A workplace can have an inclusion policy—and still make ADHD employees feel they should hide. 

An organisation may describe itself as inclusive, provide flexible working arrangements and maintain a carefully written neurodiversity policy, yet an employee may still conclude that disclosing ADHD would be professionally unsafe.

The explanation may lie less in the policy itself than in the ordinary interactions through which workplace culture is experienced. Employees notice how managers respond when somebody asks for clarification, what colleagues say about a person who is struggling and whether admitting difficulty leads to practical support or quiet reputational damage. These apparently minor exchanges gradually communicate whether difference can be discussed openly or should remain concealed.

A study published in Personnel Review on 8 September 2026 examines this relational dimension of ADHD at work. The researchers interviewed ten adults with a formal ADHD diagnosis who worked in relationally intensive roles in Italy. Their occupations included software development, teaching, retail management, psychiatry, psychotherapy, scientific affairs, personal training and business ownership.

The sample was small, culturally specific and predominantly male, so the findings cannot be treated as representative of every employee with ADHD. Their value lies elsewhere: the interviews provide a detailed account of how workplace relationships may influence self-expression, confidence, disclosure, performance and leadership.

The central message is that relationships are not simply the social background against which work takes place. They form part of the environment that determines whether knowledge, effort and creativity can be translated into sustained occupational performance.

Flexibility is broader than working from home

The researchers identified four interconnected themes: the need for flexibility, the supportive role of informal and trusting relationships, the difficulties associated with formal or rigid relationships, and the relational leadership style developed by some participants.

All ten interviewees described the effort involved in meeting traditional workplace expectations such as fixed hours, rigid protocols and highly standardised procedures. However, their preference for flexibility extended well beyond choosing where or when to work. Participants valued autonomy over the sequencing of tasks, opportunities to solve problems independently and roles containing enough novelty, movement and intellectual stimulation to sustain engagement.

Repetitive, bureaucratic and administratively demanding work was often described as disproportionately effortful. This does not mean that organisations can simply remove every routine responsibility from an employee’s role. It does suggest that managers should examine whether a task has been structured clearly, whether its purpose is understood and whether the employee has a workable method for completing it.

Perfectionism added another layer of complexity. Several participants described a strong desire to produce high-quality work, accompanied by a tendency to become absorbed in details that contributed little to the final outcome. From a managerial perspective, the resulting delay could easily be interpreted as poor time management. Yet the underlying problem may be an inability to determine which details are essential, which are optional and when the work has reached an acceptable standard.

A manager can often address this by defining the outcome more precisely, identifying the elements that carry the greatest strategic importance and agreeing on a point at which the work should be reviewed rather than continuously refined. This preserves accountability while reducing the ambiguity that allows perfectionism to consume time and cognitive resources.

Disclosure depends on the anticipated consequences

Nine of the ten participants preferred informal, friendly and open workplace relationships. Where trust had already developed, some felt able to disclose their diagnosis, explain particular difficulties and seek help before a problem became visible in their performance.

This finding complicates the way organisations frequently think about disclosure. A formal channel may exist, and employees may be repeatedly assured that they are welcome to use it, but disclosure decisions are rarely based on policy wording alone. Employees also observe how managers respond to mistakes, whether requests for clarification are treated as weakness and how colleagues discuss people who are not present.

One participant concealed the diagnosis because of concern that disclosure could affect progression into management. Another described working in an environment where colleagues spoke critically about other employees and concluded that the same judgement might eventually be directed towards them.

In both cases, the barrier was not an absence of disclosure procedures. It was the anticipated social and professional cost of using them.

This is why psychological safety has consequences extending beyond employee wellbeing. When people believe that uncertainty or difficulty must be hidden, managers receive important information later than they otherwise would. By the time a problem becomes visible, a deadline may already have been missed, a client relationship damaged or an employee pushed towards disengagement.

A psychologically safe team is not one in which performance problems are ignored. It is one in which they can be identified early enough to be managed intelligently.

When authority suppresses useful information

Participants frequently distinguished between supportive relationships and leadership they experienced as authoritarian, inflexible or judgmental. Instructions based on the assumption that something must be done in a particular way simply because it has always been done that way were described as limiting initiative, lateral thinking and self-expression.

Procedures are, of course, necessary. In sectors such as healthcare, hospitality, construction and financial services, some processes protect safety, legal compliance, service quality or commercial risk. Neuroinclusive management does not require organisations to make every rule negotiable.

