Lauren Goldberg on Working With Your ADHD Instead of Against It, Leading Neurodivergent Teams, and When Overconfidence Is Insecurity in Disguise

In Brief: Lauren Goldberg (laurengoldbergcoaching.com, linkedin.com/in/lauren-e-goldberg/), a career self-discovery and leadership coach for changemakers working with their ADHD instead of against it, joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com). Lauren explains why the ADHD label is just bad branding and what leaders can actually do to support neurodivergent team members (00:39). She unpacks internalized ableism and what it looks like to turn down the volume on the inner critic and work with your natural wiring rather than against it (03:50). Lauren and Dan explore why overconfidence and under-confidence so often come from the same place, and how to build confidence that is not rooted in self-judgment (08:33). Lauren describes the exhausting cost of masking and the freedom of embracing the unique shape that school never made room for (13:03). She also shares how she is rethinking her own inner bully and inner best friend language through the lens of parts work (20:24). The conversation turns to the new frontiers she’s exploring in her practice, from nonviolent communication and decolonizing the framework to moving from canceling toward calling people in (24:03). Lauren lays out the crux of Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication (29:12) and closes with book recommendations through a disability justice lens (31:58).

Recommended Reading: "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall B. Rosenberg, "Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication" by Meenadchi, "Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel" by Loretta Ross, "The Body Is Not an Apology" by Sonya Renee Taylor, "Being Heumann" by Judy Heumann, and "Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice" by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com.

Transcript

Dan Freehling (00:05): Hey everyone, Dan here. Welcome to another episode of Forward-Looking Leadership. Today I'm honored to be joined by Lauren Goldberg. Lauren is a career self-discovery and leadership coach for changemakers working with their ADHD instead of against it. Lauren, thanks so much for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership.

Lauren Goldberg (00:24): Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation and get into some juicy leadership questions.

Dan (00:30): Likewise. So first, what non-obvious things do leaders need to know about working with people with ADHD?

Lauren (00:39): ADHD is often perceived negatively because of its name, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but that's just bad branding. ADHDers have hyperactive brains, which can appear outwardly or not. I think the biggest thing leaders can do is, well, a few things. First, there are some folks who are not open to sharing that they have ADHD, so it's important not to focus on getting a diagnosis or identifying it. Some people don't even have a diagnosis; they just suspect or assume they have it, because it's really hard to get a diagnosis. That's a conversation for another time, but basically it's important to just focus on what folks have, what their needs are, and how to get those needs met. And being open to exploring different ways of working, trying different things so that your team members feel comfortable figuring out a way that works for them, and not putting so much energy into trying to fit themselves into a box that does not set them up for success.

So allowing them to be open and explore other ways of working, other ways of working together. I think just being flexible is the first thing.

The second thing I'll say, and this isn't just ADHD, this is any team member: when you genuinely believe that this person is amazing, has amazing skills, you have confidence in them, you can see their potential, you just have that deep belief in them, that comes out in your energy when you talk to them. And that is something your team members absorb from you. As a leader, you want to empower people, and some of that comes from the energy that's absorbed from you. There are a lot of people who don't believe in themselves until they have somebody who believes in them and shows them what that confidence in them can look like.

So I think that's incredibly impactful as a leader. And that's not just ADHD, that's any team member, any colleague. If you don't feel that way about somebody, I think that's actually some internal work that can be done before working with and communicating with those people.

Dan (03:41): You talked about the bad branding with ADHD. What does it really look like to work with your ADHD rather than against it?

Lauren (03:50): First of all, there's a lot of internalized ableism. Ableism is this idea or belief that being non-disabled is a superior way of being, and that comes up in so much of our culture, so much of our language, so much of the way the world has been designed, the way our workplaces are designed, how we run meetings. There are lots of ways that ableism comes up. And internalized ableism is like, I don't believe I'm good enough because of my ADHD. For me, I also am partially deaf, so for a long time my inner voice, my inner critic, was saying, "You're broken because your ears don't work the way they're supposed to." That was all internalized ableism. So being able to excavate that and shift that voice, or rather turn down the volume on that voice and shift to more self-compassion, is what it looks like to not work against your natural tendencies, your natural conditions, but to work with it: understanding it, knowing what your needs are, knowing how to advocate for yourself, and knowing what your strengths are.

