Telling a manager you trust, once, so that a flat day is never mistaken for giving up
A private message sent to a manager you trust, and a QR code to open quietly. What it says fits in a few lines: some periods call for an adjusted pace, others do not, and none of this reflects how committed someone is. The team check-in can then be about the work, not the mood.
This case involves a 38-year-old adult whose bipolar disorder is stabilized and monitored. At work, he wants his direct manager to have the right reference points, without turning every shift in energy into hallway gossip or having to explain himself over and over.
The moment that matters
There are weeks when everything flows, and others when getting the day started takes an effort that nothing on the outside explains. Yann, 38, has lived with stabilized bipolar disorder for years. His treatment and follow-up hold steady, and so does his work. What he dreads is not the condition itself, it is the moment when a passing dip meets the eye of a manager who knows nothing about it, and gets filed under the wrong heading: unmotivated, withdrawn, less reliable.
Rather than wait for that misunderstanding, he picks his moment. To a manager he gets along with, he sends a private message with a link to his profile. She opens it calmly, in the evening. In a few lines, she reads what Yann set down himself: a way of working that goes through phases, periods when a lighter workload or rescheduled deadlines make all the difference, and the fact that these variations have nothing to do with how serious he is. No health record, no intimate detail, just what is useful for working together.
In the weeks that follow, when his energy drops, the manager no longer looks for a hidden explanation and does not call an awkward meeting. She knows. The pace adjusts without drama, his commitment is no longer questioned at the first hard day, and Yann did not have to open up in front of the whole team to be understood by the one person who decides on his workload.
- You write it
- The QR is in place
- The reader scans
- Understood, without explaining again
Where to place the QR code for this case
In this context, the QR code is not put on display. It travels through a private channel, to the person who can actually act on the workload and the pace, and stays available for the day the subject comes up.
- Link in a private message to the manager you trust, shared at a chosen moment, before a sensitive period rather than in the middle of difficulty.
- Wallet-sized card kept for yourself, brought out during a one-to-one with the disability officer if the person decides to.
- Link slipped into an HR file handed over during a review of accommodations, read at the recipient's own pace.
- Discreet label on the work diary, printed from an A4 label sheet (standard template), as a personal reminder.
The rule here: it is the person concerned who decides whom they open their profile to, and when. The QR code offers context to one specific person, it announces nothing to the rest of the team.
Pre-written text templates
Three outlines to adjust to your situation. They open the sections a manager reads first: what stabilized bipolar disorder changes day to day, what genuinely helps, and what makes things worse. Starting points, not sentences to copy as they are.
For the "About me" section
"My name is [first name], I work as a [role]. I have stabilized bipolar disorder, monitored and treated. In practice, my energy and my pace go through phases: most of the time nothing shows, and sometimes I need to adjust my workload for a short period. None of this takes away from my commitment or the quality of my work."
For the "How to help" section
"You can: judge my work over time rather than on a single day, accept that a workload is occasionally adjusted without my having to explain everything again, favor clear deadlines and a regular check-in, let me know about important changes in advance, and keep this information between us."
For the "What to avoid" section
"To avoid: reading a flat day as disengagement, commenting on my shifts in energy in front of the team, piling on questions about my health, turning an occasional accommodation into close monitoring, or deciding on my behalf that I am not able to handle a project."
Conditions involved in this case
This case relates to bipolar disorder, here stabilized and monitored. What weighs at work is not so much the phases themselves as how those around the person read them, easily mistaking them for a lack of motivation. The linked page details how the phases work and the conditions that allow someone to work with peace of mind.
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You write down the essentials once. The grading teacher, the AESH (a teaching assistant for students with disabilities, in France), the substitute scan and understand. You stop repeating yourself.