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Welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast with me Ben Pearce. Every episode we talk through different aspects of how to really thrive in the tech world and if the podcast isn't enough for you and you want weekly micro learning delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for the Tech World Human Skills Weekly. Head over to www.TechWorldHumanSkills.com to sign up.
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Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in today and we've got another great episode for you. We're talking about ADHD. Why? Well, I'm certainly hearing a lot more about it these days. I hear about it with my kids friends at school. I hear about it with adults I know that have been diagnosed later in life. So in this episode I want to explore what ADHD is, how neurotypical folks like me can work best with people with ADHD and explore some tips for people with ADHD on how to really thrive. So in this episode we've got an ADHD expert, someone who coaches leaders with ADHD to really thrive. She's been a CEO, a chief of staff at Microsoft UK and now leads a coaching programme for leaders with ADHD. So please welcome to the show Sam Bramall. Sam it is brilliant to have you with us. Hello, thank you so much Ben for having this topic on your podcast but also inviting me along. I appreciate it very much. Well it's a pleasure, it's an absolute pleasure to have you with us. Now for people that perhaps haven't come across you or your work before could you tell us a little bit about your background? I can, so you mentioned my tenure if you like at Microsoft. I've actually been in the tech industry for close to 30 years which makes me feel incredibly old when I say that. 15 of those years spent at Microsoft. I've been in global organisations, I've been in start-ups, I feel like I've done the whole thing. In 2023 I left that industry and really what was my life and my identity to go and care for my mum who was really poorly.
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And at the same time I made some pretty big life decisions. I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2021 and I realised that I really really was very passionate about supporting leaders like myself to live and lead in their inspiration zone with their ADHD. So I've spent the last few years reskilling and retraining and investing in that kind of next part of my journey and I'm now an executive and ADHD coach and something called a polyvagal informed practitioner. So I look at the nervous system of people that I coach to help them to thrive a little bit better. Outside of all of that I'm a mum to two teens, I have too many cats and a dog that thinks it's a cat. So it is chaos in my life often but good chaos. I wouldn't have it any different way.
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Brilliant. Well thank you so much for joining us. So I guess let's start to dig into the topic a little bit. Why is talking about ADHD, why is it such an important topic to talk about?
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So I think that there's been a big big focus on diversity sort of all up over the last 10 years, maybe 15 years in the tech industry and just kind of globally across kind of corporate organisations and I think for me diversity is not optional in tech right. It's how our products, our systems and now our AI can become ethical, it can become useful for the people that are using it and recognising that all the people in the world have different brain types in some way. There's a natural variation. Neurodiversity is essentially the natural variation in human brain so it's not disorder but there are different neurotypes and there are different strengths and needs and so recognising and acknowledging that is important. Since the pandemic we've heard a lot about ADHD alongside things like autism as well, probably more so than before the pandemic and part of that was because of things like social media and people being able to be online more and more. But what's really interesting is there was a survey last year by the Tech Talent Charter and they surveyed around 700 organisations and around 230,000 employees and what they identified was that employers thought that only 3% of their workforce was neurodivergent when in fact over 50% of tech workers self-identified in that survey as being neurodivergent. When I say neurodivergent I mean ADHD, dyslexic, maybe dysbraxic or autistic or have dyscalculia which is a challenge with numbers. So there's a huge gap there in kind of what the perception of it is and then the reality. And I think that because of social media which is a good thing people are sharing their stories because they're struggling right and they're identifying that they may have this condition called ADHD. Now in the past we very much thought that ADHD was a childhood thing and it was only related to boys but as we've researched and identified it actually stays with people. So lots of people who were obviously missed in their diagnosis when they were children go online, they see more information they're like, "huh that sounds like me I've struggled with this all of my life." That was my story. I am a TikTok diagnosed ADHD woman right. I saw a few videos online and I was like, "God that looks really like me." And as I started to explore it and I found a language for why I felt a little bit different when I was younger or why I struggled with certain things. So I think that's why we're seeing this explosion happening or perceived explosion. It's just I feel it's more of a writing of the imbalance where we've had this very neuro-normative world and people are saying, "Hang on a second I don't feel like this and I want to share my experience in the world." That's really interesting. Just as you're talking there there's about 500 questions that ding in my brain. The first one, that statistic that you brought up is really interesting. So the employers think 3% of their workforce in tech is neurodivergent.