So all of that is really the magic of not putting all this effort into trying to fit into a box, but rather recognizing what unique shape you are and carving out changes that need to be made to fit you.

Dan (05:29): When you're working with clients on this and you're drawing from your own experience, having gone through a version of this yourself too, what do you tend to work with people on to really shift this?

Lauren (05:42): Everything that I do has self-compassion muscle strengthening baked into it. I have this framework that I developed that I call the Kind, Bold, Badass framework, and there are three parts to it. The first part is excavate. We're exploring, what things have we learned that we have internalized that are not serving us, or you specifically, the client? And how can we chip away at that to reveal what actually matters to you, how you actually want to make decisions, what you base those decisions on, because you value them and not because other people have put those standards on you? That's the first piece.

The second piece is invigorate. I'm all about, follow your energy. What would be energizing? Let's come up with an action plan that has energizing next steps for you. As your coach, I'm not going to tell you, "You should do this." I'm not even going to really give you advice. That's not what my coaching looks like. My coaching is helping you discover what is energizing for you so that you can take steps toward that to achieve your goal. And it's going to be a whole lot easier to take those steps if you're excited about them than if somebody just tells you to do them, right? It's a lot more powerful to do the work that way. So that's the second part.

And then the third part is advocate. I'm working with clients to build their toolkits so that they can advocate for themselves. This goes for anybody, not just folks with disabilities or chronic conditions or who are neurodivergent. Again, being able to recognize what your needs are and then being able to communicate about your needs. So that's the advocacy piece: being able to make requests that allow you to meet your needs while also meeting the needs of others, the people around you, the team that you're working with, because you're all on the same team, right?

You're all working together, and you all have needs, and many of those needs are unique. How can you do that from a place of kindness and compassion and self-compassion?

Dan (08:04): Self-compassion has some tie-ins to confidence, as you've written about. And there's this idea that you have of overconfidence and under-confidence coming from the same place oftentimes, which I really thought was illuminating. What can present as overconfidence might actually be under-confidence manifesting.

Lauren (08:24): Yeah.

Dan (08:24): Can you talk about that a little bit more, and how you work with clients on this healthier kind of confidence, this kind of confidence that comes from a better place?

Lauren (08:33): I'll start off by saying, the way that I learned to adapt to a world that made me feel very uncomfortable and anxious and not good enough was by being that cocky snob who was judging everything and everyone and every moment so harshly. It was such an energy suck. Turns out that's not a great way to make friends, either. I look back and I have a lot of compassion for younger Lauren, who was just trying to do what she thought she needed to do to survive, to earn love, and to protect herself. Now, looking back, I realize that when I was most overconfident or cocky or arrogant is when I was most insecure, and when I was most insecure is when I was most judgmental. If you have someone saying, "I don't feel confident in myself, I'm lacking confidence, I just don't feel good enough, and I need to prove to everybody that I'm confident, that I am worthy of love, that I am the greatest thing to walk the earth," it comes from that self-judgment.

That judgment comes from fear: the fear of not being good enough, the fear of not being accepted, the fear of not being loved. These are sort of baseline things that feed our inner voice, our inner saboteur. So that's why I say that oftentimes under-confidence, lack of confidence, and overconfidence, being cocky, come from the same place. The work that I'm doing with clients to help them establish more self-compassion, more genuine self-love, and more deeply rooted, genuine confidence that doesn't come from a place of self-hate is making sure that they are, one, able to recognize what those inner voices are saying, what those parts of them are saying that are making them feel small, and where they're either undercompensating or overcompensating, and being able to let go of what's not serving them. And like I said, we work on building those self-compassion muscles.

So a lot of that is being able to reframe things. Some of it is unconscious pattern disruption. The way that we talk to ourselves is a habit. So how we break that habit is creating new associations, new neural pathways in our brains, rewiring our brains, as they say, and establishing new habits, because the way that we talk to ourselves is a habit. So being able to shift that voice, or fill people's toolkits so that they can feel what they're feeling in their bodies and then react to it with kindness. Sometimes those tools can look like a somatic experience. It could be a visualization that they bring themselves back to. It can be a breathing exercise. It can be whatever we work on that ends up in their stress-busting toolkit. So that's a little bit about the work that I do to help folks with their confidence.

