ADHD Coach Training for Professional Coaches

This ADHD coaching course gives you a disciplined way to coach the life client, the executive, and the founder. Learn what changes across those three lenses, how to hold an ADHD-informed coaching stance, and where coaching ends and clinical work begins.

20 hours, self-paced 12 modules, 94 videos Lifetime access

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ADHD Coaching - Three Lenses, One Framework

Cherie Silas

Master Certified Coach (MCC), course author and instructor

International Coaching Federation (ICF) Continuing Coach Education (CCE) Approved Program: 20.0 hours – 13 Core Competency + 7 Resource Development

Watch before you enroll

Two videos from the course

The three lenses the course is built on, and Cherie on her own path into this work.

Video 0.1.2 · Three Lenses: What Surrounds the Client
The question the course asks about every client: what surrounds them. The life, executive, and entrepreneur lenses, and why a lens is never a label.

Video 1.2.1 · My Path Into This Work
Cherie, in her own words: her late diagnosis, the visible systems she works by, and why she teaches this course.

The other 92 videos open the moment you enroll.

Where this fits

Where this course sits, and where it doesn’t

People say “ADHD coaching certification” about three different things: coach training, an assessed credential, and continuing education. This course is the third. If you need one of the other two, it will not get you there, so check which one you need before you buy.

Layer 1: Training

Coach training

An ICF Level 1 or Level 2 program that teaches you to coach at all, and opens the door to an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) or Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential. If you hold no credential yet, this is the part you cannot skip or substitute.

Layer 2: Credential

An assessed credential

Someone independent evaluates you and says so: ICF for coaching itself, the Professional Association for ADHD Coaches (PAAC) for ADHD-specific work. PAAC states it plainly: “Does PAAC provide ADHD Coach training? No. We credential individuals who are already professional ADHD Coaches.”

Layer 3: Continuing education

Domain depth for a coach who already has both

Structured learning that deepens a credentialed coach’s work in one domain. ICF is explicit that CCE “focuses on additional learning, not initial training.”

This course

	ICF Level 1 / Level 2 → ACC	PAAC Certified ADHD Coach Practitioner (CACP)	This course (ICF CCE)
What it is	Foundational coach training, then a credential awarded by the ICF.	An ADHD-specific credential from a credentialing body. PAAC does not run training.	Continuing education for a coach who already holds a credential.
What it proves	That you can coach, assessed against the ICF Core Competencies.	Assessed ADHD-specific coaching competence.	Domain depth. It is not a credential and does not act as one.
Prerequisite	None. This is the starting point.	60 ADHD coaching hours for the CACP, 90% of them paid.	An existing coaching foundation. ACC, PCC or MCC.
Training route	A full ICF-accredited program.	Graduating from a PAAC-accredited school is one of three routes, not a requirement. PAAC accredits only two schools.	20.0 hours, self-paced: 13 Core Competency + 7 Resource Development.
What it costs	Program tuition, plus an ACC application fee of $175 for ICF members or $325 for non-members.	Set by PAAC. Membership dues are not published.	$399.
ICF renewal credit	Not applicable: this is initial training, not continuing education.	None. PAAC and ICF are separate systems.	20.0 ICF-accredited CCE hours toward your renewal, 13 of them Core Competency. The course documents 3 hours of ethics instruction inside Core; ICF makes the final renewal determination.
Who asks for it	Organizations and employee assistance program buyers screen for ICF.	Mostly useful for visibility inside the ADHD space.	Your own renewal record, and clients who can tell whether you know the territory.

Scroll the table sideways to compare →

Skip this course if…

You hold no coaching credential yet. Continuing education cannot replace the training underneath it. Start with ICF-accredited coach training and come back to this course afterwards.
You need a credential. This course issues a certificate of completion, and no amount of continuing education turns into a credential.

Every route, every fee, and what each one proves to a buyer are compared in which ADHD coaching certification actually counts.

What you'll be able to do

What changes in your ADHD engagements after this course

Six things you will do differently with your next ADHD client.

