Psyched For Business Podcast Episode 18

Episode 18:
Understanding ADHD with Becca Brighty

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Episode 18 - Transcript 

Voiceover  0:00  
Welcome to Psyched for Business, helping business leaders understand and apply cutting edge business psychology principles in the workplace.

Richard Anderson  0:14  
Hi, and welcome to Psyched for Business. I'm Richard Anderson, thank you very much for joining me. In today's episode, I'm joined by psychologist Becca Brighty. Becca talks to me all about ADHD. She explains what ADHD is. She talks through her own personal journey with ADHD and the diagnosis what the benefits of course of a diagnosis are. And what can employers do crucially, to help neurodivergent employees? I hope you enjoy the episode. Thanks again for listening. Rebecca brightly thank you for joining Psyched for Business. How are you?

Becca Brighty  0:49  
I'm good. How are you? Richard?

Richard Anderson  0:51  
Yeah, I'm really well, thanks Becca. And I'm really appreciate you giving up the time to do this. I've followed you quite well. I've seen a lot of your LinkedIn posts over the previous weeks. I know that you talk a lot and very passionately about the subjects of ADHD resilience. neurodiversity generally. So I've been really keen to have this conversation. It's nice to do in a podcast format, as well. So Becca, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself, I guess probably in a second. But I know that you're a business psychologist, you're an ADHD, ADHD. Coach, you do a lot of work around culture resilience. Tell me Give me Give me a proper introduction, how you've gotten into the position that you are now.

Becca Brighty  1:32  
So even after eight years of having my own business, the elevator pitch is still about like seven minutes long. You really need a really tall building. And but so yes, I am a business psychologist and ADHD confidence and resilience coach. And so my main ethos is about mindset that at the root of most problems business or or in personal life, it's often a mindset issue. And so the lot of the work that I do, whether it's about confidence, resilience, impostor syndrome, ADHD, is looking at your mindset, and seeing how you can shift that to then you can shift move towards whatever goal it is that you're wanting to pursue, or overcome whatever issues is that you feel like you're facing.

Richard Anderson  2:16  
Brilliant no, that well, that was perfect. That wasn't seven minutes was really brief, really brief, really interesting. Good stuff. So um, I know that we're going to probably focus the majority of this conversation back on ADHD as we as we talked about before. And I know that this is something that you're incredibly passionate about, I guess, from a personal perspective, as well. So I'd be keen to learn, I guess, maybe let's start with a bit of a blank slate, because we're hearing more and more about ADHD. And I'll come to why I hear about it in a few minutes time. But I'm certainly seeing it more and more on LinkedIn. I think it was only yesterday, Steven Bartlett had announced that he'd been diagnosed with ADHD, which I thought was really interesting. We're learning more and more about people that have been diagnosed with this, we're learning more about neurodiversity. But with a specific lens looking at ADHD, what do we mean firstly by ADHD? And I wouldn't, you know, I'll be interested if you'd be happy to talk through a little bit of your own personal journey with that as well.

Becca Brighty  3:12  
Yeah, absolutely. So ADHD means it stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And so already, I'm like, that's a really mean title for a condition to have the word deficit and disorder within one within one title like it's already given off a negative kind of negative connotations. I don't know of any other disorders that have two negative words within the title of the disorder, but basically, it's a neurodevelopmental condition. So what it means is that you from birth, your brain, develops in a slightly different way to neurotypical people. And then there's different types of ADHD so there's hyperactive ADHD, inattentive ADHD, and then combined, so inattentive, ADHD, and that's the kind that I have. That's where people are more. That's the people who can't really concentrate and they get easily distracted. And they lose focus easily. They have gone to the emails and like, Oh, what, what, why, why me in here, the eyebrow activist, probably more of what you stereotype people might think of people with ADHD. So they're, they're more like the people with the fidget toys and quite difficult to keep still and always need to be doing lots of different things. And then combined is where you have both in the inattentive symptoms and the hyperactivity symptoms.

Richard Anderson  4:40  
Brilliant, makes perfect sense. What made you learn about this particular subject?

