Re: Being a Boss with ADD!!!

[Anonymous]

I’m very familiar with ADHD. I helped raised my niece with ADHD and had the benefit of having been a medical social worker in a mental health setting and working with kids, families and schools where most of the challenges were management and diagnosis of children in schools who actually had ADHD and were not learning disabled. I made a career change and am now an administrative consultant part time. I work in the insurance industry with small business owners on a temporary basis. This is what I’ve found in the real world. The two business owners I worked with were helpful and enthusiastic alternating to distrustful and fearful, even though they tried to hide it and did a good job of concealing their opinions.

Their day to day emotions pretty much determined their goals and opinions of whether or not to keep or cope in regard to employees around the office. As long as the front desk personnel took on most of the burdens of organization and everything always went smoothly, they felt hopeful. If there was any kind of interruption in routine or and expectation wasn’t met, the mood went downhill and the bosses became impatient. So much so that when in a good mood they would hire someone and make a lot of promises but ultmately, in the midst of every day fluctuations they woul lose patience and want to hire another person. Many of these bosses change employees every 3-6 months looking for the “perfect fit.” In the two cases I’m speaking about, the employees were getting along well and all that was needed was patience and some basic training around the office during the transition phase.The office procedures had not been written down and new hires were expected to blend right in without any consistent protocol. The bosses seem not to be able to trust a group of people simultaneously but put a lot of responsibilities and trust into one person. That is as far as the delegation went. In both cases the front desk person was overworked yet pleasant and didn’t have the heart to say no. Whenever a new person would come on the front desk person was looking forward to some relief but because of the constant changes and the burden of organizing someone else’s business, they didn’t have time to orient or train and although the boss was able to train new persons, the boss resented having to train because he/she was looking forward to everybody being immediately efficient because he/she was underwater almost daily, with the stress of having a business. All that was needed was the team sitting down together but both these bosses, from two different businesses, were unable to open up and trust anyone other than the person they were most dependent upon. It was unfortunate because the outcome was that eventually the trusted front desk person burned out and had to leave and the other really cooperative and good employees were not given the time they needed and the bosses were back at square one, alone. I’m talking about a probationary period of three months being reasonable, not two weeks! My suggestion to bosses is to lower your expectations and make sure there is a longer training period. Watch for improvements week by week and don’t expect a seamless transition. This doesn’t happen in any business, let alone and office which hasn’t achieved enough organization yet. These things take time. In both these examples, employees had given up other opportunities with expecations to have a position for more than three weeks, obviously. One employee was told that she needed to dedicate more hours to the office so she quit one of her other part-time jobs and the business owner decided 5 days later to drop the project she was hired for. He had no complaints other than he had a certain idea of how things were going to develop and they didn’t go the way he wanted. The employee was kind and considerate, however, his impulsiveness severely affected her life. Remember to appreciate the fact that your employees are dedicating a lot of their mental and physical energy to your success. They deserve some security and chances are that they’re struggling as much as you are to keep up.

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