Workplace Gaslighting and ADHD: Why It Happens, How to Stop It

Hello, hello everybody. We are back after a long break because of craziness going on and a lot of growth around here. So I'm Danielle Ralston, founder and CEO of ND OutLoud, ND Hive, Capacity Works, and DanielleRalston.com. And I'm also, since I've been here last, I also have published a book, Hidden in Plain Sight, which is driving how invisible disabilities are treated in the workplace, which is a huge topic.

Yes.

huge center of our conversation today. And joining me, I have Jamie. Jamie D'Amico is a part of my team. He is awesome. He's one of my favorite people on my team, but he's also the founder of Fortify Leadership Coaching and Training, where he coaches and, uh, and future business leaders on improving workplace performance and navigating their career paths. He also is a neurodivergent coach here on my team. He's going through ND Coaching Academy here on Our team, as well as helping us really explore helping people in the workplace, not just for neurodivergence, but with universal workplace design. And him and I have had a lot of conversations about that. And right now we really want to talk about gaslighting in the workplace for neurodivergent professionals, because I don't know how many times I've had conversations with my clients, and I'm sure, Jamie, you've had a bazillion conversations with your clients. Regarding what gaslighting— how they feel after being gaslit in the workplace.

It's a very interesting topic because it's a fairly new term. But also, I think that happens often inadvertently. Yeah, I don't think people set out for the purpose to gaslight. And for those who are not familiar, I know it's a fairly common term, but for those who are not familiar, did you know that the term gaslighting comes from a movie called Gaslight? It was an old— I think it's from the 1940s, black and white movie where the people around a woman told her that her entire existence was not as she understood it to be and just kept lying to her, telling her that whatever she perceived was wrong, her memories were wrong. And it's It's the kind of thing that is actually— it's considered a form of abuse because abusers tend to be great at it. But again, going back to what I was saying, in the workplace, that is absolutely not the case. What we're talking about—

Yeah, it's very rarely intentional. It's just a mismatch in processing styles really between an employee and a manager or other employees on the team. It's a mismatch in understanding. understanding of what's happening in an environment. So, we want to make sure that we're not blaming managers, leaders, CEOs, anybody. We're not blaming anybody. But it is something and it is a reality in the workplace.

It is. And it very much stems from the fact that neurodivergent brains and neurotypical brains don't process, like you said, the same way. As a result, we pick up on different things. We understand things differently. We our perception of what's going on around us and needs can be very different. And a neurotypical colleague, boss may say, what? That wasn't offensive. They were just saying XYZ. And I understand where that comes from. I have a tendency to want to do that myself, is correct somebody and be like, oh no, that's not what they were doing at all. I have vivid memories of doing that to family members and be like, no, that's not what he meant. Why would you be upset by that? Well, guess what? Everybody has the right to feel their emotions.

Absolutely. And everybody, again, processes differently. And I think this is something that we really need to, like, talk about a little bit, is there's an underlying mechanism for neurodivergent brains that a neurotypical manager and most managers don't understand. Our pattern recognition is without a doubt way higher than a neurotypical's, which means even something that you as a neurotypical don't detect— like, we had 4 meetings this week and we had 3 of them that all said something differently, but the end goal was always the same, so you think they were— everything was the same. And a neurotypical or neurodivergent person looks like that and like, no, these were 4 separate meetings. We all said something different. Yes, the goal was the same at the end, but how we get there is completely different. And now you've messed everything up. And how do I fix this?

And meanwhile, our neurodivergent audience is sitting here nodding their head. But I would assume that the neurotypical audience, of which we have a good amount, is listening to this saying, wait a minute, but why would that happen? So, Danielle, what is it? You mentioned pattern recognition, but maybe you could talk a little bit more about the differences in brains and how that shows up in some practical ways.

So, how it shows up in some practical ways. Most software developers, most product managers, and production managers tend to be neurodivergent. Why? Because we could see this piece that happened over here 6 months ago, and this piece that happened 2 minutes ago, automatically connect them together and go, oh, these— this is XYZ, this is how it needs to happen the most efficiently, the— for the least cost, or all of these things. And neurotypicals are seeing the thing that's in front of them right now, not the 9,000 pieces of information that are back here that have been happening.

