47. Shaping the Future of Neurodivergent Coaching Practices! Meet Kate Arms & Tracy Winter
Kate Arms has been a professional coach for over a decade and has been mentoring and teaching coaching since 2016. From the very beginning, her coaching practice focused on coaching creators and innovators, twice-exceptional and profoundly gifted adults, and parents of twice-exceptional kids.
Her coaching work combines deep experience in the psychology of neurodiversity & collective innovation. She offers individual coaching and organizational coaching with a focus on culture-building and designing systems to support adaptive change that sticks.
She has trauma-informed training with specific focuses in improvisational dance and mindfulness practices.
On a personal level, she is highly-sensitive, profoundly gifted, queer, and agender with aphantasia, dyslexia, and traits of autism and ADHD but no formal diagnosis.
She is the parent of twice-exceptional kids (moderately gifted to profoundly gifted and combinations of autistic, ADHDer, written output learning disability, and dyslexia). She learned the hard way that standard parenting advice did not apply. Her book, L.I.F.T.: A Coach Approach to Parenting, reveals what did.
She holds a BA in Theatre and Biopsychology from Cornell University and a JD from Harvard Law School. She is credentialed as an International Coach Federation PCC, a certified ICAgile Expert in Enterprise Coaching, and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. She is a graduate of the Co-Active Leadership Program.
Tracy Winter has been a professional coach since 2009 and an ADHD coach mentor and trainer since 2021. Though she has coached executives and leaders, she is most passionate about coaching twice-exceptional people and other neurodivergent folks. She has coached people from 15 to 82 years old, including techies, scientists, attorneys, non-profit leaders, and housewives.
What we talk about in this episode:
Tracy came to neurodiversity via giftedness, which has been part of her awareness since she was four years old. Her doctoral research focused on the social-emotional development of highly gifted adults. In the midst of her dissertation, she was also diagnosed as ADHD, and began learning about twice-exceptionality and neurodiversity.
Her coaching approach is bespoke for each client but is based in adult development models and an understanding of how neurodivergent brains can manifest differently from the norm and from each other. Because each client has a unique brain, she partners with her clients to co-create unique paths to their unique solutions, moving them from where they are to where they want to be.
Personally, Tracy is highly gifted, an ADHDer, highly sensitive, and experiences characteristics of autism without a formal diagnosis. Her father, sister, nephew, and closest friends all are highly gifted and ADHDers.
Tracy earned a PhD in Human Development, an MA in Human and Organization Systems, and an Evidence-Based Coaching Certificate from Fielding Graduate University. She is credentialed as a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She also trains and mentors new coaches at the International ADHD Coach Training Center and provides leadership development for Tesla and coaching services for The Doerr Institute at Rice University. And she can jumprope tapdance.
Ever felt like your mind runs on a different operating system than everyone else's? Discover the powerful connection between neurodiversity and their specific coaching needs with my guests, Kate Arms and Tracy Winter, the dynamic duo behind the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy. As we unpack their personal narratives, we illuminate the emotional rollercoaster of living at the intersection of intense intellect and divergent thinking. Kate and Tracy’s candid sharing reveals the often-overlooked psychosomatic layers of giftedness, and their mission to address the unique coaching needs of this underserved community.
This episode takes us behind the scenes of the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy, where Kate and Tracy have crafted an inclusive coaching environment that's all about embracing the rapid learning and distinct needs of neurodivergent minds. Their approach, backed by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), is more than just a service—it's a lifeline for those who may have previously encountered the harm of ill-informed professional guidance. From monthly masterclasses to mentor coaching and coaching supervision , we delve into the academy's offerings and discuss the value of our coaching philosophy, designed to resonate with the fabric of neurodivergent thinking.
As the conversation unfolds, we examine the nuances of coaching neurodivergent clients, from navigating their unique 'stuckness' to leveraging their out-of-the-box solutions. We highlight how coaching diverges from therapy, focusing on the forward momentum and actionable change that clients can enact in their lives. Kate and Tracy also reflect on the profound impact that earlier awareness of gifted complexities could have had and the transformative power of coaching informed by their own journeys. For those eager to learn more about our Neurodiversity Coaching Academy’s resources, the episode wraps up with where to find our masterclasses and how to connect for mentorship opportunities.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
neurodiversitycoachingacademy.com
Sign up for the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy Newsletter
Kate Arms at katearms.com
Tracy Winter at nerdcoa.ch
TRANSCRIPT:
Nadja Cereghetti: 0:58
Hello and welcome to Gifted Unleashed, where we talk about the gifted and twice exceptional brain and how it affects our thinking and experience of the world differently. There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma around the term giftedness and I'm here to challenge those. I'm here to raise awareness and to have a conversation around the topic of what it means to be a gifted and two-year adult. Common experience among gifted folks is that they feel out of place. They don't quite fit in. They're too sensitive, too intense, too emotional, too overexcitable and too deep thinkers about the world and about themselves. So if you have been called too much about anything, then this show is for you. My name is Nadja. I'm too loud, too colorful, too bubbly, too bossy and I love to talk too much. So name is Nadja. I'm too loud, too colorful, too bubbly, too bossy and I love to talk too much. So welcome to my world and I'm so happy you're here.
