repeated themselves, and the group often left the meeting without a clear decision.
During an internal work session, they decided not to do one thing: work on behavior. They chose to redesign the meeting, and made three conscious choices:
- Balance: A fixed structure with clear time blocks and moments of movement in between. No endless round tables, but short work sprints per theme.
- Reasoning: First get clear on what is meant, only then discuss. One of the team leaders introduced the rhythm “ask – think – discuss”.
- Effective: On the board was a high-level agenda, with brief decisions where they had already been made. Anyone who had disengaged could see where they were at any moment.
After three sessions, they noticed something subtle but essential: more people were providing input, the pace was calmer but the decisions more solid. And above all: the energy after the meeting was no longer exhausted, but available.
When they wondered what made the difference, someone said: “We still talk just as much, but it seems like we’re all participating now, instead of some running ahead and others constantly having to catch up.”
How can you make this kind of change measurable?
- Observe how well-founded the proposals are that are put on the table
- Check if there is room for minority perspectives: are alternative paths sufficiently discussed before a decision is made?
- Track how often decisions have to be revised later without external circumstances having changed.
What Doesn’t Help
Some habits seem neutral, but unconsciously foster exclusion mechanisms.
Three recognizable pitfalls:
- Adding topics at the last minute.
This disrupts stimulus balance and preparation. Calm thinkers come in blank, quick thinkers take over. - Doing everything in plenary.
No variation in form or pace: overstimulates one, understimulates the other. - Agendas without a purpose per point.
Those who don’t know whether something is meant to inform, explore, or decide, lose track.
Which ones do you often see popping up? And do you see good reasons for them, or is that a possible point of improvement for your team?
Neuro-inclusion is about Behavior and Design
What happens in meetings happens everywhere people work together. A difference in brain, pace, or communication style only becomes a problem when the design doesn’t allow for it.
BRAINwise provides a framework for this with five dimensions: Balance, Reasoning, Effective, Interpersonal, and iNformation. No labels or types, but lenses through which you learn to see behavior and context differently.
And that’s also what distinguishes BRAINwise from classic approaches to neurodiversity. It doesn’t matter why someone needs more processing time — whether that person is autistic, has ADHD, or is “just” a deep thinker. The point is that you can adjust the design so that the difference can exist, without having to put a label on it first.
Those who start from behavior end up with frustration (“why don’t they listen?”).
Those who start from design discover room for maneuver: small adjustments with big impact.
The power of BRAINwise lies not in rules or protocols, but in seeing what happens and consciously choosing how to design for it. This requires curiosity, nuance, and sometimes courage — but it opens the door to collaboration where differences are not smoothed out, but utilized.
Want to learn which design choices fit the neurodiverse profile of your team? Sign up for one of our webinars on Neurodiversity beyond labels. We introduce the BRAINwise method and show you how this method broadens your view on collaboration. Meetings are just one application. What you learn works everywhere people with different brains want to create meaning together.
Muriel Van Gompel
Consultant neurodiversity & organizational development
Through her years of experience in leadership positions, Muriel knows the reality of the business world inside out. She combines this experience with extensive knowledge about (neuro)diversity and specific neurotypes. In guiding teams and organizations, Muriel succeeds in making complex topics accessible and applicable. Her approach combines scientific insights with practical experience, and prioritizes feasibility.
She facilitates both the Neurotalk! and Neurodiscovery sessions, and does this in Dutch, French, English, or a combination of the three languages.
