The New Science of Neurocoaching

The jump off point

In the last ten years at least five distinct application disciplines have emerged, each of them very new (for obvious reasons). These are:
⦁ Neuroleadership: how neuroscience can inform leadership, HR, change management and training/teaching.
⦁ Neurolinguistics: understanding how we comprehend, filter, learn language, use self talk and how beliefs are formed.
⦁ Neuropsychology: focuses on brain injury, brain trauma and the assessment of cognitive function.
⦁ Neuropsychotherapy: understanding how talking therapies change the brain (e.g. mirror neurons) and behaviour.
⦁ Neurocoaching: the integration of neuroscience breakthroughs into coaching and therapeutic approaches, especially recovery, mental health and trauma.

Central to a coach’s interest is the discovery of neuroplasticity – the idea that the way you think can physically alter your brain at the neural level and reverse previous learning, impairment or damage. Here in Australia, Todd Samson popularised the applicability of this field in his series “Redesign My Brain” for the ABC. In doing so he also showed just how accessible neuroscience is, especially for those who wish to use it without having a doctoral degree.

One of the things we have learned is neurons that fire together, wire together and those that fire apart, wire apart. The more you practice something the more embedded it becomes, or the more unconsciously competent you get at it. This has some really great applications for weight loss, memory strengthening, learning new skills and recovery from major surgery.

Onward to neurocoaching

At its core coaching believes in a person’s ability to examine their beliefs in order to change them. As a result their behaviour and experience of the world changes too and they can get the outcomes they really desire. Neuroscience is proving the same belief through neuroplasticity. When you think different thoughts, especially changing your inner dialogue or self talk, you will get different neurochemistry (feelings) and outcomes. The more you practice a new state, the more it becomes the default setting.

This explains in part why our company has signed up to become part of the emerging field of neurocoaching. We are collaborating with research scientists, coaches working with trauma sufferers and exposing our coaching to the scrutiny of evidence based research. We think neurocoaching is the future. But let me make something clear. Just knowing which parts of the brain fire up when we look at a psychological test inside a brain scanner does not take us there. Describing neurology and affecting actual performance are a long distance apart.