Navigating the workplace is a challenge for everyone, but when both you and your boss have ADHD, it introduces a unique set of dynamics. In this conversation, Brett, The AudHD Boss, and longtime friend and former colleague Sherry dive deep into the realities, challenges, and strategies for managing up when both manager and employee are neurodivergent.
Our Story: ADHD Diagnoses and Workplace Discovery
When Brett and Sherry first worked together, neither fully understood how their ADHD impacted their working relationship. Sherry had been diagnosed in her early twenties, but with little support or tools available for adults at that time, she mostly saw her ADHD as a personal shortcoming. Brett, on the other hand, didn’t discover their ADHD diagnosis until years later, spurred by conversations during the pandemic and the rise of ADHD awareness through platforms like TikTok.
As their friendship and professional relationship deepened, both began to recognize how their neurodivergence shaped their strengths, communication styles, and needs at work.
Managing Chaotic Energy and Prioritization Challenges
Early on, Brett’s big-vision leadership style often led to a flood of new ideas and shifting priorities. For Sherry, this meant adapting to a fast-paced environment without getting lost in the chaos. They both quickly realized that establishing systems — even within a flexible corporate structure — was crucial to managing their energy and focus.
They leveraged corporate frameworks like KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to create a “safety net” that helped them stay aligned. By tailoring internal systems that worked for their needs, they were able to channel their creative energy into productive outcomes.
Building a Team with Neurodivergent Strengths in Mind
As Brett and Sherry built their team, they instinctively focused on hiring people whose strengths complemented their own gaps. They practiced “confident vulnerability,” openly acknowledging their areas of struggle and bringing on team members who could fill those gaps. This transparency fostered trust, empowered employees, and created a more resilient, strengths-based team.
Sherry emphasized the power of feeling “confidently vulnerable” in the workplace — a practice that allowed team members to own their strengths and contribute meaningfully.
Reverse Accommodations: Supporting Your Manager
Managing up with a neurodivergent boss often means offering subtle accommodations in your communication and workflow. Some practical strategies include:
- Weekly Check-Ins: Regular, structured meetings help maintain alignment and avoid priority confusion.
- Clear Prioritization: During check-ins, ask questions like, “Of these tasks, which is most urgent?” to help your manager focus.
- Effective Over-Communication: Provide background context, clear action steps, deadlines, and attachments in emails to reduce overwhelm.
- Recognizing Overwhelm and Defensiveness: If your manager becomes defensive, offer space and understanding rather than escalating the situation.
These techniques are about creating a smoother workflow for both employee and manager — not doing your boss’s job for them, but removing barriers to help everyone succeed.
Navigating Communication Challenges
One of the biggest lessons Brett and Sherry learned is the importance of context. In a remote world, casual hallway conversations are gone, making proactive communication even more vital. Weekly check-ins, structured emails, and clear requests ensure that tasks stay on track.
When asking about rigid rules or confusing systems, framing the question with curiosity (“Can you help me understand why we’re doing it this way?”) rather than resistance helps prevent triggering defensiveness.
Final Thoughts: Helping Everyone Thrive
Supporting a neurodivergent manager isn’t just about making your own work life easier — it’s about building a stronger team. By communicating clearly, helping prioritize tasks, and practicing confident vulnerability, employees can play a critical role in creating an inclusive, high-functioning workplace.
Managing up with ADHD isn’t always easy, but with the right systems, communication strategies, and mutual respect, it’s absolutely possible — and it can even be a powerful catalyst for personal and professional growth.
Interested in more tips about ADHD, autism, and thriving in the corporate workplace? Be sure to check out more resources and videos on The AuDHD Boss YouTube Channel or visit audhdboss.com!
Related Topics:
- How to Create Weekly Check-Ins That Work for ADHD Teams
- Building a Strengths-Based Workplace for Neurodivergent Professionals
- Recognizing and Managing Defensiveness in Workplace Conversations
Transcript of the conversation:
Brett (00:00):
What do you do if you suspect your boss may have ADHD and you have ADHD? How do you manage up? Do you need to manage up? Hi, I’m Brett, The AudHD Boss on this channel. We talk about ADHD and autism in the corporate workplace. I’m Brett. I have a formal diagnosis of ADHD and autism and I’ve been in leadership for over 10 years and I also have over 10 years of leadership training. In today’s video, I’m talking to one of my dearest and absolute best friends in the entire world, Sherry, who used to work for me. And it’s because of our working relationship that we became such good friends and she no longer reports to me. We haven’t worked together for a few years now. But one of the things that I thought would be a good conversation was for us to both talk about how when I discovered my ADHD and eventually my autism and how I brought that to work.
