Neurodivergent Leadership and Entrepreneurship
Today I want to talk about leadership and entrepreneurship for those of us who think a little bit differently or would like and appreciate thinking a little bit differently about it. We've all poured over books, podcasts, YouTube videos and consumed so much content around leadership, entrepreneurship and careers in general but it doesn't always work and I want to spend a little bit of time talking about why.
Firstly, this blog today is based on a YouTube video I put out. If you would prefer to watch instead of read, you can find the video here:
To start with, I want to talk about pressure. The pressure that we always have to make up for the things we aren't good at.
We're always very aware of what we're not good at. I can tell you a whole list of things that I'm not good at right now and in some ways we're kind of primed to feel that way.
The entire marketing industry is all about things we don't have, things we're not good at yet. So in order to sell us stuff people have invested so much time, money and learning into becoming really good at reminding us what we’re bad at. So of course we can end up feeling lesser, feeling not good enough. Feeling like we don't have what it takes, we don't have the knowledge. It’s all designed to make us aware of our faults.
When it comes to leadership and entrepreneurship many of us come into this space without guidance. Maybe we've been thrust into our first leadership role or maybe we're trying to prove that we have what it takes to take on that role. Maybe we've set up our first business and we have so many ideas and so much that we want to do but we actually have no idea of how to lead a business an actually get it running.
And a lot of the times we're on our own, we're spinning, we're trying to work that out ourselves and so we go online and look for all these resources and we get overwhelmed, we don't know what to take or we try and take some of it and it just doesn't work. And when it doesn't work we end up blaming ourselves. The advice was good, it must be good, it's been so well received, it's got so many good testimonials, so much good feedback. So what is it about us that means that it doesn't work?
When we’re doing this on our own, it’s often hard to find resources that we can trust to work for us
This actually really frustrates me and I want to dive into it a little bit. There are two points that I want to talk about. First is that not all good advice is good for us and I'm going to get into that a little bit later.
But the second is that yes we have weaknesses, we have things that we're not good at but they are not the reason why we are where we are today. They're not the reason why we got hired, they're not the reason why we got put into a leadership position and they're not the reason why we started a business, right? The whole reason we are where we are today is because of the things we are good at, not the things we are bad at.
I'm a big advocate for a strength based approach and actually focus my leadership coaching on this area. The reason is that we’re all working with limited time, and we’re not always putting that time to best use.
I can tell you what I'm not good at, I can give you real examples of what I'm not good at that get in the way of me running my businesses and two of those things are I'm not good at cooking - I'm a really terrible cook - and I'm not good at cleaning.
Me cooking looks nothing like this. I look a lot more frazzled and the kitchen is a mess…
The thing is, I could spend time learning to cook better. I could invest time in new cleaning techniques or cleaning products - I don't even know how I'd get good at cleaning - but the thing is, does any of that matter? Because I can outsource those tasks or if I can't outsource them I can do the minimum viable. I can just get them good enough that this doesn't suck my time away because my time needs to be spent on the things that actually matter, the things that I'm good at.
I'm a great coach, I'm a great data scientist and all of these skills that I can bring together and make my businesses grow, make my leadership grow. And that's what's important, not whether I can cook or clean.
Now you might thing these are kind of trivial examples, I'm talking about maintaining a household. I'm not talking about careers. So I'm going to take you to something else that is maybe a bit more relevant.
I'm pretty bad at marketing. I don't get marketing and I know this sounds like a self-limiting belief as if I've got a fixed mindset and I can't get better. I can get better. I completely believe I can get better. But is it worth my time to get better?
Is this where I want to spend my time? I could learn it but I find it really hard and if I'm honest.. I don't find it interesting. In fact, I find it really overwhelming. My ADHD brain really struggles with the fact that you need to post on Instagram daily and you need to create Tik Toks and you need to repurpose them for YouTube shorts and don't forget about Facebook and LinkedIn and all of that.
I can feel myself shutting down even thinking about it. Because all of that is overwhelming. I'm not interested. It seems like a lot of work. And so what do I do in this situation?
A representation of me trying to struggle through coming up with a social media plan…
Well, I can get help. There's nothing stopping me for reaching out for someone to help me. Or I can just do the minimum viable to get things out there. Or I can just choose which subset of these that I like. I don't have to spend hours and hours making up for that weakness because I've got strengths that I can focus on instead. My strengths are what's going to see my businesses thrive.
This also leads me onto my other point. I'm sure a lot of the marketing advice out there is good advice. I'm sure there's so much good stuff out there about optimising for the different platforms, making sure you get seen at the right time. All of that stuff is probably very valid and very good. But just because it's good advice doesn't mean it's good advice for me.
That's not just because I have ADHD, it could be for anyone or any piece of advice. A piece of advice can be good but not be good advice for you.
You could be getting advice from someone who is in your exact career path and they're ahead of you by five years. And they might have amazing advice for how they did it and you can see that their career path is going in the exact same direction you want to go in but it doesn't mean their advice is going to work for you.
Five years ago was before a pandemic. The environment we find ourselves in now is very different to the environment from five years ago so while some of their advice might be amazing, some of their advice might actually not work for you and that's okay.
Not everything is going to work for you. And that’s okay.
And that’s all I want to talk about today. If you’d like to explore some of the ideas with a coach, feel free to get in touch.
If this resonates with you and feel you would be interested in talking to an adhd and autism-friendly coach, feel free to get in touch. If you’re looking for more blog posts, you can find them here.
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