Neurodivergent and Twice Exceptional (2e) Leadership Coaching

As a leader in your area, you’ve learned to put work into relationship navigation. You’ve become adept at building connections, whether that’s through helping others out, being genuinely competent at what you do or purposeful networking to expand your sphere of influence. You’re generally regarded as someone who can get things done and the relationships you’ve built have been a necessary part of that success. So why can’t you get it right with this one person?

When your only options are autistic support that doesn’t meet your level of career or neurotypical leadership training that ignores your autism completely, no wonder you feel stuck and like you’re the only one with these challenges. So in this post we’re going to talk about four challenges autistic leaders face and what to do about them.

This is a question I get asked regularly with my clients. Many are diagnosed later in life and masking has become their normal. It’s a fundamental component to how they’ve managed to build their career so far and whether to even mention their neurodivergence at work is an open question, let alone being their full authentic self. 

You’ve been given the feedback that you’re very direct and you’re not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. You probably are inclined to interpret it as good. It cuts through the noise and gets people the answers they need quickly, saving everyone time, particularly when things are going wrong. 

At the same time, you’re not quite sure that’s what the person meant. And there have been moments in meetings where the room has gone silent at your directness, rather than appreciative. Maybe the word “defensiveness” has even been used. 

Are you guilty of dismissing any achievements or accolades as unimportant or mediocre?

In this post we’ll explore why this is so common for neurodivergent and twice exceptional leaders and look at some strategies for overcoming it.

Do you put off making decisions? Feel like you need to collect every single piece of information and evaluate every possible option before choosing? Do you second guess yourself or just worry that you need to combat your internal impulsivity?

Does all of this drain your energy far too much?

Today, I’m going to give you a simple strategy to stop decision paralysis from undermining your career. 

You likely clicked on this post because you’ve been called overly self-critical. You’ve been told you’re too hard on yourself, that you’re humble, that you don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re probably an amazing person as well, you’re just not seeing it right now. And if you’re anything like me, you may well be neurodivergent as well. 

Did you know that ADHD is so prevalent in software engineers that there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to ADHD programmers? 

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.