Nadja Cereghetti: 1:52
Hello and welcome back to another episode. Today we have Kate Arms and Tracy Winter on the show and I'm so honored to have both of them here on my show. It's the first time we record basically a podcast episode with three people. Unfortunately, the audio was a little bit off, but I hope you will still enjoy this episode to the max, because it has a lot of nuggets and Kate and Tracy are sharing a lot of insights. Together, Kate and Tracy founded the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy and they're here today to talk a little bit what that means. What is Neurodiversity Coaching Academy? What are they offering and why is it needed, and which hole in the market are they filling with their services? So I don't want to say too much, I just hope you enjoy this episode, and there are all the links and the resources in the show notes and also at the end of the episode we will mention them again.
Nadja Cereghetti: 2:47
So enjoy this episode. I'm really hoping this serves you well. Welcome, tracy and Kate. I'm so excited for both of you to be here and, with our tech issues, we heard that Kate's microphone is picking up a little bit too intensely, so she's trying not to get too excited and you know asking if the people is very difficult, but we're going to try to make this work. The first episode with three people at the same call, so welcome for you both to be here and I'm so excited. Thank you, and I would like for you to introduce yourselves and introduce each other, so the floor is yours, Kate. Do you want to start?
Kate Arms: 3:35
Yeah, sure. So for people who are listening, this voice goes with Kate, and I'm going to introduce Tracy Winter to you first. So Tracy Winter is my co-founder for the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy and I know we'll talk about that work a little bit. But more than that, she is a friend and a real joy to hang out with and to nerd out on all things human development and neurodiversity. She makes me laugh, she keeps my academic work rigorous, she is more scholarly in training than I am, and so she keeps me honest. Yeah, it's a joy to be here with you, Tracy.
Tracy Winter: 4:17
Thank you. Thank you, Kate and Nadja. Thank you for having us here. First of all, yes, we appreciate the opportunity. So this is my partner and friend, Kate, the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy. Like she said, I love working with Kate. The first thing is you notice her brilliance and her ways of putting concepts together in new ways that I hadn't thought of, and that's so fun to then riff off of. We two laugh together in new ways that I hadn't thought of and that's so fun to then like riff off of. We two laugh together, and without that this partnership would never work. But beyond that, she has wisdom and sort of like bodily wisdom that she brings to all of our work, and so it's this very integrated kind of knowing that informs everything that she does and it's just gorgeous to get to interact with, and I feel really lucky that we get to do this together.
Nadja Cereghetti: 5:08
Oh, and I feel so lucky to have you both here today and tell me a little bit about your journey and how you started working together and what you're offering now in this gifted and neurodivergent space. So, Tracy, do you want to share just a little bit more about how you discovered this topic of giftedness and why you're working in this space?
Tracy Winter: 5:35
Sure, so I don't remember not knowing about giftedness. I was identified when I was about four and skipped a grade back then and then my mother got her education specialist, which is like halfway to a PhD in gifted education, and she created and ran a program for gifted students in a school district for 20 plus years. My sister was identified as gifted, you know, super early, just like I was. So like, how did I come to giftedness? I don't know how not to know about giftedness, it was just too early. So I've always been aware of sort of the smarts part of it. And then the more that I dove into it in my graduate studies, the more I learned about all of the other parts of giftedness the emotional, the, you know, imaginational. So some of this, some of this somatic or psychosomatic types of stuff that comes, you know the Javrosky intensities basically, and that really helped put so many pieces of a puzzle together for me.
Tracy Winter: 6:31
So in my graduate studies, my degrees in human development, a PhD in human development, and I wrote my dissertation on the self-concept development in highly gifted adults, sort of the social, emotional piece for highly gifted adults, and how the reflections of other people for sort of our understanding of ourselves or don't. So, yeah, it's sort of like coming into the family business in a way, because it's like I always thought that I go into my sort of family business of becoming a lawyer like my dad and it turns out I went the other direction. But yeah, it's sort of all in the family in that way, and then that was sort of my entree into neurodivergence, was getting diagnosed with ADHD in the middle of writing my literature review and then it sort of snowballed from there. So, yeah, so gifted has always been a part of my conception and part of my identity, because I always knew that I was different.