Mm-hmm.

that are affecting the outcome now.

And I would like to add to that the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, whereas people that are neurodivergent have a much stronger reaction to anything that is perceived as rejection, such as, hey, I know you're responding to something I said, but I'd like to move on now. I remember the first time a boss said that to me in a company-wide meeting. of, I'd like to move on from the subject while I was kind of pounding the table about a topic, and I couldn't have been more offended. In reality, I may have been overdoing it on that topic, you know, but in the moment, it just felt like the worst thing that could have possibly happened to me was he didn't want to hear what I had to say. Yeah, well, it's, it's very important, I think, and I'm sorry to cut you off, but I think it's very important on both sides for people who are neurodivergent to put a name to it and say, oh, I'm experiencing RSD right now. That may not be the slight I take it as. Whereas those who are neurotypical may want to say, hey, with this person, I do have to be just a little bit more careful about how I word this.

Well, and the other part of that is, one, a neurodivergent person, it really is on us as neurodivergent people. And I'm definitely pointing to myself here, and Jamie also is neurodivergent. That we really need to understand our own patterns of communication.

Oh.

And why do we need to understand our patterns of communication? It's not because you have to mask and cover that up or any of these other things, because that's gonna cause some issues and other things. We're not gonna dive into that today, but when you recognize your own pattern, you can then explain that pattern to somebody else.

Yes, absolutely. I once explained that to a boss of mine. I explained, I tend to pick up on vibes. If there's something wrong, I know it. And he was trying to get a message across to me, so what did he do? He didn't speak to me for about 3 days until I walked into his office and I said, what the hell is going on here? He's like, ah, I was hoping you would pick up on that.

Perfect.

Strange though.

But that's part of our pattern recognition is that's one of those things that we do notice. But we also notice, and this is where the gaslighting comes in a lot of time, when an organization has a stated process but the actual behaviors diverge from that process. And that's gonna happen. Because things have changed, but nobody's updated the SOP, nobody's updated the process, um, new software has been added, new employees have been added. A neurodivergent employee is going to detect every gap, every problem, and flag it and want to talk about it and bring it to somebody's attention.

And the talking about it is where it's going to become an issue, right? Because many people are going to view the same things as not an issue. Hey, this, this isn't a big deal. This is, this is not an issue. And there, that's where it, it starts to build. Okay? Because nobody, when it comes to what we're referring to as gaslighting, nobody reacts negatively the first time when they're told, hey, that's not a big deal. It's that it accumulates. And the issue with gaslighting is that you eventually start questioning your own sense of reality. So when you're told often enough, hey, that's not a big deal, no, they didn't mean anything by it, yeah, it's different, but it— I don't know why you thought it was different because it was close enough to the same. That's when it starts having a personal effect. And what's going to end up happening more often than not, that person is going to lose confidence in themselves and they're going to become unhappy. They're going to become more passive and they may start checking out and be far less engaged.

Well, and there is an operation cost when that happens because you're High-performing employee, because neurodivergent employees, when allowed to be in, in good environments, they become some of the highest performing employees 99% of the time. But when things become too ambiguous, there's too many meetings, uh, over-documenting happens or under-documenting is happening. So some of these things happen, that cycle starts to reinforce itself and that cognitive load on that neurodivergent employee increases and increases and increases.

Mm-hmm.

They get exhausted. They start underperforming. This is when things like PIPs come up. This is when you're hearing that contradiction from them of they're like, no, this is what's happening and this is how it should be. And the management team is like, no, all of these changes have happened and this is what's happening. And they're like, but there's no path from A to B. What's going on? And managers start to dismiss that employee because they seem to be too emotionally tied to whatever's going on. Yeah.

Yes. And, you know, I do want to state that this isn't opinion-based. Like, there is trauma research that backs up the fact that gaslighting, or when you are in a position where you're questioning your reality, it does have a traumatic brain effect, which can be pretty severe for some people. And many times those who are neurodivergent are more sensitive, even though they may not necessarily appear that way. From the outside. And I would say especially autistic brains in the sense that people with ADHD tend to wear a lot of things on their sleeve. Oh boy, you should be in some of our meetings. I'm kidding. That was entirely—

You don't really want to be in one of our meetings anyway.

