This week, I’m joined by Antonia Bowring - Antonia holds a B.A. in Political Science, an M. Phil. in Development Economics, and an M.B.A. She is an ICF-certified coach with an Executive Coaching Certificate from NYU. She is a frequent speaker to on topics ranging from mindfulness, ADHD in the workplace, and communication best practices.
In our conversation today, we delve into the challenges and strengths associated with ADHD and how we can work on leveraging those through creativity and intensity. We also talk about embracing ADHD, the importance of self-acceptance, mindfulness practices, strategic collaboration, and get into what it means to receive a late diagnosis.
William Curb: To get started. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and about the coaching you do?
Antonia Bowring: My name is Antonia Bowring. I'm an executive coach who understands a lot about ADHD, but I'm not an ADHD coach and we can talk about that. And I work with executives, founders, often CEOs of fast-growing companies and sometimes folks in career transition. And I'd say about a third of my clients have ADHD.
William Curb: Is there a reason you think that is?
Antonia Bowring: Well, it's been somewhat organic and after I was diagnosed with it, then I did a deeper dive into it and started writing about it. And it sort of happened organically and a lot through articles I wrote.
William Curb: Well, I can also see with people who are neurodivergent, they're often attracted to other neurodivergent folks. It's something about the way we communicate where I'm going to latch on to this person.
Antonia Bowring: That is a very interesting question. If you don't have ADHD, can you be a good executive coach to someone who has it?
William Curb: Yeah, sure. Anyone can coach anyone and have that influence. But there are aspects of understanding ADHD when you don't have it is very difficult because it is such an invisible disability where you're just like, why don't you just do the thing? I would desperately love to just be able to go and watch the dishes right now.
Antonia Bowring: By way of indirectly answering my question, I have four coaches that I would call ADHD coaches, executive function ADHD that work with me, that sometimes they're a better fit for a client than I am. And my first question always is to them, do you have a diagnosis of ADHD? All the ones I work with do.
William Curb: When you work with that kind of clients, that's important.
Antonia Bowring: Totally. And I like to think about it in terms of like, I think in frameworks, which is what my book is about. But I like to talk about the profound and the practical when I think about how do I coach someone with ADHD? And I don't know if you can understand the profound or the practical if you don't have ADHD, like the shame and the kind of the very negative self-narrative that so many people have. I think it's really hard to understand where that comes from.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's just this thing that will really just like sit over you where you're like, why haven't I done this thing? Why haven't I made this simple phone call that would make a big difference, but I just can't make myself do it. And from the outside, it often feels like, well, why don't you just do it?
Antonia Bowring: Or even more generically, why do I feel bad about myself? And why do I feel like I'm not successful?
William Curb: Yeah, that's a question I've often looked at too. So with this podcast, it's been fairly successful for me. And yet oftentimes, when I hit those milestones, I'm like, “yep, that's it. I did what I was supposed to do”. That's one of the things I've often was like, okay, you need to celebrate your wins. But when it doesn't feel like it's a win, it's really hard to celebrate it.
Antonia Bowring: I'm with you.
William Curb: You mentioned your book, Coach Yourself. Really, what were you hoping to get out of doing this book?
Antonia Bowring: Well, I got a diagnosis of ADHD in my very early 50s, which, you know, earlier in my life, I would have thought, well, gosh, you're who cares at that point, right? Like, isn't it over by then? But no, it's not. And like many typical things that happen, I got it because my son got it. And I was going, that sounds like me. So it took a couple of years. But I also then started researching it, writing about it. I was already executive coaching then. And I have to say, I know everyone has their own journey with a diagnosis. But for me, it unlocked so much. And these last several years, I've just my confidence, my sense of who I am.
Can I say skyrocketed? I mean, I do really attribute a lot of that to the diagnosis. And it was kind of like, you're in the dark, and you're trying to figure something out. And you're like, well, what is that shape? Like, what is that? And then someone turns the light on and you go, oh, I'm not a loser. I'm not an idiot. I'm neurodivergent. My brain is wired differently. I cannot express how profound that has been for me. And that, I believe, was one of the things when that got unlocked.
So many things fell into place. Literally, the publisher contacted me and said, you want to write a book? And I said, sure, this book is not specifically for folks with ADHD or neurodivergent, but it works really well for them in a lot of ways because there is a chapter specifically for ADHD years. And the book is full of my coaching frameworks. And I think these frameworks are even of greater benefit for folks with ADHD.