Becca Brighty  4:46  
And so I have a friend called Michelle Minnikin, and she is a business psychologist. And it's funny because the first time I ever met her, we connected through LinkedIn and then I met her we just got on really well. straightway a few times, yeah, yeah. Michelle. Yes, she's loved. And so I saw she done that there was an article in I think was the Sunday Daily Mail on Sunday or something about when it's not early onset menopause. It's actually adult ADHD. And I read this article, and I was like, oh, it's like my life, basically. So that like, piqued my interest, and they're, like, spoke to her about it. And like, it didn't have quizzes online, she was like, Well, you never know. And I wonder now, like, did she actually know because you kind of got this like radar once you know. And so that would kind of piqued my interest. Then also around that time, I spoke to a company in the Northeast called celebrate difference, who help people with access to work applications, and you can have access to work, which is a pot of money from the government to help people with different disabilities. I was applying for it because I've got a back problem, which costs me a lot of money like sit stand desk and chair and had to buy a new car. And sometimes like taxis and stuff like that I got told by my sister, oh, there's this pot of money that government have to be able to help you to work more, because I can only work a certain amount of time at a desk. So I was like, Oh, great. Like if I can get some help with that. So I spoke to them. I was telling them all the different coping mechanisms I had, because of what I thought was for my back then when I love the thing you're describing. These are like things we see a lot in our clients with ADHD. Yeah, I've wondered about that. Um, so that was part of it. And I started listening to this podcast called, Is It My ADHD, and it's this, it's really, really good. And it's this girl and she found out she was had ADHD as an adult. And she interviews different people about different topics. So it's like ADHD, and education, ADHD, has parent ADHD as a business owner. And every episode I would listen to was like, oh, it's like my life. It's my life. And then through ADHD fashion, I like hyper focused on researching about it and just became completely obsessed, like, due to couldn't do anything else. But it was quite, it's quite good because of my job as a business psychologist, I then I can make an interest even My only interest really is people. But being a self employed business psychologist, I can then make that interest into a product. So I then created neurodiversity at work workshops. So then I could really immerse myself in it because it had a purpose and a reason why I was doing it wasn't just for me. So I learned loads about it for that. And but still didn't know, do I have it or not? And so then I was like, tried to get diagnosis privately because I've got Bupa health care, but they don't let you do it through Bupa because it's not something that's curable. So they contact the doctors and they're like, yeah, yeah, you can go on the waiting list like two to seven years. Like at that point, I think, imagine how much I would know as I was kept researching at the rate I was. So then I just got private diagnosis.

Richard Anderson  7:49  
Brilliant. And are you pleased you did?

Becca Brighty  7:51  
oh, my goodness, it's like the best thing that I've ever done. Completely, completely changed my life. So like, if I've gone through my whole life, feeling like, I'm a bit different. But like, I used to always say to my mum, and this sounds extreme, but I used to say I want to go to a mental institution for a holiday, just so I don't have to pretend so I can like not pretend to be normal for a few weeks. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know why I felt like that. It just felt like it was pretending to be normal. And whatever normal means Yeah. And I've said that to her so many times, I've said it to other people. And then to to find out what that feeling was. And to be like, yeah you're not normal, you're not typical. You're normal within a section of people are just like you. And the reason you find that life is more challenging is because of this, this deficit. And it's like the, if you can change your environment, then it will be much less difficult. Yeah. And if you can just be self compassionate to yourself. And if you can understand why certain things are challenging and get people to help you with them, or automate different things or not put yourself in these situations, then you can be much happier, much more productive. I used to have really bad anxiety. I've not really had anxiety since I got my diagnosis. Okay. Like for a lot of years since I was 17, I got diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder when I was 17. And then on and off since then, I have really bad periods be on different medications for anxiety. And then pretty much since my diagnosis, I've not had anxiety. And I think it's that it wasn't anxiety, it was overwhelm, I think at one period when it was really like bad and fear. I had like a lot of fear. I think that was when I was 17 probably till 18 But after that, I think it was overwhelmed. I think it was sensory overload. And so by changing my environment, I don't have that anymore. And anyone who's ever experienced anxiety I don't know have you ever have

Richard Anderson  9:52  
Yes, I have. Yeah, I was everything that you're saying. A lot of what you're saying is resonating and I have to say but one yeah To

Becca Brighty  10:00  
anyone who's ever experienced anxiety, if I said to you, there's something that you can find out about, you can make changes to your life and you won't have to experience anxiety anymore. Would you think that was a good thing? 

