How managers boost productivity with ADHD team members

Julie: to have understanding. To be kind and gentle to yourself. If you are the person with ADHD, know that you're awesome. You are not an anomaly. There are millions more who have ADHD too, and that you can be as successful as anybody else, maybe even more so. Jimmy: Welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out and to help you build a high-performance culture in your team. I'm your host, Jimmy Burroughes, and if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device. Hello, and welcome back to this week's episode. I am absolutely thrilled this week to be joined by productivity coach and industrial-organisational psychologist Julie Shullem. She is an expert in helping those struggling with organising, being productive, and following through. I know all of these really well. She coaches her clients to become more efficient, less stressed, and better able to manage their time. And she actually really focuses on people who are dealing with overwhelm, frustration, and just struggling to get their productivity and task or time management in order. She's also an expert in people who have ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. So if any of those buzzwords, any of those terms are interesting or resonated with you, this is the episode to listen to Julie and I talk through. She is an expert also in helping clients to learn, create, and develop systems and structure to strategise and use newly adopted business skills to be successful. So if you want to be a high-performance leader, if you've got ADHD or if you've got people with ADHD in your team, this is the one to listen to. Julie, wow. Um so excited to have you on the show. So excited to have you with us. How are you, first of all? Julie: I'm fantastic. And thank you so much for having me. This is a true pleasure. Jimmy: Now, obviously you have an industrial-organisational psychology qualification and you've been working as a productivity coach for a while, but how did you get into this field? What was your journey, your path, your story to this point? Julie: That's a great question, and I love sharing how I started. I actually was a professional organiser and business consultant many, many years ago, decades, I won't I won't share how many. And from that, it just kind of evolved. I started working with entrepreneurs, business owners, small small, medium-sized businesses, and I realised that going into offices one at a time, I could help more people if I were coaching, and I found that the research on coaching versus consulting, often times, there's more effectiveness with the coaching model. So I segued into coaching about two decades ago, and I have never looked back. It's fantastic. Jimmy: Love that. And you have obviously focused in on the space of productivity and effectiveness, which is obviously great for those people who do want to be high-performance leaders. You mentioned, though, that you specifically like to help people who have ADHD or struggling with people in their team who have ADHD. Could you share some of the specific ways, just for our listeners to to get their heads around the topic, that ADHD can impact productivity and performance in the workplace? Julie: Yeah, there are a lot of areas that can be troublesome for someone with ADHD. And since I specialise in professionals with ADHD, this is kind of my happy space because, oh my gosh, there are so many wonderful things I can help with and teach them to be able to to make it easier. But some of the biggest challenges are planning ahead, forward thinking, decision-making, prioritising, being timely, so being able to get things done on time, start on time, and being able to communicate properly and effectively so that your thoughts and ideas are actually received as you wish them to be. Those are some of the bigger ones. Um being organised, of course, also falls into this arena, which is why, from professional organising, I ended up going into working with adults with ADHD because always a natural segue, and it turned out that, in one year's time, every single one of my clients said, "Oh, by the way, I have ADHD. Does that make a difference in how we set things up?" "Yeah, a little bit." So I realised, "Oh, my goodness, this is a a very misunderstood and underserved population, and I could help." So I made this my thing, and this is where I love to be able to help and have impact because there are these challenges, and to be productive, we all need the same kinds of things. We need structure. We need to be using a a calendar. You need to have systems. You need to have a tidier environment. But for someone with ADHD, with the the executive functioning skill challenges, that's often really difficult, and there's often a lot of shame and embarrassment around the fact that they know what to do. You know what to do. You're like, "Yeah, I need to organise my desk. I have no idea how to do that, how to get started, so I'm going to go do something else." We do this avoidance mechanism. And when you get to a situation where, "Oh, my goodness, I really want to be able to do this, but I don't know where to start." So then there's overwhelm. From overwhelm then gets anxiety. From anxiety, that can spiral into depression. Oh, we don't need to go there. So I help my clients not go there. We work on why you're procrastinating, where are you stuck. I tell people, I said, "I will be your personal Goo Gone." For those of you who don't know what Goo Gone is, it's a product that gets you that removes stickiness. I help people get unstuck, and I love to be able to teach the skills and shift the mindset so that you can actually move forward on your intentions, whatever they may