In this episode, Ash and Dusty revisit the critical topic of strengths in the context of ADHD. They explore how individuals with ADHD often focus on their challenges, overshadowing their unique strengths. Through coaching insights and real-life examples, they emphasize the importance of recognizing and leveraging strengths as a means to address challenges effectively. The conversation highlights the need for a balanced perspective where strengths and challenges coexist, allowing clients to navigate their experiences with greater self-awareness and confidence.
The hosts share a compelling case study involving a client transitioning from an expat lifestyle to a corporate job, illustrating the adjustments and challenges faced. They discuss how coaching can facilitate a shift in mindset, empowering clients to embrace their strengths while acknowledging their challenges. By fostering a sense of agency and curiosity, the episode reinforces that everyone has unique qualities that can be harnessed to overcome difficulties, ultimately leading to personal growth and fulfillment.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash, [00:00:03] Dusty: and I’m Dusty, [00:00:05] Ash: and this is Translating ADHD. [00:00:08] Ash: Listeners, this is your last chance to sign up for my upcoming Purpose course. If you find yourself questioning what your bigger why is, what you want to be when you grow up, if you’re not sure what the answer for yourself is to what is a life that fits, this is the perfect course for you. Classes begin April 1st meeting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. For more information visit the website https://translatingadhd.com/ and click on the group coaching tab. Applications are due this week, so if you want to get into this class make sure you get that application in before the end of the week. [00:00:44] Dusty: So Ash, what are we talking about today? [00:00:47] Ash: We are coming back to a topic that has been covered more than once on this podcast, but it is always worth revisiting, and that is the topic of ADHD and strengths.All of the coaching that I do is strength based coaching and I find that it’s such a valuable framework for those of us with ADHD because when our clients come to us, where are they at? They’re in their challenge and challenge is this huge signal. It’s so loud and that’s all they can see – where they’re challenged.
I’m challenged here. I’m failing here. I’m not living up here. And more so than that, there are numerous studies that back this up. ADHD people do not form a strong sense of identity. So we can be really blind to what we do well and what our strengths are. I know that was certainly true for me for a long time.
And that was one of the most impactful things about the coaching work that I did with Cam, unearthing strengths that I already had on board, having him help me see those, appreciate those and lean into them, which in a lot of ways is the foundation of the coaching practice that I have today.
[00:01:55] Dusty: Strengths are so important, as you say, and it’s such an interesting framework because on the one hand, it’s something we all know about, as in we all understand hypothetically the concept of strengths and using them. But I think that this is where coaching fills a very special niche. I remember back when I first started talking about becoming an ADHD coach, and my sister was asking me, what is that? And I said, it’s sort of like life coaching, and she was saying, I have this friend who always thinks that’s so funny, like, what is life coaching, right? There’s kind of this joke about what life coaching actually is. People don’t always get it and it’s because it’s so nuanced, because this is exactly one of those things where coaching does something that I think no other kind of “service” really does – we take something like strengths, it’s a concept, it’s an idea. We are all familiar with it, but we turn it into something very explicit that becomes like a tool that we can apply conceptually to what we do day to day. And it’s as important, if not more important than tools. Such as using Todoist or having a checklist for something, right?It’s important, but it’s conceptual. It’s not something that you can see or touch or feel. So I think it just blows people’s minds that an “idea” can be leveraged and made into something that’s almost quite tangible. And that’s what I love about taking a strengths-based approach.
[00:03:17] Ash: Dusty, what I tell every new client when we talk about where we’re headed in coaching is that one of the things that we’re looking for is that strength and challenge are on an equal playing field. Because again with ADHD, “challenge” is so loud and we’re so blind to our own strengths. And it’s not that we’re trying to flip the script, right?I am a believer that ADHD is either both a gift and a curse or it’s neither, take your pick. So it’s not about flipping the script from it’s a curse to, oh, it’s a blessing and it’s awesome. But it is about having strength and challenge live on an equal playing field, right?
So that when we are in an area of challenge, we’re not catastrophizing about it, right? We’re not blowing it up to an, I’m a terrible person that has no value and offers nothing here. We’re instead able to take a more nuanced view.