(00:47):
And then one of the things that we connected over was that she also has ADHD, but the timing and the discovery for the two of us with our ADHD in separate times and in very separate ways. So I thought it’d be interesting to sort of get her perspective on when you sort of had somebody who didn’t know they had ADHD as a manager and then that discovery and then how things shifted on the other side of learning about having that ADHD and how did that change things for us. We’re going to have that conversation today about how to be both neurodivergent leaders. Sherry was also a leader in her role as well. Here is that conversation. This is a little bit of a longer one to talk about ADHD and a manager employee relationship when you both have ADHD and or autism. And we’re going to start with how Sherry learned about her A DH ADHD diagnosis. You at least had more awareness of it than I did.
Sherry (01:42):
It’s funny you say that. I was diagnosed when I was in my early twenties. That’s literally all I got though. It was like, well, you know, have this thing. And it was pretty new at the time to diagnose an adult. It was still very much a kid’s thing. So I feel like everything was focused on helping children. So here I am as an adult out of college, I got this diagnosis and that was it. So I would say that even when I met you, I still kind of thought I was the only one who had it. Oh, wow. I really didn’t have this sense of other adults having it and struggling with it because just they weren’t talking about it then and I certainly wasn’t talking about it. So I was still seeing it just very much as a personal deficiency and not what we now know it to be
Brett (02:25):
Because there were no tools.
Sherry (02:26):
No, none. I first started working with you. I little, I hadn’t had. My relationship with bosses prior to that had been very inconsistent, we’ll say. So I didn’t really know what to expect. And I found that once we started working together and get to know each other, I found it to be pretty easy. And I now know, well, we just were matching energy, matching chaotic energy. So whether or not it was a healthy relationship is maybe to be discussed. But I know that we were having, we just kind of fell into place easily with each other. I felt like there were things that you didn’t get all up in arms about things that I did or didn’t do. Other people would.
Brett (03:09):
I got a really in-depth question the other day about how other people react to me as an autistic ADHD manager. Do I have people, especially people on my team, treat me differently because of it? Well, I didn’t know when we first met. I didn’t know until what, seven or eight years into our partnership. It was around, I mean, it was the pandemic that I started to pull on that thread and with TikTok and everything, with people talking about their symptoms more, that’s when I was like, oh hey. And I started to tell you about it. I was just like,
(03:46):
Hey, this is feeling like something. And you were like, yeah, well the work that we were doing at that time, a DD was driving the big vision. I have this big bold idea and these are all the different sub ideas, possibly too many ideas. And I think that’s sort of where I reflect on being kind of a manager. And I still get into trouble with this is as soon as I’ve got an idea, obviously I’m excited about the idea and I want the whole team to work on idea be damned anything else that we were just working on from the last idea. And I think that can be wildly disruptive. And we had a colleague who gently would very respectfully but very gently call me out on that. And I now know on this end of it, on this end of the diagnosis, oh, that’s what I was doing. That’s really disruptive. That can really mess up a whole team because you’re changing priorities, you’re adding to the workload, you’re doing all this stuff, but if there’s a lot of enthusiasm and constantly changing priorities. So how did you manage up with my rather stereotypical ADHD bouncing off the walls with new ideas?
Sherry (05:09):
I did though in thinking back, I’m like, I think I might have been on the back of that bike because I could keep up. And we kept up with each other’s, I don’t know what you want to call it, energy frantic enthusiasm. Chaotic enthusiasm. You say these things and it seems like such a long time ago in a lot of ways. And it’s hard for me to see past what I’ve seen as could be masking, could be growth. I’ve seen you go really become someone who leans on the systems, which moving into this more rigid corporate space provides some pretty solid frameworks,
(05:55):
Which can feel oppressive. But also we’re, hey, this is step one, this is step two, this is how we’re supposed to evaluate the priorities and being forced to be accountable to those systems we were presented with. I think as frustrating as they can be for people like us, they’re also a bit of a safety net in some weird way in that, well, I have to prioritize based on what I’ve been told to prioritize because of these things. But as I think we both grew over time because we were both exposed to these systems around the same time, and I think both of us sort of latched onto them a little
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Bit
Sherry (06:33):
In some ways. And it’s like, well, here’s a chart,
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Here’s
Sherry (06:35):
A chart and it’s annoying, but we get to fill it out and when we fill out the chart, we have these things. So we have these built in now guideposts and checks and balances that we’re expected to be accountable for later. So as many issues and difficulties as they presented to us in our brains also provided these opportunities for us to learn how to use systems to help us.
