Jennie Brooks, host of the Unstoppable Together podcast chats with Booz Allen lead technologist, Pat Woodward, about managing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at work. During this episode they discuss his experiences with ADHD through early childhood and school, what kind of methodologies he employs to manage it in the workplace, and tips for team members and career managers who work with ADHD professionals.
Jennie Brooks:
Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Unstoppable Together podcast, a series of stories that unite us and empower each of us to change the world. I'm Jennie Brooks with Booz Allen Hamilton, and I'm passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please join me in conversation with the diverse group of thought leaders to explore what makes them and all of us unstoppable. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Unstoppable Together podcast. I'm Jennie Brooks, and today I'm excited to be joined by Booz Allen lead technologist, Pat Woodward. We're discussing his journey navigating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Pat, welcome to the podcast.
Pat Woodward:
Hi. Thank you for having me.
Jennie Brooks:
Thanks for being here. First, can you just orient us? Tell us a little bit about what ADHD is and your experience growing up with it.
Pat Woodward:
So I have to preface, I'm not a doctor, not a psychiatrist, not a therapist, but I have lived with ADHD since the second grade, so I think I have a little bit of lived experience. So from what I understand of it, it is a neurological disorder where you have a built in problem with dopamine, creating dopamine. And that might not sound like a big deal, but from all the stuff I've read, all the stuff I've heard, every single time you do something, you get a little tiny hit of dopamine. So you turn in your homework, you finish some work, you talk to a friend, it's like all these things in life, little tiny hits of dopamine. So what happens to a kid when you don't get those dopamine hits? You try to go after stuff that really gives you as much dopamine as you possibly can, so you hyper fixate. You hyper fixate on stuff that's interesting to you, new stuff, shiny stuff, whatever it is, but it's this kind of cycle of you need a bigger hit of dopamine because your body doesn't produce it in the way that it needs to.
Jennie Brooks:
I see.
Pat Woodward:
And a lot of people have never heard of ADHD in that kind of way. Just like if you have depression, there's a chemical imbalance in your brain. ADHD is not a joke. It is a chemical imbalance in your brain, and thankfully there's some medications that can help with that. But a lot of it is just kind of how you orient your yourself in the world, at least [inaudible 00:02:24].
Jennie Brooks:
And do you remember when you were in second grade what your experience was like as a child? Do you remember how it would manifest?
Pat Woodward:
I can tell you one of my favorite stories about growing up, which was the perfect reason why... So it was actually the very beginning of second grade. In the first grade, I faked reading for six months.
Jennie Brooks:
Oh, wow.
Pat Woodward:
So I don't know how that's possible, but one day my teacher pulls me aside, and she's like, "Pat, can you read this for me, like this one line right here?" And I couldn't do it. But through class, I had somehow faked my way through reading. And so I got pulled out of class. I got very intensive English-only learning how to read. And at the end of that, the teacher that I had who was fantastic, said, "Maybe you guys should get Pat tested for dyslexia, for ADHD and stuff like that." And I came back, I passed. I aced that test. So from there, it's just been working on things, and acknowledging and stuff like that.
Jennie Brooks:
You mean you aced it and confirmed-
Pat Woodward:
Oh, yeah.
Jennie Brooks:
... ADHD.
Pat Woodward:
Yeah, flying colors.
Jennie Brooks:
Passed that test with colors flying color.
Pat Woodward:
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Perfect score.
Jennie Brooks:
Okay. And so then tell us a little bit about your journey now that you have that awareness. What tips and tricks and strategies then do you find over time to employ throughout school and/or career?
Pat Woodward:
Well, school never got better. School was really, really difficult for me. Middle school was really rough. High school was really rough. And my hyper focus-
Jennie Brooks:
Terms of the complexity of the coursework?
Pat Woodward:
Just kind of everything. This is how I'm predispositioned to be like this, when I'm not enjoying myself, it is very obvious.
Jennie Brooks:
Yeah.