Nadja Cereghetti: 7:27
It was really obvious that I was different. Oh, and you already just talked about twice exceptionality gifted and ADHD and that this creates another level of complexity, and we're going to talk about this today. And, Kate, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast for the first time and would you also like to share. How did you tap into this topic? How did you know about giftedness and neurodiversity in general?
Kate Arms: 7:57
Well, thank you, it's a real pleasure to be here and, yeah, I'm happy to tell a little bit about my journey. So I'm the complete opposite of Tracy. I had no idea that giftedness was a thing until I was a parent of a kid who wasn't fitting in and I was trying to figure out why the things that I was reading didn't apply. And he currently is identified gifted autistic ADHD. So I landed smack in the middle of twice exceptional space and the developmental pediatrician who worked with us to help support him in the intake interview said so of the people in the family, who does this child remind you of? And the answer was me. Family, who does this child remind you of? And the answer was me. And so, really, I didn't start having language to talk about giftedness until I was discovering how to apply it as a parent.
Kate Arms: 8:55
The history is all there. Looking back, it's so obvious. I had existential crisis at five. I had going to school already able to read and knowing the math curriculum for the first three years of school. Before I got to school, I had to take an IQ test to get into a program where the cutoff to get in was the 130 IQ, and I just soared through that. In fact, I was bored through it. It wasn't until I was well into my parenting journey exploring this, that somebody said, hey, there's a qualitative difference between being gifted and being moderately gifted, and extremely gifted and profoundly gifted. You're profoundly gifted. This is why that class wasn't enough for you, and so it's been a late, late self-understanding process.
Nadja Cereghetti: 9:43
Yeah, and how was that for you?
Kate Arms: 9:47
You know, it's been really interesting because I went through so much pain and identity crisis, starting from the time I was about 15 until I was parenting, until I was parenting, and so getting some language around it and getting some vocabulary really just felt like validation of everything that I had been through before and it just let me breathe and it let me Google to find my people.
Nadja Cereghetti: 10:18
Yeah, I can relate so much, just having this vocabulary, having you know the keywords and you just type that in and something pops up. And that's what I'm hoping to do with this podcast. That's, people are Googling the words and you know the intensities and land here and hopefully get you know a whole array of resources for them. And the two of you are building also something, a lot of resources and building together the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy. How did you two meet? How did this collaboration start? How did it start to bloom?
Tracy Winter: 11:04
Well, I'd like to say it's Chris Wells' fault. Yes, definitely, it's Chris Wells' fault.
Nadja Cereghetti: 11:10
That's a totally fair statement.
Kate Arms: 11:13
So, Dr Chris Wells of the Dabrowski Center, Tracy, I don't know how you connected with her, but we connected through the work that she's doing with the positive disintegration and the study group that she's doing there and the community that she's building.
Tracy Winter: 11:29
Yeah, so, and I connected with her through. I met her at SENG, Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted Conference in I don't know 2017, maybe in I don't know kind of 17, maybe when we were both sort of in the throes of our dissertation and we connected around that and you know Dabrowski and the rest is kind of history so. But yeah, so it is Chris's fault to some extent, because Kate posted in you know Facebook group that's just for that study group that she was interested in getting more hours for her coaching and was anybody interested? And I was at a point where I just thought I've been stagnating too long and I really need some development help and get moving again. And, as other gifted people will probably relate to, it can be challenging for us to find a therapist or a coach who gets it, who's ahead of us, who you know, we don't think circles around and because I knew that Chris Wells respected Kate, I was like, well, let's try this out. So she became my coach is how we met and she was my coach. She continues to be my coach, actually, and we keep those hats very separate.
Tracy Winter: 12:35
And in our first meeting, our discovery call, I said, you know, I really zipped down. What I want to do is I want to open a school for neurodiversity coaching not just ADHD coaching, because I'm already an ADHD coach trainer. And she said, well, me too. And that was kind of the end of it. And then, about I don't know, eight or nine months later, she said, okay, are we done with this session? Do you have some time? I said, yeah, so we'd like put a bow on whatever the session was she's like. So I'd like to build this school and I'd like to do it with you. And I said, okay, let's do that. And that was it. That was it. Here we are. What's your recollection, Kate? That's my, that's my burden of the story.