Read which lens you're in

Recognize which lens a client is in – life, executive, or entrepreneur – by what surrounds them, and how the same pattern asks for different work in each.

Hold the ADHD-informed stance

Work from the four commitments of the stance: read the state as well as the story, keep it safe for the client to speak openly, partner on the design, and hold the coaching line. They keep you coaching when a session pulls you toward advice, fixing, or managing the condition.

Run an ADHD-informed intake

Know the four areas an ADHD-informed intake adds, and contract for the relationship before the outcome – so the agreement holds when energy, focus, and follow-through move the way ADHD moves.

Adapt your core skills

Listen for state first, ask about one concrete moment, let the client size each experiment with a backup plan, and treat accountability as noticing. Then adjust all four to the structure around the client in each lens.

Hold the coaching boundary

Run the three boundary questions – safety, coaching or treatment, competence – and choose: refer, adjust the contract, or stay and coach. Notice the cues that call for another professional, without diagnosing, treating, or labeling.

Walk away with your Working Reference

Build The ADHD Coach's Working Reference: sixteen sections, added module by module around a boundary decision flowchart, with an unseen client case worked inside it. Keep it open in your sessions after the course ends.

What's inside

Twelve modules, one stance, three lenses

One module sets out the ADHD-informed stance. Each module after it applies the stance to one area (presence, intake, identity, skills, systems, energy, domain knowledge, or the boundary) and compares how it plays out in the three lenses.

20h

Approved ICF CCE

Videos

Resources to keep

Modules

The 20 hours are the total ICF accredited for this course: 20.0 CCE hours, 13 Core Competency and 7 Resource Development. The course teaches enough ADHD domain knowledge to coach well and notice when to refer – never to diagnose, treat, or label.

Course Orientation

How the course works, and what surrounds each client

1 unit · 2 videos

Start here. See how the course works and how you earn your certificate, meet the three lenses the course uses to look at what surrounds each client, and start your Working Reference with a short reflection on the clients you coach.

How each lesson works: video, practice, and a Working Reference section
The three lenses – life, executive, entrepreneur – defined by what surrounds the client
The first section of your Working Reference: the clients you coach

The ADHD-Informed Coaching Stance

Four commitments, and the coach’s own side

3 units · 9 videos

ADHD-informed coaching is ICF coaching done with ADHD in mind: a perceptual skill plus a stance. This module sets out the four commitments of the stance and the coach’s own side, places the field’s reference frame beside them, hears from Cherie about coaching with ADHD herself, and maps where each lens pulls the work.

What ADHD-informed coaching is, and the four commitments of the stance
Cherie’s lived experience, and the coach-with-ADHD dynamic
The three lenses at a glance, and where each one pulls the work

The ADHD Lens & the Regulation Floor

Reading state alongside content

3 units · 8 videos

Every client brings two things into a session: what they say, and what they are able to do right now. This module trains you to read both, choose a move for each of the four states the course names, tell a thinking pause from a stuck one, and see what a tired client looks like in each lens.

Reading state alongside content
Pace and silence
Depletion across the three lenses

Intake & Contracting Across the Three Lenses

Contract the relationship before the outcome

3 units · 8 videos

An ADHD-informed intake asks about four more areas, listens for signs that another professional may be needed, and acts on safety at once. Then you build two agreements in order – how you’ll work together, and what you’ll work toward – with confidentiality limits and any sponsor’s terms agreed before the work starts.

The ADHD-informed intake – what’s added
Contracting for the relationship before the outcome
How the intake shifts across the three lenses

Identity Work: Grief, Fusion, Reconstruction

Integration before action

4 units · 9 videos

A late diagnosis or a hard recognition can change the story a client tells about themselves before it changes anything they do. This module teaches you to hear that work, stay with it in each lens, and check with the client before you move to action.

