Presentations for Your Group

Barbara Bissonnette offers a variety of employment-related presentations geared specifically for individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and Nonverbal Learning Disorder. Each can be adapted for small and large groups and for various time frames. Please contact Barbara at 978-298-5186 or via email at Barbara@ForwardMotion.info to discuss your needs.

Strategies for Finding a Satisfying Career
This workshop provides tools for determining your interests, skills, and abilities plus the kinds of organizations that you’ll be comfortable using them in. Learn how to evaluate whether interests can be turned into a vocation and how to use informational interviewing, shadowing, and other techniques to research what an occupation is really like.

Effective Communication in the Workplace
Learn the basic rules for getting along with supervisors and colleagues including making small talk, repairing conversations, and avoiding common communication blunders at work. You will also discover how to request accommodations without revealing a diagnosis and “neutral” ways to explain atypical behavior.

Requesting Accommodations and Meeting Performance Expectations
Two of the most confusing areas in the workplace are how to request accommodations and how to gauge whether performance expectations are being met. How often should you ask a supervisor for feedback? What are the signs that you’re doing a good job or not? Do you have to mention AS in order to request an accommodation?

Learn strategies for clarifying job expectations and establishing performance benchmarks, plus tips on asking for accommodations without disclosing a diagnosis. You’ll discover the right and wrong ways to makes requests and receive sample scripts that address visual and auditory sensitivities as well as executive function difficulties.

Transition to Work
This presentation offers ideas for how to make the leap to first-time employment. You learn the pluses of beginning with volunteer or part-time assignments, and learn how to factor things like commuting and your preferred work style into your job search equation. We’ll also review a check list of what to be ready for prior to beginning your job search.