ADHD and Workplace Wellbeing
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello and welcome to the ADHD Impact podcast. I'm Becca Brighty, business psychologist and ADHD coach who received an ADHD diagnosis at the age of 34. I've since seized my professional training to understand how the ADHD brain functions and use that information to change the way I work. The purpose of this podcast is to help people to see how they can harness their ADHD brain so that they can make the impact in the world, that they know that they can, and to help those. Working with ADHD is to create environments that help everyone thrive at work. So today's guest is Liz Mulhall Brewer, who is a fellow, ADHD, A business psychologist and neurodiversity workplace wellbeing consultant. Hi Liz. Welcome to the ADHD Impact podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hi, Becca. Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Oh, you're welcome. So the reason why I have asked Liz to be a guest on the show is because for many moons I've seen her posting about her very interesting research on the impact of A DHD in the workplace. And so the reason I started this podcast and my business of the same name is to resolve a lot of the issues that I think that A DHD has can experience at work. So for me, that's been the biggest impact on my life that I think upon reflection A DHD has had. And while having an undiagnosed A DHD, I've managed to, I feel like have a good family, have good friends, but then my career is where I've always felt really struck. And I rarely see people who specialise in this. A lot of the great services that exist seem to help people with A DHD seem to be about A DH D's impact on the individual that very rarely see people focusing on its impact at work. So every time your research has popped up on my feed on LinkedIn, I've been very intrigued. So I'm very excited to have Liz with us here today to share what she's learned about A DHD in the workplace. So first of all, Liz, would you just be able to tell us a bit about your experience in terms of what led you to be diagnosed and then why you wanted to research A DHD at work?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, so I went back to uni to study business psychology, and within the first couple of months, it just brought back the horrors of further education and just how tricky it was. I found it really hard to sit in lectures from nine to five, retain information. I found myself rereading lots of documents. I was watching the lectures over and over again. I just couldn't understand why I couldn't retain the information. And I've always experienced quite a lot of anxiety in my life. And I was talking to a friend at uni whose daughter had just been diagnosed with A DHD, and I was actually giving her some tips around anxiety management. And she said to me that my experience sounded really similar to her daughters and had I ever considered A DHD and I hadn't. And she showed me the A DHD iceberg, and it was like I was hit by a train because it was just my existence. That was my complete experience. So yeah, I put myself forward for a private diagnosis. And in December, so I started October in December, I found out it was A DHD.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Wow. So that was quite quick. Did you do that? Did you privately or were you just one of the lucky? Do you live in a really great area?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
They don't do adult A DHD assessments where I live. But yeah, I went privately. I probably could have accessed it via uni thinking about it now. But yeah, I just put myself forward for private diagnosis and yeah, I found out very quickly that it was A DHD and everything started to make sense.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, I often hear it described as that six sense moment where you look back over your life and you're like, ah,
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, all the signs were there,
Speaker 1 (03:52):
But no one knows about the signs. So that makes it a bit difficult. So what's the A DHD iceberg that you just referred to?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So I think it focuses on the three. So inattentive, I can't remember. There's three kind of areas that it focuses on, and then that's what you see above the surface. And then below you've got emotional regulation challenges, mental health conditions, things about finances, just all the experiences that can be experienced with A DHD. And I've just never seen an image and related to it so much and thought this is what describes my experience. So yeah, it was quite a profound and weird moment to see all your life struggles put into an image. And just to make complete sense to you,
Speaker 1 (04:43):
That must have been intense. And so then what from that, so you went not knowing anything about A DHD two months later finding out you had a DHD to then that becoming the topic of your master's research. So what was it about? Can you tell us a bit about your research and why you wanted to look into the topic that you did?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, so I did what I think a lot of people do and sort of hyper-focused on trying to learn as much about A DHD as possible, read lots of books. At the time, there wasn't actually that many books out. There's a lot more now, which is really encouraging. But yeah, just really started to look into what the literature said about A DHD and if there was anything around workplace experiences, and it was very, very limited. So most of it was pharmacological, so it was looking at the impact of medication. And a lot of it is based on childhood adolescent experiences. And three years ago there wasn't a huge amount on adult A DHD that has increased. I think there's probably eight qualitative studies that look at the experience of A DHD diagnosis in women, which is eight. It's a very low number, but it's still, it's encouraging that people are interested. So yeah, I am denied for about two years on what I should cover, and I was going to look at performance.