Kate Arms: 13:26
I don't remember telling you that I was interested in doing it with you quite so early that that first session story but that also sort of sounds like it probably was about that time and absolutely there was this process of because I was your coach and this was your dream. There was this long ish it felt like a long period where we didn't talk about the fact that this was a shared dream of both of ours, that I came in completely with my coach hat on and at some point you were getting frustrated that you weren't making progress on the academy fast enough and I just that was when I was like, can we just take the hat off? And can I say, would you make progress on this if we partnered? And that was the moment where we decided that we were going to work together to make this happen. And it's been a delight and a challenge and we're learning so much. We haven't even really talked about what either of our vision was until after we decided we were doing it. We didn't plan to do it.
Tracy Winter: 14:20
It's true we just sort of started and I feel really fortunate ones until after we decided we were doing it. We didn't plan to work with you. It's true, we just sort of started and I feel really fortunate, Like this is a testament to us contributing stuff too. But we've gotten along and built on each other and not had like like it's been psychologically safe, probably because we already have the coaching relationship from go. So like we, I remember we built our first presentation and at the end of it we spent a lot of time on one day on it and we kind of looked at each other.
Kate Arms: 14:45
It was like that was kind of easy yeah, that was that was fun to do oh, thank god yeah, oh, and like we agree with each other, we actually do according with each other.
Tracy Winter: 14:57
yeah, like, oh, good thing, we align Awesome.
Kate Arms: 15:02
Now that we've advertised a year's worth of masterclasses, it's good to know that we agree with each other.
Nadja Cereghetti: 15:07
And we're going to be able to create them together, that people who are gifted, and especially gifted something else, twice exceptional, neurodivergent, that it's important to have a coach that understands them. But can you maybe just elaborate a little bit more why it is important? Because I talk to people and I try to convince them. If you look for a coach, if you look for a psychologist, look for somebody who gets this topic, and I don't always get through to them. So I would like to use this opportunity to hear from both of you why it is so important, do you?
Kate Arms: 16:01
want to take the first go at it.
Tracy Winter: 16:03
Tracy Sure. So I came at this from I was I'd already been working for another coach school as an ADHD coach trainer and I kept looking around and there are several ICI International Coaching Federation accredited ADHD coaching school. There is nothing for any other kind of neurodivergence and my clients are mostly twice exceptional. I'm starting to get some that have the autistic overlay as well. So I went and learned a bunch about that and there are lots of folks who call themselves a coach, who aren't necessarily a coach the way that Kate and I think of it, with actual training and principles and ethics behind it, which is part of being part of the International Coaching Federation, and so I just thought this is a gap.
Tracy Winter: 16:51
We need more people to do this work because I know so many people I didn't know who to refer to before I met Kate. If I wasn't the right fit for somebody, I didn't know where to send them. There just haven't been. There's more coming up all the time, but there haven't been enough people who understand more than ADHD you know within the coaching sphere. So I just that lens is important because and the reason that folks we recommend folks find somebody who does get it is your brain is like, our brains are different, they're more different from most people and they're very different from each other, and so you need somebody who understands that and isn't going to sort of cookie cutter you or use the tried and true techniques because tried and true, we've already done that and it hasn't worked Right. So like we need to come in with fewer assumptions and really allow the client to be self-directed with us, sort of look at guiding a little bit, partnering with them to sort of cross those few ideas and a lot of people.
Tracy Winter: 17:59
We've heard too many stories about neurodivergent folks or gifted folks going to therapists or going to coaches and actually having been harmed because the reflections that they're getting are not aligned and there can be sort of trauma created if these things are handled with the background and the knowledge and the understanding that one being neurodivergent and gifted which is exceptional, choose your language brings, but also the training of how to be a coach, and so putting those two things together I think is is familiar. How to get the best shot with polygraphs. Okay, I've been talking for a while, Kate. What did I miss?
Kate Arms: 18:42
I don't think that you missed anything. I think there are some things that I'd like to sort of double down on a little bit, because I think they're really important. I think the first is in terms of if you are new to giftedness and you're trying to figure out how to work through this, and especially if you're new to twice exceptionality, the reason that you want to go and find somebody who gets it and who has training is that the risk of somebody harming you because they don't get it is actually very high. And I think that that is the most important thing from a client side that most gifted people, and especially twice exceptional people so gifted plus something else actually have been harmed by a variety of things in their lived experience, whether it's parenting techniques that weren't really customized for them, school techniques that weren't customized for them, a social environment that is really not well designed for outliers, and so there's trauma in the system for almost every gifted or twice exceptional person, and so any coach or therapist has to come in with the assumption that they're walking in trauma territory, and it's shocking how many therapists aren't actually very good with trauma, actually very good with trauma.
