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| ADHD COACH AND PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZER | |||||
The ADDA Guiding Principles for Coaching Individuals with Attention Deficit Disorder Presented by: Introduction As researchers and clinicians have increased our understanding of AD/HD, it has become clear that for some individuals traditional methods of treatment, such as medication, behavioral or psychological therapies, and education or workplace accommodations, are not sufficiently effective. For these individuals different intervention approaches and services are needed. Within the scope of new services and treatments, a field has emerged called AD/HD coaching. AD/HD coaching is practiced by coaches who work one-on-one with people with AD/HD. ADDA supports AD/HD coaching as an adjunct or additional intervention within the range of available methods of treatment. ADDA believes that one of the most critical steps in advancing AD/HD coaching services is to establish a standard of care for people seeking coaching. As in any newly formulating field, consistent and accurate information is needed. Over the past decade, coaches with extensive experience have begun to identify certain principles regarding what constitutes effective coaching for people with AD/HD. It is the combined efforts of these coaches, working within the ADDA Subcommittee on AD/HD Coaching, which helped create these Guiding Principles. The ADDA Guiding Principles for Coaching Individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder represent an attempt to improve the overall care of individuals and their families who are affected by AD/HD. These Guiding Principles should not be viewed as a coaching cookbook or intervention manual. Rather, they seek to define the essential elements of AD/HD coaching, in order to help consumers increase their understanding of AD/HD coaching and its benefits. As a consumer advocacy organization, ADDA’s goal is to have these Guiding Principles serve as a step towards identifying the core components of AD/HD coaching. This document should be reviewed not as a final product, but rather as an ongoing work to be added to and updated as theories and practices are refined and built upon. We hope that these principles will improve the quality of life for everyone affected by AD/HD. What is AD/HD Coaching? 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 helps clients to: Understand that the source of many of their challenges is AD/HD , not personal shortcomings. The Benefits of AD/HD Coaching AD/HD coaching also: Neuropsychological research tells us that the brain is flexible in its ability to learn continuously. Physical and chemical changes occur in the brain when it is challenged or when new learning takes place. Rehearsing actions helps forge new neural pathways in the brain, allowing it to develop new competencies in areas that have been deficient. This is how new habits are learned. Coaching paves the pathway for this learning to occur. Coaching intervention can make a real difference in how people with AD/HD negotiate their own particular deficits and cope with life on a daily basis. There are five major deficit areas that can be seen playing out in the lives of persons with AD/HD. The following is a discussion of these areas, and how the coaching relationship can offer successful compensatory strategies. 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 What can I expect from a coach and from coaching? AD/HD Coaching Competencies The ability to use a structured goal-setting and goal-achievement orientation as the primary method of working with clients The ability to use a conceptual coaching framework within which the day-to-day coaching work takes place The skill to create a partnership with clients for the purpose of realizing their goals and hopes Training and facility in AD/HD coaching skills including active listening, questioning, strategizing, planning & goal setting, designing actions, monitoring progress, and creating accountability Professional Guidelines and Standards for Coaching Provide access to AD/HD coaching for all appropriate clients regardless of age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation. Professional Collaboration in AD/HD Coaching Collaboration may simply mean communication among two or three individuals involved with a particular client, or it may involve a larger team with clearly defined roles and established communication process from the very beginning. Many AD/HD clients are on medication, an important example of one kind of collaboration that involves physician, the client and the coach. If the physician has knowledge of the coaching client’s medication goals, for example, to sustain attention, achieve alertness, increase productivity, or alleviate anxiety, the physician and patient can more clearly identify the deficits and direct the choice of medication. The job of the coach and client would then be to plan a system for implementing and maintaining the prescribed medication routine, monitor effects, and strategize ways to address symptoms and behaviors not addressed by the medication. This information can in turn be helpful to the physician in further prescribing and fine-tuning medication. The primary work of an AD/HD coach is to empower clients to speak, negotiate and better manage for themselves. Toward that end, there will be many occasions where, in helping the client achieve success, information would best be conveyed and strategies planned in cooperation with other individuals living and working with the client. In adult coaching, professional collaborations occur with the express written permission of the client. These collaborations are for the purpose of providing first-hand communication of details, information, assessments or observations, as well as, for establishing or fine-tuning goals, strategies and resources. List of Contributors Contributors: Committee Chair: Subcommittee Chairs: Subcommittee Members: © November 2002 Attention Deficit Disorder Association. All rights reserved. |