(06:11):
I just went back and forth and there was so many gaps in the literature that I just wouldn't have been able to research it because I wouldn't have had enough information from my literature review. So I decided to look at A DHD diagnosis or late diagnosis and workplace disclosure experience because although there isn't any, well, there's one paper on, it's a quantitative paper on A DHD disclosure. It looks at the role of psychological safety and stigma, which is interesting. But that's the only paper that covers the topic of workplace disclosure. So I covered autism disability and mental health disclosures at work, which there is overlap and similarities. So yeah, I was just really interested in how women experience this significant event in their life, how they process it, how they make sense of this experience, and then how they manage the conversations at work and what the impact of those conversations were. It was really interesting and this sort of merging of A DHD identity and occupational identity and what that means to individuals. So it was very interesting, which helped.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, it's a really strange experience, isn't it, because one day you just, well, especially for you how quick it was, but one day you just have in your mind you're neurotypical and then you find out and then your whole inner world kind of change, but then everything around you is exactly the same. So you could find out on a Wednesday and then you're just like this crazy experience, but then you just go back to work the next day even though you now have this insight into yourself about why your admin takes you so long, why emails take you so much longer than everyone else. You now have this understanding, but then everything around you hasn't changed at all. So what did you find in your research
Speaker 2 (08:09):
With regards to what diagnosis experience is like? It was described very overwhelmingly positive. Everyone who, including in my participants, but everyone who received a diagnosis really spoke about the benefits of being diagnosed mainly for themselves and understanding themselves better. It was described as validating, bringing relief, making sense. One of my participants described it as all the angels coming down at once and saying, it's okay, we've got you. Wow. It was really emotional and just reading about these experiences because people initially often are quite highly motive. And yeah, it's really interesting just to see how these experiences versus what you hear about the stereotype and the press media coverage and how profound it is for individuals, yet how other people probably wouldn't have a clue what it really means or how big the experience is. So yeah, lots of relief and validation. Some grief for the life they feel they should have had if they'd had an early diagnosis, made them understand themselves better, their struggles, it gave it a name.
(09:32):
So yeah, overwhelmingly positive experience. Workplace disclosure experiences were mixed and quite negative with refusals of adjustments being sat down and having to explain what A DHD is to managers when they've just received a diagnosis in a week and they don't understand themselves. And also what adjustments do you need? So what support do you need expecting them to be experts in their recent diagnosis, which I think was challenging, frustrating, and it was described as sort of battles and horrible experiences they wished they hadn't. There was one really positive experience where the manager was very proactive, but interestingly, good experiences were related to having a DHD in the family or knowledge. So the managers that gave a better experience had a child with A DHD, for example. So they had an understanding already. But yeah, it was very interesting. The research on disclosure suggested the biggest barriers to disclosing are stereotypes, stigma, and discrimination. But the benefits are obviously getting accommodations and adjustments. I saw your post about reasonable adjustments and I just think, yeah, the wording is so off and it needs to be looked at and reframed. But there was also some research about saying disclosure is a double-edged sword because if you do disclose, you then get sometimes stigma and discrimination from that disclosure, but if you don't, you suffer in silence and you don't get any adjustments. So yeah, it's quite a dilemma I think, for some people to make the decision.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So these negative experiences, was it more about an unkind response from the management and from the organisation, or was it just a lack of understanding? Because like you say, I've been diagnosed for 18 months, there's still stuff I'm learning all the time, so it's potentially not reasonable to expect a manager to know a lot about A DHD. So when these people are talking about their negative experiences from their perspective, I can totally see that having someone being like, okay, so what do you need? And tell me about A DHD, why that would be horrible. But did people tell you anything about the actual intention, where it was coming from?