Supporting ADHD or Neurodiversity in your team

July 4, 2023 Ruth McDavitt

Employees with ADHD or neurodiversity can need a little extra support and tools to make them shine. Understanding how different team members approach a task or project and what level of detail or context you need to provide can lead to more successful outcomes for your next project.

Takeaways

Attention and working memory are both key to learning and processing new information. Working memory issues may cause critical information to be lost and not processed, or not retained.
Executive dysfunction challenges an individual's ability to be able to understand what the future state looks like.
Support your neurodiverse team members to picture the end state of a project and work back to understand what they need to begin a piece of work.

Neurodiverse individuals are those with developmental disabilities such as autism, ADHD and social anxiety disorders.

However, there’s a growing understanding that these individuals don’t have a disability, but rather, are differently abled. While they may struggle with social skills, they tend to have above-average abilities when it comes to things like analysis, information processing, and pattern recognition.

Sarah Ward's (Speech and Language Pathologist) research has provided insights into how to support individuals with Neurodiversity and ADHD in the workplace. Individuals with these conditions have challenges with executive function. Executive functions are critical mental processes that help us meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite distractions.

Working memory is particularly challenging for those who are neurodiverse. Working memory temporarily stores and manipulates several pieces of information and the output is used to guide future decisions and actions. Working memory information may only stay in your brain for a few seconds if it is no longer needed. For neurodiverse individuals, incoming information can be disorganised in their minds and may not carry much meaning or be seen to be useful. Working memory issues may cause critical information to be lost and not processed, or not retained for long-term memory.

Executive dysfunction challenges an individual's ability to be able to understand what the future state looks like. An example would be understanding what the end state of a project looks like. A common approach for a neurodiverse person is to imagine the end state and then work back from there (in other words, they reverse engineer a path to what they know). If they can't imagine the end state, they struggle to figure out how to begin a piece of work. It is then overwhelming for them to start the work because they are anxious about working towards an unknown state. And uncertainty = anxiety. The inability to see the "Done" state of a project will hold them back from working through the work quickly and efficiently.

How can I apply this to support my team?

Set the Goalposts very clearly

Running kick-off workshops where the outcomes and success measures are clearly defined. The context and assumptions enable your team to better understand the outcomes. If there are unknowns, they should be listed, and there must be tasks to learn/uncover these unknowns.

Define Scope

Chunking and defining scope is another way to help manage the picture of the end goal state. This way, your team can reduce the unknown by chunking the work into small, manageable pieces.

Use a Personal Worksheet to organise a pathway to success.

The “Get Ready, Go , Done” Board which prepare tasks for neurodiverse people

Here is a simple document structure for your team to work through the process of picturing the end state of a project and working back to understand what they need to start.

Drill into the detail of each section and break down what is required.

Plan to do the plan.

Follow through and do the plan. Remember sometimes, using a “timebox” can help limit time spent on individual tasks and help their focus.
At the end, use the opportunity to review their progress and offer advice on how to improve.

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