Making Change Manageable With the Personal Coaching Agreement Jodi Sleeper-Triplett, MCC, SCAC
www.jstcoach.com and author of Empowering Youth With ADHD.
Let’s face it-change isn’t easy. Even for those of us who don’t have ADHD or learning issues, it can be extremely hard to try on new behaviors, let alone maintain them over the long-term. Just think of the countless New Year’s resolutions that so many of us set each January, only to have them fizzle within a few weeks or months. Now just imagine that you are a young person with ADHD. You have challenges with prioritization and time management, your self-esteem is low, and you have very little practice at setting goals and working toward them because you are still young and your parents have so far stepped in to help you succeed. You arrive at the coaching intake and are asked by the coach what it is you’d like to get out of coaching, and you feel totally overwhelmed. Where do you begin? Even if you could figure out how to begin, would you stand a chance of finishing what you started?
Enter the Personal Coaching Agreement (PCA), a written document capturing the young person’s goals, alongside a personalized plan for achieving those goals. Although the actual work of meeting the goals themselves must still be done, the PCA puts the young client on the road to success. By the time the PCA has been formulated, the young person will have spelled out desirable yet realistic goals for him or herself, considered which steps he or she would like to take to achieve those goals, designated incentives that will help motivate him or her to achieve, and specified a clear accountability plan that will have him or her checking in with the coach and/or parents as needed to stay on track. Clearly, there is a lot going on in the PCA. In order to keep the PCA manageable, the coach becomes the supportive “glue” that holds it all together by inviting the young person to
• choose what he or she wants the PCA to contain
• discuss the benefits and potential pitfalls of his or her choices
• recognize that the coach will provide support and encouragement as he or she works toward his goals.
In this way, the PCA can become a useful tool in a process that could otherwise be daunting or overwhelming.
In sum, the PCA provides a clear, concise, and concrete structural framework for setting goals and taking action steps, using positive reinforcement and coaching support to pull it all together. Whereas parents typically write chores on a list, fill out a calendar denoting their child’s schedule, or simply tell the child what to do, the coach takes responsibility and accountability to a more independent level suitable for the maturing adolescent and beyond. Checklists are replaced by action steps, and reasonable, attainable goals replace the “maybe someday I will” in order to put reality on the page. The PCA allows the coaching process to be simple, direct, structured, and supported.
About Jodi Sleeper-Triplett MCC, SCAC
Jodi is a pioneer in the field of ADHD youth and has been working with young people for nearly 35 years. As cofounder of the Institute for the Advancement of ADHD Coaching and Director of Coach Training for the Edge Foundation, Sleeper-Triplet is seen by many of her peers as the foremost expert in the field of ADHD coaching for youth. Her company, JST Coaching, LLC, provides premiere coach training and coaching worldwide.