Product Led Growth Leaders · 2026-06-18 · 22 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
30 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Frankie Berkoben reframes how high-performing tech leaders should think about ADHD - not as a diagnostic label but as a lens for understanding executive functioning challenges that affect far more than 5% of the population. Drawing on her work with 200+ founders and senior leaders, she argues that the real problem isn't neurodivergence itself but the mismatch between capacity and expectation, compounded by shame-driven self-talk that further suppresses cognitive performance. She explains executive functions (working memory, emotional regulation, planning, adaptation) and how stress, postpartum changes, layoffs, or role transitions - not just neurology - can crater these skills. For high achievers, she identifies a vicious cycle: the gap between potential and actual performance triggers harsh self-judgment, which then impairs the prefrontal cortex further. Her executive coaching practice uses a strength-based, iterative design approach: a deep 90-minute diagnostic, then weekly sessions structured around strengths-based retrospectives, targeted problem-solving, and accountability-focused implementation plans with built-in obstacle prevention. She works with clients for minimum four months, treating belief change as the stickiest challenge. Ideal for founders, engineering leaders, and senior ICs struggling with inconsistent performance or mysterious malaise.
ADHD is a medical diagnostic term defined by social norms with intersectional biases, but executive functioning challenges - managing working memory, emotion regulation, planning, and adaptation - are what actually make ADHD relatable and affect roughly 50% of the population regardless of diagnosis. Many people experience executive function struggles from stress, postpartum changes, or increased responsibilities without being neurodivergent.
High achievers have a gap between their peak potential and actual consistent capacity, and they often hold impossible standards expecting peak performance to be their baseline at all times. This mismatch between perception and reality, combined with rigid self-beliefs about capability, creates shame and negative self-talk that actually suppresses executive functions further, creating a vicious cycle.
Look for malaise - a sense that something is wrong but you can't pinpoint it - combined with confusion from trying many solutions that don't work. Also notice what energizes or drains you and dig deeper into underlying needs; for example, loss of transition time (like commute or dog walks) impacts working memory capacity, so malaise around return-to-office may signal a real cognitive load issue.
She works with clients for a minimum of four months. The first session is a 90-minute deep dive covering strengths, challenges, and goals; subsequent weekly sessions follow an ICF-style format of strengths-based retro, targeted problem-solving with success metrics, and a detailed implementation plan with obstacle prevention and plan B. Between sessions, clients run micro-experiments to test assumptions and iterate on what works.
Frankie identifies three reasons tasks come easily: innate strengths or deeply held values, acquired knowledge and practiced skills, or favorable context (tools, habits, people, organizational culture). Her coaching surfaces all three to reduce friction in areas of natural advantage and intentionally design life and work systems that calm the nervous system and enable prefrontal cortex function.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
There are a handful of genuinely useful concepts - capacity vs. capability, shame suppressing executive functions, inconsistent capacity as the human norm - but the density is low for 22 minutes, with much of the runtime spent on vague coaching generalities and throat-clearing. Most insights are at introductory level for anyone even lightly familiar with cognitive psychology or coaching.
the mismatch between what they're capable of and what they have capacity for leads to a great deal of shame
behaviors are sticky, but beliefs are even stickier
The reframe of ADHD as a broad human capacity problem rather than a discrete medical label is mildly contrarian, and the '50% of population' claim gestures at something interesting, but the ideas never develop into a genuinely fresh framework - design thinking applied to personal development and shame cycles are well-circulated coaching tropes.
ADHD is a medical diagnostic term which is um defined by certain social norms
it probably impacts about 50% of the population
Frankie has real practitioner credibility - engineering consulting background, product management, and a coaching practice with 200+ founders and senior leaders - but she is a solo executive coach, not a scaled operator who has built and run large teams herself, which limits the operational weight of her perspective.