Integration before action
Identity in the life lens – grief and self-trust repair
Identity in the executive lens – leadership and ADHD
Identity in the entrepreneur lens – fused with the business

Skill Shifts: Listening, Questions, Goals, Accountability

Your core skills, recalibrated

4 units · 9 videos

Four everyday coaching skills, adjusted for ADHD-informed work: listening for state first, asking about one concrete moment, letting the client size the next step with a backup plan, and accountability as noticing. The module ends with practice in matching all four to the structure that actually surrounds each client.

Active listening shifts
How the questions change
Goal-setting and accountability shifts
Three-lens calibration

Daily Systems & Between-Session Structure

Structure the client designs and owns

3 units · 7 videos

Reminders, routines, a person working alongside, a short look back at the week: structure between sessions holds best when the client designs it and owns it. You learn to partner on that design, what to do when a system stops working, and how to set limits on your own contact between sessions so you are not on call.

External scaffolding and body doubling
The weekly review and between-session contact
Systems across the three lenses

Energy, Hyperfocus, and the Crash Cycle

Energy as information the client designs around

3 units · 7 videos

Energy rises and falls, focus locks in and lets go, and after a long push a client can hit empty. You learn to coach all of it as information the client designs around: the energy map, the conditions and costs of hyperfocus, the session after a crash, and the things a client started and set down.

Energy mapping and the conditions around hyperfocus
The crash cycle across the three lenses
The half-finished pile and finishing

7.5

ADHD Domain Knowledge for the Coach Who Doesn’t Diagnose

What you know shapes what you ask

4 units · 13 videos

You don’t diagnose, but what you know shapes what you ask. This module covers two published models of ADHD (Russell Barkley’s and Thomas Brown’s), the conditions that often come with ADHD and the plain-language cues that call for a referral, the ADHD coaching field, and how to share knowledge with permission and without attachment.

The coach-education frame: Barkley, Brown, and self-regulation
Co-occurring conditions: noticing and referral
The ADHD coaching field
What you know, and when to share it

Boundary & Referral Discipline

Refer, adjust the contract, or stay and coach

5 units · 15 videos

This module carries the course’s three hours of ethics instruction under the ICF Code of Ethics. You practice the three boundary questions, the crisis protocol, the referral conversation and network, the recontract, and the coach’s own side, so the hard moments in a session have a trained response.

The three-question decision process
Refer – when coaching is the wrong room
Adjust the contract – when the agreement has to change
Boundary signals in each lens
Coach self-awareness and supervision

Capstone: The ADHD Coach’s Working Reference

Where the moves become your own reference

3 units · 7 videos

Here you finish your Working Reference, the document you keep. You learn a short check for which lens is shaping the work, watch it run through two full cases, and work a client case you haven’t seen.

The cross-lens case-formulation method
Completing The ADHD Coach’s Working Reference
Submission and verification: your unseen case, reviewed by Cherie Silas, MCC, and the scenario quiz

Resources, Feedback, Completion

Every resource in one place, and your certificate

3 units · text only

Every course resource in one place, a short feedback form, and the steps to your certificate, including where to submit your Working Reference.

Course resources
Your feedback
Course completion

How the course is built

One stance, three lenses

The same ADHD-informed stance looks different depending on what surrounds the client. The course teaches the three lenses side by side, so you can tell which one a client is in.

Lens 1

The Life-Coaching Client

ADHD shaping daily life, relationships, and self-trust. Many of these clients arrive after a late realization that changes the story they tell about their own past.

The work: grief and self-trust repair, identity reconstruction, and systems that fit the life the client lives now.

Lens 2

The Executive

ADHD inside a leadership role: high capability, high stakes, and a gap between what the leader can do and what they can do consistently.

The work: leadership identity with ADHD, energy and focus under organizational load, the sponsor who pays for the coaching, and systems that hold up in a senior role.

Lens 3

The Entrepreneur

A founder whose identity is tied up with the business, where hyperfocus can carry the company one week and cost it the next.

The work: founder identity, the hyperfocus-and-crash cycle, the finishing problem, and the structure a one-person business needs.