Brett (06:57):
I think that’s where we had some angst too, which is also that very classic ADHD thing, which was we really resented having to have a system at the beginning of it. And then that’s where I think we sort of let ADHD kind of like, what if we hack the system and make it our own?
Sherry (07:14):
Yes,
Brett (07:15):
There were still systems that you’re right. As a corporate structure where we worked, we had to do their systems their way, which when a system takes over can be very frustrating when you’re trying to stay creative. But we had enough autonomy that we could say, well now hold on now let’s make our own system that mirrors that system and works within that system so that it works for our needs. And I think that was one of the, I don’t think I could have done that without you because then you were able to sit down and go, okay, here’s what this should look like. And then I think where I needed you especially was I can’t do stuff like that. I can sit down with you and I can verbalize in verbal processing style the crazy ideas of how I want to do it and I can see it in my head, but I can’t possibly sit down and develop a spreadsheet for it.
Sherry (08:19):
Well, yeah, I think that’s why we’re a good two-headed monster because my auditory, I have a lot of trouble. If I only hear something, it’s really hard for me to retain it and I have to see it. I have to make it, I have to see it physically, digitally, I need to see something.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
So
Sherry (08:40):
I think that the strengths where you have of picking up on things you’re hearing and being able to paint a picture in your head, I really can’t do that, but I can then take. So I think between the two of us, we can make a pretty good loop of information
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Because
Sherry (08:54):
You can articulate and I can make it visually evidenced.
Brett (08:59):
When you and I first started, it was just the two of us. And then as we started to build out the team that we made, that we created based on the work that we were doing, we almost instinctively, I don’t think we realized that at the time, but we were instinctively going, okay, what are the needs that we need to have met for the work that we’re doing, but then what are the needs that the two of us thinking style wise really need the piece that’s going to complete our puzzle for the work that we’re trying to do? And so we took a long time before we hired the first person to work with us to sit down and go, okay, well I work like this and you work like this and here’s how we do this together. We need somebody who can kind of fit into that. And then we started to work backwards from there, just build the job requirements.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And
Brett (09:45):
Then we kind of hired for someone who had the skills to sort pick up on the gaps that we both had. And I think that was critically important to how, and then we did that over and over and over and over again as we built our team, we ended up hiring out 10, 12 people by the time we were done, but we just were to repeat, did that every single time
Sherry (10:09):
To be in a space where I felt comfortable saying, you know what? This thing not my strong suit. So I’d love to bring on someone that is a strong suit for and feeling confidently vulnerable
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I
Sherry (10:21):
Think is a really good practice to be able to do in a professional setting and
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Not
Sherry (10:27):
Often something people think about doing. But I feel like that, I think our team was pretty awesome, is pretty awesome. And I think that they do fill in a lot of the gap.
Brett (10:37):
I like that phrase confidently vulnerable because it’s like we both kind of leaned into that a lot because it was like, look, I’m going to tell you what my weaknesses are because I see it in you as a strength, and I can’t do this without you. We can only do this together and I need to tell you that because otherwise we’re not going to be successful at this
Sherry (10:57):
Powerful to do. And I think it also helps your relationship with that person to say, this is kind an expectation I have in our relationship working together. So I think that helps people feel even confident in their specialties and their abilities to have their manager say, this is the reason I stand out on this team and why I was brought in. And they can kind of own that piece.
Brett (11:18):
But to be able to look at somebody and go, Hey, you really good at this. You have a really, I’m in awe that you can do this. Not just because I’m incredibly incompetent at that, but you’re just really good at that. Do you want to do, and I think I love these types of questions. Is that something you want to keep doing more of? Do you like doing that thing or what can sometimes happen in a corporate workplace structure is now you’re getting tapped to do that thing too much. Are you sick of it? And a question that I use in coaching is, is there another job that you see somebody else doing that you’re a little envious of that you think you could do better? And that’s where I try to sniff out from somebody, what are you interested in? I want people to bring their interest to work for this to work. I want it to be both and interest-based.