But yes, autistic brains can oftentimes stuff those emotions down. And again, It builds up over time. And, you know, there's some excellent research out there on general gaslighting, but I would say that this topic is not particularly well-researched in the neurodivergence area, like most topics at this point. Which, cheers to you for bringing so many of these topics that need the light of day for you bringing them up as often as you do. But as we move forward, you know, this is sort of helping people understand it. There's a whole lot of what we should do about it that I feel like I'm still learning more about it. I'm still learning more about how to work with my brain, let alone that of others. So—

So So let's talk about why conventional advice underperforms for a neurodivergent person first, because I think that understanding the why, the, uh, wisdom that's already out there by all of the psychologists and psychiatrists and stuff— because again, this isn't a well-researched, uh, topic in the neurodivergent world— we hear things like managers have been taught to tell their employees to build resilience. But that building resilience assumes that that person has a regulatory capacity. Um, but a neurodivergent person may not have the capacity in that moment to regulate in order to build resilience because that regulation requires growth. Um, have a direct conversation with your manager, but then you're going to bring in RSD, executive dysfunction issues.

Mm-hmm.

And it's only really good in an environment where there is psychological safety. And so many people say that less than 10% of employees— and this is a widely studied topic on ADA and all kinds of websites— feel safe in their work environments.

What percentage?

Less than 10%.

And that's the general population?

That's the general population.

Okay, we need to do better than that for sure.

Yes, we do. And manage your own stress. Well, when the work environment is causing the stress, how do you manage when you're in that stress environment 8, 10 hours a day? But the pattern that most— the thing that I see is a lot of wellness systems inside of companies treat workplace gaslighting as a communication issue. And not a cognitive accessibility issue. And is there some communication issues there? Absolutely. But because of cognitive understanding, not because of somebody's refusing to communicate.

So can you explain the difference between cognition and how it's a cognitive issue versus communication?

So communication is What you say, how you say it. What you say and how you say it. Somebody who is having cognitive difficulties may not be hearing the words correct, like literally may not be hearing the words correctly because they have a preconceived pattern that you're supposed to be following in their head and they're stuck in that pattern and unable to cognitively process the actual words being said, or they're stressed out, which means we're only catching about 5 to 10, I'm making up numbers here, 5 to 10% of the words in a sentence. A lot of people who are neurodivergent also have auditory processing disorders or visual spatial disorders, or they're hyperverbal, but they need to see it in writing, not just have somebody speak it to them. And a manager is handing everything in writing or handing everything verbally, and it's the opposite of what somebody needs. Yes.

So what I'm hearing you say basically is there are environmental and communication factors that play into all of this because of how a neurodivergent mind is functioning. Am I hearing you correctly?

Absolutely.

I'm realizing, just a side note, I'm realizing how much I sound like a coach. I'm sitting here asking you question upon question. Wonder how that happened.

I don't know. But I think the biggest thing that we have to— the practical interventions for an employee. So as an employee, you can intervene on your behalf in these situations. Ask for things in writing. Even if writing isn't your best communication style, ask for it in writing. Why? You could take that writing and put it into AI— ChatGPT, Claude, Cowork, whatever you're allowed to use for work. And have it analyze what was said and restate it for you. You also get more time to process when it's in writing. You can read it out loud to yourself if you need it verbally said to you. Record yourself saying it so you can hear it and play the recording back if that's what you need. Those are easy things that you can do for yourself. Um, identify a trusted colleague or external advisor who who can help you corroborate what you read and help you make sense of it. That's where, like, having— if you are neurodivergent, having an ND coach who is a career and leadership coach can absolutely help because we translate corporate worlds a lot. I know I do. I translate the corporate world for my clients a whole lot. Um, conserve your cognitive bandwidth.

Oh yes, and that goes very deeply into the, uh, basically protecting your dopamine levels. So, you know, preserving your cognitive bandwidth, my gosh, that is something that I think most people really struggle with, no matter who you are, because we are, we are in a society that rewards being in the rat race and being on the hamster wheel and running and running and running. And those are the people we uphold as being successful. And I can tell you, the people that get away and allow their brains to recharge are the ones that ultimately do the best. Now, there are some people out there, yes, they only need 3 hours of sleep. Fine. I hate them. You know who you are. And, uh, but it's just like any other muscle. Back in the day when you played sports, it was just day after day, hit the weights, hit the weights, work harder, work harder. And then they started realizing your muscles actually need downtime in order to repair themselves, in order to be more effective, to get stronger. You can actually make yourself physically weaker by working out too often. It's the same thing for your brain. So I'm so happy you brought that up.