Richard Anderson  10:12  
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 

Becca Brighty  10:14  
So even that even that one thing of not like anxiety is, like horrific. I've had physical like, my back problem was horrendous pain, like I was on morphine. And for years, I was in agony. But I would take that any day over anxiety. So to have find out something that means I don't experience that anymore. Just that one thing, nevermind all the other things that have happened, and how much better I understand myself, however, managed to change the way I work, how I differently I parent differently. Just the one thing of the anxiety that in itself is completely worth it. 

Richard Anderson  10:48  
Well, it's really interesting, because I think that's that's one of the things that hasn't confused me. But I've probably wanted further clarity around you've just answered it perfectly as what are the benefits to getting a diagnosis and I'm not trivializing it by any means. But there's been a long period of time probably, I reckon, the last four or five years where I've had colleagues say to me, you've definitely got ADHD, there's no question you've got ADHD. And I've put them in my wife even says it, you know, close colleagues I've worked with for a long time. And they'll say a little bit tongue in cheek, and it's not. Again, it's not to trivialize it, it's just to say, look, you've definitely got ADHD, and I've thought in the past about getting a diagnosis for ADHD, but I was never sure about what would be the benefit to me personally, because I feel like, I do feel like I've, I've often been different with a lot of things, I've got very stressed and very anxious throughout several occasions, you know, in my entire, you know, adult, and I guess Child Life. But it was just okay, well, for me, I see a lot of the attributes that might put, you know, pertain ADHD or whatever that I have as a strengths as well as deficiencies or limitations or whatever it might be. So I think it's a it's a really interesting one. But I can definitely see the benefits in knowing if you if you do have ADHD, based on what you've just said there. But just to touch on the point that I've just made there. So I don't know you and I've talked about this before is about people in business, people in life who have ADHD, but it can't be viewed as a negative it this is, we're talking here about a real strength for a lot of people on me.

Becca Brighty  12:37  
Yeah, so I think for the individual, it's a challenge. And I think in life, it's a massive challenge having ADHD. And it is, like, I don't see myself as disabled, but it is classed as a disability. Okay, but so it's not to trivialize the experience of having ADHD and say, like, oh, this whole superpower narrative and stuff. But I believe it can be a superpower within the world of business or within the world of work, if you can harness it. And if you can, like you just mentioned that you see a lot of the stuff that you would associate with ADHD, you think they're your strengths. And then I think that the strength based approach for ADHD is really, really powerful. And so I think that there's within the world. And until two years ago, I would have probably thought of it that ADHD was a bad thing, and that you wouldn't want to hire someone with ADHD. Because the one though I don't know they wouldn't be able to concentrate, they'll be wanting to bungee jump off the roof or like it, there'll be talking to way too much, or whatever, that whatever the stereotype is, I would have probably, like, thought that I don't even know if I've ever in my life had a conversation about ADHD before two years ago. And yeah, it's just, it's crazy. But absolutely once you can get rid of, because one of the things that's holding people with ADHD back is they're spending so much energy on their weaknesses. So once you know, that's one of the things about the diagnosis, is that once you know you've got it and you understand, like, you've got weaknesses, that that's fine, because you've always got these amazing strengths. Yeah, there's something called a spiky profile. I'm not sure I've come across it.

Richard Anderson  14:20  
I'd like you to explain it if you if you will. Yeah. Yeah. So

Becca Brighty  14:24  
for neurotypical people will have strengths and will have weaknesses, but they will. It's difficult to describe it on audio, but there'll be things that they're good at, say, a plus 10 and things like they're better at like a minus 10. Whereas people neurodivergent people with a spiky profile will have things that they're amazing at, say plus 100 and things that they're really, really terrible at at minus 100. It's like the strengths are massively amplified, but then the weaknesses are massively amplified. So it's it's like my there was no one else I knew at school whose GCSE results ranged from A stars to U. Everyone else had like, either like, I don't know As to Cs or A stars and Bs, it was all around the same. It wasn't like amazing and in some subjects and terrible other subjects. And so that's the thing like you don't know why, why you like that and you're just spending so much energy on like trying to get those, the minus 100 up to minus 50. You don't have much energy to make the 100 up to 100 200. Yeah. So that's one of the great things as well about finding out is like, yeah, I'm really bad at supermarket shopping. But Tesco online exists. So, that's fine. Like, I'm really bad at like managing my email. But I've got a virtual assistant. So it's like, now I can use all that energy I was wasting on trying to get my minus hundreds of to a minus 50. On taking that 100 to 200. Yeah, it's much more fun and much less tiring (play to your strengths) Except that's that's a mean, like, that's one of the main things that ADHD is, yeah. In general. That's one of my most commodify approaches for coaching is like, yes, some of your weaknesses, you probably need to tweak a bit. But if you play to your strengths, you're just going to be so much more successful.