be. Jimmy: Wonderful. The I mean, it's just what a rewarding part of business to to work in. People who are struggling with how do I prioritise, how do I make decisions. And as you say, these are not just ADHD traits. These are things that a lot of people who are extremely overworked and overwhelmed are struggling with. So, Julie, such an interesting topic for us to unpack. And, you know, one of the things I think is common for people with ADHD is that they are misunderstood or perceived in a certain way in the workplace. And that can often be related to their productivity or their effectiveness. Could you dispel some of those myths for us? Tell us a little bit about where are those misperceptions happening? Julie: Yes, absolutely. And there is, sadly, there are some misunderstandings, and a lot of it is some of the people in the world just don't even know what ADHD is. So there's that just complete ignorance of of that diagnosis. And the fact that it is real, this is not something that someone has made up and that they're trying to get away with something by using that as as an excuse. So that's the first thing. I also try to tell uh leaders, employers that have perhaps someone they suspect has ADHD or someone who has told them they do, that this employee or staff member is not intentionally trying to make the work environment troublesome. That is not their MO here. They actually want to succeed. They want to do a good job. And the other thing that, often times, uh someone who presents with ADHD is termed is lazy. Oh, my gosh. This one gets just I have seen such the opposite on every in every circumstance I have encountered. It's not that this person is lazy. Uh by Uh and actually, it's often the opposite. They are sometimes working longer hours and harder than anybody else on the team just to meet expectations, because it is so difficult for them to get tasks done. They're either procrastinating because they don't understand what to do, they're stuck because it just seems overwhelming, they need someone to help them break it down and have it planned out really carefully for them. And sometimes, that's just not in their wheelhouse, and that's a skill that they can learn, they can develop. I teach my clients this all the time. And it's just a matter of getting really good at it. But not being able to prioritise a project with all the tasks that are associated with, not communicating with people frequently enough so that the rest of the team knows what you're doing and what's going on. So there are many misunderstandings around the whole ADHD component. The thing is that, oh, my gosh, people with ADHD have so many amazing gifts and talents. And if an employer can really utilise those, got a stellar employee there, because this is that person who comes up with solutions when maybe nobody else does. They can think outside the box. They're really creative. And you know, when you've hired somebody to do a job, find out, you know, well, how do they do that job? It may not be the way you thought it was supposed to be done as the supervisor, but if they get a result by going on a different train of thought, awesome! Maybe they come up with something that no one else had thought of, but it works. That's That's the genius there. So yeah, there are lots of lots of um of things that I try to help an entire organisation understand about how to really make it so that the person with ADHD gets to shine and can do their job and be spectacular at it. Jimmy: Yeah, and I think you you hit on something really interesting there, and as somebody who has experienced this myself, the one of the challenges is to getting going because you either feel overwhelmed or you there's so much friction to you being productive. But if you can work out the way to defriction yourself to be productive, then it's like turning a light on. And what I've noticed with, certainly, with my own personalities that, Exactly. yes, there is a shadow to being ADHD, and you can struggle to achieve certain things, but there's magic that comes with it, you know? It's a It's a give-and-take environment. Gardner's multiple intelligences is a good example of this, you know? You might be great at this and not so great at that. Or you've got somebody in your team who might not be great at what you perceive to be the conventional skills, but amazing at something else. And so it's definitely worth not writing those people off. They bring a whole different lens to the workplace, and they bring a whole different set of talents that you might not have considered. So yeah, key into them. And so let's go with that. Let's roll with that momentum and and think about how leaders can create a workplace that optimises productivity and performance for people with ADHD. How can they be more inclusive, and how can they create an environment that really allows these people to succeed and bring their light? Julie: And that's a great question, and this is something that I really do love to stress and help leaders understand. First of all, understand, that's kind of the key thing. What do you need to know about what ADHD is from the beginning? Know that this is actually a diagnosis. This is, again, not something that someone just made up. And then, ask the person who you are working with and who is in your, you know, on your team, "What can you do for them? What would make it easier for them to get their job done?" Let's say you are delegating a project, and there are multiple steps. Well, for someone with ADHD, navigating all those steps can be a little challenging. It can be daunting. There's overwhelm. When there's overwhelm, there's procrastination. When there's procrastination, we miss deadlines. So, back up and get to a point