Why do so many brilliant scientists and engineers get labelled as difficult, resistant, angry, or disengaged?

In this episode of Herding Cats, Katie starts with a familiar Sunday-evening scene. She follows it into a deeper question about resilience, empathy, and what science-led organisations are quietly getting wrong.

Drawing on years of work inside space, engineering, deep tech, clean energy and fusion companies, Katie explores why behaviours often framed as pushback or poor attitude are more accurately understood as signs of distress in neurodivergent nervous systems, particularly in teams with a high prevalence of autism and ADHD.

This episode looks at:

• Why uncommunicated change can trigger spirals, sleepless nights and overpreparation
• Why scientists react so strongly to vague commercial predictions and shifting narratives
• How “resilience” has become a stick to beat individuals instead of a design challenge for leadership
• What empathy actually looks like when it’s treated as infrastructure, not a soft skill
• How environments designed for nervous-system safety unlock intrinsic motivation, creativity and better problem-solving

This episode is not about labels, initiatives, or acronyms, but about the basic human right to feel seen, heard, and respected at work.

If you lead, advise, or work inside a science-led organisation, and you care about performance, retention, culture and real innovation, this episode will change how you think about resilience and what kind of human being you want to be at work.

🎧 Your Host Katie Caiger

I’m Katie, a senior storytelling consultant and advisor working with science-led companies across space, engineering, clean energy and fusion.

I sit at the intersection of communication, culture and neurodivergence, helping leadership teams understand why brilliant people sometimes go quiet, push back, burn out or disengage, and what to do about it before it becomes expensive.

My work focuses on clarity, empathy, and designing environments where people can actually think, speak, and do their best work, without masking, spiralling, or surviving the week.

Herding Cats is a space to talk honestly about complexity, leadership, neurodiversity and the human side of building serious technology, without jargon, bullying or performative optimism. I care less about acronyms and more about whether people feel safe enough to bring their best ideas forward and thrive.