Real Job Talk

Welcome Skye Waterson, coach for people working with neurodiverse teams and partners helping them to excel in the workplace. Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organisation and the ADHD Skills Lab Podcast, and she has dedicated her career to helping neurodiverse professionals manage their challenges and bring their superpowers into focus while at work. We thank Magic Mind for their support and help with clarity, focus, and sleep. Our friends at Magic Mind are giving our listeners 20% off their products (they have both clarity and sleep). If you want to try it, get 20% off the Magic Mind bundle with our link: https://www.magicmind.com/REALJOBTALK20 There’s a money-back guarantee, so try it if you’re curious. Diagnosed as a young adult, Skye had dedicated her life to teaching about ADHD and coaching business owners and leaders how to manage and grow without the burnout. She looks at what is happening and where people are feeling stuck and she helps them build systems to move forward and avoid burnout. Results happen quickly after that. The most common challenges Skye sees in professionals with ADHD are difficulty with time management, inability to “knock things out” without help, trouble with transition times, and more. That said, there are super powers around creativity. We asked why someone would want to have a boss with ADHD if they aren’t great at time and task management. Skye said that ADHD bosses are great for navigating choppy waters because they can think creatively out of choppy waters. If you don’t want to talk about your ADHD, make sure you share your preferences of how you work best with your boss and colleagues. If you don’t know what you need, how can you help people to best work with you? To understand how to staff around someone with ADHD is to understand the bottlenecks and make sure there are people who can fix them. Often with ADHD there isn’t a lot of process, so Skye will build it in, and they need help with administrative pieces and delegating. Another key to managing up with ADHD is to ask about prioritization. If they want to change direction, ask what you can drop. Be very specific with what needs to get done to meet company goals and how changes will affect the bottom line. ADHD folks do well with data-driven questions and this-or-that choices. ChatGPT is an amazing tool to come to your boss with 3 ideas and 1 suggestion to make sure you’re doing a good job and helping them prioritize. Confirming solutions and direction can be helpful in successfully navigating each others’ strengths and weaknesses. We discuss how brilliant neurodiverse minds can be. It’s so important to focus on the super powers and what is working vs what isn’t to remember the value add to a business, a community, and the world. People with ADHD are world-changers, so getting strategies that work help support their strengths. Another key to success with ADHD is to make sure you’re supported in a way that you won’t be overwhelmed. Folks with ADHD need to set themselves up for success with supportive structures in place and tools that work for them so that they don’t get overwhelmed and burnt out. We discussed managing up when the leader “sees squirrels”. Skye said to start acknowledging the squirrel. Then, show the timeline you’re under and what would have to be dropped in order to switch direction to follow the squirrel. Sometimes folks with ADHD haven’t thought about the consequences or step of a pivot, so pointing it out and showing the resources needed is a key to success. Coming straight in with negativity will backfire, but giving it a minute and doing some research to show the gives and takes and data around “following the squirrel” will help make informed decisions. Ultimately, if a leader isn’t able to delegate or prioritize, they are going to lose the employees who could be deployed to support them. Skye supports those leaders so that they can keep their teams and their companies can flourish. We give Skye a scenario where a performance review is due and the boss hasn’t gotten it done meaning the person’s bonus is at risk. Skye has a number of suggestions: 1. Book a meeting to get it done. Body doubling works wonders for folks with ADHD. 2. Write it for them- make a template. 3. Remind them of your concern that you will lose your bonus. Connect with Skye Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skye-waterson-026286204/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unconventionalorganisation/?hl=en X/Twitter: https://x.com/ADHD_UO