Richard Anderson  16:20  
Absolutely. And how important would you say because when we were talking about being diagnosed with ADHD, and it's been enlightening for you, and it's enlightening for probably the vast majority of people that get a diagnosis, it makes sense, you know, all suddenly that makes sense. But what about people that you work with? Is it worthwhile? I mean, how does it genuinely I don't know, how does this typically work? Do people who are diagnosed with ADHD, do they tell the the typically tell the business to the tell their close colleagues, you know, this is a condition or technically a disorder that I've got that I've been diagnosed with, cut me a bit of slack here, this is what I'm good at. This is what I'm not what normally happens in those instances,

Becca Brighty  17:01  
So it really depends on the business that they work for. Okay? This is a massive, massive thing. For a lot of people like finding out my whole like, it can be a really positive thing. But it's also can be like, for a lot of people a really negative thing. So for me, I'd had prior to my finding out about 18 months beforehand, or maybe a year I'd had a really bad burnout. And as a result of that I've done a lot of work on like self awareness and mindset. And I've created a resilience model. And I've done a lot of work on like self acceptance. So then when I got the diagnosis, it wasn't this massive, awful thing. It was still really like a lot to deal with. But it was like, Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. For some people, it's like, life, like, at first blows their whole life up. Yeah. So to get that, and then the next day, go into your work and be like, Okay, so I've got ADHD, and this is what it is. And these are my strengths. Like, that's a lot. It also depends on the organisation. So one of the questions I often get asked is like, what can businesses do to help neurodivergent employees? Great question. Yeah. And one of the things I would say is the number one best thing you can do is to educate your workforce and what new agents actually is. Because if you're, if you're a person, you've just been diagnosed with something and you know that everyone thinks it's this thing that like crazy people who like I say want to jump off buildings can't stop talking. If you think everyone's got that perception of ADHD, and then you get told you you've got it. Are you really gonna go in and say, I have got this thing that everyone thinks is terrible? Yeah, probably not. But if you've had education, on, this is what ADHD is. This is the challenges it poses for people. This is the challenges that will pose for you if you're working with someone, but these are the strengths. Yeah. And it's a very different conversation, like saying, like, well, it's not that people are lazy, or whatever it is that people might be perceiving about this person. And then when they get told, or they've got ADHD, oh, well, it makes sense why they're lazy, then it's like, no, it's not lazy. It's a dopamine deficiency. So once you understand it, like, once you educate your workforce on like, the science of it, it's just a different, it's a completely different thing for that person who has been diagnosed, to go and disclose because they're disclosing it to people who understand, okay, this is like a brain chemistry thing. It's not a choice. Yeah. It's not a craze is like a real thing that we all know about, and how can we help you?

Richard Anderson  19:32  
Yes. And I know that we, I'm guessing here, Becca and jump in, you know, if I see anything that you disagree with, but up but I guess we're getting better generally, at educating people across the board with things like neurodiversity. I only say that because I know more about it. And I haven't Well, I've researched it a little bit on occasion, but I feel like I'm much more educated generally from places like LinkedIn and kind of anecdotally and speaking to businesses and kind of how they're approaching these things. Obviously we we specialise in assessment and reasonable adjustments and accommodating assessments for people with neurodevelopmental kind of conditions, all of that sort of stuff. But I would imagine, although we're getting better, we're still quite far away in terms of being able to educate people on mass with these things. Is that fair comment?

Becca Brighty  20:19  
Yeah absolutely. So I think me and you might live in like a bit of a bubble. In terms of the people to work with business, you work with psychologists, work with psychologists and coaches and the type of businesses who come to me I want to genuinely want to learn and want to support people. So don't know if I definitely think things are improving. Absolutely, completely. agree with that. And

Richard Anderson  20:44  
skew it to my LinkedIn connections, which are in the majority psychologists and coaches and people like that