Sherry (12:13):
When we started working together and how I worked with you as my manager, you and I worked together, you started learning about ADHD As a result, I started learning more about ADHD. And then I think we kind of, you sling shotted me up to where I could realize we both had this thing because we’re both different. We don’t struggle with the same things. I knew how I could better help you and in turn would usually help myself.
Brett (12:42):
We had built so much of that trust up over the years that when I was able to be like, Hey, I think I got this thing, and you were able to go, oh yeah, let’s keep going down that road and see where that takes us. And luckily we had one or two other colleagues on the team who also had already identified as having ADHD as well, and they were comfortable talking about it too. And so it kind of felt some days like you and I were going to school with that other colleague who had a little bit more awareness. Again, at that time, there wasn’t as many resources available
Sherry (13:18):
And I learned what was helpful to you. Again, because it’s not a monolith
Brett (13:23):
Of course,
Sherry (13:24):
It’s really learning where can I really help you with when I need to bring something to you?
Brett (13:30):
Because normally as employees, our first place is going, okay, I need an accommodation for me. But if I think my boss or my manager, somebody is either undiagnosed or diagnosed and they don’t want to talk about it, which is entirely possible, how can I manage up by offering up accommodations to them? And some people might think, oh, that’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to offer up an accommodation to a manager when you’re an employee. But if you want to get things done and you’re struggling with priorities and you’re struggling with the to-do list and you’re struggling with all the different things, thinking about how and how you phrase that I think is critically important too. It could be as simple of going to, and you and others on the team had done this for me plenty of times, which is just coming to me and sitting me down in our check-ins and saying, help me prioritize. There’s a lot of things here you want to get done. There’s a lot of ideas here. How would you like me to prioritize these tasks and help me figure out due dates? Again, it’s like a reverse accommodation. You’re sort of asking for an accommodation for your work at the same time as you’re suggesting, here’s an accommodation that they can do as well.
Sherry (15:00):
If you are neurotypical and you have a boss that you’re thinking, I think they have ADHD, what are some of the things that might make you think they have ADHD? And one would be they’ve given you 57 things to do, but no sense of which one is most important.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And
Sherry (15:16):
Knowing when it’s due doesn’t necessarily tell you if it’s most important. And as a good employee, you should be saying, Hey, you’ve given me a lot of things. I see a lot of due dates, but I need to understand what are the biggest priorities here. And again, if you’re in a situation where you’re in a company that has the systems of OKRs, OKRs, what are they? Objectives and key results.
Brett (15:40):
Objectives and key results or KPIs, key performance indicators.
Sherry (15:44):
So you’ve got these guiding forces sometimes of, well, these things actually directly align with our department goals, our company goals, whatever those might be. But if you’re in a situation where you are maybe a smaller company that doesn’t have those, it may need to be more time bound, more specific to the calendar or the importance of a client that you’re working with or the amount of money coming in based on whether or not you get it done. So I think sitting with them even week by week, and I think that that’s, well, that asterisk there about the check-in, but I think if you or your manager has ADHD, a frequent check-in is critical. So important. It’s critical. I know other people who love that they only meet with their manager once a month. Oh my gosh, the mess I could get into if I didn’t check in once a
Brett (16:37):
Month. Well, that’s just it. If you and I didn’t meet in every week, barring vacations are sick days or time off, we were a mess.
Sherry (16:44):
It was really hard because you want to do all the things and you’ve got the things you want to do and then the things you don’t want to do and the things are important. And so I think just if your boss is neurodivergent a weekly check-in is you’ve got to do it. You have to.
Brett (17:06):
Yeah, and I mean it doesn’t have to be a full hour if schedules are tough, but you should try to go into it with a few small specific structures within the check-in if you can.
