Managing an ADHD Team: The Accommodations That Work

Hello, hello, hello everyone. This is Danielle, Vida, and Jessica from ND Out Loud, and we are here today to talk about managing an ADHD and an AuDHD team. And the reason why this is coming up, this is a very hot subject for me today, and they're gonna both giggle at me a little bit. I met with an HR team yesterday that wanted to get rid of their problem team. Because their problem team was causing too much chaos. They were questioning things too much, and the accommodations that they were asking for were ridiculous.

Don't make me laugh too hard.

The accommodations— so I'm gonna put this out there. The accommodations that their team was asking for is recorded meetings, agendas before meetings, and AI transcription during meetings, and a longer time to respond to questions asked in meetings.

So all appropriate accommodations.

Oh, not just appropriate.

The things that should be done anyway for every— everyone benefits.

And what I told this HR manager is, all you're telling me is that you are a bad manager. You, you don't want any of your words recorded for any reason because you don't know what you're doing.

Yeah, unfortunately, I think that happens a lot because those accommodations wouldn't just help the neurodivergent employees, it would help all employees. But in doing so, it forces the managers to be accountable for what they say.

Yes, and the thing is, businesses need to more practice that of taking time to answer, giving that space, because you don't want Off-the-tongue answers. You want your employees to think about it, mull it over, have productive responses, actionable responses. I, I've had so many people come to me, stuff like this, just like, manager came to me and wrote me up because I didn't have an answer right away.

Well, and the thing is If you are needing your employees to respond like that and you are pressuring them to respond like that, you are not getting well-thought-out answers. I don't care who you ask. And for those of us, um, that are trying very hard to manage our brains and manage our emotional regulation, And that have, have developed some good boundaries, we're going to push back on that anytime we feel that pressure and we're going to ask for time.

Yes.

And I think one of the other things, and I'm sure like I've run into this so many times when something is said on a team meeting or in an email or in a Slack channel or wherever it is, and you have an employee that asks why. Something I want all managers to hear is I don't care who's asking why. They're not criticizing you. They're not criticizing the question you asked. They just want to know the reason why so they can make sense out of it in their head. And honestly, it doesn't even matter what the answer is. I don't know how many times I've been accused for questioning somebody's authority. I don't care what the answer is. I just want— I want the answer. I really honestly don't care.

It's clarification, really. Some of the time, I mean, you may have already given us the answer, but that answer didn't register. Like, it needs to be said a different way, explained a different way. That's why we're asking why. We're not fully understanding. We can't— we're missing information, cannot compute, need more input.

Yeah.

And by asking why, if I know why you're trying to do this, I can get you to the end result.

Yes.

Right. If, if you're just like, I need you to walk over in that corner, bend over, touch your shoe, touch your toes. Like, I'm going to ask you why. Like, what is this trying to accomplish? And that is a ridiculous hyperbole about it, but still, you know, um, sometimes the directives that were given at work feel like that. It doesn't matter what you're trying to say to me if It feels like that kind of order to go in the corner and touch my toes. I'm going to ask you why so I understand what we're trying to accomplish.

And we— so because our brains work better than yours, work faster than yours, and work extremely logically and analytically, and I can say that for all 3 of us here on this call, we're extremely logical, we're extremely methodical, and we want details. If you don't give me the details, I do not understand the direction at all that you want me to. And even if you're direct, Is go stand in the corner and touch your toes. Do you want me to sit on the floor and touch my toes? Do you want me to stand up and bend over and touch my toes? Do you want me to kneel down and touch my toes? How do you want me to touch my toes? What's the reason for touching my toes? How am I going to get there? Do you want me to walk over there by walking around the whole entire cubicle office before I get to the corner to touch my toes? I mean, these are all of the questions going through my head.

Do I take my shoes off? Am I supposed to touch each toe once at a time? Am I supposed to grab my toes? I know we're all thinking, I'm like, no, okay, so what was I doing by touching my toes?

I saw a colleague of, of ours that was, um, doing a video on TikTok, and, and the deal was it was a question that is on the autistic assessment. It's like, what do the number 2 and 7 have in common? And the guy was talking about how this is kind of A crazy question because all the neurotypical people were like, well, they're numbers. And all the autistic people were like, I mean, they have a similar shape or they have this.

That's so where I went.

And okay, but see, in my brain I was like, they're real numbers, they're integers. Like, how deep are we going with this? And you know, like, I was just go— I was so overwhelmed.

