The Neurosciences and Coaching II

Stress and Coaching

An obvious way in which neuroscience findings relate to professional coaching is in the interactions between mind and body when we are confronted with stress and must find a way to manage this stress. Two LPC essays concern this topic. The first relates the management of stress to what we do as professional coaches. An additional foundation was set for exploring the relationship between stress management and coaching when Marcia Reynolds, a noted coach and author, set up an interview with Robert Sapolsky (one of the thought leaders and researchers in the area of stress). They talk about his own perspective regarding how findings about stress can be related to professional coaching practices.

The Neuroscience of Coaching and Stress
Betz (2014)

If not one of the main reasons people come to coaching, stress certainly is something that comes up with almost every client. In neuroscience, we use the term “emotional regulation” for what is basically the ability to deal with stress. And as I read through the literature, it dawned on me that this is a huge amount of what we do with our clients. We help them not only “emotionally regulate” in the moment of our conversation, but we also help them build skills for more competency in this area. In order words, we help them become more resilient and capable in the face of day-to-day life.

Zebras and Lions in the Workplace
Marcia Reynolds (2020)

When it comes to understanding why people do what they do, we cannot ignore the biological reasons for behavior. Leaders need to take into consideration physiological responses both in the environments they create and the requests they make to individuals within the organization. This interview explores the effects of stress on productivity and learning. It includes what are optimal levels of stress, how to create a “benevolent environment” that encourages risk-taking and innovation, and how to deal with our mental wiring that promotes the resistance to change. As a result, coaches can help their clients “re-create” their organizations to be more successful and more humane.

Dr. Sapolsky notes that when you’re talking about what most people attribute to “memory,” such as explicit memory (declarative, such as facts and descriptions) and implicit memory (procedural such as reflexive, motor actions), you get this sort of inverse pattern. First, a little bit of stress does wonders for enhancing memory. A little bit of stress increases glucose and oxygen delivery to the brain, strengthens synaptic communication, and finally increases the occurrence of LTP (i.e. Long-Term Potentiation – the phenomenon that describes the synapses learning and is strengthening). Short term stressors that are not too severe make that sort of learning mechanisms work better. We remember those things that excite the brain. For under about two hours or so stress is therefore beneficial. By the time its gone on for four hours, you’re pretty much back to base line. Once it goes beyond four hours, and for some people constantly for up to 70 years, everything goes in the opposite direction. The learning capacity gets worse; less glucose and oxygen are delivered to the brain. Neurons in the hippocampus can actually be damaged and shrivel up. You stop making new neurons in that part of the brain.