Kate Arms: 20:13
And the other thing that I think is really, really powerful to know is most of the therapists I know who work with this population have a very coach approach to the way that they do therapy. Because a gifted person once they turn their attention inward and start studying themselves, they learn a lot fast and even if they didn't start out with an enormous amount of self-awareness and an enormous amount of expertise, they become experts very, very fast. And for a therapist or a coach who doesn't really honor the expertise of their client, it can be really triggering to the therapist or the coach or the gifted individual to move so fast. It gets really bad for business that my clients develop really quickly and so I have to actually be really skilled at knowing that my gifted folks are going to come in and it may take us a while to unlock stuff, but at knowing that my gifted folks are going to come in and it may take us a while to unlock stuff, but once we unlock it they are running and I can just sort of wave as they go.
Nadja Cereghetti: 21:22
Thank you for elaborating and reemphasizing that actually, if you don't seek out somebody that's trained in this topic, can cause more harm than actually help you, because everybody obviously goes with their best intention seeking help and then the opposite happens and then they give up. I talked to people who said, oh, I went to therapy but it didn't help. Yeah, because you didn't seek out the gifted specific therapist. Or yeah, coaching didn't work out for me. Yeah, now we know a little bit more why. So you're created the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy. Who is it for and what do you offer?
Tracy Winter: 22:10
Who is it for and what do you offer? Okay, so it's for coaches.
Kate Arms: 22:22
We have very explicitly chosen to align ourselves with coaches who want to be connected with the International Coaching Federation model or at least are happy with their approach to coaching. So coaches who have an alignment with that approach to coaching. What we're offering right now is intended for people who are already coaches, so we're not offering how to be a coach 101 kind of stuff. We're offering how to be a better coach and a more inclusive coach and specifically looking at the pieces about how to make sure that you're accessible to your neurodivergent clients. And the really cool thing is that if you're accessible to your neurodivergent clients, you're accessible to everybody, because what works for the real customization and trauma-informed and real sensitive work for them works for everybody. So it's really just good coaching training, but with that eye of here's why it's important to have that nuance. And right now, what's currently available is a monthly masterclass on that topic and we've got coach mentoring and coaching supervision starting in May and more in the works, but nothing else launched yet. Tracy, did I miss anything?
Tracy Winter: 23:39
No, do you want to drop the teeth? Go ahead. I know I kind of just did. We are working on creating a specialization program. We are working on creating a specialization program. So you know a big chunk of continuing coach education credits which we have to look at the ICF, to be confidential and like a deeper training program than the master classes are going, so that you can sort of re-specialize and say I'm specialized in neurodiversity, inclusive coaching. So that's coming up. I won't put a date on it, but we're working on it.
Nadja Cereghetti: 24:13
So if somebody is interested and thinks like, oh, that's something I want to look out for, do you already have like a sign-up link? Or how do people stay in contact with all this information that you just teased out? So there's the monthly class, and then there's the mentor, coaching and coaching supervision and what you just mentioned. How can people stay on top of what's happening?
Kate Arms: 24:40
So right now we do not have and this is a lack on our part an easy place to sign up to get on a newsletter, and so I'll just sort of put that out there that we don't have. What we do have is, on the neurodiversitycoachingacademy. com website, direct registration for the masterclasses, and the easiest way to make sure that you stay in the know about what's coming up is to connect with Tracy or me or the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy on LinkedIn, and if you send an email to info at neurodiversitycoachingacademy. com, we can take your email address and put you on the mailing list. Once we've actually got that set up and started.
Tracy Winter: 25:22
We're working on it. It's very close.
Kate Arms: 25:25
We don't have a newsletter.
Nadja Cereghetti: 25:26
Yet we don't have a newsletter. Yet. When something drops and sign up, if I'm a coach, and well, if you're listening to my podcast, probably they're neurodivergent. But if somebody wants to do your programs, do they have to be neurodivergent themselves, or no?
Tracy Winter: 26:08
no, we don't have pretty much any gatekeeping. I mean, Kate has just described who we're designing these things for and also you've gotten some paraphrases in. You've gotten some just interested parties looking in, so you know we're open to everyone. We are not going to give you a narrow diversion to test before you come in. You know like we want everybody to have access to this information as easily as possible, which is why we keep the cost of our masterclass so low and we have recordings that you can buy from seeing $10 that we've been charging for masterclasses Because the important part for us is more people knowing more about coaching for neurodiversity and passiveness, so that there's less harm done.
Nadja Cereghetti: 26:53
Yeah, thank you, and you just mentioned the masterclass recordings. If somebody missed the last few that were amazing, by the way they can still access the recording.
