Resources for Teachers

ADHD coaching

Excerpts from: The ADDA Guiding Principles for Coaching Individuals with Attention Deficit Disorder
Presented by: The ADDA Subcommittee on AD/HD Coaching

The full document, including much more information about the coaching process, is available from: http://www.add.org/articles/coachingguide.html

What is AD/HD Coaching?

AD/HD coaching is an ongoing partnership that helps clients live more effective and satisfying lives by deepening their learning, improving their performance, and enhancing their quality of life.

Clients with AD/HD have the same human needs as any coaching client, and also face unique challenges related to AD/HD, which can interfere with their quality of life. These challenges might include hyperactivity, impulsivity, and/or inattention, as well as the belief that they can't reach their goals because they have AD/HD.

AD/HD Coaches support their clients in developing a comprehensive understanding of both the nature of AD/HD and the impact of AD/HD on their client's quality of life. In addition, AD/HD coaches work with clients to create structures, support, skills and strategies. Coaching assists clients with AD/HD to stay focused on their goals, face obstacles, address core ADD-related issues like time management, organization, and self-esteem, gain clarity and function more effectively. AD/HD coaches work with their clients to develop strategies to move forward towards their goals, to deepen their self-awareness and to continue moving toward fuller and more satisfying lives. The client is seen by the AD/HD coach as resourceful and thus, with increasing self-awareness, as fully capable of discovering his or her own answers.

AD/HD coaching also:

• Provides support from an understanding coach who is knowledgeable about AD/HD.
• Helps clients identify their positive AD/HD characteristics and to appreciate their strengths.
• Improve client's understanding of AD/HD related to their learning styles and personal challenges.
• Nurtures personal awareness and responsibility, and encourages the client to look for options that lead to progress and success.
• Guides the client into actions that (re)build self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-regulation.
• Focuses on the client's executive functioning skills (i.e., planning, prioritizing, and analyzing) to create customized systems that will improve the client's consistency and effectiveness.
• Offers a safe environment for clients who need to let go of their isolation and helps them form a nurturing connection with another person.
• Provides consistent accountability and encourages the client to move beyond thinking into appropriate action.
• Helps clients learn to advocate and speak out for their own needs, questions, and boundaries.
• AD/HD coaching builds hope by educating clients about AD/HD. It is instrumental in developing systems and strategies that they can use in effectively managing their specific AD/HD challenges, which can dramatically improve their quality of life.

How AD/HD Coaching Works (This section is excerpted from: "Life Coaching for Adult AD/HD" by Nancy Ratey, Ed.M., ABDA, MCC in Clinical Interventions for Adult ADHD: A Comprehensive Approach, edited by Sam Goldstein, PhD and Phyllis Ann Teeter, Academic Press, 2002.)

1. Coaching maintains mental arousal and focus on completing goals.
   If attention is under-aroused, chances are motivation will lag also, and vice versa. For instance, people with AD/HD often have a hard time pursuing abstract goals. Coaches seek to bring the more abstract goals to the forefront of their clients' minds, keeping attention aroused to work on the goal and stay focused until it's completed. The coaching partnership provides a "shared awareness", or mutual consciousness, of goals and their associated challenges so as to sustain the AD/HD client's vigilance towards an identified goal. The coach works with the client to create deadlines, schedules, meetings and regular phone check-ins around reaching goals. This induces a certain level of "good stress" on clients, keeping their brain aroused, vigilant, and on track to reach stated goals.
2. Coaching helps modulate emotions.
   Shame, guilt and fear are demons plaguing many people with AD/HD. Years of being labeled "stupid", "ditzy" or "irresponsible" create an emotional burden that can derail their actions, throw them off course or even paralyze them. A coach helps clients learn how to identify bad feelings and their triggers, and explores effective ways to modulate emotional responses. Instead of blaming themselves when AD/HD gets in their way, clients can think: "Wait a minute! I know this is my AD/HD at work, and I know I have ways to get around it now." By isolating the behavior from the emotion, the behavior can be broken down into parts to take the mystery out of it, giving clients an opportunity to think up strategies to contain and change the behavior.
3. Coaching maintains motivation and sustains the feeling of reward.
   Motivation is often questioned in people with AD/HD. Although clients may have developed the tools to sustain attention to tasks, they may still lack motivation. By reminding clients of their top priorities and of all the gains they have made, the coach provides encouragement. Self-confidence is bolstered.
   