Pat Woodward:
I don't want to be there. I don't want to do what I'm doing. I make it known, not in a obscene way, but I just want to get gone. And that was me at school every single day. And so I just sat in class and did anything else other than what was in front of me. And technology has always been my huge hobby. So when I wasn't at school, I was setting up servers in my mom's basement and running websites in middle school and high school. So my knowledge that I was self-teaching turned out to be my career, which is great, but that's not the case for everyone who has ADHD, or who's on the autism spectrum, or anyone who hyper fixates. It's not always as clear cut as it was with me.
Jennie Brooks:
Technology, that's the shiny object maybe, literally in figuratively, that you were passionate about. And so you started developing skills, self development basically around that passion, and built it over time starting at a young age.
Pat Woodward:
Yeah. So I've had great bosses, I've had great mentors, but I'm self taught. I didn't go to college. I started working for tech companies right out of high school, which again is not the path.. Kids, if you're listening, stay in school, very important. But for me, I had this kind of weird circuitous path that ended me here at Booz Allen.
Jennie Brooks:
And then as you begin your career, are there specific strategies or tips around ADHD in the workplace that you have found? And how do you engage in the conversation? And by the way, thank you for sharing your story. It'll be very beneficial to someone who might be listening who's hesitant about how to navigate the conversation or accommodations in the workplace. What have you found?
Pat Woodward:
So I'll start with the last part first. So for me, the conversations have been easy when I've had really great bosses. When you have people who you trust on your team in your career path, it's easy to talk about what you struggle with, because at least for me, I frame it as in this is what I need to be the best team member and the most productive that I can be. So I'm all for self-identification with HR, with onboarding. It doesn't need to be the most known thing about you, but for the people who you engage with, your boss at Booz Allen, your job leader, your career manager, it's important to have them know as much about you as they can. That's the point. So just like if you were going through a really difficult period of time with your family or personal stuff, you would let them know. You wouldn't have to all email to all employees about the struggles you have. But for the core people who it really matters, you would tell.
Jennie Brooks:
And then once you have that conversation, if you are a colleague of someone who comes forward or a manager of someone who comes forward and says, "This is part of who I am," what is your advice for navigating that conversation? What have you found to be really good supports for those listening who might be a colleague or a manager of someone with ADHD?
Pat Woodward:
I think the biggest thing is you don't have to be an expert.
Jennie Brooks:
Yes.
Pat Woodward:
I think there's a tendency, especially with the folks that I work with, that to strive to be a subject matter expert. And you don't need to be an expert on someone else's problems. They hopefully will tell you how they work best or as they're figuring it out like, "Hey, I just did this project like this. I just used this tool. I just went about it in a certain way, and I crushed it." And as the person who's on the receiving end of this information, you need to just say, "Awesome. That's great," and not... You don't need to read a book. You don't need to go read blog posts unless you want to, but you should let the person come to you and work through. So preconceived notions kind of need to go to the side and let the person guide you, I guess.
Jennie Brooks:
Thank you. Going back to your journey, do you recall anything specific around your parents and that journey? We often get feedback from people who listen to the podcast who are parents of someone, children who are going through something. If there are parents listening who are finding out that their child may have ADHD, what would your guidance be to them?
Pat Woodward:
So the strangest guidance you'll hear about ADHD for parents is go get tested, because ADHD is in the 70-something percent genetic. So that's exactly what happened with me. I don't want to air my father's business, but he'd be fine with me telling this. As soon as I got diagnosed, and he was in that research period of like, "Okay, what does this mean? What do we do," all that kind of stuff. He was like, "Oh, wait. This sounds really familiar." So he got tested, and he has it, as well, obviously a different expression, because he was able to go through law school and work for the government. So his level of making it work is higher than mine. But he tested positive. He had ADHD symptoms that he has been able to work through and figure it out. But it does kind of then point to that, "Huh, that explains so much, so much about my life, so much about what I've struggled with."