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, so one person had self-disclosed previously, which was ignored effectively, and she asked for an access to work referral, and that was refused. Another person asked for adjustments and they said, so if we give you this, you'll stop making mistakes. It was this trade off, okay, so we can give you this, but what are you giving back? So I think there was an element of being unkind but also very unreasonable. And I think given the heightened emotion of the situation, sometimes it can be received in a different way. You've got RSD that can impact how responses are received as well. So I think it's not as clear cut or black and white, but they received it as a negative experience based on how they read them and what the response was to the support they needed, essentially.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, that's tough. And the access to work one's a really strange one as well, because it doesn't cost businesses any money to refer access to work is a government scheme that supports people with A DHD or any disability. So that's really, really confusing. You just mentioned RSD there. Could you just tell us a bit about what RSD is for anyone who's listening who might not know what that refers to?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, so it's rejection sensitivity dysphoria. It isn't recognised as a symptom of A DHD, and I looked actually, there's no research into what it is or what the experience is, but I would describe it as for me, it's when your brain sort of floods with emotions and an overwhelming emotional pain that can be brought on by situations where you feel vulnerable or rejected. And I can create it for myself, which is quite a joy. So it's not that I'm being rejected by other people, sometimes I'm rejecting myself. But yeah, it's quite a paralysing experience that can stop functioning for hours or days so it can get in the way of you being able to think more logically. It has a strong emotional response and makes things really tricky to think logically and kind of get back into probably the window of tolerance where you are feeling more calm and able to rationalise. So that's how I would describe it.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Thanks for that. And just going back to the workplace disclosure stuff for an organisation, what are the benefits of them creating an environment in which A DHD has feel comfortable to disclose? Because from a business perspective, they might think, oh, well, if no one's disclosing, that's all good for us. We don't have to make any adjustments. Why would a business want to create an environment in which people feel comfortable to come forward?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I think given the prevalence of neurodivergent conditions being estimated around 15 to 20%, and it may be higher, it's inevitable. I think that they're going to have employees that will need support and will benefit from fundamentally, it's about adjustments in their role. So being able to perform at their best and removing barriers that they might find in the way of performance. So I think there's a strong sort of performance angle to it. And also I think people being able to, I don't think people can bring their real selves to work. I think that is a bit flawed where there is a degree of professionalism that's expected from us, and if we were to bring everything with us, I don't think that would be optimal. But I think having a space where people can share who they are and how they experience work is really important. I think also there's an increase in parents and particularly women receiving later diagnoses as a result of their children. So you've got the impact of having parents at work with neurodivergent children, and that can be quite challenging when they're managing their careers and home life and children. And so you've probably got maybe 40% of the workplace that might be impacted in some way, and it just makes sense to have support and adjustments for productivity and performance, and it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So there's the business case, the productivity gains and the performance improvements that you would see if you are supporting people within the workplace who have things like a DHD.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And this is what you often see hammered home. The NEURODIVERSE teams are 40% more productive and highly innovative creative, which they are, but we can't solely focus on the gains without thinking about the support and the environment required to get those gains, which I think is sometimes overlooked.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, absolutely. And so how do businesses go about creating that environment where people are going to feel comfortable to come forward with this thing that feels really massive to them, especially if you've got a late diagnosis, or there is most people will have, even if you were diagnosed in childhood, you will have experienced stigma and rejection, et cetera. What can businesses do to create that environment where people do feel comfortable to disclose?