William Curb: I can definitely see that because while I don't like things to be the same all the time with the ADHD, I like the impulsiveness, having that structure in place. If I don't have the structure, I can't be impulsive of it. I'm just doing whatever and I don't end up doing anything.
Antonia Bowring: Yeah. I mean, a great example would be if you have to have a challenging conversation, right, what I'll call in the book a critical conversation. Someone with ADHD can get very easily overwhelmed and a little bit like lost in the emotionality of it and impulsive responses and I have this super simple framework in it for having a critical conversation called COIN. It's just like something you have in your back pocket that, oh, I can rely on that scaffolding if I feel like I'm getting off track or if I need a bit of support. And I think that builds your confidence, that keeps your cortisol down.
William Curb: So you said it was called COIN. Can you tell me a little more about that, it sounds really interesting?
Antonia Bowring: Yeah, I can I literally had a conversation with a client today and I brought up that framework and I'd said, well, you know, we've talked about coin. Could you use that in this conversation you have coming up with the CEO? So I use it all the time. So it's got two parts and I'll make this super brief and it's so simple. You'll walk away from this podcast knowing how to use it. So part one is knowing a little bit about who you are. Like, do you tend to be soft or hard when you have these kinds of conversations?
Do you tend to kind of be a bit too giving in the conversation and you don't hold your ground or do you hold your ground too hard. So knowing that about yourself is step one. And then second is the actual coin, C-O-I-N, super simple. Common purpose, observation, inquiry, next steps. And you can just follow that through the conversation. So what's our common purpose? Because from a neuroscience perspective, as soon as you and I link on a common purpose, you'll listen better. It creates a friendliness, right?
William Curb: And if you're having a conversation and there isn't a common purpose, like nothing's going to come of it.
Antonia Bowring: Right. And even like a common alignment, like, hey, I know that we both really want the best for this team, like common purpose. And then observation is just fact. Like what happened? I had this crisis last month and I never got a response from you. There's no judgment there. It's fact. And then the dances in the inquiry, that's where we listen, we use open-ended questions. And we want to have a dance back and forth of trying to understand what's going on from both perspectives, right? And then finally, never ending a conversation without next steps. I see we sort of both agree there was a breakdown of communication. Here's what we can do next time, that kind of thing.
William Curb: That feels like one of the most key pieces too, because often you'll have some sort of conversation with someone where you're like, okay, we're going to get things changed. And then nothing changes because you didn't actually discuss what needed to change.
Antonia Bowring: Right. And what you were committing to. Even if that's another meeting, like, yeah, I guess we don't have enough info. Let's get on the calendar for X and we'll come to a decision then or whatever, but always leaving with a next step.
William Curb: Yeah. Because in general, that's such an important point for ADHD in general, is that we're like, if we don't know what our next step is, we're not going to do anything.
Antonia Bowring: Exactly.
William Curb: That sounds like a really good framework to keep in mind for not just work conversations but like your other relationships as well.
Antonia Bowring: I use it with my teenage sons all the time.
William Curb: I have an eight-year-old who really wants to be a teenager. She calls herself a pre-tween right now. I'm like, okay, but you're eight.
Antonia Bowring: Is this the one with the messy bedroom?
William Curb: I mean, they both have messy bedrooms, but yes.
Antonia Bowring: Okay. Okay. By the way, can I just say, I heard that on your podcast and I think that is such a great point you made that the organizational system, they have to know what it is and it has to work for them. I love that. Okay. There's two laundry baskets, dirty and clean. I thought that was brilliant, by the way.
William Curb: There's so many things where you're just like, oh, if we just, why are we doing this in the hardest way possible? Why aren't we doing this in a way that works for us?
Antonia Bowring: Totally.
William Curb: It sounds like a lot of the ideas here are also is just like, hey, how can we make something work for us? What kind of framework do we need in our life to make things move forward?
Antonia Bowring: I really appreciate the idea that different systems work at different times. For someone with ADHD, I like this term seasons. This idea of being really open to meeting different systems, strategies, tools to match the different seasons.
William Curb: One of the things that I found with this same idea of doing what works for us is that I'll get bored of using a system and then I'll fall apart. If I have that built-in plan, I'm going to change things up and it's not just because things failed. If we have just one thing, we're going to get bored, but we're not going to want to do it anymore.
