Just What is a Coach and Why Do I Need One?

by Kerch McConlogue, CPCC

Marge has lots of great ideas about how to pull in really big bucks selling insurance. She knows just what to say so people understand the value of her products. It’s just that she keeps putting off making the calls she knows she has to make. Even worse, she forgets to send the follow up invoices after the calls. Week after week slips past when she’s done enough to just get by but not enough to get her a corner office.

Peter’s company knows him as the big picture man. He is a project manager. He sees the possibilities and the traps, and he’s expert at evaluating where the conflict will be. But Peter has “people” who set up his appointments and nudge him about the follow up.

Peter and Marge both have AD/HD but Peter has something Marge doesn’t have. Peter has a coach – specifically one who understands ADD, what it does for him and where it can trip him up.

What is a coach?
Peter doesn’t get advice from his coach, Kathy, who doesn’t even have to understand what he does for a living. She does, however, have to trust that Peter knows! In addition, because she is trained to work with people who have AD/HD Kathy has valuable information about the condition that other coaches may not. And that information can be comforting when you’re feeling like the only one with your problems.

A coach will help you set up a system or structure to accomplish what you say you want. You’ll get to think up your own advice and then try it out. If it doesn’t work, you’ll learn from what you tried and do something different next time.

Coaching takes time. It is important to give yourself the time to change. Living with ADD has probably taught you certain strategies to get along in life. If those habits aren’t working it will take some time to change. You have to be prepared for that.

Coaching is a confidential relationship. Although a growing number of employers will pay for it, insurance generally doesn’t. It can cost generally between $150 and $250 a month. Some coaches may charge less and many charge much more.

How is coaching different from therapy?
Coaching is not the same as therapy. Many people have both coach and therapist.

In the broadest of terms, therapy address the “whys” of your life. For example, you might have a problem with exercise because of something that happened to you years ago. In therapy you could learn to understand why you don’t exercise, then you might be able to make changes for the future.

Coaching, on the other hand, does not address your past or your pathology. Moving forward is all about deciding what do you want to do and then making a plan to do it. Perhaps your lack of exercise is based on the fact that you haven’t really found an exercise you like, or the right person to do it with, or the best time of day to actually do the work. Coaches can help you identify those possibilities and then hold you accountable for making the change.

Why a coach?

According to an article in February 2005 of FastCompany Magazine

People seek out coaches for two common reasons: navigating some transition in their lives or careers, or having some inkling that they’re jerks, and that antisocial behavior is holding them back.

The coaching relationship is structured so that the client takes responsibility for his own actions. He gets to say what he wants from the relationship and how he wants to proceed. This covers everything from how often you’ll meet together, to what you’d like your coach to say when you do, or don’t do, something you said you would.

Many of the reasons that people with AD/HD seek help from a coach are very specific – having trouble with time management, with the chaos created by clutter, with transitions to a new job, or, perhaps, the shift from an “at work” personality to an “at home” one.

Tackling any change, though, must address the whole life of the client. While you may come to the coaching relationship with a specific problem in mind, the changes made will likely touch many other parts of your life. For example, if you come to a coach to get help with managing your time at home better, you can expect that the way you manage your time at the office will also come into the conversation. You may have different issues about time in both places but, in fact, they are related. Besides, what you do well in one place may be useful in the other. Perhaps you just didn’t notice that before.

How to pick a coach
Most coaches work on the phone as well as in person, so it’s not necessary that your coach be local. Some of my local clients have grown to appreciate telephone work and not having to travel to appointments.

  • Ask your therapist if s/he knows any coaches who might be a good match for you.
  • You can search on-line using Google or some other search engine. For a start try typing: coach for adults with ADD or perhaps coach for ADD in Baltimore in the search box.
  • Check out the websites of a few coaches. Not only will you be able to learn about their training but also you’ll be able to tell something about their personal style and attitude based on what they think is important enough to mention on their website.
  • Take advantage of the free introductory session offered by most coaches. Coaching is a relationship. You want to be sure that you’re compatible and not feel judged or scolded.
  • Commit to a couple of months of coaching. Change takes time. You should ask how long the coach expects you to work with him or her. If there is a contract, how do you get out of it if it’s not really working out for you.

Above all, coaching is pragmatic. It’s a great opportunity to practice saying clearly what you think. If coaching doesn’t seem to be working for you, say so. The coach might not know it if you don’t speak up. Coaches don’t expect their clients to stay with them forever. While some clients do keep working with the same coach for years, it’s probably more common that they work together for several months. Then it’s great when the client feels in control enough, comfortable enough with the relationship, to come back for a check in once in a while.