(17:20):
One of them being, what are our priorities this week? What are the deadlines for this week? And then if there are competing priorities, how are we prioritizing each one of those things? With my boss, I would sit down and I would keep a little to-do list, a separate notebook that as things would occur to me throughout the week, I would just write this list down of things I want to talk to my boss about. And I would just keep a little, it’s literally just a little sticky note with bullet list on it. And then I recommend ranking them in prioritization as well, so that if you run out of time on any of those topics, don’t put your most important topic at the bottom and then give yourself time to come out of that check-in with, alright, well I need to check in what the priorities are. So if it’s only a 30 minute call, you got to have some time awareness. Alright, there’s 15 minutes left in the call, there’s 10 minutes left in the call. Pause and what are my priorities for this week? Or compare, these are what I’m prioritizing. Is that what you want me to prioritize this week?
Sherry (18:28):
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good way to approach it because like you said, it does force you to align yourself, which neurodivergent or not, it’s really good to do once a week because things change throughout the week. Things come in, things go, things do change based on all sorts of different factors. So to be able to respond to them meaningfully, it’s helpful to have that reset once a week and know that you’re working on the most important thing. And if your manager is neurodivergent, I think sometimes, well, we all forget people, other people don’t live in our head and we’re getting all this information that tells us things have shifted, but you need to make sure you’ve communicated that to other people
Brett (19:11):
Because
Sherry (19:11):
They might not know. They might not
Brett (19:14):
Know. That is one of my biggest pet peeves, not necessarily at work. It feels like it in personal life versus work life. In personal life, I feel like it’s harder for me to tell a friend or a loved one, Hey, I don’t live in your head. I don’t know what you’re talking about right now. Versus at work, I can be like, Hey, could you give me some more context around your thinking on that? Because it’s like there’s a professional way to say it where you can kind of find a respectful way, whereas in your personal life, it sounds so corporate when you say that to somebody, but I just want to shout to somebody like what is going on?
Sherry (19:55):
And that can still happen as much as we communicate and there’s all these ways we hear about things, especially with the remote life,
Brett (20:02):
Sometimes
Sherry (20:04):
You don’t hear things. We don’t have that casual, you’re
Brett (20:07):
More siloed,
Sherry (20:08):
That casual, the bathroom conversations don’t happen, or at least they hopefully don’t. If you’re fully remote, I’m not going to say don’t.
Brett (20:17):
I’m guessing that’s more of a lawsuit for a company if they are. So
Sherry (20:20):
I mean things happen, but yeah, so I think if your manager has a billion priorities, corralling them once a week or they should be corralling you too and getting aligned on the priorities helps with that big long list. Right. One thing I think about a lot that you said was just over communicate. There’s a lot of times there’s a lot of factors in it, and if you can’t get with them in a room to talk about it, frankly over-communicating is best because nowadays, if you’ve written all of this in an email, your boss doesn’t have to read the whole email. You can say, here’s some key points. I’m going to include other context here for you to refer to if you need it. And kind of guiding them through your overcommunication a little bit is something I found helpful because I know I would loop you in on things and just say, I want you to have the full picture because I know I’m dealing with this thing and as my manager, you should know about it, but you may not need the minutia, so I’m going to stick it in here.
Brett (21:25):
Here’s the context I think you need for
Sherry (21:27):
What you
Brett (21:28):
Have to do,
Sherry (21:28):
But you might not. So tuck it away, but you can always go back to that email. So again, in trying to be respectful about what you are communicating, you can get to overload, you can get to Whelm and I think just a little bit of guidance in the email of here’s key thing, refer to read the bottom in case of emergency break glass and read the bottom of this email if you have to go back and you’re in conversation with your manager and need to figure out what the heck I’m talking about. So I thought that was helpful.
Brett (21:59):
I would add to that too. Don’t wait too long. Because if something’s building, building, building, building, and this happens with, I find new managers where new managers on the team will wait too long to speak up about something to their management skills and to their respect, they’re trying to manage it and show that they can manage it, which is commendable and great for your experience building and everything, but a part of being a good manager is knowing to raise your hand and go, hold up, I need more help on this. It’s not necessarily that every manager is expected to do it completely on their own is that a manager is supposed to know how to pull in the resources that they need to get the thing done to remove a barrier. So if that means to pull in more people to be more effective or to bring another manager in at a certain time to help, that’s where you have to have that awareness to be like, hold on, this is going to get out of control. Then had people come to me and I’ll have to say, boy, if you just brought me in two instances before where it is now, we could have shut this whole thing down and saved everybody a lot of stress
(23:09):
Because it could be, you may not have context that more senior manager has, there’s a system as we noted that could help support this. Or Oh, I know somebody else in the organization who can fix that. Things like that. It is not necessarily about, I think sometimes we internalize that work maybe because of rejection, sensitivity dysphoria, and we’re getting nervous, oh, I don’t want to be judged. Oh, I don’t want to be seen to screen this up. Or, oh, I want to be shown that I’m capable or I’m trying hard enough for all these different things. It’s just like, yeah, but you got to know when to ask for help.