Antonia Bowring: I took a course where the instructor talked an amazing woman like a master trainer on ADHD issues. Barbara Luther, giving her a shout out, she talked about how folks with ADHD love sparkly things. I think about that a lot. This balance of ritual and routine and there's something feel solid about that, but the need for the sparkles and the change and the variety. If we know that about ourselves, then we can plan for it right?
William Curb: Going back to when you were saying how your diagnosis opened up so many things for you, often when we don't know what's going on, we have judgmental thoughts about what's going on. It's like, oh, I don't want to tell them their ADHD because that's just another label. I'm like, no, this is an explanation. Instead of before I was like, oh, I'm just being lazy. I'm not doing this. I'm like, oh, I have ADHD and this is executive dysfunction. There's something I can do about that. I can't do much about being lazy.
Antonia Bowring: I like that you made that point. Some people will say, well, I don't want to get a diagnosis because I don't want this to be an excuse. My answer is no, a diagnosis then means you have a responsibility to do something with that information. It's not an excuse, but it gives you power and agency to make changes that work for you.
William Curb: Yeah, because there's so many ways that we need to work with our brain rather than against it. It's just without the information, we don't know what we're doing wrong.
Antonia Bowring: Yeah. You're reminding me. I was talking to someone, a potential client the other day, and we got onto this conversation. This person is actually a medical doctor, super educated. I was saying, well, can we also just celebrate for a moment? You did all that studying and training before you had a diagnosis. That's amazing. We both commented that I also did very well in college and graduate school, but I think I worked doubly as hard and I didn't know any other way. Both of us also commented that it was our responsibility to make the instructors, the teachers, the professors like us because we needed every advantage in order to be successful. We couldn't just rely on being an engaged good student. No, we had to do so much more. It made me kind of sad.
William Curb: The experience we go through, especially in higher education, can be very hard when we look back on it. We're like, oh, I could have gone through this in such a different way had I known.
Antonia Bowring: Yes, that's exactly it. I could have gone through this in a different way had I known. Yeah. I have this super strong memory of being on a Sunday afternoon. These were the days when you actually had to go to the library because that's where all the books were. Like getting these piles of books and going into a what were called the stacks and writing out hundreds and hundreds of index cards. And I couldn't figure out a way to do it smarter. I must have put in triple the amount of work for a paper. I really wish I'd had an executive function coach, which I don't even think they existed then. I wasted a lot of time trying to be perfect and thorough.
William Curb: Yeah I remember going to college and being like, I'm just going to close myself in this room until I get this paper done. And four hours later, I've written a paragraph, but this is how I have to do it. Even though it's not working, this is what I'm going to do.
Antonia Bowring: Now we know there are better ways.
William Curb: Yeah. And I think that's one of the great things with working with a coach is that we often don't see when it's not working for us. I mean, that's why I kept doing it. I was like, well, this is what you do. There's nothing better. But having that sounding bar you're like, because if I had a coach, I was like, yeah, I'd just go into the study room for four hours and get a little bit of work done. Immediately, they would be just like, why?
Antonia Bowring: You mentioned in one of your podcasts, I think for me, the two things I despise administration and more so as I get older. But the two things I hate the most in the world are taxes and filing healthcare receipts. The whole thing boggles my mind. And you want to know what I've found to be the most helpful thing. Have you heard the term a body double?
William Curb: Yes.
Antonia Bowring: I only heard that term for the first time last year. And I literally have to organize it so that my spouse is my body double and literally is doing something near me in the same room. And we've agreed upon the timeframe that I'm going to sort of sit and do these things.
William Curb: Just for the people that aren't familiar with the term, it is just basically working alongside someone else who's also working.
Antonia Bowring: And the way I think of it as they are also like know what you said you were going to do and help hold you accountable. So yeah, I'm going to get the receipts organized for half an hour, turn the timer on, and they're doing their own thing. But they're holding me accountable as well.
William Curb: Body doubling is one of the things that I find frustratingly effective. Antonia Bowring: Right? Yeah, it would be expensive if you have to hire someone to do it.
William Curb: Yeah. And I'm always just like, oh, I don't need this. I can just do without and like never works as well. I mean, even if I'm doing something just like on Zoom or something online where I'm like, talk to someone, I'm like, why is this so much more effective?
Antonia Bowring: I know. Yeah, it's accountability in some way. Yeah. And by the way, there are people that pay people to do that. Right? I mean, hey, why not?