Becca Brighty  20:50  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think, I think like it's massively, massively improved. I also think it's really difficult with invisible conditions to understand. So it's like, even if you get told something, it's like, I don't I genuinely, like even for me, myself, I understand it. But I still don't understand sometimes why? I can't, like, I'll go, I'll go somewhere, and I can't get out the car. I'm just like, paralysed. It's like if I'm really stressed, or something. And even though I experienced that, and I know, all the reason, going into a thing and said, Sorry, I'm 15 minutes late, I could not get out of the car. Even for me like I'm like eh like why? Like, why are you why are you literally stuck in the car. So I think even like the most open minded person, it's a challenge. To understand something that you can't see. We have to be as, as neurodivergent people, I think that sometimes it's a bit of a narrative of like neurodivergent versus neurotypical. But it's really hard thing to understand. If you've never experienced anything like that. You're a person who's never experienced depression, or anxiety or any form of neuro divergence, trying to understand these types of things. It's really hard to with all the best will in the world. It can, you can still make mistakes. So I think it's just like everyone's learning together kind of thing

Richard Anderson  22:15  
Course. And I would imagine it probably and again, jump in if I'm wrong here. It manifests maybe differently for certain people. So you talked about the the Combine stuff earlier on, but I'm thinking for myself, and by the way, I don't know whether I've got ADHD, like I say, I mean, other people diagnose me all the time, I don't know, possibly. But I think for me, what frightens the life out of me, as my business gets, grows a little bit, and I get busier every day is keeping on top of things in terms of responses to emails and diary management and those types of things. This might sound crazy, but I use a diary in outlook as I would imagine, most people do, or Gmail or whatever, but I use an outlook version, I get reminders from that diary that pop up. And they don't process in my brain. So I've got a set two additional notifications. I've got one that's native they've been slack, which has been it's been a bit of a revelation, because a minute before a meeting pops up other bones. Oh, yeah, that's where I need to be. But the other one is the mobile phone and the amount that I put a post on LinkedIn, I think you might have even liked it a couple of months, well, longer than that about. I mean, I must have it must drive people nuts in the office 10/12 alarms going off every single day and reminders to do things. But I would imagine if I did have ADHD, that's probably how it manifests in me is like forgetfulness, concentration, not finishing. I mean, I did the Belbin I was kind of non completer finisher, you know, the sten one or sten 10 or whatever the years. Anyway, sorry, I've gone off on a bit of a tangent there. But that's probably how it it manifests in me was for some other people, I guess it's it's different. And where I'm going with this is we probably need to educate across across the board because it might not just be okay, these are the symptoms or this is how it manifests in, in people generally, because it might be very different.

Becca Brighty  24:08  
I guess it's like saying, how does a neurotypical person act? Like, it's all it's a, it's a type of brain wiring. That means that in certain situations, you act differently to neurotypical people or you find certain things more challenging, but you can't, there's not just going to be a standard ADHD person, just like there's not going to be a standard neurotypical person or a standard autistic person. We're all just people, different experiences, different wiring, different upbringings. And so there's this typical challenges and there's the executive function. So that's, I've not found a more eloquent way of describing this, but your executive function is your brain, the bit of your bits of your brain and the connections in the brain that make you do complex things. And Um, and for people with ADHD, they have an up to 30% delay and their executive functions interested in executive functions are activating. So that's like make it like doing stuff responding to stuff. Focus, quite self explanatory focusing on things. Energy. So managing your energy having energy using the right amount of energy, not using too much not using too little. Managing your emotions, and memory. So that's working memory. So find a lot of people with ADHD can tell you about a holiday that that went on 20 years ago, and a person that they met in a bar and what that person wedding day was like, because I had immense conversation with, but they can't tell you either in the emails, or what they brought in their bag for their lunch, which is, so it's a different day. And then taking action. So, and monitoring yourself when you're doing something. So it's about like actually making yourself doing stuff, but also that challenge of getting out of something. So sometimes for me if I'm really into something, having to stop even to do something else, like it's really difficult, of course, and so on a nighttime when I've been working, especially if it's something I've been really enjoying, and I've really got into, I find it really difficult to go like back into family, mum, wife mode. Yeah. And so you've got a delay. So if you've got ADHD, you've got delay across those areas. Yeah. So, but how that manifests and how it shows up will be different for everyone, of course. And the thing about people with ADHD has had interest based wiring, whereas neurotypical people have important you're laughing is this you? A little bit? Yeah. So yeah, so interest based wiring is basically if you are neurotypical, you just do something because it's important you understand the consequences of doing it or not doing it. If you have ADHD, you need something to be interesting, novel, or you need to be fearful of the consequences of not doing it, or reason to emotions are an interest. And again, that'll show up differently. Now we're all going to have different interests, and we're all gonna have different things that motivate us, like I used to have, be really hyper focused on certain things, and always try really hard. But the interest for me was an interest in not failing. So it wasn't necessarily the topic for me, I had this like, thing where I couldn't fail I didn't ever want to get negative. Yeah. And so that made whatever, even if it was really boring, you'd be like, no, no, I need to do well at this because I don't want to fail. So a fear can also be fear can be an interesting, emotions can be interesting. But it's that difference between just doing something because it's important, or doing something because it's interesting.

