The CTL Blog
Stages of Coaching: Part 1 - 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 post, we met Erin, a prototypical young adult who is encountering her executive function weaknesses for the first time. At college, away from the structure and routine she was used to in high school, she became very disorganized, and as a result, became very demoralized. With the help of her mom, she walked up to the first stage of development, Contemplation, where she became conscious of an urgent need to change.
In our next post, we’ll follow Erin as she begins Collaboration with a coach in order to create a plan of action. She’ll bring conscious awareness to her existing habits, both “good” and “bad”, and reflect on how they help and hinder her.
As you read her story, what did you identify that might be contributing to her struggle? What might be helping her? What did you make of Erin’s experience with her knitting, and how might it be related to the formation of effective habits? As we tease out the answers to these questions in the coming posts, we hope that this will help you better understand your own relationship to habits and change.
Stage 1: Contemplation
Erin’s Transition to College
Erin is 19 years old and has just returned home from her first semester at college. Erin excelled in high school, so she expected a smooth transition into college. Her high school was strict about minimizing cell phones and other distractions during the school day, and her teachers would often break down bigger projects into smaller steps and set a slow and deliberate pace for assignments. Erin often worked on projects in class, her teachers gave her frequent feedback, and they often reminded her about due dates. She was aware she tended to procrastinate, wasting a lot of time at home on other diversions, and often raced to finish things at the last minute. But her all-nighters were infrequent enough that they didn’t cause her much distress. Erin is creative and a big-picture thinker; this style worked well with the structure she had in high school.
College was much harder than she expected. Erin found the anonymity of the large lecture classes impersonal. Without regular feedback from her teachers, she stopped taking notes. The large quantity of information in each lecture overwhelmed her, and her attention often wandered. In smaller classes, she discovered that assignments were not broken down into smaller parts and that she was responsible for keeping track of the many reading and writing tasks on her own. Her friends seemed unphased by the workload, engaging in discussions as though they already understood the assigned material.
Making matters worse, Erin struggled to adjust to dorm life. Forever catching up with academics, her laundry piled up, contributing to a growing mess on her side of the room. Feeling ashamed, Erin began to find excuses to stay out, further eating into the time she needed to stay on top of her classwork. Her sleep patterns became disrupted as she stayed up later and later to do work. She quickly grew tired of her dorm’s cafeteria food and so her diet deteriorated, dominated by Powerade, instant noodles, and Nutella.
Erin was upset but not shocked when she earned a C in her English class; she couldn’t figure out how she had handed in such a poor paper, but she knew it wasn’t good. Although she thought she could do better, she began to worry that maybe she couldn’t. For the first time, Erin questioned her intelligence. She returned home for winter break at a loss, questioning her desire to be a writer, and her fitness for college completely. She was demoralized. How had it gone so terribly wrong?
While at home, Erin finds comfort in returning to her favorite crafty past-time. She always knits a new hat for her mom every winter as a present. Erin falls into the rhythm of the stitches without thinking, flying through the first few rows before pausing to admire the swift accuracy of her work. Although not totally conscious of it, her body relaxes and her gloomy thoughts retreat; she starts to feel capable, assured, and productive. She thinks to herself, “I’m good at this, even after a few months off.” The beginnings of the new hat fill her with familiar pride and confidence. After weeks of feeling disorganized and demoralized, the feeling of capability was like a light turning on in her mind. If this feeling is so easy to access, why can’t she do it at college?
Erin lets this thought kick around in her head for the rest of her time at home. She finishes her hat, noticing how the feelings of competence and confidence return each time she examines her progress. But as the return to school approaches, a sense of dread builds up inside of her. The night before going back, Erin bursts into tears and the story of the semester’s challenges comes pouring out to her mom. At last, her mom has a clearer picture of the chaotic cycle that led to Erin’s unexpected low grade. She sits with Erin on the bed and reassures her. Holding the beautiful hand-made hat, Erin’s mother reminds her she is capable of doing many complicated, challenging, and worthy things, but that they need to figure out a new way for her to bring that capability out at school. Erin is glad for her mom’s acceptance and warm reassurance but still feels a desperate need to change and anxiety over not knowing how to do so.