4: ADHD dopamine seeking... and how it impacts on your support teams!

ADHD dopamine seeking and how that impacts working with support teams!

Do you get anxiety working with people that you hire to support you in your business?

I used to as well, until I created a communication framework to prevent stress triggers.

And I'm going to tell you how you can use it in your business as well.

So I want to tell you the story today of the breakdown I had when I started working with my online business manager, who's also my fractional COO, Rhi Pearce. I love her to death.

We work together really well now, but when we started working together, we started as I was launching a program, the BYOB program. And I don't know how familiar my listeners are with online business managers and fractional COOs.

Typically, they come in and build the foundation out of your business before you do a launch. They don't come in mid launch... but Rhi was a good sport she jumped right in, helped me get everything organized.

I found that our meetings became really, really triggering for me, and it took me kind of breaking down and crying to realize what was going on for me.

Now, for folks with ADHD, we're very used to people nagging us and telling us we're behind and where's this thing? And you were supposed to get that done last week. Where is it?

And this is something that gets to us throughout our school years, in our early 20s, throughout our lives, in our relationships. I remember my mom getting really upset with me when I was falling behind in my school work.

And then, of course, you have to go to school, and your teachers are all freaked out that you're not doing your homework, and everyone's constantly asking you, where's this? Where is this? Where is this?

And what happens to you as an ADHD person when you complete a task... that's what you get dopamine from, right?

We don't have a lack of attention.

We have a lack of dopamine.

It's one of the theories of ADHD. And so when we finish stuff, we get a little drip of dopamine.

Now, if we're already behind on that thing, say you had to write a two page paper on the movie The Lion King. We'll just make it simple... and you haven't done it for a week. Now, completing something that you've already failed at actually doesn't give you the same amount of dopamine as it would if it were just a fresh task. So what I was finding in my work with this new support system that I had hired Rhi, who was absolutely incredible....

So when I hired Rhi, one of the things that she needed to help me with is holding me accountable to producing a bunch of videos for the BYOB program, putting together a bunch of copy, finalizing the landing page, so on and so forth.

And what I found was I would get to these calls with her and she would go down the list of everything that I needed to get to her so that she could do her job. It wasn't like she was just being mean and trying to snap the whip or whatever.

She genuinely needed these things so that she could do her half of the work. And what I found happened for me in those calls is I would get immensely triggered, as if I was back in 6th grade, not having done a worksheet for math class, not having done a paper for my reading class, not having done the reading for my science class, and having my teachers and my parents both breathing down my neck asking, after all this work.

And so I literally fell apart. In one of our meetings, I started crying, had this whole moment. We figured out that what really needed to happen in our relationship was there needed to be a format for her to be able to support me.

And without this format, really, I wouldn't be able to utilize her support. And the reason I'm sharing this today is because I see a lot of ADHD-preneurs struggle to scale their businesses. Because when they do hire people who are good at what they do and are able to support them in the right ways, this is what happens.

These people who come into your business to do a task, they are reliant on you to provide certain things to them so that they can do that task. And when they ask after it in the wrong way, the ADHD-preneur gets super triggered and gets thrown back to these moments where they were already failing as a child.

So what I've designed with my team, that works for me, and of course, if you're hiring people, if you have people working for you and you're finding this is happening for you, you want to design this with them based on what works for you.

But what I find works for me is that my team, whenever they ask about something, they have to very clearly state that there is no rush for me to get it done.

Even though it is my business and the things that I come up with and the deadlines that I'm setting, I need them to tell me that there's no rush for me to get it done. I need for them to tell me that they're not pressuring me to get it done.

So how this will look is Rhi will come into a call with me, she'll have a list of things that she needs to check in on, and she'll say, okay, cool. So there's no rush on any of these things. There's no pressure to get them done by a certain time, but I just want to check in and see where you're at with them.

And then she'll go through and she'll ask about one and she'll ask about two, and then she'll reiterate, there's no rush on the rest. There's no pressure to get this done by any point, but where are you with this and this and this? And it's really the only way I can give her a progress report on what I'm up to without getting super triggered. It's also the only way that I can get things done and get the right dopamine hit.

 So those of us with ADHD, we have a shortage of dopamine every day. So we wake up and we don't have as much dopamine as other people would have in their systems. And dopamine is that hormone that really helps you get that get up and go, right? So what helps is getting little things done throughout your morning and giving yourself credit for them.

So literally, I have a printed out list of things that I like to do every single morning. And it's drinking coffee and it's taking my dog out to pee, and it's feeding my dog and it's having breakfast and it's brushing my teeth and it's taking a shower. And literally, as I go through my morning, I have it on my little kitchen island. And as I walk past it, I check the list and I cross off the things that I've already done and these simple little things that I would be doing really anyway, the fact that I'm giving myself credit for having accomplished them is giving my brain that little drip of dopamine. That little drip of dopamine helps me do harder and harder tasks throughout the day until I'm too tired to do anything.

So one of the pieces of advice that neurotypicals love to give us is do the hardest task of the day first. Eat that frog. You know, do the thing that is the most challenging for you so you can just get it out of the way. This is one of the most soul crushing pieces of advice that neurodiverse people get because when we hear that, we hear, wow, well, I'm just going to fail at that every day because I can't do the hardest thing first.