[00:04:05] Dusty: Hey, quit reading my diary. Ash. [00:04:07] Ash: Yes, every one of us has had those moments and as an aside, particularly those of us that menstruate, the PMS always makes those moments worse. Just a little reminder for those of you that may not know that is very true.But, really getting in tune with your strengths and starting to observe and see them in play can make a huge difference here.
I’ve got this really interesting client that I’m working with right now where we’re doing exactly this work. And I’m doing this with all of my clients to some degree, but this is front and center for this particular client. Because at the time she came to me, she was an expat living outside of her country of origin.
And she was winding up a job here in preparation for a job she had already accepted with moving back to her country of origin. And she made these moves somewhat strategically, right? She really enjoys the expat life. She had previously worked almost exclusively for startups in the technology realm. And so here she is returning to her country of origin, staying in tech, but going to work for a corporation.
And the thing that made her make these decisions in the first place was curiosity, right?
Curiosity in the direction of “is the expat lifestyle right for me” or “is staying in startups right for me”. I want to try something different just to see how I do, and just to get the learning here. And it’s been such an interesting experience because A, we started coaching before the move, right? So we had a lot of opportunities to figure out what was going to have her attention when she got there. But then B, when she got into the corporate environment, all of that one comes crashing down, right? It’s all so different in so many ways that are challenging for people with ADHD.
Everything moves a lot slower and in some ways you’re a lot more removed from the problem right in a startup. It’s like here’s a problem. Boom boom. Solve it. ADHD people are generally pretty great at that, right? We’re great with pressure. We’re great with urgency.
We’re great when we have lots of agency, and ability to do creative problem solving. And in a corporate setting, you’re a lot more gated in all of those ways, and more so gated by what is given to you. So double down, she was handed a project that had none of these things, no collaboration, very low agency, it was really more about just making sure that the thing was moving along. She was really struggling and getting into that one but her biggest fear was that she’s not going to be able to take care of herself and her life, right? The running kind of joke now in our coaching sessions is “I’m going to end up in an institution. I’m going to end up dependent on other people because I can’t do these things.”
[00:06:48] Dusty: Oh my god, that’s so dark. [00:06:49] Ash: It is dark and it’s really dark when that’s coming from the place of fear, right?And so when she’s catastrophizing, when she’s spiraling out, that’s the place that she goes to. And so what’s the antidote for that? Well, it’s a couple of things. #1, it’s remembering that she has that choice. And that before she ever made this move, we knew that this might not be a fit for her, that she chose to do this out of a place of being curious, wanting to experience something different, wanting to have that experience on her resume, but that she knew that what she might find is corporate was in fact not for her. That she would want to go back to startups.
She had similar challenges with re-acclimating to the culture in her country of origin. She found that being a person with ADHD can be really tough there. She stands out in a number of ways that made her really uncomfortable. And so the same thing is kind of bringing it back to choice here.
[00:07:53] Dusty: Let’s be curious here, but also remembering what her strengths are as we’re talking about challenge.What you’re saying is really resonating with me because I also find that clients really do struggle when they feel like they don’t have choices, right? When you feel that sense of agency being taken away. And as you say, Ash, with ADHD we really need a high degree of independence.
We don’t like to be told what to do even by ourselves. Right? And so feeling like you have options is key, because as soon as you don’t feel like you have options, what happens? You get into fight or flight mode, your amygdala fires up, right? You’re like, oh no, I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.
And that can provoke a real physiological, fear based reaction out of people’s nervous systems. And once you get there, once you get into anxiety and panic, you can’t do good decision making anyway, right? Your ability to make good decisions, we know neurobiologically, means you have to have access to your prefrontal cortex, which you don’t when you’re panicking.
So I think what you said is really key, reminding people that they always have choices. They don’t have to like their choices, right? It’s not that we always have great choices, sometimes all our choices kind of suck. But, I think, it’s one level to get to that place where you realize you have choices, but then the question becomes how do I decide. What I’m hearing from you, I think, is leaning into your strengths at that juncture can really help clarify things for people. Is that kind of what I’m hearing?
