How Autism Became His Leadership Superpower

Welcome, dear listeners, to the Speak and Flow podcast, where we dive into unique experiences to help you and your team achieve maximum potential and flow, even when the stakes are high. Today, I have an amazing…

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Melinda Lee: caring. I already sense the care that he has. His name is an also successful leader. He's a senior product manager at Balsam Brands. His name is Nick Borlin. Hi, Nick, welcome!

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Nick Bourland: Hi, thanks for having me.

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Melinda Lee: Thank you so much for your time, and also sharing your amazing story today. And before we dive in, can you share with the audience, what are you so excited about at Borland, or Balsam Brands?

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Nick Bourland: Well, it's a company that's really unique. It's called, an evergreen company, which basically means we don't have outside investors.

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Nick Bourland: It's wholly owned inside, and that allows us to do more of what's right for our customers and for the business as a whole, instead of being beholden to what stakeholders want to do.

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Nick Bourland: A lot of times, businesses have to sacrifice on quality for that. So that's not something that we have to deal with, and actually, one of our values is to share joy. So that's something I really resonated with. I love being able to bring a little bit more happiness around the world just through our products and things, so we do,

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Nick Bourland: artificial Christmas trees, just, like, really high-end artificial Christmas trees, and so Christmas is something that's very joyful for people in general, and so we get to be part of that, and that's something that I've always loved about being part of Balsam. It's been a very great company. And also.

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Nick Bourland: wonderful as I've, gone on this journey that we're going to talk about here in a little bit. They've been very supportive through all of that, so it's a good place to be.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, oh my gosh, to have that wonderful value of joy and spreading joy, it sounds like an amazing company firm. And also, like you said, yeah, not having the outside investors' opinions, you do what you want to do. And so… and you're a senior product manager there now, you've raised up the ranks, you've elevated and made some progress there, and so congratulations.

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Nick Bourland: Thank you. Have you… can you share with the audience what it was like before that, before you… your success?

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, well, it's been a long journey. I think, growing up, I always knew that I was a little bit different, but we didn't have a word for it.

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Nick Bourland: And as I've gone through the years, I've come to realize, there is something I need to investigate what it is, right? So I've come to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which, just a few years ago, as a matter of fact, about 2 years ago.

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Melinda Lee: Oh, wow. And so…

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Nick Bourland: Through my career, there were a lot of ups and downs, and there was a point in my career where I was actually dismissed from a role. This is probably about 15 years ago.

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Nick Bourland: And it was a misunderstanding, largely in part, as I look back, due to this condition that I have of being autistic.

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Nick Bourland: And,

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Nick Bourland: when that happened, I was told, well, maybe you should just be in a role where you shouldn't work with other people, and you can just be, kind of a lone ranger, and do, you know, do analysis, it'll hide you in a corner, or something like that. And that was very devastating to hear.

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Nick Bourland: Because I've always really cared a lot about people and wanted to work with people, but, but this…

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Nick Bourland: condition that I've had has always been something that I've struggled with, and it causes me to maybe not always have the same social boundaries or understandings about how people perceive things as what comes normally to most people, so it's always been kind of a struggle. And when that happened.

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Nick Bourland: I thought at the time, wow, this is really career-ending. I felt very devastated. But…

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Nick Bourland: I battled back from that, and then got into another role at a company I was with for about 6 years, and then even a similar thing happened. I'd been there for…

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Melinda Lee: Because can you describe to me what was happening? What was your experiencing, and what was the feedback? What would you try to do, and what was the feedback that you were getting?

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, well, it's just when you are autistic.

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Nick Bourland: Things sound right in your head.

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Nick Bourland: But when you say them, they're not always perceived in the way that you had intended, and so sometimes I will say something and then realize, I don't know, 5 minutes to an hour later, like.

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Nick Bourland: gosh, why did I say that? You know, because you realize later, it just doesn't come off entirely right, and so I've had to really learn how to… I mean, I guess in the autistic community, we call it masking.

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Nick Bourland: trying to reorient our thoughts, or the way that we come across in ways that are more normal, I guess, for people.

