Executive functioning coaching can be a really positive experience as well as a good investment in your future. We’ve documented lots of examples at Life Skills Advocate about the benefits of EF coaching.
But in addition to the easily recognizable positives of working with an Executive Functioning Coach, some of the hidden benefits might surprise you.
Today we’re breaking down five additional area of benefit of working with an Executive Functioning Coach and look at how they can potentially improve your overall life quality.
Primary Benefits of Executive Functioning Coaching
Having an EF coach to support your goals and personal growth can help you in many measurable areas that can result in a strong sense of accomplishment. Research well-documents the benefits of EF coaching in these areas:
- better time management
- increased self-control and motivation
- stronger abilities to break larger projects and assignments into smaller, more manageable pieces
- development of organizational and planning strategies
- And useful skills that can improve everyday functioning and build a stronger foundation for success (Goudreau, S. B., & Knight, M. 2016).
Working with a coach can also improve your ability to focus, while lessening your daily anxiety and stress levels. It can help make life transitions smoother and easier, as you develop impulse control and the mental flexibility to potentially grow beyond what you thought possible.
Secondary Benefits of Executive Functioning Coaching
It might be surprising how creating little changes in EF skills can add up to better functioning and coping with everyday challenges.
These small ripples of change can spread across many facets of your life, areas such as developing and keeping friendships, creating a better work-life balance, and maintaining successful employment.
Here are 5 secondary benefits of having an executive functioning coach:
Increased Self-Esteem
An Executive Functioning coach can help you develop everyday strategies with items like creating healthy, nutritious meals for yourself, being productive during your work day, completing projects or assignments on time, and making time for healthy self-care practices like a regular sleep routine, exercise, and meditation.
By developing and practicing skill sets with an experienced coach, you will likely grow in confidence and a sense of competency. You’ll also start to avoid pitfalls like making impulsive choices or engaging in risky behaviors.
Self-esteem can flourish when your life choices reflect the goals and values you want to live by, and who doesn’t need more of that?
Less Anxiety and Stress
Life can offer so many, ever-changing challenges that require a shift in attention, focus and mental flexibility. Deadlines, due dates, and timelines can be tricky and sometimes result in feelings of uncertainty and anxiousness.
By learning how to anticipate these while discussing possible solutions with an Executive Functioning Coach, you can learn the best options in a given situation and how to calmly move forward.
Feeling more confident about the decisions you make can feed your sense of well-being in adjusting to various circumstances.
Better Relationships with Family, Teachers, and Employers
Interpersonal relationships can be negatively affected in situations where an important chore, assignment, or work project fails to be completed on time. Resentments can build and lead to tension and unsatisfying relationships.
Working with a coach to develop skills that increase a sense of trust, dependability, and reliability with others can reinforce more healthy, conflict-free relationships – and perhaps give you a much needed sense of relief.
Parents can go back to being parents, instead of policing or monitoring their child’s behavior.
Caregivers and family members can enjoy spending greater free time with you because of effective time management, emotional and attentional control.
In turn, the positive feedback you’re likely to receive from those around you can help reinforce your confidence in your abilities to navigate social situations successfully while cooperating and working together.
Improved Self-Monitoring Skills
Many people don’t realize how important developing metacognitive abilities can be in executive functioning.
A trained EF coach can help you develop skills in the three significant areas of metacognition – self-monitoring, self-regulating, and self-evaluating. All of these are important to developing more self-awareness in understanding how and why you make the choices you do.
Discussing how you process information, interpret situations, and react to them with a coach, can build your awareness of how you operate in the world.
This awareness can provide you with the opportunity to better evaluate and analyze your own skill sets for problem-solving and resolving conflicts and improve them if necessary.
For a sample EF coaching exercise regarding self-monitoring skills, check out our free .pdf “Data Collection Worksheets” from The Real Life Executive Functioning Workbook to see how you can start monitoring your progress.
Major transitions in life can be unsettling and chaotic for anyone, but for those who are neurodiverse, big transitions like those from high school to college, getting a new job, or becoming a parent can feel overwhelming and place a lot of demands upon you. An Executive Functioning Coach can offer a trusted professional who can aid a healthy transition from one phase of life to another.
Why Try Executive Functioning Coaching
Each individual has varying strengths and vulnerabilities that a coach can help identify and build upon in personalized, one-on-one training sessions.
Having a trained, compassionate professional to help you find answers and understand outcomes, while building stronger skills can make a difference between feeling uncertain how to move forward and learning to trust your ability and skills to progress through life’s changes.
If you need help with building executive functioning skills, the benefits of working with a coach can bring a lot of positives into your life. The hidden benefits exist under the surface and can spread out into various parts of your life.
Remember, building a strong foundation can be a key to everything from better self-image, more self-esteem, increased positive feedback from those around you, and a sense that you are growing more capable and healthy in time.
For more information on what EF coaching looks like, check out our Ultimate Guide to Executive Functioning Coaching.