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Self-identification 50%. So straight away I go, "Wow that's interesting." Second thing then which comes up is you then described yourself as, and I can't remember the exact phrase, but something like self-diagnosed TikTok diagnosis. So now I'm going to, I'm not really political, but get a bit political. There's also this massive swathe now of over-diagnosis, of benefit street, of we can fix neurodivergent with a Panadol or a paracetamol. It feels like there's a wave going, "Well hold on the only reason we've got this problem is because there's a load of people watching TikTok deciding they've got it." So if I put that, maybe you could tell us about your story of the TikTok diagnosis and what it meant before, what it meant after. Yeah absolutely. So I mean I use it as a sound bite but I think my experience was I'd always felt a little bit different. I struggled at school but I have a really high IQ. When I found myself in the workforce I was suddenly accelerating because it was exciting and interesting and I'll come on to why that's important in a second. And over the years I'd taken some of those online ADHD tests and they'd always scored really high and then as my family started to have their children, I've got some family in the US and they were sort of streets ahead of being able to diagnose,
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their children were suddenly getting diagnosed and we were all a bit like, "Huh, but they're like us." So suddenly you see these sort of patterns kind of connecting together. But you know, during the pandemic you go online, you start seeing things. I saw this video of this woman and this is why I went to seek a diagnosis. She kept leaving all of her kitchen cupboards open and forgetting where her keys were literally every five minutes and that's me. It's not just doesn't just happen once a day but my husband is always going around going, "I'm having to close the doors behind you" and I'm constantly forgetting where my keys are. I just put them down absentmindedly. At the same time, because I'm a woman of a certain age, I was also going through the menopause and that has an impact on women. There's a lack of Eastern impacts to open me. So that was my story.
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The social media, lots of people slam it, but actually it gave me a language to be able to go and self-advocate and to feel that I wasn't going completely insane. I thought I had dementia, right? And that I was going to go and get tested for that because that's all I knew. So in terms of the over diagnosis, there is not an over diagnosis. So diagnosis are rising,
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but that's not because prevalence is exploding, it's because visibility is, right? Prevalence has not meaningfully increased, but what has changed is awareness, access, the fact that adults and women are finally being recognised because for a long time it was thought that girls and women couldn't have ADHD. So there is still, I think, a significant under diagnosis, which kind of aligns to that tech charter statistic. So I think saying that over diagnosis is happening is really invalidating very often and ignores decades of missed identification. And what I would sort of end that by saying is we wouldn't say that to people with cancer. We wouldn't say, oh, there's an over diagnosis of cancer. So it's very easy to target people with ADHD because people don't understand it. We don't say there's an over diagnosis of dyslexia or dyspraxia, but people like to or seem to like to target ADHD, which I find fascinating in itself. So over the years, so obviously this is something that's been part of you forever. How did it show up when you were working, you know, in the big corporate life or when you're working as a CEO? How did that kind of manifest itself for you in the work environment? I think in the work environment. So to understand this, let me tell you a little bit about parts of the ADHD diagnosis, if you like. So, and I'll come on to a bit more of this in a second, but there's a wonderful guy who sadly passed away now, a professor called Dr. Tom Brown, and he identified that ADHD people have something called an interest-based nervous system. So our motivation, if you like, is ignited by novelty, urgency, complexity, challenge, and passion and purpose. That's all sort of interest fuel. So in the workplace, how that would show up, I love business development. I love new stuff. I used to love, when I was in technology, new solutions coming together and trying to make something out of that and creating something new to go to market. So it'd come out in that way as a strength for me. I'm a real big ideas person. My energy from a game changer index energy is all around strategist and mapping the future. So if I'm in those environments, it was really, really great.