They can only— yeah, they can only be divided by themselves and 1.

Right. I mean, I have a story to go with this. I was asked To write a blog post, and I was right, asked to write a blog post on a subject that should have been, I guess, really simple. However, I spent 7 hours writing the post and getting all kinds of resources and qualifications and scientific research and all of that. They wanted a 300-word explanation of what this was.

Yeah.

But they didn't give that to me, and they wouldn't qualify and give me that clarity. So I went And they got billed for 9 hours worth of work.

But this is why when you are managing neurodivergent teams, clarifying questions, bullet-pointed lists, time to respond to things, transcribing meetings— like, this is going to save you time. The whole company, it's going to save you time, it's going to save you energy, and it's going to save everyone frustration. But we've talked about this before, Danielle. Like a lot of mid-level managers don't are okay. They just don't have the training to lead any team, let alone a neurodivergent team. And it takes a level of behavior management training to lead or lived experience, but it still takes a level of training and experience. experience to get the most out of your employees. I mean, the Marine Corps has a whole leadership course that you have to go through before they'll give you the next level of responsibility of leading a group of people. And so, and it's pretty intense, like their leadership traits, like corporate America has tried to like cannibalize that and start it, but it's still, would you go from like Low level to mid level management in the United States Marine Corps, they make you go through training to be a leader. But in in corporate America, it's just like, yeah, you look good, Fred. Your numbers are good. Come on over here and lead a team of ten. And it's like, hmm, you know. But I think people don't want to, and and I think when they do send these people to. Management training. I think management training is crap.

Yeah, I think it's very, um, surface level. Like, yeah, it's just— it's the people pleasers. It's the ones not asking the why. And that's— and that's the answers you get when you don't let the whys— you're just getting the yesers and the yes-mams. And then you're not getting the products you want and the And then they're like, well, why didn't you understand I wanted this? Well, you didn't tell me you wanted this.

Tell me what you want. I need all of the details or that's not what you're going to get. So out of all of the managers, we've all worked in corporate, Vita worked in the school system for years. What are some of the traits of some of the best managers you've ever had?

The ones that actually come check on you, like notice when you're acting different. Like, even if you're trying to hide it, like, they just know it, and they just nicely come over and be like, hey, come for a walk with me. And, you know, take you out of the atmosphere or whatever going on and be like, just checking in, what's going on? Those, like, the ones that really are in tune with their team are amazing. The ones that listen, and then the ones that ask the whys back, like Why will that help you?

Why do you need that? And again, it's not accusatory because we've also worked for the managers that will say, well, why do you need that? Well, that I— it just— it's a tone of voice of, well, why will that help you?

Yeah.

Well, you recognize one, that it's gonna help me. Now you're asking why. I am happy to tell you why I need that agenda beforehand, because it will help me be able to make sure I'm tuned in and paying attention. If I have something written to follow, I can hear You when you talk.

Or the managers that do listen. I mean, in, in my own workplace, I know, you know, I'm teaching these guys things. It's the simple things of like, hey, do you know you can turn closed captions on on our Teams meetings? Like, they're all, we can? And it's not like, oh, that's dumb. It's a, oh my God, I didn't know this was possible. And that's really helped. Like, they're like, I'm doing this every time now. Like, that makes Super sense. I'm like, and it's not hard, hit the record, right?

I think some of the best managers, they create a safe space, right? We need to be safe, seen, and heard. So they create a safe space for dialogue. They allow you to be seen, like, hey, you don't look like you're having a great time, or like, do you need extra time to process? Do you need— like, what do you need? And then they hear you when you speak. And I mean hear you, not get judgy and talk over you. Like, I feel like the people that create the space for that open dialogue, even if they don't agree with you, they create this space for open dialogue. And it, and it is— you feel safe to talk in that space. Like, hey, I have a question, I don't understand this. And you know, as a teacher, we always tell students there is no such thing as a dumb question, because if you have that question, other people have a question. Like, just because you're 25 and work in a corporate office, like, doesn't mean that logic mysteriously went away. It's the same, you know? And, um, so I do, I think managers that can create a safe space, can hear their employees, can see their employees. If they can do that, if they can create that, then their employees will give that back to them.

Exactly.

And then it's a more collaborative space.