We welcome Leanne Elliott, an organizational psychologist, to talk about how to manage fairly in our current divided world. We thank Magic Mind for their support and help with clarity, focus, and sleep. Our friends at Magic Mind are giving our listeners 45% off their products (they have both clarity and sleep). If you want to try it, get 45% off the Magic Mind bundle with our link: https://www.magicmind.com/REALJOBTALKJAN There’s a money-back guarantee, so try it if you’re curious. Leanne grew up knowing she always wanted to be a psychologist from a young age. After a friend lost her mom she saw how a psychologist helped kids understand and process their feelings. She wanted to help as many people as possible, so she learned how to help organizations build cultures that validate feelings, process difficult situations, and move forward through productive problem-solving and discourse. Leanne is the owner of Oblong HQ, a consultancy helping companies with their cultures and leadership as well as the co-host of the most popular Hubspot podcast (and one of our favorites) Truth, Lies, and Work (https://truthliesandwork.com). We were guests on Truth, Lies, and Work, and we are thrilled to have Leanne with us today. For Leanne, a positive outcome of the recent US election is that we know the winner and we can try to anticipate what things may look like going forward. A lot of anxiety was built up around that “who will win?” question; knowing the answer gives us a place to start. She calls out the exhaustion from the last few years with the economic and political instability. She says that burnout is happening at much higher rates with a compounded stress of life, cost of living, geopolitical change, and uncertainty. Leanne is focused on helping organizations avoid this burnout with some relatively simple culture shifts. There are things you can do to create a workplace culture. It’s not complex, but it needs to be approached with consistency, dedication, and intention. Talk about politics or religion can bring more tension. People talk about it because it impacts them. We can look at bringing teams back together and building cohesion around both tasks and social, starting with the tasks and insisting on civility. Make sure each team member knows that their role is to push work forward. Understanding each person’s contribution can build trust and camaraderie, which can then build social cohesion. Revisiting vision and values whenever you look at strategy will help to make sure your company is living the words they’re saying and that people understand the 'why' behind what they are doing. Making sure your team understands the WHY behind decisions and changes so that they can get on board (or not). Knowing the why gives people autonomy in their decisions. Managers impact our employee experience, and when managers communicate effectively, it drastically improves employee experience. Around the election, she talks about Trump transcending politics because he challenges the belief that leaders should stand for good in the world. His election makes us rethink everything in this geopolitical environment. We’ve seen far-right swings all over the world, not just in the US, but for all of us the acceptance of behavior we’ve been counseling against for our whole careers is unsettling. Kat advises to focus on what we can control. Leanne adds that the psychological transition between accepting what we can control and changing what we can control in a world that feels out of control is challenging. When we’re in the ending phase where our beliefs are challenged, there are uncomfortable negative feelings that we show both emotionally and physiologically. We need to process to move forward. Talking with a therapist, journaling- actually writing things down- and processing can really remove stress. We’re seeing a trend of employees wanting to move to a different state or country. HR leaders are trying to figure out what to do. Leanne encourages tring to understand what’s behind these requests to move. It’s probably linked to personal reasons and fears. Once you understand that, you can start to understand what we can do as an organization to support people in the location they’re currently in. Helping our people understand what’s happening in their minds and bodies helps them to not feel alone and be able to understand next steps in a more informed way. The time to actively deal with people’s stress in your organization is now. Helping them understand who you are as an organization and why you’re making decisions around policies (locations included) will help you stay productive. Taking the time to explain what’s happening to your employees will pay off in spades. To keep teams cohesive, Leanne advises to avoid topics like the situation in Gaza. Whatever you decide, make sure to have a team culture mandate and making sure that we measure behavior and call out any behavior that could be toxic and eliminate it by showing how to challenge and eliminate behaviors we have agreed are not ok. This will bring civility, trust, and control. Civility is the only thing that is directly related to our employee experience. Civility includes allowing people to show up as their authentic selves. Managers NEED to be allotted time to manage, and they need to be held accountable for their performance as a manager. Then they have to listen and try to understand, but they will not always feel like they have all the answers. As a manager, ask questions and reflect feelings back on people, and make time in your calendar for office hours. HR can have a list of resources for employees and managers, and managers can show what resources, programs, and professionals are available for your people. If you don’t have resources like an EAP (Employee Assistance Program), this is the time to get one….