I’m Not an Executive, Why Do I Need to Function?

Transcript — S1:E10 — I'm Not an Executive, Why Do I Need to Function?

[00:00:00] ♪ Intro music ♪

[00:00:17 Andrew Sanders] Hi, I'm your host, Andrew Sanders.

[00:00:19 Flo LaBrado] Hi, and I'm your co-host, Flo LaBrado.

[00:00:22 Andrew Sanders] Welcome to Different at Work, where we talk navigating the modern workplace and cultivating professional relationships while being wired a little differently. We're gonna explore executive functioning, which is an aspect of how we think and operate. And no, executive functioning is not about any particular position at work, like an executive VP of a company.

Everybody uses executive functioning many times throughout the day. It could be something simple like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, to something more complex like a home remodel or other project. Many of you in the modern workplace know what it's like to have a project, task, goal, deliverables due, that sort of thing.

All of that requires executive functioning. So it's not just reserved for the big guys upstairs.

[00:01:06 Flo LaBrado] I often use the term executive functioning, and I think of it as an aspect of cognition or, like, how we think, of how we organize ourselves and almost, like, strategize to get things done. And I think it would be helpful for us, though, for the listeners, to level set on what it even is. So, Andrew, how would you define executive functioning?

[00:01:32 Andrew Sanders] So to me, executive functioning means to have a goal, to think about how to achieve that goal, to be able to create steps or a plan to get to that goal, and then to regulate yourself, your behaviors and emotions, to be able to carry out that goal.

[00:01:50 Flo LaBrado] And what do you mean by a goal? Because, you know, to me, I think of executive functioning as the examples that you gave earlier, like just getting up and brushing your teeth. But when I hear the word "goal," I think of something big, like, hey, you know, run a 5K or, you know, save up an emergency fund or whatever.

That's what I think of when I hear "goal."

[00:02:14 Andrew Sanders] So think of it as any sort of outcome that requires your effort.

[00:02:19 Flo LaBrado] Okay. All right, that's — yeah, that's accessible to me. And executive functioning is everyone — almost everyone is very capable in this area. It just looks a little different. And I'll use the example of someone I love very much who — she had just moved, and she was putting all her things in, you know, in their new spot, in their new home.

And I remember her standing in front of this cabinet where she had, like, a lot of small things to put away, and i- in front of this — this china cabinet, and she was almost paralyzed in front of it, unsure of what to start with, like, where to even begin. And I was in the same space as her.

I was on my laptop doing something. I don't even remember. And it took me a while to notice, like, oh man, she's been standing there for a while. And then finally she said, "I don't know where to start." And I appreciate that vulnerability, right? And so I just helped her. I said, "Let's just start here. It doesn't have to be the permanent place. You can rearrange things later if you want, but let's just start somewhere." And after that, once she got the ball rolling, she was good putting everything away. But there was this moment there, and I remember thinking very clearly this, at that time, like, she's stuck.

[00:03:41 Andrew Sanders] Yeah. I'm not surprised by that at all. So the reason we're talking about executive function today is that it's very common for people with neurodivergence, ADHD, autism, and the like, to have issues with their executive functioning skills. And the brain is such a crazy, awesome place. There are so many different smaller pieces and moving parts to the neurological condition that is ADHD.

So think about our conversations going back to neurotypical people being able to... prioritize, or their brains are driven by importance, right? So you can see how that would align with executive functioning: be able to have your goal, y- be able to begin work or be motivated by what's important.

This project's important, this outcome is important, therefore I can take this first step, right? But in the ADHD mind, we're motivated by interests, novelty, or high-pressure situations. So that's where issues with executive function start to come into play. And in that example that you gave, that was a perfect example, because oftentimes the problem is with getting started, knowing where to start.

People could have issues with perfectionism, procrastination, or task switching. Just, you know, ending one task and starting another. All of that impacts executive function, and all three of those things are traits that can be found in people with ADHD. So you can see, if I'm worried about getting started because I'm worried it won't be perfect or someone will judge me for it, or, ah, I'm putting that off 'cause I'm bored, so that's — not now, later I'll get to it.

