Leading a company without using email, reading memos or going to endless meetings sounds like a pipe dream. But it’s a reality for Selim Bassoul, chief executive and chairman of Middleby Corp. , the Elgin, Ill., kitchen-supply maker with such popular brands as Viking and Aga Rangemaster.

Mr. Bassoul, 60, has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conditions that weren’t diagnosed during his childhood in Lebanon, when he initially struggled in school. Years later, when he was a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a professor suggested he get tested, he says.

Eschewing distractions such as email, Mr. Bassoul says, helps him avoid bogging down in the details of running a company with 7,500 employees and a market cap of $7.8 billion. It also buys him hours every week, which he uses to visit with staff and customers and to help lead the Bassoul Dignity Foundation, which funds vocational training programs and efforts to help refugees.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bassoul, who started at Middleby in 1996 as a division president, explains how having dyslexia and ADHD has affected the way he runs the company.

“I want to be able to give hope to children or parents of children with dyslexia and ADHD that they can be successful,” he says. Edited excerpts follow.