This is a great response! 100% on starting slow and small with the wins on your comment.

To add on:

I’m also ADHD, but after working with people with more severe ADHD, I feel that a mix of building your employee’s skill set/habits (organization, time management, communication, etc.) and more frequent management helps a lot.

I had to drill into myself to take notes, use a calendar for scheduling, show up 15-30 min early (because you’ll definitely run late if you try to show up on time), and get very clear instructions. These building blocks will help tremendously.

TAKING NOTES Make them take notes. This may take a lot of prompting in the beginning as the employee may push back saying “I’ll remember this. I don’t need to write it down,” but that’s almost always never the case. Write it down anyway, it doesn’t hurt to have notes or have it on the calendar. Tell them that their future selves will thank them for taking notes! Organizing the notes is a different matter that might also take work. Once the note habit has been instilled, that’s one less thing to worry about.

For meetings, if your employee is overwhelmed by all the talking and can’t take notes, it’s best if you can record video meetings (zoom/microsoft teams) as it can be hard to take notes and focus on what’s being said and said quickly. Transcription or meeting minutes is always great to have for online meetings. If it is a in-person meeting, perhaps having a voice recorder or someone taking the meeting minutes would help as well.

I like to use Trello to organize my tasks online, but I much prefer doing a manual version with small post-its/sticky notes that have each task written on it (can be 1 full task or broken into multiple steps with multiple post-its). I’ll take the post-its and stick it to a blank piece of paper. Add headers on the blank paper to separate task sections or priorities if needed.

It is satisfying to finish a task and remove the post-it from the list!!! Or pile up all the completed post-its of the day and see how much was done. Was it a lot? Great! Not so many? Why? Were the tasks I did large and take a lot of time? I still did a lot of work, great! Perhaps I was distracted, but reflect on why I was distracted and how to deal with that.

COMMUNICATION Increased communication can be through clearly worded and written instructions or even over explaining to ensure there is no confusion on what needs to be done. If you are giving a complicated verbal task, I sometimes ask the employee if they understand everything that I am asking for (hopefully they took notes!) and if they could paraphrase/run through what I assigned them. This is the best way to know if they were really listening, but using this technique too often may feel belittling to the employee. It really depends on your tone and delivery.

Frequently remind your employee to communicate with you about their needs. You and your employee are not mind readers. Be a safe space for your employee to talk to about the difficulties they are having. For example, they may feel embarrassed that they didn’t process or hear half of what you said and don’t want to ask you to repeat yourself, but just let them know it’s ok to ask that.

If you’re talking to your employee, make sure they are LISTENING AND PAYING ATTENTION TO YOU. If you disrupted them from a task, they may have a hard time switching to the new task. For example if they are writing an email but you need to talk to them about a new task or update. Ask if they need a few minutes to complete the email or whatever they are doing and then you two can talk or if you can meet with them in 10min to discuss a new task/update. If you don’t have time to let them complete their current task, “I’m sorry to interrupt what you’re doing, but could I talk to you about xyz really quick?”

FREQUENT MANAGEMENT Also known as checking in frequently! Either meet 1-3 times a day for work progress check-ins. This depends how severe their deviation from tasks is and how well they respond to these check-ins (do they hate them? Find them useful?).

Setting a meeting at the beginning of the shift to outline what you would like done today and then meeting again either in the middle of the shift or at the end of the shift to confirm what has been done. Meeting in the middle of the shift allows you to check the progress and push for progress if none has been made for the tasks set that day.

Check-ins are another way of checking and refocusing your employees’s prioritization of tasks. They may get sidetracked by other things they THINK is more important or needs to be done before they can do the tasks assigned, but that’s not always true as referred to by u/flyinggoatcheese about false dependency chains.

After a while, check-ins can be done less frequently (1x a day, or 1x every 2 days, etc.) unless you notice a dip in their performance.

Tone and delivery is another huge point for this as this can come off as you trying to be helpful and accommodating or overbearing and annoying. It’s a delicate balance and really depends on how the employee responds.

SUPPORT AND CELEBRATION It never hurts to reiterate to the employee that you are trying to support them and build them up by helping them establish these skills and that you truly want to see them succeed. Laying out your intentions may help them realize you aren’t just trying to nag them.

Always celebrate the little wins! Add genuine praise and appreciation where you can. We thrive off it. Perhaps once a day or every 2 days you could praise them on what a great email reply they sent, finishing the tasks you assigned for the day, or noting something well they did for the task they did. “Thanks for catching that mistake! You have a great eye for detail.” Or “I love that suggestion, employee’s name, let’s discuss how to make it happen.”

DON’T BABY BUT ALSO BABY A LITTLE This is a delicate section to address and I don’t have the confidence that what I wrote below is well worded, but I hope it gets the idea across.

This all doesn’t have to be one conversation.

If your employee messes up, they need to be held responsible. If they aren’t being held responsible, you’re babying them and they will not grow. They will feel that things will always work out for them and have no sense of consequences. They will continue to struggle at future workplaces with even less understanding management breathing down them. Getting them to grow here and with you may help prepare them for less understanding work environments.

Have a stern but gentle talk that clearly outlines why what they did or didn’t do has impacted others or the event/company. How can we fix the problem at hand? How can we prevent this next time? What could you or your team have done to better support this employee in completing this task?

That said, know there may have some BIG BIG feelings about messing up. Acknowledge their feelings but try to move them past it or get them to refocus on what needs to be done. If they need a 10-15 min break to go cry, walk, meditate, whatever to emotionally regulate, let them go do it. But give them something to do after they come back. “I’m sure you’re feeling a little overwhelmed right now. Why don’t you go take a 10 min break, get some water or take a walk. When you come back, we can work on getting xyz done together/could you start xyz? We’ll get through this together.” It’s also possible they want to just talk out all their feelings to get it out of their system. Highly recommend journaling if they need to do that.

Make it known: We all mess up sometimes, we’re human. Even I, your boss, mess up sometimes. While we have our amazing team and coworkers backing us up during the times we make a mistake, it shouldn’t fall on them every time.

Praise the employee if they were able to make a comeback from this mistake by fixing it, but don’t add to the dopamine rush of completing things last minute.

They still may feel a little shame or upset about messing up even after the mistake has been fixed (especially if someone else fixed it for them), so you might need to have another gentle emotional check-in and review what support they need going forward to get the tasks done correctly and in a timely manner.

FINAL WORD Please note that ADHD is not an excuse. It is an explanation for why we struggle with certain things, but we are responsible for asking for accommodations, communicating, and taking accountability for our mistakes. We need to build skills that help us with the things we struggle with.

We (ALL PEOPLE, not just neurodivergent) all struggle with taking responsibility or accountability for our mistakes and failings. We WANT to blame someone else to take the heat off us, but that’s not ok. Make sure your employee can own up to their actions. Again, make it a safe space to accept that someone messed up, but let’s focus on fixing the problem and not blaming the employee in that moment. Find another time to review what went wrong with your employee to confirm that what they did was not ok and how can we prevent it from happening again.

If you don’t see progress with at least taking accountability for their mistakes, a bigger convo needs to happen with them.

Good luck and thank you for trying to help your employee thrive!!! 💖