I've now worked with about 200 founders, senior leaders, um, people in with high degrees of impact or visibility
one of my clients who was um pretty high up in Airbnb, um, developed a heart condition because of the amount of stress that she was putting on herself
Concrete evidence is almost entirely absent: the only named company is a vague 'pretty high up in Airbnb' anecdote with no outcome metrics, no data on coaching efficacy, and the methodology is described in soft process terms with no numbers except a four-month minimum engagement and the 167-hours-between-sessions observation.
one of my clients who was um pretty high up in Airbnb, um, developed a heart condition
I'll work with clients for a minimum of four months because behaviors are sticky, but beliefs are even stickier
The host asks mostly surface-level, open-ended questions with no real follow-up pressure or challenge to any of the guest's claims; he frequently inserts his own explanations mid-conversation rather than drawing out the guest, and the episode ends with a promotional wrap rather than any productive synthesis or pushback.
And and so when you work with folks, how does the engagement unfold?
And do you think, you know, for folks who are leading teams uh who are listening to this, who are managing people while they're trying to build things, um what are some signs that people should uh start thinking about this?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
You can be brilliant, ambitious, and wildly capable and still feel like your follow-through is slipping. That doesn’t automatically mean you’re broken or “not disciplined enough”. It often means your executive functioning is overloaded by context: stress, layoffs, a heavier emotional load, shifting team expectations, or the simple fact that life outside work got bigger. I sit down with executive coach Frankie Berkoben, founder of Frankly Quite ADHD, to unpack a more useful way to think about ADHD and productivity for tech leaders. Frankie explains executive functioning in real terms: planning, working memory, attention, emotional regulation, and adapting when conditions change. We talk about why these skills dip under pressure for many people, and why the diagnostic label can be less helpful than understanding what your brain needs to do its best work. We also go straight at the toughest part for high performers: the gap between potential and performance. When your identity is tied to achievement, that gap can trigger shame and harsh self-talk, which then suppresses the very prefrontal cortex resources you need to plan and execute.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Product Led Growth Leaders. We've got an excellent guest for the show today, Frankie Berkobin. Her background is in engineering consulting, product management. One thing that her and I have in common already is that she were both PhD dropouts.
And so that's fun. And her uh midlife discovery of ADHD reframed things for her, and I think led on the path that we'll be talking about today. Uh today she is executive coach and founder of Frankly Quite ADHD, where she helps brilliant, high-performing tech professionals build lives and careers that actually work for their brains. Frankie, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Thomas. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely. Um so okay, so where to begin? Um I think we all have a passing idea of what ADHD is.
And by the way, I I believe that this month is um mental health awareness month or something like that. Is is is that I believe so, yeah. Yeah, something like that. So this is apropos.
Um how should we be thinking about ADHD? SPEAKER_01: This is a complicated topic. And my my views on it have really changed over time. The more that I've worked with people who are visionary, brilliant systems thinkers who have follow-through or inconsistent performance, like you know, that they have a great idea and high potential but inconsistent performance and like what actually happens.
And that is that ADHD is a medical diagnostic term which is um defined by certain social norms, and so there's you know uh various intersectional biases that come into that. But why ADHD is so relatable is because of executive functioning challenges. And executive functioning skills are what our brains do, how are like the cognitive processes that help us make sense of things, make plans, enact and follow through on those plans, remember them, regulate our emotion and attention, and then to be able to be aware of and be able to adapt to changing situations and our own needs.
And when you put it like that, you're like, oh, when I'm stressed, this happens. When I'm sick, this happens. So an interesting thing happened a couple of years ago that I was postpartum with my first kid, and there were things that were happening to me personally that were colloquially known as mommy brain or brain fog. And I was like, no, no, no, no.
These have terminology associated with them that are around specific executive functions, like nonverbal working, memory, et cetera. At the same time, my coaching practice was expanding through referrals, and there are a lot more people coming to me saying, I don't identify as neurodivergent in any way, but everything that you're saying speaks to me ever since half my team got laid off and everybody else is like worried that they're gonna be next. I'm managing more emotional and cognitive load in that scenario, or something changed in my family situation, and there are more responsibilities that I'm holding and juggling outside of work, which then means that my capacity at work is diminished.