We need, we need rest and Whether you're spiritual or not, the Bible says on the 7th day you rest. Your body needs a day, at least a day of rest. Our, our society is not— in, in the US and modern world— is not built to actually take a day of rest.

True.

And what does a day of rest look like? Walk away from the computer. Like, don't go home from work all day and then go do a second job or play video games all night. And I know that there's a lot of dopamine attached to that for many of us. But you need your eyes and your body need a break from that.

Mm-hmm.

Um, silence. Silence is good for your brain. It drives some of us insane. Like, I don't handle silence well. I'm very honest with this. I don't handle silence well, but I still need a break and I have to have a silence break at least for 15, 20 minutes a day to give my brain a break. And when I do that physical movement, when I do those things, I'm able to operate at a much higher level.

Absolutely.

It only takes 15 to 20 minutes. The other thing that's really, really easy is fixing your communication gaps. Why does that help? How do you fix your communication gap? So I'm going to tell you how to fix it first. Use AI right now. That is one of the easiest tools. that you have before you send that email or that Teams message or that Slack message or whatever, put it through AI. Does this tone sound good? Does it sound positive? Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Like, whatever the thing that you've been criticized for, tell AI that you're looking to fix that issue with communication.

Mm-hmm.

You have an easy tool. And there are very few workplaces that aren't letting you use one of the million AI tools that exist out there. Those are really practical things you can do when you're fixing the communication gap. And not masking to fix the communication gap, because that's a really important skill, is to not mask your own communication style. Allowing AI to do that for you, you're going to fix a lot of issues for yourself.

Yes. And I am— I have to tell you, I'm very happy that you are bringing these things up. And it's how people who are neurodivergent can help themselves. Because one of the things that does bother me as somebody who's neurodivergent is feeling like, or the attitude that the world has to adjust to us. We have to take care of ourselves first. We, as much as we don't want to admit it, we are a minority.

We are.

And that is, and that means that there is a responsibility on our end to work with the world around us. And it is certainly important for people to become more educated on neurodivergence so we can take a lot of these conversations conversations out of the shadows and start understanding how do we work better with each other. Yeah, I, you know, underneath it all, one of my rules is treat everybody with respect and dignity. And one of the best ways of doing that is learning more about them, no matter how different they are. And I, like I said, I love the fact that you are giving some practical advice about that, but I don't want to go too far without also talking about what leaders and managers can do in order to assist people that they are suspecting may be neurodivergent. Now, I do want to start this off with a little bit of an anecdote, because in the coaching that I do, I am not a therapist. Therefore, I am not— I cannot diagnose. I'm a coach. However, you know, we can sort of smell our own along the way, and I have enough education to pick up on the symptoms. So what happens— this is the place to start, I think— what happens when you are working with somebody who you are suspecting is neurodivergent? Well, to me, that's a great starting point. Instead of asking them, do you have ADHD? Are you on the autism spectrum? You can start moving into strategies that work for people who are ADHD and autistic in order to help get them to that point. Because let's be honest, you don't need a diagnosis to know you have ADHD. Somebody doesn't need to tell you that they have ADHD for— if you're educated on it or if you're informed on the topic to recognize it in other folks. So starting point number 1, if you suspect it, start using some of these strategies and see how they work.

Even if you don't expect it or suspect it, excuse me, every employee deserves to operate at their most effective space, whatever that is. And every employee, neurotypical, neurodivergent, has their own things that will make them operate the best that they possibly can. What is that? Get curious. Ask that question. That is the number one thing that you can do as a manager is get curious about every person under you and ask what will make them more effective in their position. End of story.

Yes. And make sure that there is enough goodwill that they will actually tell you. Yeah.