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I think it's about their motivation for why they want to do that, thinking about why it's important to them as an organisation. And it's not about separating of groups of people that need support. I think it's around being inclusive across the organisation and asking everyone what they need to perform at their best. And it should be a pretty standard conversation for a manager to ask their team, how can you perform at your best? What do you need from me? What support do you need? What barriers do you experience and how can we help you overcome? So I don't think it has to be complicated or expensive, it's just this human approach of asking people what they need and wanting to give it to them. I think if you feel that it's going to be costly or people are undeserving, sometimes there's a lot of friction with organisations not wanting to give interview questions in advance because they think it's unfair. Again, you would want your candidates to interview their absolute best, showcase their skills, be comfortable in their interview. It's the same with workplaces that you should be quite motivated as an employer to want your employees to be happy, healthy, productive, and being inclusive can really help that. And you can have adjustment programmes, but I think removing any medical diagnosis requirements is a really good step and just understanding what people need and how you can best support them.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
So in terms of what people do need, it's such a diverse spectrum. What are in general some things that might be helpful for all organisations to know about? I
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Think with A DHD in particular, schedule flexibility and flexibility with how and when they work because of the ebbs and flows of motivation and focus, which are unfortunately out of their control. Having flexibility to start later work in the evenings or work in a certain way, I think is probably the most effective and it doesn't cost anything. So it's flexibility with where they work and how they deliver their role. I think what really helps is clarity, absolute crystal clear clarity on what are the expectations in this role and what do performance does good performance look like? So there's no reading between the lines or missing what you need to do. So clarity on role and expectations, and I think a willingness to adjust adjustments or accommodations, they're not fixed. And what someone needs one week may vary six months later. So it's having a flexible approach. Again, I think flexibility is just key with how you approach it, the support that you offer and not thinking Sarah needs the same as Sally. It's so unique and it's just understanding the individual need and how best you can support.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I think that's one of the tricky things when you're talking about it within businesses is it's so different for everyone. So I have a DHD and my sister has a DHD, but the things that we need are really different. She likes having music on, whereas I find music over simulating. And so it's even just within a family of two people who both have a DHD who were brought up together in a household. Our needs vary a lot and how it shows up for us varies quite a bit as well. So it's difficult within businesses. So I love the idea of just being flexible, be open-minded, and then that's how you can help people. Another thing I've seen you talking about on LinkedIn is the importance of psychologically safe environments. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, so I think psychological safety is a really interesting concept in that I think it's a journey rather than an end goal, and it's an ongoing process and something that organisations have to continually work on. And for me, psychological safety is being able to be comfortable to be yourself at work, whatever that looks like, but also being able to fail and be open about that. And I think having an A DHD lens because of the shame and guilt that can come along with a DHD being consistent with team members, not holding things against them and allowing them to make mistakes and fail is probably heightened. The openness of communication and being able to be open to feedback, again, two-way channels of communication I think is really important and sort of this learning and development piece for people to be able to grow in their roles.
(23:15):
But came out, there isn't any research on qualitative experiences of psychological safety, but it came out as a main theme in my research. It played a key role in disclosure, so people did feel safe to disclose. It didn't mean that they then had a good experience, but they felt psychologically safe to be able to. So I think it plays a big role in workplace disclosure, but it also, it's very individual and you've got the psychological safety at individual level, team level, organisational level. And yeah, I think it's probably there are measures of psychological safety, but I think lots of concepts, it's very fluid and it changes. I think it can be particularly variable for people with a DHD one day, they may have what they deem as a bad experience with their manager, which will impact their psychological safety levels, and then they'll have to rebuild that. So I think it's an ongoing process and just requires a consistent human approach to leadership.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, definitely. Because worked with people before where the organisation is really, they would describe the organisation as psychologically safe, but they wouldn't necessarily describe their team as having psychological safety. So then that's a bit of a difficult one for an organisation to tackle, got this great culture, but then there's pockets within the business that aren't experience in that.