Coaching Chemistry

This newsletter is written jointly with my 11-year old autistic/ADHD son whose passion is science. In each edition, he will start by talking about a scientific phenomenon. I will then relate it to coaching and write about its application to senior leaders. My son’s part is unedited and indicated by a block quote notation. My part that follows will be in normal text. Hope you enjoy this unique format!

Respiration IV (Conclusion)

All In all, the complex system of respiration keeps us going. Without it, our hearts won’t even beat, our lungs would not breathe, and we’d be otherwise paralysed.

Now, let’s imagine for a moment that this does not happen.

The closest approximation that I can think of is a nerve toxin, which stops the signals to use ATP. Imagine you have contracted sarin gas. The gas goes to your central nervous system and sticks to a protein called acetylcholine esterase, inhibiting it.

Okay, let’s back up a little.

When you want to transmit a signal across a synapse, you send out an acetylcholine signal this neurotransmitter traverses the synapse, which is otherwise no-man’s land for neurotransmitters because of acetylcholine esterase when you want to stop the signal, you release acetylcholine esterase into the synapse, and it catalytically breaks apart the acetylcholine molecules.

You might have noticed the problem already.?

When sarin attaches to acetylcholine esterase instead of an acetate group, it binds stronger than an acetate does and sticks there.

You might be wondering, then how is the acetate normally removed from acetylcholine esterase? The answer lies in the humble water molecule.

When the water comes, it takes the acetate off the acetylcholine esterase and turns it into acetic acid, which dissolves into aqueous solution and gets washed away along with the choline.

When sarin comes, the acetylcholine is left stuck, and the muscle cannot retract.?

The result is complete paralysis for any animal unfortunate enough to get caught in a cloud of this gas without a hazmat suit.

The above section is the unedited writings of my son.

Coaching and Respiration IV

“I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”

Variants of this is one of the most common issues I meet in coaching.

Some real-life examples from clients:

• Visibility to top management is important to my career progression but I freeze up every time I meet a top executive.
• I should empower my team more, but I keep being afraid they’ll make a mistake.
• To be promoted, I need to let go of operational stuff but that’s what I’ve been doing all this time, so I always default to that.
• I know my sleep is more important, but I can’t seem to stop myself from scrolling social media in bed.

Beliefs drive behaviours.

Most beliefs are unconscious or subconscious. Which means that no amount of conscious thoughts or action plans can affect them.

Like sarin, it gets stuck and cannot come off.

Fortunately, we have all seen people drastically change their behaviours permanently. Meaning there is a way to change those underlying beliefs.

The most common way in coaching is awareness.

Simply by genuine curiosity without judgement, we can often shed light on the beliefs that drive behaviour.

A case in point from one of my clients.?

James (not his real name) is a CFO for a MNC with an annual turnover in the hundreds of millions. In his early 50s, he hasn’t yet planned financially for his retirement.

At one point in a session, he said exasperatedly, “Why is it I can do financial planning for every business unit at work but cannot sit down to do one stupid financial plan for myself?!”

My answer? “Yes, why?”

It's my belief that every coachee is capable, resourceful, and whole. Therefore, if they behave in this way, there is be a very good reason why they are choosing to do so. Which makes it worth spending our time to examine this underlying cause.

We spent the session examining the root cause, and it turns out that in James’ mind, financial planning for work and for himself lies under different domains.

At work, he applies his knowledge and experience gained from decades of working his way up from an accountant.

But when it comes to his own finances, the model he follows is that of his parents. Meaning fear and overwhelm. Money was so tied to negative emotion when he was growing up that even the thought of looking at money fills him with dread.

The realisation struck him.

“I had gone into finance so I can avoid repeating my parents’ relationship with money. They never had the skills to manage their finances so I badly wanted to have them. Now I DO have the skills, but ironically my mindset is keeping me in the same place as them.”

Awareness brings change. Simply knowing what drove him gave James a chance to embark on a different course of action.

It took him only an hour to draw up his own financial plan. Last I checked in with him, implementation is going swimmingly.

What does this mean for you??

