When I speak to managers about ADHD in the workplace, I often hear the same concern: "I don't want to get it wrong." There's anxiety about saying the wrong thing, making assumptions, or accidentally making things worse. This anxiety is understandable, but it also reveals something important. Most managers care about their team members and want to support them well. The challenge is that ADHD remains poorly understood, even as awareness increases.
Managers occupy an unusual position. You're responsible for team performance and outcomes, but you're also the person employees interact with daily. Company policies might exist on paper, but you're the one who decides how they're actually applied. Your reactions, your flexibility, your willingness to listen: these matter more than most official accommodation processes.
This isn't an instruction manual. I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do in every situation, because every person with ADHD is different, every team is different, and every workplace is different. What I can offer is perspective on what it's like from the employee's side, what tends to help, what tends to make things harder, and why.
Key insights
- Your role matters most. Manager support is the single most significant factor in workplace success for employees with ADHD, more than HR policies or formal accommodations.
- Many won't disclose. Fear of judgement and past experiences mean most employees with ADHD won't tell you. Create an environment where disclosure feels safe and where flexible practices benefit everyone.
- It's not about effort. ADHD affects executive functions (planning, time perception, attention regulation). Someone struggling isn't being lazy; their brain processes things differently. Standard productivity advice often makes things worse.
- "Strengths" are complicated. Hyperfocus isn't a superpower; it's dysregulation. "Thriving under pressure" is crisis mode, not sustainable performance. Focus on individual capabilities, not mythical ADHD superpowers.
- Small shifts, significant impact. Clarity about outcomes (not rigid processes), written follow-ups, and flexibility in how work gets done often help everyone on your team.
- Equity, not equality. Different people need different things to perform at their best. That's not special treatment; that's effective management.
- Imperfect support is still support. You'll get things wrong. What matters is being willing to listen, adjust, and keep communicating.
Why Your Role Matters
Research consistently shows that direct manager support is the single most significant factor in workplace success for employees with ADHD. Not HR policies, not formal accommodations, not even the nature of the work itself. You.
This creates both opportunity and responsibility. A supportive manager can transform someone's work experience. An unsupportive one, even unintentionally, can make everything harder.
The real impact is in the daily interactions: whether someone feels they can be honest about struggles, whether they're constantly masking and exhausted, whether they believe their contributions are valued despite the ways they're different.
What ADHD Can Actually Look Like at Work
The stereotypes and topes persist: hyperactive children who can't sit still, people who just need to try harder, employees who don't care enough to focus. None of these reflect the reality of adult ADHD in professional settings.
What you might actually see:
- An employee who produces brilliant work but struggles with deadlines, not because they don't care, but because their perception of time doesn't match reality. Someone who contributes exceptional insights but zones out in longer meetings. A team member who thrives in crisis situations but struggles enormously with routine administrative tasks.
- ADHD affects executive functions: the brain's management systems for planning, organisation, time perception, emotional regulation, and sustained attention. These are precisely the skills most workplaces assume everyone possesses equally.
- Here's what that actually means in practice. Imagine being told to focus on a boring task. You can probably do it, even if you don't enjoy it. For someone with ADHD, it's not about enjoyment or motivation. The brain literally struggles to allocate attention to things that aren't immediately interesting or urgent. It's not a choice. It's like trying to see without your glasses on: you can try harder, but trying harder doesn't fix the underlying issue.
- This matters because so many workplace frustrations stem from misunderstanding this fundamental point. When an employee with ADHD struggles with something, the assumption is often that they're not trying hard enough, don't care enough, or need better time management tips. In reality, they're often working twice as hard as colleagues to achieve the same result, and standard productivity advice makes things worse, not better. Spewing more "knowledge" on how they can improve their performance is a complete waste of time and misses the point entirely.
The Disclosure Dilemma
Many employees with ADHD won't tell you they have it. This can present what feels like an impossible situation: how do you support someone when you don't know they need support?
The reasons for not disclosing are complex and valid. Many adults with ADHD carry years of shame: being told they're lazy, careless, unreliable, or just not trying hard enough. By the time they reach a professional environment, they've learned to hide their struggles. Disclosing feels risky. Will they be seen as less capable? Will every mistake now be attributed to their ADHD rather than normal human error? Will they lose opportunities for advancement?
Even when workplace cultures claim to be inclusive and supportive, employees rarely see evidence of what happens after someone discloses. Without seeing positive examples, why would they take the risk?
