Attention Deficit

Executive Skills

Executive-Skills Coaching

Coaching aimed straight at the executive functions ADHD hits hardest, by building scaffolds around them. Every plan pulls three levers, and every session runs the same loop.

Step 1

Know your profile

Find your executive-skill strengths and your weak spots, so you build with your wiring instead of fighting it.

Step 2

Pick a good-fit goal

Choose a goal you actually have the prerequisites to hit, and choose it yourself. Self-chosen, right-sized goals are the ones that stick.

Lever 1

Change the environment

Modify the setting to cut the demands it quietly places on your attention, organization, and follow-through.

Lever 2

Add an incentive

Find a motivator that actually moves you, and attach it to the goal so doing the thing pays off.

Lever 3

Practice a strategy

Pick one concrete strategy for the skill you're building, and rehearse it until it's yours.

The loop

Review & re-plan

Each session: review the last plan, rate how well it went and whether the goal was met, decide what to work on next, and write a fresh plan.

Dawson & Guare, Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits, Guilford, 2012.
Practitioner-established
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Educational summaries of published research, in our own words, with sources cited. Not medical advice, and not affiliated with the named programs or their authors. See our privacy notice.