The show’s guest in this episode is Frankie Berkoben. She is an executive coach and sought-after speaker who works with leaders at top companies like Google, Airbnb, and the White House. She helps high-achieving professionals break free from overwhelm and inconsistency, unlocking clarity, confidence, and sustainable success. Combining design thinking, the scientific method, positive psychology, and ADHD expertise, Frankie empowers clients to perform at their best without relying on grit or willpower. Her systems-based approach digs into neuropsychology to address the root causes of friction, optimizing for success by shaping the right conditions. A behavioral psychology expert, Frankie makes complex ideas simple, focusing on what makes success happen, not just what’s “wrong.”
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Executive Functioning and Leadership Clarity with Frankie Berkoben
Hi, Melanie. Hi. I’m Mel Rutherford McMaster, University’s first transgender department chair and the co host of the experimental leader podcast.
What are you thinking about in your leadership these days?
Well, since I’ve become department chair, we’ve done an extraordinary amount of hiring, and I’ve I’ve been getting more and more experienced with this, and I’ve learned, recently, learned a couple of lessons. One is that when you are going to hire for a position, it’s useful to take time to think about the position itself, before you start looking at candidates, before you start considering, you know, comparing one candidate to another, just, you know, make sure you’re clear on what the position is, and then the other is. The other thing that I’ve learned, relearned recently has to do with being really inclusive of a lot of personality types. And this is obviously something that I have known for years and years, but I got to really experience this couple weeks ago we had, we had a candidate come in for an interview who was very what, not not soft spoken, but slow, like a slow talker, just really mellow. And at first I was having trouble imagining working with this person. I thought I might get frustrated. And, you know, try get frustrated with the pace, and want to get more work done and get more conversation done, but I’ve come to appreciate this, the cadence and and like this is who this person is. This is a person who’s calm and mellow and probably going to be quite pleasant to interact with. And then we had another candidate who was almost the opposite came in in a black sequined shirt, and bleach blonde hair, and was really quite snappy to the point of almost being snarky and and again, the my my colleague who was interviewing with me, was at first kind of put off, but then we kind of again, we Just sort of got to understand this. This was the person who we were talking to, and this was the personality we were working with. And so we had both of these people we had really positive experiences with, despite sort of an initial misgiving about what we what we were seeing presented in the in the beginning of the interview.
I think that’s really interesting. And I love hiring consulting and things. And some of the literature says that people tend to hire the person that’s most like them, and so it doesn’t lead to different personality types, which I would say makes for a stronger team if people are different on a team and and so I think it’s really interesting that you’re talking about these personalities. The other research might bear out that someone who’s very steady or speaks more slowly might be more likely to stay in their position for a long time than someone who speaks rapidly, who might be more driven to rise through the ranks or move more quickly through in their career. So I think there’s interesting things that are sort of attached to some of these personality styles that you may not it may so the person who talks more slowly or processes more slowly, may take an extra month to get up to speed, but then may stay for 20 years, so that month has no relevance, really, in the long scheme of things. Whereas the person who’s more quick and snappy might stay two years, and then they’re ready to move to their next position. So you think, Oh, well, they’ll be easier to get up to speed, but then you’re going to get to do that over and over again in that position.
Yeah, what have you been thinking about recently.
I noticed something that I do that I think is interesting, and I didn’t know I did it, so it surprised me, but I realized when. When I’m faced with conflict, sometimes I fight it out, which is what people would think I do, like I would speak my mind. But other times, I sort of just don’t talk to somebody for a while, while I process or I don’t talk to them because I don’t think they’re worth having conflict with and so I just remove myself emotionally from the relationship, and I know it’s really it can be really negative. So I’ve been pondering, like, when is that useful? Because I think sometimes it’s useful to just not have conflict, and sometimes it’s really useful to have conflict. And so I’ve been trying to discern how I want to be a choice about that, and when I shouldn’t do that, and when doing that might be an interesting strategy in peacefulness and calmness in my life. So I’ve been thinking about that.
Yeah, yeah. I imagine it matters what kind of a relationship it is.
Yes. And I think that my react, my reactivity about it, is not as discerning as I would want to be, like, I react to the feeling I have. And then I’m like, Oh, I just want to talk to that person for a while and then, and I think that I might need to apply some discernment to my process.
Right? Yeah, do we have it? Do we have a guest today?
We do have a guest. I’m super excited about our guest. Our guest name is Frankie Berkoben, and she’s an executive coach, and she’s an ADHD coach, which I’m really excited to talk to her about. And she’s a PhD dropout with a background in engineering consulting, and she trained at the Hudson Institute of coaching, and she primarily coaches gifted leaders in tech, many whom do not identify as neurodivergent, and she combines design thinking, executive functioning and somatic tools to help people become who they want to be. And I am super excited to talk to her.