[00:09:19] Ash: That’s exactly it, Dusty. It’s not just leaning into strengths, but also remembering what your strengths are. My client’s strengths work really well in a startup environment, and we’re still determining whether or not those strengths can work well here. And her role is still kind of being shaped, right?She likes to collaborate with tech people. She’s very good at translating between tech people and business people and loves being in that type of role. Loves tackling collaborative projects, big problems, loves tackling things like how our organization or our team or institution can do things better, can run better.
And whether or not she’s going to have the opportunity to do that here in this role is still a question. The way that our conversations are being framed are a couple of things. #1, the last time we talked, she said, I want to give this my all in the next half year. So we reconnected to that more than anything. This is a learning experience. If ultimately at the end of this half year, I am still in the same place where I don’t love it here, it can be at choice and I can move on. I do want to feel like I’ve given it my all. I do want to get the learning here, even if that learning ultimately means that this is not a fit for me.
And #2, there’s been a lot of changes and shakeups since she first started, and she’s still acclimating to this role. This is her first experience being in a corporate environment and so she has to remember that there’s lots of learning and lots of catching up to do, but there’s also opportunity to shape her role.
And in fact, she was about to have a sit down with her manager in terms of what direction she would like to head in. We spent the rest of that coaching session talking about that, sort of looking at what are the possibilities here in this space and how can we articulate those strengths to your manager in a way that’s kind of advocating for this is the type of work I would like to be assigned.
This is what’s going to help make me successful and even in terms of the project that she’s struggling with, this is how we could change it up so that it would be easier for me to tackle. If this went from something that was my sole responsibility to move along to something that I could be in collaboration with another person on, that would change the game for me in terms of my ability to engage with this, being able to collaborate with others just helps shake loose stuff for me. It helps me problem solve. It helps me keep things moving, even if it’s not a preferred task.
Now I don’t know the outcome of this conversation yet because this was the last coaching session that we had, but you see how this conversation is being framed in #1 – the client is putting herself in the picture. I do not have to stay in this job. I can find another job and I know that there are other jobs that I’ve had in the past that at least as things are right now, were a better fit for me and what I uniquely bring to the table. And #2, if this isn’t a fit for me, that’s not a value judgment. That just is that. It doesn’t have to be that I’m wrong or bad. It’s just I’m strong here and I’m challenged here and a corporate environment touches on and picks at my areas of challenge in a way that a startup didn’t. So it takes a lot of the emotion out of the conversation, and puts the client right in the driver’s seat.
[00:12:56] Dusty: It’s really cool to hear about that process that you had with her because I think you’ve hit on so many things. I think what’s useful about this podcast is we hit on so many things that make it more clear about what happens in a coaching session, right? And that’s hard for me. People are often like, I don’t really know what coaching will be like.So I think it’s great that people can kind of hear the play by play of what actually happens and how we get from A to B, because that’s a really interesting process that you described. At one point you asked if I had anything to add, and honestly, I just wanted to keep listening.
There’s a coach that I did some of my coach certification with who I really like. She’s a Canadian coach, and she also does a lot of strength based coaching. She had this really interesting framework that I’d never heard before, but I love it, and I use it all the time.
One of the things I heard her do with a client is she asked her client about using strengths the right and wrong way, which I found absolutely fascinating and a super helpful framework. As opposed to talking about strengths and weaknesses, one of the things, one of the tools that I use is the VIA Character Strengths Index, which is just like a cool online thing that we do with our clients. It gives you 24 different strengths that everybody has, and they’re ranked in different orders. What I like about that tool is it gives you strengths that I never would have thought of as strengths. Some examples are humility, spirituality or humor. I would think of these things as personality traits not necessarily strengths, right?
And so, I like to talk with my clients about how something like humor can be a strength. If someone had asked me before coach training, what is one of your strengths? I would have thought, I’m good at cooking, or I’m good with people, or I can drive really well, or something like that, right? I’m not good at cooking, and I’m adequate at driving, but anyway, you get my point. And so, for me, my top strength was curiosity. And so one of the first things I had to do was think about, how is that a strength for me? And it definitely did have a pattern of showing up in my life, especially as it pertained to my ability to engage other people.
