ADHD Managers Need to Use These 5 Strategies to Be Better Leaders
Description:
If you are not leading the way you want, it may be you have not yet addressed key ADHD challenges. Ready to see how you can turn that around?
Key Takeaways:
- Your ADHD can get in the way of leading the way you want.
- You can change that by identifying the challenges.
- Decide what is essential.
- Do enough upfront thinking.
- Be consistent in expectations.
- Help people you manage solve their own problems.
- Delegate work.
Resources:
Articles:
Books:
- Getting Things Done by David Allen
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
- The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change The Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Transcript:
(00:01):
You probably have strengths related to your ADHD symptoms that help you in your leadership role of managing people, like being an out-of-the-box thinker and perhaps great in a crisis. It’s important that you make sure you’re leaning into these in other strengths, not losing them. As well as managing your challenges, including those related to your ADHD.
You’ve tuned into Scattered, Focused, Done- Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, a podcast for ADHD adults, like you who want to learn how to adopt the best strategies, tools, and skills to get your essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired. I’m Marla Cummins and I’m glad you’re joining me today on this journey to reimagining productivity with ADHD. So you can get what is important to you done without trying to do it like everyone else.
(01:04):
One of the keys to being an effective leader and managing people well is, as I said in the beginning, leaning into your strengths, no doubt. And you can check out How to Stop Fixing Your ADHD and Start Using Your Strengths, if you’re interested in learning more about how to do this. I’ve included a link to the post with the podcast on my website.
At the same time, if you’re not the kind of leader you want to be, it may be some of your ADHD related challenges are getting in your way. The good news is just as you can build on your strengths once you identify them, you can also address your challenges, as long as you know what they are.
One of your challenges may be that you just haven’t decided what is essential for you and your team to do as a leader. Well, you’re not responsible for doing all the work you are responsible for, well, leading steering the ship.
(02:08):
This means knowing where your team is going and making sure you are applying your team’s resources in the right way to get there. But, if you haven’t decided what is essential, you may too often be in a reactive mode. To paraphrase Getting Things Done guru, David Allen, you may waste energy and burnout, allowing your busyness to be driven by what’s latest and loudest, hoping it’s the right thing to do. But never really feeling the relief that it is.
This happens, for example, when you accept all meeting requests without thinking about whether it’s even the best use of your time. Answering emails as soon as they hit your inbox. Or dropping whatever you are doing and helping your direct reports whatever they ask for help. And then again, it may be immediately saying yes to any request your boss makes without considering whether you have the capacity.
(03:18):
While there are likely other changes you may need to make to avoid these scenarios, one way to be less reactive is to become an essentialist. According to Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, a book I highly recommend, when you are essentialist, you first need to decide where you want to go big as a leader. That means, according to McKeown, making your highest contribution toward what really matters to you. And then making sure you’re using your time and energy to do those things that will allow you to do this.
For example, when a former client, a banking executive, became more of an essentialist, he clarified what was the best use of his time and energy and what was best left to the members of his team. This entailed delegating much more, including having others go to meetings in his place and then report back to him. As well as handing off projects to members of his team to head up. Then he could spend more of his time strategizing and, well, leading.
(04:27):
At the same time, he developed processes to make sure he was keeping his finger on the pulse of what was going on. He was able to persist on his journey and course correct when necessary because he also started to set aside more time for strategic thinking or as I like to call it, upfront thinking. This included regularly reviewing where his team was vis-a-vis their goals and, of course, planning the next steps.
You may already know you need to do more of this. But, if you aren’t doing this yet, don’t despair. As it is often not a strong suit for ADHD adults and may not come naturally for you.
But you can, again, build these skills and with practice it can become easier. One way you can start to practice doing this is, in addition to whatever yearly and quarterly planning you may need to do, setting aside time each week to think strategically. During this time, part of what you will do is review the work you and your team are doing to meet its goals and evaluate what you need to do to continue moving forward. So you can be more proactive and less, well, reactive.
(05:57):
If you’re interested in learning more about how to do this, I’ve included a link with this podcast on my website to an article aptly called the ADHD Adults Guide to the Weekly Review. And this includes suggestions for creating your own weekly review template. I also know you may not feel you have the bandwidth to add one more thing to your plate. So to start this practice, well, it will probably be hard in the beginning, you can have faith that in the long run it will save you time and reduce your stress and overwhelm.
Another area where you may need to build your skills is being more consistent in your expectations of your team. I bet you’re not surprised to hear that this is often a stumbling block for leaders with ADHD. After all, inconsistency is one of the hallmarks of ADHD. And, if this is true for you, it may be at least in part because of your ADHD symptoms.
(07:06):
One of the reasons for this inconsistency is because of your wonky memory. That is, you may simply forget to follow through and have not yet adopted a structure to help you remember. For example, let’s say you decide you want your team members to send you a prep form before your one-on-one meetings to help keep both of you on track. But you stop referring to it in the meetings because, well, you forget. And so they stopped sending it to you, figuring you don’t need it, and why waste the time. Then out of nowhere, you ask them for it, you are frustrated and maybe they’re frustrated.
The good news, again, is that if you know this is a problem for you, you might decide to use, for example, a checklist or some other method to minimize the chances of forgetting to refer to it. Not such a heavy lift, right?
Another reason for your inconsistent expectations may be because of your tendency to pivot suddenly when you come up with a new improved and better idea. No doubt being able to generate lots of ideas is often a strength for ADHD adults and may be for you too. And you’ll want to implement those when it makes sense. But it also can be demoralizing for your team if you often change course on, well, whim.