And that's not coming at them, well, I noticed that you're not doing great at this. How can we fix it? No. Hey, I want to empower you to be better at your position. What can I provide you with? What support can I provide you with to help you with that? If you have a neurotypical person whose mom is dying and they're taking care of their mom, they're exhausted. They're going to need you to put things in writing for them. You want to know who else needs that? A neurodivergent person. You want to know who else needs that? Your deaf employee. You want to know who else needs that? Is your employee with visual-spatial learning disabilities. Your employee whose brain works 9,000 times harder than anybody else's and hears everything in the room— that pen tap, somebody playing with their hair— they need it in writing. Like, okay, so I just named every type of employee problem in your meeting. Why aren't we putting everything in writing? End of story. Like, some of these things are universal workplace design.

And that is exactly where I was sort of headed with this, and for those who are unfamiliar with universal design, that's something that was born out of the Americans with Disabilities Act when the government started mandating, hey, we need to have handrails on stairs, we need to have ramps on curbs, doorways have to be a certain width. And the immediate effect of doing all of that was everybody loved it. Everybody found it easier. The mother with the stroller, who's walking down the street and, you know, is, well, going down the sidewalk, crosses the street, she doesn't have to lift the stroller and wake up the baby that's been asleep. You have the handrails. Suddenly people who have balance issues, maybe they have vertigo, maybe they're just elderly, suddenly they have something to grab onto and now they can, now they are more mobile than they were before. So that is where the term universal design began. And the, basically the definition is if it helps a small group, it probably helps everybody. And now this has been moving into education for a while. They started, here's an example, fidget spinners. They started saying, okay, if you have ADHD, you can have a fidget spinner. And they found, wow, the research is showing that they're doing much better with fidget spinners. And then they said, well, let's study what happens when all the kids have fidget spinners, and they all did better. So, so we have been talking, and something we do quite a bit within our partnerships here, especially Capacity Works, is we take universal work design and, and help bring that to companies. So the things that we're going to talk about in order to help with the gaslighting effect of those that are experienced by people who are neurodivergent. These are general communication, mostly communication recommendations that I promise you they will work for everyone. For everyone.

They work for everyone. Again, your deaf employee, your hearing employee, your employee who had a little bit too much to drink last night and is recovering. I mean, we all have, Yeah, I mean, no matter what your employee is, if you give verbal-only direction, there is space for ambiguity. There is space for lost in translation. Ever played the telephone game? Like, things can happen. If you put it in writing, none of those things happen. Magically, things are trackable.

And let me give some advice there. And this is, again, it works for everybody. 100% of people do better when you put things in writing and you structure it correctly. You have short paragraphs, short sentences, use bullets wherever you can, put section labels on your emails, put something in bold. This is what we're going to talk about. This is what the next couple of items are, and then put it in bold, another section heading, and have your bullet points. It works wonders for people who are neurodivergent.

Everyone.

And it works Perfectly for those who are neurotypical as well.

So the thing to know is if you are creating a better situation for somebody who has difficulties, because neurodivergence is a disability, there are a million disabilities that could be under that— learning disabilities, dyslexia, all kinds of things, people with invisible disabilities— that by creating structure for everyone, you're removing things that can be a hindrance and make that employee not as effective. You're increasing everybody's effectiveness. So, the next thing I want to tell you is lock priority windows.

What do you mean by that?

So, don't say to your employees XYZ is happening this week on Monday. And then Tuesday morning, change your mind. And then Wednesday morning, change your mind again back to the first area. And Thursday, change your mind again. Lock priorities. This week, this is what we're working on. This is a priority. We do have emergencies that come up. But if it's an actual emergency and only happens once in a while, guess what gets attention? The thing that needs the attention. If you're doing that all of the time, nobody's paying attention because nothing is an emergency.

Now, this is something that when I'm working with leaders and not just neurodivergent leaders, something that we have to work on. Fairly regularly because, you know, let's be honest, agility is very important in the workplace. If you're going to be successful, you have to be agile.

Mm-hmm.

However, what I end up telling people in leadership positions all the time is do not workshop things with employees. Get all the information that you need and then make a decision. But don't have a feeling you should be doing something else and then change your mind after you start doing that something else. You know, do— so basically do your homework. That way you look— not only do you look more decisive, but your employees are shifting gears less. And it takes, what is it, on average of 23 minutes for a— for an employee to Recover from an interruption. Now imagine that interruption, you're adding on top of that a task that they may have to figure out. They may be derailed for a half day or more. So in order to keep things moving forward, lock the priority window, like you said. And I'm going to— do you mind if I follow that up with another piece of advice?

