If you’re ready to go deeper and work with someone 1-2-1, it’s worth knowing the difference between the options.

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ADHD coaching is structured and skills-based — it helps you build tools for planning, focus, and accountability. A good coach guides you to set goals and develop strategies that turn awareness into practical change.

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Mentoring, on the other hand, is experience-based. It’s less about performance and more about understanding what it feels like to live with ADHD — making sense of patterns, emotions, and how your brain works in real life. 

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Coaching builds systems; mentoring builds self-understanding. Both are valuable and together, they can turn awareness into confidence that lasts.

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ADHD Coaching
👉 Professional, structured, and accredited (look for ICF, EMCC, or AC membership) 
👉 Future-focused and goal-based.
🔗 Find verified coaches here: GoldMind Academy Directory

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ADHD Mentoring
👉 Grounded in lived experience and evidence-based insight.
👉 Helps you apply what you know and refine what works.

👉 My mentoring combines my frameworks (EES and Which Means What) with clinical insight and lived experience, they're designed to be put into practice by you and are tailored to you.

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Questions to ask a Coach or Mentor

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• What experience do they have with ADHD beyond your own story?

• Do they have lived experience professional experience?

• How long have they worked with people with ADHD?

• Where were they trained/where did they study? Particularly important for ADHD Coaches.

• How long was their training to qualify as an ADHD Coach? **

• Who were they trained by? ***

• If they didn’t ‘train’ or study formally, how did they learn what they teach?

• If they are diagnosed, it’s okay to ask how long ago?

• Did they ever work with people with ADHD before their diagnosis? (if they have ADHD)

• Did they have any experience of Coaching, Mentoring or running courses before their diagnosis?

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** Anything under 12 months of part-time study would concern me. Anything under 12 weeks of full-time study, and I’d look elsewhere.

*** Was that person someone with a credible long-term history of working with people with ADHD who also had clinical and academic partnerships when creating the course content? How long had they been diagnosed and how many people had they supported before selling courses to teach others?  (In my opinion, if the answer to those questions are not clear, the person you are talking to doesn’t know, or if their trainer had less than 5 years of professional experience working with ADHD, and teaching others anything before creating the course, I would ask what extra professional experience, education or training the person you are talking to has done after the coaching course.

 

Remember your understanding of what ADHD means to you is important and you are placing a lot of trust in someone to help you.​​