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Nick Bourland: And that's been a bit of a journey. I think I've always really, really cared a lot about people, and so that was one of my main driving forces in wanting to be better, is that I would recognize, oh gosh, I've offended somebody really inadvertently, and made them feel bad, and then I'd go off and feel horrible about it.

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Melinda Lee: Hmm.

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Nick Bourland: and beat myself up about it, and then realized later, okay, this is not something that I'm going to allow to rule my life, so I have to figure out how to stop doing it, how to be better. And so that's been…

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Nick Bourland: I mean, even to this day, it's like a 15-year journey of when I realized this was something that was going on to where I am now.

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Nick Bourland: and it's through a lot of therapy and just introspection and learning.

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Nick Bourland: And also, I think a big part of it has been my personal faith has allowed me to,

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Nick Bourland: equalize. I think as somebody who is autistic, the natural way our brain thinks is you tend to be very self-focused, and it's not because you don't care about people, it's just you get in your head a lot.

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Nick Bourland: And that can be perceived in negative ways if you're not careful, and that happened to me a lot. But through this journey.

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Nick Bourland: The great equalizer has been my faith, which calls me to, care more about other people.

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Nick Bourland: And there's a quote that I love about humility. It says, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

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Melinda Lee: Who's…

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Nick Bourland: Meaning less frequently, and thinking about others more frequently. And so that's been something that, over the years, has really

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Nick Bourland: Helped me even out.

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Nick Bourland: And has been my North Star. So, through that process of many, many years, like, the first time that I became a manager was when I was working for Oakley. Gosh, this is…

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Nick Bourland: 15 years ago or something now, and I crashed and burned. It's terrible. I was not good as a supervisor at all, and it was because I was still learning how to… how to be.

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Melinda Lee: You still didn't… you were not diagnosed at that point.

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Nick Bourland: No, I wasn't. So I really had no idea.

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Melinda Lee: joining.

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Nick Bourland: people would just think, oh, well, that's just Nick, he's… he's kind of weird.

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Melinda Lee: Oh.

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Nick Bourland: And, that was hard, and so this happened again, and, and I just really didn't do a good job as a manager the first time around.

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Nick Bourland: And after that happened there again, I thought, wow, this is gonna be really career-ending.

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Nick Bourland: And it wasn't, but at the time, that's how we feel. You know, we think, oh.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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Nick Bourland: I failed, how can I ever recover from something like this? And…

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Melinda Lee: Second time, too.

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Nick Bourland: time.

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Melinda Lee: This is underneath the award!

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Nick Bourland: And it's been very bumpy, and like, I have other friends who are autistic, too, and they've shared similar experiences with me. It's…

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Nick Bourland: especially in a corporate environment, everything is supposed to be, you know, very… you have to be very prim and proper. It's getting better now, but…

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Nick Bourland: there's a lot of etiquette and unspoken things that you have to adhere to, and a lot of people tend to get really offended about really small things, but they don't necessarily tell you that they've been offended, they go and tell your boss. They tell someone else, and then it becomes this big thing, and that's exactly what happened. It was something that was taken way out of context.

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Nick Bourland: And I wasn't given the opportunity to give my side.

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Melinda Lee: Huh.

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Nick Bourland: It was just, oh, well, this is not acceptable, so you're out. I'm like, okay. And so again, I thought, wow, this is really devastating.

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Nick Bourland: how am I ever going to come back from this?

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Nick Bourland: But fast forward to more recently, as I've gone through the years, and I've had a wonderful counselor who's helped me do something called EMDR, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but it's a…

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Melinda Lee: Liar.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, it was originally pioneered for PTSD victims, but has been found to be useful for any type of trauma, and I think we all have trauma in our past, I certainly do, which I won't go into here, but

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Nick Bourland: through that, my, therapy has really helped me to find, I guess redefine my neural pathways, so that when my brain wants to go down a certain route, and overthink things, which is also a hallmark of my condition, then I can rein it back in.

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Nick Bourland: stop the negative narrative. I think that's been a really big thing for me, is the brain tends to skew very negatively. I think a lot of us do that. We think, well,

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Nick Bourland: even if you did 99% of the things right, you fixate on the 1% of the thing that you did wrong, and you beat yourself up about it. That's definitely been me.