Warren Buffett said, “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars. I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” It’s that one step at a time thing that’s important. People with ADD often see the big picture and miss the steps required to get there. The power of the coaching process, particularly for us, is in helping to notice those parts of the whole which are required for growth. Notice them, acknowledge them, and attend to them – that’s when success is sure.

Find a Coach Resources:
ADHD Coaches Organization
www.ADDConsults.com
www.ADD.org
www.ADDResources.org
www.coachfederation.org

About the author: Kerch McConlogue, CPCC is a professional coach in Baltimore who works with people who have too many ideas. She can be reached on the web at www.mapthefuture.com, or by phone at (410) 233-3274

For information about CHADD meetings in Maryland, check out our online schedule.

Comprehensive Education about ADHD

brown goldfish book Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults

by Thomas E Brown, Ph.D.
Yale University Press © 2005
$27.50 384 pp

For years Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D. has been paying attention to the stories of patients with AD/HD. As associate director of the Yale Clinic for Attention and Related Disorders and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, he also knows the science behind the diagnosis. The result is a new book, Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults. Like Dr. Brown’s very popular talks at annual ADDA conferences, it presents the stories he’s collected during his clinical experience and pairs them with recent research to draw a clear picture of ADHD.

Dr. Brown’s model of ADD groups significant chronic difficulties which tend to show up together and improve together into six clusters of symptoms which he calls the ADD Syndrome: “a complex disorder that involves impairment in focus, organization, motivation, emotional modulation, memory and other functions of the brain’s management system.”

These executive function impairments are often described as being like a slightly off maestro lacking control of an orchestra. He has trouble managing the starting and stopping of thoughts and actions; his memory and focus are disorganized and undependable.

Executive functions impaired in the ADD syndrome are not simply skills to be learned. ADD Syndrome is not about a lack of will power. Trying harder will not fix it. And medication is not magic — Pills can’t teach skills.

As for any disorder, the most important thing in successful treatment of ADD is education about what it is, what it does, and how it affects the person and his family. The education in this book is clear and comprehensive in its offering. Brown’s references to the problem of emotional modulation for people with ADD is not reflected in the DSM-IV* but it makes sense in my limited experience. I also found some interesting explanations for other problems that I didn’t know were related to ADHD. For example, I learned that while I may understand all the words my children use to describe their day, my ability to repeat them – word for word — it is out of scale with my understanding of the story. An obscure fact? Perhaps. But I believe knowing that’s common for people with ADD will help me appreciate why a verbal grocery list is less effective than a written one.

The book is heavily cited for clinicians but never in a way that made me feel inferior. In addition, the book includes the clearest explanation I have ever seen of how the brain uses its special proteins to move thoughts around and how different medications affect that process. I particularly appreciate Dr. Brown’s gentle humor and compassion in the construction of metaphors to explain complicated concepts and then his further explanation about why they are not quite the full story. He’d regularly speaks at ADDA conferences. If you have the opportunity, do not miss him!@

ADD is, if anything, a collection of symptoms – widely varied in those diagnosed with it. For clinicians, this book has the studies to back the premise that ADD Syndrome includes a more complex collection of markers. For parents or adults with ADD, this book lays out the intricacies of the bits and pieces of behaviors that have just not made sense before.

* For a refresher on what the DSM-IV says about ADHD, check out the very useful website of David Rabiner, Ph.D. Associate Research Professor, Duke University

Communication between Cooperating Companies..Got an equation?

There are two teams working on a single project.
Each team has a distinct and separate part in the project,
both are required for completion.

The Ralph Shaw Law of Cooperating Companies (which I just made up and named for the guy from whom I learned to live it) says that in order to have the least opportunity for miscommunication, misdirection, or misunderstanding, one and only one person from team A represents official conversation to one and only one person from team B.

I propose that for each added person to either team the opportunity for mistake or misunderstanding expands by a pretty big number. But I don’t know how to figure out what that number is. If you can, I’d love to see it.

Here’s the back story:
Ralph Shaw owns Shaw & Sons Amusements. I was the volunteer chair of the Baltimore City Fair, a giant three day celebration of life in the city of Baltimore. Ralph’s organization was responsible for the rides and midway set up to compliment the neighborhood and other exhibits that were the showcase of the event.

The Fair needed the Midway to entertain the huge number of people for longer than the time to walk thru the exhibits. The Midway need the Fair as a reason to block streets and set up in downtown Baltimore.

Each organziaiton had its own team of workers who knew their own jobs. But as you can imagine, it’s important that not just anyone from the Fair’s team could go to any one on Ralph’s team, for example, on the day before the event and say.. “OH, gee, we don’t like where you set the merry go round. Could you move it over there?”

