Reducing Barriers to Promotion for ADHDers

These are the results of my research titled 'What barriers do ADHDers face to promotion, and what factors mitigate them'. I'm sharing the results here in hopes that they can be used for helpful conversations about how best to support ADHDers at work. For the full research, including references etc please email me or use the contact page. Here is the full list of ADHD barriers.

Phase 1 was identifying barriers to promotion for ADHDers, while phase 2 was identifying ways to reduce or remove those barriers.

Phase 1 Interview analysis

Engaging with the data from 4 interviews I generated the following thematic map:   

Executive function

Executive function challenges are a key part of ADHD Adler (2017). Analysing the data showed a number of ways in which promotion processes caused barriers for ADHDers because of challenges with executive function. For example one interviewee shared the ways that struggles with time management impacted her promotion experience “You have to write an awful lot and I found that really hard and I couldn't just spread it out throughout the years always the last minute. So I’d be overwhelmed by all the stuff.” 

One interviewee described an issue at higher levels of promotion where opportunities for promotion depend on someone leaving. This ADHDer passed up an opportunity to apply for promotion due to worries about managing their time “there’s stuff I'm busy with at the moment. So I don't want to split my focus”. I can also be hard for ADHDers to sustain their motivation for a long term goal (Modesto-Lowe, 2013), which is required by promotion processes that require opportunities which are infrequent. One interviewee shares that it’s “harder to find those opportunities, at least within sort of like a six to twelve month period”.

Another interviewee described a lack of flexibility around time “Structure process in that you have things (interview tasks) expected to be done in a certain amount of time”. This can present barriers for ADHDers whose ability to focus is more variable depending on their energy levels (Kofler, 2008) - if the task arrives at a time of low focus they will face a barrier to completing it well and on time.

This interviewee also struggled with a lack of time in the interview portion of their promotion process. They say “the questions are asked and very little time sometimes given for people to think about it”. This also highlights the important of intersectionality in considering an individuals barriers as this candidate has English as an additional language and is dyslexic as well as ADHD. Each aspect of their identity contributes to the barriers they face and this can cause confusion for employers when some aspects are protected characteristics and others are not.

One interviewee explained how the extraordinary effort to complete the promotion process with ADHD was not recognised "you spend time applying for jobs or working on a promotion to get promoted. no one actually has the obligation to give you anything in return”. For this candidate the experience let to a feeling of frustration and started internal beliefs about how much they are valued and whether it’s worthwhile applying for future promotions. This shows how relatively simple barriers (an executive function heavy promotion process with a lack of meaningful feedback) can escalate into internal beliefs which are much harder to address and cause a massive impact over the lifetime of the ADHDer, extending beyond their time in any one particular organisation. Another interviewee says “because of the amount of effort that goes in to get this is that if I'm not 99% certain, I'm gonna get this I don't want to put all that effort into building up the evidence and then doing the presentation and then doing the interview”.

Beyond the struggles with time, broader executive function requirements can create barriers in promotion processes. Interviewees highlight organisation, formal education and an expectation that candidates excel at a broad range of skills, including ones that are not related to the job description.  

Many promotions processes test organisation either explicitly or implicitly. Where those organisational skills are an unavoidable part of the job this may be considered reasonable, however I have come across many examples where the organisational skills to obtain the promotion are not related to the job or are not the only way to excel at the job. For example one ADHDer describes a process with “a lot of exercises, specifically in the project that I am now, tests that are related to a attention to detail and etc”. Testing a specific skill, rather than an ability to create desired outcomes is not good practice as it prevents candidates from accessing the support they may usually rely on to enable them to achieve the necessary outcomes. 

Another interviewee describes barriers they faced due to the sheer amount of  evidence that was required to gain a promotion “to go through that big massive document is he's probably one of the biggest barriers”. Someone else describes their interview process as “this intense level of preparation providing the application. I had to write for each of them a vision. So it was writing that was interviewing that was presenting”

ADHDers learn better when in educational environments designed with consideration (Solomonidou, 2004), many formal educational environments are not designed to be accessible. This causes issues with recruiting and retention both when formal qualifications are explicitly required and when ongoing learning is expected but not provided in an accessible way. One interviewee shared that “Comprehension from reading and learning is also a huge challenge”. This again highlights the complex way that differing needs co-occure. ADHD and dyslexia are highly co-occuring (Boada, 2012). In jobs that require professional qualifications/memberships to progress these often pose a barrier as they usually require a great deal of paperwork to complete.

