Sage Ke'alohilani Quiamno was a few months into her new role as a global DEI leader at Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) when she hit a wall. She told Business Insider she was experiencing a cycle of feeling overwhelmed, procrastinating tasks, and then scrambling to catch up. As the cycle caused her workdays to routinely stretch past 12 hours, she started to worry about burnout.
So she hired a life coach. The coach helped Quiamno develop skills to manage her mental and emotional patterns so that she could better utilize her time and energy.
The coach, whom Quiamno started referring to as an "executive function coach," was so helpful that she still meets with her once every two weeks. "This is a long-term investment,” Quiamno told Business Insider.
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Quiamno isn't the only professional working with an executive coach these days. A growing number of anxious and overworked employees are turning to these gurus, desperate to regain some semblance of control.
The trend points to the negative effects of the digital world on our attention spans as well as major shifts in the way we all live and work, Business Insider says.
When executive coaching began to gain traction in the early ‘00s, it was virtually synonymous with ADHD. It wasn't until the last few years that it became more mainstream.
University of Denver Executive Functioning Specialist Jesse Ruderman told Business Insider the school only hired its first executive function coach in the spring of 2020 to help students and faculty through the pandemic. Since then, a number of other higher education institutions have implemented similar programs.
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J. Russell Ramsay, a clinical psychologist and the co-director of the University of Pennsylvania Adult ADHD Treatment and Research Program, says it’s not surprising that the rise of executive function coaching was tied to the onset of the pandemic. COVID removed the "scaffolding" of office-centric life and the designated start and end times that many people had relied on, he says.
The continued surge in executive function dysfunction in the years since the onset of the pandemic can be attributed to the multitude of ways modern life is stretching our mental capacities to the brink, experts like Ruderman and Ramsay told Business Insider.
While executive functioning challenges can be difficult for employees, they can be equally hard on employers. Chronic stress and overwhelm are common factors of burnout, which drives up absences and lowers employee engagement.
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So, although executive functioning coaching isn't a cure-all for the distractions of modern life and the demands of the workplace, workers and employers can still benefit from it.
"It doesn’t take too much to knock us off track, and executive functioning means knowing how to shield yourself from distractions,” Ramsay said.
As for Quiamno, who found herself back at the drawing board after Amazon scaled back its DEI efforts earlier this year, she credits the practice with improving her confidence and helping her pivot when necessary.
"With a one-on-one coach who knows your strengths and your blind spots, there’s always something new to learn,” she said. “It’s an accountability mechanism — a commitment to myself and my growth as a leader.”
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