Jennie Brooks:
And so essentially from what you just shared is your father's, it presented differently than yours. So is it officially like a spectrum, so that it sort of shows up in different ways? Maybe that's not the official term for it, but [inaudible 00:09:54] being, we should have you lead us for supports or certain things where you are like, "This, I'm good, I'm strong at, but there's some other pieces that would be really hard for me." Is that fair?
Pat Woodward:
Yeah. None of these neurodivergent learning disabilities are the same per person. They can be very similar, but it's kind of a suite of issues or disabilities that diagnostic criteria packages together and says, "Okay, so you've got a problem with being in social situations, and got a lot of anxiety, and all these stressors. You have probably a general anxiety. You have trouble reading. It's difficult to comprehend stuff that you're reading. You might have dyslexia." It's these kind of suites of things, and it's almost never one expression. So very rarely in my experience does someone just have ADHD. It's almost like there's a multi-vector spectrum, like a 3D spectrum where you could have ADHD and anxiety and depression and OCD, or you could have none of one or a little bit of one. So it's kind of a multifactor, multilayered thing that's all under one umbrella.
So in that way, just specifically on ADHD, I don't really have a lot of time-based problems. So I'm really good at keeping on time, showing up to things on time. That is not the case with most people who I know who have ADHD. There are people who have ADHD who have really a lot of difficulty expressing their emotions on both sides, so people who it's very difficult for them to express emotions or people who go from zero to a hundred instantly. And it's very difficult for them to regulate that, so there's a lot of expressions. Like I said, it's an umbrella of issues. And because of that, it's really difficult to say, "Oh, you have ADHD, which means this." It's a bunch of things.
Jennie Brooks:
That's really important. Thank you. Pat, at the end of every podcast, we leave our guests some free space to share their final thoughts with our audience. What would you like to leave us with today?
Pat Woodward:
Where to start? Specifically for ADHD and for what we've been talking about, I think it's really important to not make ADHD a joke, because at least for most of my life, it's been kind of the butt of jokes. It's been a bit, but can be really debilitating and really difficult for people to navigate through the world with learning disabilities, neurodivergency. And so just to keep that in mind, you should understand that you're probably talking about the biggest day-to-day issue that this person has and will have for the rest of their life. So little sensitivity and a little understanding and a little empathy goes a really long way. And I think as people who are neurodivergent, we pick up on that empathy and that understanding and will gravitate towards people who are like that because it's better than the alternative.
Jennie Brooks:
But I think that's a really important point, and thank you for sharing. I think general observations, sometimes people just think it's about inability to attend to something, keep attention. Is that your experience growing up when you mentioned that your experience has been being the butt of the joke? Are you willing to share?
Pat Woodward:
Yeah. Well, I never really grilled bullies too much, and there were no exit interviews with what they were trying to accomplish. But I do think that it's just about not being able to pay attention or it's just not being able to... It's a lack of understanding, which is the cause of division writ large in society. If you don't understand where someone's coming from, you can't know them really. So I think it's important to not use it as a crutch and not say, "I'm never going to be able to do this because of X, Y, Z." I've never tried to get to that kind of place. But I will say that ADHD is not lazy. If you're a parent of someone who has ADHD and what their hyper fixation is, what they're super passionate about, you have never seen them bored because in their spare time, that's all they're going to do. And if it's video games or Legos or something that's not directly applicable to a career, you've seen them pay attention. So it's really difficult to have lazy and hyper focused in the same thought of someone. So that's a long and short of saying it's not a joke, it's not laziness, it's not people pushing kids to take Ritalin. It's a real thing.
Jennie Brooks:
I just want to thank you for that. I think that's just so meaningful and something that I'll certainly carry away from this conversation. And I know that anyone who is a parent of a middle schooler or a high schooler, that phase of complex peer relationships and all of these things that kind of rise to the top, I think everyone can appreciate and empathize and also extend our gratitude for you having the courage to share that with us. Thank you.
Pat Woodward:
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Jennie Brooks:
Thanks for listening. Visit careers.boozallen.com to learn how you can be unstoppable with Booz Allen. Be the future. Work with us. The world can't wait.
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