Neurodivergent candidates often have ‘spiky profiles’ (Doyle, 2020) meaning that while their strengths may be stronger than expected their weaknesses are also more intense. Because of this good support and a role that fits their skills are key. Higher level jobs in theory offer more opportunity to specialise in areas of expertise and leverage strengths compared to entry level jobs, however many ADHDers are unable to access these jobs due to promotion processes like the one this ADHDer describes  ”you had to be brilliant at everything … you had to be an all-rounder.” Spiky profiles can be misunderstood by hiring managers, sometimes leading to conflict and putting careers in jeopardy, as this interviewee describes “He (the hiring manager) assumed that because that person excelled and one thing. They must excel at everything”.

These process challenges are features of the promotion process and distinct to ways that executive function can hinder work performance and thus indirectly impact on promotions. It is hard to see any reasonable justification for the executive function burden that these processes cause since they are not related to work performance and often require abilities that are not relevant to the candidates current or potential future job. This makes these barriers a good candidate for reasonable adjustments.

Cultural factors

Cultural factors that create barriers to ADHD promotions are more abstract than the executive function issues described above. Because of this they are harder to resolve, often requiring sustained organisational change rather than point solutions. Despite this, I believe it is reasonable for organisations to address these issues in order to enable ADHDers (and others) to access promotions on an equitable footing. Change in these areas may take time but that cannot be an argument to put off starting, rather organisations must begin immediately.

The first cultural factor I consider is “implicit information”. This is all the unwritten expectations around communication, behaviour and applying for promotion that may exist in an organisation. This “implicit information” creates barriers for ADHDers who may already be overwhelmed by the issues described above. This leaves us without the bandwidth to decode, recall and apply “implicit information”. This barrier is higher for ADHDers who are also ADHD, EAL and who come from different social backgrounds to the majority of a company. 

One interviewee describes a lack of clarity about language “what is not clear was? How you’re supposed to fill in the forms, using the right neurotypical type language. The types of evidence you're supposed to give”. The choice of certain language may be natural and obvious to some candidates but not to others, creating a barrier.

A lack of clear hierarchy is another example of implicit information. In organisations without formal hierarchies, informal hierarchies emerge (McCaffrey, 2022) and navigating these can be a barrier to promotion. One interviewee describes “no hierarchy or they get rid of management layers  … it just creates huge amounts of competition and encourages bad behaviour.”

Another interviewee described implicit requirements to be visible “that reputation aspect is sort of hung over a lot of that so it was a conversation I had when I left was like, okay, I've ticked all these boxes yet still didn't get this compared to someone else who didn't take the boxes but was more publicly visible”. While visibility may indeed be a reasonable requirement for promotions at some levels the lack of clarity around that requirement created a barrier for this individual. Additionally, when requirements are not explicit it is difficult to discuss whether they are reasonable or not. One might even wonder if certain requirements are deliberately implicit to dissuade such necessary  conversations.

Interviewees describe a lack of clarity about what and how much evidence is required “the amount of evidence seems to be quite Up and down on how much you need to provide”.  “even though it wasn't a prerequisite. It was very much. Okay, if you line manage you automatically get a green tick. If you don't manage your automatically can cross it as opposed to being sort of like a null”. A lack of clarity about promotion requirements creates an opportunity for bias and barriers for neurominorities.

As well as this indirect bias interviewees also described examples of direct bias. One said “it's very biased there is a lot of the good old. I got this weird impression from …”. Another said “there are still people within the organization that are aware that they're somewhere on the Spectrum whether they've been diagnosed or not. but s*** scared to say anything about it because of promotion because I guess what they might see it doing to their professional career” (Usually ‘on the spectrum’ refers to Autism but here the interviewee is using it more broadly about neurodifferences.) A third said “because I was just slightly too quirky this person the leader at the very top of the whole project basically personally didn't like me”.

These examples show that bias against neurominorities is impacting careers. The cultural factors and reward systems around promotions need to be carefully structured with awareness of bias, unfortunately, as interviewees describe, this is not always the case. One interviewee describes a lack of organisation support which leads to already disadvantages groups having to take on extra labour to ensure accountability. "It relies too much on us individually. We have to fight the battles. I see still little kind of a institutional not even support but ensuring that there is an accountability that things are done properly” This mirrors the existing research (for example Trejo (2020))showing that gender and race diversity initiatives often create additional under valued work for disadvantaged groups, creating further barriers to career progression.