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Absolutely. And there's the intersectional identity impact as well. You're going to have different experiences across teams of gender, ethnicity, age, it's going to impact the psychological safety level. So yeah, it's not as clear cut. I think it's packaged up as this thing that's achievable and this is what it is. It's a lot more nuanced, I think, and complicated.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, it's one of the questions I get asked a lot is like, so how do you create psychological safety? And it's so difficult. It is so variable for me. I say that it's just about that openness, that trust, that being authentic. But yeah, it's a tricky topic. You mentioned feedback being part of that, creating psychological safety and having that two way feedback between managers and their team. How does RSD complicate that? Because with RSD, you can interpret anything that's not positive. So some days you could interpret something that's neutral as a negative. So for me, sometimes as someone says, yeah, yeah, it was fine, I'm like, it was fine. What have I done wrong? Why am I in this career? Everything's terrible. Oh my goodness. And I'll think about it for a week. And then to them they've said it was fine, as in, yeah, it was good, it was fine. How does that complicate matters in terms of making people feel comfortable at work and giving them feedback when RSD can be this little tricky demon?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It is a complicated one. And as you say, it's very, you could deliver something well intentioned and it can be received the complete opposite way. So I would say clean feedback, it would be a really good approach. This is something that genius within cover a lot with their coaching, and it's looking at what went well, what could be improved and what would be even better. And there's kind of three levels beyond that. And so you start with the evidence, I saw X, Y, Z, and then you move on to the inference. So this made me think that. And then the impact and the impact of that was so you're bringing in evidence and kind of factual, this is what I thought it meant, and then this is what the impact that it has. So you've got these three layers and three levels, which I think when you get feedback and it's sort of a bit of positive and they dunno what to say, and so they'll pump you up a little bit and then they'll bring and it's delivered so poorly.
(27:32):
So I think this structure just, it works very well for divergent employees because you've got the factual, oh, okay, so this is what you thought, oh, and this is the impact. It separates out and it makes it a lot easier. I'm sure there still will be an impact sometimes of RSD, but it just can take the emotion out of it. And it's not about behaviours. It's about, this is what I saw rather than you were doing X. So yeah, I think that can be a really effective way, but I imagine it would be a barrier for managers not wanting to give feedback and be honest because of how that might be received and not wanting to hurt people. And I think with managers, it is very rarely that there's bad intentions. I think it's misunderstandings and miscommunications that cause a lot of problems and the intention is good, but they dunno how to deliver it. And so they'll avoid it or do what they always do and can create negative responses.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, absolutely. So that does sound more effective. And I've heard it referred to the, you say something good, then bad, then good. It's like the shit sandwich a feedback. I like this clean feedback approach a bit more than that way you're just looking for something good to see the side,
Speaker 2 (28:55):
But the shit sandwich, they'd say, this is the bad thing. And then that's it. I would go offline, nothing else would go in and I would just hyperfocus on the first thing that was said. So for me, that wouldn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (29:09):
No. And you just think as well, oh, they're just looking for the two nice things to see the side of the bad thing. Yeah. So you mentioned there this idea of people avoiding topics, and I think that is really tricky because I feel like now you can just offend people, especially online, you can offend someone with anything that you're going to say. And so I think you've touched on something really important there and that I'm talking about now with a lot of businesses is around that education piece of what is a DHD, how does it impact people? What are the different areas of their work? It's likely to impact, as in things like organisation prioritisation, email management, all that kind of stuff. But then the more emotional stuff that we're talking about, giving feedback about how to do that effectively, about the different ways to, so one of the things I talk about is at the start of a networking event or a meeting where everyone has to introduce themselves, I have started doing this thing where I get everyone to write their name and whatever their role is and whatever the icebreaker question is down, sometimes I feel so anxious at the start of a networking event, my name, I can't even, I'm like, I start panicking what's my name.