And so the two things that I really work on, which are agnostic of ADHD, are the executive functioning challenges and how to support those. So, kind of about logistics and um systems that support the brain, your the way your brain actually works. But then another component of this, especially for high achievers, people who are extremely smart, and when that could be intellectually or creatively or athletically, um, is the mismatch between what they're capable of and what they have capacity for leads to a great deal of shame.
And that shame and blame and like negative self-talk then suppresses our own executive functions. So it's a kind of vicious circle of lower executive functions due to either context or pervasive. And then the shame that then suppresses that. And so it's um, you can see that there's there's the emotional side and then the behavioral side.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so since I'm a psychology geek, can't help myself, and I want to also clarify for the audience a lot of business folks might not hear these terms, you know, executive functioning. Um, you know, we're talking about stuff that's the advanced part of the brain, prefrontal cortex, and it in it, you know, and and it's managing everything else. So so much of what we do is automated, but we have to run the show at the very top. And sometimes there's problems that come into play when we're trying to do that.
And um, okay, so that fantastic. We're talking about that, and then we're talking about the shame you're saying that comes from a mismatch between what I can do and what I what I know I can do and what I've done. And I'm a since I'm a high achieving person, that's my value system. And I I I identify with achieving a lot.
Is it kind of like that? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you put it so well. And it's the difference between potential and performance. And with high potential, um, yeah, the the gap between normal or average performance um often is the thing that creates additional challenges.
SPEAKER_00: And is do you think a lot of uh founders, a lot of executives have ADHD and don't know it? SPEAKER_01: My personal opinion is yeah, probably. And also, ADHD may not be the term for this. It may be this probably impacts about 50% of the population.
Like I'm I'm not a diagnostician. Um, and if we think about the the intersection of nonlinear, associative, um, like deeply intuitive and high empathy, like high emotional reasoning in terms of that sort of way of thinking versus zeros and ones, binary and deductive linear thinking, um, then it expands to, oh, this is a set of qualities that many visionary leaders, people who are great at, um, who are very charismatic and able to bring people along, fund me, buy into this initiative.
We need to go in this direction. That that actually that set of qualities is much more common than a diagnostic label would indicate. SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And so should I think about this ADHD is the one of the more commonly known terms out of the whole world of neurodivergence.
Should we see that as kind of like an umbrella term of like, yes, you might have ADHD, who knows? But the point is that you're in a high kind of performing position, you've got a lot of responsibilities, and you're also trying to manage some of these neurodivergent traits. Is that a fair way of thinking about it? SPEAKER_01: The only thing I would change is, and you're trying to manage human traits.
You're trying to manage being an animal that has sleep needs, that has emotional variance, that has uh, you know, we're social creatures as well as analytical. Like there's a lot of variability in how we're able to show up and the resources that are available to us. And we don't operate in a vacuum. We are part of social systems, we're part of workplace systems, like we're interacting with the physical world.
And so it's um it's the the traits, the challenges that come with being human in a set of expectations that maybe require we we think that we're machines, that we have the same capacity no matter what. SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us a story as an example? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's I work with You can make it anonymous, of course. Oh, yeah.
Well, so this guy. Um Yeah, I mean that the most common thing that I see, and this is a you know amalgam of 12 different clients in in many ways, is um I'm I'm at this level. I'm a senior IC, or like I'm an engineering manager, a lead, and I have certain levels of responsibilities. What got me here won't get me there.
And um what got me here was hustle, was grit, was diving in and doing the things. And now I have to think about operating differently. And I can't just increase the number of hours because the laws of space and time do not allow for that. I can't um, you know what and the frustration of um I used to be able to do this really quickly, but now it feels like I can't access that mode of operating, that way of thinking, that brilliant creativity, that sense of this is fun and I belong here.