The manner in which a rule is communicated nevertheless matters. Explaining which part of a procedure is essential, what risk it controls and where professional judgement remains possible gives the employee a framework for applying it. An unexplained demand for compliance may secure immediate obedience while discouraging questions, suggestions and early warnings that a process is not working as intended.

The study therefore points towards a form of management that combines clearly defined boundaries with enough relational trust for employees to contribute information from their own perspective. This balance is particularly relevant when an employee’s cognitive style may reveal problems or possibilities that a more standardised approach has overlooked.

Belonging cannot be manufactured through compulsory sociability

The interviews also explored company dinners, networking events, celebrations and other organisational rituals. Participants’ reactions depended heavily on the relationships surrounding those events.

When trust already existed and interaction was relatively informal, social occasions could deepen professional relationships and make future collaboration easier. In a formal or judgmental environment, however, the same event could require sustained self-monitoring and masking, leaving the employee feeling less included rather than more connected.

This distinction is useful because organisations sometimes treat attendance at social events as an informal measure of engagement. Employees who enjoy crowded dinners, after-hours drinks or unstructured networking may become more visible to senior leaders, while those who participate differently can be perceived as distant or insufficiently committed.

A genuinely inclusive social culture allows several forms of participation. Predictable formats, clear information, quieter alternatives and freedom from pressure may do more to create belonging than another compulsory team-building event. Social connection has organisational value, but it cannot be produced merely by placing people in the same room and expecting them to perform sociability in the same way.

From receiving support to providing leadership

Perhaps the most original finding concerns the leadership practices described by six participants. Their experiences of misunderstanding, rigid supervision or low psychological safety appeared to influence the kind of environments they later created for employees, students, interns, patients and clients.

They described approaches centred on empathy, trust, collaboration and flexibility. Rather than reproducing the authority structures they had found disabling, they attempted to create conditions in which other people could communicate difficulties without immediately losing credibility.

This challenges the narrow portrayal of ADHD employees as recipients of accommodation or additional supervision. Some are already managers, founders and professionals with responsibility for others. Their lived experience may give them a particularly developed understanding of how vulnerability shapes communication, how judgement changes behaviour and why flexibility can sometimes strengthen rather than weaken accountability.

Experience of difficulty does not automatically make someone an effective leader, just as an ADHD diagnosis does not guarantee empathy or managerial skill. However, organisations may overlook valuable leadership potential when their preferred model of authority is based on control, rigid presentation, constant availability or a highly conventional executive style.

Leadership development should therefore consider not only whether a person resembles an established image of a manager, but also whether they can create the relational conditions in which other people perform well.

From awareness to organisational design

The practical implications of the study extend beyond asking individual managers to be more understanding. The authors recommend embedding neuroinclusion in work design, team practices and retention strategies.

In practice, this may involve protected periods for focused work, greater autonomy over task sequencing where operationally possible, explicit conversations about workload and priorities, and clearer distinctions between essential procedures and areas in which employees can exercise judgement. Organisations can also reconsider whether their social rituals, promotion criteria and leadership models unintentionally reward one narrow style of participation.

Flexible or individualised arrangements should still be connected to the requirements of the role. Responsibilities, performance standards and KPIs remain important, as does reviewing whether an adjustment has produced the intended result. The objective is to create a sufficiently clear and workable route through which the employee can meet those expectations.

This is more sophisticated than either lowering standards or insisting that everyone reach them in precisely the same way.

Inclusion is created in ordinary interactions

The study does not demonstrate that informal management is always superior, nor does it suggest that every employee with ADHD wants a close relationship with colleagues or supervisors. Its participants were diagnosed in adulthood and selected specifically from occupations in which interpersonal interaction played an important role, which further limits how widely the findings can be applied.

Even with these limitations, the research offers an important insight. Organisations cannot assess neuroinclusion only by counting policies, training sessions or disclosure forms. A workplace may possess all three while continuing to communicate, through daily interactions, that difference is best kept private.

The true culture becomes visible in the manager’s response to a question, the explanation accompanying an instruction and the conversation that follows a mistake. It can also be seen in whether an employee is able to identify a barrier before it becomes a performance failure and whether flexibility is treated as a threat to standards or as one possible means of reaching them.

For an employee with an invisible difference such as ADHD, these relational signals may determine whether they contribute openly, request what they need and pursue leadership—or protect themselves by masking, withdrawing and eventually leaving.

Source

Beatrice Re, Cinzia Calluso and Pietro Previtali, “Relationships at work: friend or foe? The perspective of ADHD employees,” Personnel Review, published 8 September 2026:

https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-05-2025-0532