Sherry (23:43):
Yes. And I think that that’s, again, if you have ADHD, your boss has ADHD, you want your boss to be able to advocate for you and have the information arm them with that information and the ability or the ability to find it so that they can do that easily if they have to chase you down to figure something out. That’s a frustrating thing. So I think in terms of having a manager or divergent, if you can just be as transparent as possible where you keep things, where you track things. I mean, I know I tend to want to hide my work a lot until it’s done, but like you said, it is if you give them access and they can check things quickly, you can often help keep things from spiraling further than they need to because your boss can say, oh, there’s that spreadsheet where they keep everything. I can find that I can go there.
Brett (24:44):
I know there were days where I would have overwhelm either when you were giving me context around a situation or it was just things weren’t going our way because there was just too many barriers or whatever. Or maybe I was having a hard time articulating my vision or what I wanted or what the thing was. When you are with a manager who, again, you don’t know if they are or not with ADHD or autism and you don’t know if they have a diagnosis or not, but maybe you suspect it, maybe you don’t, I don’t know. But when you’ve got somebody who’s starting to be kind of short, maybe you sense overwhelm coming, but you’re starting to recognize it as defensiveness. We had a colleague once, and this is one of the most important things in my career. I will never let this go because it was so helpful and so courageous of this person.
(25:41):
We were having a conversation about something and I was actively getting defensive about whatever that topic was, and I didn’t recognize that I was getting defensive. I had no idea I was doing it, but our colleague did, and there was immense trust between me and this colleague and the colleague said, Hey, why are you getting so defensive right now? And we had the relationship where they could say that to me and it took me back and I was just like, I’m not, and then I stopped. I went, oh, I am getting defensive right now. It stops me in my shit. Now. I don’t recommend everybody do that because you have to have a really good relationship with your boss to be able to pull that off, which this person had with both of us. And I was able to stop and recognize, oh, I am getting defensive right now and I could stop and investigate within myself, what am I getting defensive about?
(26:29):
And I use that person’s action in that moment all the time because now I recognize when those are building inside of me because they so thoughtfully called me on it that now this was, gosh, I don’t know, 2019. This was so many years ago now. So now if I start to feel that happening, I have that person’s voice in my head and I go, what are you getting so defensive about? And then I stop and reflect. I do a sensory check, okay, am I defensive because there’s too much information? Am I being overwhelmed? I don’t understand what’s being talked about. I can’t get my foundation here. There’s so many different things that I’ll run through in my head to be like, what am I getting defensive about? But my question for you is, you’re on the other side of that and maybe you’re recognizing somebody’s getting defensive. What do you do on your end of it? If you’re dealing with maybe me or somebody who’s not going to stop and think for half a second about their defensiveness, how do you manage that? Especially when you can tell there’s maybe some overwhelm, maybe there’s, you don’t know what it’s,
Sherry (27:39):
It’s always nice if you can recognize it that you think, I think this person’s actually just got kind of a lot and I’m the feather on the back right now, so let me just step away. I feel like you’re not in the best place for me to talk about this, and I do need your attention,
Speaker 3 (27:59):
But
Sherry (27:59):
I’m going to go get some water. I’ve got to go give them a moment so they can absorb that You’re noticing they’re overwhelmed, you’re being respectful of that and you’re walking away for a second, but you do need them. You need them. So I’m going to come back to you or you know what? I’m going to write you an email. Let’s talk about it after. So just give, I think just if you have that presence of mind to be able to recognize that and not take it personally. Because a lot of us, when people get defensive at us,
Brett (28:27):
That’s the thing.
Sherry (28:28):
We then get defensive
Brett (28:29):
Match, we match that energy, especially if we’re neurodivergent, there’s a strong possibility we’re going to match energy for energy.