(30:26):
But then by writing it down, it means you getting everyone to do that, it just allows that executive functioning to catch up a little bit. So I think there's so many things that you can do once people start getting that education and the opportunity. And like you say, I think the majority of these hurtful things that are happening to neurodivergent people, they're not coming from a bad place. They're coming from the fact that it's a really complicated situation and a lot of the time people aren't being educated at work about it.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And then in terms of how it can impact people's wellbeing, so workplaces are quite stressful for everyone, but how is that different when you've got a DHD?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, so there is a bit of research. It is some research on A DHD. A lot of it is on autism, which there is strong co-occurrence or frequent. But essentially what is thought is that neurodivergent people have a heightened nervous system, so it's more responsive. And there's some research that shows that cortisol spikes are higher and longer for divertable for autistic participants. And so you've got often a reduced stress tolerance and a heightened stress response. So the experience is a lot more stressful and it lasts for a longer time. There's also research that suggests that the window of tolerance, which is this sort of calm state where we're able to perform, think rationally, the window of tolerance is reduced for neurodivergent people and they're able to flip into states of hypo and hyper arousal more frequently. So
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Is that hyper and hyper under arousal and over arousal?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So fight, flight, freeze. And you can go between these states more frequently if you're neurodivergent. So they're just more sensitive to workplace stress. And I think when you've got coexisting mental health, which again is higher, I dunno the exact numbers, it kind of varies between 50 and 70% of anxiety depression across research. So you've got other factors that will impact their wellbeing as well. So yes, everyone experiences is stress at work and is impacted, but I think you've got this group of people that are particularly vulnerable to those stresses and don't have the physiological tools to be able to cope with it that other people would. So the system wiring is different and that can impact them. And also burnout is, it tends to be what's viewed as more impactful longer term, three plus months. And it can prevent functioning. So some people won't be able to do their daily functioning for days or weeks at a time because of burnout. So yeah, the experience of it is just heightened, prolonged, and probably, I don't like these comparisons of worse than others, but compared to other people, it's more of a significant experience, negative experience.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Well, that's difficult. So logically, DHD has respond more strongly to these stresses, but also they are actually genuinely experiencing a lot of the time higher workloads because of things like how long it takes to do emails or the fact that you go to do one thing and then you get distracted by another thing and then you've kind of forgotten some instructions that you were given. So what can we do? Bearing in mind the fact that often the workload is higher because of these difficulties, but then also the responses to the stresses are physiologically so much stronger. What can we do as individuals with A DHD at work to help ourselves and what can businesses do?
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, I think workload's really interesting. One, because you've got actual workload and you've got perceived workload. And I think perceived workload, which is, I don't want to say it's like imaginary, but is how much work you feel that you have, which can vary from actual workload. And so when you've got people that can find it challenging to break down, understand and manage time, that can impact how they view the workload as well. So are they accurately measuring the amount of work that they have in the first place? I think it's a good place to start to think about that workload.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And how would you do that? How would you help people to accurately forecast something? I struggle with, I'll create workshops and I'm like, when I'm planning out the time in my diary, I'm like, is creating this workshop going to take me a day or two weeks? It's really tricky. How do you help? It's so
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Hard,
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Isn't it, just to do that, especially when you are a different person who doesn't live in their brain, doesn't know their abilities, how fast they do things, maybe that's an impossible question.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Again, me on a good day could take me 10 minutes to do something. Me on a bad day could take me an hour. So it's so variable. Yeah, I dunno if an answer exists, but just to think of what are the core requirements of your role, what do you need to do to be successful? And then see if you can time some elements of that just to break down how long things will take. Being mindful of the emotional impact of work and the emotional response that can sometimes impact productivity or focus. It's so complicated, but yeah, I dunno if there's an answer, but there's some really interesting research on A DHD and work addiction essentially. And they think that inattention can contribute to work addiction. So because it can take people with H ADHD longer to do some tasks because of inattention and lack of focus, that can lead to overwork and also environmental distractions can play a role and stop them being able to focus Well sometimes, and I'm very guilty of this checking and over checking work, this perfectionism of the perfect email.