Tracy Winter: 27:04
Yes, just go to the website and you can order them there.
Nadja Cereghetti: 27:07
Awesome. So, Kate, you mentioned what we're doing is basically good coaching. We teach good coaching and that works for all your clients, but for your neurodivergent clients especially. Do you want to share a little bit what that entails so that also people that are listening are like what is coaching and why should I get a neurodivergent coach and what do I need to look for for good coaching?
Kate Arms: 27:36
Yeah, I think that's a really great question, and I also want to sort of just pause for a moment, because I was thinking about this before we got on this call. The way that Tracy and I are approaching developing curriculum for coaches reveals our level of giftedness, because what it is that we have done is we have, between us, collected an enormous number of coaching tools and we have actually distilled the patterns underneath why these tools work. And so what we're actually extracting is we're actually extracting the patterns and teaching our students what those patterns are so that they can then customize them for the very different brains and nervous systems that they encounter while they're coaching and nervous systems that they encounter while they're coaching. And so what we're doing is actually quite different than most coaching schools, which start with here's a tool, here's a tool, here's a tool, here's a tool, here's a tool. Once you've used enough tools, you can then sort of branch out and expand, and so our giftedness and our pattern recognition and our ability to pull things apart is very much why we're doing what we're doing, and so for gifted people who want to become coaches, like that's a pitch that we actually understand why this works, well enough to teach why it works rather than just having to trust that it works, which makes a difference.
Kate Arms: 29:11
So really, why it works is a coach creates a relationship that is focused on the client, and it's focused on the client in a couple of different ways. One is that we trust that our clients are creative, resourceful, intelligent, able to solve problems. We also assume that if they had been able to solve it by themselves, they wouldn't have come to us, so they only come to us with the problems that they're finding hard in the moment. And so, as a coach, part of what we do is we believe that they have the power to solve this problem if we help them figure out how to get unstuck in this moment. And we help create a conversation in which we investigate why is it that they're stuck in this moment and how can they get unstuck. And then, once they're unstuck, if they don't already know what to do, then we help them figure out what to do.
Kate Arms: 30:16
But quite often, particularly gifted or otherwise neurodivergent clients come to us and they know what it is that they should be doing and they know where the information is, but they're actually just not somehow getting to it, and so often the just getting unstuck is the piece that is really important. And so we do this conversation, we do this sort of conversation homework conversation, homework conversation, homework kind of process, the homework piece and I'm sure it doesn't use that word, I don't use that word with my clients but there's coaching session and there's in-between, and then there's coaching session and then there's in-between, and in the in-between piece what makes it coaching is that there's something that the client takes on to do, to try to think about, to explore during the in-between piece, and those experiments in between, then the next session we learn from and those experiments in between, then the next session we learn from. And so it's this iterative discovery process that is a mix of self-inquiry and then practice in the real world. You want to add to that Tracy.
Tracy Winter: 31:22
No, there's probably some doubling down I'm going to do, but yeah, the way I think of. People are often asking what's the difference between coaching and therapy, and Kate just sort of put her finger on it.
Tracy Winter: 31:33
In coaching we have some overlap with therapy in terms of we are looking at awareness. We're, you know, looking at new perspectives. We're excavating a little bit where some of the includes might be or what's involved patterns might be. We're doing it more in a sense of like what's happening now and what do you want to happen in the future, more than digging into the past and sort of like learning how to deal with that. So that's part one. But we, like coaching, can be emotional and coaching can be disruptive and uncomfortable, just like they're. In those ways we can change off the needs. And then I think the biggest difference is we, because change often is. And then I think the biggest difference is we get sued some new awareness and then we say, okay, what do you want to do about that? Right, and so I co-design experiments. That's mostly the client having the ideas and us sort of like you know, making suggestions or or asking the questions that will help you get to you deeper of an experiment. And then they go.
Tracy Winter: 32:32
Like he said, the in-between is really important. They go away and do the thing or they don't do the thing. But he's right, I don't use the word homework, I use experiments, because you can't fail an experiment right. You're data collecting. So if you don't do the thing right, you don't do the experiment or whatever you call homework. You haven't do the experiment or what other people call homework. You have it fail. We have data that, whatever it was, there's something missing from it or there's something that wasn't designed, aligned with the way that you're going to make you want to do it that's new data.
Tracy Winter: 33:02
Let's iterate, like Kate said, and see what to do next. It's not yet again not making it to a goal. In other words, I don't inspire often my clients.