Sherry (28:35):
I don’t want any of these things to sound like you’re doing your manager’s job for them. There’s that boundary of you want to make sure what you’re doing is taking barriers away from them doing what they have to do. They still have to do the thing, they still have to be accountable, but you can move them towards the action that makes them accountable within your role by setting up these, I think it’s ultimately setting up systems, but also having the awareness. They may not have ADHD, they may not have autism. They just may have that kind of a personality where you need to just figure out how to make it work for them. And
Brett (29:14):
Yeah, and I always say this, for every situation, there’s always going to be more context to something that you don’t have awareness of, especially as a direct report to a manager, especially the more senior the manager is, can you track any rigid rules or any rigid thinking? And I think tracking rigid thinking in rigid rules can also be tough because if it’s rigid rules, it’s kind of like, well, why do we have to do things that way?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Which
Brett (29:43):
If you ask that question to your manager, that is probably going to come back with a defensive response. So is there another way we can ask why are we doing it this way?
Sherry (29:57):
Yeah. Well, I think two people ask that generally. Well, you never know. Generally, I want to understand, so I could do this better for you. I want to do what you need me to do. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time including my own. So give me some context as to why we have to do it this way.
(30:15):
What is the benefit of doing this way? And if your manager can answer that and say, well, it’s because that’s how our parent corporation told us to do it. Don’t really know why. Well, that’s frustrating. But if they can say, well, it’s because they want us to achieve X. Okay, well, do we have to get there in the way they say or can we get there a different way? What’s a better way to get at it? Yeah, I think if people just ask that because they want to be a part of the solution, they want to be part of a useful cog in the machine, so understanding the bigger picture or specific reason why you’re doing something helps ’em contribute,
Brett (30:55):
Can be better. That’s our biggest thing. I mean, this is the thing that’s not on the reasonable accommodations list that I wish was, but just simply telling an employee the why behind something. If you can just explain why are we doing this or why are we doing this way? Give me the big picture and then give me the minutia of the details.
Sherry (31:14):
One of the biggest things I think you could do to help a neurodivergent boss is when you email them, have a little sheet next to your computer, wherever you need to put it to say, does my email have these four pieces of information in it, background what you’re emailing about? Two, the reason I’m emailing three, what the request is, what is the intent of the email I’m sending you? And then four, if there’s something you the recipient needs to do, and if there is something you need to do when you need to do it by, I guess that’s five.
Brett (31:51):
Takeaway, takeaway, action, and deadline.
Sherry (31:56):
And if there’s a zoom link related to the meeting you’re talking, man, I’ll throw it in there again, if there’s a PDF you’re talking about, reattach it. Because the amount of time your neurodivergent boss will have to, if you don’t include those
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Things
Sherry (32:12):
Together in email, you’re now creating two to three to maybe four more steps for them to do what you need before they can do what you’re asking them to do if you’ve remembered to ask them in the email.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
So
Sherry (32:25):
I think that you can really keep in mind with your boss who is neurodivergent, they, they’ve got a lot of things competing for their attention. Keep them in that email until they respond to you. Don’t make them go chasing things. They’ll get
Brett (32:37):
Distracted 100%. It is wildly helpful when someone includes, especially if they’re following up, but even if it’s the first email includes all the things of all the places and all the locations that I need it right then and there, so I can just grab and go as opposed to somebody who’s like, well, you can find it. And it’s just like,
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I have
Brett (32:55):
20 seconds to look for this to get you this response. Please, dear God, don’t make this an hour for me. No,
Sherry (33:02):
And it helps everybody.
Brett (33:03):
And that’s the thing. Ultimately, anytime you do any of this, you’re helping everybody. Even if you’re managing up, even if you’re supporting a manager to try to give them tools and tricks, whether you know they are or aren’t, you’re still helping other people on the team by doing that. You’re being a good colleague and you’re going to get that back one way or another.
(33:23):
Sherry and I have lots of other topics and conversations. We might be recording more of these conversations, so if there’s one topic in particular you’d like for us to talk about, please let us know as well. And be sure to check out some of the other videos while you’re here, and please be sure to Like and subscribe. It really helps my channel grow and help get more of our educational information out to more people around ADHD, and autism in the workplace. Thank you so much for watching, and be sure to check out some of the other videos while you’re here.