Also, most employee rights advocate groups and leading voices in the ADHD world advise against disclosure, unless the person is comfortable the company is genuinely going to be supportive or it becomes necessary due to proceedures such as performance improvement processes.
This puts you in a difficult position. You can't support someone specifically for their ADHD if you don't know about it. But you can create an environment where disclosure feels less risky, and where general practices already accommodate different working styles.
What makes disclosure safer isn't grand gestures or official policies. It's the small, repeated signals that differences are okay. How you respond when someone makes a mistake. Whether you value outcomes over rigid adherence to processes. Whether you're willing to have honest conversations about what someone needs to do their best work. Whether you demonstrate flexibility for everyone, not just select people.
If someone does choose to tell you they have ADHD, your immediate response matters enormously. There's no perfect script, but some responses are more helpful than others. Thanking them for trusting you with the information works well. Asking what it means for how you work together shows you're taking it seriously. Asking what support would be helpful puts them in the expert position about their own needs.
What doesn't help: "Really? You don't seem like you have ADHD" (this dismisses their experience). "Everyone's a bit ADHD sometimes" (this minimises a genuine condition). Immediately sharing stories about your nephew or friend with ADHD (everyone's experience is different, and this makes it about you rather than them).
When Communication Gets Complicated
One area where ADHD often creates friction is communication. Not because employees with ADHD can't communicate, but because the typical workplace communication style doesn't work well for how their brains process information.
Long verbal discussions without written follow-up mean details get lost. Not because the person wasn't listening or doesn't care, but because working memory challenges make it difficult to hold multiple pieces of information simultaneously. They were paying attention in the meeting, but by the time they're back at their desk, crucial details have slipped away.
Vague instructions create anxiety and paralysis. "Just figure it out" or "you know what I mean" might work for some employees, but for someone with ADHD, it can lead to overthinking, second-guessing, and ultimately not starting because they're unsure what's actually wanted.
Conversely, overly detailed process instructions can also be problematic. Pages of documentation about exactly how something must be done, when what's actually needed is just the outcome. The employee gets lost in trying to follow the process precisely and loses sight of what they're trying to achieve. If you're in tech, while JIRA might make perfect sense to operations type project leads and most people who use the system to know what to work on, such a system can completely overwhelm someone with ADHD, making it hard to start the day, let alone get through it. It's always worth speaking directly with someone with ADHD and asking them how they would prefer to know what they should be working on, not assuming the tools you use will make sense to them.
There's no perfect formula here, but generally, what helps is clarity about the outcome and deadline, flexibility about the method of getting there, and written confirmation of key points. This isn't about lowering standards or hand-holding. It's about removing unnecessary barriers to someone doing the work you've actually asked them to do.
The Meeting Problem
Meetings are exhausting for many people, but they're particularly challenging for those with ADHD. Sustained attention in a passive role (listening to others talk) requires significant mental effort. Add in the expectation to look engaged, contribute at appropriate moments, and remember everything discussed, and it becomes genuinely draining.
Some meetings are essential. Others are status updates that could be emails, or discussions that only require three people but include twelve. When someone with ADHD asks whether they truly need to attend a meeting, it's worth actually considering the question rather than defaulting to "everyone needs to be there."
When meetings are necessary, small adjustments can make them more productive for everyone. Agendas shared in advance allow people to prepare their thoughts. Starting with the most important items means crucial decisions happen when everyone's still fresh. Regular breaks in longer meetings help people reset. Following up with written summaries ensures nothing gets lost.
Some managers worry that allowing people to skip meetings or accommodating different attention spans creates unfairness. But consider: is it fairer to require everyone's physical presence regardless of whether it's productive, or to focus on ensuring everyone has the information they need and can contribute effectively?
Time, Deadlines, and the Reality of Executive Function Challenges
Time perception difficulties are one of the most misunderstood aspects of ADHD, even by those with the condition, at least not well enough to make sense of what to do. It's not about being disorganised or needing to use a calendar better. The brain's internal sense of time passing is objectively very different to neurotypical people and doesn't work reliably.
This shows up in ways that can be incredibly frustrating: chronic lateness despite genuine efforts to be on time, underestimating how long tasks will take, missing deadlines that seemed ages away and suddenly aren't. From the outside, it looks like poor planning or not caring. From the inside, it's a constant battle with a brain that experiences time in bizarre, inconsistent ways.
What helps isn't just "use a timer" or "start earlier." Those strategies can help, but they're working against a fundamental challenge. What tends to work better is external structure: interim milestones on longer projects, regular check-in points built into timelines, reminders that don't feel infantilising, simply talking.