I’m gonna loop back around to what this other lady did, but let me just kind of, like, diverge here and say, at a young age, I got into doing fundraising for non profits. And one of the things that made me a really good fundraiser is I had no shame. I was not afraid to talk to anybody about anything. I had no social boundaries. But what made me good at approaching people, what made me good at actual fundraising is I would treat every conversation like a game. And the game that I played was, what can I find out about this person? So whatever the person told me about them, whatever it was, I’d find something that made me curious.
I’d find some questions to ask them no matter what. So if they said like, I’m a tax accountant, I’d be like, oh, really? So I mean, that sounds like a job that’s kind of boring, but what’s the most interesting thing about it? Like, no matter what someone said to me, I could think of something that I was curious about.
So I used my curiosity like a tool to get them talking and get them telling me about themselves. And the more I listened and learned, eventually I would find a thread that would connect back to why they should donate. I’d be like, oh yeah, so you mentioned that, you’re an uncle, and so here’s something that you should know about and so you probably have spent a lot of time with little kids, well we’re working with these kids, with Doctors Without Borders, whatever, right?
I would find some way to loop it into their identity and what was meaningful for them, and I did it through curiosity. And I realized that, that went back even further for me, in terms of how I learned to relate to people. But, and I think it’s part of what makes me a really good coach, but I never considered that it was a strength.
So, coming back to this coach, she asks people this question of how do we use our strengths the right and wrong way? And I’ll often have this conversation with my clients and we’ll talk about using hope the right or wrong way, right? When is hope a strength and when do you use your strength of hope the wrong way? It seems so positive, being hopeful seems like such a good thing, but when is it not a good thing? Or curiosity, in what ways do we use our curiosity the wrong way? It was just such an interesting framework and I find it really useful and a lot of my clients find it useful to think about these abilities, curiosity, humor, strength, kindness and we can use them in pursuit of our larger goals, but we can also use them to undermine ourselves. When we’re humorous, but we’re putting ourselves down. Okay, we’re really good at being funny, but is it helping us? No. If we’re really hopeful, that’s great but if we’re using hope to keep ourselves stuck in relationships or situations that are not improving because we have an abundance of hope, is that a good thing? No.
And so for me, I think that’s really interesting. I had never heard anyone do that, and I really love that. I kind of, like, “stole” that from her. But that’s interesting too, we have an abundance of these qualities, and it’s not just about having it. It’s about how you use it.
[00:17:43] Ash: Dusty, it’s about first recognizing it and then tuning into how you use it. Cause again, sometimes we don’t see these things in ourselves. My coaching practice today is very centered on topics like purpose and identity.And do you know who suggested that I should do a class on purpose? My coach Cam, when we were doing this podcast together and he noticed before I noticed that this was a thread that I was pulling on, that this is what was already happening in my coaching because we did talk about clients so often on the podcast.
He knew a lot about what was happening individually in my coaching sessions. And he was the one that said, hey, I’m noticing this. You should do a course on this because you seem to really have a lot of coaching strength in that direction. You’re already doing that work with your individual clients. That could be a group coaching course. And I may not have seen that for myself had he not seen it.
As far as using the right or the wrong way, I actually independently have come to the same thing with slightly different language. I often say to my clients that strength and challenge are two sides of the same coin because they really can be.
For example, my clients who value knowledge, I had a client who had the value of knowledge, just relentless curiosity, wants to know the answer, wants to solve the problem, can be infinitely curious about building knowledge in any one area. But something he felt challenged by is he is not the person that knows the answer right away. His brain just doesn’t work that way when it comes to when he was a technical guy. When it comes to some technical question, he’s not the guy that’s ever going to have the answer off the top of his head. And he thought his coaching goal was to be that guy. That’s who his boss was. The guy that has the answers. I want to be like that. How can I be that guy that when I’m asked a question, I know the answer off of the top of my head.