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Nick Bourland: And so the therapy has really helped me to even that out and focus on, look at all the positive things that I did. And so that's been very transformative over the last, you know, 15 years or so, and then come to

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Nick Bourland: in the last 2 years, I guess, is when I finally got diagnosed, and had a name for it.

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Melinda Lee: What prompted you?

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Nick Bourland: Well, you know, it's funny, so I had been at Balsam for…

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Nick Bourland: I don't know, just a couple months.

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Melinda Lee: Huh.

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Nick Bourland: And again, something that, something that happened in meeting was taken out of context, and it was brought to me, and this is why I really love the company, because instead of just, doing the same thing that had been done before, and saying, oh, well, you know, Nick's just a jerk, or he's weird, or whatever, they…

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Nick Bourland: Brought this to me and said, you know, have you ever thought about this?

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Nick Bourland: You know, being diagnosed, because,

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Nick Bourland: one of my, we call them people partners, it's just human resources, but they call them people partners. My people partner had come to me and said, you know.

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Nick Bourland: This sounds like this.

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Nick Bourland: to me. Have you ever, taken a test or been diagnosed? I said, no, I haven't. And so she shared, kind of an unofficial test with me that I took online, and basically it said there's a high probability of that you…

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Nick Bourland: are, neurodivergent, and so I said, okay, that actually makes a lot of sense. So then I asked my therapist, is this, something you can help me with? Can you give me an official diagnosis? And so he did. And so, after that.

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Nick Bourland: come to find out that folks who are like me, being on the autism spectrum, as we call it, are actually protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and so Balsam was really wonderful, and they shared that information with me.

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Nick Bourland: And I think they did a couple things. They gave me some professional coaching just to help me, navigate all of that, but I think more than that, it was just being validated.

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Nick Bourland: To know, like.

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Nick Bourland: everybody else in the past had just said, oh, you're just weird, you're strange, you're abnormal, and just dismissed me as that, but they didn't do that. They really tried to validate me.

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Nick Bourland: And recognize that this is a legitimate, unique thing that people have, and that,

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Nick Bourland: That did not invalidate my contributions to the company.

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Nick Bourland: So, it's been… it's been a bit of a bumpy ride.

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Nick Bourland: But,

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Nick Bourland: But through it all, I think what I've learned is that, you know, people are going to tell us, you will never

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Nick Bourland: succeed in this, you'll never be able to be a manager of people, maybe you should just go hide, like I said before. You know, these are things that I was told.

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Nick Bourland: And fast forward to now, I found it's really not true, it's just been more of understanding who I am, and how to manage that, and how to better interact with other people. So it's been a… been quite a journey, but I think I'm stronger for it.

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Melinda Lee: Wow, what an inspiring story. You definitely are stronger for it, and I'm so thankful for the people at Balsam to, yes, to be there for you, to have that conversation. I mean, just to, yeah, ask you to even think about it, and to find out on the other side, all the dots aren't making sense now.

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Nick Bourland: Yes.

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Melinda Lee: And so, kudos for you to continue to… yeah, even though people are saying these terrible things about you, or just things that were not true, maybe that's just what they thought would help, but it just was not helpful.

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Melinda Lee: You continue down, continued to pick yourself up, found your way to an amazing company that will support you, and yeah, I continue to even help you to use this probably as your strong point. You…

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Melinda Lee: I mean, they can leverage you so much more now, because you have… you have different strengths.

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Melinda Lee: And then to be able to capitalize on that, that's awesome.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, so… so now let's talk about the positive.

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Melinda Lee: Yes!

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Nick Bourland: the thing I think I want to share most with everybody, especially people who are of this persuasion, there's lots of different flavors of autism, and they all present in different ways, but what I want to share with people is

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Nick Bourland: I've learned to look at it as a strength, like you said, strength, not a weakness, because our brains think just differently. It doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it thinks differently, and so people on my team have said things like.

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Nick Bourland: how in the world do you keep track of all of the things? I mean, so I manage, 4 teams.