The same four commitments apply in all three: read the state as well as the story, keep it safe for the client to speak openly, partner on the design, and hold the coaching line. Seeing the lenses side by side helps you tell which one a client is in and adjust when they move between them.

The three lenses, in writing

Get the free companion book

ADHD Coaching: The Essentials puts the whole stance into a short read: the three lenses, and the boundary that keeps coaching coaching. 69 pages, yours to keep, and a free companion to the course.

We email you the PDF. Unsubscribe from book emails any time.

The complete book

ADHD Coaching: Three Lenses, One Framework

The whole framework in 231 pages and ten parts, by Cherie Silas, MCC
Intake, identity work, daily systems, energy and referral, each taken through all three lenses
A fill-in Working Reference workbook and a printable boundary decision flowchart

Get the book – $49

One payment. PDF and EPUB, emailed as soon as you buy.

Is this course for you?

Who this course is for, and who it isn't

Check both lists before you enroll.

For you if

You're a credentialed coach (ACC, PCC, MCC) and ADHD clients keep finding you in life, leadership, or founder work
You take ADHD clients and feel the pull toward managing symptoms or handing out strategies
You want one coaching frame that holds across life, executive, and founder clients
You coach executives or entrepreneurs and want to work with ADHD without leaving the coaching chair
You want CCE hours from a structured 12-module curriculum

Not the right fit if

You want to assess, diagnose, or treat ADHD. This is a coaching course, and it teaches where coaching stops
You want symptom checklists and productivity hacks to hand to clients. The course teaches you to coach the client, who designs the strategies
You have no coaching credential or training yet. Start with our Coaching Foundations course first
You only need a short ethics course. This one carries three hours of ethics instruction inside a 20-hour ADHD coaching specialization
You want a live cohort. This course is fully self-paced

Your instructor

Taught by a Master Certified Coach who has ADHD

Cherie Silas wrote, recorded, and reviewed the course. She coaches ADHD clients in all three lenses.

Cherie Silas, MCC

CEO & Managing Partner, Tandem Coaching

ICF MCC ICF Mentor Coach Specialization (MCS) ICF Coaching Supervisor Specialization (CSS) European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Accredited Supervisor Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC)

Cherie co-founded Tandem Coaching and coaches life clients, executives, and founders living with ADHD. She has ADHD herself and talks about it openly in the course. Where her own experience helps a lesson, she uses it. She teaches the line between coaching and clinical care as a skill you practice, because she has kept to that line in her own client work for years.

More about Cherie

Format and certificate

What you get when you enroll

Self-paced, on your schedule

94 short videos across 12 modules, with practice built in: eleven Your Turn videos and five Lens Lab practice routes. Watch on any device, no live sessions to schedule around. Start with the orientation, then work the modules in order or jump to the lens you need.

Lifetime access

No 30-day, 90-day, or one-year limit. Come back to the executive lens or the boundary module when your next ADHD client walks in. Yours to keep.

Certificate of completion

Pass the scenario quiz (30 questions, 24 to pass, up to three attempts) and submit your ADHD Coach's Working Reference with an unseen client case worked inside it. Cherie Silas, MCC, reviews it within five business days against six criteria. You'll get a shareable certificate suitable for LinkedIn and for learning and development reimbursement.

The Working Reference + 9 resources

Build The ADHD Coach's Working Reference – sixteen sections, built module by module around a boundary decision flowchart – alongside a crisis protocol card, coaching agreement additions, noticing and referral cues, reference cards, and an hour claim map for your renewal file, plus a transcript of every video. Yours to use in client work long after the course.

ICF CCE-Approved Program

ICF has accredited this course for 20.0 CCE hours: 13 Core Competency and 7 Resource Development. The Boundary & Referral Discipline module provides 3 hours of ethics instruction inside the Core Competency total; keep the course documentation because ICF makes the final renewal determination. The approved hours count toward ACC, PCC, and MCC renewal, and your certificate carries the ICF CCE-Approved Program badge.

