The neuroscience of coaching

I am celebrating that I have completed the course "The neuroscience of coaching". What I have learnt here has deepened my understanding of how we humans are wired and how incredibly adaptable we are when we put our minds to it. It has also given me new tools to help my coaching clients make progress with changes they've been wanting to make, but have been unable to break free from their default behaviours.

The idea that we can change our habitual ways of approaching something and replace it with a new way (known as neuroplasticity - the brain being malleable rather than set) is empowering. It means there are very few things we cannot learn to do to at least a functional level if we choose to. We may believe that the way we do things is "who I am", and of course we want to stay true to ourselves. It turns out that many first reactions and things we do without thinking are learnt: we grow up with a set of norms and values from our parents, we model ourselves after people we admire, or we mirror what people around us do successfully so we can fit in. Once we settle on something that seems to work, we keep doing that. Before too long that becomes the default, no-thinking-required approach. But our environment keeps evolving, and so do we. What once worked fine may, at some point, become a road block. Your learnt approaches keep you ticking along where you are, but they don't help prepare you for what might lie ahead. Learnt behaviours are responses to past experience. Succeeding at something new requires anticipation: looking ahead at what is required for you to succeed in the role you aspire to fulfil.

Once you have your aspirations clear you can take an honest look at how ready you are now. What strengths can help you while you build out new "muscle" in new areas that are becoming more important? Some people get frustrated when the clarity alone is not enough for them to start acting differently. They expect that once they can see what they want to do, they will be able to just go and do it. They underestimate the way our brain and body want to help us move forward in the quickest, most efficient way, particularly when under pressure. Our "operating system" knows the shortcuts we've designed over the years and simply takes us there when we're not paying attention. It just wants to help. It does not know that you, the orchestrator, have decided on a different path. You'll have to tell it what you want, repeating it a few times until your OS understands what you want and starts to work with you.

Hold onto that feeling of being the orchestrator. Call on the parts of you that keep sliding back to what they were used to doing, your individual orchestra musicians if you like, to follow the new direction. Then keep practicing until all the musicians play together to create your beautiful new music. The sense of accomplishment you'll get from that will sustain your efforts and make them stick. One day you'll find that the new way you approach challenges is "who you are".

The work I do with my coaching clients supports that learning curve. We establish what you want and why it matters to you, before we go into specific behaviours: how are you approaching things? How do you want to approach them? We explore what you can do to accomplish your aspirational approach, anticipating what could easily derail you and what you would do to bring yourself back in line with your intention. You go and apply these new approaches in real life, and we review what worked well and what didn't. We iterate. Dropped a ball? Tweak a little and go in again. Practice. Having a coach alongside you who can reflect how you come across, who guides you to ways you could build your new approaches, and helps you stick with them can make all this a lot easier. You'll see results faster, and they will be stickier. Why not try it?