Neurodivergent Leadership Coaching

According to the Institute of Engineering and Technology survey, nineteen percent of their volunteer community identified as definitely or possibly neurodivergent. In a Stack Overflow blog from 2023, they point out that there’s even enough of an overlap between people with ADHD and coders that there’s an entire subreddit dedicated to ADHD programmers with over 65,000 members. 

So ADHD is a common presence in software engineering, but what could be causing this love affair between ADHD and programming? Let’s dig in. 

Many neurodivergent professionals don’t plan to become leaders. It often happens by accident. They stumble into it when excelling in their work and earning trust suddenly turns into telling people what to do, often without clear communication that that’s what they’re meant to do, and certainly without instructions of how to do it. 

One thing I’ve learned in my years of coaching is just how powerful being seen is. So when I watched the show Severance I was stunned by just how much it made me feel validated.

Support for ADHD is incredibly lacking. Medication often seems to be the only thing available despite psychosocial treatments being recommended alongside medication for ADHD. So what actually are these psychosocial treatments and are they any good?

There’s a huge body of research out there that says ADHDers just aren’t good at making decisions compared to the general populus. We’re more likely to gamble, to abuse substances, to participate in risky sexual behaviour. In this context it can seem like we’re worse leadership candidates due to our suboptimal decision making but in reality, these generalisations miss a huge amount of nuance and even though on average we might be worse decision makers in some contexts, in others it’s a completely different story. So let’s dive in.

You’re smart, but you don’t always feel like it. You feel things deeply and sometimes you really struggle with impostor syndrome. Above all, you clicked on this post because, quite frankly, the title is incredibly interesting and you’re ready to do some deep thinking. Did I get you?

The amount of times people have told me to “just relax”, when I’m stressed, when my cello technique isn’t correct, all sorts of situations throughout life. I’ve always nodded to them because it sounds like reasonable advice, like the right thing to do in this situation. But really I have a secret: I don’t actually know what relaxing is and have no idea how to do it!!

Simone Biles, Noah Lyles, Michael Phelps, Adam Peatty, Louis Smith, Nicola Adams. What do all these people have in common? If you said Olympic athletes, you’re not wrong but that’s not the answer I’m looking for. What’s that? You guessed it. They all have ADHD.

Have you been told that it’s about time you settled down? That the job changes you’re making will make you unemployable? That you need to pick something and stick to it already or you’ll never get anywhere in life? I’m here today to tell you that all of that is wrong.

With more and more celebrities, business leaders and entrepreneurs revealing ADHD diagnoses in recent years, I’d like to think the days of people thinking ADHD is some terrible life sentence that means you will never be successful at anything are long behind us, but in case not, today I’m going to talk about positive traits that make ADHD adults successful. 

Everything was going okay, not easy, but okay. And then suddenly it wasn’t. You went from coping to not coping and somewhere along the line received an ADHD diagnosis, or started exploring on your own. Sound familiar?

Periods aren’t fun for any of us, especially if you have ADHD or autism. But if you’re someone whose emotions go especially haywire, then there might actually be something even more to it.

Were you someone who actually kind of liked school and maybe even found it fairly easy? Did you enjoy the challenge of achieving high grades and feel satisfaction from learning subjects that interest you? Did you feel pretty confident until either university or the working world suddenly hit? If so, this post might be for you.

Yo Samdy Sam is a YouTuber known for videos exploring autism and neurodivergence in general and has helped many people on their journey discovering their autism. She also helps neurodivergent business owners, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs to build their businesses in a way that works with their brains. As part of this, Sam recently put on a three day retreat for ADHD and autistic entrepreneurs. So how was it? Let’s find out.

Periods suck. The negative parts of ADHD suck. When you add those together what do you get? Even bigger suck.

Do you ever feel like your ADHD symptoms swing wildly week to week? Do you find yourself SUPER emotionally dysregulated at certain points of your cycle, or just losing the ability to executive function completely? Today we’re going to look at the cutting edge research in the world of ADHD and periods.

On days when executive function is running low it’s so hard to get ourselves to do the things that we need, or the things that we want to do. What if there was a way to make the amount of executive function we have every day even higher?

The internet is full of tips, tricks and strategies to help us executive function better on a bad day. But what if there was a way to increase our baseline for executive function?

There are so many outdated concepts that we need to talk about when it comes to neurodivergence in the workplace and it’s time that we started to dismantle those myths.

When we have ADHD we're SO good at putting ourselves down and feeling negative about ourselves. But by spending all our time making the things we’re not good at less bad, we’re missing out on using what we are amazing at and not only is it more fun to work on what we’re good at, but it’s also where we can have the most success.

We know people with ADHD are often excited by entrepreneurship and take up the challenge at a higher rate than people without it, but our ADHD symptoms can really be a mixed bag. So what makes some of us more likely to succeed than others?

People who have ADHD tend to have this draw towards entrepreneurship and are much more interested in taking on start up risks than the non-ADHD population. But are we actually any good at being entrepreneurs? Let’s dive in.

Have you ever thought of turning your hobby into your career? Or found a new hyperfixation that would work amazingly as a business? Do you find yourself coming up with entrepreneurial ideas on a regular basis? Today we’re looking at the combination of entrepreneurship and ADHD.

What if there were evolutionary circumstances under which having ADHD presented a distinct advantage? A recent study has found one of them, and we’re going to take a look at it today.

So we know that ADHD has been around for a long time and that rates of diagnosis are increasing. Some statistics are even suggesting we make up as much as 10% of the population. This begs the question: Why are rates of ADHD so high?

Look I get it, ADHD can be super hard and I have been fighting my ADHD so hard to get this post made in particular. But it can also help our careers in huge ways. Let’s talk about how.

Those of us with ADHD or autism get burnt out so regularly by our jobs that many of us become or consider becoming self-employed just so we can work in a way that actually works for us. But that doesn’t have to be the only option.

Why are those of us with ADHD and Autism just so burnt out all of the time?

For some of us, our neurodivergence is a super power that we can use to our advantage to achieve things that others never have done. For others it’s crippling and stops us from moving forward with every day life. How can neurodivergence be so disabling for one group of people and not at all for others? Let’s find out.

Neurodivergence is a collective term used for people who have a condition like ADHD, Autism, Tourette’s Syndrome, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia and other similar conditions. Neurotypical is someone who’s not neurodivergent. They’re.. I guess typical? It’s in the name. So we know they’re not neurodivergent. But what does that actually mean?