Richard Anderson  27:52  
Very, very interesting. So I'm just thinking of a recent project that I've done a bit of work on, and typically Becca my job, but I kind of, if you want, I'm the founder of the company, I run the company, whatever. But normally, I get involved in the new exciting projects, the new exciting tech functionality, new businesses, new clients, partnerships, all sorts of things, generally speaking, in delivery. So once we get clients on board, it's with the operations team, and the client success team and all that sort of stuff. And if we ever have any issues, and it might be a bug in the system, or something that's causing a delay or lag or a problem with people automatically, even though I find that that sort of thing bores the life out of me, fear of failure and the fear of and I'll I'll drop everything I'm doing to jump on that is what you're saying is really resonating. And so it's, it's really interesting stuff. Okay, so just what I'm keen to get into, and I'm very keen for you to, to kind of talk about the work that you typically do Becca. But before that, how do we, how do we continue? Or how do we get better at educating people about this, because as you said, it's still not brilliant, it's better, but it's still not brilliant, there's still a lot more that we need to do on all these people like yourself and Michelle and other people in my kind of local network. And obviously, now that we've got people like Steven Bartlett coming out and saying that he's been diagnosed with ADHD. So LinkedIn is probably one thing screaming and shouting about it from the rooftops. How else do we? Yeah, how do we get better at this?

Becca Brighty  29:22  
So I think it's just about being interested. So like, I think like a lot of the people I coach when anyone in their business comes to them and says, Oh, I was reading about ADHD, like they're so touched. And I listened to a podcast on ADHD and I wanted to ask you this question. They're like, Oh, my goodness, like this person is showing an interest in this kind of this thing. That's a massive part of my life. And that means so much to people so like one of the great things about being diagnosed is you find your tribe. So you find the author of ADHD-ers, and that's amazing, but another thing is really amazing as ADHD allies to the neurotypical people who are genuinely care. You just like it's really, really nice. So I think people just have an a genuine interest and wanting to know about it. I think I do think businesses complain and make like such a big role in it. So I'm an ADHD coach. But in the day, the maximum people I'll coach is, three people, okay? For my own energy, and to make sure I can give them the best that I've got, I could go to a so I'm speaking, I am a recruitment event in a few weeks, and there's going to be 40 HR people there. Okay, I'd spend that half an hour teaching those 40 HR people about neurodiversity, and about ADHD, they can then go back to their business. And they can then disseminate that information and make changes in the business to help all those people. So it's like that, I think, act kind of think of it as like that Teach a man to fish thing. So I think we're in an amazing position to make a like to make a change for neurodivergent people. So a lot of people who found businesses it is because they're really passionate about that thing. And they want to make a difference. But I don't necessarily know if businesses think about how much difference you can make to a person's life to a neurodivergent person's life by making small changes by being interested in them. So I from didn't myself because I'm, like, literally trained as a business psychologist and a coach. I've also had coaching, but I could change the way I worked. And that was kind of like the starting point for me for change in my whole life. Because it's like, I've got my shit together at work now. And I feel like a failure at work. I'm not using up loads of energy at work. So I feel more confident in the rest of my life. So businesses have an opportunity to genuinely change people's lives by just getting people not just but by getting people like me to come in and talk to the workforce for reading stuff from being from just showing a genuine interest. And everything that you do if if all businesses were designed to cater for on a  neurodivergent people, everyone in the business will be more productive. There's nothing you'd do for a neurodivergent person that wouldn't benefit everybody. So I think at the education piece is really important. But I think a great place to start is within businesses, because you can they can have such a big impact.

