In today’s fast-paced workplace, ADHDers encounter unique challenges hindering productivity. From focus issues to time management struggles, these hurdles can seem daunting. Unlocking ADHD writer Ashley Chay explores these issues, gleaning insight from the recent webinar, “Unlock Your Potential: Career Strategies for ADHDers.
ADHDers may face many challenges at work – including maintaining good interpersonal relationships with colleagues, having issues dealing with time management and boredom, or being conflicted about whether to disclose one’s diagnosis to the employer. In Unlocking ADHD’s recent webinar, “Unlock Your Potential: Career Strategies for ADHDers,” Adrian Phang, Career Coach and Facilitator at ET Potential, Sher-Li Torrey, Founder of Mums@Work, and Moonlake Lee, Founder of Unlocking ADHD shared their insight and tips on how individuals can thrive at the workplace with and in spite of their diagnosis.
Emotional dysregulation
ADHD causes an impaired ability to regulate big emotions like anger, sadness or frustration. Why? Well, neuroscience says it’s because the connection between two regions in the brain is impaired in individuals with ADHD: the amygdala and the cerebral cortex. The amygdala is a region in our brain responsible for big emotions like fear, rage or frustration, and the cerebral cortex inhibits these large emotional responses by calming us down, giving us time to control our outbursts and regulate the emotions. ADHD causes the connection between these two areas to be weaker, making it significantly harder for individuals with ADHD to respond to setbacks and workplace struggles healthily. Even a small setback can cause huge feelings of anxiety and panic, and as such, it’s imperative to be imbued with good strategies to cope with these heightened emotions at work – especially when in front of your boss or employer.
According to Adrian, the most effective strategy he’s found is removing oneself from the situation. Instead of trying to cognitively curb the emotion (which is ineffective as your brain is already overwhelmed with anxiety or frustration), excuse yourself to the bathroom and take a moment to breathe once you feel the anxiety bubbling in your stomach. This allows you to curb the emotion before it overwhelms you. Sher-Li’s strategy for helping her daughter, who has ADHD, is to give her a task to do, such as opening all the windows in the house. This allows the brain to focus on something else, to momentarily curb the anxiety such that you may return to address the emotions with a clearer and calmer mind.
Dealing with boredom
Individuals with ADHD often struggle with boredom. As the executive function kicks in when the task is particularly engaging or personally meaningful to us, excitement is sought out so deeply by individuals with ADHD whose executive functioning is often impaired. When we feel excited, the executive functioning kicks in and the brain feels healthy and well – and as such, experiencing the opposite of excitement (boredom) can be particularly emotionally draining on individuals with ADHD.
So what can you do if you’re in a workplace where you feel as though you’re dragging your feet to work everyday? Sher-Li suggests creating an organisation within your workplace to introduce novelty into your vocation – for instance, look to empower the women within your company, and start a new sector for that.
Alternatively, it may just be that your career is not suited for you, as Moonlake, the founder of UnlockingADHD, shared. She was a tax lawyer for a long time in her life due to being unaware of what she was truly passionate about. Take the time to reflect on your values and what is personally meaningful to you. Of course, a career change like Moonlake’s is a large and unfeasible step for many – but you can find other ways to introduce novelty to your job. For instance, you could volunteer as the organizer for the next team-building workshop or to undertake a task that you usually wouldn’t at work.
Time Management
Research has shown that individuals with ADHD routinely struggle with time blindness, which is the inability to correctly estimate how long a task will take to complete when compared to non-ADHDers. As such, time management is a common challenge for individuals with ADHD in the workplace.
A strategy suggested by Adrian is to have an accountability partner in the workplace. This could be someone who you are close to, and feel safe enough to disclose your diagnosis with (even if you don’t disclose it, it’s still possible to have such a colleague). In this partnership, you would check up on each other’s progress during coffee breaks or lunch ask how their progress is doing. According to Adrian, this was a sustainable strategy that he found really helped overcome his poor time management. Other strategies may include breaking down large tasks with long deadlines into smaller tasks, i.e., giving yourself ‘mini’ personal deadlines to meet.
To disclose or not to disclose?
This was one of the most commonly asked questions during the webinar – and we get it. It can be extremely tricky to navigate the disclosure of a diagnosis to one’s employer, especially if you’re unsure as to how your employer would respond.
In all honesty, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The recommendation by the webinar’s panellists was to critically evaluate the situation around you in the workplace, and how you may suspect your boss could respond. For instance, some bosses who are compassionate and understanding wouldn’t fault you for your diagnosis and could offer solutions and accommodations in the workplace, while there may be others that seem cold and unapproachable.
It is, at the end of the day, an extremely situation-specific question that you will have to come up with the answer to. In a perfect world, such a question would not even plague our minds and all bosses would be understanding. While we cannot give you a concrete answer, the next section will outline what to do if you chose not to disclose your diagnosis to your employer – which is a completely understandable and reasonable decision to come to – and how you could go about asking for workplace accommodations for ADHD nevertheless.
How to ask for workplace accommodations without disclosing your diagnosis
Requesting for workplace accommodations need not always be prefaced by a disclosure of your diagnosis; in the webinar, Sher-Li gave her insights into several reasonable workplace accommodations that anyone could request. These may be particularly helpful for those with ADHD as well.
Take for instance, “Discussing expectations and performance with bosses more often”, this could help keep accountability and reduce the impacts of time blindness that individuals with ADHD often struggle with – and it is also a perfectly reasonable request that your bosses would be happy to implement as it shows motivation and accountability. It can be made entirely without disclosing your diagnosis as well.
Conclusion
Despite the challenges that ADHD may pose, with the right strategies and mechanisms, we are sure that you’ll see success in your career journey. By having an accountability partner or with emotional regulation strategies under your belt, thriving at the workplace becomes much easier and more manageable. If you’d like to know more tips, check out the link to the full webinar below.
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