Dan (12:25): Yeah. It's reminding me so much. We had a previous guest, Dr. Jamie Goff, and she wrote a book called The Secure Leader. She basically brought attachment theory and self-worth and all of this kind of stuff into the leadership space. So I'll definitely send you a link to that after. But it's a really important part of this that I think gets overlooked in a lot of coaching. This is a really common thing that clients come to us with. Some high percentage of my clients, 15, 20% I would say, come to me with ADHD or some sort of neurodivergence. It's a very common thing, and I think it's kind of overlooked and glossed over a lot of the time.

Lauren (13:03): And I feel like, especially with the folks who are ADHD or neurodivergent, they can recognize it. They feel like their brain works differently. They feel like they've learned, especially in mainstream school where you have to adapt or else, right? There's a right way and a wrong way. There's grades, there's getting your teacher's approval. It doesn't leave a ton of room for you to just explore who you are beyond what your achievements are, what your grades are. Maybe I'm just projecting because that's how I felt in school, but a lot of my clients, I think, feel that same way, that they just tried so hard and put so much effort into trying to mask and appear that they were normal and not struggling or not different. And it turns out that as you get older, that doesn't really apply once you're out of school. Being able to embrace, like I said before, what that unique shape is that you make up, is more empowering than trying to fit yourself into this box that wasn't designed for you and your unique needs.

Dan (14:38): Thanks for sharing that. That seems spot on from everything I've heard from folks too. It just feels like a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of personal attention going toward this masking, as you said. And how much better is life, and the world, when you can spend that toward the things that you actually want to be spending it on? What does rejection sensitivity dysphoria mean, and how can people work to have a better relationship with rejection?

Lauren (15:08): Yeah. So this is a really common experience for folks with ADHD. It's not a diagnosable thing, it's not a diagnosis, but rather a common experience of emotional pain in response to perceived rejection or criticism or failure. That feeling goes beyond disliking an unpleasant experience of rejection; it can feel intolerable or excruciating, and that's according to Verywell Mind. I do have some tips for helping people regulate that. The first tip is just being aware that this happens to you. It's a tendency, and once you recognize it's coming up for you, you can choose to make the shift, right? Choose to talk to yourself with more compassion. You can seek out people and experiences that change your perspective, change your mood, reframe your situation. So the awareness piece is the first piece. I talked about that inner critic voice and being able to build your skills so that you can switch over to that inner best friend, that inner self-compassionate voice, whatever that looks like for you.

So I have a lot of clients who answer the question, in this situation, what would a friend say to you who was experiencing this, and how would you respond? Or, what would a loving friend say to you right now in this situation while you're feeling these feelings? And it can help to actually write it out and see it and feel it and internalize it that way. So that's another tool that we develop in coaching, and it can be really helpful for folks who are experiencing rejection sensitivity dysphoria.

I think it's also important to connect with your support squad, whoever you feel safe calling to talk through those feelings of not feeling good enough or feeling rejected. When I have a hard time remembering what my light looks like when I shine it out on the world, I have friends and mentors that are there to remind me. They're good at reminding me what that looks like, and that can also help me make the shift.

I think the other one is going to sound really fluffy, but I tell people, so often, if you're experiencing rejection sensitivity, there's an assumption that people hate you, or people don't like you, or people don't think you're good enough. There are assumptions being made there without facts, oftentimes. So to shift that, to turn that around and actually assume the opposite, assume love, assume that people do care about you and like you. What will that mean for you? That can actually just shift your energy. For me, I was afraid to post on social media for so long, and now I assume that the people who are following me on social media want to hear from me. That's why they're following me. It's just a more compassionate, self-compassionate place to operate from, to assume love. And again, that's a habit that we can practice. That's a muscle that we can strengthen.

And then the last tip I'll give is, if you have an intrusive thought, a rumination that is hard to break, then you have to interrupt it, because it's so easy to spiral. So how do we stop the spiral? Often we just have to interrupt it. An interruption could look like changing an activity, or imagining the silliest thing happening in a situation, or getting up and doing jumping jacks. Whatever it is that feels like an interruption, so that you can just switch modes mentally and physically, that can help break the cycle of rumination and allow you to take a breath, have that awareness. "Okay, this is happening. What do I need? What tools from my toolkit can handle this situation? How can I be more self-compassionate?"