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The downside to it is, is the routine and mundane. So you've worked at Microsoft, Ben, you'll remember having to do your expenses, the forecasting, and all of the stuff that is, was like, for me, it was painful. It was like walking through treacle and actually really impacted my excellence as a manager. Because the things I love doing as a manager was to lead people and go and meet clients. It wasn't to do, prepare another Excel sheet with loads of data in it and to do that on this very routine base. And those are the things I really, really struggled with. And that's where we can see a lot of inconsistency in the workplace because in the right environment, someone with ADHD is flying, but with the wrong set of situations or variables, it can really impact us. Does that make sense? It does. And so when, when is it so, so if I think about myself now, and as far as I'm aware, I'm neurotypical, there's no reason that I would think otherwise. But those two things you've said, I feel exactly the same. I'm quite a big picture person. I'm quite creative. I like those sorts of things. And I hate the routine and I hate all of those things. So where, and I'm not very good at it, you know. But so where does it move from, a neurotypical person that's creative and doesn't like routine to ADHD? What's the difference? So let me explain a little bit about the, I guess, the diagnosis, if you like. So there is an official diagnosis process using something called the DSM, which I can't remember all the elements to. It's diagnostic, I think it's statistical manual or something. But it's where every psychiatrist will refer to in terms of being able to clinically diagnose someone with ADHD. So ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition. It's not behavioral or psychological alone. And it's symptoms that I'm going to talk about in a second must be present before the age of 12. Now this is something that's a little bit grey because very often people learn to mask, particularly girls, because of the way they've been brought up. But it's what we, it's almost what we call chronic and present across most settings. So it would be school and home life or home life and work and personal life if you get older. And there's, it causes what we call functional impairment, and it can't be explained by another condition. It's also really highly heritable. So often you'll see it through generations. I can see it now we know our, our family tree and what have you, we can see it through the generations. But what it affects in people is their executive functioning. So the prefrontal cortex, and that impacts self and emotional regulation, motivation, activating to do something, poor working memory, it creates time perception, organizational and planning. So being able to, if I give you an example, if someone was told to go and do their, their tax return, right, end of year, we all get given them if we're running a company or we earn over a certain amount. Somebody who is neurotypical will go, hey, I've gotten the reminder in August, I'm going to go and put it in my diary to go and do it in September, December timeframe, and not really think about it. Someone with ADHD might start, might sort of either ignore it because there might be a bit of shame involved in doing it because it's, they're worried about getting it wrong. I'll talk about why that is in a second. But then they might start to think about all the things they've got to do to bring that together and then go into real overwhelm, and it becomes a real disabling worry, if that makes sense. It's not just like, and they can't sequence often what needs to come next. So there's a lot of efforting that goes on. So they then will leave everything to the last minute because of that urgency based interest based nervous system, everything gets left to the last minute and they put themselves into that spiral. And that doesn't just happen once, right? That happens to us all occasionally, if you don't have ADHD, but it happens regularly. And that's where, you know, when it comes to trying to motivate themselves. So ADHD is a dopamine dysregulation. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that effectively helps with reward and motivation and pursuit. And for a neurotypical person, they are motivated enough just to get something done, even if it's mundane, they're just the ticking of the, ticking it off and doing it. It's like, "Oh, I've done it. Well done." Our nervous system doesn't work in that same way. We really, really struggle because it just feels incredibly boring. And for some people, it can feel actually painful. The pain of it being so dull, so under stimulating, actually makes us feel ill and overwhelmed. And we just, we just back away from doing it. And so that's where, you know, there is the difference, if you like, and the nuance between something that is impairing and disabling and us being able to do it versus it feeling just a little bit boring to the regular person. Interesting. So, you know, I'm completely sold. I asked a challenging question, but I'm completely sold that it's a real thing, you know, and it's observation