This excerpt on Neurocoaching was taken from ROI Executive Coaching case study, The Neuroscience of Executive Team Coaching.

"If neuroscience informs and guides a professional coach’s methodology, then the title of “neurocoach” seems both reasonable and helpful. This distinction sends a signal to a client that the coach studies NeuroLeadership and integrates relevant neuroscientific findings to facilitate, augment, and optimize coaching programs. ROI approached the WSR engagement as a neurocoach might, keeping the brain and mind of the client omnipresent.

Credentialed professional coaches of the International Coach Federation (ICF) demonstrate 11 core competencies at a high level. One of these competencies, Coaching Presence, is defined as the ability to be fully conscious, intuitive… be able to confidently shift perspectives, and self-manage emotions without being overpowered by a client's needs. (coachfederation.org)

To maintain a coaching presence, a coach strives to be aware of when and how their mind maps and beliefs enter the coaching space. This mindfulness can signal the development of Mindsight: The reflective capacity to become aware of our own minds, as well as our empathic ability to recognize the intentions and emotional states of others and to truly understand where they are coming from. (Seigel & McCall, 2010) Mindsight has been considered our seventh sense, our ability to perceive the workings of our own minds, as well as the minds of others. Mindsight is a mission critical competency for coaches to ensure their minds and emotions connect with clients but are not entrained.

In neurocoaching, to be client-centered or have a client focus, takes on a deeper meaning when it has the potential to connect clients’ neurons in new ways, leading to novel thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. When David Rock explained coaching to neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz (Rock & Page 2009) he responded, “Oh, I see, what coaching is…it is a way of facilitating self-directed neuroplasticity.” This quote immediately struck me, and it continues to guide my coaching practice.

After learning about neuroplasticity, the power of the brain to rewire itself; I was liberated and relieved to read about Neural Darwinism (Rock 2006), the term for how the brain constantly prunes and removes unused links. As a coach, this made immediate sense. If we wallow in an individual’s problems, we reinforce those problematic neural connections. Instead, as neurocoaches, we “operate”’ on our clients’ brains with questions that have the power to reconfigure and modify neuropatterns into new designs, new thoughts—insights—that can move our clients forward in a meaningful way. It is a relief to have permission to “let go” of the neuropatterns or mindmaps that aren’t working for our clients, knowing that without attention they will fade and fall apart. Instead, neurocoaches can focus energy on creating new ways of thinking that will be more productive, positive, and effective.

….Finally, ROI was keenly aware of the impact of the coach’s presence on the dynamics of the system (CEO and team). ROI promotes meditation, yoga, and visualization to prepare for coaching sessions.  This preparation helps the coach monitor physical, auditory, and emotional signals to create an environment of positivity in an attempt to expand the client’s peripheral vision and generate greater insight. (Fredrickson 2009)"

The power of feedback is described in this excerpt from an ROI Case Study, The Neuroscience of Executive Team Coaching.

"….At the end of each workshop, we initiated a step-by-step process for feedback. After demonstrating the process, team members were allowed time to practice the skill. The key factors that guided this practice included allowing the team members to offer their own observations first. Other factors included keeping the feedback specific and focused on the positive. Follow-up questions such as “What did you do well and discover about yourself?” or “What went well, what impact did that have, and how do you think you could do more of that?” serve to reinforce positive neural patterns and create new habitual behaviors.

The delivery and receipt of skillful, positive feedback is further endorsed by neuroscience research indicating that social and physical pain are similar (Lieberman & Eisenberger, 2008) The findings suggest that bringing out the best in people in the workplace depends at least as much on optimizing a person’s social and emotional well-being as it does on cognitive processes.

Leiberman and Eisenberger offer the analogy of “expecting someone who has a broken leg to run from one meeting to the next…But when someone is in social pain, we often treat this as if it should be compartmentalized and kept outside the office. We might tell them to ‘get over’ their hurt feelings despite the fact that we would never think someone should ‘get over’ their broken leg.”

According to Leiberman and Eisenberger, specific, positive feedback that treats individuals as valued members of the organization may activate reward systems in the brain that promote stronger learning of those behaviors. When social needs are satisfied, the brain responds in much the same way as it responds to more tangible (monetary) rewards. Skillful feedback can be viewed by organizations as a highly cost-effective social reward system."

ROI Executive Coaching recently completed an executive team engagement.  The following post describes how the SCARF model served to guide the coach throughout the engagement.….

