The CTL Blog
Stages of Coaching: Stage 2 - Collaboration
Executive Function is the learned ability to plan, steer our attention, organize our thoughts, and coordinate multiple tasks.
Executive Function coaching helps people learn and strengthen these abilities.
Our coaching process follows a pattern of personal transformation. People usually follow this sequence, but they also move back and forth as they encounter new challenges.
Contemplation: the awareness of an urgency to change as well as the need for help in doing so.
Collaboration: identifying a partner in change and creating a plan with actionable steps.
Rehearsal: doing the steps of the plan with feedback and support from a partner in change that focuses on the process as much as the outcome.
Remoralization: the experience of feeling capable and competent again after successfully rehearsing and executing plans.
Growth: working through inevitable setbacks and recognizing that success in one thing leads to new, bigger challenges. Then the process of collaboration, rehearsal, and remoralization repeats.
To better understand these stages, we will introduce you to “Erin”, a composite of many of our clients and a case study of what Executive Function weakness looks like in a young adult. Through her story, you will get a detailed sense of what Executive Function is and how coaching can help.
This week, we saw Erin in Collaboration; she began developing an authentic connection with her coach, and in that context, identifying some concrete and tangible goals for them to work on together. Next week, we’ll talk about the trial-and-error period of Rehearsal. We’ll go into further detail about how some of Erin’s challenges are typical weaknesses in Executive Function, and we’ll see how Erin collaborates with her coach as she discovers what is and isn’t working.
In the meantime, why don’t you try answering some of the questions that the coach asked Erin? Think of a big goal that you have. How can you break it down into smaller steps? What is one change you can make this week, and how might this change impact your life? What might make it hard to achieve? And what is one specific thing that you can do each day in service of that change?
Stage 2: Collaboration
What steps do you take when you want to learn something new? Are you a do-it-yourself kind of person, or do you learn best with other people? Do you like having a teacher? Or does that stress you out?
Personal development is essentially the process of learning new habits and new patterns. While some people find success with a DIY approach, we have discovered that the fastest way to learn and sustain new habits and patterns is in collaboration with another person. There are different names for this collaborative relationship (mentor, teacher, trainer, peer-tutor, or coach) and each name connotes subtle differences in the role and expectations of the collaboration. At Connect to Learn, we collaborate through coaching. While tutoring prepares students for specific subjects or test requirements, coaching empowers students with the tools they need to tackle any subject matter or learning challenge. Coaching helps clients of all ages learn how to learn.
In our last post, we introduced the sequence of change that organizes how we approach Executive Function coaching. We then watched Erin struggle in her transition from high school to college, and recognize her urgent need to change (the Contemplation phase). Today, we are going to describe how Erin begins to Collaborate and build a relationship with an Executive Function coach.
Erin’s Transition to College
Erin knows she needs help, but has no idea where to begin. Her mother offers to create a system of accountability, but the suggestion quickly devolves into an argument. Erin’s lack of follow through with chores at home - and her mother’s attempts to remind her - is an ongoing source of tension; her mom’s genuine efforts to help often backfire as Erin perceives she is being treated like a little kid. After some debate, they agree that Erin does need an accountability partner, but that this person can’t be her mother. Erin doesn’t feel comfortable opening up about her struggles to another family member, and her mother thinks Erin’s friends might enable her bad habits. So Erin’s mother turns to the internet, googling a few phrases: “accountability partner for college student”, “organization coach”, and “organization coach student”. The last phrase leads her to a site offering executive function coaching which they realize might be the exact support they are seeking. An executive function coach will target the problems of organization, structure, and motivation that underlie the challenges Erin has experienced in her transition to college.
In the days before her classes resume, Erin begins the intake process by completing a survey about her ability to organize and manage her time, her space and her materials, how she handles distractions and difficult emotions, the quality of her focus, and her awareness of her difficulties. Then in the initial meeting, the coach asks Erin about her life, her interests, and her challenges in much more detail. The coach’s primary goal for the first (and every) session with Erin is to establish trust. In order for Erin to change her habits, she needs to be able to show up as her whole self, without editing or hiding the parts she doesn’t like. So Erin and her coach spend time getting to know each other.
They further into Erin’s relationship with schoolwork, and when it became demoralizing. Erin talks about the qualities of her favorite teacher: she felt respected and also that this teacher had a sense of Erin as a whole person. This teacher was able to challenge Erin without making her feel belittled or ashamed. As her new coach asks Erin questions about her life and her interests, she listens with openness and curiosity. When Erin mentions something that they have in common, the coach relates some of her experience, but strives to keep Erin at the center of the conversation. She asks what brought her to coaching, and Erin begins to open up a bit about the difficulties of her first semester. Erin talks mostly about her feelings, using phrases like “I feel like I’ve gotten dumber,” “I know what I have to do, I just can’t make myself do it,” and “It feels like everyone else knows what they’re doing.” By the latter half of the session, her coach has sketched a rudimentary picture of Erin’s situation, which she’ll revisit and refine for the entirety of their relationship. She thanks Erin for being so honest, and reassures her that she is capable of change. Lastly, she asks Erin, “Can you tell me about one of your top goals?”
At first, Erin freezes up. She wants to talk about writing, she says, but it feels too big, like it’s impossibly far away. “That’s okay,” says Erin’s coach. “We can start with something smaller. What’s something that you want to change about your routine right now?” Erin wants to turn in her work on time, without waiting until the last minute or beating herself up about it. Her coach asks her why this goal, explaining that “It helps to get specific about how it’s going to impact your life. It makes it feel more real and achievable.” After a pause, Erin shares how it feels like she’s always thinking about the work she has to do, even when she wants to be doing other things. “I want to feel like I have time to think about other stuff again. I want to know how much time it’s going to take me to do my work, so that it doesn’t feel like it’s going to last forever. I want to feel confident that I can get it done.” The coach affirms Erin’s reasoning and then asks her to identify what might make it difficult to achieve her goal. Erin snorts, and says, “The work is so boring!” Erin’s coach smiles. “What else?” “There are other things that I want to be doing more. I do something I want to do and lose track of time, and then there’s not enough time to do the things I have to do. The assignments are so long and complicated, I don’t even know where to begin.” Her coach again affirms Erin’s response.
With the last fifteen minutes of the session, the coach helps Erin sketch out one change that she can make in service of her goal. Erin will spend a little time each day working on her class assignments. They look over her schedule together and find two half-hour windows each day which they then mark in her calendar with reminders for half an hour before each one as a cue to transition. They agree that Erin will put away her phone during these times and that her coach will check in via text at the end of the first day. Erin has an outstanding reading assignment for a class so they decide that completing this assignment will be the “trial run” of the structure they’ve designed. The coach reassures Erin that this is not a test. “If something doesn’t work, that’s just as important to know as something going well. When something doesn’t work, it just means that we get to try something else.”