30 September 2026 - Jeanette Hunter | Executive Function Coaching

What is executive function coaching, and how is it different from therapy?

If you have been looking into support for executive function challenges, you have probably come across both coaching and therapy as options. They are genuinely different, and it is worth understanding how before you decide what might suit you.

Coaching is not therapy

Therapy, in its various forms, tends to focus on understanding and processing past experiences, patterns, and emotional difficulties. It is clinical in nature, and it is the right choice when someone is dealing with mental health conditions, trauma, or needs a therapeutic relationship to work through something significant.

Coaching is different. It is forward-focused, practical, and collaborative. It starts from where you are now and works towards where you want to be. It does not treat mental health conditions, does not involve clinical assessment, and is not a substitute for therapy when therapy is what someone needs.

That said, the two can sit alongside each other comfortably. Some people I work with are also in therapy, and when they are addressing different things that tends to work well.

What the coaching process actually involves

Coaching starts with your executive function profile, looking across all eleven skills to get a clearer picture of where things feel easier and where the consistent friction is. But it does not assume you will arrive knowing exactly what you want to change. A significant part of the work is spent stepping back and looking at life and work as a whole: what feels difficult, what feels ready to shift, what matters most right now. There are tools and approaches to help with that exploration, particularly if you are still figuring out where to focus.

My approach draws on a number of frameworks that sit well alongside each other. Motivational interviewing runs throughout, which is a way of working that follows your own thinking and readiness rather than telling you what to do. The stages of behaviour change model helps make sense of why some things feel possible now and others do not yet, and why that is not a fixed state. There is also a technique that involves holding a goal in mind while looking honestly at what is actually standing in the way of it, which tends to surface things that a straightforward planning conversation would not.

These approaches matter because understanding something and being ready to act on it are different things. The process moves at a pace that makes sense for the person rather than the programme.

Alongside the strategy work, coaching also pays attention to what keeps executive functions available in the first place. That includes working with an understanding of how the nervous system affects capacity, what conditions help you function well, and which consistently get in the way. Evaluating environments and activities, and making adjustments based on that, is often part of the picture too.

Before I trained as a coach, I spent many years working alongside neurodivergent business owners and employees, helping people set up systems and workflows that would actually hold up over time. Not complicated systems that look good on paper and then fall apart, but simpler ones that fit how someone genuinely operates day to day. That experience shapes how I work now. When a coaching conversation reaches the point of building practical strategies, I can get specific. Not generic suggestions, but a real look at the particular situation: what is already in place, what is working, what is getting in the way, and what might realistically fit. For people running their own businesses or navigating complex working lives, that tends to be useful.

Where my background comes in

What people tend to notice

Something I hear fairly often after a first session, or towards the end of a coaching block, is that it was easier to open up than expected. That things came up that had not been said out loud before. That there was no sense of judgement about where someone was starting from or how long things had been difficult.

I think that matters because shame is one of the things that most reliably gets in the way of change. If someone spends energy manageing how they are coming across, there is less available for the actual thinking. So creating a space where that is not necessary feels like part of the work, not separate from it.

People also mention the balance between being given space to think and being offered a prompt when they are stuck. I try to follow the conversation rather than lead it, and to ask questions that open something up rather than close it down. The useful insights tend to emerge from the person rather than being handed to them, and in my experience those are the ones that actually stick.

What you leave with

The aim across a coaching block is not to create ongoing dependency. It is to build something that lasts.

That means practical skills you can apply in other areas of your life, not just the ones you worked on together. It also means developing metacognition over the course of coaching: the ability to step back, observe your own thinking, and ask yourself the right questions. That is the skill that makes independent progress possible beyond sessions, and it tends to be one of the things people find most useful in the long run.

A good coaching relationship makes itself less necessary over time. That is the intention from the start.

Is it the right fit?

Coaching tends to suit people who want to understand themselves better and make changes that last, whether or not they arrive with a clear sense of what those changes are. It is not the right fit for someone in acute mental health crisis, or who primarily needs therapeutic support. In those situations, a therapist or clinical psychologist is the better starting point.

If you are not sure whether coaching is what you are looking for, a free discovery call is a good place to start. It is just a conversation, and there is no obligation.