So there exists one person from the Fair — the chair — who talks to one person at Shaw & Sons — Ralph — about any major decisions affecting the the event.

This is not to imply that other people in the organizations can’t talk together or work together. I think the referenced conversations are sort of contract level discusssions. We will do this; we won’t do that.

My hypothesis:
In any conversation where instructions are given there are three options for out come.. Do it, dont do it, or do something else.

So if there are two people in the matrix, then there are six options (each person could choose any of the answers) ? Or is it only three?.. because it’s only one instruction?
And if you add a person to one side, how does that number increase?
And what if there are two people on each side? Then what?
What about more?

Do you get the math? Could you send me an equation? I’d really like to know.

PS.. Don’t tell my old math professor, Marv Brubaker, that I can’t do this on my own.

What’s that hawk doing in my Baltimore city bird bath?

My office is in the sun porch of our 1920s home. It’s a wonderful room and probably one of the biggest reasons we bought the place 30 years ago. This spring I put a copper bird bath in the shrubbery outside my window. I’ve had great fun watching the birds playing in that water.

I was sitting at my desk yesterday and noticed a lot of flapping wings out side. What a surprise! A hawk had found my bird bath. I’m not sure what kind of hawk. I looked at some pictures to see if I could tell. But no luck. I checked out some on line conversations about hawks in my area. But still I’m not sure what kind he(?) was.

I have a feeling it was not very old, seeming particularly ungraceful at take off. But perhaps that’s what happens when you’re in a too small space for your normal flight path. He lighted for a short time on a low hanging branch of a tree. A squirrel started up the tree right for the bird! Man, I thought, this is gonna be bloody. But then the bird flew away.

I brought my camera downstairs so in case he comes back I can snap a picture.

I was thinking about flying when there isn’t really enough room, about being intimidated by someone much less powerful than you. And you know, that bird just flew away. He stumbled a little in his flight plan, and he flew away from a squirrel. But I am guessing it didn’t keep him from finding his next meal or enjoying the sights when he got high enough to see them.

One foot in front of the other. What must be done now?

Fidget to Focus

Fidget to Focus – Outwit Your Boredom: Sensory Strategies for Living with ADD
Roland Rotz, Ph.D. and Sarah D. Wright, M.S., A.C.T.
IUniverse © 2005
$14.95
126 pp

Do your kids swear that listening to music while they do homework actually helps them concentrate? Can you sit still OR focus, but not both – simultaneously?

If your answer is “yes,” you might already understand the art of effective fidgeting – using simultaneous sensory-motor activities to increase your ability to pay attention.

Based on the collected stories of hundreds of people, authors Roland Rotz, Ph.D. — a licensed child and adult psychologist — and Sarah D. Wright, M.S., A.C.T. – a professional AD/HD coach – propose sifting the paradigm: Give yourself permission to fidget. “Restlessness is not just an expression of trying to ‘get out of the fidgets’ in order to become calm. It is rather an attempt to self-arouse to become focused.”

The beauty of fidgeting in order to focus is that it works for everyone, not just people with ADD. Moving your body is particularly effective. Running, walking or even plain old recess activities help many people attend even after those activities have stopped. Personally, I find knitting to be a great way to keep myself focused while attending mlong meetings. It actuates the sense of touch, and it’s much better than picking at my nails. Color coded file folders are more plesant to look at so they help make the drudgery of filing a bit more interesting.

Key is to identify socially acceptable forms of fidgeting. Whether it’s doodling in a notebook while listening to a lecture, chewing gum while taking a test, or racing against the clock to finish a tedious task like cleaning the kitchen, what makes it work is using different senses for the fidget and for the focus.

This short book is structured with review points at the end of each chapter. It aims to help you identify your own socially acceptable devices to keep one part of your brain busy while allowing greater focus by another part. The strategies suggested in the text and in the “Fidget Strategies Workbook” included with the appendices will likely lead you to think of other techniques that will work for you. You’ll find suggestions for using your senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell as well as movement, time awareness, or a companion.


A couple of big points from the book:

“Effective fidgeting uses a second sensory-motor activity, one other than that needed for our primary activity, to help us stay alert and focus the primary activity.” These secondary activities might include listening to loud music while doing housework, racing against the clock to finish a tedious task like cleaning the kitchen, doodling in a notebook while listening to a lecture, or chewing gum while taking a test.

“Some of the strategies we use to simulate ourselves into interest and thus action, e.g. procrastination or emotional conflict, can have undesirable side effects.” The authors warn that if you don’t actually choose your method of fidgeting, you could wind up doing something harmful: perhaps something as simple as picking your cuticles or more problematic smoking or engaging in some other addictive behavior.