How To Get Your Entire Team On Board With NeuroAffirming Approaches

Trying to get your entire team on board with neuroaffirming approaches can feel like a fish swimming upstream. 

You’re putting in the effort, explaining your reasoning, advocating for kids – and still meeting resistance. If collaboration feels harder than it “should” be, you’re not doing anything wrong.

Most therapy teams are made up of people with different training backgrounds, lived experiences, values, and levels of comfort with neuroaffirming care. 

Add in time pressure, system demands, and emotional investment in kids and suddenly it feels like there are too many chefs in the kitchen, all trying to cook the same meal in different ways.

Collaboration tends to break down not because people don’t care, but because people start to feel judged, rushed, threatened, or unheard. When that happens, the nervous system takes over. Fight, flight, or shutdown makes true collaboration almost impossible.

This is why so much well-intentioned “teamwork advice” falls flat. It assumes everyone is ready for the same conversation at the same time.

But that’s rarely true.

Not everyone is ready for growth at the same pace and that’s where the “crab in a bucket” dynamic can show up. When one person starts shifting, others may feel unsettled or defensive, not because the change is wrong, but because it feels unsafe or unfamiliar.

So what actually builds collaboration??

Here Are The 4 Most Powerful Things You Can Do to Build True Team Collaboration

1. Relationships Before Resources

Trust is the foundation of collaboration. Before strategies, handouts, or research ever matter, people need to feel safe with each other. As the saying goes, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

You don’t need the entire team on board at once. In fact, trying to convince everyone often backfires. Real change usually starts with one or two aligned people who feel safe working together.

Relationships create the conditions for collaboration, not the other way around.

2. Seek to Understand Before You Try to Educate

One of the fastest ways to shut collaboration down is jumping straight into “teaching mode.”

Instead, curiosity opens doors.

Simple questions like:

“What’s your goal for this child?”

“Has something like this worked in the past?”

“What do you think would help them most right now?”

These questions signal respect. They help you understand where someone is coming from, rather than assuming resistance or lack of knowledge. People are far more open to change when they feel understood first.

3. Start With Why And Center Autistic Voices

When conversations are framed around compliance, trends, or proving a point, collaboration gets tense fast.

When they’re framed around regulation, participation, dignity, and real-life outcomes, alignment becomes easier.

Centering autistic experiences shifts the focus away from “doing therapy correctly” and toward helping kids feel confident, communicate authentically, build relationships, and engage in ways that honor their strengths – whether that’s through AAC modeling, sensory supports, or interest-based interaction.

The “why” matters most when it’s grounded in lived experience, not just best practice language.

4. Make It Easy to Say Yes

Collaboration rarely happens through big paradigm shifts.

It happens through small wins.

Instead of asking for a complete overhaul, offer one low-risk adjustment. One strategy to trial. One simple change that solves a real problem quickly.

Success builds trust. Trust builds collaboration.

This is exactly why, inside the NeuroAffirm Therapy Academy, we focus so heavily on shared frameworks and practical training. When teams have a common language and clear starting points, collaboration doesn’t depend on convincing – it grows through alignment.

You Don’t Have to Carry This Alone

If team collaboration has felt heavy, frustrating, or isolating, that makes sense. This work was never meant to be done solo.

Community, shared frameworks, and regulation-informed approaches give teams something solid to stand on together, even when they don’t agree on everything yet.

And that’s the goal. Not perfect alignment. But enough safety and clarity to move forward together.

This is exactly why in the NeuroAffirm Academy we focus so much on shared frameworks – so collaboration doesn’t depend on convincing.

>> Click here to learn more about joining us in the NeuroAffirm Therapy Academy. 

And if you want to hear more about this topic straight from the source, check out our recent NeuroAffirm Live Show: “Why Team Collaboration Breaks Down & How To Fix It This Year,” Ep. 112.