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Are you frustrated with a student who does not follow through on tasks between your executive function coaching sessions?
Do you feel pressured by parents who make comments like:
We are paying a lot of money for this. We expect our student to do more between sessions...
In this article, I will walk you through how to support students who procrastinate and struggle to task-initiate between coaching sessions.
Why is it important for students to follow through between coaching sessions?
Follow-through is often a metric by which parents evaluate the impact of executive function coaching.
Follow-through may look different for different students, but it usually involves students doing:
Their homework independently
Planning their week
Or adding new assignments to their tracker.
Developing the skill of independent follow-through is a key indicator that a student can generalize the skills they are learning in executive function coaching sessions and transfer them to other areas of their life, such as:
Managing school with increasing independence
Being a reliable figure in their personal and professional life
Showing their parents that they value the experience of working with an EF coach
So why do many students struggle to follow through on things between their executive function coaching sessions?
Why do students struggle to follow through between EF coaching sessions?
The reasons are often specific to the student, but here are a few common reasons students procrastinate between executive function coaching sessions:
They feel overwhelmed and anxious
Many high school students feel overwhelmed by the demands of school, personal lives, and after-school activities. This can make it difficult for them to initiate tasks.
For students who feel overwhelmed and anxious that it prevents them from initiating tasks between sessions, it may be best to work with a therapist in conjunction with an EF coach OR just a therapist until they are ready to utilize the support an EF coach can offer.
Lack of accountability at home and school
Without a system of accountability, students may struggle to stay on track between sessions.
For example, if a student is productive during EF coaching sessions but fails to work on anything between sessions, this may be because no routines or structures are built in the home environment to encourage independent or supported work.
For this reason, we strongly recommend that you ensure parents are on board with participating in Family Team Meetings (FTMs) throughout the coaching process.
Misconceptions about coaching
Some believe that executive function coaching will magically fix follow-through issues.
Progress is often incremental and requires consistent coach, family, and school team effort. Seeing EF coaching as a partnership or group effort is critical to significant progress.
5 tips to help students who do NOTHING between executive function coaching sessions
1. Use motivational interviewing (MI)
Motivational interviewing can help students articulate their goals and feel "bought in" to take action.
Here are some of my favorite MI questions to use with students:
"Is there anything you want to discuss before we identify any key assignments or tasks to work toward your goals?"
“Can you tell me more…?”
"What is the cheat code to work effectively with you?"
These questions put the student in a position of power and authority, rather than requiring them to do things.
Read my full guide on how to implement motivational interviewing in your executive function coaching sessions here.
2. Implement a system of least prompts
Great coaches know how to use a system of least prompts or increasingly small "asks" that help students task-initiate.
This might look like using the following questions to help spur action:
What assignment is feeling most overwhelming to you right now?
What could you do for 2 minutes on that assignment to make a little progress?
Once you've practiced this technique a few times in your live coaching sessions, you can start to apply it between sessions by using text messaging to help them initiate tasks on their ONE THING.
(Pro-tip: never have students commit to doing more than ONE thing between your coaching sessions; otherwise, you will lose them.)
3. Practice the skill you want to see between sessions, IN your sessions
I once had a student who would not respond to text messages between sessions.
Because he would not respond to text messages, he was not able to progress toward his college graduation and was not able to obtain a job in his career field of choice.
He was living at home, and his parents were exhausted from doing things for him.
So, during sessions, we started practicing with me sending him sessions in the moment and him responding right then.
He got comfortable with the process and was able to start completing things outside of sessions. This led to him being proactive about finding a job and being responsive to prospective employers.
He eventually landed a job in his field of choice.
During your sessions, practice the behaviors you want your students to adopt, no matter how trivial they might seem.
4. Create a system of "proofability"
Set up a shared accountability system where students are expected to fill in their assignments each night.
This could look like a Student Dashboard shared by educators, parents, and coaches or a group text message thread in which the student shows screenshots of when they submit missing assignments.
Instead of taking a student's word for things, teach them to prove it to their stakeholders.
This will teach them the valuable skill of "closing the loop" and demonstrating they can be trustworthy in their education (and one day as an employee or business owner).
5. Focus on tiny examples of progress
Before parents sign up for executive function coaching, I ask them, "Can you commit to following the golden rule of executive function skill development?"
"What's that?" they reply.
"To commit to focusing on PROGRESS, not perfection."
If they say "no," I decline them as clients. This process will not work, otherwise.
When attempting to inspire work between sessions, encourage students to focus on the smallest next step they can take independently.
This could be as simple as replying to a text message saying, "I'm checking my homework now," or sharing a photo of their completed task.
Keep progressing toward more significant steps as they complete the previous small step.
Summary
Those are my top tips for helping those students who seem to do nothing between executive function coaching.
Sometimes, the key is reframing what progress will look like upfront with parents so that you don't set yourself up to "oversell and underdeliver."
If you are ready to take action (which is always the key), try these steps:
1. Use motivational interviewing to guide students to commit verbally to taking action.
2. Try prompting students with tiny "asks" to see their starting point.
3. Practice the missing skills DURING sessions.
4. Create a system where parents and educators can see proof of work.
5. Always focus on PROGRESS above all else.
Hope this helps 🤙🏻
P.S. These are skills that executive function coaches work on with their students. If you want to try working on them with your students, consider joining hundreds of other educators and parents who have completed my Semester Success Blueprint Course. In less than 2 hours, this comprehensive course will teach you and your student the system I developed to help hundreds of students learn how to manage school effectively and raise their self-awareness and engagement with school.
About Me
Hey! I'm Sean 👋
I'm a former public school special education teacher who realized that executive function skills are more important than knowing when George Washington crossed the Potomac.
Since then, I've made it my mission to teach anyone who will listen about how to develop these key life skills.
In 2020, I founded Executive Function Specialists to ensure all students with ADHD and Autism have access to high-quality online executive function coaching services. We offer online EF coaching and courses to help students and families.
Realizing I could only reach so many people through coaching, in 2021 I started the Executive Function Coaching Academy which trains schools, educators, and individuals to learn the key strategies to improve executive function skills for students.
In 2023, I co-founded of UpSkill Specialists, to provide neurodivergent adults with high-quality executive function coaching services.
When not pursuing my passions through work, I love spending time with my family, getting exercise, and expanding my brain through reading. You can connect with me on LinkedIn.
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