When we introduced Alison, our leadership coach who works with clients who have ADHD, she said something worth pausing on. Straight away, unprompted, she told us: “I’m not a clinician. I do not diagnose. And I wouldn’t even call myself an ADHD or neurodivergence expert.” Her actual expertise, she says, is in coaching and behaviour change, and in applying that to people with ADHD.
That’s a distinction worth more than a longer list of credentials. Alison has a background in psychology, a master’s in behaviour change, and years working in the NHS on neurodevelopmental pathways for children and young people. She could easily lean on all of that to sound like more of an authority than she’s claiming to be. Instead she drew a line around what she actually knows, and what she doesn’t.
Why the limits of your expertise are worth stating out loud
In a space where a lot of confident advice gets given by people with no basis for giving it, saying plainly where your expertise ends is a form of respect for the people you’re working with. It also happens to be good self-promotion, not the kind that inflates, but the kind that’s honest about scope, which tends to earn more trust over time rather than less. We touched on this same tension a few weeks ago when we wrote about humility and self-promotion, and how wanting to seem modest can stop you sharing work that would genuinely help someone.
It’s worth asking yourself where you might be doing the opposite: stretching your expertise to cover ground you haven’t actually earned, because it feels safer than admitting a boundary. Alison’s line suggests the opposite approach usually works better.
If you’d like to talk through how this applies to your own work, we’re here for that.
If this sounds familiar at work, our ADHD leadership coaching helps leaders and managers build support around what gets in the way.