Maybe in a few minutes or next week, right? All of that is about getting the task started. It's about — the term for it is activation, and that touches on another definition of executive function, and we'll get into the science here in a second. But you can see how in that example that you gave, to tie that back, your friend was just paralyzed, right?

They didn't know where to start, so they literally couldn't start. It wasn't willpower. They wanted to do the thing; they just couldn't do the thing.

[00:06:05 Flo LaBrado] Yeah, I hear that, and I've seen this. I've witnessed it with so many people that I love and that I've worked with. But I can also make the argument that anyone can experience this at any time, and I'll use a personal example. And this is so silly. If you guys could watch this, you'll see, on my hands — in my hand I'm holding a whole bunch of business cards.

And for a long time, I had my own business cards in my wallet, just loose in my wallet, and whenever I would exchange a card with someone else, I'd put their card in my wallet, and it would just hang out loose. I know — I knew I needed one of those little business card holder things so that my cards aren't just floating around in my wallet.

I knew this for months. And I, for some reason, could not bring myself to just pick one on a website, and I was so stuck. And then one day, I started to look. There were so many colors and so many options, and I just got overwhelmed and stopped. And I know this sounds probably silly, but in the moment it felt overwhelming to me.

And then, just this past weekend, I called my sister. I'm like, "Hey, I'm stuck with this. Can you just pick one of these for me?" And she picked one, I ordered it, and it was at my house by Sunday, and now I don't have business cards just flying all over in my wallet. I could say that that's an issue with my executive functioning, because I just couldn't move forward with the next step.

[00:07:29 Andrew Sanders] Yeah, I would agree with that. That is — I'm not claiming that executive functioning issues are exclusive to ADHD. With most of the topics that we've talked about on this series so far, everybody experiences a little bit of some of the things that we've talked about. Nobody's perfect.

But the — the problem that exists for, at least for me, from my perspective, is I would say the severity of the highs and the lows of these ADHD neurodivergent traits that we talk about. So the frequency that they happen, the impact that they have on our lives, and how we experience things completely differently than the neurotypical person.

So a neurotypical person that has something they wanna get done — I hate to use you as the example because we've talked about that before, but say you're frozen ordering something and you were able to pick up the phone and call someone. You weren't paralyzed to the point of not even getting that far, right?

Picking up that phone, that is controlling steps to achieve an outcome, right? You already knew your goal, you knew it needed to get done, you know it needed to happen. You were stuck on pulling the trigger. But you knew enough to have someone else help you pull that trigger, right?

[00:08:51 Flo LaBrado] Yes.

[00:08:53 Andrew Sanders] I would — I don't know that everybody with ADHD would intuitively know to do that without having practiced some sort of mindfulness or self-awareness or self-control practices.

And I know we'll get into some of the scaffolding and everything else a little bit later, but I think that's the bigger difference there.

[00:09:13 Flo LaBrado] Yeah, and I think that's a really good point, and I think that there are other ways that concerns with the executive function or dysfunction — I don't like "dysfunction," because to me it's just a difference, but that's another topic. Another way that this can show up is maybe it's not an issue with following through on the next step, but almost like a hard time f- flexing cognitively from one thing to the next.

Where for some individuals, it can feel — it can be more like, oh, I'm bouncing from thing to thing, and it can seem, based on novelty, and it can seem that they're very cognitively flexible, and that may be true. But for someone else, this kind of executive function issue can look differently.

It could be having a really hard time flexing when the conditions change, and almost like a different kind of stuck. And we've talked about what executive functioning is in general and how it can be experienced differently with people with different brains.

Now let's turn this over to at work.

[00:10:21 Andrew Sanders] Yeah. So why don't we talk through how you can see executive function — let's call it dysregulation — in...

[00:10:31 Flo LaBrado] I like that word better. Thank you.

[00:10:33 Andrew Sanders] Yeah, excel— Talk through how we could see executive function dysregulation in the workplace. So, I know that not every manager in the workplace loves doing annual reviews, quarterly reviews, compensation planning, all of the paperwork that comes with being a — a people manager, right?

And so I'm gonna draw upon my experience with that, because that was my least favorite thing to do, was the paperwork.