William Curb: I think it's definitely a growing thing where more people are becoming aware of it and it's going to be a lot more accessible. Right now, I'm like, yeah, make sure people know what it is because they might not know. But I mean, I think in five years, everyone's going to know what body doubling is because it's going to be such a common thing people do. For executive coaching, is that something that you actually have to address? Because with ADHD, we often want to do so many things. It can be hard to focus on doing the few important.
Antonia Bowring: With most of my clients, they have an advantage, which is they have people that work for them. So that is a huge privilege that not everybody has. Right? And I'm super aware of that. But it's often hard for founders to let go of things. And it's kind of pretty clear why, because it's their baby. And you know, it's hard to let the baby grow up. But it is still a struggle to get them to utilize maybe assistance or other folks on their teams in a productive way. And it takes trying different things, figuring different things out, trying notebooks, trying voice recordings, trying huddles at the end of the day. And look, if there was one way to be organized and productive, it would have been on Oprah and we would all be doing it.
Right? So it's very individual. A lot of my clients can get support from other people, which is a great benefit. But then it's also like the technology piece, right? Are there apps you can use? Or can you annotate documents and share them? Can you do your to-do list at the end of the day? And then your assistant seamlessly gets it? All kinds of tricks. That is definitely a part of the coaching. But there's usually business goals and team building and communication goals and could be a bunch of different things.
William Curb: Yeah. Because I was thinking, yeah, one of my biggest problems is I'm like, I want to do all of the ideas.
Antonia Bowring: Well, actually, you make a good point. You know what these early-stage founders or CEOs with ADHD are very good at is capital raises, raising money. Because those are very, very intense times where everything is in the moment. It's either now or not now. You're not looking down a year down the road with a strategic plan. It's like now or not now and you're juggling and they're very, very good in those times. They thrive. They get a lot of energy from it.
William Curb: I think that's one of the great things that people with ADHD can do is focus on what they're good at. We know what our weaknesses are, but we don't always know what our strengths are because for a lot of things that I do, I'm like, I'm good at this, which means it's not hard. So it's not a strength.
Antonia Bowring: Right.
William Curb: Like a lot of my podcast, I'm like, this isn't hard to do. So this can't be a strength.
Antonia Bowring: Because it should be hard. It should be effortful. Yeah. I agree. I think we undervalue the creativity, the ability to collaborate, and our ability to move from big picture to detail back and forth. We all have our individual gifts, but those seem to be pretty typical of many ADHDers.
William Curb: That's actually one of the things I've been thinking a lot recently is the idea of doing more collaboration stuff because it is something where often, especially in the US, it's like American exceptionalism and individualism. It's so, and I'm like, it took me such a long time to hire an editor for my podcast, and it has been the best thing I've done. And it's like working with someone else is better than working alone.
Antonia Bowring: I agree. I don't think our education system is great at training young folks to work that way. They get projects that they have to do as a team, but they're actually not taught in how to work as a team. Right. It's just you got to figure it out. And there are actually things that you can talk about and instruct about or coach about to help people develop those skills faster. I agree. I think our brains like to ping pong ideas back and forth. Those are dopamine hits, right? And we like those.
William Curb: Yeah, and it's just if I can do the things I'm good at and my friend can do the things they're good at, we're both going to have a better time.
Antonia Bowring: I made a very wise decision to get someone to help me with my invoicing and a certain assessment I use quite a bit. She also does all the administration of that. I mean, I'm so lucky I can afford to do that. But boy, that's a game changer. I don't spend my time frustrated, inefficiently doing things that she does much better and much faster than me.
William Curb: Yeah, and it's really funny too when you step back and you're like, oh, they do it better, faster, and cheaper than I do. It actually makes more sense for me to be working with someone, even if it feels like, oh, I should just be able to do this on my own. I think that's something that I see with a lot of people with ADHD is that they feel like they should just be able to do things. There are things I'm not good at because of my ADHD. And if I can hire a cleaning service for my house, which, you know, that costs money in it, but if I can then use that time for something better, that's huge.
Antonia Bowring: I mean, I think you're getting to the nugget of something which is, well, I should be good at everything. And I'm going to force the round peg in the square hole because I should be able to do that. And there's that loop, right? That loop of not feeling like you are doing what other people do easily. And it gets harder to open up that loop and just say, because it's true of everyone. Everyone has things they're better at than other things. But I think for folks with ADHD, it's harder to just say that out loud because it means you're accepting maybe your diagnosis and you're not comfortable with that.
