What Did They Hear? The Metacognitive Work of Executive Function Coaching
There are some coaching conversations that end when the session ends.
Others follow you around.
You replay a sentence. You wonder whether you explained something clearly enough. You remember the look on a student’s face and reconsider what you said immediately before it.
Recently, I had one of those conversations.
A student and I were discussing ceramics, something she loves and typically attends several times a week. She had also been describing the stress she experienced when work was left until the last minute, and at one point describing the feeling as if she were pulling her hair out.
From my perspective as an executive function coach, I was trying to put several pieces together.
I was thinking about motivation. I was thinking about dopamine. I was wondering whether an activity she already valued could help us create a different structure around starting and completing work. I wondered whether changing when she attended ceramics — or even splitting up that time differently — might give us something useful to experiment with.
That was what was happening in my head. But I’ve thought about that conversation several times since.
Because I wonder whether what she heard was much simpler: She wants to take ceramics away from me.
I don’t know that she interpreted it that way.
And that’s actually the point.
Intention and perception are not the same thing
As coaches, educators, parents, and other helping professionals, we naturally pay attention to our intentions.
I was trying to motivate her.
I was trying to explain the consequence.
I was trying to help him problem-solve.
But communication doesn’t end with intention.
There is what we intended to communicate.
There are the words we actually used.
And then there is what the other person’s brain received, held onto, connected to previous experiences, and ultimately understood.
Those three things don’t always match. That’s not necessarily because anyone did something wrong.
It’s because communication is a cognitive process.
Consider what we know about executive function.
A conversation may require a student to hold multiple pieces of information in working memory while simultaneously processing new information.
They may need cognitive flexibility to move from an initial interpretation — She’s taking ceramics away — to a more nuanced one — She’s wondering whether we can experiment with when I go to ceramics to make getting my work done easier.
They may need emotional regulation to continue processing the rest of a conversation after hearing something that feels threatening or disappointing.
Attention matters.
Prior experiences matter.
Stress matters.
The student’s expectations about what adults usually do when they aren’t completing their work matter.
Even the order in which we present information may matter.
Suddenly, “I explained it to them” doesn’t tell us very much about what they actually understood.
The lens needs to turn toward us, too
We talk frequently about developing metacognition in our clients. We want students to notice what they are doing, recognize what is working, identify where something broke down, and make adjustments.
But shouldn’t we be willing to do the same thing?
After a conversation doesn’t seem to land the way I expected, I can ask myself:
What was I trying to communicate?
What did I actually say?
What did I expect the student to hold in working memory?
How many connections was I expecting them to make?
Was the most important message obvious, or was it buried underneath my explanation?
Did emotion change what the student was able to process?
Did I check what the student understood, or did I assume understanding because I had explained my reasoning?
What might I try differently next time?
Those questions aren’t an admission that I shouldn’t have had the conversation.
They’re part of being a reflective practitioner.
Reflection can get uncomfortable
There is, however, another place our brains can take us.
Maybe I handled that completely wrong.
Maybe another coach would have known exactly what to say.
Maybe I’m not as good at this as I think I am.
Many professionals will recognize the pull toward imposter syndrome. But professional metacognition and professional self-doubt are not the same thing.
Reflection asks:
What can I learn from this interaction?
Self-doubt asks:
What does this interaction prove about me?
One creates curiosity. The other creates judgment. And ironically, that’s the same distinction we often ask coaches to make when looking at their clients.
Curiosity changes the question
I recently encountered another situation in which a student walked away from a classroom interaction believing he had essentially been told to stop raising his hand and asking questions because he was interrupting.
I wasn’t in that classroom. I don’t know exactly what was said. I don’t know what the teacher intended.
What I do know is what the student believed the message was.
That matters.
And my own coaching interaction reminded me that this isn’t simply something other professionals need to think about. I do, too.
Maybe the question isn’t:
Why did they misunderstand me?
Maybe it’s:
What did they hear — and what can that teach me?
Sometimes the coaching conversations that stay with us are the ones that ask us to turn the same curiosity toward ourselves that we ask our clients to develop. We can care deeply about our intentions. But we also need to remain curious about perception.
Because somewhere between what we intended, what we said, and what another brain received is information that can make us better coaches.
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Before You Intervene: Assessing Executive Function Skills