[00:11:00 Flo LaBrado] You didn't love admin day? Oh my gosh.

[00:11:03 Andrew Sanders] Uh, yeah. If I had to rank them from my least favorite, it would probably be firing people — least favorite, hated — to paperwork, to hiring people, like interview process. I think those are my top three least favorite things about people leadership.

[00:11:23 Flo LaBrado] All the admin stuff.

[00:11:25 Andrew Sanders] All the admin stuff. So yeah, I'm using that because that was a constant challenge of mine, that and expense reports.

Paperwork that I had to get in, and it's stuff that I knew I had to do, and I had a certain time frame to do it, and I know that I wanted to get it right because it impacted people's lives. Not only did I have to formulate my own assessments, but I had to put them into words, and then I had to make sure that I had the evidence to back them up, because I knew that later I would be in a room with a whole bunch of other peers, calibrating and arguing over how budgets get spent and all that fun stuff, which is based on the work that I did.

So you can see how important that was to spend some time and due diligence on getting it correct. And I know I had some peers that, as soon as the tool was available, were in there planning, and even had some notes already saved from their emails and their OneNote files and all that fun stuff, right?

I... We'll call it cognitive completion. Like, I thought about it a lot. I kind of, like, tossed around in my head who was where. I had my own tools and my own system. Yeah, like, I had my mental notebook. But the act of, like, getting it into the system and finding time in my day to do it where I could not be interrupted, or like — that takes planning.

Where I'm gonna be to do this, in a quiet area, off of Communicator, Teams, whatever you use. And yeah, I won't say that I was ever, you know, down to the wire. I know that some in our group were constantly being tapped on the shoulder about, "Hey, you're over the deadline." I can say that I was always at least by the deadline, but I wasn't early.

[00:13:05 Flo LaBrado] Just in time.

[00:13:07 Andrew Sanders] Yeah. So, and that's — I use that example because that is a really clear example of: I have a task, so I know it needs to get done. So I have a goal. I thought about how to achieve that goal, right? Where I'm gonna be, how I'm gonna structure my notes and what I'm gonna say. My action plan to complete the goal, and then self-regulating and making sure that I'm, you know, staying focused and on track and avoiding distractions and giving it the attention that I need, not being pulled away.

Like, all of that's self-control, self-regulation. And I kinda wanna pause here, because using that example, I think, is a good time to introduce some more science behind executive function. And there are two more really prominent researchers whose definition of executive function are the gold standard.

So there's Dr. Thomas Brown, and his model consists of six different clusters. So he sees all of these as equally important, and they work in conjunction with one another. So there's activation, focus, effort, emotion, memory, and action. So all six of those kind of working in tandem with each other is how he would define executive function through the research that he did.

[00:14:25 Flo LaBrado] One thing that I'm — what I'm hearing is that all six, according to this framework, like, all six of these are equally important, but it doesn't necessarily mean that all six are equally affected all the time.

[00:14:43 Andrew Sanders] Correct.

[00:14:44 Flo LaBrado] Sort of how I'm taking this. Okay, thank you.

[00:14:46 Andrew Sanders] Yeah. But you can imagine if they — since they are equally important, if one of them is impacted by your neurotype and how your brain is wired, executive functioning abilities are impaired. So the activation part. So in the example that you mentioned, your friend not knowing where to start, like, she was stuck at activation.

She couldn't pick which way to point, what to focus on first. So activation and focus — like, her effort, her emotion, like, all of that was there. It was — she got stuck in those two.

[00:15:18 Flo LaBrado] And I think it's important also to differentiate what we mean here by activation, because activating is technically a strength in the CliftonStrengths framework. But that's different. That strength of activation in CliftonStrengths is meaning someone who is amazing at getting people activated and mobilized towards something.

Say, the person who gets everyone fired up and bought into the project, or gets people focused and moving in the same direction and being active towards a shared outcome. What you're talking about here, activating, is more like at the individual level of, you know, these are the things that I need to do, and now I'm going to go do them and actually start.

