Helping Incredibly Talented People Work Through Their Blockages as they Try to Move Forward in their Professional and Personal Lives
Alan is the author of The Guide to ADHD Coaching and Lemonade: The Leader’s Guide to Resilience at Work.
Tell us a little about your background.
Well, my undergraduate is in economics with a minor in math. I got my Masters in teaching and my PhD in psychology from Northwestern, and I’ve worked extensively with children and adolescents. In the mid-nineties, I started to do executive coaching, and then added an ADHD focus in the early August. I have been really focused on coaching business and team executives and managers impacted by ADHD for the last 20 years or so.
I led the steering committee for the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Psychology in the Workplace Network (PWN) for years. The Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards (PWHA) recognized organizations that pay attention to psychological safety and health. I'm still involved in doing that kind of work now through the Psychology in the Workplace Collaborative.
Please tell us a bit more about this concentration in ADHD coaching.
I coach high achievers and professionals who are impacted by ADHD. I've worked with attorneys, physicians, Vice Presidents, and C-suite professionals—and while they may not be diagnosed as ADHD, their stress level sometimes leads them to exhibit ADHD-like symptoms. I partner with them to prioritize, maximize their relationships, and manage their time so that they can be more successful, efficient, and productive.
What is it that you find the most rewarding regarding your coaching?
Because my background and undergraduate degree are in economics, I enjoy business—I understand business. So, I like working within organizations. But I also enjoy working with people impacted by ADHD because there is this kind of certain spark in them. Partnering with them to be successful in the areas that they want to be successful in is something that I really love doing.
Tell us a bit more about the kinds of things you want to be able to do for these folks.
I want to partner with high achievers who have been impacted with ADHD to be more productive, efficient, and more effectively bring their gifts to the world.
I use an approach based on the biopsychosocial (BPS) model. It's a medical model, but it works here. In this model, I focus on the systems that people live and work in. So, in my version, the inner circle is the biological self. The next circle out is the psychological self. Next are our intimate relationships like spouses, siblings, parents, and kids. Then comes our social group, but it’s not just friends; it’s also work—who we report to, who reports to us. Lastly, there's the public self, which includes our acquaintances, coworkers in other company areas, etc. Each circle is its own distinct system. Working within and understanding how a person functions within each of those systems and how they can have an impact in each of those systems is the way I think about coaching and working in organizations.
One of my other interests is resilience. I've actually written a book on resilience called Lemonade: The Leader's Guide to Resilience at Work. That's definitely another area where I can partner with people to improve their resilience.
I imagine this is the kind of group that has a lot of challenges. What are the biggest challenges your clients seem to face during the coaching process?
Managing their time and managing their priorities and being willing to acknowledge that they need help to get things done. Often executives feel that they can’t show any weakness and asking for help suggests to them that they can’t do their job. Through the coaching process, I partner with them to sort out what they need to achieve, what they need to tackle first, which are most important and who and what they need to delegate. People with ADHD often have a difficult time filtering out all the stuff that's going on. They need to be able to narrow it down. I think of myself as providing the guardrails for them within which they can work.
Is this specific to individuals? Or does it apply to teams as well?
No. This applies to both individuals and teams. Teams often struggle with getting clarity on their goals and productively working toward those goals. I’ve been lucky enough to partner with both.
So what do some of these success stories look like?
I worked with a CFO who hadn’t let anyone in his organization know he had ADHD. They knew he wasn’t measuring up, so they gave him a coach—me. I partnered with him to get on track, to the point where he became the Executive of the Year within his organization.
I also worked with an Innovation Officer to improve his relationships with the people he reported to, his peers and direct reports, and to change the way that people viewed him. He made it into the C-suite as the Chief Innovation Officer.
But the truth is, this work applies to many types of people.. For example, I partnered with someone to move from the professional world into a high-level government position, but I’ve also worked with a lot of attorneys to increase their revenue by becoming more efficient in managing their caseloads and overcoming their fear of “messing up.”
For people with ADHD who are having trouble seeing the big picture, self-evaluating, or self-monitoring, what kind of cues should they be looking for that might trigger them to reach out to someone like you?
One of the biggest cues is if they are struggling to meet deadlines or manage their relationships within the organization. Those flags may signal a need to talk to me—to partner with them to work through their blockages. They're often overwhelmed, so it's getting too much for them and they don’t want to admit they need help or support for themselves or from others. ADHD is not a disorder of knowing. It's a disorder of doing.
How does the ProAdvisor MindScan™ Assessment fit into all this?
I really like the MindScan. It’s a different kind of assessment because it's based on a mathematical model, rather than the type of traditional assessment that’s based on control groups and normative samples.
Even though I have a PhD in psychology, I wasn’t that familiar with Dr. Hartman’s work because it’s not traditional psychology. It comes out of philosophy. He actually got his PhD from Northwestern.
What I really like about the MindScan is that it zeros in on what a person values and pays attention to. That helps to shape what their coaching is going to be about. It’s very powerful in that way. When I meet someone, the first thing I have them do is take a MindScan™ Assessment. That is the first step that opens up the opportunity to develop a coaching relationship. It “ups" the speed at which I can partner with them and increases the effect the coaching can have.
Are there any other unique elements of ProAdvisorCoach that you like?
What really attracted me to ProAdvisorCoach was the consulting aspect of the relationship. It’s allowed me to extend the coaching part of what I do to include business consulting as part of that practice.
Any final advice?
Planning. Develop systems to keep track of stuff. Being willing to ask for support to help get things done. That’s definitely something I can partner with clients to do. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Watch Alan talk about goals with Jessica McCabe. >>
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Contact Coach Alan
Email: alan@proadvisorcoach.com
Web: acpleadership.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alan-graham-phd
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