   The client may under-function in certain situations, especially when it comes to prioritizing, planning, attending to details and following through with projects. In other instances, the client may become overwhelmed with a project, and not knowing where to start, may avoid the task. By breaking large projects down into smaller, more manageable tasks, coaches keep clients more focused on their goals. Other clients might need help in discovering a system of tangent rewards so as to sustain motivation and progress forward.
4. Coaching acts as the "Executive Secretary of Attention."
   Clients with AD/HD are challenged in their ability to "gross prioritize", to gather and focus their attention in a more global way. By keeping the big picture in mind, the coach helps the client to sustain their attention on their primary goals, pointing out distractions and helping to create strategies when distractions do arise.
5. Coaching supports the client's ability to self-direct actions and to change behavior.
   In order to function autonomously, individuals must be able to screen out distractions, sustain their attention and use feedback appropriately. Attentional arousal is a double-edged sword for people with AD/HD. While it is usually the case that their attention needs to be aroused in order to attack certain tasks, it is also true that if their attention is too aroused they can find themselves becoming "over-focused" and getting stuck in a particular activity or step of a task at the cost of everything else. Just as they can be sidetracked by pleasurable feedback, clients can also be sidetracked by negative feedback such as those "voices in the head" that continually remind one of one's inadequacies. Clients with AD/HD are also very adept at self-deception and forgetting the pain of past procrastination and other self- defeating behaviors.
   
   The coach compensates for these deficits by providing daily reminders and helping the client sequence out the details of needed actions. By pressing clients to process and evaluate outcomes and consequences, the coach allows clients to develop the ability to make more proactive choices and be less reactive to the environment. Coaches also help clients develop the ability to estimate the time it takes to complete tasks by having on-going discussions, reviewing plans for timelines and processing out the details and sequences of tasks. The coach helps clients to, in effect, observe themselves in action, by processing out events, asking questions and providing feedback.

What to Look For in an AD/HD Coach

The relationship between coach and client is that of a partnership. A good fit between coach and client is vital. Below are questions that can be asked of a prospective AD/HD coach in determining the specifics of how the partnership will work. In asking these questions one might also be listening for the less tangible, but equally important characteristics such as style, energy and tone of the prospective coach being interviewed.

• What can I expect from a coach and from coaching?
• Can the coach clearly explain what I will get from coaching?
• What would this partnership look like?
• How exactly would we work together to accomplish what I need to accomplish?
• What would an individual session look like?
• How, where and when would we meet - face-to-face meetings, telephone, or electronic mail?
• What happens if I miss a session?
• How much will it cost?
• What is the method of payment (check, credit card)?
• Can I access my health insurance to pay for coaching?
• Does the coach have a sliding fee scale?
• Are my records and information kept confidential?
• Are there ever times when information about me would be shared with other professionals?
• Under what arrangement?
• How long has the coach practiced?
• What is their experience in the coaching profession?
• By whom and when were they trained?
• Is this coach certified?
• Do they have a specialty: executive coaching, spiritual coaching, career coaching, life style coaching, etc.?
• Do they associate with other coaches belonging to coaching organizations?
• Does this coach have specific AD/HD coach training?
• Do they have knowledge of medications, other professionals who diagnose and treat, and relevant resources?
• Does the experience of this coach match my needs?
• What else would I like to know about this coach and their work in order to discern that we might work well together?
• Does this coach's philosophy, style and/or approach fit with how I believe I function best?

In choosing an AD/HD coach one must be as clear as possible in stating specific needs, challenges and desired goals. The coach's ability to listen, summarize and help in expressing this information may be a further indication of how well you might work together in partnership. It is important to choose a coach who can answer your important questions, help you clarify what you want from coaching, and be a total support and advocate.