Great.

Make asking questions safe. Clarifying questions, especially folks who are neurodivergent. They process differently. But even those who don't process differently because they're neurodivergent, some people just— it takes them more time to think through something. Maybe some, maybe some people need to know the why behind things. Very common amongst folks that have ADHD, but other brains too. Other people need to know the how, but you can't get upset with people for asking those questions because you feel like it's taking too much time. Now, if it is actually taking too much time, move it over to email, have a sidebar conversation, but people need to feel the ability to ask all the questions they need to ask in order to move forward. And that is going to help with the gaslighting immensely.

Immensely. I think something that a lot of managers don't realize, that when a neurodivergent employee asks why— well, why are we doing this? It's not because they're questioning your authority or the logic behind the thing or anything. They just want to know why so that they can process it. That's it. I, I personally, I ask why a lot. Well, why do you want to do that? Why? Why? I just want to know why. And I have had employers tell me to stop being so combative. That's not combative. I just want to know why. Like, I don't care. I do now because I have a bigger sense of justice than I had when I was in my 20s. But back then, I didn't care. It could be illegal.

I just want to know why. And that is— that's such an important thing for people to understand. I was just having that conversation with a good friend of mine who's Young daughter, I believe her daughter is 6 years old, who they're fairly sure has ADHD, asks why all the time. And this woman that I know, her mother used to say, why does everything have to be so difficult? And, you know, when you're a parent, you kind of emulate what you grew up with. And she's trying so hard to not say the same thing To her daughter. And it wasn't until we had the conversation where I explained, hey, folks with ADHD don't fully understand the what unless they also know the why. It's just there's something fully incomplete for people with ADHD if they don't know the 360 degrees of something.

So, and that's it. And a lot of them, again, don't care what the actual thing is. They just want to know why. We don't care. We just—

Yeah, they're not going to argue with you.

No, they just want to know why. And that's a really big one. The next thing I want to really talk about, and it's in that wording again, is just again, back to the ask them how to help them. What can you do to help their thing is, what is in your way today? What's in your way today? As a manager, what's in your way should always be a question you're asking your employees. I know Jamie and I had this conversation, I think a week or two ago. He was working on something and it was Something was just in the way. It was really frustrating him. And I said, okay, what's in your way? How can we fix this? Okay, I got a fix for you. Here. That was it.

Did she ever, mind you.

I'm a little bossy.

No, I'm saying you had something to really fix it.

So, the thing to remember is the more that you put on your employee to have to operate cognitively, physically, masking, dealing with Navigating a workplace, the more you're going to have burnout, whether it's a neurodivergent employee or a neurotypical. The more stress that you can remove by asking, what's in your way today? How can I make you more effective? Those 2 questions can remove so much cognitive and physical load from every employee that you're going to have employees who burn out less, who need less sick days, who need less mental health days, who need to spend less in mental health support just by removing and asking 2 really simple questions.

And I'm going to, I'm going to add to that. Always tell them at the end, well, if something comes up or you think of something, let me know right away. And the reason for that is it becomes very reflexive to say nothing. Sort of like asking somebody, what's up? Or how are you doing? Is a greeting. It's reflexive to say, fine, good. I now know that when I was an RA my 5th year of college, there was a guy who lived on my floor. He was absolutely on the spectrum. I can almost guarantee it. And I was scared of him at first because when I would ask, how are you doing? He would actually tell me, well, not so good. See, This happened with my girlfriend, and I— and I'm like, oh my God, that's not what I was asking you. I was greeting you. But, um, most— you, you, you're not going to get that from most people. They just want to kind of move on with their day. So make it clear to them that if something comes up at any point, that you are there to help remove the barrier, which is another sort of Leadership 101 thing. Which is you're not going to get— you're in a leadership position, you're going to get far less done than you ever used to because you're dealing with people now and not just issues. And that's— I love a good check-in. I have actually— one of my clients is seeing a huge improvement in her staff's— well, I would say, yeah, I would say Much greater productivity from her team since she started doing 5 to 15-minute stand-ups on a daily basis with them. And they are not a crew of neurodivergent people. It's just better leadership.

