He’d made a fateful decision. It cost the company a great deal of money, and its long-standing reputation.
When I asked my executive client with ADHD what questions he’d asked himself prior to making that fateful decision, he replied: “Questions? I don’t ask myself questions. Should I?”
That moment revealed the most overlooked leadership skill I coach: metacognition.
Metacognition is the leadership skill behind every other leadership skill.
Before you can prioritize, delegate, regulate emotions, or make strategic decisions, you must first be aware of how you’re thinking.
Not everyone with ADHD experiences this absence of awareness of their thinking. But for those who do, the internal consequences are significant:
- Overestimating their abilities
- Underestimating time
- Mental fatigue
- Increased distractibility
- Reduced mental flexibility and adaptability
These internal challenges lead to external difficulties:
- Navigating hard conversations
- Making strong hiring decisions
- Creating truly strategic choices
- Executing in a timely way
- Building and sustaining credibility
What Is Metacognition?
Metacognition is your “thinking about your thinking.”
It’s the ability to step back and observe how you’re thinking so that you can anticipate, plan, adjust and adapt – all in real time.
Metacognition is a core executive functioning skill often impacted by ADHD. It’s the last skill to develop, usually in the late 20’s, and it’s often delayed by 2-3 years compared to neurotypical folks. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/on-your-way-with-adhd/202308/adhd-and-metacognition
This delay matters.
It’s a gap that continues into adulthood and impacts all contexts of your life:
- You may think you’re communicating effectively, only to find out that no one understood you.
- You find yourself reacting emotionally when you receive feedback from a peer or your spouse.
- You see all the details of the project, but become distracted by rabbit holes instead of staying focused on the overall picture.
Metacognitive training is one of the most valuable leadership development investments available.
Why High-Performing Executives with ADHD Need Metacognitive Training
Executives with ADHD do not have a lack of intelligence, vision, or ambition. But they struggle mightily to manage the invisible cognitive demands that accompany high-performance roles: inhibiting distractions, planning time and tasks, getting started on complex matters, prioritizing competing objectives, translating vision into consistent execution – to name just a few!
While productivity tools and time management systems are helpful, they don’t address the underlying cognitive processes that drive them effectively. Having extra time doesn’t help much if you’re not skilled at monitoring yourself or getting started on a task efficiently.
Metacognitive training encourages folks to understand how they think before attempting to optimize what they do.
Do you have weak metacognition?
If you listen carefully, you’ll hear it in the way you speak. Weak metacognition sounds like statements.
“The team has 30 days to complete this project.”
“There were six new files on my desk today.”
“This is an appalling outcome! Get it fixed!”
Strong metacognition sounds like questions.
“What does the team need to complete this project in 30 days?”
“How shall I prioritize these six new files?”
“What does my team need to prevent this from happening again?”
Practice turning your statements into open-ended questions.
What do you experience?
What makes metacognitive training necessary?
Many leaders with ADHD excel in crisis environments where urgency creates clarity. You experience a sudden surge of dopamine and norepinephrine which brings all your pre-frontal cortex functions online.
But in calmer moments when you don’t feel motivated or interested, you cannot access these abilities as well. Metacognitive training scaffolds your thinking so that you can create access to these skills.
Metacognitive questions create a pause between impulse and action. It’s in that pause (after asking yourself the questions) that you gain the ability to choose, rather than react.
For executives with ADHD, metacognitive training is not simply about becoming more productive. It’s about becoming more intentional, adaptable, and self-directed.
It’s the difference between relying on urgency to perform and being able to access your strengths consistently – even when there’s no crisis demanding your attention.
Metacognitive Training and Coaching
Coaching is the best modality I know of to develop awareness of your thinking.
In coaching, we ask open-ended questions with an air of curiosity. These questions have a dual purpose. They’re designed to be broad for deeper exploration, and also to model how to do this for yourself.
In my practice, I reflect with my clients at every session about what’s been working, or not. The questions I ask usually begin with the word ‘what’ in order to allow the client to tap into a deeper level of knowing. These questions may sound like, “What did you notice worked for you? What else?”
When we’re working concretely on a plan, we always generate a list of the questions we asked that led to the final result. It doesn’t remain a mystery! The questions matter.
The questions may sound like, “What might get in your way on the day you plan to have this conversation? How do you want to mitigate against these distractions?”
Over time, the questions that we explore during a coaching session become internalized and part of your inner voice:
- What am I assuming here?
- What information am I missing?
- What is making this task difficult to start?
- What would make success more likely?
- What is the highest-value next step?
Metacognitive training works!
An executive I worked with for one year had rated her time management at 0/10 when we began. No system could get her to follow up with valuable clients in a reasonable period of time! She would inevitably avoid them completely – and then feel deeply ashamed.
Her breakthrough came when she saw her planner as her tool. She learned to trust herself to use it effectively by asking herself metacognitive questions:
“When do I want to follow up?”
“What might get in my way?”
“What will I need to get started easily?”
Once she learned to trust her thinking to guide her actions, she was unstoppable. She rated her ability to manage her time at 10/10!
The quality of every decision, every action, and every result is determined by the quality of your thinking that came beforehand.
Peak performers know this.
When you ask open-ended questions, there are no limits.
Book a call with me. Let’s explore how to use your higher-order thinking for powerful outcomes.