And then there's a lot of self-doubt that creeps in. And so um uh someone who one of my clients who was um pretty high up in Airbnb, um, developed a heart condition because of the amount of stress that she was putting on herself around performing to a level that she had been capable of at one point in her career, but with the additional responsibilities was not no longer available to her. SPEAKER_00: And so you, even before you explicitly adopted this lens to uh tell me if I have this uh right or wrong, um, but you've been uh practicing consulting uh for a long time now.
You're out there in SF, lots of founders, lots of executives, and um, but at some point you adopted this lens. Did that change fundamentally how you uh approached things, or did it just add a layer? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it did fundamentally change how I approach things and also how I now see things. A lot of people are extremely judgmental of themselves and they hold themselves to impossible standards where peak performance is what they should be aiming for as their new baseline, or they should be able to access it all of the time.
And so the mismatch between um perception and reality of we have inconsistent capacity. And so um also with that, that's one part of it is seeing how hard people are on themselves and the rigid belief systems about themselves, what they're capable of, um really is is damaging in the um in the long term. Um but also just working with, I've now worked with about 200 founders, senior leaders, um, people in with high degrees of impact or visibility. And there are lots of common threads that look very different on the outside, but are deeply related to certain like common threads, as I say, like around working memory challenges or around um being highly ambitious and having a value system that is around achievement, around worth, um, and things like that.
And so just it's interesting how you see lots of commonalities if you look slightly below the surface, which means that I take people at face value a lot of the time. Um and like that's really interesting. Like I'm not imposing the same interpretations that I would when I was in a full, fully consulting problem-solving um type career. My role is to listen.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And do you think, you know, for folks who are leading teams uh who are listening to this, who are managing people while they're trying to build things, um what are some signs that people should uh start thinking about this? I think you're naming a lot of them uh now, a lot of these kinds of traits. But for a listener, you know, who should kind of be like, hmm, maybe I should kind of give this a thought.
SPEAKER_01: Hmm. So a sense of malaise or something's wrong, but I can't quite put my finger on it. There's a mismatch, and I don't know what it is. It just feels like something's off.
So trusting your gut. Um, and especially like we're we're all problem solvers, especially in the in the tech world. We're analytical. We love to solve problems.
Um, and so uh you've tried, you've probably tried a lot of things and they don't work, which leads to a sense of kind of confusion too. So malaise, confusion, something isn't quite right. That's a sign to look into. Who are you now?
What uh you know, what are the things that are energizing, but also that are draining to you? And not just what it looks like on the surface, but what are the um the underlying needs that this signifies. So for example, um, you know, return to office, like with you know, working in office three days a week, that sort of thing, is oh wow, I don't have as much time to think to myself because I'm not puttering around like walking the dog. Or um, or as we saw with work from home in early 2020, like the lack of transition time also impacts like your working memory, how much you're holding at any one time.
So, what I'm saying here is where's the malaise? And then look below that. I mean, you can ask the five whys. Why is that the case?
Why is that important to you? Why is this impacting you in this way? You know, what does that mean about your belief system? Um, that sort of thing.
And then so from there, it's understanding the user because you're designing your life, and no decision is still a decision. So getting to understand who you are, what has shaped you, what your beliefs and values are, and what impacts you, and how your brain operates. And so through through the style of coaching that I do, there's we bring in various frameworks to help you understand and put labels on where useful, different ways of operating, how you process information, executive functions and contexts and environments, types of bandwidth and capacity that we have or don't have.
Um, and then from there we can use a design thinking approach and iterative development to design for what works, not just throw spaghetti at the wall. And so it's intentional design and it's iterative. We have a hypothesis, design and experiment. And a huge part of that is understanding why certain things come easily to you so that you can reduce friction in those areas.
And often things are easier for three reasons. One is that they're an innate strength or value that you hold. It is so much a part of you that you could you couldn't possibly not do it. Um the second thing is things come easily to you because they're acquired knowledge, wisdom, skills, ways of doing things.