(36:55):
Does it make sense? Are there any mistakes? So this constant over checking of work can result in people working longer and having to put in double effort to get things done. And then also the role of hyper focus. So once you are in the zone, it's very hard to break. I find it harder to stop working than starting. And so yeah, I think it's really complicated, the workload pressure. Some other research found that people with A DHD spent a lot of time doing low value tasks. And so top tip would be to identify what are the highest value tasks or what are the most important things that you need to achieve today that are high value and focus on those first. So it's complicated and sometimes employees will need help around prioritisation and just what's the most important thing for me to get done this week? And just some steer with that
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Perfectionism thing. So tricky as well because there's so much as you're growing up, oh, I've only, you'd concentrate, oh, you didn't read the question properly and there's lots of silly mistakes in this that you've heard that time and time and time again. So then it makes sense why you would want to check your email to colleague 10 times or look over something that is not actually really that much of a big deal because you have this kind of such a strong association with making mistakes and looking stupid. And then people thinking that you are stupid because you're making these little mistakes. Like my husband, he doesn't say this since I've been diagnosed, but he used to say to me, you are the most stupid intelligent person that I've ever met. And I think that that is, and I wasn't offended by it. I was like, yeah, no, I am. And I think that this is probably something that a lot of a DH DERs get told, no common sense. So dizzy, you really need to pay attention. How do you not know how to do that? So it's really difficult to move away from this. I don't want to look stupid, so I'm going to check this email 10 times.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
And the grammar police and this weird link between accuracy and competence. So oh, I missed out on apostrophe. Oh, they're incompetent. Just I think it's so you've got these neurotypical standards and expectations and this good employee put onto neurodivergent people. That just isn't their reality. And it's quite tricky for 'em to operate that way. And I think it's quite unfair. But yet perfectionism is crippling at times, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Would you say that could be a thing that businesses could do to help neurodivergent employees is to say, we don't care if you are sending internal emails. We don't care whether you've capitalised it full stops. If you miss out apostrophes, it really doesn't matter. It doesn't reflect on your competence. Just sit that message out to everyone. Would that be helpful?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, I think that would be a really nice approach. And if this accuracy in communication is very important for external communication and websites, make sure it's proofread and that someone who's very skilled at that is doing that. But I think that'd be a really good shout and it would ease a lot of anxiety for people just knowing that it's okay to miss off the S or put in the wrong word. Because also for dyslexia, screen readers, sorry, grammar checkers and spell checkers, standard ones, they won't identify, if you put in the wrong word, they're not skilled to help either. So yeah, that can be quite embarrassing for people. And I don't think that that's a fair experience. So if they control a lot of the time,
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, this sharing of tasks is something I talk about quite a lot with businesses. People with A DHD often seem to have a lot of shame around the fact they can't do what they refer to as the easy things. Like I'm really bad at organising or time management or sending things out when I say I'm going to. But I always talk about the fact that once you get to a certain level in a business, you are a CEO of a business. You don't have to do all these things that we think are so important. Once you are respected at a certain level, you have somebody who manages your time, who tells you when to leave for something, who organises your travel, who does your emails? Why are we as a society putting so much importance on that when you're a little worker bee? But then once you are really important, those things actually don't matter. So I think if we could have that as a reframe as like we're treating CEOs and important people as it's your brain that we care about, so other people can do other things. Often A DHD is their brains are insane. So if we could just treat everyone like that, I think that would be really helpful.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, I'd love, yeah, it's so true. And I hadn't thought about it like that actually before. I did wonder how people I found as I've got more senior in my career and it's just been harder. It's got harder to manage everything. And I just dunno how people, I don't feel like I could be a CEO too much, but you have got that support and that help to get you through those executive functioning skills that can be really tricky.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So for me, I've got access to work that funding from the government, and that's been a complete game changer for me. I can outsource all these things that take me absolutely ages that wouldn't take me so long if I didn't have a DHD. And so now for the things where I know, oh, that's really affy, or I'll go into my email and I'll get distracted, I can just dictate while I'm walking along an email to my virtual assistant and then she can do that. It's still my ideas, it's still my content, it's just that she's typing it and finding the email address and not getting distracted by exciting shiny things. And that's the approach that we take with CEOs. So if we can do it for the important people, surely there's some way of working it. So you could have an admin assistant per team or something like that. I don't know the logistics for all businesses, but I definitely think that that is something that could reasonably easily be done.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
They're very low value tasks as well. And if you think about what do we want people to be doing in organisations, it's not sitting up meeting and sending emails. It's getting business. It's delivering. Yeah, it would make sense to outsource those tasks.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
So obviously they're important things that need to get done, but do you need everyone to be doing them or could you have someone where it's actually their skill and they're super fast at logging into Zoom and they know all the different systems and they know all the different technologies. Couldn't that one person just be doing it for a lot of people? Could we not just have that as a normal business practise?
