The Professional Communications and Leadership Skills Workshop (PCLS) is a series of case-based sessions designed to empower neurodiverse students to thrive in school and work environments. Participants take part in case studies, lessons, challenges, realistic role-play, and social skills labs.
Workshop Format
Sessions are held virtually for one hour, twice a week, over 16 weeks. Participants join a strategically selected, small community of learners and create personalized tools for success in the classroom, workplace, and personal life. Sessions are conducted by nationally recognized employment and autism experts from iSocial.
Expected Outcomes
Upon successful completion, participants will improve their ability to:
- Read and interpret emotions with greater accuracy.
- Improve awareness of their professional image.
- Develop advanced problem-solving strategies.
- Understand the elements of advocacy.
- Use goal setting to move from surviving to thriving.
- Understand the importance of networking.
- Become more effective team players.
- Spot and repair social errors.
- Resolve conflicts effectively.
PCLS Workshop Outline
Unit 1: Professional Communication Skills
- Micro-expressions, reading emotions, reading a room, and body language.
- Accurate perspective-taking.
- Social skills lab.
Unit 2: Professional Image
- Defining the professional image the participant wants to create.
- The role of appearance, behavior, and communication.
- Rigidity versus flexibility.
Unit 3: Spotting and Repairing Social Errors
- Identifying when a social error has occurred.
- Repairing errors after they occur.
- Preventing future errors.
Unit 4: Conflict Resolution
- Strategies for responding effectively to conflict.
- Knowing how and when to address, assert, or advocate for oneself.
- Matching solutions to the conflict.
Unit 5: Self-Advocacy
- Steps for self-advocating.
- Understanding individual rights.
- Identifying when disclosure may be beneficial.
Unit 6: From Surviving to Thriving
- Advancement.
- Reflecting on the current situation versus the preferred situation.
- Tools for moving from surviving to thriving.
PCLS in the Words of Past Participants
“Autism affects us all differently. It is an unseen force that consumes our aptitude in things that most people would consider common sense. This often manifests in difficulty with social skills. PCLS provides tools, clarity, and processing techniques to help us cope with aspects of communication that we often struggle with. Concepts such as social networking, self-advocacy, goal setting, and relationship structures are explained in ways that make them understandable and useful. For those of us who see these concepts as exotic or alien, mastering them can be life-changing.”— IT department manager, Mercy Health
“PCLS spread out all of my actions and reactions in detail in front of me so I could see them. Then it showed me which ones to focus on—what was actually happening with myself and others and what was just my paranoid fear. This program gave me both the clarity and the confidence to use my skills effectively. Tearing down my doubt about making mistakes and replacing it with confidence means that I’m empowered to go to bat for myself.”— Former U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber crew chief
“PCLS was a life changer for me.”— Third-tier cloud services technical support specialist, IBM
“The program is wonderful! I have really enjoyed the case studies. I learn by doing, so going through the case studies has really helped cement things for me. I would definitely recommend this program to my coworkers.”— Applications developer, IBM
About iSocial
Mission: To radically improve the lives of people with autism.
Philosophy: We embrace people who think and learn differently. We do not believe we are fixing, healing, or curing people on the spectrum.
Team: Leading experts in autism, corporate leadership, and training, all with direct ties to autism.
Origin: iSocial was created through collaboration with the University of Missouri and the Thompson Center for Autism Research. Their $8 million research and development program created a social competency intervention proven effective with 1,000 participants and documented in 17 peer-reviewed technical articles.