Bontle Senne is a speaker, transformation leader, author of The ADHD Boss, and coach for neurodivergent leaders.

Ask anyone who has ever worked with me, and they will tell you that nothing gets me more excited than complicated and chaotic problems to solve. The messier the challenge, the more energy I seem to find in fixing it. I love coming up with new ideas, frameworks, and options to experiment with, and luckily, I'm not particularly attached to any of my ideas. Being right is less important to me than getting it right, so, even given only a few minutes, I easily discard way more ideas than I ever tell anyone about.

The ADHD Boss

In conversations with founders and leaders, this often looks like having an answer ready on the spot for every question. I wish.

What is really happening is that I am generating several options very quickly and filtering out the ones that will not work before I speak. That process relies on pattern recognition rather than methodical analysis, which is why it looks instantaneous. It is also why problem-solving gives me energy: it is both instinctive and strategic, and it rewards fast, creative thinking, which is an excellent source of dopamine for my ADHD brain.

Finding Your Spike

Over time, I realised that that energy was more than a signal of my passion. Energy seemed to act like a map that led directly to my hidden strengths and spikes.

A spike is something you do exceptionally well, often better than almost anyone around you. It is the thing people already know to come to you for. When people ask what your biggest strength is, that is your spike.

Mine are written communication, public speaking, and problem-solving. People come to me when they need help thinking through a difficult situation, when 'best practice' fails them, or when they need structure to communicate a complex idea to the CEO. The good news about knowing your spikes is that they make you more useful to your team and your organisation. The bad news is that if people do not know what you are good at, they cannot give you opportunities that fit. As my former coach, Beverley Simpson, often told me: no one can buy from the world's best-kept secret, no matter how good the product is. Your spike is the 'product' people need from you; they just don't know it yet.

The Four-Part Framework

So, how do you find your spike? When I work with founders and small-business owners in particular, they are often trying to define their niche. In a perfect world, that might be the Japanese concept of Ikagi or 'meaning of your life'. That is where passion, mission, profession, and vocation all meet. Unfortunately, the world of work is imperfect. With the demands of competition and compensation, life becomes more difficult when our meaning isn't something we can get paid for. That's why I use four questions to help leaders find the overlap between what they do best, what they know best, what they enjoy, and what the market will pay for.

What do you do better than others?

I like to think I'm pretty good at writing, but I'm not the best writer I know. When it comes to consulting leadership teams on culture's link to productivity, I haven't met many people who do it better than I do. It's niche and I don't always love it, but doing it better than most makes it a dependable foundation for sustainable income. My niche doesn't need to be impressive, unusual, or rare because being better at it than others is what takes it from 'nice-to-have' to secret weapon.

What do you know better than others?

I know conflict on teams because I have seen and resolved it a dozen times. Most of my knowledge doesn't come from degrees, accelerators, or training. All of those have been valuable for me, but lived experience counts more than we realise. If you have bootstrapped a business to profitability, you probably know more about early-stage resource constraints than someone who has only ever had venture backing. We often discount or underplay what we know because it feels si...