I don't have enough dopamine in my system to get it done first.

And so what we can do is flip that advice on its head and give ourselves some simple things that builds up enough dopamine so that we can do a medium hard task late morning and then probably tackle that hardest task right after lunch. Which by the way, is a great way to trick yourself to remember to eat lunch. Because the lunch will then become a delay tactic of doing the really hard, challenging thing that you have on your list. Which, you know, us, we love our delay tactics.

Okay, so this is complicated. I'm just going to talk you through what I do. So I wake up, I immediately give my dog a treat. I turn my coffee on, I take my dog out to pee, I come back and I feed her breakfast. I also think, oh well, she's eating, I should probably eat too. So I make myself some breakfast. Sometimes I even remember to eat the breakfast after I cook it. And all the while as I'm walking through my apartment, I'm walking past my kitchen island and I'm looking at this little list that I've printed out and I have check mark boxes which I typically don't use because I really like crossing things off. So as I'm going through my morning and I'm getting my typical morning stuff done, including brushing my teeth, I am going through and I'm just scratching them off. And each time I cross something off of this list, I get a little hit of dopamine, which helps me with that next task that I'm going to have to do as I start my workday. And typically when I start my workday, my favorite task to cross off first is writing something to post to LinkedIn, which helps me get that daily visibility in my network.

There are two things that I want you to take away from this episode.

First and foremost, I want you to start giving yourself credit for all the little things, even the life sh&t that you do throughout your morning, throughout the first half of your day. It will immensely help you build up enough dopamine to be able to do harder and more challenging things later in the day.

And secondly, I want you to design with your teams as you're growing them, as you're bringing new people in to support you, how they can check in with you and hold you accountable in a way that will not trigger your inner child who is sick and tired and freaked out by big scary adults asking them where the f*%k that thing is.

Because when you get kicked into that state, you stop being a CEO, you stop being a business owner and you go back into that mind state of being an employee, of being a troubled school kid, of being a bad little boy or girl.

And that's not where you make your best business decisions. And I want you in the mindset of making your best business decisions. I want you getting all the sport you need from your employees, from anyone that you have hired in your business so that you can get the most done.

And remember, even if they're asking questions that previous authority figures used to ask you, they are not the authority figure here. You are. You own this business. You get to determine what the deadlines are. You get to determine when you want to get things done.

And sure, you can absolutely set idealized dates of how that's supposed to happen. But you and I both know that the idealized dates are never realistic and it's far better for you to give yourself the dopamine hit by just moving the date and not saying, oh well, I've already failed at this, it's already late, it doesn't really matter now, but I'm going to do it anyway.

So one of the reasons that people generally hire a coach is; A, they need to learn what to do next to reach their goals, B, they need some accountability. Which is essentially what I'm talking about and a few other reasons. But let me explain how I use accountability gently with my one on one clients. So first and foremost, I'm not coming in hot, typically in the beginning of a session saying, did you get this done? Did you get this done? Did you get this done?

My first question with most of my clients is what are you celebrating accomplishing?

What are you celebrating accomplishing? Because when you ask that question, when you come at it and you sport the conversation there, my client typically gets to give themselves credit for any progress made on any one of the goals that they set from the last session, which giving yourself credit for any progress is also a dopamine hit.

And so even if they were meant to email like 50 people on their email list and they only did 10, they get a chance to celebrate, wow, I emailed ten people, I still want to do 40 more, but I've emailed ten and I'm going to give them myself credit for that.

And really the reason I do this is not because I want them to be like so dependent on me for this dopamine hit that I give them every single session is every time I ask this, I'm actually helping train their brain to start there. I'm helping train their brain to start with giving themselves credit with what they've already accomplished, even if it was a small portion of a bigger task.

Now, another thing that I do for with my one-on-one clients is every Monday we have a Get Organized Monday Sprint and it's 30 minutes. Basically, we all go off mic and off camera for 10 minutes and we do a brain dump of everything that we want to accomplish that week in those 10 minutes towards the end, each person is expected to take three tasks they want to do that Monday and three must dos for the entire week and then in the last 20 minutes of the call everyone names 'here's what I'm planning on doing today and here's what I must do by the end of the week'.

On my Friday Brave Biz Lab call, which if you want to come to - https://bookkatiemcmanus.as.me/BraveBizLabADHD - my one-on-one clients typically get the first couple minutes to have some accountability and celebrate what they've accomplished throughout the week.

And so I love being able to book end things for my clients so they can set the intention get the dopamine hit at the end of the week. The following week, on Mondays. I always remind my clients that Monday start with forgiveness. Whatever it is that they had intended to do last week, if they didn't get it done, they haven't already failed at it. They get to forgive themselves for prioritizing other things, for trying other things, and they get to start with a fresh slate.

Because my goal is never to have my clients in a deficit of dopamine.

My goal is always to have my clients set up to experience the win at its fullest.

And one of the most simple ways you can set yourself up to experience that win and get that dopamine hit is honestly just forgiving yourself, for the sh*t that you haven't done yet.

© 2022 Katie McManus – Business Strategy (For Weenie ADHD-preneurs)