that's leading to the numbers. That seems to be my perspective, not that suddenly everybody's caught this disease. It's like, it feels to me like, well, we just didn't know about it and that and that and now. A couple of things sort of spring to my mind. So firstly, throughout work, and we were both at Microsoft for a while, you would go on these like psychological sort of assessment training things to work out. It could be strengths finder, discovery insights, Myers-Briggs, or all of those sorts of things, which I took some value from, actually. And the one I particularly always liked was discovery insights. I don't know if you ever did that one. Yeah, red, yellow, green, blue, reds, fiery, yellow, big picture, blue, all of that kind of stuff. If people have already got that kind of background of understanding that there's maybe people on a wheel, and I know it's a bit of a reduction, but maybe they've got, how does like ADHD sort of fit into that kind of mindset? Or doesn't it? Well, it can do. Absolutely. So, let me start with strengths finders, because that's a really important link. What we do know is that people who have ADHD do well when there's real positive reinforcement. So taking the leap from positive psychology, all of ADHD coaching is actually fundamentally focused on strengths based work. So we have every single person do a strengths assessment, what you will find, and I was on a call recently with a guy called David Gewerk, who is the, I guess, the daddy of ADHD coaching, he runs a company called Adka. And I'd already observed this, but every single person I know with ADHD, who does the strengths finder, perseverance and self-regulation are down at the bottom, every single person, which is all around that self-discipline, that self-regulation, that willpower. And you won't see that in a neurotypical person, it's normally a higher up the list. You will often see people with high justice, sort of fairness and kindness, and creativity up in those sort of top five, those signature strength areas. So there is definitely, there's very definitely a pattern building. I don't know about disc, because I haven't done the assessment on disc. I know for disc myself, I am red, yellow, and I typically will see autistic people being more blue, blue, red, sometimes, but they're definitely more blue. There is another, I guess, assessment called the Game Changer Index, GC Index, which looks at energy for impact. And it buckets you into five proclivities. And what we're seeing through that, I'm a GC-ologist, I love that term, what we're seeing through that is this is all about where you want to, where your energy is best spent to have impact in high performing or high growth teams. And there is Game Changer, Strategist, Implementer, Playmaker and Polisher, those are the sort of five proclivities. And what we are seeing and what I see in my clients when I asked them to take the test is that there is high Game Changer energy for people with ADHD. And that's associated with that sort of real creativity, visionary, innovation, idea generator, but low implementer. So that the kind of the challenge of being able to take an idea and turn it into action is the bit that we struggle with the most, which links them to that, that strength space piece, which is around perseverance and self regulation. So we're, we you know, the I guess the stereotype is that we the superpower of ADHD is that we're very, very creative and innovators, we have to be we have to be careful with that because not everybody is, we have to be careful assuming that everyone's like that. But that is, that is a very typical profile that we see in the workplace. Yeah, so that's how I would visualize it if I was if I was doing it that way. So maybe should we start to think about how do we all work well together. So given 50% neuro divergence in the workforce from from that from those statistics, and I don't want it to be a a neurotypical versus neuro divergent. So maybe we can sort of just think about how do we just how do we work well together. And maybe we can start there. And then maybe we can subdivide that and go, right, well, if you're neurotypical here's some some, some, some things that are useful to work with people with neurodivergency. And if you're neuro divergent, here's some things that might be useful when you work with neurotypical. Can we have a look around that kind of area? Yeah, can I before we do that, can I just talk a bit about around some of the things that ADHD isn't isn't because I think that's important as a setup. So we've talked a little bit about what the kind of clinical diagnosis is. And we've talked a little bit about the being an interest based nervous system, and dopamine regulation, you will see in I guess, the sort of language used in places that linked in ADHD brains, which I think is really diminishing. ADHD is actually a full body condition, right? So people with ADHD are like to have higher rates of hypermobility or something called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, where, where we have challenges with how our muscles and tendons work. And they're more likely to have something called POTS. And I can never say the