[00:16:08 Andrew Sanders] Yeah, really it's the same competency or skill, but it's inwardly focused, right? So you're not activating group; it's your brain. You're trying to get your brain to pay attention to what it needs to pay attention to, right? And this goes back to the conversation we had about the mind and the brain, where the brain is kind of like — you know, what's the comparison we used?

Like a Ferrari car with bicycle brakes. The ADHD brain. It's always going, so activation's really important, 'cause you need to get it to pause for a second and be like, "All right, this is what we're gonna waste our energy on — or spend our energy on." So I wanted to talk about Dr. Brown's model because I like how he defines those six areas, and I think it makes a little bit more sense of the example that I gave about the work task that we talked about. The other researcher that I wanted to mention is Dr. Russell Barkley. He describes ADHD executive dysfunction as an inability to manage your behavior that you're doing now so that your needs in the future can be met.

So what you do now impacts you down the road. And if you can't manage that, that is executive dysfunction. And his model puts a heavier focus on self-regulation, and he says it's the most important. So whereas Dr. Brown's model says they're all equal, Dr. Barkley says self-regulation's the most important, because without self-regulation, there's no dice. You'll notice, though, that when we started this conversation, I kinda didn't use either of those. I just laid it out as kind of a four-step plan, like identifying the goal, thinking about how to achieve it, creating a plan, and then controlling yourself.

[00:17:49 Flo LaBrado] Yes, and I appreciate that, because theories can change, but the way that you talked about executive functioning at the start of this conversation, I think, is more of how people experience it and how the people around the person with an executive dysregulation or something like that experience them.

And I think a lot about this in the workplace. Let's say there's a project that needs to be done, and there's a goal and outcome to be achieved, and some people might be fantastic at strategic planning. They might see the goal, the vision, break it down into subcategories, tactics, and all of that.

Some people might prefer to just, "Let's go, and we figure it out as we go along. We don't need a plan," right? And move with that kind of intuitive agility. And there's — to me, there's like a — a whole spectrum between those two. What I see at this — this sort of executive regulation might be: we've come together as a team, we know... We created a plan, everyone was bought in, everyone knows what to do. And for one person, it might feel like they know what to do, but just having a hard time getting started, and might choose to work on something else, not because they're disregarding the project or because it's not important, but something else is more interesting, and in their mind, it just felt like the natural thing to work on next.

And that's one of the ways that I've seen this show up in a workplace... Another way that I've seen it show up is when... And — and I wanna set aside when someone is feeling overwhelmed with stress, because, you know, in today's work world, that happens when there's so much overwhelm and it's hard to sort of see your way out, and we've talked about that in other conversations.

But let's talk about — let's say it's a normal, typical, manageable level of stress, and someone is given an outcome to achieve. And they may have all the good intentions, dedication, commitment to the work, and just have a hard time getting started. And we might not see that individual struggling with starting, but what people on the outside see is lateness, rushing, coming in at the 11th hour, or less important work being worked on instead of the work that everyone agreed to was priority, and those kinds of things.

The concern that I have is that often our brains like stories, right? Without enough curiosity, we might draw conclusions like, oh, this person doesn't care about this job, this person has checked out, they're inconsistent, da, da, da, da, instead of taking the moment to consider neurodivergence.

[00:20:35 Andrew Sanders] Yeah. Absolutely. And not only does our brain like stories, it also likes to defer to the negative. So it's always trying to get to that fight or flight, lizard brain, so to speak, that we all have from back when we were hunting saber-toothed tigers or whatever. But the brain is instructed to defer to the negative, so you're going to think that or assume that that person doesn't care about their job or can't handle the job or whatever the case is. But they could be... And it could be any six of those — activation, focus, effort, emotion, memory, action, right? — that they could be struggling with. And this becomes an area where you gotta tread carefully as a leader, because you don't want to offer help so much or forcefully that you tread into micromanaging. But you should still at least know what your team is working on and where they're having problems.

[00:21:33 Flo LaBrado] And that's part of leadership, right? Paying attention to not just the work that needs to be planned and resources to manage, but also the human and what their needs are. That said, there's still work that needs to get done. Like, understanding why someone is struggling doesn't negate that work needs to get done.