The balance here is tricky. Too much external structure and you're micromanaging, removing autonomy, and creating resentment. Too little, and someone might genuinely lose track of where they are with something. The right level varies by person and by project. This is why conversations matter: what does this particular person need for this particular project?
When deadlines are missed despite support, it's worth examining why before assuming the person isn't trying. Is the deadline genuinely realistic? Are there too many competing priorities? Is the task itself a poor fit for the person's capabilities? Sometimes the issue isn't the deadline or the person: it's the mismatch between what's being asked and what someone can sustainably deliver.
When Performance Becomes a Problem
ADHD isn't a free pass for poor performance. Having ADHD doesn't mean standards should disappear or that feedback shouldn't be given. But it does mean that the usual approach to performance management might not be effective.
Standard performance improvement often focuses on what someone isn't doing well and tells them to do it better. For someone with ADHD, this rarely works. They already know what they're not doing well. They're probably hyperaware of every mistake, every missed deadline, every way they're not measuring up. Telling them to simply do better doesn't address the underlying barriers.
More useful is understanding what's actually getting in the way. Is it a capability issue (they genuinely can't do something), a working style mismatch (they can do it but not the way it's being asked), or an environmental barrier (open plan office making concentration impossible)? Each of these requires a different response.
Sometimes, despite best efforts on both sides, the role genuinely isn't a good fit. A position that's 80% routine administrative work is going to be incredibly difficult for most people with ADHD, regardless of support. That's not a failure on anyone's part. It's worth considering whether a different role might work better rather than forcing a square peg into a round hole.
The Complexity of "ADHD Strengths"
There's a popular narrative that some with ADHD like to extol as a matter of fact: ADHD is some superpower that comes with special strengths: creativity, ability to hyperfocus, thriving under pressure. Yes, people with ADHD often do indeed excel in certain roles and environments and can get a lot done when something is novel or a deadline is close, but leaning into this narrative is problematic for several reasons.
First, not everyone (only a small percentage) of people with ADHD see these traits as positive, some may. ADHD presents differently in different people, and assuming that there are magical and universal "ADHD strengths" sets up unrealistic expectations. If you have ADHD but aren't particularly creative, are you doing ADHD wrong? As a coach, I often have this discussion with people who feel very invalidated and frustratred why they can't do what others so confidently exclaim is simply a matter of a mindset change on LinkedIn.
Second, many of the supposed "strengths" are actually coping mechanisms or signs of dysregulation. Take hyperfocus. Yes, people with ADHD can sometimes become intensely absorbed in tasks and produce exceptional work. But hyperfocus isn't a controlled superpower you can turn on at will, if anything, most would prefer not to rely on it to get things done. It's what happens when the brain's regulation systems fail and someone becomes stuck in something, often to the detriment of everything else. They might miss meals, forget other commitments, and crash afterwards which can last for days, ruminating with thoughts of "why does it always have to come to this to get things done, why can't I do things on time". For most people, this was of activating to things at the last minute is very much not seen as a strength, but a coping mechanism. It's just another example of extreme all or nothing dysregulation. Is it really okay or healthy to lock yourself into tunnel vision for 10 hours without talking to anyone, eating or drinking water, fueled by intense adrelaline as you pull of an impossible amount of work at the last minute?
Some with ADHD only see their ADHD as a positive and that should be celebrated, bust most do not. This doesn't mean people with ADHD don't bring valuable contributions. They do. But framing ADHD itself as a gift or superpower is unhelpful. It minimises the genuine challenges while creating pressure to demonstrate special abilities that may not exist. From a legal perspective, it's also simply not the pragmatic choice to assume this position of staff who might reprt to you when the law says something else entirely.
What can really actually help is recognising that people with ADHD, like all employees, have individual strengths and weaknesses. Some of those might relate to ADHD, but many don't. Creating opportunities for people to use their actual strengths (whatever they are) whilst providing support for genuine challenges is better than looking for mythical "ADHD superpowers."
Team Dynamics and the Fairness Question
A common concern: won't accommodating one person create resentment among others?
Possibly, BUT often this resentment comes from how accommodations are implemented rather than the accommodations themselves. If one person gets flexibility and grace while others are held to rigid standards, that breeds resentment. If someone's needs are accommodated while others' needs are dismissed, people notice.
The answer isn't refusing to accommodate anyone. It's recognising that different people need different things to perform at their best, and being willing to have those conversations with everyone, not just people with disclosed conditions.