And by the way, this went on for a couple months that this was this client’s goal. The interesting perspective shift that he eventually came to was he brought up his boss and for the first time brought him up in a nuanced way, brought him up in a way where that same strength of knowing the answer, of just having that sort of photographic boom memory was a challenge because it turns out what his boss wasn’t so great at was mentoring.
Helping people brainstorm, having those one on one growth conversations because his boss was very prone to, you ask me a question, I give you the answer. That’s the answer. And so suddenly my client was seeing nuance where he didn’t before, where the prevailing story was my boss is good and I am less good.
Now we’re starting to see, oh, okay, so my boss has a strength in memory and recall and if you need a technical answer, he’s the guy you go to. But I have a strength in mentoring and helping people grow and helping people brainstorm and work through problems, which he does not have. And so that is the point in which our work went from, I want to be like this person to I now uniquely see my strengths and challenges.
I can now let go of needing to be the guy that always has the answers. And the reason I brought up that knowledge value in particular is that I’ve noticed that when it shows up for my clients, that’s a big strength and challenge. Like most of my clients that have knowledge on board, like the client I’m talking about, feel dumb if they don’t have the answer right away.
And so that’s what is normally a strength presenting itself as a challenge, not because ADHD brains are challenged by recall, but because of the expectation on ourselves there. And we’re not considering that ADHD might present challenges with recall or that we might need some time to remember ourselves what that answer is or to do a little digging to remember what we already know, which is perfectly valid, but something that is so easily discounted, particularly when we’re only seeing the challenge side, brings in the strength.
Now my client realizes, okay, I’m challenged here, but I’m strong here. And that’s what I mean by strength and challenge being on an equal playing field is that challenge no longer is a value judgment or something I’m doing wrong or something I have to force myself to get better at. It just is. And so he just accepts it as is.
And when he’s asked a technical question that he doesn’t instantly know the answer to, instead of going into that limbic system, beating himself up, catastrophizing, getting all the way down to I’m the worst person on planet earth, he’s able to just pause and recognize that he might need a minute to get that answer, or he might need to send them to someone else because he is not the person that can spout technical knowledge at the drop of a hat.
And that’s perfectly fine.
[00:22:44] Dusty: Wow, take a breath. [00:22:46] Ash: Woo. [00:22:46] Dusty: What you I think what you said there touches on such a bigger issue too because what you just said is this all links back to this ADHD one down perspective of all or nothing thinking. I really think that people with ADHD forget to remember that they don’t have to be good at everything.I had this conversation with a client the other day where the client was talking about wanting to, they’re a college student, have time to go to the gym, they want to do good on their studies, but they also want to have social time, and they want to be able to cook and feed themselves nutritiously.
And I was like, listen, are you comparing yourself to one person, or are you comparing yourself to maybe an amalgamation of all your friends, and looking at all their strengths? Then the client said, oh, you got me, you got my number.
So I used to do this too. If I had a friend who was really funny and outgoing, I’d look at them and I’d be like, oh, I should be more social and funny and outgoing like them. And then I had a friend who was really good at keeping their house clean. I’d look at them and go, I should keep my house more clean. And then if I had a friend who’s really putting in a lot of effort into going to the gym and taking care then I should do that too, right?
But I wasn’t comparing myself to one other person. I was comparing myself to the best of all the people that I knew. I was thinking that I should be able to do all of that. And I really think we forget to remember that we don’t have to be good at everything, but that’s easier to accept if you can accept that you have value and worth even if you’re not perfect.
And so when we’re starting from a place of I don’t have value and worth unless I’m perfect and I suck all the time at everything and so I have to be good at everything…Then we have to sort of do that internal work to recognize that you can have value and worth even if you are not good at something else or you’re not the most perfect person.
Then from there, I think, it becomes a lot more possible to accept that you have strengths and some areas are not your strengths and that’s okay.