where you can say, "Okay, let's break down this project into doable steps. Let's strategise when these tasks need to be done. And let's create some benchmark check-in dates, not just wait till the project deadline is, but, okay, let's check in every couple days. What works for you, employee with ADHD? How can I help make this better for you so that the whole team succeeds?" And that way, you know, when there's some, you know, definitive information and step-by-step directions, that often is all that it needs to happen for that project to get started. And I work with the employees who are stuck in how to kind of push past some of that, "Oh, my goodness, blank slate, what do I do here? How do I start?" and really just get to the point where, "Okay, you know what? Just do something. Do one thing. Just tell yourself, 'I'm just going to start this in for 5 minutes. I'm just going to do it for 5 minutes.'" That's less overwhelming than, "Oh, my gosh, I've got to spend the entire afternoon doing this whole project. What do I do with that?" So this way, they can actually make that start. And sometimes, it's just open up the document, review what has to happen, put some blocks of time in your calendar when you're going to do it. You know, there's all these little things that you can do to actually spur yourself on to make some headway. Jimmy: I love that. Julie: And having a supervisor that can be there in your corner and check in helps. Jimmy: Really, really helpful. And I think, you know, from my perspective, what I believe is really important here, and not just for employees with ADHD, but actually for all employees, is asking people, "How can I help you feel cared about? How can I help you feel supported?" versus me just imposing my care, or imposing my support in the way I think you need it, as a leader, to my employees and my team members. "What works for you? How can I get the best out of you?" And because ADHD is not a blanket diagnosis, there's people with ADHD who are excellent at prioritising and very good communicators. Equally, there are those who really struggle with that. And there are people with ADHD who are very organised in terms of project management. And there are some who are terrible. Exactly. So your staff member with ADHD is going to be a unique individual and is going to have different requirements on you, as a leader, in order for you to get the best out of them. So it's your job to try and understand that a little bit more, as you say. Julie: Exactly. Jimmy: Hey there, Jimmy here. Hope you're well. I just wanted to drop into this podcast and let you know that my new book, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance: The Leader's Playbook for Building a High Performance Culture, is going to be released very soon. And if you haven't already, head over to my website and grab yourself the first chapter of the book absolutely free. The address you want to go to is beatburnout.jimmyburroughes.com/book, and you can download that first free chapter to get you interested and excited about the topic of purpose. And the reason we're giving it away for free is because we think that purpose is the single most important factor for beating burnout, and we want to get it into as many hands as possible. So head over to beatburnout.jimmyburroughes.com/book. Grab Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance: The Leader's Playbook for Building a High Performance Culture, and enjoy reading. So we've got past our understanding piece, and maybe we're now into that project with our member of the ADHD community. And they are, perhaps, struggling, and they need a little bit of feedback, or they need some steerage. How can I approach that in a really effective way? Julie: Well, first of all, make sure that you set up time to meet with your, you know, your team member, your employee, one-on-one. It should never be something that, you know, is done in a group where you bring up some failure of some sort, or something that is less than wonderful. It should be done, you know, in person, in private. And find out, ask them right off the bat, you know, "How can I support you?" It doesn't mean you're going to do everything that the person says necessarily, but at least, as you just said, what do you need to that person? What do they want? How can they get the kind of help that they need? What is that help? It might be something really simple that you're like, "Oh! Well, if that's all, that's great! No problem. We've got this." But sometimes, it might be something that you hadn't thought of as the supervisor. "Oh, you know what? I didn't even think that that is something that might be needed. Great! Let's talk about that." And just be finding out, what is it, specifically? Um and being inquisitive, ask questions. The person with ADHD generally has no problem sharing information. Often times, over-talking is a challenge uh and an issue with those with ADHD. So if you say, "Hey, what can I do about this?" you're generally going to get a really great answer. So ask, and then listen. And then ask, "What solutions would you suggest for this issue you're having?" Let them give you, again, give you feedback. And speaking of feedback, when you are giving feedback to the person with ADHD, be very careful not to be blaming and not to call upon that potential, you know, that maybe this is an ADHD thing. They know. They need to be supported and be given feedback that is going to help move the needle forward, not cause them to go backward and hide and uh feel embarrassed about whatever happened. They want to succeed. We all do. We want to be seen as doing great work. And the person with ADHD does too. It just might take a few extra steps for them to get