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Frankie, welcome to the show.
Welcome.
Thank you so much. Melanie and Mel. I’m excited to be here. And what a fantastic discussion you already started.
Yeah, well, it’s, it’s um, it’s fun to think about, to just find out what people are thinking about. And we also like to ask people, sort of where they’re experimenting in their life and work right now. So that’s my question for you.
Gosh, starting out bold, I’m experimenting in a couple of different ways. This year 2025, is my year of expanding into corporate engagements. I’ve only had a few corporate engagements in my leadership, coaching work, and so that is coming up against so many inner critic thoughts, I’m not enough. I don’t belong. Who am I to do this? So that’s, you know, whenever we’re experimenting, we’re always nudging up against our discomfort zone. So that’s one experiment, and another one is in recent years, I became a parent two and a half years ago. That’s fantastic for so many things, being fully present in the moment with what’s going on. But also I stopped being present so much in my own with my own thoughts and in my own body, with my own breath. And so that’s another experiment I’ve been doing, is how can I connect to all of me, not just the brainy bit.
That’s interesting. I know you work with folks with ADHD, who are in tech and who are smart. I was wondering if, did you create this niche, or did the this niche find you? Or how did that come together?
I think creating implies some sort of intentional design, rather than letting your clients tell you what they need and who needs you most. So when I started my coaching practice, it was for twice exceptional, gifted ADHD adults. I have a tech background, and there’s a lot about the Agile development process, which is design thinking in action, experimental, iterative. There’s both divergent and convergent pieces of the process. It’s kind of organic in that way that I resonated a lot with, and that’s. How I built up my coaching myself in an iterative way. And also that’s the process of coaching and exploration and going deeper and wider and longer. And so starting out with gifted ADHD adults, and then this kind of nerdy side of me started coming out a little bit more, and people, more and more people, and I live in San Francisco, so a lot of people were coming to me in the tech world. And there’s just so many parallels with, you know, the challenges of ADHD and just general leadership in a world where it’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, right? So I started to see this is about more than ADHD. This is about more than leadership. There’s similarities that between the experiences that some people have, those with ADHD and blessed or cursed with high intelligence, have some all of the time. So there’s some of us all of the time, experience what all of us experience some of the time when we’re under pressure, and the common thread is executive functions. I’m not sure if I answered your question, but I think we punched different and enjoyable place.
I don’t I don’t know if you know this about me, but I coach in tech as well, and I tend to coach probably similar people, top performers, usually not line line managers, but sort of people who solve problems as individual contributors, right? Which is a pretty I think they’re pretty interesting group, and it’s quite rewarding.
Yes. And actually, a lot of people come to my practice because what got them here won’t get them there?
White puzzles in the shape of a question mark on a blue background, flat lay, conceptual minimalism.
Me too, and I also, I, you probably don’t know this either. I actually wrote about agile and and in my book, it’s, it’s in their verbatim, because I think it’s so important that and so many people in tech haven’t actually read it, so I wanted to make it readily available.
So yeah, and it’s what’s really powerful is that what people are doing 40, well, maybe plus hours a week, when you help them apply that to their own personal and professional development, not just the deliverables or products they’re working on or with. Like, wow, I never knew I could do this. And it’s just, well, you have this affinity and experience with a certain way of thinking, and yet you’re not applying it to yourself. What if? What’s possible when you do this, what if you experimented here?
What do you think are the places that you…
What are some of the common threads that you see in your clients?
So many of my clients are directors, VPS, some senior ICs, and that there’s kind of a sense of things are only just holding together, but it’s requiring a lot of effort on my part, and everybody else has it easier. How does everybody else do this? And the sense of the something that I don’t have that’s missing, and actually, the two most striking measures of success for our engagements tend to be either the issue that I thought I had when coming in, I actually see that is it’s irrelevant, like maybe it was a symptom rather than a root cause, or it was a misleading shiny object sort of thing. But oh, I have a different perspective, and that’s not even within, within the scope of what’s what’s meaningful to me. So I love it when that happens is that the original goal is not just met, but just irrelevant. And then the other is, I trust myself again. Oh, sorry, I just hit my mic. I trust my intuition, I trust my assessment of a situation, I trust my decisions, I trust my ability to follow through. I trust that I can say no. And so that is really magical, and just getting tingles down my. Spine of trusting oneself and trusting that you have the capability and confidence and social capital to to to get what you need and to not invalidate those needs preemptively because you’re afraid that they couldn’t, can’t be met. And often, as I said, many of these people are in fairly prestigious or highly visible positions with a great deal of influence, a great deal of responsibility, and yet their inner thoughts are, I can’t trust myself. I don’t know how to do this. I’m missing something. Everybody else has it easier. So those are the commonalities. Thanks for asking.
Yes, you mentioned that What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Are there commonalities there too, that that are like the common things that people need to get to the next step.
