For years, I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't just "figure it out."

I'd forget things that mattered. I'd get sucked into a task and lose four hours without noticing. I'd say the most obvious thing out loud while I was working through a problem out loud — verbal processing, it turns out, not me stating the obvious like everyone assumed. I left everything until the last possible second, every time, no matter how much I promised myself this time would be different.

By the time I went looking for ADHD coaching, I didn't need someone to sit back and ask me open questions until I arrived at my own answers. I'd been doing that to myself my whole life. What I actually needed was someone who could say, "did you want to know why that keeps happening?" — and then tell me. I needed the reflection too, don't get me wrong. There was a huge amount of value in being given the space to talk things through and notice the limiting beliefs that were quietly running the show. But sometimes what moved me forward wasn't another question. It was information I didn't have yet.

That's the whole idea behind semi-directive coaching, and it's the approach I use with every client.

What "semi-directive" actually means

Traditional coaching — the kind most coach training teaches — is non-directive by design. The coach doesn't advise, doesn't teach, doesn't lead. They ask, they reflect, they hold space, and the client does the work of reaching their own conclusions. For a lot of people, that's exactly right.

For a lot of ADHD brains, it's only half the job.

Semi-directive coaching keeps the client's own agenda and goals at the centre — I'm not there to tell anyone how to live their life or run their business. We still ask questions. We still encourage clients to find their own direction rather than handing them a script. But when I can see someone is stuck, or genuinely doesn't understand why a pattern keeps repeating, purely waiting for them to arrive at it themselves isn't always kind — and it isn't always effective. Sometimes the most useful thing I can do is plant a seed. Offer the missing piece of psychoeducation. Say the thing out loud so they don't have to keep circling it alone.

Because here's the bit that doesn't get said enough: a lot of us have spent years — decades, for some clients — doing nothing but thinking in circles about why something happens and what we could try to fix it. Asking someone to do more of that, more slowly, with a coach nodding along, isn't always progress. Sometimes it just rehearses the same self-criticism in a nicer voice. It can genuinely knock self-esteem rather than build it.

Where pure non-directive coaching runs out of road

I've had sessions where I could feel it happening in real time. A client working through something hard, answering "I don't know" to question after question, not because they were being difficult but because the honest answer really was "I don't know" — and no amount of rephrasing the question was going to change that. In moments like that, staying strictly non-directive stops being neutral. It starts to feel like withholding.

What tends to help isn't abandoning the open questions — it's offering a suggestion, a reframe, or a bit of context, and then handing it straight back: does that land, or not? The client still owns the decision. They just aren't being asked to generate the entire insight from a standing start, with a brain that may have been fighting itself on this exact issue for years.

Where pure directive coaching goes wrong too

The opposite extreme isn't the answer either, though. I've also caught myself, afterwards, wishing I'd asked more before I offered a fix — wanting to hand someone a "temporary solution" for the week because we were reaching the end of a session and I wanted them to have something to work with, without first understanding why the last three systems they'd tried hadn't stuck. Direction without curiosity just becomes another system imposed on someone, which is exactly the kind of thing most ADHD business owners have already tried and abandoned a dozen times.

The clients who make the most progress are the ones where a semi-directive challenge lands because it followed real exploration — not instead of it. I think of one client who'd spent weeks circling how to get his time and his goals to line up. We'd done the digging. He was motivated, clear on what he wanted, and just needed a concrete next step to test. Offering him a specific challenge to try that week wasn't me taking over — it was me meeting the moment he was actually in, because we'd done the work to get there first.

What the research says

This isn't just a hunch I've built a business on. Most of the published research on ADHD coaching still describes it, formally, as a "non-directive partnership model" — coaches using Socratic questioning, treating the client as the expert on their own life (Ahmann, Tuttle, Saviet & Wright, 2018). But look at what that same research actually identifies as the evidence-based skills that make coaching work, and it tells a slightly different story. CHADD's review of the evidence base names breaking tasks into small behavioural steps, "do it now" hands-on approaches, and structured between-session accountability as core, effective elements of ADHD coaching — which are considerably more directive than the "ask, don't tell" model coaching is supposed to run on.

Dr J. Russell Ramsay, whose work on CBT for adult ADHD is some of the most respected in the field, puts it more bluntly: "ADHD coping skills are not in the pills." His research points to structured, active, between-session support — not just space to reflect — as what actually helps people translate insight into changed behaviour (Mantra Health interview with Dr Ramsay).

In other words: the evidence base for ADHD coaching is already describing something semi-directive. It just hasn't always been called that.

Why this matters if you're looking for a coach

If you've tried coaching before and it didn't stick, it's worth asking whether it was too far in either direction. Fully non-directive coaching can leave an ADHD brain circling the same "I don't know" for weeks, with nothing external to catch it. Fully directive coaching — or the productivity-system-of-the-month approach — can hand you another structure that doesn't fit how your brain actually works, built without ever asking why the last one didn't.

Semi-directive coaching sits in the middle on purpose. Your goals, your agenda, your pace — held alongside someone willing to tell you what they see, when it's useful, and hand it straight back to you either way.

Interested in learning more? Reach out today for 1:1 Coaching with myself, Kelly Rigg, Qualified ADHD coach.