ADHD and Executive Skills: How I came to love Dawson and Guare’s Smart But Scattered Model
Last week we explored how ADHD is misunderstood and touched on how the condition presents in unique ways for each person living with it, usually involving challenges with executive functioning.
So what is executive functioning? There actually isn’t a consensus among the experts on how to define executive function or what it involves. Generally speaking, it’s how your brain is able to run itself. In other words, If your brain had a CEO, executive functioning is how you’d measure their performance. Executive functioning involves processes that regulate your emotions, thoughts, and actions.
Dr. Russell Barkley has researched and written extensively on the executive dysfunctions common in ADHD. Being able to articulate our common fundamental struggles is essential for understanding our needs and advocating. But as I read more about ADHD and executive function, several questions nagged my mind:
We're all somewhere on the road to progress. Photo by Debra Manny Mosley on Unsplash
Are we folks with ADHD just unequivocally bad at executive functioning?
Can we ever strengthen our executive functioning?
Or, if everyone’s ADHD presents differently, could there be some nuance worth exploring here?
In my quest to better understand my brain’s CEO, I came across The Smart But Scattered Guide to Success by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, and it quickly stood out as one of the more helpful and practical resources on executive functioning skills out there.
There’s a lot of other things to love about this book:
It’s accessible - it aligns other notable models, but organizes executive functioning into 12 distinct skill areas - just the right amount of differentiation and descriptiveness to be a comprehensive overview without too much splitting of hairs. The 12 skills areas in their model are:
Response Inhibition - the ability to stop and think before you act
Working Memory - the ability to hold information in memory while doing complex tasks
Emotional Control - the ability to manage emotions to achieve goals, complete tasks, and direct behavior
Flexibility - the ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, new information or mistakes, relating to adaptability to changing conditions
Sustained Attention - the capacity to keep attention on a task despite distraction, fatigue or boredom
Task Initiation - the ability to begin projects in an efficient and timely fashion without undue procrastination
Planning/Prioritization - the ability to create a road map to reach a goal or complete a task, making decisions on what’s important to focus on and not
Organization - the ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information and materials
Time Management - the capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it, and how to stay within deadlines and limits
Goal-Directed Persistence - the capacity to have a goal and follow through to completion, not put off or distracted by competing interests
Metacognition - the ability to step back to take a bird’s eye view of oneself in a situation, and observe how you problem-solve - also to self-monitor and self- evaluate (How am I doing? How did I do?). (Also described as an ability to think about how you’re thinking, often related to an ability to see both the big picture and the details of a situation).
Stress Tolerance - the ability to thrive in stressful situations and to cope with uncertainty, change and performance demands
It’s universal - It’s not just folks with ADHD. Neurotypical folks have their strengths and weaknesses too. Talking with our loved ones (neurodivergent or not) about our unique differences builds understanding and empathy so we can better support each other. This book can help us do that.
It’s practical - A quick questionnaire that makes it easy to measure your unique combination(s) of skill strengths and weaknesses. It provides relatable examples for clarity, and tips for leveraging strengths and improving (or working around) weaknesses.
It’s about growth - The book explores executive function as “skills” that can be strengthened rather than physiological deficits that we’re doomed to struggle with. This approach makes this book a lot more motivating than other literature on the topic. As someone who was diagnosed in adulthood, I had already done a lot of adapting over the years in order to survive. While by no means perfect, I had worked hard to strengthen executive skills wherever I could. So this book’s approach to executive skills as diverse range with a spectrum of abilities in each area feels much more true to life - and more useful - than an overall binary (function or dysfunction) applied to a few clusters. It makes space for us to be more than just deficient - rather, we’re all somewhere on the road to progress. ADHD is not all bad news!
It’s affirming - Going over my questionnaire results was illuminating. I wasn’t that surprised at which skills were indicated as my weakest. But I was surprised - and kind of proud - when I read over my strongest skills. The book helped me identify and name what I knew to be strengths but never had words for. Reading over my middle-of-the-road skills also felt pretty good. I remembered past successes for which I had these skills to thank, and how I had worked over the years to expand and strengthen them as well.
It’s credible - If you’re familiar with some of the who’s who of experts on ADHD, you’ll know it says a lot that both Russell Barkley and Ned Hallowell - two ADHD experts whose perspectives and approaches are often very different - both gave the book very high praise.
So what to do with this information?
Where would we be without that box with the picture? Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash
Clients often come to me for ADHD coaching after having challenges with one or more executive functions. They want to improve their weaknesses. It’s common with ADHD to be aware of your weaknesses but have little insight on your strengths. I find that having a ranked list that tells you which executive skills are strong, weak, or in the middle is like having the box with the picture on it when you’re putting together a puzzle – You can more easily see which pieces almost certainly work together, and which are a bit more, well, puzzling. As the strengths pieces come together, a clearer picture begins to form, giving us the clues to understand how to get those tricky weakness pieces into place.
Executive strengths may help us better understand positive characteristics that are common with ADHD:
Creative thinking and Problem-solving in non-linear ways may involve Metacognition and Task Initiation skills
High Energy, Spontaneity and Compassion may involve Flexibility and Stress Tolerance skills
Creating order out of chaos and Being great in a crisis may involve Flexibility, Stress Tolerance, Metacognition and Organization
And then there are some executive skills that are like ADHD nemeses - they are just (for many of us) persistently difficult and challenging (**shakes a fist at working memory and time management**). For those weaker skills, we can explore external tools for improvement and coping (such as mindfulness and DBT techniques for emotional control and timers and calendars for time management) or engage our strengths to come up with more strategies.
For instance, to help with my weaker working memory skills, I had no trouble thinking outside the box and beyond my comfort zone to research, source, and set up NFC tags like this one around the house to trigger reminders for things I have trouble remembering. I’m pretty sure I have my strong metacognition, task initiation, flexibility and OK organization skills to thank for being able to do this.
Let's build on those lesser strengths. Photo by VD Photography on Unsplash
So while ADHD definitely has a big impact on executive functioning, it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a variety of skills, and every person has their own levels of strength and weakness in each. You can leverage strengths to help in your weaker areas. And even your weaker skills are still skills - it’s about growth rather than limitations. Even more important than the strategies we use to improve is having self-awareness and self-compassion for ourselves and our unique combination of skills.
ADHD coaching is a great way to start learning about your unique combination of executive functioning skills, better understand how they all work together, build on your strengths, and improve your weaknesses. If this is an area of growth you’re interested in, I’d love to hear more about your goals and talk about how coaching can help! Schedule a time to meet with me for a free discovery session at juliariceandco.com/schedule - let’s talk soon!