William Curb: One of the things that I come back to on the podcast so many times is that the best thing for ADHD is accepting that you have ADHD. I keep saying this because it feels obvious. I mean, I start every podcast, like, I'm William Kerb, I have ADHD. That has been important for me. I need to be reminded of that. I have times where I'm like, why can't I do this? Oh, if I think about it from the lens of I have ADHD and I'm dealing with executive dysfunction right now, that's why. Okay, what can I do about my executive dysfunction?
Antonia Bowring: I have to say, and I know this is no secret, it's talked about widely, but the two biggest game changers or keystone habits that have impacted my ability to regulate ADHD are some kind of mindfulness practice and exercise. Exercise, the research is quite astonishing on not just ADHD, but the impact if you suffer from depression or anxiety, everything. We should just all be doing it in some way, shape, or form every day.
William Curb: It does not have to be hard exercise, just move your bodies more often.
Antonia Bowring: I took my own advice this morning and sort of knew what my day looked like and could feel like some anxiety growing inside me. And I thought, okay, it's a beautiful day here. I'm just going to walk for half an hour before I sit down and plow through the day, even 15 minutes. Even if you can't get outside, there's so much stuff on YouTube, right? I think that is one of the biggest game changers.
William Curb: For me, the other one is good sleep.
Antonia Bowring: Yes. How do you do on that front?
William Curb: Been doing better recently, which is always good because it's sometimes a struggle, but finding when I can be fairly regular about it, it's like, oh, last weekend I went camping, so that's going to be a bad sleeping experience.
Antonia Bowring: Period.
William Curb: Yeah. But when I can really focus on, okay, if my body feels good, my brain feels a lot better too.
Antonia Bowring: You know, I almost have like a mental image sometimes of cortisol or whatever, just like going from the top of my head down through my body after I've exercised. It's very powerful. And also, I know mindfulness or I see mindfulness, not meditation, but I know that's hard for ADHD-ers. And I also think we don't need to judge, right, about, oh, it doesn't have to be 20 minutes sitting on a cushion. It can be many different things. It can be just being in nature. It can be just sitting and looking out a window. It can just be taking 10 deep breaths. Again, that is a muscle that you have to develop. But you can start in tiny, tiny micro ways, and it helps. It creates space. That's the advantage I get from it.
William Curb: Yeah, I think it's a great way to reflect on our ADHD as well, when we're like, oh, if I'm having so much trouble sitting here because I can hear this sound, I hear that all the time anyways. Maybe this is something I should be looking at in my environment, giving ourselves a little time to think.
Antonia Bowring: Yeah. And there's some great apps, you know? Some people are very, oh, no, you can't listen to an app when you meditate. Who cares? Whatever creates that space and allows you to be in the moment.
William Curb: I feel like there's a lot more we could talk about here. Is there some final things that you would want to mention before we end?
Antonia Bowring: I think my dream is that we destigmatize ADHD. I'm even not so interested in superpowers versus challenges. I just want it to just like be, oh, William has ADHD.
That's different brain wiring, period. And to me, that's where I want us to go. And then there's all kinds of work you can do to do things better or really reframe your past and let go of things that have been holding you back. But it's just different brain wiring, period. And then I guess this balancing act between the profound and the practical. There's some deep dives that for a lot of people require a therapist. And then there's just the practical of, I got to get shit done every day. And how can I do that and be kind to myself.
William Curb: And so if people wanted to find out more about you or more about your book, coach yourself, where should they go?
Antonia Bowring: Yeah. My website is ab/strategies.com. And I'd love folks to visit me on TikTok. That's Antonia Bowring 963. And the book is either through my website or on Amazon. And if you just search, coach yourself and my name, you'll find it.
William Curb: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I had a great time.
Antonia Bowring: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. And thank you for what you're doing for this community.
This Episode's Top Tips
Recognizing and understanding the specific attributes and challenges of ADHD can help individuals develop strategies to manage their symptoms more effectively and leverage their strengths.
Just as important as identifying our strengths can be identifying our weaknesses and finding ways to help mitigate those weaknesses, like collaborating with others and outsourcing when we can.
Incorporating mindfulness, regular exercise, and maintaining good sleep hygiene are essential strategies for managing ADHD. These practices can significantly enhance focus, emotional regulation, and overall well-being.