So you've practiced it a lot, so it's become second nature, but it is not in your primary nature to do so. Um and then the third thing is what is present or absent in your context or environment that makes it makes things easier for you. And it could be tools or habits or people or the type of project or the you know, the culture of the organization, um, you know, whether it's stable or not. And those are things which kind of calm your nervous system and enable your prefrontal cortex to do its thing.
So right. SPEAKER_00: And and so when you work with folks, how does the engagement unfold? Do you do kind of like a diagnostic exploration and then develop a plan and meet with them periodically? How does that look?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm not a mind reader. So we do have a we do have a I mean, I'll work with clients for a minimum of four months because behaviors are sticky, but beliefs are even stickier. And when we're talking about designing a life that works for you, figuring out who you are, who you want to be, what version of you that you want to be that isn't, you know, part of um that isn't shame laden or deficiency driven. Um, so we start with a deep dive.
It's a 90-minute session where we go deep into um what are your strengths? So there's a quick assessment, which is 80% good enough. It's you know, like it gives us some language and some nucleation points for discussion that, and it's um landscape analysis. Who are you?
What drives you? What things have been challenging in the past? Um, why are you excited about these certain goals? Then we look into well, if you could wave a magic wand, what would your life look and feel like six months from now, a year from now?
And so then we can look at that, being like, okay, well, what does that tell us about your underlying needs and your underlying values? It's not what it looks like, but what it feels like is the most important. And then after that, sessions are in three parts. Um, there's a strength-based retro because we have such a negativity bias.
Like, and it's important if you're designing for strengths, to um to make sure that you're you have a strengths focus. So um people who are high achievers, who are extremely capable, tend to be very hard on themselves. So, like this this is again the sticky beliefs part. So, first part of each session, strengths-based retro.
What's gone well? What were your keys to success? What can you give yourself credit for that you take for granted? Middle part of each session, what are we working on today?
And what specifically do you want to end up with at the end of today's session? What are our metrics for success? It's not an open-ended discussion. There is a goal where we're trying to end up.
And how will we know that we've been successful? This is very classical ICF style coaching. And through that conversation, we may bring in additional aspects around processing modalities, et cetera. But what really differentiates my coaching from a lot of others in the executive coaching space is the implementation plan, like the final part of each session, which is what are you taking away from this and how are you going to follow through?
No, no, how are you really gonna follow through? Because this might have been a fantastically optimistic discussion, but especially when we think about executive functions, working memory, et cetera, we may have forgotten crucial steps. So, what are the obstacles? And then um, how can we preemptively circumvent those obstacles?
Plan A, plan B. And then repeat. So in the 167 hours between sessions, which is approximately a week, off you go and you run this micro experiment. And we're co-creating that experiment together.
It's not thou shalt do this worksheet, or go do this um, you know, immense habit shift, but it's an experiment. And the point of an experiment is to learn what assumptions no longer hold, or how we can adjust, or what that surface is about your innate strengths, your acquired strengths, or the environment and context. And it's really fun because then we iterate on that. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Hope that gave you that's great. Um, ladies and gentlemen, we've is we've been speaking with Frankie Berkobin. Um, and we it's uh Franklyquiteadh.com.
Uh I guess a good way to remember that is it's like quite frankly, but reversed. Um plus we've got the Frankie in there, uh really good um multi-uh layered uh thing there. Um and so uh yeah, so folks should go to uh your page and um book a call if they're interested. Is there any kind of do you produce content where people can take a look at that and and and hear your thoughts?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. My primary platform is LinkedIn. So you can find me at LinkedIn.com slash in slash Frankie Burkoban.
And um my website is also Frankie Berkhobin.com. Um as as I'm moving into executive coaching uh without an ADHD lens. So there's there's two two verticals there.
Um gotcha. So yeah, I would love to hear from anybody on through LinkedIn direct message if there's anything that resonated about any of this call. SPEAKER_00: Excellent, excellent. Really nice stuff.
Well, Frankie, great talking to you today. SPEAKER_01: You too, Thomas. You're a fantastic host.
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