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Nick Bourland: of doing multiple different things at Balsam, and it's all technology-based, but they all are in sort of different work streams. So it's, like a marketing workstream, there's a data analytics workstream, and, like, a more, like, a core company data back-end stream, and, customer service. So those are all things that I oversee.

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Nick Bourland: And,

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Nick Bourland: with that, there's just a lot of things to keep track of, and I have, you know, like I said, multiple teams of folks under me, and I've got to manage what they're doing and try and give guidance and leadership, but I'm also managing my own initiatives and things to stay connected. It's a lot. And people will say, how in the world do you keep track of all this? I say, well.

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Nick Bourland: In this case, autism is sort of my superpower.

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Nick Bourland: Because… Because my brain works this way.

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Nick Bourland: it just makes it easier for me to keep track of things. I'm ultra-detailed, as most of us in this persuasion are. We're very detailed, and

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Nick Bourland: I don't know, it's just how my brain works, and I try not to look at it as I'm better or worse than anybody, I'm just different.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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Nick Bourland: And so, what I try to do as a leader is recognize those same things in people on my team.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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Nick Bourland: And actually, one of the guys that was on my team before, he…

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Nick Bourland: I'm 99% sure he's also of this persuasion, and I encouraged him to also get diagnosed, because I had learned this about myself, and he's very similar, and so I tried to get him into a work stream that would allow him to leverage that strength as well, and now he's just doing fantastic things. It's a super detail-oriented role, but also requires him to take an active lead.

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Nick Bourland: And he's just doing a fantastic job. And so I love that, getting to just examine who are all the people that we have, and we're all not all… we're not all the same.

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Melinda Lee: Right?

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Nick Bourland: But what are the individual strengths that everybody has?

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Nick Bourland: And I think that all started with me recognizing what those were in myself. Say, okay, what are my strengths? And so this is my… my autistic superpower as being super, super neurotic, I guess, and ultra detailed.

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Melinda Lee: But it allows me to…

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Nick Bourland: Do things that might be harder for

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Nick Bourland: you know, I guess you'd call them neurotypical folks.

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Nick Bourland: Because it's… it's just the way my brain works. And so I've come to… to use that as a… as a benefit, as a strength.

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Nick Bourland: instead of a weakness. That's been really a wonderful thing for me.

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Melinda Lee: Oh my gosh, and the team also said that they… you are one of the best managers that they've ever had.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, they really… they knocked my socks off the other day. They had a meeting, and they just organized this on their own, and they said, let's all get together and just say a few things that we have learned, or that we appreciate about Nick. And I'm like, wow. I mean, I don't know that a lot of people get to have that, but my team…

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Nick Bourland: all got on there, and they probably made me almost cry a few times, because they were just very, very kind and said things like that, like, the best manager I've ever had, one of my… I manage a lot of software engineers, right? And normally, they're very quiet.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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Nick Bourland: And reserved and not willing to share, certainly not feelings about things, but one of my guys said, when he's talking with his friends about his, their managers and the struggles that they have with their managers.

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Nick Bourland: He says, whenever that's happening, I talk about you and how great you are. And I thought, wow.

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Nick Bourland: I don't know what to say to that. That's just such a wonderful thing, but it's also such a transformation.

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Nick Bourland: from earlier in my career, with all these things that I struggled with, of

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Nick Bourland: trying to figure out how to interact with people, and especially how to lead, and the first time that I did that did not succeed, and so to be able to come back

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Nick Bourland: And turning this weakness into a strength, and then have people say those kinds of things about me has just been such a blessing.

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Melinda Lee: Oh, it makes me want to cry.

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Melinda Lee: I love that! I can't imagine had you listened and believed that person, and been in the hole in your cave, just alone? Oh my gosh! Yeah. That could have happened, had you given up.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, well, and I've heard lots of stories, too, of other people that

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Nick Bourland: had similar things like that happen. You know, when people are…

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Nick Bourland: a bit different. They think differently about things. People don't usually accept it immediately. They think, oh, well, that can't be done, it's never been done before, this is always the way it's been done. But I think having people who think in different perspectives in different ways is what gives us strength.

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Nick Bourland: I mean, think about if someone had, told Jeff Bezos, you know, well, nobody wants to buy books online. In fact, I think he did have a lot of people say that. Nobody wants to do this, who's ever going to do that? Had he listened to them.