there, and it may be a slightly different path. And you know what? They still all end up in the same place. That's awesome. So listen. Listen. Ask questions and listen. Jimmy: I really resonate with some of those tips, Julie, very useful. And as you say, it can come down to really simple things. One of the I had a member of my team when I was working as a GM who had ADHD, and they had a great tip, which was, "Please don't expect me to read something while you're talking to me, because I can't do both at the same time." Yeah. And I notice that's also something I struggle with. It's I can't read and listen at the same time. I need to either read or listen. So when you're in an environment where there's, you know, "Can you read this document?" and somebody's trying to debrief you on it at the same time, nothing goes in. And so they shared with me, "Can you just give me the document either ahead of time, or let me read it for 2 minutes, and then and then we can talk about it?" But what I've also found, having now worked in the world of burnout, is that people who are on the verge of burnout also struggle with the same thing. So if you've got a really tired, overwhelmed member of your team, trying to expect them to assimilate information while you're talking to them can be really, really challenging for them and put them into a spiral. So there's a lot of overlap between burnout and ADHD. And what we see also is a lot of ADHD people burn out, because they're, as you say, overcommitting, overtrying, overworking just to keep up to your expectations. But you, as a manager, can realign those expectations with them. Julie: Exactly. And to that point, being able to balance one's schedule, create a schedule, just creating a schedule, that is often a huge challenge for someone with ADHD. This is something that seriously comes up pretty much every single time with every person. They don't have that balance. They don't have the structure in place. They don't know how long it takes them to do something, because there's time blindness with ADHD. And that's something a lot of supervisors don't realise exists. But 10 minutes and an hour, yeah, that makes absolutely no difference to many with ADHD. And they can just go on and on and on and not realise, "Oh, I've gotten into that wonderful hyper-focus mode, and I forgot to get out of it. Okay. I have now just worked through the entire, you know, whatever may have been coming up that day." So there are those issues of knowing how to structure one's day and how to appropriately figure out how much time to allocate for a task. You may not know how long it's going to take if it's something you've never done before. Well, how would you know how long it's going to take? You have to kind of guess. And what I tell people, this is one of the areas that I help my clients with, is whatever you think something's going to take, you need to actually double the time that you allocate for it. So if you think something is going to take 30 minutes, allocate an hour, because the amount of cognitive distractions that you might experience, you need to actually have some time allocated for that to happen, because you can't always control all of that. You can somewhat control visual distractions. You can somewhat control auditory distractions, but you can't always control those cognitive distractions, those millions of ideas that are floating around in your head. So allowing extra time works beautifully, because you're probably going to be pretty close to that time that has the you know, with the extra amount allocated. And if if you get it done sooner, yay! That's an amazing feeling of accomplishment. You've finished early. Great, go on to the next thing! You're ahead of schedule. Knock it out. So having the ability to plan and schedule and sequence and structure is super crucial. Jimmy: I like that, and perhaps, if you've got a member of your team or you yourself are ADHD, then you can sit down with somebody and just sketch out your rough timeline of the plan and check that with somebody else and just go, "What do you think?" Exactly. And if certainly, I saw people in my team who had it, we would collaborate on that planning process and say, "Oh, I think that takes 30 minutes." "No, that might take an hour, so let's allocate the hour." Just sanity-checking it with somebody before you make a commitment. You might not be able to keep and you can't deliver on a deadline that you have set expectations against can really help. Going off-course a little bit, but I I'm intrigued as to your thoughts on this. How can things like some of the new modern AI platforms be useful for people with ADHD? I'm specifically thinking, you know, ChatGPT and Google Bard, things like that, but have you seen any examples of where that's becoming useful for people to have as an additional tool in the toolkit? Julie: You know, it can be really useful as long as it's not abused. By you know, let's say someone is really having a hard time coming up with a report, uh you know, the intro of a presentation, or uh something that they need to speak about, and they're a little stuck getting started. Yeah, go ahead and ask ChatGPT. "Okay, write about that da da da and put it in." There's your start. So for someone who procrastinates all the time, this is awesome, because there you've got a bit of a template. Now, should you just run with that and say, "Okay, I'm turning this in"? No, because that is they're not always, you know, 100% accurate, and it also may not have your voice. It should have your voice. You need to go back and edit it. Edit it, add to it, subtract from it, make it your own. But at least it got you started. And that's, sometimes, the best thing that needs to happen