I’ve been going back amd forth on if I should share my diagnosis with my manager and hr. (hr really just to cover my ass not for accommodations)
My last performance reviews was that I was doing great overall but the areas that needed improvement were all traits that are difficult for me with adhd. I also feel frustrated on days where it’s hard for me to communicate clearly. I’ll try speaking more slowly to not ramble or I end up leaving out too much detail and backtracking to repeat my thought when I see the person is confused.
At the same time, I also feel like it’s too big of a risk to disclose. That it’ll either be looked at as an excuse (rather than an explanation) or just bais my manager that I’m not reliable for high priority projects even though I’ve been handling them.
Does anyone have experiences to share about if you disclosed at work and the outcome?
Having worked for people who (even if they didn’t do so intentionally) treated me differently after I told them I had ADHD, with my current job, I’m seeing how things go not disclosing my ADHD to my manager or coworkers explicitly, but mentioning what is a weakness or strength for me. This is in a work culture where the managers are managing a bunch of researchers (aka nerdy specialists 🙃), and so it is accepted that not everyone will be good at everything, and that’s ok–we can choose what of our strengths we want to build on more, choose what of our weaknesses we want to work towards growing in, and choose what weaknesses we are willing to let stay a weakness (and ask someone else to do–fortunately it’s a large workplace). So I’ve approached this by telling my manager or coworkers that I am, say, not great at estimating how long a given task will take, or telling them that I am great at organizing projects that I find especially compelling (and not as great at organizing things that I don’t find as interesting), or that sometimes I’ll bounce back and forth between tasks but I can still get things done. So far, that has been received pretty well. It’s not that I want to assume that my coworkers and manager will treat me differently if I tell them I have ADHD–I don’t know whether they have pre-conceived notions about ADHD, and if I tell them explicitly, it’s a bell I can’t un-ring. But it’s absolutely a personal choice about who to tell, under what circumstances, and how to present the info. Best wishes in whatever you decide to do! ❤️
I think framing it that way is great advice!
My colleague does not want to disclose her ADHD to the rest of our team so we did a “Guide to Me” sorta thing - it’s just a one page document that outlines how she best works and communicates, so it says things like “I prefer calls over Teams Messages” or “I like clear deadlines on my tasks/actions” or “morning meetings are my preference but I can accommodate later meetings for business needs”.
I’ve encouraged the rest of our team to do it too because I think it’s a great exercise regardless of neurotype.
I think context is also key: you work in a researching environment. My bad experience was in an operational one (processing/admin). I think the nature of the work will likely influence the level of bias/assumptions that disclosing may result in. It’s nothing easy to navigate regardless.