Nadja Cereghetti: 33:12
Well, thank you for elaborating and, if I hear correctly, that neurodivergent people get stuck, but sometimes on different ends or in different ways than nonurodivergent people, so that coaching works for both, for all people? But when you're neurodivergent you might get stuck on things that for the general population seems more easy to get over, or there's a lot of good advice out there that might not work. Did I understand that correctly? And you help them get unstuck?
Kate Arms: 33:52
Yeah, yeah, people get stuck. Getting stuck is human. One of the things that sometimes you hear people say about gifted people but neurodivergent people of various sorts, is that what's easy for everybody else is hard for me, and what's hard for everyone else is easy for me, and so that's very much true. That, like, whatever's hard for you is what you should bring to coaching. Whatever is easy for you you don't need to coach for, unless you really want to get like minutely amazing at it and then you might want to coach Like there are elite athletes who are trying to get like the little tiny bit of extra performance out of themselves who use coaches, but for most people it's the places. Well, I mean, even for them, that's the place they're stuck, like they want that little piece. So what you bring to your coach is where you're stuck.
Tracy Winter: 34:43
It's. To me it's not only the content of what they bring that might be different, but the part that we are trying to get at with our classes is the way they maneuver through those stuff places, the way they get to the other side, and that is going to be different, and maybe different from a way they've tried before so like what, what my clients tell me actually happens in coaching.
Tracy Winter: 35:07
Over the course of the whole thing is they learn how to work with their brains in ways that they were not before, instead of like arguing with them right or being in conflict, which makes them then able to unstick themselves that much more readily because their brains are flowing more. So, yeah, it is getting past the stuckness. It is also learning how to get past the stuckness, and it's also learning how to get past the stuckness in a sense Very much.
Nadja Cereghetti: 35:36
So I assume then also the solutions the clients come up with are also a little bit more out of the box than you would see in other coaching sessions probably.
Tracy Winter: 35:50
I honestly I don't coach very many not neurodivergent people anymore. I used to, but like not so much anymore, so I'm not sure I can compare. Yeah, but I mean I always say the best thing about coaching as a job is I get to be curious and surprised all day long, so they continually surprise me with the ideas. What do you think, Kate?
Kate Arms: 36:13
Yeah, I mean, I think that the thing that I notice is that I will be in a coaching session and I will be hearing what's going on and I'll be asking questions and my brain will be sort of dropping session. And I will be hearing what's going on and I'll be asking questions and my brain will be sort of dropping in how I would solve the problem. And then I ask a question that is what do you think will help you accomplish this over the next week? And they have frequently my clients have very clear this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it this way and I'm going to do it this way and do it. And it is so different from what I would have done if it was my premium.
Tracy Winter: 36:46
Yeah, that's the surprising part, right Like that's the fun of surprise.
Kate Arms: 36:50
Yeah, and it's a real reminder about just how different we all are and what works for one of us works for one of us.
Nadja Cereghetti: 37:01
And what's the beauty in coaching is that you get coached as the person and not the problem, as I learned right, and so, as you said, getting unstuck can be very, very individual. Yeah.
Kate Arms: 37:17
Yeah, one of the things that sometimes comes up in the conversation about how is coaching different from therapy is that a lot of people find coaching actually very healing and very therapeutic. And being coached as the person, not as the problem, is the heart of why coaching can have this incredibly therapeutic impact. Incredibly therapeutic impact because so often everybody who's trying to help us is so helpful that the fact that we have a problem, they like want to dive in and help us solve the problem.
Nadja Cereghetti: 37:52
Yeah and again. You get a lot of good ideas and suggestions, but if they worked for me, I would have already, you know, applied it as the client right.
Kate Arms: 38:02
Right, everybody, everybody, very generously tells you what they would try in your situation.
Tracy Winter: 38:11
That's one of the things that clients often come in with is they're expecting us to have solutions.
Nadja Cereghetti: 38:16
They're expecting us to have the have the thing for them.
Tracy Winter: 38:20
And I always say to them, expecting us to have the thing for them, and I always say to them you've Googled this how many times, like if there were solutions out there somewhere external to you, that would work, you wouldn't be talking to me. So I don't have your solutions, but we can figure them out together.
Kate Arms: 38:36
Yeah, I've been doing a bunch of coaching right now, recently with parents of gifted to twice exceptional kids and I've been doing one-off sessions, which is really fascinating, to try and figure out how to be really helpful just in a one-off session, little intake form, and I say, on your intake form you put a huge amount of stuff in.