Start coaching ADHD clients with discipline

20 hours across 12 modules: the ADHD-informed coaching stance, the three lenses, and the boundary discipline that runs through every module.

Instant access on enrollment. Your account is live in minutes.

Instant access Lifetime access 3-day free trial

ADHD Coaching

$399

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Start free trial

Or Buy now and pay $399 today.
Every course: All-Access ($597/yr), 3-day free trial.

ICF-accredited for 20.0 CCE hours (13 Core Competency + 7 Resource Development). Free trial: cancel within 3 days and pay nothing. Your certificate is issued after the $399 payment, which is not refundable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Before you enroll

What does this course cost?

$399 one-time, lifetime access. You can start with a 3-day free trial: we charge $399 when the trial ends unless you cancel first, and that payment is not refundable. No certificate is issued during the trial. You can also get it as part of All-Access ($597/yr), which includes every course in The Practitioner Series with a 3-day free trial, or as part of the bundle ($949).

Will the hours count toward my ACC, PCC, or MCC renewal?

Yes. ICF has accredited this course for 20.0 CCE hours (13 Core Competency, 7 Resource Development), and they count toward ACC, PCC, and MCC renewal.

The Boundary & Referral Discipline module documents 3 hours of ethics instruction inside the approved Core Competency total – the three boundary questions, the crisis protocol, the referral conversation, recontracting, and supervision, taught under the ICF Code of Ethics. Keep the course documentation, including the Course Syllabus and Hour Claim Map, because ICF makes the final renewal determination.

Does this let me diagnose or treat ADHD?

No. The course teaches coaching, and holding the line between coaching and clinical care is one of its subjects. You will not diagnose, assess, treat, or label. One module covers the boundary in depth, and every other module comes back to it.

You do learn enough about ADHD to coach well, to recognize when a client needs another professional, and to make that referral.

What are the three lenses, and do I have to coach all of them?

The life-coaching client, the executive, and the entrepreneur. The ADHD-informed stance is the same in all three, but the work looks different in each, so the course teaches them side by side.

You don't have to coach all three. Even if you see only one kind of client, the comparison helps you tell which lens a client is in. Clients also move between lenses, for example when an executive leaves to start a business.

Do I need to have ADHD, or be an ADHD specialist, to take this?

No to both. You need coaching foundations; the course supplies the ADHD-informed stance, the domain knowledge a coach should hold, and the boundary discipline.

Cherie draws on her own experience of ADHD in some lessons to illustrate the work. You don't need ADHD yourself to take the course or to coach ADHD clients.

How long does it take?

About 20 hours: 94 videos, plus the practice and Working Reference work around them. ICF approved the course for 20 CCE hours. At 3 to 5 hours a week, plan on roughly 4 to 7 weeks. There is no current completion deadline while the course remains available under the Lifetime Access terms.

You can watch straight through, or work the modules as your ADHD clients raise the questions each one answers.

What do I actually get at the end?

Three things you keep using:

1. The ADHD Coach's Working Reference – sixteen sections you build module by module around a boundary decision flowchart, with an unseen client case worked inside it, and keep open in sessions.

2. Nine coach resources – the crisis protocol card, coaching agreement additions, noticing and referral cues, reference cards, the hour claim map for your renewal file, and more.

3. A certificate of completion – shareable on LinkedIn; suitable for learning and development reimbursement; carries the ICF CCE-Approved Program badge and the accredited hour count.

How is this different from Tandem's ACC or PCC programs?

Tandem's flagship programs are ICF Level 1 (ACC) and Level 2 (PCC) : credential-earning programs that take you from no coaching credential to ACC or PCC. They run for months, are instructor-led, and include practice sessions and mentor coaching.

This course is a specialization for coaches who already have foundations. It covers ADHD coaching only, runs 20 hours, is self-paced, and builds on the credential training you already have.

Can I verify this course’s ICF CCE approval?

Yes. ICF lists this course as The Practitioner Series: ADHD Coaching. View the official ICF Education Search Service record →

The Practitioner Series