Cogitation \ˌkä-jə-ˈtā-shən\
1. the act of meditation or contemplation.
2. the faculty of thinking.
3. a thought; a design or plan.
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 - Step away from the customer. Photo courtesty of www.jimwnelson.com.
If you work in a company providing technical solutions, your engineers can be a great asset in building relationships with customers. They bring more credibility in discussing potential solutions and come up with better ideas to address a customer’s challenges than most sales or marketing professionals can. A good engineer can in turn gain insight into how the products they design are used, which helps feed future improvements.
Unfortunately, there is the occasional (hopefully) engineer without a commercial bone in his or her body. This engineer can take many forms. For example, some characterized by a closed-minded “not-invented-here” mentality (i.e., no one outside the organization can possibly have a better solution). Others are exceedingly cautious and emphasize a solution’s limitations more than its advantages (so as not to avoid any risk of issues with the solution). Or they may be more interested in looking like the smartest person in the room than they are in actually landing the sale. And finally, some just lack the social skills necessary to manage a productive conversation with a customer.
At times, however, such an engineer may be critical to involve in the sales process, perhaps because they are the true expert in the solution you offer, or they really do need the experience of seeing their products in use. When facing this challenge, here are some tips for making the most of the situation.
Communicate the objective of the meeting. You must set the expectations on what the meeting is to accomplish, whether it’s to address a customer’s concerns, uncover their latent needs, etc. Emphasize the reasons why you feel this engineer can bring value to the meeting, and make them feel an important part of the whole process. It is important to communicate to the engineer whether this is an information-gathering or question-answering session. Engineers by their nature feel a need to provide answers, when at times it may be better to say, “let me do a little more research on that for you.”
Emphasize the importance of preparing for the meeting. Hopefully you are doing this yourself – researching the customer and the contacts you will be meeting with, reviewing the account history, and planning the approach for the meeting. Involve your engineering colleague where you can, or at the minimum send them the appropriate materials to review. A good rule of thumb is that each hour of meeting time with the customer requires three hours of preparation.
Make sure that the engineer isn’t over-scripting the meeting. Engineers like to be precise, and many will head into such a meeting with a checklist of questions. This risks missing the opportunity to let the conversation flow in unexpected directions and uncover latent customer needs or alternative ideas for solutions. Having some questions planned is good, but remind the engineer that this is a conversation, not an interview.
Communicate a dress code. What may be obvious to you is not so to those who spend their day in front of the computer or in the factory. Be clear and specific, avoiding such broad generalities as “business casual”. And you may wish to remind them that their clothes should be pressed; I know of a sales manager who once had to take a visiting engineer to a clothing store after his flight arrived to buy new clothes because the engineer was so disheveled.
Review how to discuss competition. Every engineer wants to believe their solution is the best, and hopefully it is. But even so, addressing competitive offerings in a positive manner, but emphasizing your “points of difference”, will help maintain credibility and make your company appear to be a helpful resource (look for a future blog post on this topic). Also, make sure that your messages are consistent; if you have stated a specific advantage of your solution previously, make sure the engineer knows this so that they don’t contradict your prior statements.
Lead the meeting, but subtly. You want the engineer to be the source of the technical information, but you need to take charge of setting the meeting objectives with the customer, introducing the engineer, and watching for the conversation to shift off course. You must also intervene if the engineer is becoming, to put it mildly, a know-it-all, or is talking over the customer. Some engineers do believe that they have nothing to learn from a customer, and these are the ones who will take the most coaching. One last thing to watch for is whether the engineer is asking too many questions, so carefully monitor the customer’s body language and responses during these interchanges.
Document commitments and ensure follow-through. This is basic meeting advice, but you need to make sure that the engineer does not feel their job is “done” after the meeting, if there are responses due to the customer. Spend some time with your engineer going over the takeaways from the meeting and identify actions required.
Again, many, if not most, engineers either naturally have or have developed good communication skills with customers. For those that don’t, hopefully following the above advice will make for a productive engagement, turning your engineer from a liability to an asset.
I’m eager to hear of your experiences (especially horror stories) and what you’ve learned from them: do you have any additions to the above list? And if you work with this guy, please keep him away from your customers
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It is not unusual for children with autism to also have sleep issues. In many cases, this compounds the challenges the child faces in attention span and development, and adds stress and fatigue for the rest of the family. It is not clear why children with autism also tend to have sleep disorders. Possibilities include their increased response to outside stimuli, inability to read social cues (i.e., not being able to tell from others’ behavior that it is night time), irregular melatonin levels, and other theories.
 - Photo courtesy of WatchMoto.com blogs
Regardless of the cause, there are steps you can take to help establish good sleep patterns in your autistic child. Let me first state that I am not a psychologist or a physician, and if sleep issues present a major challenge for your child, you should seek professional help. We have worked with a psychologist and behavioral therapist in overcoming our son’s sleep issues, and he now uses a sleep medication to help him get to sleep. This medication helps some with sleeping through the night as well, but we are convinced that our improved efforts to establish good sleep habits are more responsible for these gains.
Before discussing what you should do, let me share some of the mistakes that we made through the years (our son is now seven). Perhaps you will gain from the comedy of our errors and avoid repeating them. In most cases, we tried to give our son what he asked for in order to calm him down and allow him to go back to sleep. Of course, since communication is a major challenge for autistic children, our son didn’t really want what he was asking for, he was only applying what limited vocabulary he had.
- Reading the same story over and over to him until he fell back asleep (after having read it to him over and over to get him to sleep in the first place)
- Putting a TV in his room so he could watch Sprout® at night and stay in his bed (as if he would stay in his bed)
- Allowing him to come into our room to watch Sprout (I can’t tell you how greatly the middle-of-the-night shows on Sprout now irritate us.)
