Write first. Default to text and structure.

If there is one habit that changes the relationship faster than any other, it's defaulting to writing. For an autistic manager, written communication is high-bandwidth. Hallway conversations are not.

Non-autistic professionals are often trained to 'bring it up in person'. Walk over. Catch them between meetings. Pull them aside. For an autistic manager, this is the lowest-bandwidth, highest-cost channel available. They have to switch contexts on no notice, read your face, infer the agenda, and respond before processing — all while being expected to perform warmth. The output of that conversation is usually worse than if you had written two sentences in Slack.

The 'write first' habit, made concrete:

• Bring an agenda to every 1:1. Three to five bullets, pasted into a shared doc twenty minutes before. Not because your manager is 'demanding': because it gives them the gift of being prepared to actually engage with your topics.
• Send asks in writing first. 'I'd like to propose moving the deadline to the 14th, here's why' is a Slack message. Don't ambush a yes-or-no in person.
• Write decisions down in the room. When a decision happens verbally, type it in the shared doc before the meeting ends. You are not 'taking notes' — you are creating a referenceable artifact your manager will trust.
• Use the 'Working With Me' document. The template for this module is a one-pager every team member writes. It tells your manager (and your peers) how you work: and it asks them to write theirs. The mutual exchange is the point.
• Treat written feedback as a feature, not a slight. If your manager edits your draft in Google Docs with margin comments, that is the relationship working. Reading the comments at face value is the skill.

One specific Slack habit worth naming: when you ask a question, give your manager the option to answer asynchronously. 'No rush, can answer Monday' or 'this is non-urgent' is more useful than 'whenever you have a second'. Vague urgency is expensive for an autistic manager.

This is not about turning the team into a robot factory. Real-time conversation still happens. Hallway connection still happens. The difference is that you stop using high-cost channels as a default and you stop coding their preference for writing as 'cold'.