[00:24:30] Ash: Precisely Dusty. When strength and challenge are on an equal playing field, when we know that we have unique value and we know what we bring to the table and what we’re good at, that means that we can address challenge from a place of strength. So all of those friends that have different strengths are resources for you. [00:24:48] Dusty: Exactly. [00:24:48] Ash: Instead of that one down, I can’t ask for help. I can’t ask my friend that keeps a really tidy home to help me figure out how to keep my home tidier because she might judge me or might think something about me. Instead, we’re able to say, oh, okay. I know somebody who’s good at this. I know somebody who might be able to help me with this.And again, without all of the value judgment, standing in our own strength and recognizing this is something I’m not good at. I can outsource or ask for help from a resource or figure out how to support myself. I can accept that it’s a challenge and work from that place rather than feeling like I shouldn’t be challenged by anything.
[00:25:27] Dusty: It’s interesting what you just said because it kind of plays into what I was about to say. I realized this the other day that I have this strength that I’ve never really considered before. So I’ve been doing a lot of work with my new accountant, just like figuring out some business finances and personal finances stuff. So I’m looking really closely at what are the trends of where I spend my money?And I realized, in anticipation of having a conversation with him, that one of the things I was going to have to justify is that I spend a lot of money on gifts for people, and I also like taking people out for dinner and stuff and like going to people’s events and buying people’s stuff. I was thinking, okay, is this sort of irresponsible or over the top spending that I should cut back on? And I had this really big pushback from inside of myself, and I thought, where’s that coming from? And I realized, I spend a pretty good amount of effort and budget into maintaining a very high number of social relationships.
And I wouldn’t say that all of these people are my close friends, but even when I have just acquaintances or something, I really strive to maintain a lot of threads. But what it has meant is, whenever I need anything, I always “have a guy”. I got a guy for that. I know a guy. And I realized, I was like, damn! That’s my thing! Like, my strength is “I know a guy”. No matter what you need, I know a guy. And we think about that character in movies, right? But that really is a strength of networking and connecting things.
I will often tell my clients, and I’ve thought about this too, that I feel like one of my strengths as a coach is that I am kind of a repository of facts and tools. If someone is struggling with ____, I’m like, oh, well, have you heard about this thing? They’re like, oh my god, no, I never have.
Sometimes I feel like I’m just this enormous database of knowledge that people can come to and I’ll connect you with a thing. But I also do that between people and actually I really like doing that. I really like connecting people. I really like connecting a person who needs something with a person who can do a thing. And that’s a strength.
And so I feel good about that portion of my budget going there because what it does is it helps me maintain my network, which is pretty central to one of my key strengths. I never really put two and two together, but I just love to be able to say, don’t worry, I got a guy for that.
[00:27:50] Ash: Love that Dusty. And are you ready for this? Cause I’m going to pile on a second strength that I heard in that, that is new to you but is true. So by investing in other people’s stuff, you’re an amazing cheerleader. You always have been, you took a Translating ADHD group coaching course years ago, in part because you were venturing into group coaching yourself and you wanted that experience for yourself but you were one of the most enthusiastic people in the class. And I don’t remember exactly what you said, but you paid me this compliment that just hyped me up. Made me feel really good about myself and my coaching. And that is not the only time I’ve had that experience of you where you’ve hyped me up about something.And in a way where you see me and know me, it’s not BS, right? It’s real. It’s based on something that you see, even if I don’t see it yet, you are an incredible cheerleader. So that time and space and budget that you’re holding aside to support other people, part of how you’re keeping those social connections is you are an amazing, enthusiastic and genuine person because especially us neurodivergents, right, we can smell sort of bullshit from a mile away. You genuinely and enthusiastically are a cheerleader for the people around you. And I see you doing that all the time in so many ways. Heck, you’ve done it for me a couple of times privately, like before and after sessions, if I’m struggling with something, you kind of help to shift my perspective and hype me up and get into a space where I feel like this is a problem that I can solve, that I am capable of doing something about this.
So there’s a second one for you. If you didn’t already know that one, although I’d be surprised if you didn’t but if you didn’t, there it is.
[00:29:33] Dusty: Thank you. I am a great hype man. [00:29:35] Ash: You are the best, nobody is better. I think that’s a good place for us to wrap today. So until next week, listeners, I’m Ash. [00:29:42] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:29:43] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