is just getting started. So from that perspective, yeah, it can be very effective. Jimmy: I love that. I think one of the ones I've also seen that I think is quite powerful is document summarisation with key points or key notes pulled out. You know, if you've got a 20-page document to read, board paper or something like that, copy-paste that into ChatGPT, use an appropriate prompt that says, you know, "Summarise this with the key points and key actions highlighted." And that can just help you get a almost like the tl;dr version of a board paper. Yes, you may still need to go through it, but if you need to get the highlights quickly, if you struggle to concentrate for a long time with written word, things like that can also help. So there's some great tools out there. And I, you know, I agree. Just getting you started when you're a procrastinator can be, um, can apply to many people, not just people with ADHD. Now, Julie, you have, uh, a course, don't you, that is around helping people to be more productive? Tell us a little bit about that. Julie: I'd love to. So the course is called Your Life: Productive Finally. And it's for those people that have procrastinated on getting organised and becoming more productive. It's an an on-demand course. It's less than six hours in totality, and it's very task-oriented. In other words, the course gives you instruction, and then you can pause it and go do that thing. So it's very more interactive and gives you a really good idea of how to become productive all the way from dealing with papers, dealing with clutter, uh becoming better organised in your environment, as well as then going into task management, using a calendar properly. Oh, my goodness, I can't tell you how many people they show me their calendar. It's like, "Yeah, that's not the way it's supposed to work." They're sort of using it, but oh, my goodness, it has It is the most wonderful tool ever, and people are just not using the calendar well. So I really dive into that deeply. And then going into project management, which is actually, once you got the other ones down, project management is much easier. So it's really the full gamut of everything that one would need to address to become more productive, and it starts with getting organised in all areas. Jimmy: It sounds fascinating, and I think for our listeners, you are extremely kindly offering a discount code, which you can see in the show notes below this episode. Thank you so much, Julie, we really appreciate it. Let's close out, because I know this is a a huge topic, but there's going to be people who want to learn more, find out more, understand more. How can our listeners keep current and upskill about your topic? What resources or web pages, sites, papers would you recommend? Julie: Well, I highly recommend the work by Ned Hallowell, H-A-L-L-O-W-E-L-L. He has written several books with his colleague, Dr Ratey. Actually, both of them are doctors, so it's Dr Hallowell, Dr Ratey. And they just finished, actually, a book called ADHD 2.0. Super super easy to get through, uh well-edited, beautifully edited, and lots and lots of research uh behind all of the comments and tools and techniques that they mention. So I'm always reading and watching these the people that are actually doing the research that are studying those with ADHD. Both of these two people have ADHD as well. They're both psychiatrists. It's awesome. Uh so they're really, you know, well versed in this. And uh you can also go to There are several organisations that specialise in helping adults with ADHD. There's ADDA, A-D-D-A. There's CHADD, C-H-A-D-D. Both of these are non-profit organisations. And I'm always putting out content as well on my website so that I'm keeping it very easy for people to be able to gather information on the productivity point and also the ADHD area, so I merge the two. Jimmy: Amazing, and we'll pop in the links to coach Julie's website in the show notes below also. Julie, you know, if there's one thing that you'd like our listeners to take away from our fascinating episode today, what would it be? Julie: To have understanding. To be kind and gentle to yourself. If you are the person with ADHD, know that you're awesome. You are not an anomaly. There are millions more who have ADHD too, and that you can be as successful as anybody else, maybe even more so. And you've got all these resources. We have so many tools now that we didn't have decades ago that can help even if you have ADHD. They help all of us. Utilise them. And if you are stuck and you need some assistance, find a coach. ADHD coaches, there's not a lot of us, but those of us who are out here, we love what we do, and we really, really want to help. Jimmy: Fantastic. Coach Julie Shullem, wonderful to spend time talking to you, and I feel like we could just chat for hours about this for a variety of reasons, but it's been super useful for, I think, our listeners just to get a bit of uh get their heads around the first the concept of ADHD, some of the myths and preconceptions that might apply to people with ADHD, and also how to manage and lead more effectively if you have people with ADHD in your team. Really appreciate you joining us today. It has been wonderful to talk. Thank you so much. Julie: Thank you so very much. It's been my pleasure and an honour. Jimmy: That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it, and it helps us to connect with new listeners. Also, if you haven't already, head to jimmyburroughes.com and download a copy of my latest best seller, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture and is packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode of game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.