North Star Conversations Transcript: Maggie Schwalbach on Making the Implicit Explicit
North Star’s Brandon Gimbel and Maggie Schwalbach address how executive dysfunction can look like laziness but is often a sign of unseen overwhelm. Coaching helps make implicit structures explicit—giving clients a way out of shame and into action.
Brandon Gimbel:
As I hear it is also, the initial reluctance of the teen might be, "got this. I'll try harder." And I always flag that when someone tells me they'll try harder. It's not like they've been slacking. People don't want to be having trouble. Everybody's trying as hard as they can. What you're then offering them is training and a new system that they can implement to succeed because their effort, unfortunately, isn't sufficient.
Maggie Schwalbach:
I'll say that executive functioning, another one of my little phrases is executive function is making the implicit explicit. We're making the implicit rules clear. So that can look like a checklist that can look like a chart, but it can also look like walking through a plan to make sure that everybody knows explicitly what's going to happen and when.
Maggie Schwalbach (00:44)
And I'll say behaviorally, it can look like they're not trying. It can look like it, right? From the outside, it can look like disengagement, laziness, sort of the tropes that we hear.
Brandon Gimbel (00:58)
Shame is everywhere in this. And you are, providing a system change for these kids, teens, young adults, adults to be able to escape, at least for a period of time.
Maggie Schwalbach (01:09)
In a very practical way. Agree completely.