Leaving corporate work forced me to rethink everything. I’m walking into a brand new job as my full AuDHD self — and that’s both terrifying and exciting.
Hi, I’m Brett, the AuDHD Boss, and on this channel we talk about ADHD and autism in the workplace. I have over 12 years of leadership training and experience, and I happen to have autism and ADHD (AuDHD).
I used to start every job fully masked
I used to start every new job fully masked — even before I knew what masking was. When I entered a new role, I’d spend the first few weeks (or months) trying to get the lay of the land: how the systems worked, who did what, who I needed to know, who I could trust, who I couldn’t, who I should listen to, who I shouldn’t.
This model would repeat. I kind of learned it in school — I used to switch schools a lot as a kid, and that taught me skills I then took into adult life. I would always “mask up.” I wouldn’t reveal too much about myself. I would cherry-pick when I wanted to share little parts of myself. I’d ask a lot of questions — and that’s the best time to ask them, because you’re new and figuring things out.
As I would go along, I was supposed to build the version of myself I needed to be for that job, for that role. If you’ve ever watched Doctor Who, this is how I would “regenerate” into the person I wanted to be for that specific job — and that always served me very well.
Late diagnosis changed how I think about work (and recovery)
In my last job a few years ago, I was late-diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and I started to rethink everything: who I was, how I managed, how I approached roles and jobs. What does my ADHD need? What does my autism need? How does the push and pull of autism and ADHD show up in how I work every day?
And then — more importantly — how does it show up in recovery? The recovery itself is critical for how I rest, recover, and come back the next day, the next week.
So this is the first time I’m walking into a brand new job fully aware of my autism and my ADHD, fully aware of what ADHD needs and where ADHD trips me up, what autism needs and where autism trips me up — but also not having to hide those parts of myself.
Working somewhere I can be fully AuDHD
The people I’m working for now — it’s a neurodivergent group. They all know that’s why they hired me. It’s part of the job. I’m incredibly privileged to walk into this job, to both work on neurodivergent topics and be fully my neurodivergent self.
That’s both scary (I’ve never been able to be that open and honest and raw before) and exhilarating, because it allows me to not have to hide those parts of myself. I don’t have to think through the strategies and hoops to hide things. I can say: “Oh, that’s where my ADHD needs this thing,” or “Oh, my autism doesn’t like that.” It’s part of the conversation — part of how we talk about how each of us need to work and how each of us need to have our needs met.
Chaos and order: the AuDHD push/pull
This is making me stop and think: how does ADHD show up for me at work, and how does autism show up for me at work? Where does ADHD get in the way, and where does autism get in the way? More often than not, ADHD tends to cause a lot more problems than autism does.
I’ve noticed ADHD really thrives on chaos and disorganization — and then autism comes in and makes sense of all of it. Autism enjoyed putting order around those things. Over the last two or three jobs, that chaos-in-order push/pull became our routine.
The early part of my career was broadcast journalism. There was chaos and deadlines every single day. That was just part of the job. Autism would put order around those things as best it could, and I thrived — but it burned me out really hard. I was exhausted at the end of every day and every week, and I needed a lot of recovery time.
That’s how I ended up in corporate work. I left journalism thinking corporate structure would give me more relief and more rest — except I brought with me all the things I loved from the news world: deadlines, adrenaline, chaos. I brought them in a structured way and reinvented those things as I led new teams inside corporate structures.
And that was a blessing and a curse.
What kind of employee do I want to be now?
What kind of employee do I want to be now? How do I want to have my needs met? The only way I can figure that out is to go back through the last few jobs and figure out where I was — and wasn’t — getting my needs met. The things I need to undo, and the things I need to carry with me.
What do I miss, and what do I need?
I love learning new things. That’s where ADHD comes in. I need sparks of something new: creative energies, environments, ideas. I like ideas. I can be an idea machine — but more often than not, it has to be on a topic I actually want to pump ideas out on.