Next time you’re faced with frustration at your actions contravening your intentions, don’t ask yourself “WHY?!” as a rhetorical questions.

Pause, and show genuine curiosity about the answer. Even if you are behaving in an irrational manner, I assure you that you have a really good reason for doing so.

Keep asking yourself why with an open mind and no judgment. Give yourself time to dig deep so you can find the basis of your beliefs.

The basis of beliefs is the meaning we make of our experiences. We looked at what worked for ourselves and others and try to formulate a belief that we think would help us achieve our objectives in life.

For example, if we see another student doing well after working hard, we might form that belief that “Hard work brings success.” If instead we see her doing well after receiving tuition, the belief might becomes “You need help from others to achieve success.” The two beliefs will drive different actions.

Most coachees have good life outcomes driving their beliefs. It’s often the strategy used to reach to reach these outcomes that is wrong or outdated.

Hard work may have driven success when the success matrix is individual, like at school. But in the modern workplace where success is often a result of collaboration, working hard on our own may not contribute to success.

Therefore the fault lies not with the outcome. ‘Why are you working hard? To achieve success at work.’ But with the method. ‘Is working hard the right way to achieve success at work?’

The same goes for many of our irrational behaviour.

Take another client of mine, Dawn (not her real name). She is a fast tracked leader who has just been promoted. From managing team members, she is now managing teams across the whole APAC. She has 14 direct reports, all of whom have teams below them.

Dawn was terrified.

“I’ve never not had direct line of sight on the work done. Before, I can be directly responsible for everything we’re delivering. But now, with this many countries, and this many people, I have to depend on my people’s reports, and I don’t know what’s really happening anymore.”

Her objectives were good. She wanted to deliver top notch work and value add to her company. Plus, she wanted to protect her people by making sure they weren’t making any major errors.

Her methods? Not so good. She was micromanaging, came across as distrusting of her team leads, and overworking herself to illness.

So we talked about what lies below her behaviour. Mainly the belief that she had to make sure everything was ok.

And why? Because that’s the only way to ensure quality of work.

At this point, I challenged Dawn on that belief. She was the one bottleneck now in her organisation, impeding the work of her team. Her current belief was driving behaviours that slowed down decision making, discouraged team members, and reduce delivery capability to business.

What more useful belief could she take to better achieve her objectives?

Dawn decided her new belief was going to be, ‘I will ensure my people can be trusted with the work.’

This new belief drove new behaviours.

She evaluated each of her 14 team leads and put them into capable, potential, and incapable (her words, not mine ??).

For those who she has judged to be capable of working independently (which was amazingly 8 out of 14 ??), she simply sat down with them and let them know that she was going to be more hands-off from now on.

For those who she felt could do it with some development, she worked out individual development plans and regular check-in schedules with them.

For the last group, she worked on replacing them while handling their work in the meantime.?

What can you do?

When you sit down to examine the basis of your beliefs, assume you have excellent outcomes you want in life.

It’s just that the strategies you picked up earlier, which had solidified into your beliefs, are outdated or wrongly applied.

So once you’ve narrowed down your objectives, ask yourself, “What would be a more useful strategy to use to achieve them?” In other words, what’s a new belief you want to pick up to better achieve your objectives in your current circumstances?

Can beliefs be changed that easily?

Well, you are the one who makes meaning of your experiences. It’s up to you to make a different meaning.

How fast beliefs can be changed is a belief in itself. ??

My belief as a coach is that it changes as quickly as a new thought can form in your mind – several hundredths of a second.

And I’ve seen that happen in my coaching session.

Like acetate in neurotransmission, you can learn to hold lightly onto your limiting beliefs and challenge them as necessary.

Because like sarin kills our bodies through impeding respiration, if we remain stuck on our fixed mindsets, we will eventually kill our own growth by failing to take in fresh information.

In this first edition of Coaching Chemistry for 2025, I wish you the capability to convert sarin to acetate to better achieve all your outcomes for this year!

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Book a free discovery call with me here if you’d like to explore how we can work together to overcome your limiting belief: https://tidycal.com/serene/discovery.

#coaching

#belief

#limitingbeliefs

#mindset

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