ADHD

I think understanding people goes a long way toward working cohesively and maintaining good relationships with them. Two books that I found really helpful are How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and It's Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff.

A few cliff notes from my experience:

• People are often driven by their emotions at the expense of logic. Be quick to forgive this. We're all that way sometimes. Part of the human condition.

• Use knowledge of the former to your advantage. People like to be trusted and given ownership of their job. Focus on clearing obstacles and enabling your team rather than micromanaging their work. If they learn to trust you, they will be much more prone to come to you for help before things have gotten out of control.

• Balance criticism with praise. You need the job done right but your main goal is to help your team succeed. Their success is your success. Have hard conversations with them when necessary. Be direct but be kind. Have these conversations in private. As much as people need to know when they're not performing as expected, they also need to know when they are. And, I would argue that they need this more. When someone does something right, tell them and mean it. It's ok and sometimes even good to do this publicly. "John, that feature you implemented was great and your code quality was top notch. Thanks for doing that." It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

• Take responsibility for your own failures. You're not perfect. None of us are. You will earn a lot of respect by being willing to own your mistakes, not to mention it shows you're a person with integrity and at the end of the day, it's worth more to know you can sleep at night because you did the right thing even if was hard.

Good luck! I hope this helps.

I will usually just acknowledge it without giving an explanation. People will almost always accept that. Examples.

Oh I think I just got carried away there. Let's take a step back. Do you have any questions?

Hey I think I got a bit too excited about the project for a sec. I hope that wasn't too much.

It's usually fine and takes the awkwardness out of the situation if there was any. And it shows people you realized what was going on. That's usually all they need to hear. No apology and no justifications or explanations needed. I found those would often just make it worse rather than better. Just be brief and move on. The longer you stay in the topic of an awkward situation the more it will stay awkward.

Saw this post on 'All'. I do not have ADHD, but I believe I work with someone who does. I don't want to take over ops question, but perhaps add an additional question/angle that could be helpful:

• This individual is notorious at the company for overwhelming people with work requests and long list of "thoughts" about how to do things at the company that tend to spider web into every problem the company has.
• People who have tried to fulfill his requests in the past always try to start small and solve a chunk at a time, but he gets upset and says they all need to be worked on simultaneously or we'll have nothing in the end.
• He has alot of industry knowledge so our executives love him. But he ends up getting people fired because they can't help him complete his list of demands.
• I just got promoted to a position where I'm now next in line to deal with him.

How should I work with him? It's just not feasible to work on everything he wants at once. And he overwhelms me daily with long documents and emails full of random thoughts. I worry I'll be next on the chopping block if I don't figure out a way to work with him.

I’m very successful in what I do in IT and interact with many business users. They just come to accept that when I go on a technical jargon tangent, I will rehash it for them in layman’s terms once I speak the incomprehensible version which gives me the opportunity to get my thoughts in order. I am slowly learning to do that part in my head and to know my audience. I found that reading books on philosophy, politics, communication, and time management have all helped me to make my discussions with other it’s a strategic game where I know that I have to say things properly to accomplish the goal. If you realize that why you are opening your mouth is to accomplish a specific objective, then you can target just that objective and bulletpoints you other thoughts in notes for later. I’ve gone as far as to state allowed what I needed to and sent my bulletpoints soon after as either meeting notes or in the meeting chat if on zoom.

For me, I've just accepted I may not be everyone's cup of tea. And that's fine. That doesn't make me any less valuable.

For me the risks are a lot higher since I've been looking nonstop for work (in software) for the past 2-3 years. I realize I do have a strong personality: I love to get engaged in a project and really own it. Whenever I feel a potential employer/client trying to play it "cool," I'll often try to engage with them more and try to provide more value for them.

I do try to temper this. But at the end of the day I realize that while most people may not want someone engaged with their team, there are some companies that are desperate for people like me. And I just need to find out who they are...it just might take a while.