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Nick Bourland: How different would the world be today? We wouldn't have the wonderful convenience of Amazon.com or anything, and that's just one thing. There are so many examples of this.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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Nick Bourland: And it's people who think differently.

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Nick Bourland: And I think for ourselves, people who think differently, learning to embrace the difference and saying, no, I'm not the same as everybody else, but that's okay.

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Melinda Lee: So how… yeah, I'm curious, the masking, so how do you… so you still think different.

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Nick Bourland: Oh, yeah.

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Melinda Lee: How do you, translate, or mask it, or whatever to… so that it… you think different, and also it resonates with people?

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, it's been a journey over many, many years.

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Nick Bourland: I think now I just have a… a very quick translation engine in my head, I guess, where…

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Nick Bourland: it comes in here, and I think, okay, no, I have to say it this way, and it just happens very instantaneously, and so most people, when they talk to me now, have no idea that I am autistic unless I actually tell them, because I've just gotten very good at it, I think.

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Nick Bourland: So… but before, it was really just…

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Nick Bourland: learning that I can take a moment and pause, and that's okay.

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Nick Bourland: In fact, I have a post-it note next to my laptop on my desk that says, you don't have to respond right away, you can take a minute.

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Nick Bourland: Because it's been something very important for me to remember, one of the hallmarks of autism is that if you make plans for something, and then things go awry, which, in my line of work, they often do. We make plans, and then the plans get torpedoed, and we have to pivot.

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Nick Bourland: That can be very frustrating.

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Nick Bourland: And so, in those moments, we take a deep breath.

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Nick Bourland: And I look at my post-it note. I say, okay.

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Nick Bourland: I don't have to respond to this right now, it's okay to take a moment, and so sometimes I do. Sometimes I'll take it away from the meeting, say, let me take this away and come back, and that allows me the time that I need, and that's absolutely okay.

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Nick Bourland: And it's also okay to say you're not sure.

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Nick Bourland: That's another thing that I've learned. So those things… I do those things when necessary, but, on the whole, it's just been, my translation engine, I guess, in my head, has come about where I've just learned

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Nick Bourland: Think about it like, sort of, taking mental notes about how people respond positively or negatively to things.

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Melinda Lee: Hmm.

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Nick Bourland: And so, over a lot of time, I've logged all this stuff away.

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Melinda Lee: Got it.

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Nick Bourland: and then learned, okay, when I do this, people don't really like it. When I do this, people do. And there's actually a really wonderful book, called, The Journal of Best Practices, which is actually written by a man who is also on the spectrum, and it was about him learning how to be a better husband.

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Nick Bourland: Actually, and so he was doing this, he was actually physically writing notes and putting them in a drawer, and this was his journal of best practices, right? And learning, when I say this thing to my wife, she really doesn't like it, or when I do this thing, she really doesn't like it. When I do this other thing, she responds positively. And so, he was literally writing these things down. I haven't gone to that

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Nick Bourland: length.

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Nick Bourland: But I just file them away in my mind, and so when situations come up, say, okay, I've gone through this before, this is how I should respond when this happens.

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Nick Bourland: Or even, being proactive about things, like beginning meetings and just doing simple things, like asking how everybody is. Or if someone on my team has said something like,

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Nick Bourland: you know, their mother was ill, or, you know, someone had passed, or something hard happened in their family, I follow up, and I ask them how they are.

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Nick Bourland: And I really do care. I mean, I genuinely do care, but I log these mental notes away to just show that I care, because being autistic is… it's not always the first thing that comes to your mind.

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Nick Bourland: So I… I make a mental list of, okay.

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Nick Bourland: I need to make sure that, I show that I care to everybody on my team so that they know, and it's not just this unspoken thing that they have to assume that I care, but I show them.

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Nick Bourland: And over time, they've really come to see, yes, Nick really does care about us, and so then, they also care about me, and then it creates this environment where everybody has felt cared for, they've felt welcomed.

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Nick Bourland: And they've also… some of my team members have told me that they feel like I've created an environment that allows them to fail upward.

