Megan Glennie
- Megan Glennie was quit her tech job and was diagnosed with ADHD in her late 30s.
- She became an ADHD coach and now helps clients reach their own goals.
- Her clients have pivoted careers and learned to go easier on themselves.
In 2021, Megan Glennie was working as an associate manager in the tech world — and she was completely burned out. Unsure of what she wanted to do next, she decided to go back to school and finish her psychology degree.
That same year, her fiancé was diagnosed with ADHD. As she started to read up on it to support him, she started to recognize some of the symptoms of ADHD in herself. Shortly after, at age 37, she was diagnosed as well.
As she was finishing her degree, Glennie still hadn't decided on a new career path. But after getting her ADHD diagnosis, and doing some research, she learned about ADHD coaching.
She took a year-long course with the International Coach Federation, a non-profit organization dedicated to training certifying professional life coaches. Since then, she's launched her own business dedicated to helping other people with ADHD reach their goals.
She helps ADHD clients focus on the future
Glennie, now 39, said that unlike talk therapy, she doesn't dig into mental health concerns like depression or anxiety, though many of her clients deal with those issues.
"We are less looking at the past and thinking about healing past traumas," Glennie told Business Insider. "Instead, we're looking more at, 'What do we know about ourselves and what are we going to do as we move forward?' Let's make a plan for now and the future."
Often, the issues have to do with executive functioning skills — something people with ADHD can struggle with.
Many of her clients come in because they were thriving at work as individuals, but have been promoted to a leadership role where they need to manage other people and figure out new strategies.
Others might need assistance with completing household chores.
It's something Glennie herself strongly identifies with. "I've had challenges with a lot of different organizational things and just procrastination," she said.
Having a coach who understands how their brains work can help people with ADHD troubleshoot and find better processes for reaching their goals.
She works with them to spot their strengths and values
Glennie typically starts seeing clients for 12 weeks, meeting once a week. They start with a 90-minute session, where Glennie helps them identify up to three long-term goals they want to work on. They also go over her client's core values and do an exercise to spot their biggest strengths.
"A lot of folks with ADHD have pretty negative self-concepts from all the criticism they receive," Glennie said. That's why she tends to emphasize what they're good at while also examining what challenges they may face.
For the rest of the weeks, she'll meet with clients for 50 minutes at a time, going over their successes and the roadblocks they've faced so far. Then, they set new intentions and goals for the coming week, going over potential obstacles they may run into and developing a plan of action for when that happens.
Throughout the week, they can also email Glennie and she shares additional resources that might be helpful.
Her clients have pivoted careers and learned to be kinder to themselves
Glennie's clients all have different journeys, and she says that some have ended up in very different places than where they started.
She's had some come in to get better at their current job, only to realize that they're in the wrong career.
"That's always exciting to see, when people get more in touch with actually what they want to be doing and their purpose," she said.
For others, the changes are more subtle. She said most of her clients want to be "more consistent," which she helps them unpack.
"What does consistency mean? Is it having something be the same every single day the exact same way? Or can we be more persistent and just keep sticking with something and trying, but it may look different every time we do?" she said.
Slowly, some people end up reimagining their relationship with perfectionism – a common part of having ADHD.
"I think the coolest thing to see is people changing how they approach making a plan, changing their unrealistic expectations of themselves, being more flexible and more self-compassionate," Glennie said. "It makes them more successful as a result."