Yeah. And I mean, I just think of it on my own thing. I've been with my company 3 years and I'm finally learning to speak up. And, you know, we have reviews like every 3 months or something. I don't know. We have a lot of them. So I finally, on the last one, spoke up and, you know, manager's asking, what do you need? I'm like, I need to be recognized. I'm like, I know I'm doing a good job because I'm not getting written up and everyone says I do a good job. But like, Can I be more than just, hey, good work, see you later, bye? And they put me in and I got an award this last quarter. So like, they saw me, they heard me, and they did something about it.

Yeah.

And those are the managers that are awesome. They're amazing.

So I think one of my best managers is— we did, you know, the stupid online 16 Personalities Myers-Briggs test, and he's like, I know this is not super accurate. Everybody go do it. And he scheduled a meeting for us to all do it at the same time. So we're all chatting with each other as we're filling these stupid things out.

That's fun.

Then we went through it and picked out the personalities and picked out the movie characters that we most— our personality most represents. And then we went and we watched movies around those, and we— and it was a learning It was a learning exercise. We kept stopping. Well, you see how they answered that? Hey, Danielle, you do that. That's so funny. Look, look at how you do that. And look at how other people in the room interact. And that was like stupid. I mean, it was the stupidest thing ever. But you want to know what that did? Every single person on that team knew how to interact with the rest of their team, not just the managers. And the managers then took all of that information. And their job was to then come back to us and say, okay, so this is your personality type. Is this true for you? Well, when I read about this, it means that you might need this accommodation. Do you need this? Will this help you get back? Like, we didn't even have to go ask that because we took this goofy online, not accurate thing. They were taking a look at it and actually analyzing it and looking at us as a team and going, how can we help you be better?

Yeah, and that's, that's where it is. It's learning to communicate. And that's where, even as neurodivergents ourselves, yes, we sometimes get tired of the self-advocacy, but we've got to keep it up because the same way around, they can't read our brains. And especially when our brains are going 20 million miles a minute and change, you know, ideas every 2 seconds, we've got to learn to communicate clearly. In those bullet points.

Seen and heard. And a lot of the times it's a manager just learning to not react during a call is the only thing a manager needs to learn to do is not react to something we say during the call.

Yeah. There are workshops that I do think are good for any team. One of them, including like It doesn't matter where you are in, in the company or, or the thing, what level you're on. Everyone needs to be able to take negative feedback without having an emotional response to that.

Yeah.

Which is difficult for a lot of neurodivergent people because it triggers our RST, but it's also really, really hard for a lot of neurotypical people because everyone gets defensive. You may not feel rejected. But everybody gets defensive and it's like, hang on, I just need to tell you that this didn't work for me and we need to fix it.

Yes, ma'am.

Did you have an epiphany?

Oh, choosing my words. Um, we're— when you're on a call with a whole entire team, neurodivergent, neurotypical, or not, it is no one's job to manage your feelings and your perception of what was said.

Yes.

Again, take your feelings out of team meetings. They don't belong there in any way. If you are offended by something I say on a team meeting, take it to me after the team meeting. I will handle it. I'm not going to handle it well anyway because RSD, but don't do it in a team call ever. Well, but how many times have we been told we talk too much during a team call, we talk too loud during a team call, or you might want to check yourself?

I do think, I do think that a lot of classroom management strategies should be taught to managers and, um, people because, right, if this happened in a classroom, I'm not going to chastise you in front of 30 other children. I'm going to take you out in the hall. We're going to talk like, hey, are you okay? What's going on? Like, you seem to be a little agitated today. And then we're going to go back in and we're going to rejoin. And that is only if I haven't been able to redirect you, because we have all these tools in our toolbox about how to handle that. But no, that's not what they want to do. There's lots of— and like you said, depending on the manager's emotional response, there may be a reason that they're trying to put you in your place in front of the team. But if you want to degrade the foundation of your workspace, then that's how you go about it. You punish and humiliate and degrade your team in front of each other. And then guess what? No one feels safe to speak out. And so they stop talking and they stop giving you ideas. And then, yeah.