name properly, so I won't bother. But that's around how our autonomic system and our heart rate work. There's an increasing amount of research that shows people with ADHD will have higher levels of asthma, migraines, and also stomach problems. So what we're seeing is it as a full body condition, right, the neuroimmunity autonomic, and there's an inflammatory part of this. So that's important to note, I think, because that can help people understand that actually someone being sick isn't because they're just a sick person, but there might be something underneath that going on. There's also a part of ADHD that is that is talked about a lot, but not part of the official criteria, although they're trying to get it into, into it, which is something called rejection, sensitivity dysphoria. And what this means is that people with ADHD perceive things like criticism as a physical pain response. They see it, it feels it, but they've done MRI scans on the, on the brain on scans on the brain. The pain parts of the brain light up when people are faced with bad criticism or even perceived criticism. And so RSD, I see a lot of that in the workplace. It's the, you know, where people have been able to mask certain parts of their ADHD, or it's not as impactful in terms of maybe organizational challenges. RSD is the one that seems to come up quite a lot. And that's something that's that can be a real challenge. And then finally, I just say that, you know, the name of the ADHD attention deficit, I think, is misnamed because actually it's not too little attention. It's actually too much attention. The issue is filtering it out. We're very sensitive to kind of everything around us. So that, that, that's what I wanted to kind of preface that in some ways. Yeah, really interesting to help give that more clarity of what we're talking about. So, so in terms of how we then all work well together, because I think this is so important, right? You know, I hate division in the world, regardless of where it is. But the most important thing is all about creating psychological safety. And, and I think, you know, often a very overused word. And what I mean by that is creating the environment that people can disclose that they have ADHD as a thing, and not feel shame or feel they're going to be discriminated against as a result because of, because of cognitive bias that might exist. So, you know, I think from that perspective, if we assume that, you know, a neurotypical brain, if you like, is, is the norm.
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As a neurotypical person, just educate yourself on, on neurodiversity and neurodivergent conditions, right? So understand what ADHD is, because what really is important is when you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD, we're all incredibly different as a result of our upbringing. And just because, you know, your PA shows up with ADHD in this way doesn't mean that your leader will show up with ADHD in this way. So I always say that education is really important. The other thing I think is, is that's incredibly vital is, is having empathy both ways. And what I mean by that is, you know, when we're in a survival response, and, you know, in organizations in, in corporate life, sometimes we can live in that sort of sympathetic activated stress or fight or flight way, we can sometimes take our cognitive ability offline, and we can center ourselves versus other people. So really important that we have empathy both ways between each other and for each other. You know, me as a neurodivergent person, how can I learn what to what's expected of me? Not to mask, but how does how does the world work, so that I can find a way through it in a way that isn't harming to me in some way? Neurotypical person, how can I build a world that supports everybody in some way, knowing that I have the majority and I have the privilege because of the way my, the world's been built for the way my brain works. And then underneath that is communication. I think that, you know, you'll have done those active listening stuff when you're at Microsoft. And now I'm sure you talk about it all the time. You will go into a meeting and everyone is listening to, listening to reply and speak and not listening to understand everywhere. And we're bringing all of our childhood rubbish with us into those sessions, right, and just standing up. So communication is absolutely important. And I think the number one, the number one part of learning to work well together, regardless of your neurotype actually. But it's really important for people who are neurodivergent and working together with people who are neurotypical. And then I think sort of positive language, I talked about strengths. We know that neurodivergent nervous systems respond really well to positive reinforcement versus the, you're not, you haven't done this well enough. No one responds well to that. We know that through research. And then the final things really is, is, you know, can we co-create environments that support different processing needs and speeds and capacities? Adjustments matter to people. And I, you know, I often sit opposite people who've had their adjustment