Leadership Research Summary:
• Environment-leader congruency yields better adaptability manifested in better decision-making. The military combat environment offers advantages for leaders with ADHD; though they are expected to encounter difficulties due to executive dysfunction. This research aspired to increase the congruency effect for leaders with ADHD in a stressful military environment through interventions that improve executive decisions. Researchers hypothesized that making decisions in isolation will improve decision quality overall; while face-to-face interventions that activate commitment and focused attention will promote decision-making particularly among respondents with ADHD.
• A large-scale controlled study explored candidates’ responses to combat dilemmas under four randomly assigned interventions: Isolation, Simple face-to-face, Withholding response face-to-face; and Control-peer-group classroom setting. The main effects of improved decision-making in isolation and simple face-to-face settings were shown across groups. Further, both face-to-face interventions interacted with ADHD, yielding stronger effects and better performance among participants with ADHD as compared to those without ADHD.
• Current findings highlight the importance of finding suitable conditions for enabling improved executive decisions among candidates with ADHD. Introducing economical and easy-to-operate face-to-face interventions enhances decision quality in a highly represented neurodiverse population. Current findings may generalize to an array of high-risk/high-stress working environments, providing ecologically relevant support for young leaders from neurodiverse populations.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
• Current findings shed light on important interventions that lead to better decision-making of young leaders with ADHD. These interventions work parsimoniously, are easily implemented, and do not include any sophisticated auxiliary tools. The findings highlight that acting in a quiet isolated environment is beneficial for all leaders with and without ADHD. Regarding leaders with ADHD in particular, it is shown that the presence of another interacting person, who offers feedback during the cognitive process, as well as actively sustained reaction, promotes decision making.
• When observing the military field, it seems that these interventions may be applicable at times in simple ways- but further studies are needed to explore the efficacy of such contexts in real-life settings. Combat soldiers usually operate in cohesive teams (Siebold, 2007). Thus, making decisions in a face-to-face manner with a person with whom one has rapport and an opportunity for receiving direct one-on-one feedback is an implementable intervention that naturally takes place in various military situations, as commanders operate alongside their deputies.
• Additionally, although not applicable in all states, even in extreme conditions, a leader with ADHD may be trained to delay a response (if needed) for a marginal time of 12 s, based on the approximated time it takes to formulate a coherent sentence (Kempen & Maassen, 1977); to enable the passing of an interfering thought or enable second consideration in high-risk high-gain contexts when encountering a stressful context with another person.
• While current findings do not indicate improvement in the withheld condition on its own; given other effects seen in the current study and the theoretical considerations it may be fruitful to explore in future research withholding responses effects in social contexts other than the presence of a supervisor. Current findings suggest that when leaders with ADHD implement simple techniques while exerting leader’s decision-making, they can make more adaptable and cost-beneficial mental assessments that lead to better solutions and outcomes with vast implications, including scenarios related to the battlefield.
• Moreover, the results strengthen the understanding that, despite skeptical voices, leaders with ADHD may succeed when given the appropriate conditions and trained to apply interventions that can be implemented even when considering combat events, like instructing leaders with ADHD to make leadership decisions while interacting with another individual when possible.
• Given the efficacy of these interventions for leaders with ADHD, considerations may be warranted concerning the generalization of the findings to other domains of leadership. An array of occupations share characteristics with those of the combat roles, such as having to cope with stress and danger (Kellett, 2013). In medical fields, law enforcement, fire departments, and crisis response organizations, as well as occupations that are characterized by immediate high profitability and performance (Brandt et al., 2016) where extreme events are commonplace (Hannah et al., 2013).
• Importantly in this regard, apart from the military context, highly stimulating, stressful, and challenging work environments have been found desirable by individuals with ADHD, who report more success and satisfaction in such work placements (Lasky et al., 2016). Plausibly the current notions and findings may generalize to an array of high-risk high-gain occupations. Indeed, similar to the higher prevalence of ADHD in combat soldiers (Rosellini et al., 2015) compared to the general population of adults (Moffitt et al., 2015); there is a higher prevalence of ADHD in certain civilian environments with characteristics that attract more individuals with ADHD. For example, firefighters have more than four times the prevalence rate of ADHD compared to the general adult population (Phyllis et al., 2011), as well as elite athletes (Han et al., 2019)— placements that elicit traits that fit the occupational demands, along with the positive reinforcing and attentional activating effects of these occupations (Putukian et al., 2011).
• It may further be concluded that operating in a stressful civilian working environment may bear similar implications for managers and their decision-making (Albrecht, 2010), and potentially offer similar beneficial contexts as can be implemented in the military. Overall, the study hypothesizes that managers and leaders with ADHD in a wide array of civilian organizations may benefit from implementing these interventions, leading to major organizational impacts. Current findings lead the way for future research that has the potential to highlight optimal environments that both fit neurodiverse populations, as well as benefit from characteristics that leaders with ADHD have to offer.