- Allowing him to come into our room to go back to sleep (which may or may not eventually happen after 2 hours or so of tossing, turning, and occasional jumping)
- Sitting next to his bed until he fell back to sleep (often with one arm on him to hold him in his bed)
I’m sure there are a few other errors I have blocked from my mind. Let’s move on to what we should have done (and now do) when he woke in the middle of the night. The concept is that the actions you should take to help the autistic child develop good sleep habits are the same you should use for any other child. These may be more challenging for autistic children due to the social and communication hurdles, but when followed, they should yield improved behaviors.
Establish a consistent bedtime routine. This routine should start the same time every night, with consistent reminders that night time is approaching and that is the time for sleep.
Practice good habits on getting the child to sleep. This includes maintaining a routine as mentioned above and allowing the child to fall asleep on his or her own. If you usually stay in their room until they fall asleep, gradually remove your presence from their room. Minimize your interaction with them should they continually get out of bed (put them back to bed with no talking). If you need help on this, simply watch almost any episode of Supernanny.
Keep the child in their own bed. Like with any child, allowing them to sleep with the parents just provides an attractive alternative to learning to fall back asleep on their own, thus encouraging them to repeat the behavior.
Remove as many stimuli as possible. No toys should be allowed in the bed (except for comforting items like stuffed animals), and there should be no TV or extraneous light in the room (again, other than a comforting night light if needed).
Work to gradually remove yourself from the room. Depending on how significant the sleep problems are, you may need to start with sitting in the child’s room, but over time (either that night or the next time) move closer to the door, then outside the door with the door open, and eventually outside the door with the door closed.
Be persistent. Correcting sleep behaviors can be very stressful, but any backwards step and set back weeks of effort. This adjustment may have a negative effect on your family in the short term (such as waking up other children due to the noise) but will have an incredibly positive effect in the long run.
Again, should sleep issues be a major barrier in your child’s development or well-being, seek professional help. It is my hope that our experiences will help you address occasional sleep issues in your autistic child, or at least serve as the starting point for discussions with such a professional. Our child now sleeps through the night at least 95% of the time, and on the nights he doesn’t he typically just plays (if loudly) in his room with no intervention from us. If you have any tips that have helped your child sleep better, I’d be happy to learn of them in the comments.
Authors Note: As I post this early on a weekday morning, our son has been awake since at least 3:30, but playing contentedly in his room for over two hours. This is the first night he has been up so early in over three weeks, and we have to at least take satisfaction that he has needed no intervention this morning to keep him in his room.
Sprout is a registered trademark of Children’s Network, LLC
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I have noticed a few visitors to this blog having come here searching for my article on Posterous discussing indoor swings for children with autism (originally posted by Lifehacker). My apologies for the confusion, as this domain used to be hosted by Posterous. However, this does present a good opportunity to expand on our approach to fighting off the winter blues for our 6 year-old son, who is on the spectrum.
First a little background: last year, after returning from a week’s vacation in Marco Island, our son went into complete meltdown for a month. This created sleep issues which just compounded the problem, and it ultimately took sleep medication to get him back on track. It had always been difficult to get him to come inside and the thought of going from sunshine and sand all day every day to a typical Cleveland winter was too much to bear. Since we are returning to Marco Island for vacation this year, we wanted to make sure we were as prepared as possible to make him feel comfortable coming home (I’ll cover the use of social stories to prepare for vacations in a separate post).
 Our basement with playspaces for our autistic son We have thus equipped our basement with his favorite outside-like play areas. Our basement is unfinished so we didn’t need to worry about ruining the carpeting or walls. We also held a successful garage sale (and Salvation Army donation) earlier this year to clear out as much space as possible. Our basement includes:
Sling-Style Swing – we had an extra swing from the swing set we installed in the backyard this year, so we put two eye-bolts in a beam in the ceiling, bought some extra chain to get the length rate, and hung the swing. We had to be far enough from the wall to avoid the risk of hitting it.
Trampoline – this was actually his birthday present last year (shortly after our return from Marco Island) and while he was not in a place to enjoy it at first, it has now become his favorite item in the house. A bonus is that it provides the exercise he needs to sleep well at night and stay fit. Safety is a concern; we purchased a low trampoline from 1-800-Trampolines.com and have put a few gym mats around it.
Sandbox – what we hope will be the coup d’état this year is the sandbox. He loves playing in the sand, especially between tasks of his ABA therapy. We cringed at the thought of bringing sand into the house, but if it is successful it will be well worth the hassle of daily sweeping and vacuuming with the dedicated broom, dustpan, and portable vacuum. This came from Step2, though I don’t see the specific item on their list right now.
Happy Light – we purchased this at the recommendation of the psychologist last year and it may have helped some in bringing our son back to earth. The goal is to try to extend the day (though not too late into the evening, so as not to interrupt sleep cycles). We actually have not used it much yet this year, but it stands at the ready. This can be ordered from Verilux.
In addition to these, you can see the inflatable bouncer; since we have the trampoline, we no longer use the bouncer (which tends to turn into a steel cage death match anyway). We also have an art table, though that is mostly so his brothers are encouraged to play in the basement too. There are several tricycles in the basement, though our 6 year old has outgrown them. And finally we have a dedicated workspace for his ABA therapy, close to his favorite play spaces so he can return immediately to play between tasks. I’ll let you know how this works for staving off any issues throughout the winter; so far so good, as he has not complained at all about being stuck inside as the days have grown shorter and temperatures cooled.
Disclaimer
Please remember that I am not a trained therapist or psychologist and am only reporting what has been successful in our own circumstances. If your child has challenges dealing with the shift of seasons, you may need to seek professional help.
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02-08-10 4:31AM
5.04 mi in 36:23 (07:13 min/mi)