requirement or request dismissed and they've been discriminated against. And you're like, why, why, why, why are you spending energy as an organization to deny someone, you know, the basic right to live and work? Why is that happening? So, you know, things like flexible working helps everybody, remote options, cameras are for on, helps everybody, you know, spaces where people can go to do quiet work, it helps everyone. And I think that's the, it's kind of getting over that bias. And just thinking about actually, what's a great place for humans just to work and grow together, that really supports us to achieve our full potential wherever we come from. Well, if we start to then maybe break that apart, then into two sets of advice, advice for the neurotypicals, and advice for people with ADHD. Should we start with advice for people with ADHD? What would be your top tips to help them thrive in the work environment? So I think, I think if you're neurodivergent, and kind of getting the most out of your kind of neurotypical colleagues, if you like, you know, I talked about psychological safety, I think one, one of the things I say to all of my clients is, whether you've got a diagnosis or not, learn as much as you can about ADHD and how it shows up for you, right? That might be working with someone like me or just doing your own exploration. Sometimes we can struggle with self-awareness, so being really self-aware of where your ADHD is at its best and at its worst, helps you to understand what help then do I need in these situations. So I think, you know, I talk about the ADHD operating system, because that's my tech background, but communicating what your operating system needs to perform at its best. You know, for example, people with ADHD often struggle with uncertainty, like, and a lack of predictability. So they work better with context or clarity. So, you know, for example, if someone says to me, go do this project, I would probably sit there and procrastinate for absolutely hours, freaking out about where do I start? How do I start? And just, you know, just getting a bit overwhelmed by it all. So it's really important that you maybe understand that and that actually the way I step into that piece of work is to do brainstorming with somebody. So I don't start from a blank page. And it gives me a little bit of structure so that I can then make really, really fast tracks in getting that work done. So communicating your operating system clearly is the number one. Sorry, you're gonna ask a question, Ben. No, no, no, carry on. I think that, you know, understanding where your interest-based nervous system works best, you know, my interest-based nervous system, I love brainstorming, as I mentioned, I'm really good at mapping the future. And so put me in those sessions, and I'm in my element. But put me in a place where I'm doing the mundane stuff potentially, or it's very routine, and there's no, feels like there's no autonomy, then I just will start to fall to pieces. I hate it. So it's really understanding where you work best, understanding your processing preferences, right? We all learn differently. So, and sometimes with ADHD, we can have different processing speeds. So, you know, I can sometimes sit in a meeting and think, I have no idea what that person's just said. And I'm expected to give an answer, but my brain is trying to cognitively catch up, because it might be a bit stressed out. And it's trying to understand that, do I need to write it down? Do I need to come back after the meeting?
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You know, I find most people usually want to help, but they need a kind of translation. And I think it's about feeling safe enough to share, trying to empower yourself to find support, and getting really clear about what you need, as much as and getting and making sure the organization can help you achieve that as best as possible. What about, so we talk about, you know, let's maximize the strengths when we can, if you're brainstorming in that big, big, big picture. But sometimes, you know, that isn't how life works. For example, you're running a small business, right? You not only have to come up with business development, but you have to do your VAT return, or you have to do your taxes, or whatever it might be. So you can't just say, well, I'm not going to do that part of my life because it so how do you get that balance? And what do you do about the bits that you're not so good at? So that becomes that that's an important distinction, I think. So you know, if you are, and that is different by role. So if you're a small business owner or a leader, I also I often talk about what you what can you outsource? Right? What can you outsource and afford to outsource? So I don't do my VAT returns, I have a wonderful accountant, who does that work for me. And I and she knows I have ADHD. And I've sat down and clearly explained to her that I hold a lot of fear around getting money stuff wrong. My biggest theory when I get a brown envelope, and if anyone from HMRC is listening, please make them yellow. Don't make them brown, just change them. Because I have a Pavlovian response to the brown envelope.