I mean, I think it’s the standard going from an individual contributor to to something with more scope, more complexity, more pies to put your fingers in. Well, that analogy didn’t work, but that, you know, putting in more hours is not like working harder, not smarter, is not the way. Like working hard gets you to a certain point. That’s that gets accolades and promotions and opportunities, but at a certain point, there are the laws of space and time say you cannot physically be in five places at once, 37 hours a day.
I think there’s a there’s a leap that people have to make. And I often see people in their first leadership role trying to figure out how they provide value, and it’s at that point where they think working many hours, doing work, is how they provide value, and shifting that to developing other people or working smarter. It depends on the role but, but it’s actually empowering others is and it’s not by hours, it’s by state of mind. And so there is a really big shift there that I think is really important.
And to add that to that in a kind of in coaching parlance, it it goes from what you do, what you’ve done, and you know your tasks and responsibilities to who you are, how you show up, your presence as a leader, how you model the competencies or skills, or you know how to comport yourself, and you know your identity, I suppose.
Yeah, I agree with you and and it’s not about the like often. It’s not about how many hours a day like you’re present. It’s about how you are showing up when you’re when you’re present, with with others. And it can be, I think it can be quite exhausting, like the the number of hours you spend with people, if you’re having intense conversation, conversations all day, if you’re thinking about many different avenues of influence, it is a really different cadence than an individual contributor.
And actually one of one of my clients we were just looking at, well, if you could design your day from scratch, what would that look like? And looking at well, what do you have capacity for? What different types of work are draining at some point in the day but energizing in others? And he switched to all of his one on one meetings being in the afternoon, because that’s when he’s, you know, sitting back, a little bit more reflective, less in Go, go, go, do, do, do mode, and less about making decisions, and more about holding space and listening. And that’s, and he mentioned, wow, this is like, the lack of context switching within my day, I have a block of time for this, and then I know that my afternoons are when I have afternoon feeling conversations, yeah, and so, and that came about partially to do with understanding the How cognitively expensive task task switching and context switching is just and that that relates to executive functioning skills and executive function of working memory and being able to replace one set of data with another set of data and context and to be able to work. Work within that without being like, Wait, what am I? What do I not remember? What am I forgetting like? So it’s also a different skill to be leader in a coaching or mentoring or one on one context, rather than being in, you know, a strategic decision making, meeting or presenting or you know.
Well, Frankie, where can people find you?
I am on LinkedIn at Frankie Berkoben and that’s also the name of my website, frankieberkoben.com
That’s great. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. It’s been a really interesting conversation.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you both.
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Well, that was interesting. What? What? Um, what do you think about the idea of organizing your day into blocks?
Well, I’m noticing that my day has organized itself just because I’m I’m in the department, and there are times of days when it’s busier, and I know if I’ve got a writing project, I’ve got to get in and get it done in the morning, because the traffic will pick up before too long. The traffic into your office.
That’s interesting. So it’s like, it’s naturally organized. Your day is organized itself. I was thinking about time blocking for myself. I was also thinking about context switching. And, gosh, my life is about context switching. Like, like, new client, new thoughts, new memories, new and I was wondering about just the toll of that after 25 years of being a coach, and whether or not there was anything I can do about it. I don’t know that there is, but it is an interesting idea.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s interesting.
Well, it’s been a joy to be with you today and go experiment.
Go experiment.
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Frankie Berkoben
Frankie Berkoben is an executive coach and sought-after speaker whose clients include engineering, product, and design leaders at Google, Airbnb, and the White House.
Known for her work at the intersection of leadership and executive functioning, she helps intellectually brilliant professionals move from cycles of overwhelm and inconsistency to clarity, confidence, and sustainable success. Frankie’s process blends design thinking, the scientific method, positive psychology, and ADHD-specific expertise to help her clients do their best work (and scale their professional impact) without relying on grit, shame, or heroic acts of willpower.
Executive functioning (the brain’s ability to prioritize, plan, and execute those plans) and systems thinking take equal billing in Frankie’s work. She translates the complexity of how our brains manage decisions, focus, and prioritization into practical tools that resonate with high performers. Taking a systems approach, she moves beyond quick fixes and productivity hacks, diving into neuropsychology and environmental dynamics in order to help clients understand the “why” behind not only what causes them friction and heartache, but also how to elegantly address those underlying needs.
An unapologetic behavioral psychology nerd, Frankie combines intellectual rigor with a gift for making complex ideas accessible. She’s fascinated by how context (stress, social dynamics, or even internalized beliefs) shapes our capacity and impact, especially at work. These themes are woven throughout her coaching, speaking, and writing: instead of focusing on what’s wrong, let’s understand what makes it feel or go “right”, and optimize for conditions that make success more likely, rather than aiming for rigid definitions of success.
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