We return once again in this thirty second issue of The Future of Coaching to findings from the neurosciences as they relate to professional coaching. Neurobiological studies of memory, emotions, stress, interpersonal relationships, neuroplasticity and many other aspects of human life are broadening and deepening our perspectives on the professional coaching enterprise—while pointing the way to new coaching strategies and tool.
Some of the essays includes in this issue of The Future of Coaching were published in the Library of Professional Coaching (LPC) when the neurosciences were just beginning to emerge as revolutionary subdisciplines of biology (often overlapping with subdisciplines in the field of psychology). Other essays have appeared more recently and focus on specific issues that hold major implications for professional coaching.
Summary Findings
We first offer several essays providing a summary of findings from the neurosciences that hold implications for the practice of professional coaching.
Neuroscience Findings and Coaching: A Summary List
Bergquist (2011)
This essay includes “animation” questions which were posed at a symposium sponsored by the International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations (ICCO) held in Seattle on June 14-15, 2007. These questions concern the implications of neuroscience research for the professional of coaching. They are worth pondering for anyone involved in the field of professional coaching.
Neuroscience Findings and Coaching: Survey Findings
Bergquist (2022)
As one of the initiatives in the ongoing research being engaged on behalf of the New Executive Coaching Summit (NECS), the Institute for Research on Professional Coaching has conducted an online survey regarding recent Neuroscience research and insights gained from this research for executive coaching practices. This essay provides a brief verbal report that summarize some of the results from this survey.
Brain Behavior and Coaching
The stage was set In the adoption of the phrase “brain behavior” for exploration of neuroscience findings as they relate to professional coaching —and for the subsequent focus on this behavior during professional coaching sessions. Following are several essays published in LPC
that introduce this concept and coaching focus.
Brain Behavior: The New Science of Neurocoaching
Holmes (2015)
Broadly defined, neuroscience is a combination of medicine, physiology, applied psychology, immunology, the study of human behaviour and some hard core imaging in big, white, expensive machines. The industry has existed since the 1850’s (obviously without the machines) and has evolved over four distinct eras. These are of interest because when you’re reading the literature or chatting to a colleague about this fascinating subject you can hear which of these eras they are coming from. It’s easy to get lost in the world of “neuro” everything, so here’s a dummies guide to the departments in this giant industry.
Brain Behavior: When Coaching and Applied Neuroscience Intersect
McGinnes (2018)
Much has been made in the last several years about the brain and neuroscience. It seems as if it’s popping up everywhere. I think that’s a good thing. I was introduced to the field of neuroscience over 10 years ago through my coach training and certification, and I often say, “The brain is the one neutralizer—everybody has one,” and “If you’re not working with the brain, you’re working against it.” So, what does neuroscience have to do with coaching? Good question.
There are many ingredients that go into being an effective coach. The ICF Core Competencies are a good place to start. Additionally, I’d suggest a decent understanding of basic brain functioning, and foundational neuroscience research is a tremendous help, too. Many people may think an applied neuroscience coaching approach is overly cold or rational. What they don’t realize (at first) is that to apply neuroscience is to understand that emotions play a critical role in how we feel, think and behave. Ignoring emotions is not anywhere close to an applied neuroscience approach—understanding the power of emotions and how to manage them so they inform rather than derail us is. It’s a big piece of this coaching puzzle.
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.
Human Performance and Coaching
Many of the essays concerning neuroscience findings that have been published in LPC relate to specific aspects of human behavior. They provide new and enriched neurobiologically based understanding of this behavior and trace out the implication of this understanding for professional coaching practices. An essay on motivation is offered first. A recent essay on memory is presented that concerns findings from two fields – the neurosciences and the cognitive sciences. Finally, a neurologically based perspective on interpersonal relationships in offered as a concluding observation regarding the “discipline” of professional coaching (especially in an organizational setting).
Motivation and Coaching
Holmes (2015)
People often behave in ways that seem at odds with their cognitive position or their perception of a situation. This ‘at odds with self’ phenomena is a great example of the ways motivation can cause a person to be in conflict with themselves, resulting in procrastination, indifference, double mindedness or conflicting body language. Motivation is worthy of our attention. In the book “Mastermind – how to think like Sherlock Holmes”, Maria Konnikova observes that motivation is one of those x-factors that affect everything positively. Motivation improves memory, concentration, brain receptivity, priming for learning and performance on any spectrum you’d like to measure. Understanding how motivation works will directly affect your success as a professional coach.
Memory and Coaching
Bergquist (2023)
The retention of memories from our life has always been a source of great interest on the part of philosophers as well as biologists and, more recently, psychologists. Now, with the ongoing revolution of the neural sciences, we are learning much more about how memories are formed, retained, forgotten and revised. Here is a brief summary of what we now know—or at least are considering—based on research done by biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists. A variety of strategies and tools are offered that enhance the retention of work from a coaching session.
Interpersonal Relationships and Coaching
Page (2022)
Linda Page emphasizes the usefulness of neuroscience to coaching theory and research, as indicated by her suggestion of “Neurosocial Dynamics” as the name for a discipline of coaching. This suggestion by Dr. Page is made with recognition that the usefulness of neuroscience or any other potential contribution to the proposed discipline will be determined by the field of coaching itself The richness of dialogue within that field will help to determine its viability. It is out of this dialogue that the foundation for a discipline of Neurosocial Dynamics (or whatever it ends up being called) will emerge to provide a theoretical foundation and evidence for the value of coaching.
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I believe that there is much to learn from those engaged in research on the functioning brain and body. As professional coaches, we must meet the challenges that arise from both our client’s mind and our client’s body. We are becoming increasingly aware that mind and body are fully integrated and that our coaching perspectives and practices must take this integration into account.
William Bergquist, Ph.D.
Editor