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But you know, it's always you've been caught speeding, you own money tax, a brown envelope like the worst one ever. So my the RSD part of my ADHD goes, you're going to jail, you've done something wrong. Oh my god, am I going to freeze mode? And that's when I will start to bury my head. So what you do is you I'm working with people who understand how my brain thinks and works, how my nervous system is responding to this particular task. And, and I kind of offload it to them. So I'm outsourcing it to them that becomes the way of doing it. And I say the same thing to leaders. You know, if you're an ADHD leader, you shouldn't be doing things that drain your energy, you should be focusing on the things that grow your business and that you're brilliant at the reason why you founded the company. But often, very often, they don't know how to delegate and they struggle with some of that stuff. And they think they should be able to do it. And they start getting involved. So it's about creating the operating system around them. Now, if you're an individual contributor, that becomes harder, right? Because you don't necessarily have people to outsource to. You can do in some parts of your life, I have a cleaner, for example, there might be other people who come and help me like a gardener and that kind of thing. I'm privileged that I can afford that. But in those instances, an organization could say, huh, I understand you have ADHD. I know you might struggle once a month to do this work because it feels really dull. Why don't we do something like a body doubling session? Because we know that when people with ADHD do body doubling, with people on a call, they're more likely to get those mundane tasks done. Those are tiny little tweaks. And here's the thing, everyone can benefit from that, right? It's not just you're doing special treatment. Actually, you know what, let's all get on a call. I remember, Ben, and you'll remember this, remember the employee survey that we all used to do annually at Microsoft. I think they do it quarterly now. But I can remember way back in the day, obviously, the desire to get everyone to do it. I remember Scott Dodds, who was in charge of SMSP at the time, said, let's just bring everyone together and create an hour and we'll get in a room and we'll just do it individually. We won't influence, we'll just do it. And it was great. Everyone turned up, everyone did the employee survey. That's body doubling in action. And it's doing those times things. Again, mapping out what do I struggle with? And what might I need to help me to manage around it and get it done? Does that make sense? Yeah, no, no, it does. If we flip it round and then say, right, so from the neurotypicals now, that want to be able to create this environment and work really effectively with people of all kinds of diversity, any techniques and tips that you have? So again, I think, you know, for me, I talked about communication and clarity. I see a lot of what I call drive by delegation happening in organizations, right? Super fast paced. And we go into a meeting, the expectation is everybody completely understands what the outcome is. Brené Brown talks about this, this thing called Paint Done. And actually, Brené Brown was a diagnosed with ADHD just this year. But she talks about the importance of leaders and teammates being able to paint done paint what the outcome is that's being required to have to happen. And so that everyone has clarity. Because when we when, as an ADHD person, when I understand what's expected of me, as a predictability happens, and I don't go into the whirlwind of, you know, fear, and I'm able to go, Okay, now I've got to get this done. So that that clarity is really, really important. And it goes without saying education around ADHD and how to support an ADHD person, I think is number one. But communicating clear expectation is becomes number two. Helping the individual to break things down into meaningful steps. So let's say I came to you, Ben, and I've got a big project, I'd know to go and deliver what did you used to work, what seemed to used to work in when I left I was a cloud solution architect leader, we've got to go and deliver a big RFP to a to whatever customer. And we know there's a number of steps that need to go happen, right. And I might go, Oh, my gosh, we got to do that. And it feels like I just how am I going to plan all this stuff. So what I might say to you is, or you could say to me as my manager, which is let's go and brainstorm this, let's go and look at the steps, not assume that I'll know them. Let's go and look at the steps in the timeline and get really clear on what those are and break them down and start to understand where there might be a lack of capacity, a lack of knowledge. And just taking that time to do that one thing can have a massively positive impact on that individual. The other things are, you know, we've all had done this, and I'm guilty of it as well. So you know, I'm not going to start blazing people here. We've all sent out an email or an event request with no agenda in it and no, no context for the meeting to happen. And that can feel like kryptonite to us, we're like, about to get fired. So making sure that agendas and meet this context there about why we're having the meeting. Giving feedback. So feedback, again, connect to that RSD. Feedback is a, I think is an art form for most leaders and most leaders get it wrong, whether you're neurotypical or neurodivergent. I have definitely got it wrong in my life.