This is equity versus equality. Equality is giving everyone the same thing. Equity is giving everyone what they need. Most people understand this distinction when it's explained well, particularly when they see that their own needs are also being considered.
Many organisations find that bringing in external facilitators to run ADHD awareness training sessions helps normalise these conversations and gives the entire team a shared understanding."
That said, transparency has limits. You don't need to explain to the entire team why someone has specific accommodations, in fact, that could betray the trust and privacy of that employee. That's between you and the individual. What you can do is normalise flexible working practices, different communication styles, and outcomes-focused rather than process-focused management. When these become standard practice, individual accommodations stop standing out as "special treatment."
What You're Not Responsible For
It's worth naming what's not your responsibility. You're not expected to guess if someone has ADHD. You're not required to become an ADHD expert. You're not responsible for fixing all the challenges someone faces.
Your role is creating an environment where someone can do their best work, having honest conversations about what that requires, and being willing to consider different approaches when the standard way isn't working.
If you're unsure about something, it's okay to say so. "I want to support you, but I'm not sure what would actually help. Can we work this out together?" is a reasonable response. So is involving HR or occupational health when you need guidance.
Some situations are genuinely complex. An employee's needs might conflict with business requirements in ways that aren't easily resolved. Someone might need support that's beyond what the organisation can reasonably provide. These situations require honest conversations, not false promises or assumptions that everything can be easily fixed. External support such as professional ADHD coaching can be valuable, taking pressure off managers whilst giving employees specialized support.
Building Your Own Understanding
You don't need to become an ADHD specialist, but building some understanding helps. Not because you need to understand every aspect of the condition, but because assumptions and stereotypes often create unnecessary barriers.
Reading and learning from reputable sources helps. So does listening to adults with ADHD describe their experiences. Professional training can be valuable: many organisations now bring in guest speakers to educate managers and teams about ADHD and other neurodevelopmental conditions.
What's most important is approaching individual employees with curiosity rather than assumptions. Someone's ADHD experience might not match what you've read or heard. They're the expert on their own needs. Your role is listening and responding, not applying a standard template.
Legal Responsibilities and Reality
In Ireland, the UK, and across much of Europe, ADHD is recognised as a disability under equality legislation. This creates legal responsibilities around reasonable adjustments and non-discrimination.
What counts as "reasonable" varies by context, but most adjustments cost little or nothing: flexible working hours, allowing different communication methods, focusing on outcomes rather than rigid processes. These are things many organisations already offer to all employees.
Formal accommodation processes exist, and sometimes they're necessary. But often, informal flexibility works better. A conversation that results in small adjustments doesn't require extensive documentation or official approval processes. It's just responsive management.
That said, if a situation becomes contentious or formal, documentation matters. Record conversations about support, what was agreed, and outcomes. This protects both you and the employee.
What Actually Helps
Rather than prescriptive lists of "do this, not that," what seems to help most is a shift in perspective. From seeing ADHD as a deficit that needs fixing, to seeing it as a different way of functioning that requires different support.
From expecting everyone to work the same way, to recognising that flexibility in methods (whilst maintaining standards for outcomes) often improves performance.
From assuming that struggle means lack of effort or care, to understanding that someone might be working incredibly hard whilst still struggling with things others find straightforward.
From treating accommodations as special favours, to recognising them as removing unnecessary barriers that were never essential in the first place.
This doesn't mean abandoning standards or accepting poor performance. It means questioning whether the way something has always been done is actually the only way it can be done, and being willing to consider alternatives when they might work better.
The Reality of Imperfect Support
You'll probably get some things wrong. You'll misunderstand something, make an assumption that doesn't apply, or miss signs that someone needs support. That's inevitable.
What matters more than being perfect is being willing to learn, adjust, and keep communicating. When you get something wrong, acknowledging it and being willing to try differently matters more than getting it right the first time.
Supporting employees with ADHD isn't a checklist to complete or a problem to solve once and for all. It's an ongoing process of communication, adjustment, and mutual understanding. That's true of managing humans generally, but it's particularly visible when managing someone whose brain works differently than expected.
The employees with ADHD on your team are working hard, often much harder and later into the evenings than you realise, to navigate workplaces not designed with them in mind. When you're willing to meet them halfway, to question assumptions about how things "should" be done, and to focus on what actually matters rather than rigid adherence to standard processes, you create space for them to contribute the work they're genuinely capable of.
That's what good management looks like, ADHD or otherwise. Different people need different things. Your willingness to recognise and respond to that makes all the difference.