Dan (20:00): Yeah, those are hugely valuable tips. On the inner bully and the inner best friend, I think that's an amazing shift to make, and I think a lot of people listening will probably get how that can all of a sudden quiet a lot of these intrusive thoughts they might have about themselves. Anything more to say on how to make that shift for people?

Lauren (20:24): It's funny that you asked me about that, because I am in the habit of saying inner bully, inner best friend, since I've said that for so long, but I'm actually shifting my perspective on that as I learn more about parts work. Even just labeling the voices, prelabeling them inner bully, is judgmental. It sort of puts judgment on it, when in reality my inner bully voice, just to use myself as an example, is often just my sad eight-year-old self. So for me to assume that this voice is bullying me, and not allow it space to just be and feel and process it, versus realizing, oh, okay, actually it's just my eight-year-old self being sad. Going through the exercise of offering love to that sad eight-year-old self feels a lot better than being like, "Well, you're being a bully and that's not okay," and being shameful about it.

So I'm actually shifting. I'm in the process of shifting some of that language and figuring out how to adapt my coaching so that it's not those hard labels that put judgment on it before we even do anything in the exercise. But I do think it resonates with a lot of people that they have an inner critic, an inner saboteur, an inner voice that sounds mean. So it's been easy to call it the inner bully for a long time, but as I'm trying to create more space for non-judgment, that's one way that I'm doing that in my coaching. And the inner best friend, even calling it an inner best friend sort of separates you from it, and I want people to really know that that's them. I don't want it to feel like it's this far-away thing outside of themselves, when it actually is how they talk, how they love themselves, and how they extend compassion to other people, and that is true to who they are.

So yeah, I'm actually kind of shifting some of that language, but in that rambly explanation, you could probably see how we use those terms to recognize what's not serving us and make the shift toward more self-compassion.

Dan (23:23): Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that, and it hits home for me too in terms of how we update how we think about our own practice as we learn more and more. I know that can be a bit vulnerable to share when it's something that you've been working on with people, and I just really appreciate you doing that. I've had previous guests on. I just had on a guest named Roger Kastner, who was talking about incorporating parts work into coaching. I would love for you to share a bit more about how you're thinking about doing that, and also any other of these kind of new frontier things that you're incorporating into your coaching.

Lauren (24:03): Yeah. I'm actually not too deep into exploring that yet. That's one of the things I'm exploring right now. But the thing that I have been exploring in more detail is nonviolent communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg. I actually read and trained in parts of nonviolent communication back in college, but I had never read the book. So now I just read the book cover to cover for the first time, that's Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg. I read it and I was like, wow, this is a leadership game changer. I've already been using it in my coaching, but to dive in even deeper into it, I'm like, wow, this is shifting into a whole different way of thinking and seeing yourself and your interactions with the world. So I do recommend it. I believe it really is a leadership game changer.

And I started to question myself, because I was like, I really don't have any criticisms with this technique or this framework. So I did a little research, and I'm about to get a workbook called Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication, and that's by Meenadchi, that's M-E-E-N-A-D-C-H-I. I'm really excited about that, because again, I want to see, what is missing here from the nonviolent communication framework, and how else can we be making it more inclusive? How can we make it a more equitable framework to use? So I'm really excited about that.

My special interest lately has been learning more about cancel culture, and I think people are really, really sick of cancel culture. It doesn't feel good for anybody. Maybe for the person who's canceling, or the people who are canceling, there's an initial kind of, you're not enough for us, either you're for us or against us, and there's an initial dopamine hit from that. But long term, it doesn't feel good. So I've been really obsessed with that. Now I'm reading the book Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel by Loretta Ross. From the first chapter, I'm so hooked, so I'm excited to keep reading that. So many of the clients that I work with are in social and environmental impact. So many of them care about creating a more equitable world, a more inclusive world, and it's hard to build that when we have this very wide gap between what's acceptable for creating change and what's unacceptable for creating change, and not really bridging the gap. Just having that black-and-white thinking, you're either for us or against us, you're great or you're terrible.

