#74✌🏼 Building Self-Trust: How to Overcome Self-Doubt and Improve Workplace Performance
Discover Strategies to Cultivate Self-Trust and Improve Productivity While Managing ADHD
Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog for navigating the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.
I am an ADHD and product management coach helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
Part 17 of the Performance and Productivity series.
🐼A coach, a therapist, and a VP walk into a room…
Join fellow neuro-spicey tech professionals in group coaching cohorts. It’s a space to learn about ADHD with peers that can help support both your professional and personal growth.
It will be led by 3 neurodiverse individuals who work in the tech industry.
An ADHD and product management coach (me)
A vocational therapist
A tech company VP
🦋The Takeaways
Belief: It’s hard for me to trust myself but I want others to trust me.
Reality: Trust with others is built around trust in yourself.
Action: Build more trust in yourself so others can build better trust with you
⭐️ Introduction
It’s much easier to perform and be productive with people you trust.
Yet, I think it’s something many people don’t have at work.
Sometimes, you can’t trust managers or co-workers to know some of the most important parts of your life, such as being neurodivergent, pregnant, or struggling with mental health.
These aspects can greatly impact your performance at work, yet you might feel the need to hide them to stay safe.
Without trust, you can’t perform at your best.
Today, I’ll discuss how ADHD can interfere with trust and how to develop better self-trust to enhance work performance.
💭 The Belief – Trust me
This past week, I started a new job after 17 months of self-employment. This explains why I’m writing to you on a Sunday instead of my regular Wednesday.
As a contractor, I won't disclose where I'm working.
I've been getting to know my new team members and feeling a bit nervous.
Part of me wonders if I can maintain a job. Maybe the layoff was justified. I question if I deserve to work again because I’m not good enough.
Logically, I know this isn't true. I wouldn't have been hired if it were. People trust and believe in me, which is why I got the job.
However, I still let negative thoughts weaken my self-confidence and undermine my self-trust, affecting how I show up to my new co-workers.
I want my new coworkers to trust me more than I trust myself. That seems reasonable, right?
Nope.
🔍 The Reality – You can only trust as much as you trust yourself
Before I go deeper, I want to define trust.
Charles Feltman defines trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” And distrust as “what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation)” (Dare to Lead p222).
One of my biggest challenges with ADHD is my self-loathing or self-hatred. This feeling that I’m a bad person that can’t be fixed.
As a result, I struggle with self-trust.
I struggle to trust my feelings and instincts because I blame them for my previous failures.
I blame myself for the times I’ve broken the trust others have had in me. It doesn’t matter if it was my fault or not. Intentional or unintentional.
I solely blame myself for why these relationships were hurt or broken.
As a result, one of my defense mechanisms is to show up inauthentic ways aka masking.
I show up and connect with others in the ways I think they want me to be. While I might feel good about how the person might like me, it’s at the potential cost of building a relationship on inauthentic trust.
Because I don’t trust myself enough to share who I am, my connection and trust with another person cannot be deeper than the mask I show them.
To grow, I must be willing to develop more self-trust to cultivate authentic trust with others.
🛠️ The Action – Building self-trust through curiosity
Creating trust with others begins with having the highest degree of self-trust. More eloquently put:
“We can’t ask people to give us something that we don’t believe we’re worthy of receiving. And you will know you’re worthy of receiving it when you trust yourself above everyone else.” - Brene Brown
That’s easy to say but hard to practice when you work in tech and have ADHD. It often feels like you’re perpetually behind and underperforming.
For me, this feeling creates a false belief that I constantly let down the people around me more than help them.
To overcome false feelings and develop more self-trust, I practice embracing vulnerability through curiosity
Vulnerability is defined as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.” It’s choosing to share or take action despite knowing how others (including yourself) may respond.
Instead of listening to the voices of self-blame or failure I choose curiosity.
I choose to show up and keep asking questions of myself and my co-workers to learn more about them and their work challenges
Here are some questions you can use to be curious when you meet your next new co-worker.
Who are they outside work?
What are the most common struggles they’re experiencing?
Who has been listening to their challenges?
Who hasn’t been listening to you that should be?
If my role is successful, what is one thing that would have changed at work?
What’s one thing I could do in 2 weeks to make your life easier?
These aren’t meant to be profound questions. They’re meant to be reminders of curiosity and opportunities to practice vulnerability.
✨ Conclusion
Self-trust is something you build daily, both within yourself and in your interactions with others. It's a practice of self-compassion and curiosity.
This week, I’ve been applying this practice to answer the question: “Why do I struggle to accept that I’m an extraordinary person?”
Initially, my answer was, “Because only an extraordinary (or crazy) person could juggle a full-time job and lead two startups at night.”
But that’s not it.
I’m extraordinary because I’m living my life the way I want to. I’m being authentic in what I choose to do today.
I’m curious to see where it leads me next.
🐼Join me for group coaching
⏭️Next Week
A toolkit summary of the Performance and Productivity series.