Unfortunately, poorly defined promotions processes can have bias baked in (whether as a feature or bug is beyond the scope of this project). For example one interviewee describes a system where managers where given a financial reward if they had a high proportion of their staff promoted. She describes the impact “it's supposed to incentivize to push people forward. But what it does is it incentivizes people to only focus on the easy people, who are like them. And anyone's remotely diverse. It's like I don't know, I don't relate to you. You don't operate in the way that I operate therefore I'm just gonna shove you aside and just focus on other people”. This system creates barriers for ADHDers.

Another interviewee described a system where your manager would represent your case to a promotion committee. For ADHDers who may struggle to collate all the written evidence this is an important final opportunity to add anything that was forgotten. However the likelihood of the manager doing good job depends on how well they know you and how much they care about you. One interviewee described “the managers, the ones who were like  I'm going to go in and fight these people's cases, they just weren't curious about me in any way.” This lack of curiosity about people who think differently is a barrier to ADHDers.

There are many other ways that organisational culture can impact promotions for minoritised groups. From these many possibilities it’s worth pulling out behavioural expectations as ADHDers often behave in ways that are judged harshly even when they don’t impact on results. For example “Bouncing your leg or something or changing position I do that a lot. So I'm sitting and then I'll kind of slightly stand up and cross my leg and change position and lens once I need to another because I need to do that. It's part of my process of concentrating and paying attention. And that sometimes is not super well received”. 

Eye contact is a common behavioural expectation that is experienced differently by ADHDers (Frick, 2022). One interviewee explains “I'm paying attention, but I don't know, not making eye contact or I might be referring to the question. So I'm looking down the same way as the interviewers are writing taking note Etc. But there is this kind of different interpretation and how you should act and react.” 

ADHDers can also struggle with tightly defined behavioural rules as following these over a prolonged period requires both emotional regulation and executive function. These examples show how behavioural traits impact promotion “(they want) a super corporate person and I'm just really not that way but I always deliver results. So I would always get told. you don't fit the standard consultant mode. I got told that and every project for five years and I didn't realize that it wasn't a compliment.” Or “You had to be someone who's really good at selling which I'm terrible at” (for a non sales role). Or “people who were nicer didn't get promoted. It was very hard, people had to always have an edge to them and know how to play political games”.

These cultural factors can be harder to see, and therefore create adjustments for, than the executive function barriers but they deserve attention in order to ensure ADHDers have equitable access to career opportunities.

Internal Barriers

When the above barriers occur they may change how ADHDers view themselves or their careers and become internal barriers. This is particularly likely when the ADHDer perceives negative feedback about something they don’t feel able to change (such as the way their brain works). According to Hu (2016) belief that an ability can be improved reduces negative self-relevant emotions when employees receive negative feedback. ADHDers are particularly sensitive to negative feedback (Babinski, 2019) and so may be more likely to develop internal barriers from repeated negative experiences or feedback. From this perspective, even the requirement to regularly collect feedback as part of promotions processes could be a barrier as it generates more negative experiences for ADHDers.

The first step of many promotion processes is to convince someone (often your line manager) that you are ready to apply. One interviewee describes “if you feel like you are ready to get promoted you agree it with your line manager”. This creates a dynamic where the ADHDer immediately risks negative feedback as the line manager may begin by ‘managing expectations’ i.e. listing all the reasons you shouldn’t expect promotion or all the things you need to change first. The above research makes it clear why it’s crucial that feedback for ADHDers must always be about things they can change (i.e. outcomes not personality traits).

Feedback is not always explicit. Many ADHDers are highly attuned to disapproving body language. This interviewee describes picking up disapproval in a promotion interview “I had to as the person to repeat the question. I think a couple of times. And the person was clearly not happy with the fact that I asked them to repeat the question and for me it was this whole process of I'm already stress. I have to ask the question. Body language face are showing that I'm not doing well. They're not happy.” This candidate received negative feedback about something they can’t change (their auditory processing issues). Although the feedback was not formally delivered the impact on the candidate is still there and this incident, especially if it is repeated, could seed an internal barrier.

Some promotion processes include explicit feedback, especially to candidates who don’t get the promotion. This is generally seen by interviewees as helpful, for example “they did give actually a decent amount of feedback … The reasons were very clear and were actually pretty good”. The exception is where feedback is personal or unfair, with one interviewee commenting “they gave reasons whether I agree with them is different”. However some organisations don’t provide this feedback and this leads to frustration from candidates who don’t know how to improve. One interviewee says “(on) asking for the feedback I was met with a very spicy reply.”