(08:49):
Let’s say, for example, you ask one of your team members to work on a project. Then you have a light bulb moment. You know what I’m talking about. And you decide to change course without even talking with her about it in advance. So maybe she is left feeling like weeks of her work is just, well, down the drain. She, again, is understandably frustrated and, perhaps, starts to deliver inconsistently because she’s just not sure if her efforts will pay off when you might change directions suddenly.
Sometimes, though, again, it will make sense to pivot in the middle of doing a project when you get new information you didn’t have when you started. And you want to be flexible enough to do this and not just stay the course because of sunk cost. But you also don’t want to just follow the squirrel because, well, your ADHD brain lights up.
The key is to do enough upfront thinking to make sure you have a compelling reason to change course. And also loop in the affected team members so they understand why you’re changing course and aren’t blindsided.
(10:13):
One of the other reasons you may have inconsistent expectations is you don’t want to be responsible for following up. After all, you might think, I don’t have time to chase them. I have too much on my plate as it is. They should just do what they need to do. I get it. It’s totally reasonable to expect your people to follow through when they’re committed to doing something. But the reality is sometimes they don’t. And, ultimately, you are still responsible for making sure your team does the work, right?
So when they don’t follow through, you have a few choices. You can let things go until it feels urgent. Unfortunately, by that point, you’re probably, yes, frustrated and maybe even angry. The alternative, which I’m sure you’re already anticipating, is to be, yes, proactive. Well, in part because of your ADHD, this may not come easily, there are, again, structures you can put in place to make it, well, easier.
(11:24):
For example, if you asked one of your team members to deliver a report on February 15th, you could put in your task manager, check in with Tia if I don’t have the report. And give it a due date of the 16th. So it will pop up and you don’t have to keep it in your head. Or maybe if you have regular one-on-ones with her, you could track her deliverables like the report and check in with her during the meeting.
The key again is to acknowledge that following up is a challenge for you. And then create the scaffolding or the structure that will help you make it easier to do so. Well in the case of following up, you may resist doing so because you don’t want to put more on your plate, there may be other times when you inadvertently add more work to your plate that you could avoid.
(12:22):
This is the case when you try to solve problems that don’t have to be yours to solve. For example, right now, when one of your direct reports comes to you with a question or problem, your immediate reaction might be to jump in and try to help. But not only does this, of course take up your time and energy, but it may encourage them to come to you prematurely before trying to figure it out on their own or accessing another resource.
Of course, one of the reasons this may happen is because your ADHD brain lights up, is stimulated when faced with trying to figure something out. And being a great problem solver may, like many ADHD adults, be one of your strengths. But it can also be a liability when solving other people’s problems takes up time and energy you just don’t have.
One of my former clients who was a partner in a law firm thought initially it was his role to help out his associates anytime they needed it. So he had an open door policy.
(13:32):
Of course, this meant he was always getting interrupted and had a hard time completing his own work. Eventually, he realized not only was this not good for him, but it wasn’t good for his associates as one of his roles was to help them develop their skills, including their own problem solving. Eventually, he decided to have certain times during the day when they could drop in. And, not only did this overall number of visits go down, but the associates figured out other ways to get their questions answered.
And, when they did come to visit him, he also used a more coach-like style of working with his associates by giving them less advice and through careful questioning, helping them learn how to figure out their own problems more often. So coming to him became not their first option, but their last option. If you’re interested in learning how to be more coach-like in your role, you can check out The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change The Way You Lead Forever.
(14:47):
I’ve also included a link to this book on my website with the podcast.
Similarly, just as you may be solving problems that are not yours to solve, you may also be doing work you don’t need to do because you’re just not delegating enough to the people on your team. To be sure, delegating is often hard for ADHD adults. Think about it. You need to make a decision about what to delegate. Then you need to be able to clearly explain the details, including what outcome you want. This is all hard for you to do I know.
In part because of your ADHD challenges, and it also takes a lot of time. Time you probably don’t feel you have. So because it is so hard and doesn’t come easily to you, you don’t automatically think about it when starting a project. And, perhaps, by the time you do think of it, it may be so late, you decide you just can’t dump it on one of your team members at the last minute.
(15:59):
You may also decide it would just be easier to do it yourself because it’s just too hard to explain what you want. And I know you may also worry they just won’t do it the way you want. So why even bother, right? Of course, despite all these concerns, you might still want to delegate because you just can’t do it all on your own. Especially if you want to spend more time thinking and planning strategically. And you might also want to work on developing your team member skills, which is one of the effects of delegating.
The workaround, which you may have already guessed, is, yes, slowing down and doing the upfront thinking needed to be able to decide well ahead of time what you want to delegate. Then mapping out enough of the details, including the objective, so the team member will be able to follow through. And, yes, you’ll need to check in along the way. And I’m sure you might also have to practice, well, letting go of needing the task to be carried out exactly as you want. You definitely have strengths as a leader. Yet right now you may not be leading as well as you would like. Whatever is getting in your way, you can turn this around. So where would you like to start?
(17:33):
That’s it for now. I’m really glad you joined me and stayed until the very end. If you’re interested in learning more about my work with adults with ADHD, I hope you’ll check out my website, marlacummins.com. Of course, if you’ve learned a thing or two from today’s podcast, which I hope you have, please also pass along the link to anyone else in your circles you think might benefit. And until next time, this has been Scattered, Focused, Done. And I’m Marla Cummins, wishing you all the very best on your journey to reimagining productivity with ADHD.
