The Difference Between Regular Life Coaching and ADHD Coaching

ADHD Education | Coach Training

Clients with ADHD have the same human needs as any coaching client. However, they also face unique challenges related to ADHD that can interfere with their quality of life. These challenges, which are related to the executive functions of the brain's management system, might include emotional self-regulation, cognitive and physical hyperactivity, impulsivity, distraction, focus, decision-making, time management, short-term working memory, and more. It may also include the belief that they can’t attain their short- or long-term goals because they have ADHD.


ADHD coaches support their clients by developing a comprehensive understanding of both the nature of their ADHD and ADHD’s impact on their quality of life. Medications can be an important part of a comprehensive program to manage ADHD. But it is not enough to sustain compliance with their physician's medication recommendations or helpful support or options provided by health care professionals, designed to improve daily academic, family, workplace or personal performance, and create consistent progress.

Remember: the pills will not give you the skills. If your skills are integrated with your talents and a realistic purposeful plan, and your talents are usually the foundation to achieving your recurring patterns of success, they will do you no good until you identify, embrace and integrate them into your life.

A very important part of the coach-client relationship is the ability of the ADHD coach to empower the client to explore and discover his or her hidden strengths. The coach encourages the client to take action in areas of interest and positive intention, while also learning to watch for what is working and what is not. Once the evidence of success is captured and refined, the client can begin to embrace what he or she never knew existed.

It is not enough to know ADHD; each client must understand their own specific brand of ADHD and how it manifests in different situations. A well-trained, certified ADHD coach* has the skills and tools to educate their clients in simple, memorable, and creative ways so that they will understand and identify how their particular brand of ADHD shows up in different situations. Individualized education of each person’s ADHD is the foundation for the successful management, and eventual progress, with ADHD.

In addition, well-trained ADHD coaches work with clients to create and identify the “Five S’s”: Strengths, Structures, Support, Systems, Skills, and Strategies. Coaching assists clients with ADHD to stay focused on their goals, face obstacles and address core ADHD-related issues such as: time management, organization, procrastination, and prioritizing. Coaching also allows clients to gain clarity and function more effectively to improve their self-esteem. ADHD coaches work with their clients to develop customized strategies to move forward toward their goals, to deepen their self-awareness, and to continue moving toward fuller and more satisfying lives. The client is seen by the ADHD coach as resourceful and, thus, with increasing self-awareness, as fully capable of discovering his or her own answers. The coach empowers the client to discover their own solutions by asking the client powerful questions that will encourage them to explore different strategies that work in harmony with their unique brain wiring.

We believe the following elements are what set ADHD coaching apart from regular coaching: 

  • A toolkit of strategies, models, and systems for helping clients learn about their ADHD and turn it to their advantage. 
  • Identifying and honoring the unique brain wiring and strengths of each individual with ADHD. 
  • Appreciation of the paradox of the tremendous weaknesses and exceptional strengths of one’s clients. 
  • A commitment to coach from a paradigm of assisting clients to manage the ADHD challenges that impair their quality of life, and enlisting the strengths in more aspects of the client’s life. 
  • Supporting and assisting clients in identifying and articulating their ADHD-impairing challenges for effective communication with their health care providers. 
  • A greater level of safety and support for their clients, taking exceptionally great care to refrain from any judgments. 
  • An appreciation of, and patience for, ADHD traits that trip their clients and look deceptively like opposition or procrastination. 
  • Recognition that ADHD clients are often afraid to even contemplate success, given past experiences of failure. ADHD coaches come from the knowing that ADDers are uniquely wired, and they assist clients in uncovering their strengths and owning their dreams and goals again. 
  • Assisting clients to appreciate their learning modalities, unique organizing methods, and creative leaps and connections in order to develop customized systems that will facilitate the completion of goals and tasks. 
  • Witnessing the client’s actions and thoughts and mirroring them back to help them process what may have been swirling around in his or her brain. Reflecting back the client’s communication increases his or her awareness of thoughts, beliefs, and patterns he or she has not been paying attention to. 
  • Offering structures and tools to assist clients in forming memory and retrieval links. 
  • Knowing when to take the pressure off, so an individual with ADHD can take the action required to succeed. 
  • Co-creating systems that integrate more of their client’s talents into his or her short- and long-term strategies for the successful completion of important goals, tasks, and projects. 
  • Empowering the client to observe the patterns that have not served him or her well, and challenge him or her to create new ones that will lead to success. 
  • Working with clients to identify the key values that define who they are so that they can identify activities in their life in harmony with those cherished principles. 
  • Identifying and integrating character strengths using the free VIA Character Strengths survey**. 

If you want to identify your character strengths, click here.  If you want to get an idea of some of the key principles our coaches learn and model take a look at this short video. You can also check out our many educational videos and articles on our blog or on Facebook. The Power of the Pause link *We will refer to coaching individuals with ADHD as *ADD coaching. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, 1994, (DSM-IV) the diagnostic label is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) However, in popular conversation and on the ADDCA website and other websites the terms - ADD, ADHD, AD/HD - are used interchangeably

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David Giwerc, MCAC, MCC
ADDCA Founder & President