Richard Anderson  32:27  
Yeah, no, I completely agree with this. So when you talk about being an ADHD, sorry, an ADHD coach, you're coaching the businesses about ADHD, rather than the individuals with ADHD is that

Becca Brighty  32:40  
I do both you do people with ADHD, okay? To help them with managing their ADHD and work but then that obviously hasn't a wider Yeah, I'm a workplace ADHD coach, basically. But then I also run workshops for managers to help them to support ADHD is, and then a run like, just knowledge, sharing workshops, which is where anyone comes and their whole business might call. And they all want to learn about neurodiversity, so that all the teams really understand it. Because it's not just like, oh, we need to support the ADHD-er. So it's like the ADHD is probably doing stuff that they're not aware of, it's quite irritating for the other people. So both the ADHD-er and the non ADHD-ers is can understand each other better, then all teams are going to thrive more, like a lot of conflict comes from, from things like so, as a lot of people with ADHD are people pleasers, but that then builds resentment. So if you're in an organisation, and you're people pleasing people pleasing people pleasing, but then you're not getting it back, that builds resentment. But then if you're not expressing your needs, which a lot, which most ADHD-ers that I know, I'm really bad at. Then the other person's like, we've never told me, you know, you kicking off with me. So it benefits the teams as well. And so yes, it's like all different levels in the business that are helped people. So it helped the individuals and help the HR people and help the knowledge sharing in general and help them the managers as well.

Richard Anderson  34:12  
So you could theoretically be a one stop shop for all of these types of things with ADHD for businesses for staff management.

Becca Brighty  34:19  
Well, that is sort of funny, you should mention that. So ADHD Impact my new my new venture. That's the purpose of that business. I'm not going to do it alone. But the point of ADHD impact is to be a one stop solution for helping ADHD-ers smash it in the workplace and in business. So I've got ADHD, impactful business, and I've got ADHD impact for entrepreneurs. And the point of that is there's so many problems that people come across in the workplace that can quite easily be solved, but it needs to be through an ADHD lens. Yeah, so for me personally, I would never I've gone on so many, so I Have a startup I've gone on so many like marketing programs and make this work and do this, I'll be so I'll be so excited on the day I've done it. And then I'm gonna do this. And then like for like three days after that, like I'm really consistent, and then I forget about it. And then a month later, I'm like, I'm so rubbish, I should, I should have kept doing that. So now I'll only ever do things like for my business that are for specifically for ADHD-ers brilliant, because I know if something's not designed with the ADHD and brand brain in mind, it won't work for me. There isn't really that service that exists for a lot of things. So for example, a lot of people who are coach tell me they really like find networking difficult is in not just what we think of as networking, but like, conferences or big functions that they work. So I want to work with a networking expert to create a course on networking for ADHD-ers my public speaking as in like standing up and doing presentations, that's something that a lot of people tell me that they find hard. But it's not just doing a presentation, it's Speaking at a meeting or Speaking at a meeting or whatever. So I'm going to work with a public speaking expert to create public speaking for ADHD-ers. And so what I want ADHD Impact to be is at the moment, it's just the courses that I've got the things I've already told you about, like the coaching, education for managers, the education for organisations, but what I want it to be is if you have a problem at work, and you've got ADHD, you know where to go, because at the moment, you just go to the internet, and it's like, Google has returned 7 million articles. Yeah. Well, I have ADHD. So I have a real problem with filtering information, because I've got an executive function problem. And you've given me 7 million articles that just want it to be a place where people can come and they can say, this is my issue, and then there will be something there that will help them with that.

Richard Anderson  36:47  
Brilliant, well it sounds really exciting. So as and when people want to get in touch with you to talk about that in a little more detail. Is that any way that they can do that? What's your website?

Becca Brighty  36:58  
So it's ADHDimpact.com Yeah, for the website and

Richard Anderson  37:02  
We'll pop it in the blog as part of this.

Becca Brighty  37:05  
Yeah. And then I'm on the can either email me at becca@adhdimpact.com, or contact or get in touch with me on LinkedIn, which is just Becca Brighty and I'm the only as far as I'm aware, I'm the only Becca Brighty got a unique name, which is quite handy

Richard Anderson  37:21  
It is quite handy. Absolutely. Well, I've listened I've found that really, really interesting. I know that we've spoken about it previously, but I've learned so much in the last half an hour or so. So thanks ever so much for taking the time to educate with me and and the audience and thanks. I really appreciate that. Okay, thanks, Richard. All the best. Bye.

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