If I hit a boredom window, I lose steam, and I need another spark to get going again. Sometimes that spark is working with really smart colleagues — people who energize me when we start bouncing ideas around the room.
I love collaboration. I love thinking out loud (I’m a verbal processor). I love working with teams and seeing people’s strengths around the table — figuring out where great ideas are and building on them to make something bigger and better and bolder, but still achievable and manageable.
Then I love for us to split and go do the parts of building we need to do in our own space — and I’d love to hyperfocus on one of those projects, especially a project I really love.
The higher I moved up, the less I could do that because it became more about meetings and being a manager and budgets and… blah blah. But the only reason I became a boss and a manager and a leader in the first place was because I wanted my ideas to come to life. I wanted to build teams where we could do big, bold, amazing ideas.
Meetings: love/hate (and community)
I have a love/hate relationship with meetings. I like a productive meeting. A working meeting. A meeting where we get something done and we can look back and say, “That was a great use of time.”
I don’t like meetings where we’re just looking at slides, or things that could have been an email, or talking for the sake of talking, or listening for the sake of listening. I like interactivity — where I can think and express and do things.
For the last seven to ten years, my life was meetings: start at 8:30 in the morning and meetings straight through the end of the day. It became my normal routine. And when I no longer had that job, I was really lost — because it wasn’t only about whether we got things done. Those meetings were also my community.
Even when it was just my team, I got my community needs met through those meetings because those people were my friends. I was invested in those relationships for 13 years. Not seeing them every day is sad. That’s been a huge adjustment: not having that community, those conversations, catching up for a few minutes, then getting into work, having fun, building, enjoying being around one another.
I’m building community now in my new job, but it’s a smaller group. Everybody’s in different parts of the world. We don’t need the same volume of meetings. It’s a different industry, so I don’t see myself totally recreating it. So I have to figure out a way to get my community needs met in a way that works for my AuDHD.
Here’s the thing: work met my community needs — but when colleagues wanted to do something outside work, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to exist outside the work atmosphere. I didn’t know how to be a person outside of work, outside that job, outside that role.
And when I was the boss, I had to be careful: how I act, how I carry myself — constantly strategizing. Another layer of masking. I don’t miss that part. Now I can go have a drink with my friends and unmask a little bit more, which is nice.
Now I’m trying to be more aware of where ADHD shows up, where autism shows up — where ADHD needs sparks of creativity, dopamine, adrenaline — and where autism needs more routines.
Unlearning rigid corporate rules
I have the structure now and the space to let autism and ADHD both have their needs met in a way that works for my full AuDHD self — which I’ve never had before. It’s fascinating and a little scary.
I’ll have moments where I feel like I “should” be doing something — but a lot of those rules are rigid corporate rules that came from a corporate structure built for a neurotypical brain and not for my AuDHD brain. So I have to check myself and say: no, that’s a rigid rule. That was for a neurotypical brain.
It’s also giving me perspective when I talk to people still in those structures: here’s a small strategy, a tip — something you can do to undo some of those things. When we work together to have everybody’s needs met, collaboratively, we can grow together, work toward shared goals, and get the work done at the same time. I’m seeing it in real time now — it’s proving to me it can work. It’s proving we need to change corporate work so more neurodivergent employees can be successful when we honor our neurodivergent needs.
And that’s not easy for everybody. I still keep a little bit of a mask up so I am professional. I truly believe I have to mask at work to some degree. I truly believe I have to stay professional because if I fully unmasked at work, I don’t know if that’s what everybody actually needs or wants. So that’s what I’m sitting with.
Right now the scariest part for my autism is building new routines that make my autism feel safe — because I had so many careers of chaos that autism needed to organize, and I don’t have to do that now. A lot of times autism’s like, “What are we doing?” Autism also misses the meetings schedule every day. (It’s weird to say autism is like another person living in my head — it’s all me.)
Question for you
Is there an accommodation or something that works for you? How do you have your needs met at work?