What I do think about, though, is — I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone struggling with executive dysregulation, and the person that people might feel or assess that they don't care, they're not committed, and all these negative things — how difficult that must be for someone. I would feel terrible that I'm doing the best that I can, and my misfires are being interpreted as if I don't care, and I'm not committed, and I don't want to be here.

And because of that, I think it's important to talk about — okay, so awareness is one thing. What do we do about it? One of the things that is so important is that — and we'll talk... What we're talking about now here is essentially scaffolding, systems and structures to help someone in that time when they may be struggling.

And one of those that I love, that I learned from one of my sisters and from you, Andrew, is to create systems and environments that support you, to have physical reminders in front of you of what you need. Maybe it's reducing clutter to make it easier to see what the next step is and take action on that.

And even physically writing things down. There's so much evidence that shows that writing things down makes it easier not only to remember, but to take action, which flies counter to our worlds, in which almost everything is digital. It's typed, or, you know, I use Wispr Flow often to take notes, right?

So I don't — I'm not even typing anymore. Oftentimes, I'm just speaking into this AI that is recording for me. So it is important to create systems, physical reminders in front, to make it easier to see and execute on the next step.

[00:23:50 Andrew Sanders] Yeah. I would like to point out — just pause here briefly and point out that the scaffolding that we're talking about here and the tips to help executive functioning are pretty universal. They can help everybody. But it's especially important for people with a neurodivergence because, without it, not only does the work suffer, but the person suffers, because it is exhausting and painful to always feel like you're treading water and missing work that you really wanna do, right?

It's... 'Cause, you know, again, not willpower. You wanna do it; you just can't. There's that invisible wall. So another topic I wanna bring up here real quick, and this is only to kind of stress the importance of having a system in place and scaffolding, as Flo said. According to ADDCA, the ADD Coach Academy, ADHDers also suffer from what's called positive illusory bias.

And what that is, it means that people with ADHD tend to give inflated ratings on how they're doing. Basically, that prevents them from recognizing the need to improve or to seek help or to reach out and find support. That positive illusory bias hinders their ability to acknowledge negative feedback, or their ability to realize soon enough that they're in trouble and that they need to ask for help.

So you can see how that illusory bias that ADHDers tend to have kind of works in conjunction with their executive functioning dysregulation, and how that can be problematic in the workplace, right? So clearing the space: awesome piece of advice in scaffolding. Given that we are bad predictors of our time or our planning, another thing you can do is pad your time estimates.

When you're making commitments to people, multiply it by two or three. If you think you can get something done in a week, maybe you should tell somebody two and a half weeks, if you know that you have executive function problems. You underpromise, overdeliver, versus overpromising and underde- delivering and missing commitments.

And along with padding your timing, we've talked a little bit about positive psychology too, and we haven't done a deep dive into neuroplasticity, but our brains are malleable. It's a muscle. You gotta exercise it, and if you exercise it with positivity, you actually start to think a little bit more positively.

So if you, you know, padded your timing and... or can't even get started on something because you're a perfectionist or you wanna get it perfect and you're just stuck in your tracks because of that — whatever the reason, don't be too hard on yourself if you have executive functioning problems.

Just give yourself a little compassion, and focus on the will and not the will not, right? Focus on the positive of your situation. And maybe try to picture the outcome you're trying to achieve, or what a good first step might look like, right? How a good first step might feel. And going back to the example of a housing project — painting the house, right?

We're not saying you have to strip the paint, sand the wall, fill in the holes, and paint the house all in one day, right? That's not how that works. And, "Oh, man, I — I can't do that. That's impossible. I can never get it done." Well, picture it like, "Hey, what if I were to just sand the walls today? What that... What would that look like? What would that feel like inside me? Would I feel good at the end of the day for making a step towards my goal, and is that enough pressure on myself to do it?" So that's an example of talking about what you will do and not focusing on a reason why you won't.

[00:27:42 Flo LaBrado] And focusing on that step positive, like not just thinking about duty, but the feeling and that experience of doing something that is very much part of happiness. Another strategy to support someone who's struggling with executive dysregulation would be to do the fun thing first and to celebrate.