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Get my vote for that.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
So finally, just because conscious of the time, the two questions that I ask all guests, so the first one is, what would be your number one tip that you'd give to those employing people with a DHD to help them to achieve their potential?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Definitely plate to strengths. So when hiring, I'd really look at what are the core skills and strengths required to successfully do this role and perform in this role. And I think definitely focusing on strengths. So identifying what those strengths are within individuals and helping them deliver their roles, relying on their strengths. And if I could just add on a little something else would be to align it with an interest. If you can have an interest that's backed up by strength, you will have high performance engagement. That is the perfect place to be, and I think it's hard to find that, and that should be a mission for A DHD employees to find an area of interest that they love, that plays to their strengths.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
That's the ultimate combo, isn't it? So my second question, and you may have just already answered it, is what tip would you give to A DHD is to help them make the impact that they want to at work? Would it be that finding the interest and play to your strengths is you're going to be a recipe for success?
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, I think so. But also get coaching. I am such a fan of coaching. It was so transformational for me that I became a coach and it can help you understand yourself, unlock your potential. It does all of that stuff and more. And it has to be a DHD specific coaching. It can't be, I've had traditional coaching over the years. It's frustrating. It doesn't do anything. It's a waste of money. Neurodivergent coaching, absolute game changer for performance, happiness, health. I think it's the best investment you could make in yourself.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, absolutely. And something interesting that, well, there's two things I think really interesting. This are the studies that show that for managing A DHD symptoms for a lot of people, A DHD specific coaching is as powerful as medication. And then in New Zealand, they've now included as part of their medical model of treating A DHD, they recommend a DHD coaching. So that's how powerful. Yeah, absolutely. That would, I think if I was asking me that question, I think that would be my top tip as well. I love any issue that I have now. I'm like, right, I'll just get coaching on it. I'll just get coaching on it and sort it out instead of it going round and round and round in my head. That is all we've got time for today, but if people want to know more about what you've been talking about today, where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (47:03):
LinkedIn is where I'm often found, but yeah, I haven't got my website up and running yet. But yeah, LinkedIn is the best place for me.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Okey do well, I'll put a link to Liz's LinkedIn in the show notes so that if you do want to get in touch with her and find out anymore about what we've been talking about today, you can do so. But thank you very much, Liz. That's been an enlightening 50 minutes for me, so thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you want more information around this topic or details on the ways I support individuals in the workplace and help businesses to be more A DHD friendly, please go to a adhd impact.com or follow me, Becca Brrighty on LinkedIn.
In this episode of The ADHD Impact podcast I chat with Liz Mulhall-Brewer.
Liz is is a fellow ADHDer, Business Psychologist and Neurodiversity Workplace Wellbeing Consultant. 🧠🌟
Liz and I chat about a lot of the psychological factors that impact ADHDers at work. 💼💡
Find out about Liz’s research into ADHD disclosure in the workplace and the practical steps employers can take to make everyone feel more comfortable in their working environment. 📊🏢
We talk about the importance of psychological safety and what a tricky thing it can be to achieve. ⚖️🤝
We discuss how ADHDers can take steps to achieve workplace wellbeing and enjoy work and what employers can do to support wellbeing for neurodivergent employees. 💪🤗
If you want to know more about Liz or the work she does you can find her on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/lizmulhall 👥🔍
