Our Stewardship in practice series highlights insights from the facilitators behind IPAA Advantage and the practical ideas they bring to the key capability areas shaping today’s public sector. This time, we hear from Joey Ballantyne, founder of Grit n Grace Collective, about the connection between neuroinclusion, everyday work design and stewardship in the public sector.

Stewardship is often discussed through the lens of systems, institutions and long-term public value. But it also has a deeply human dimension.

If public sector leaders are responsible for strengthening the institutions they serve, they also need to consider the conditions they create for people to contribute well, sustainably and over time.

For Joey Ballantyne, founder of Grit n Grace Collective, this is where neuroinclusion becomes part of the stewardship conversation.

Joey’s work challenges a familiar assumption in many workplaces: that there is one “right” way to focus, communicate, process information, manage energy or perform well.

“We need to stop confusing conformity with competence,” Joey says. Leaders have inherited a narrow picture of what “good” looks like: confident, extroverted, always available, emotionally restrained and endlessly productive. This can unintentionally exclude brilliant people, particularly neurodivergent professionals.

Instead, she encourages people to become more aware of their “personal best practices”: the conditions, patterns and support that help each person work at their best.

“My vision is for everyone at work to be aware of their personal best practices, to be more curious about other people’s personal best practices, and for there to be mutual adaptation and support where there are differences,” Joey says.

Recognising the friction built into work

Across public sector workplaces, teams are working through complexity, change, competing priorities and high expectations. Understanding different ways of working is not simply a wellbeing issue. It is a workforce capability issue.

A one-size-fits-all approach to work can create friction that is not always visible. People may differ in how they process information, communicate, manage sensory input or sustain focus and energy throughout the day.

Neurodivergent employees can spend considerable energy adapting to workplace expectations that were not designed with them in mind. Over time, the pressure to mask, compensate or continually push beyond personal limits can affect performance, wellbeing and a person’s capacity to contribute sustainably.

When this happens, an organisation may still achieve short-term results while gradually weakening the capability, trust and resilience it will need in the future.

Rather than waiting until someone begins to struggle and then introducing individual adjustments, Joey encourages leaders to examine how work is designed from the outset.

“If leaders were focused on instilling best practice throughout their organisations, there would be very few reasonable adjustments or accommodations required,” she says.

Moving from individual adjustment to better practice

“Neuroinclusive work design isn’t about lowering expectations or creating special treatment. It’s about being intentional about how work gets done,” Joey says.

Clear priorities, flexible ways of working, thoughtful communication, fewer unnecessary meetings and autonomy over when and where possible can help neurodivergent people perform at their best, while improving work for many neurotypical employees.

Joey describes this as mutual adaptation. Rather than placing the responsibility entirely on an individual to fit an established way of working, teams develop greater awareness of their differences and consider how they can work together more effectively.

The goal is to build enough clarity, curiosity and flexibility into everyday practices that fewer people are unnecessarily excluded by them.

Through Grit n Grace Collective, Joey brings an auDHD-led, neuro-affirming and strengths-based approach. Her work is grounded in the belief that people should be able to belong without having to fit in.

Neuroinclusion as stewardship

For public sector leaders, this shifts neuroinclusion from a reactive accommodation process to a proactive leadership practice.

Joey encourages leaders to ask: “Who has to work the hardest just to meet our definition of ‘normal’?” The answer can reveal where systems, processes and expectations are unintentionally asking some people to absorb more friction than others.

Through IPAA Advantage, IPAA ACT works with facilitators like Joey who bring current thinking and human-centred approaches to the challenges facing public sector professionals. Their work helps leaders examine the everyday practices that shape capability: how people communicate, collaborate, manage energy and contribute their strengths.

Viewed through this lens, neuroinclusion is not an additional people initiative or simply a matter of making exceptions for difference. It is part of how leaders steward organisational capability: by creating conditions in which more people can contribute well, sustainably and over time. In doing so, they strengthen not only the people within public institutions, but the institutions themselves.