Kate Arms: 39:05
We've got 50 minutes together. We're not going to solve all these problems and it's a relief to me because it means I don't have to understand your child in order to help you, because you don't have time to explain your child to me. In 50 minutes you'll just get started. But the cool thing is you have expertise about your child and so all I can do in this 50 minutes is I can help you think about how you think about solving the problems that you will then take with you to experiment with with your child parent coach to tell them they're expecting me to give them some vocabulary to use to talk to their, their kid that's going to get through to them, and I'm like there are no words that are like I cannot label magic wand, I cannot give you the phrase that is going to unlock your child is now successful.
Nadja Cereghetti: 39:56
I wish I could oh yeah, and I think it's important to set expectations. You know, I get questions like oh, I have a coaching question for you. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. How would you do it? I'm like that's not a coaching question, that's a mentoring question. But yeah, how would you approach it? Putting it back, so yeah, my favorite coaching question.
Kate Arms: 40:20
What do you already know about that?
Nadja Cereghetti: 40:24
Oh, thank you so much for sharing your insights of coaching and best practices and why it's important to get a neurodivergent coach if you're neurodivergent yourself and what you're offering and I'm looking forward to all that you're doing. Is there anything else that you would like to share, something you wish people know or something you wish you knew earlier?
Kate Arms: 40:51
I think the thing that I wish I'd known earlier about being gifted and this comes into my coaching and Tracy alluded to it earlier when she just introduced me, when she talked about embodiment and the body and the thing that I wish that I had known earlier is that the best thing that I can do for my ability to feel good about myself in this world is to make friends with my body.
Nadja Cereghetti: 41:25
Do you want to elaborate a little bit more?
Kate Arms: 41:28
So, in the gifted context, we get so rewarded for what our brain does, and so we over-index on the problems we can solve by thinking through them. And so many of the things that we really want out of life a sense of ease, a sense of connection with people, a sense of joy, love those aren't problems you can think your way into a solution of.
Tracy Winter: 41:50
Those are problems that live in our bodies and our embodied relationships, and I didn't learn to love my body enough to get wisdom from it and use it in those relationships until I was far older than I wish in retrospect what's coming up for me in my coaching Evening? I wish I had really understood that I'm bringing value by being there with my client. It's not about getting them somewhere, it's not about solutions.
Tracy Winter: 42:33
It's about relaxing into yourself and feeling I can be here and you know just being at the same time as the client is being stressing about which questions to ask, or will they get to where they want to go, or am I deciding? I found these kinds of questions which I think a lot of feeding coaches you know deal with. If I could have learned that a little quicker, I could have been a better and I'm still learning that because that's what you do, right.
Nadja Cereghetti: 43:03
Thank you for sharing that and I think me, as in my own journey, as you know, starting out with coaching, I feel like, yeah, I'm here to provide solutions or not to provide solutions, but the client is here, they want a solution quickly. And yeah, not getting trapped in coaching the problem, but really being there for the client and coaching the client and being there. So thank you for reemphasizing this Tracy. Thank you so much for sharing and for being here, and I will put all the links that you provided me with for your Neurodivergent Coaching Academy website, but also your personal websites or your own business websites, for your individual businesses is what I meant. I will put them in the show notes and people can find you and connect with you on LinkedIn and hopefully join your masterclasses.
Tracy Winter: 44:08
Thank you so much, and I can testify from the client role that Kate is an awesome coach. So please, please, check her out. Have a conversation with her. She does work such amazing work that I've never seen before, so definitely check hers out and both of you.
Nadja Cereghetti: 44:27
Obviously, you're both open for new clients at the moment. Yep, oh, wow, okay, so my listeners hopefully listen and, yeah, you might not soon have more slots open. So thank you so much.
Tracy Winter: 44:45
Thank you, nadja, thank you very much for having us.
Nadja Cereghetti: 44:49
Bye.
Nadja Cereghetti: 44:50
I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, and if you want to learn more about the Neurodiversity Coaching Academy by Kate Arms and Tracy Winter, then please go to neurodiversitycoachingacademy. com.
Nadja Cereghetti: 45:04
You will find information on all their amazing online masterclasses, which are really affordable, and you can also buy the replays for the ones you have missed, and they're really, really amazing. And they also offer the mentor coaching and coaching supervision for coaches who want to embark into the neurodiversity space of coaching. So I can highly recommend, and you can also find the link to sign up there on the website and also sign up for their newsletter. So at the time of the recording they didn't have the newsletter, but now they do have one, so you can also find that information on their website and also more about themselves, and you can also find links to their personal websites, which I also link in the show notes. So I hope you had a wonderful time listening, I hope you learned a bunch and I'm again so grateful for your time, for listening, for being here with us, and I'm wishing you just a wonderful time and I see you next time. Bye, thank you, thank you, thank you.