It's like, people are different, and how do we work through those differences? So that feels way better to me for the purposes of creating social change. That's what I'm obsessed with lately.

Dan (27:55): There's a real humility to that, and I think it's so important to talk with people who we might not agree with. Even if you don't convince them to your way of thinking, that's always an interesting conversation, I think, if people are acting in good faith at least. I think there are times where it's, okay, this is not someone who is, but...

Lauren (28:14): A lot of these conversations are just not happening, because people are putting labels on other people and making assumptions about other people and refusing to even engage in conversation. No change can happen. No needs can get met by either side, or multiple sides, because there isn't an open-mindedness and a recognition that we're all humans, we all have needs, and how can we work together to get those needs met? And that's connected to nonviolent communication, so it's all overlapping for me right now.

Dan (28:53): Yeah. That perfect ideology, while lacking in actual efficacy, I think is a symptom of our time. Just for people who aren't familiar with it, what is the crux of nonviolent communication? What is this whole framework, this movement, about?

Lauren (29:12): Yeah. So the whole framework is that we have needs. Everybody has basic needs that need to be met, and being able to approach conversations with empathy and understanding and wanting to meet each other's needs. What Marshall B. Rosenberg argues is that you can do that with nonviolent communication: being able to make observations about what's happening without judgment and without bias, without analysis and evaluation; being able to share more about what you're feeling and connecting it to whatever your unmet needs are; and then making a request that allows you to meet your need while also meeting the needs of whoever else you're communicating with. Then, on the flip side, being able to receive criticism and blame and confrontation with empathy, with understanding people's feelings, doing what you can to understand what their unmet needs are, and offering help or a solution that says, "Hey, we're on the same team."

We're not looking at each other like you are the problem, but rather we're looking at the problem together, side by side, and we want to solve it together, and we're on the same team. Again, we have needs that we can both have met through this conversation and reflection and working together.

Dan (31:00): Yeah. And what's the decolonizing criticism of this, I guess?

Lauren (31:06): I'm not even sure that it is a criticism, but I'm excited to explore that more. One criticism that I've seen online is that nonviolent communication is for folks who are privileged. So I'm curious to explore deeper into that and say, well, how can we make it so that that's not the case? And what does decolonizing nonviolent communication look like? I'm so curious. I'm about to get the workbook started. I don't know yet, but I'll report back when I learn more.

Dan (31:47): Well, looking forward to it. I'm going to dig into both of these as well. This is really interesting. In terms of books that you find yourself recommending the most often to others, what comes to mind?

Lauren (31:58): I'm often recommending books that expose people to disability justice, because a lot of the work that I'm doing is through the lens of disability justice: how we change the way that we work, how we advocate for ourselves, and how we can think about careers in a different way that's not ableist. Some of the books I would recommend on that end are My Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, and Being Heumann by Judy Heumann. There's a book that I'm excited to read called Care Work, and I actually don't have the author's name in front of me right now, but it covers interdependence. That's another thing that I'm excited to read and have had recommended to me, and it's on my list to tackle next.

Dan (32:57): Cool. Well, we will link to all of those in the show notes and encourage everyone listening to read those. I will definitely be reading those myself too. So this has been such a great conversation. Thanks for taking the time to come on and share all of your expertise and your personal experience with everyone listening. If people want to follow along with you and your work, and get in touch if they'd like, how can they do that?

Lauren (33:18): My website is laurengoldbergcoaching.com. I'm also on LinkedIn, you'll find me @LaurenGoldberg. I'm on Instagram, you can find me there as well. And feel free to just send me an email too. You'll find my contact form on my website. I'd love to get to know people and have conversations and collaborations, and I'm happy to connect with your community, Dan.

Dan (33:46): Great. Thanks so much, Lauren. I would encourage everyone listening who's interested to do that. It's a really generous offer. So Lauren, thank you so much again for joining us. This was such a pleasure.

Lauren (33:56): Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here with you, and just excited to share some of these resources, some of these ideas, and the messy middle of figuring out how to adapt our coaching to an ever-changing world.

Dan (34:16): Very fascinating, and on the cutting edge of some of this stuff. Looking forward to keeping our relationship going as well.

Lauren (34:22): Yeah, absolutely.

Dan (34:24): Awesome. Thanks, Lauren.