[00:37:15:02 - 00:39:48:04]
But for people who are neurodivergent, hearing criticism can feel really hard. Because we will, we love strengths based work and positive psychology. It's about making sure that you're teeing up the feedback, not making it personal base, which we know is a thing. But giving context around it and making sure that there's space. It's not just what I call a drive by feedback session, right? Which is you did this wrong, and everyone's there like, I'm about to get fired. I haven't got a job. Oh my gosh. And they go into a spiral. So really, going slow, I think is the way I would see it. Going slow and supportive. And that actually benefits everybody, frankly. Yeah, I mean, as you described that, then, yeah, lots of the things that you've been describing to me, I sort of go, surely, surely that's just good practice for life. You know, lots of these things. It is, but it's not done. And that's the thing, right? So we know that there's actually really bad leaders out there. We know that organizations are expecting too much from everybody all the time. So, you know, where there's not, I would call the personalized leadership needed for individuals happening. Everyone's just, go do this and what have you. So great leaders will get this, and they will be doing it, and it will benefit everyone. I think the other thing is, you know, if I was managing someone today who had ADHD, I'd want to sit down with them and say, help me understand how it shows up for you. In what situations? Where is it triggered? Where are you in your flow? How can we make this? What do you need? How do you need me to show up as your leader? And just being really curious and open-hearted around how me as the leader needs to show up. And, you know, some people, I mean, I don't need some of this stuff, but some people really struggle with coming into the office every day, or they struggle with a really loud environment. They want some sort of quiet time. They struggle with meeting environments. They feel really overwhelmed with lots of people in a room. It's just understanding those nuances that that particular nervous system requires that becomes disabling to them and start to support it as best they can. Fascinating. Do you know what? I've glanced at the clock. I think we're about at time. Okay. It's been really interesting. So thank you so much for going through all this. You're welcome. As we start to wrap up, what would be your key takeaways for people that have been listening?
[00:39:49:23 - 00:43:28:17]
Number one is education. Go on to attitude.com. There's loads of places out there where you can literally go and learn about ADHD. Bring someone like me into your workplace, because I can talk to you about what that looks like as well. But, you know, education and not just education that stays in your brain, but this what I call embodied education. So you're actually physically doing something about it. The responsibility is not just from the leaders, but across the organization. So things are not just what I call valueless values on a wall, but they're things that we live and breathe. So I think that education, if you are a neurotypical leader, or a teammate, and wants to help somebody you think is neurodivergent, that would be my number one. And then if you're neurodivergent, again, just your self-awareness and what you need, taking time out to really assess what, how you thrive, and how you're merely surviving potentially, and what's tripping you up. You've probably got a really good idea about it. You're probably holding a lot of shame about it. But just understanding that will help you to create clarity for yourself, so that you don't have to avoid the difficult conversations with your leaders around what you need in order for them for you to be the best version of yourself. Yeah, yeah, really interesting. For me, the bits that stand out are, firstly, that survey, that data point, I found that fascinating, that 50% of people were self-identifying as neurodivergent. In the tech industry, right. In the tech industry, yeah. I hadn't realized, yeah, that's a big number, right? So I found that very interesting. Other things, you know, the empathy, the education. But the other thing that's just sort of, I'm thinking, rolling around my brain is, you know, I have spent a lot of time over the years doing things like the Myers-Briggs discovery insights, those things that we're talking about. And that idea of being self-aware of your style, understanding other people's styles, and adapting your style to best interface. And I think you call it personalized leadership, so that you can, to get the best out of it. It's just like that, really. But there's just some extra lenses that you need to put on it. And it's education on what those extra lenses are. And they might be more extreme, some of those lenses that you need to put on them. But it's exactly the same thing. Being aware of yourself, aware of the people you're working with, and trying that personalized leadership, and just being educated a bit on what that personalized leadership, how that could be even better than what we thought it was in the noughties or the tens or the whatever, as we become more educated. And lead with empathy, you know, care about the person you're interacting with. Don't assume that just because they don't look you in the eye, they're ignoring you, you know, just understanding all of that, I think really will help become a better leader. Brilliant. So if people have loved this topic, want to get more education, I think you mentioned there's a website that will pop in the show notes, attitude.com. So attitude.com is a great resourcing website for just general stuff. It's like a magazine, e-zine online, it's a great place to go, just for really good insight into ADHD. So yeah, that would be the place if you want to go and learn or kind of understand a little bit more, it's a great place to go and get that. Brilliant. And if people want to connect with you, how is it best for people to get a hold of you? I'm on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram, Sam J. Bramwell, and there is a website called the ADHDleader.co.uk and you can reach me there as well. Brilliant. Well, I'll pop all of those in the show notes so that people can make sure they've got the right link, the right person. So the final thing for me to say is, Sam, it's been brilliant. Thank you so much for leading us. It's such an interesting and important conversation. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for the
[00:43:30:21 - 00:43:51:00]
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