A lack of formal feedback also allows the informal feedback experienced during the interview process to dominate a candidates perception. Ultimately candidates all experienced feedback, even if it was just ‘you didn’t get the job’ and so it’s important to ensure constructive feedback is given. As one interviewee puts it “you don't get I don't know lessons learned or at least good feedback or suggestions and maybe you could do this … that's something that goes into this kind of slightly. Anxious OCD thing. That's kind of like, my God. Where did I mess up?”

Interviewees shared examples of internal barriers based on past experiences. One said “generally my experience of promotions is I can tickle the boxes I could do all the right stuff and it still doesn’t happen”. Believing that there’s a low chance of promotion leads to lower motivation and worse work performance, especially if it’s felt that the low chance of promotion is unjust (Xie, 2021).

Interviewees also shared beliefs about promotion that create internal barriers. Sometimes these beliefs are so embedded that it’s not clear where they came from, however they can still be changed by new experiences and so it’s possible to reduce or remove these barriers. For example one interviewee shared “climbing the greasy pole for me is the antithesis of what I turn up to work to do” and “that (promotion/career growth) to me is scary and it's not really something I want to be doing”.

Phase 2: Analysis

I engaged with the literature prior to analysing this data as in phase one. I discovered that the relevant literature was less developed than for phase one and so I had to use a more inductive approach.  

Engaging with the data from the focus group and interviews I generated the following thematic map:  

Cultural

A good organisational culture can significantly mitigate barriers that otherwise prevent ADHDers from being promoted. On the other hand, negative cultural factors can increase barriers. Cultural factors can be difficult for ADHDers to navigate as there is often a disconnect between what is said and what is ment. One participant highlights this with her desire for ‘an organisation that actually values skills and expertise and doesn’t just say that they do’. Participants highlight the role for education about ADHD within organisations, saying ‘I think we need to educate people because it’s stigmatised because we don’t understand it’. Another participant highlights the barrier created when organisations expect minoritised groups to advocate for themselves ‘having to be the sole person who is advocating for yourself and having to do the education … I have also been in a situation where it hasn’t landed particularly well and it’s exhausting … you become the person who’s always talking about their problems’. These participants make it clear that advocacy and education about ADHD is important work that organisations should commission without burdening the ADHDers who work for them. This remains a big barrier in many organisations, as one participant summed up ‘just getting organisations to say the word disability is such a big thing and not to treat it like it’s a dirty word’. Interviewees highlighted how intersectional cultural initiatives had helped them secure promotions, for example citing competency frameworks, flexibility about how much of an interview process is written vs spoken, and reasonable adjustments passports as factors that were not specifically designed for ADHDers but still helped them secure promotions.

For many ADHDers a good culture is one that is clear and transparent, which means that processes are in place and are followed. A participant explains ‘process of asking for reasonable accommodations need to be set up by organisations and they also need to be make public and they need to be very clear’. She adds ‘you need to know that you’re going to be supported and there needs to be kind of organisational policies in place to make sure that you asking for accommodations is not going to backfire on you.’ We could add, there must be clear budget processes to fund reasonable accommodations. Process is very important to many ADHDers and it appears twice in my thematic map as process can be at an organisational or team level and comes under both culture and interpersonal. Clearly described promotion processes are also vital for equitable access to promotion. One interviewee contrasted the level of detail in two different companies ‘the guidance is pretty much just fill out this Excel spreadsheet’ vs ‘we want this … guide … this amount work count is your maximum’ and found that more detailed guidance reduced his barriers to promotion.

Culture determines which behaviours are allowed and which are punished and this can either reduce or increase barriers. For example one participant says ‘I like not being told what to do’ another describes a flexible workplace ‘making things easier when they didn’t matter… I would ask that I can be excused once my part (of a full day event) was over’. This shows the interplay between cultural level interventions and individual. A good culture allows individuals to request the accommodations they need without being penalised, enabling the conversations that result in effective accommodations. 

Interpersonal

Process is also important at the interpersonal and team levels where factors such as how feedback is shared, whether team members roles are clear, and how team meetings are structure can greatly impact an ADHDers professional success. One participant describes ‘being in a space where there’s a function that is specifically dedicated to project management, where you are on a cross-disciplinary team doing a complex project that there’s at least one resource whose job it is to make sure that project management processes are being followed…you’ve got a scope and document … you are not kind of managing these sorts of interpersonal complexities’. Those interpersonal complexities can create barriers for ADHDers and good processes reduce those barriers. Successful project managers have higher emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills (Lima, 2020) so process is important it is not enough for effective project management. The more complex projects become, the more important interpersonal skills are (Tadege Shiferaw, 2024).

