ADHD Leadership and the Paradox of Open Spaces

Space can present an interesting dilemma for the ADHD leader. I’m talking about the kind of space where you have room to make choices, time to consider bigger questions like What’s next? Where do I want to take my business? What really matters?

Space is often a product of success and achievement, of effort and hard work.  Isn’t this what all of us are striving for? Space to have options? To make informed choices? Yet for the Global Creative, the opening of space, time or choice can be nerve wracking. Why?

For years we’ve honed our nervous systems to react to the urgency of the day, to respond to program as it shows up. Priority of the urgent creates a form of structure that fits with our wiring. Then a day comes where you’ve established practices, you’ve honed systems and you have empowered people to do the uninteresting work you did for years. You may be between jobs, possibly not by your own doing. Or, in one former client’s case, you traded your high intensity, high pressure job for one that has more flexibility and freedom.

With new found flexibility and freedom comes space in your day and the need to create structure rather than respond to it. This can be uncomfortable and disorienting because choice is now a muscle we have to develop. Choosing is about researching, selecting, prioritizing, committing and following through - activities all implicated in the executive dysfunction of ADHD. It’s easy for us to respond. It is much harder to generate or create program when given a sparse canvas, when given infinite choice. Yet, this is an experiment worth engaging with, to get comfortable with space and choice, to get comfortable with ample time. Here we can exercise a new set of skills like presence, curiosity and creativity.

The tools you used to operate in the tight confines of urgency like adrenaline won't serve you here. In this place of ample space we can look to values and collaborative efforts, to meaning and connection. We can look to our higher level needs.

If you are feeling a bit uneasy sitting in this place of ample space take a moment to lean into this moment, to ask the questions at the top of the blog and exercise some muscles that could use a workout.