Absolutely.

And may I give one last recommendation? Find a way to provide feedback without shaming people.

So, how do you do that when— how do you do that as a manager? How do you give feedback without shaming somebody?

Okay, there's 2 things you absolutely have to do. Number one, you have to take your own emotion out of it. And I say this all the time because if you take emotion out of it, you always know the right thing to say. It's when you're upset or frustrated or stressed out that You say things that you regret. So that becomes the subject-object movement that I talk about in coaching, and they talk about in psychology all the time. The topic has to— the subject has to become an object. Write it down, put it on the board, imagine it on the wall. Our amazing colleague Shay just yesterday made that recommendation. Take this scene and Pretend you're projecting it onto a screen and tell me what you're seeing. It was wonderful. The other thing you have to do is you take the personal out of it, the you, and talk about the situation. So instead of, you didn't get that done and now we're behind schedule, has to become— When things don't get done, we end up behind schedule. It's the same message.

I'm going to interrupt a little bit. I want— I tell my clients, I want you to use outcome-based feedback. We had this project that just did not go well. It's caused us a lot of issues. Do you see a way that this could have gone better?

Oh, you know what? We're talking About different phases through a project, right?

And when you have that conversation and your employee, especially if they're neurodivergent, and a neurodivergent employee is going to be more self-aware about this than a neurotypical, they're going to say, oh man, I was so far behind and I didn't understand this process. I wished I would have had XYZ. You as a manager are going to get so much amazing feedback When you do basically a postmortem of why something didn't work well, not accusing any single person, not accusing your team, not saying you don't— never saying you or we or any of that, just saying this didn't go well. What could have been done to make it better?

And let's go back to something that may be more on a personal level, something that is due to the well-documented time blindness of people that have ADHD. Late arrivals.

Mm-hmm.

A way of approaching that is by taking the you aspect out of it is late arrivals lead to X, Y, and Z. It becomes too lax of an environment. People find it to be disrespectful. It gives the impression that when people are arriving late, they don't care. I know that you care. But we are, you know, we are judged by our peers based on these things. So, you know, that's, that's where I feel like the shame is being removed. And finally, don't ever address something like that again. Management 101: don't address problems like that in front of other people.

Don't do this in a team meeting, ever.

And don't address anything with sarcasm. Yeah, it's just—

If you have neurodivergent— God bless a manager who has a ton of neurodivergent employees on one team because that— I will tell you as a manager of neurodivergent people, sarcasm is a way of communication sometimes and it's very, very hard to get them to communicate outside of it. But you, as the manager, should never be using it, even if it's a normal culture of your team.

You know, I was told some great advice very early in my career by a guy who, you know, he ended up being a VP by like 26 years old. And he had one golden rule. And I think he took it right from the movie Road House when he said, no matter what, just be nice. Be nice. It is your job to be the nicest person there. That doesn't mean you can't correct people. That doesn't mean you can't give bad news, but you have to be nice to everyone. And sarcasm cuts right into being nice.

It does. Absolutely. I will tell you again, even if it's the culture of your team and their interactions with each other, you as the manager should not be communicating ever in that way.

So, can I real quickly summarize the things that we talked about as advice for managers?

Yes.

All right. You said, put it in writing, make asking questions safe, lock priority windows, do not shame people, and get problems on the surface Early and quickly by having regular meetings and letting folks know that you are available to help solve problems. And that's 5 things.

It's 5 things. They're very easy. And something I will tell you, if you do those 5 things, you will become one of the best managers in the company you've got.

Oh, absolutely.

Because unfortunately, that's still a very rare thing. So, I hope we've empowered the managers today. I hope we've empowered The neurodivergent people dealing with this today. If you have more questions, you want to learn more, down below is going to be some more articles, some really deep articles that we've written on gaslighting in the workplace. We have one for neurodivergence, we have one for the bosses, and we also have one for therapists to help their clients deal with gaslighting in the workplace and some tips and tricks for you. If you have questions, always reach out to us. We're always happy to talk to you. Have an amazing day, everybody.