Participants highlighted the importance of clear communication, both to ensure they understand their colleagues and to ensure that they are understood, saying ‘making sure that expectations are clear that things are communicated clearly that you are being taken for face value’ and ‘I started from something my manager created so I was able to use a language she understood’. Another participant explains how her boss was ‘able to handle my directness … was confident in his own abilities’ and this reduced barriers for her. Multiple participants highlighted a supportive manager who reduced barriers. For example ‘he’s very open to listening… I feel like I’m in a better place’ and ‘having somebody in a higher position who has a brain similar to yours was very useful’. Other interviewees highlighted peer support as a factor that reduced barriers, for example ‘a slack channel that I know enough people in that I could ask for help’ and ‘a WhatsApp support group… it really helps me feel like I’m not alone’. These are low cost interventions that some organisations are beginning to utilise, however minoratised groups are often expected to create and sustain these groups with their own labour and they are not sustainable in smaller organisations. Therefore it would be valuable for national bodies to fund facilitated groups to support ADHDers at work.

Individual

There are two distinct types of strategy that help ADHDers overcome barriers to equitable access to promotions at the individual level. There are the traditional ‘reasonable adjustments’ which are accommodations that aim to directly reduce barriers and then there are strategies that allow ADHDers to make best use of their strengths in order to achieve success on their own terms. These often involve flexibility or freedom so that different employees can create their own conditions to achieve promotions. As one participant puts it ‘I like being in control of my own time. I like that the projects are varied. I like that I can sleep when I want to. I like not being told what to do.’ This flexibility depends on trust and is much more likely to exist where organisational culture was supportive. Individual managers also have a lot of power here, either to extend flexibility to their managees despite a controlling culture, by shielding the ADHDer from the wider culture or by allowing their insecurities to override a positive culture and create unnecessary restrictions on how and when ADHDers work. One participant explains the benefits of ‘someone higher up than you who actually recognises some of those wonderful quirks for what they are’. Another says ‘because I get bored easily I’m doing lots of different things and that makes people happy’. Another ‘I tend to overbuild things so I will build things to be scalable, not just a minimum viable product…being able to display skill and knowledge’. Because ADHD achievements may look slightly different to what managers are expecting participants found success by proactively sharing their achievements e.g. ‘I … create opportunities to highlight my achievements to my supervisor’ and ‘I had things like the notion website which I would just use to capture everything I was doing, linked always to competency’. Interviewee described the value of different routes to promotion, e.g. people/management based or technically focused, enabling different people to focus on their different strengths and still be recognised for them.

Participants describe being more engaged and motivated in roles that included variety and challenge, saying ‘I also performed or did my best in activities that I enjoyed, for example, I enjoy event coordination. I love the challenges… They’re similar but always different.’ Feeling listened to and understood also helped ADHDers motivation, e.g. ‘I’ve got a really great supervisor now who understand me.. he’s very open to listening.. I’m not as anxious as I used to by. I feel more motivated to do my work.’

The straightforward accommodations that participants mentioned include

• flexibility to move around and sit where comfortable. e.g. the floor

• being excused from events once they’d completed their task

• adjusting the interview process, e.g. removing written aspects

• providing interview questions upfront

• breaking questions down and/or putting them in writing

• someone to help set up ToDo lists or processes to manage work

None of these are expensive or difficult to do, they are all reasonable in the sense that they are unlikely to put undue pressure onto a business. All of these adjustments reduce or remove barriers that ADHDers face at work so it seems to me that they are reasonable accommodations, as provided for by the equality act and that all employers ought to be providing these as standard, in addition to listening to individuals and finding ways to accommodate their individual barriers. However, conducting these interviews made it very clear to me that many organisations are still not doing even this much and that there is much more work to be done. From a research point of view, further research is needed into ways to mitigate the barriers faced by people who face multiple barriers, e.g. ADHD and other disabilities or race or gender. It would be valuable to develop a measure of how successful an intervention is at reducing barriers to ADHDer at work. Finally, more research into accommodations, including a larger group of participants would uncover even more ways to reduce barriers.

Thanks

Thank you to all the participants who shared their time, stories and insights with me. I hope that I have done justice to some of what you shared.