Underachiever, underperformer

Hi, I’m Leila and I have ADHD, and this is a part of my story.

I was only diagnosed at the age of 35, and the reason I was diagnosed is because my psychiatrist couldn’t understand how I was having the struggles at work that I was having. The only answer was that there was something else impacting me at work. Like ADHD.

That diagnosis was… life-changing.

After coming back to work, newly diagnosed and medicated, I sat down with my manager, and explained what I’d learnt about myself and ADHD, and how I could apply it to my work. And while she claimed to understand, and claimed that as a business they were supportive of me and my mental health struggles, they were still going to put me on performance management (a contradiction if ever there were one).

I met with our company’s mental health ambassador, who validated my belief that without accommodations, a person with ADHD (or any other mental health challenge), shouldn’t be measured directly against peers who do not have the same challenges, and if so, it would be unfair treatment. My manager, having misunderstood what it means to be “fit to return to work”, said that I should still be on performance management because I had returned to work. But legally, what “fit enough to return to work” means is that they don’t have to pay me 75% of my salary for an extended period of not working. It doesn’t mean that I’m not impacted by ADHD nor that they don’t have to provide me with the requisite accommodations.

Fast forward to 6 months later, and I have shown progress during the performance management period, and I am not dismissed for poor performance. (phew!) Should I have been on performance management for poor performance at all? No. Should they have provided me with accommodations, and then measured my performance for 6 months, and if there was no improvement, then put me on performance management, because then the assessment is fair? Yes.

Despite surviving performance management, the problem is that once you have been on performance management, you are branded as an underperformer, and then not only was I trying to prove my own performance (like everyone else), but I was trying to perform despite have challenges that my peers don’t struggle with, and having to repair my reputation on top of it all.

The plot thickens. After the performance management, I had an understanding manager who gave me accommodations for my ADHD, but then I was moved to a different team, and the leader of that team said that to get my accommodations I had to prove myself first, but to be able to prove myself I needed the accommodations. Once again, a misunderstanding of what accommodations were and why they are required for people with mental health challenges.

Accommodations are not unfair treatment – they are required to level the playing field. And yes, they need to be reasonable accommodations. And in my case, my request was for a half day, or a full day out of office to limit distractions, for emails to include a subject line indicating if it’s an action required or for information only and for my deadlines to be staggered. So not unreasonable. Sure, they didn’t want to buy my R6000 headphones, and that I accepted, but surely I should be able to get some kind of accommodation, or modification of my role?

Needless to say, without the accommodations, or consideration for my ADHD, I ended up on a final written warning a year later. Listed amongst the transgressions were misreading an email, and a pattern of missing deadlines and poor prioritisation, which, as I stated in my disciplinary discussion, are all symptoms of ADHD – and without support, my performance is unfairly measured by these metrics. In fact, I shouldn’t be measured on these metrics at all. But also, having been on performance management a short period before meant I was judged more harshly than my peers.

Fast forward a year later, once again, I survived the written warning. And after receiving ADHD coaching, and a leadership change, I was thriving. And I wish it was happily ever after.

The damage has been done, and despite all my efforts to improve my performance, with no support for ADHD, I have been branded as an underperformer, and even when I perform well, I am viewed through the lens of underperformer so nothing is ever good enough.

But I continue fighting.

Because a strength that many ADHD’ers have is resilience – it’s helped me get through both performance management and a final written warning, and I’m still standing and I’m still laughing and enjoying my life as best I can.

As far as the world has come, and as much as organisations are sharing about their mental health supports, we have a long way before mental illness isn’t stigmatized. What is important, though, is to know your rights, and fight for them. We don’t always win, but if we don’t fight, no one wins.