Like, to do the exciting, the fun, the rewarding thing, even if it's smaller, first. This is not to say to permanently disregard all the priorities, but if, you know, there are 10 steps or 10 different things to be done — to get started, pick the one that's fun. Do something fun, and then also celebrate that accomplishment.

We generally — neurodiverse or neurotypical and everyone — we have a tendency to be so goal-oriented sometimes that when we finally hit something, we're already thinking about the next step, and we don't celebrate the m- the — the goal, not even the milestones that we hit. And so it is so important to do the things that are fun, and also to celebrate, because that creates the energy to sustain that focused momentum, so that it's not just movement but momentum, meaning energy that is focused in a direction.

And yeah, fun can be such a huge part of that, especially for someone with... And you shared this with me, Andrew — with ADHD, how important it is to do the thing that feels the most rewarding, to create that rewarding, fun experience that can then be the energy to go on to the next thing, and the next thing, and so on, and to be able to stich- stitch together all the things that need to be done.

I also wanna talk a little bit about strategies for organizations and leaders. Because so far, all the strategies that we've talked about are for the person experiencing executive dysregulation, for them to have the support or create the support and scaffolding that they need. But in the workplace, organizations and leaders also do have responsibility to — to do some things here to make things smoother.

Organizations and leaders do have a responsibility here as part of, you know, organizational development and leadership, to create an environment in which people can thrive. And if you're a leader, this one is for you. One: psychological safety and accommodations. And this is so important, because psychological safety for someone to speak up and articulate what they need or own up and say that they're struggling, and then also accommodations to — to support that person.

There's some research out of France that I believe I mentioned before that — there's this almost — this cliff that happens. Neurodivergent students at university have the support that they need, but then they struggle when transitioning to the workplace. And part of the issue is that they're working in an environment where in university they have the support, the resources, the scaffolding, and then almost like cold turkey move into the workplace, where so much of that is gone, or it requires disclosure, which can be really scary, especially when psychological safety is not present.

So it is important for leaders to, one, create the psychological safety and the sense of belongingness so that someone can raise their hand and say, "Hey, I'm having a hard time sequencing, putting these things together. I'm having a hard time getting started. Can you help me out here?" Right? And the second thing is also to be able to make accommodations.

For example, if someone just needs to be in a space where there's less intrusion or interruption, make that possible. That might not be the person who gets the cubicle in the middle of the floor, 'cause it just doesn't make sense. Or if it's someone who, from time to time, even when working in an office, needs to be away from someone else, allow them to — to, you know, do a half day in a conference room by themselves so that they can do what they need to do and organize themselves.

So yes, it is important to have both psychological safety for people to raise their hand and say, "I need support," but then also the accommodations so that they can thrive. Another strategy for organizations and for leaders is to challenge your assumptions when someone is having a tough day and it is an executive functioning issue.

Challenge the assumption that the individual doesn't care or they're not committed or, you know, they're — they're lazy, or they're passing on work to other people, whatever it is. Challenge those assumptions and get curious and find out what's really happening. One scenario — and this is — this happened to me, for different reasons.

I was in a period where I was very stressed, had not slept enough. It was just a project launch, and it was really, really tough. And I remember being in a conference room and feeling the weight of being responsible for everything that was happening in that room, and yet not being able to organize myself in that moment.

And this is me as the leader, right? E- even in a position of positional power, I still almost felt powerless in that moment. And another leader, they picked up on what was going on, and we literally left the room and went outside and got some sunshine, and that was the moment that I needed, instead of someone, you know, judging or wondering why I couldn't get moving.

And that's for me, right? A — a neurotypical person in the workplace, right? So for someone else, just challenge your assumptions when they're having a tough day, so that you can offer support instead of assume that this is intentional and the person doesn't care.

[00:33:37 Andrew Sanders] I would like to add a couple more examples there because — first of all, great examples of things and how they could impact neurodivergent people. But you can even do simple things like — so one of the common themes in the examples that you just provided is transition, right?

