Why ADHD Entrepreneurs Struggle With Delegating
You hired someone good. The work was fine. You still sent the late-night Slack message, redirected the task, and checked in on something that had already been handled.
This episode looks at what the research suggests is actually driving that pattern. Not trust issues. Not a bad hire. A specific kind of perfectionism that shows up differently in people with ADHD.
Two studies help explain it. A 2016 study found perfectionism was the most common cognitive distortion in adults formally diagnosed with ADHD, endorsed by 55% of the sample. It was not close. A 2023 study then looked at what kind of perfectionism. Their findings indicate ADHD founders are not setting impossibly high standards. They are feeling the gap between what they expected and what was delivered more intensely than others. What drove avoidance most strongly was not perfectionism in the traditional sense, but the persistent feeling of falling short, even when the original standard was reasonable.
Delegation becomes the thing most associated with that painful shortfall. So the brain starts treating it as a threat.
Friday's episode covers the practical side: how to structure delegation so the gap is smaller from the start and your perfectionism has less to react to.
What We Cover:
- Why ADHD perfectionism research suggests it is not about high standards but about feeling any shortfall more acutely than others
- How the discrepancy between expected and actual output drives avoidance in ADHD founders specifically
- The two scenarios where delegation breaks down even when the team is competent and the work is solid
- Why the founder who re-enters delegated work is not micromanaging but responding to a learned pattern of emotional pain
- What Friday's episode will cover on structuring delegation to reduce that gap from the start
About ADHD founders for ADHD founders.
Interesting in working together? You can click here to receive a free bottleneck audio session and learn more about what we do. https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/unstuckaudiosession
Diagnosed with ADHD at the start of her PhD, Skye Waterson spent years researching what actually works and writing about it for thousands of founders. The pattern she kept finding: ADHD business owners don't have a focus problem, they have an operations problem, because the whole business runs through their own head. Now she and her husband, former programmer Robert Waterson, work as fractional COOs for those founders. They find the bottleneck, hire the fix, and build the system that holds.
Subscribe to our Newsletter - https://unconventionalorganization.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram - @unconventionalorganisation
Visit our website - https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
More description
You hired someone good. The work was fine. You still sent the late-night Slack message, redirected the task, and checked in on something that had already been handled.
This episode looks at what the research suggests is actually driving that pattern. Not trust issues. Not a bad hire. A specific kind of perfectionism that shows up differently in people with ADHD.
Two studies help explain it. A 2016 study found perfectionism was the most common cognitive distortion in adults formally diagnosed with ADHD, endorsed by 55% of the sample. It was not close. A 2023 study then looked at what kind of perfectionism. Their findings indicate ADHD founders are not setting impossibly high standards. They are feeling the gap between what they expected and what was delivered more intensely than others. What drove avoidance most strongly was not perfectionism in the traditional sense, but the persistent feeling of falling short, even when the original standard was reasonable.
Delegation becomes the thing most associated with that painful shortfall. So the brain starts treating it as a threat.
Friday's episode covers the practical side: how to structure delegation so the gap is smaller from the start and your perfectionism has less to react to.
What We Cover:
- Why ADHD perfectionism research suggests it is not about high standards but about feeling any shortfall more acutely than others
- How the discrepancy between expected and actual output drives avoidance in ADHD founders specifically
- The two scenarios where delegation breaks down even when the team is competent and the work is solid
- Why the founder who re-enters delegated work is not micromanaging but responding to a learned pattern of emotional pain
- What Friday's episode will cover on structuring delegation to reduce that gap from the start
About ADHD founders for ADHD founders.
Interesting in working together? You can click here to receive a free bottleneck audio session and learn more about what we do. https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/unstuckaudiosession
Diagnosed with ADHD at the start of her PhD, Skye Waterson spent years researching what actually works and writing about it for thousands of founders. The pattern she kept finding: ADHD business owners don't have a focus problem, they have an operations problem, because the whole business runs through their own head. Now she and her husband, former programmer Robert Waterson, work as fractional COOs for those founders. They find the bottleneck, hire the fix, and build the system that holds.
Subscribe to our Newsletter - https://unconventionalorganization.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram - @unconventionalorganisation
Visit our website - https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
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