The SCARF model is an excellent tool for leaders, and it proved to be a highly practical and effective guide for ROI Executive Coaching during this phase. ROI remained cognizant of SCARF throughout the engagement and aligned behaviors to mitigate potential amygdala triggers that could interfere with a positive, productive frame of mind. (Goleman 2002)

This is a quick summary of ROI’s practical interpretation and application of SCARF from an executive coaching perspective (Rock, 2008):

Status

Status refers to an individual’s feeling of relative importance compared to others. Related research by Eisenberger and colleagues showed that when individuals perceive a reduction in status, or social pain, the same regions of the brain are lit up as would occur with physical pain. (Lieberman & Eisenberger, 2008). ROI focused on positive feedback and affirmations in an attempt to trigger the ventral striatum, the brain’s social reward system, and increase feelings of satisfaction.

Certainty

ROI was aware that the brain is a pattern-seeking device constantly seeking to predict outcomes to satisfy its craving for certainty. A blip in a predictive pattern can send an error signal to the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and interrupt an individual’s focus. ROI watched closely for expressions of uncertainty surrounding issues such as role definition, hiring decision, or financial transparency. To counter these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, ROI coached the client to find a place of increased certainty to calm the perceived threat.

 Autonomy

Autonomy refers to the feeling and belief that individuals have choices and some control over their environment. Addressing threats related to this domain may come most naturally to professional coaches. The professional coaching process empowers clients to discover their goals and co-create their programs. This approach places the client in the driver’s seat, and consequently calms potential threats to the individual’s autonomy. This is one of the many reasons that individuals find the coaching process pleasureable. ROI listened for instances where team members perceived an external threat to their autonomy, and countered with exploratory questions that helped them discover options and regain a sense of control.

Relatedness

This was the most complex and challenging domain to manage during this engagement. Relatedness refers to an individual’s sense of belonging, and how that person determines whether someone is on the team or not, i.e. friend or foe. ROI saw this domain as closely related to trust. Viewing a teammate as a competitor has been shown to significantly reduce an individual’s capacity to empathize. ROI witnessed behaviors and listened to perceptions of individual competition that triggered the threat response numerous times. ROI’s explanation of the brain science behind these feelings helped to normalize the emotions and equip the team members with the knowledge to relate more effectively.

Fairness

An individual’s threat response is easily triggered by a sense of unfairness. ROI witnessed numerous SCARF infringements throughout the engagement, with many of these related to a perception of unfairness. The OC decided to revisit its ground rules for behavior and focus on process management and role clarification, all of which appeared to mitigate most feelings of unfairness.

When a coach tunes into the five domains, the expressions of these threats are quite distinctive and difficult to overlook. One particular situation triggered all five domains for a team member, which catapulted her into significant distress and disengagement. During this individual’s personal coaching session we were able to tease out the SCARF threats, discover options and improve thinking to temper the concerns. This process significantly reduced her stress, enhanced her situation, and lessened the potential negative impact that her emotional distress might have transferred to the team.

I am not referring to the movie with Ashton Kutcher but rather to the Butterfly Effect that relates to the notion of a butterfly flapping its wings in one area of the world causing a tornado or some larger event to happen in another area of the world.

How does this relate to coaching?

The Butterfly Effect relates to Benoit Mandelbrot’s discovery, in the early ’60s, that simple inputs can produce significant outputs.  In 1961, Edward Lorenz was researching weather systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He was one of the first scientists to have his own computer, and he used it to create and test a simple weather model. One day he wanted to rerun the test model and found starling results:

The new run should have duplicated the old.  Lorenz had copied the numbers into the machine itself though, as he stared at the new printout, Lorenz saw his weather diverging so rapidly from the pattern of the last run that, within just months, all resemblance had disappeared. (Gleick, 1987)

Lorenz checked his numbers to discover what had created such a different result.  He realized that the computer stored six decimal places, but the printout showed only three.  There was a difference of only 1 part in 1,000.  But such a small difference in input made a big difference in the eventual output.  

Lorenz had discovered that the principle of non-linearity, as shown by Mandelbrot, also applied to natural phenomenon.  

In dynamic, or ever-developing systems, small changes in inputs, magnified by system feedback, can result in hugh changes in outputs over time.  This is the non-linearity principle.

Lorenz asked himself, "Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"  He called this the Butterfly Effect. So, Lorenz determined that any long term prediction of a dynamic nonlinear system was impossible because of the magnified effects of small changes in input.

So, one individual, or subtle influence, can make a big difference. 

Coaches who listen for and help their clients discover those seemingly small acts that will make disproportionately large, positive changes – will be exercising the Butterfly Effect.  A nice visual for me, as a coach, to think of clients as butterflies where by simply flapping their wings they can make a big difference for themselves and the systems in which they live.