From task to task, that task switching. So moving your mind from meeting A to meeting B, or from this meeting to this email I have to send, or this phone call I have to make. For the ADHDer, transitions are hard. So another example of things you can do as a leader, small things, is maybe try to incorporate, like, a three-to-five-minute period in between meetings so people aren't going back-to-back meetings, so their brain has a minute to reset and refocus, right?

That's kind of a mini moment that's — your sunshine moment is — physiologically is the same thing. You needed to be taken out of that environment so you could have a second to just breathe, right? So imagine the hyperactive mind or, you know, people suffering with so much going on and so many thoughts going on at once and having to switch their focus all day long.

Kind of reminds me of somebody at work that at one point tried to implement the three minutes cut off, and it never really caught on.

[00:34:52 Flo LaBrado] Oh my gosh, that's so frustrating. But that, to me, also just goes back to the topic of meeting hygiene. Let's not cram meetings with agenda items that nobody cares about, and if it doesn't have to be a meeting, make it an email.

[00:35:04 Andrew Sanders] Absolutely. But I know in today's world, a lot of people have those back-to-back meetings, and sometimes double-booked meetings on it. Our calendars were not funny. They were not a laughing matter. They were... You know, sometimes people were booked with three meetings at a time.

[00:35:16 Flo LaBrado] Stressful.

[00:35:18 Andrew Sanders] Stressful, but try to build in some break times.

And it's all right for you to step away from your computer every now and then. It's actually good for your brain to just have a minute.

[00:35:28 Flo LaBrado] Yeah, a sunshine moment. I like that reference that you made. Yeah, and this is something — this is something that leaders can make possible, because leaders are in the position of power to make that happen. Another strategy that leaders can implement is to create bridges for neurodivergent students or workers who are new, who just left university, where they had all the scaffolding, entering the workplace, where they do not.

Create that bridge so that that new entry-level worker doesn't experience that cliff. And the two suggestions under this that I want to make are, you know, the recommendations of Sophie Hennekam and her colleagues in doing this research about the gap between support in universities and then entering the workplace and not finding that — is create more internships.

Give people the opportunity to try out work and see what it's like. Create internships to help people determine what they need, and leaders what they can provide for accommodation. And the second thing is for — and this is a recommendation more for academic institutions — is, in addition to all the academic learning, to offer the things like business skills, like, hey, how to handle a meeting, how to juggle all the different communication avenues that a worker may have in the workplace.

[00:36:47 Andrew Sanders] I wholeheartedly agree. And I also wanna point out that nothing that we have suggested here is a detriment to neurotypical people. And again, you're in a corporate world, you're — you may not necessarily know the neurotype of the people on your team. So it's important to tailor — just like you should be doing this already — tailor your coaching and your leadership to the people individually. Ask people what their work style is and things that trip them up, or the type of support that they might need. That's perfectly acceptable. Obviously, you don't wanna ask them if they're ADHD or what their neurotype is. Don't get fired, don't get sued. Not acceptable, not appropriate. But asking what motivates them, how they're more comfortable working — totally good. The other thing, too, is there are ADHD coaches out there. So I'm just saying, you could also hire coaching for help.

[00:37:47 Flo LaBrado] Executive coaching for helping a leader manage when executive functioning issues show up in the workplace. This is such a rich, complicated topic, but I'm really glad that we tackled it, because in our planning we talked about it was time to talk about executive functioning.

As we wrap up this episode of Different at Work, we talked about so much. We talked about what executive functioning is and what dysregulation might look like. We talked about strategies like creating systems in an environment that works for you, padding your timing because people in general are terrible at estimating how long something will take.

Focusing on what you will do, not just what you won't do — the possibilities, because our brains can adapt. And also do the fun thing first and celebrate as you go along. And then also, for leaders in organizations, create that psychological safety and accommodations that people need to thrive, even when executive functioning issues could be a problem from time to time.

Challenge your assumptions. Don't hold executive functioning issues against people, and see that as an opportunity to provide the support that they need and create those bridges. Again, creating that support and those details that can help everyone in the workplace to be able to flow better throughout the day, but especially the folks who might struggle from time to time with executive functioning.

This has been such a good conversation. Thank you for joining us, and we hope that you keep being you, Different at Work.