Coaching Services

What is ADHD Coaching?

• A person newly diagnosed with ADHD looking for information, understanding and AD/HD coping skils;
• Professionals/Small Business Owners who have recently encountered work challenges;
• People in career transition looking for an occupation that is congruent with their natural strengths and interests.

How Can Coaching Help Me?

An ADHD coach provides encouragement, feedback, and assistance with strategies.

• Some of the benefits of coaching include:
  • An increased knowledge of ADHD;
  • Improved performance (time management, organization, planning);
  • A greater awareness of strengths;
  • Realization of potential.

 

How Does the Coaching Process Work?

• The coaching process begins with an initial interview in which the client shares their goals, background and current challenges;
• The coach and client connect weekly in person, by telephone or by Skype for the first 1-2 months. After the initial assessment period the client and coach reevaluate the frequency of sessions.

How Long Are the Coaching Sessions?
Initially the sessions are 45 minutes long and the coach and client connect once a week. Over time the coach and client may alter the length of sessions depending on the client’s needs.

How Long Do People Participate in Coaching?

• The length of participation varies depending on the goals and needs of each client;
• Past coaching client relationships have ranged from 3 months to working with Ken periodically over years.

How Does Coaching Over the Telephone or Skype Work?

• ADHD coaches often work with clients over the telephone or Skype;
• In fact, clients do not need to live in the same community as a coach to participate in coaching;
• I have developed skills to help clients hold focus during calls. I also use visual aids such as handouts that are faxed or e-mailed.

What is strategic coaching?
Ken works with managers, small business owners, and creative people who are working through issues with performance.

MANAGERS:

• They may be the “turn around manager” who comes into a new business setting with little instruction and is asked to fix problems or develop new systems;
• They tend to get bored unless they are using their creative abilities to work on new ideas or fine tune existing systems;
• These managers seem to have two modes: Growth or Atrophy;
  • Growth: New projects, the creative, “idea people” who are good macro level planning, they require a high degree of variety and seem to be built for the sprint not the marathon;
  • Atrophy: Once the business is built they may struggle to deal with staying on top of details, are easily bored, struggle with paperwork and tracking deadlines.
• They may overcomplicate tasks to compensate for their lack of creative outlets – they tend to be perfectionists who sometimes get engrossed in less relevant minutia at the expense of higher priorities.

 

SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

• They have a great vision and always seem to be at the leading edge of the next big idea;
• They are resourceful, intense, curious minded, require a high level of stimulation and variety to feel effective;
• If they are working on projects or creating systems they excel but they may struggle with attention to detail, tend to bite off too much at once and may struggle with work/life balance.

CREATIVE PEOPLE

• Example: A talented writer who struggles to realize his potential due to issues with staying organized or getting side tracked by challenges of daily living;
• They may struggle with staying on top of the bills, prioritizing their time, and struggle with procrastination and perfectionism.

How can strategic coaching help me?
I work with clients to address the barriers to consistency. I talk to clients about common areas where they may struggle with productivity, attention to detail or prioritizing their time. We will identify common scenarios where they lose time, struggle with organization or become “stuck” or bogged down at work.

We then work on these issues in phases.

Phase 1 – “Stabilize not Fix”

Usually, when people struggle at work they may cut back on sleep, become less physical active and avoid leisure activities and social outlets. However, the more depleted they become the more overwhelmed and less productive they are at work. They are working harder but are less effective. They waste time on the internet or put too much time on irrelevant details at the expense of the larger priorities.

The goal is work on baseline functioning – identify factors that deplete the individual or the system – we work on improving daily functioning with sleep, mood, interpersonal stressors, exercise & socialization.

Phase 2 – Identifying themes for success.

We talk about leisure activities and work experiences where they were productive to identify their personal working style. The mindset here is that “Good Days” are not necessarily random or an accident. If we look at enough good days we can identify themes and then build their work day around these keys to success.

Phase 3 – Self-sustaining Systems.

As we start to develop strategies and systems to help you with staying on top of priorities, managing time, attending to details and tracking deadlines we will start to notice common areas where you may struggle. We will systematically address these “barriers to consistency”.