And I think we, and I mean, we touched on this last week too, is we need to remember that in our daily lives too, as we're on social media and scrolling. If there's something you see you don't like, either A, just scroll on. Like, you don't have to put that negativity out there. Or B, if you know the person saying it and you really want to private message them and be like, hey, can we talk about this? It's really like, I don't understand where you're coming from. Can you explain it further? Like, try to understand. I mean, I just did this last week and hurt the feelings of someone that I really care about. Like, and Then it dawned on me. It's like, oh, okay, there went my logicalness instead of like trying to understand the situation first. And, and we're all fine now. Like, we've, we talked in the back end. It was nothing out forward, and it's all good. But it's still like, I mean, I still hate that I hurt someone's feelings. Like, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and I don't think any of us really do. Oh, okay, well, sometimes I do want to hurt some people's feelings.

Um, you know, a lot of, a lot of Okay, a lot of companies, a lot of schools, a lot of different people that just really have, like when you work in large teams. Um, I had someone that did this one time and it irritated me, but it only irritated me because of how it was applied. So we sat down before we started having team meetings and we established norms. We established norms for the meetings, like talking over each other was a norm. We did not do that. And so she made these plates that on a popsicle stick, and it had the face of Norm from Cheers on it. And so when someone violated the norm, you just raised your paddle, right? Norm. So it was a way to hold people accountable, but it was kind of silly, but it, and that was to offset like the rejection sensitivity or the defensiveness. It's like. So the, the most awkward time that people do that, like if you're trying to establish norms and do this, is the first and second time. After that, everybody's like, oh, this is allowed, okay. And then sometimes you get people that are norm happy and you have to be like, okay, like let's remind everybody of the norms, and you go on. But that is just training people how you want to go. And it's like When I talk to my kids about movies, right, I'm like, if people had a good conversation in the first 5 minutes in the— of the movie, it would be over. None of these wacky hijinks would ensue. None of this emotional angst would happen. Every Shakespeare play would be over before the first act ended. It was just, let's have a conversation, let's get it over. But people are terrified of having a conversation, especially a negative one.

Yes. So how do managers manage AuDHD and ADHD teams? I mean, we, that's who we are here at ND@Loud, but I'm gonna tell you that every invisible disability falls under these management styles. Listen, take your emotions out of the conversation, answer the questions asked of you. And give basic accommodations. These accommodations that I mentioned at the beginning are super basic. They do not cost your company more than maybe $30 a month. Maybe, maybe most of the software— Zoom has it built in now. Microsoft Teams has almost all of that built in now. Like, everything is— it's built in. So maybe when I say $30, maybe if you want to buy the fancy software. This is not— and if somebody is asking for transcription accommodations and stuff, they probably own their own software for that. I do. And I have gone into corporate. When I worked in corporate, I had my own stuff just to make my life easier. If they want to wear loop earplugs at work, great. If they want to wear noise canceling and they're asking for the accommodation, they're more asking for the acceptance of them wearing the thing that they're going to bring in. They're not asking you to purchase anything. They're not asking for any of that. You ask for that qualification. Reasonable accommodations are going to strengthen your team.

Mm-hmm.

If I had agenda before a call, so I knew what I needed to bring to the call, if I had transcription during the call so that I knew what to follow up with after the call, you just made me super powerful and hit every single one of my superpowers as a neurodivergent adult.

Yeah. And, and at that, like most large, especially larger businesses, they have, like, it is a requirement for a meeting to have someone take minutes. Like that is a business requirement. So someone is doing it. So adding someone to that email string that gets it, or just having that shot out to a group, to everybody.

I always wondered that. Because you do add a lot of like, okay, I know I'm— we— some people aren't comfortable with telling their age, but I'm 44 and I've worked in companies that where they do to take minutes at every single thing. But then the minutes go into this mysterious like purgatory of like nonexistence. And it's like, man, that's a lot of energy expended for no one to get the notes.

Yeah, and the, the basis behind it is minutes are required because it's actually a tax thing because of how meetings are like, the hours are figured in. My dad explained this to me and I was just like, well, that's kind of dumb sounding, but okay. But it is, it's literally like, so just like if you have a business dinner and you're writing part off as a, as a meeting, you have to have someone there taking the meeting minutes to prove that it was partially a meeting so you can write it off to taxes. Like, that's what it comes down to. And I'm just like, okay, so then who gets— and I asked my dad, I'm like, so who gets the minutes? The secretary just puts them in a file.