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Nick Bourland: You know, where they can… they can experiment, they can try something new, and if it doesn't work out, that that's okay.

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Melinda Lee: Because they feel safe.

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Nick Bourland: And they also feel like,

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Nick Bourland: that I'm actually concerned about their personal growth, and helping them achieve what they want in their career, and helping them realize their strengths, instead of just, you know, we gotta get the work done, we gotta get the work done, you know.

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Nick Bourland: But it's more familial. And they've said things like that to me, like, okay, yeah, this is the environment that we want to foster. We want everybody to feel comfortable and confident, because that's when they do their best work.

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Melinda Lee: I love it. Yeah, to fail upward. I love that. Every failure, you can go upward.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah.

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Melinda Lee: There's possibility there, as long as, like, you have someone, a leader like you, who will facilitate the safe environment to… to continue to expand upward, even in the midst of failure, because that's what you did, and you know you're stronger, because of that.

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Nick Bourland: Exactly.

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Melinda Lee: Oh my gosh, I love that, Nick, that was so amazing. I'm just really, really inspired by that story, and I do… I mean, even from the beginning, when I first met you, just, debriefed before the recording, I just genuinely felt your care. So I'm so glad that you… you do continue to,

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Melinda Lee: take the mental note. It's a lot for you to make sure that people care… know that you care. It sounds like you're, like, you're doing… I want them to know, and I'm glad that it's all reciprocating.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah.

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Melinda Lee: I'm so glad. So, thank you so much, and I want to just close with one more question.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah.

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Melinda Lee: What is that one leadership golden takeaway that you want the audience to remember?

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Nick Bourland: Well… Never let anybody else define your future.

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Nick Bourland: Because had I listened to a lot of these people that said, you will never be a leader, you'll never, interact normally with people.

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Nick Bourland: My life would have been very different.

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Melinda Lee: That's amazing.

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Nick Bourland: And I didn't let them define those things for me, and so what I want to say to everybody, whether you're on the spectrum or you're not.

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Nick Bourland: Just because someone says something doesn't make it true.

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Nick Bourland: So, if someone says, you will never fill in the blank.

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Nick Bourland: That doesn't make it true. I take those things and look at them as a challenge, and so I think, for me, I always really wanted to be a leader, I wanted to be a mentor of other people, and so even though I didn't succeed at first, I didn't give up.

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Nick Bourland: And because I didn't give up.

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Nick Bourland: I actually managed to achieve what I wanted. And to go from

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Nick Bourland: being, you know, really just not a very good leader, to having people say the things that they've said about me and led a successful team, and we've just accomplished so many wonderful things at Balsam and elsewhere throughout my career.

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Nick Bourland: if I had listened to those things, my life would have been very different, and so I just want to encourage everybody that,

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Nick Bourland: Just because somebody says something doesn't make it true.

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Nick Bourland: And if you put your mind to something, and you say, you know, I have this struggle, but I really want to overcome it, and I want to be a leader, or I want to be whatever it is, you absolutely can.

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Melinda Lee: Oh, Nick, I am inspired, because I, you know, sometimes as a business entrepreneur, I'm constantly putting messaging out there, and I'm thinking about, what are people gonna think?

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Melinda Lee: you know, is it gonna sound weird? And so what your guidance in terms of… test it out! Like, see if they like it and see if they don't.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah.

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Melinda Lee: Being different, it's okay, we're not meant to be like everybody else.

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Nick Bourland: Yeah, exactly.

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Melinda Lee: don't let other people define you. I think those are all so key, important messages, for anyone to hear. And so, thank you so much for sharing your inspiring story. I know it's vulnerable, but I know that it's also going to help so many people.

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Nick Bourland: I'm so glad.

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Melinda Lee: Thank you, Nick.

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Nick Bourland: Thank you.

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Melinda Lee: Okay, audience, thank you so much for being here. I trust that you got your golden takeaway to implement today, and I… I just send you the best. And remember, anytime you have a chance to communicate, you're also connecting and inspiring others.

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Melinda Lee: Until next time, I am your sister-in-flow. Much love!

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Melinda Lee: Bye-bye!

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Melinda Lee: Bye, Nick!