I mean, don't get me started on any of this. Yes, I am a business owner. I need to keep minutes from meeting certain kinds of meetings. I need to keep a transcription of them if I ever get audited by the IRS. I can prove all of that. I've got all of that. For me, it's in a digital file. Why can't you share these things? Just take it one step further and share it with your whole entire team. All of these things, again, all of these are built into 99.9% of the software that we use now as companies. And if you aren't using these things as companies, let's have a very different operational discussion. And my operational brain and organizational brain will come in and help you become a real company. Um, and I don't— more efficient. Like, there's so many issues there if you don't have these softwares in place. And if you do have these softwares in place, there is zero excuse for not giving your team members accommodations.

But okay, so as upper management, so If someone asks for this or this becomes a big hullabaloo, right? Someone's asking for this and middle management is pushing back on it. Upper management, you need to ask yourself why. Because clarity of mission, do you know how many meetings I've sat in about like, let's get really clear on the mission and the vision of the company, right? And somebody's like highly curated, like a mission statement. And it's like, okay. So we have to do that because people have— are not clear on the expectations of the company. So if you have middle management pushing back against these accommodations, you need to ask yourself why. And a lot of times, uh, it is because they, uh, are not confident in their ability to do their job and they don't want it highlighted. And maybe that's some people, not all people. Maybe they just don't like their words taken down. But a person that is doing their job correctly will not have a problem with transcription software.

Yeah. Or even— I had someone come to me that had an issue. They went to a meeting and got written up for taking notes. The manager— yeah, manager said, well, if you're taking notes, you're not paying attention. And I was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you need to stop that manager right there. Number one, you are paying attention. You're— and it was a, it was a middle manager at another higher level and needed to take information back to their employees. I'm like, does this person expect you to memorize things? Like, number one, our brains— I don't care, neurotypical, neurodivergent— no, like, you need to take notes. If you're especially relaying information.

I do— I think you should touch on the thing that we were talking about the other day. You can give your employees accommodations, these very reasonable, appropriate accommodations, or you can do what, Jessica? Remember you said like there, there's a— because you either take care of it on the front end or you end up having to pay for that.

Yeah. Pay for the EEO claims.

Yes.

Yeah. Those are— or the turnover. I mean—

Or the turnover. It's more expensive to replace an employee than it is to accommodate. And whatever that accommodation is, I don't care if that's a pay raise or accommodations, $30 a month is way cheaper than replacing your employee. Let me tell you.

Down—

whatever.

On average, it's $50,000 to $60,000. $60,000 to hire a new employee. That's because of training and onboarding and the new salary and the benefits starting up. I mean, that's, that's like the low end, honestly. And if you started talking about people in upper management and executive level, I mean, that number triples. Mm-hmm. Or more, because it's expensive.

And that's the thing. And people are so short-sighted. They don't see the big picture a lot of time. They're like, well, I'm just going to fire this problematic employee. And it's like, you could accommodate them for free. And then guess what? They're an asset, not a problem. You know, and it's, I just think it's so funny that it's like, well, we should get rid of them. They're asking too many questions. So I know the book is problematic, but if you've ever read it, like the 48 Laws of Power, right? Like, okay, one of the rules in it is not to question the master, right? Like there's this thing in it. Okay, but he tells it in historical vignettes, and he says that there is a general during Vietnam that said the best soldiers he ever had were the ones that were drafted that did not want to be there because they asked questions about every single thing, and they made their—they made everybody get. Crystal clear on the mission and what they were doing and why they were doing it and what was expected. And that guy was one of the most successful, like, generals in the military. And he goes, because it was those guys that asked questions. So it's like high anxiety situation. People didn't want to be there. They asked questions. It was scary. It was life or death. And they still made it better. So at the mid-level Dunder Mifflin paper management company, I imagine you can handle a few questions in a board meeting. Mm-hmm.

So something to always keep in mind, and, and we have to tie this up because time is running out, is as a manager, you have to make sure you have safe space for your people to be heard. Take your emotions out of the equation and answer clarifying questions and make sure everything is documented. This will make you a better manager. This will make your team more efficient and better at their jobs. And if you don't know how to manage your neurodivergent people, reach out. This is what we do. All 3 of us have very specialized ways that we do it. And Jessica has software that will help you find what the needs are for your whole entire company and cater to them. Vida does behavioral modification, and I'm gonna come in as an executive functioning and operational side because I have years of operational Management to come in and help you find ways to make your team work more efficiently. So let us know how we can help. All of our contact information is below this video. If you have any questions, please let us know. We're always happy to answer you. Thank you again. And this is Danielle, Vida, and Jessica from NDLO.

Hey guys.

Bye.