We are pleased to share an article entitled “ Presence, Listening, Awareness, Growth ~ Grounding the ICF competencies in neuroscience – Part 2 ” written by Susan Britton & Jessica Burdett.
This article is the second in a series that pairs various neuroscience principles with ICF core competencies. We address competencies #5-8 here (see the prior issue for competencies #1-4).
There are myriad and complex neuroscience findings that support coaching; the suggestions in this article are fundamental starting points, many which apply to more than one competency, along with practical suggestions for application.
ICF #5
MAINTAINS PRESENCE
Presence impacts both coach and client on a neurobiological level.1 Our capacity to manage our thoughts and emotions impacts our ability to respond to the whole person of the client.
Neuroscience Principle: Emotion Regulation, Autonomy
- Emotion Regulation Supports Coaching Presence: Emotion regulation is the ability to initiate, stop, or change the course of an emotion,2 as well as reflects the rate of return to an average emotional set point.3 The opposite of this — emotion dysregulation — is costly from a cognitive standpoint.
- For example, experiencing anxiety (but not anger) impairs higher-level cognitive skills, concealing negative emotions decreases memory performance, and suppressing forbidden thoughts causes people to give up more quickly on brain-teasers. Research in psychotherapy settings points to emotional coregulation, where a bidirectional emotional linkage between two people can promote emotional stability.
- Presence Honors Client Autonomy: Autonomy is a key dimension of well-being, influencing positive functioning and life satisfaction. Neuroscience research links decision making to one’s conception of autonomy — a greater sense of autonomy helps clients make choices that are consistent with their values, beliefs, and desires.
Coaching Tips
- Practice mindful curiosity about the mental distractions or emotional triggers that arise for you when coaching people with different personality traits, values, customs, organizational norms, etc.
- Your regulated presence can coregulate the client! Powerful ways to support emotional co-regulation include: deepening your breathing during sessions to support vagal tone; engaging in calm and respectful eye contact; and increasing your comfort with holding curious space for the broad range of emotions clients might bring.
- Honor the client’s autonomy by offering choices of where to take the coaching conversation. “You’ve mentioned several hopes. Which feels most important to explore now?”
Our coaching presence can change the course of a conversation. When interactions are grounded in emotional regulation and respect for client’s autonomy, it will support the client towards desired change.
ICF #6
LISTENS ACTIVELY
Listening is a critical component of coaching, powerfully tapping the brain’s reward system and clearing the path for optimal brain functioning.
Neuroscience Principles: Brain’s Reward System, Neural Processing, Brain Coupling
- Active Listening Taps the Brain’s Reward System: Through functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI), active listening has been shown to activate the brain’s reward system of the person being listened to, helping to improve positive reappraisal (reframing) of the listened to experiences.
- Silence & Utilizing Client Language Support Neural Processing: Silence can increase theta and gamma brain waves associated with creativity, learning, memory, attention, and problem-solving while decreasing beta waves linked to stress and anxiety. Inner silence enhances activity of the vagus nerve that reduces sympathetic nervous system activity and physiological stress. Additionally, MIT neuroscientists found that when study participants encountered sentences with unconventional grammar or unexpected terms, the brain had greater difficulty processing and making sense requiring additional brainpower to interpret meaning and delaying potential insights.
- Brain Coupling: Brain coupling, also known as neural synchrony, refers to the synchronization of brain activity between individuals over time, playing a role in interpersonal dynamics and shared experiences. The more extensive the coupling between a speaker’s brain responses and a listener’s anticipatory brain responses, the better the comprehension for the coach, as listener.
Coaching Tips
- Listen into the client’s pauses, non-verbal expressions, emotions and hesitations, all of which can be just as or more important than the words they share.
- Pay particular attention to metaphors and symbolic language clients bring as potential carriers of meaning and emotion.
- Become “bilingual” with the client’s lexicon, using their keywords, phrases, and metaphors to ease the client’s neural processing. For example, if a client says “I need to prioritize my day better,” respond with “How will you know you’ve prioritized your day better?” as opposed to “So how would you time-block your calendar?”
- Establish agreements with the client around allowing and leveraging silence. Use silence liberally.
ICF #7
EVOKES AWARENESS
New awareness is necessary for change. The coach facilitates insight and learning, which expands or deepens the client’s way of thinking and feeling. New ways of being often involve the client reconstructing their ways of reasoning.
Neuroscience Principles: Insight and Meaning-Making
- Insight: Insight is the sudden comprehension or problem solution that leads to a novel interpretation of a situation. Research points to non-directive coaching techniques activating brain mechanisms that facilitate the insight process and improve creative capacity. As clients compare a new insight to what they have known in the past, working memory is engaged, and then explored to expand or deepen thinking.
- Meaning-Making: Meaning-making is the cognitive process of finding significance, coherence, and purpose in experiences to facilitate coping and growth. Integrating one’s beliefs, values, and goals with one’s experiences leads to a sense of understanding and coherence in the face of adversity.
Coaching Tips
Consider these techniques and tools to support the brain’s ability for insight and new meaning-making:
- Share questions, observations or insights with the client in a non-directive way. Inviting them to respond in any way allows them to further their meaning making and personal insight.
- Explore tension, ambivalence, or resistance as natural consequences of change and transition. For example, “What do you notice in yourself as you describe the pull between caring for your team and delivering on sales goals?” [and] “How would you like to explore those tensions?” [or] “What would need to shift in your thinking to meet this challenge?”
- Explore values. As the client grows in their sense of self, explore how their values can be honored or how they are taking on new meaning. For example, “How do you stay true to your values in the midst of this change?” [and] “What new values are emerging as you step into this different way of leading?”
As insights come online through ICF #7 Evokes Awareness, there is a natural progression to ICF #8 Facilitates Client Growth.
ICF #8
FACILITATES CLIENT GROWTH
Awareness unfolds into action, which anchors client growth. The coach invites the client to articulate new insight and learning from the session about themself and the situation, and consider how they will use this learning to move forward.
Neuroscience Principles: Neuroplasticity, Self-Reinforcing Energy
- Neuroplasticity: The degree of concentration and repetition given to a particular mental experience or behavioral action influences neuroplasticity. Research psychiatrist Jeffrey M. Schwartz explains that when there is sufficient focus over time, proper brain circuitry “can be held in place in a stable dynamic way.” Mammal studies show neural connections strengthening over the course of just a few hours of repeated activity. With repetition, behaviors reach automaticity22 or routinization, where working memory is no longer required for tasks to be performed efficiently and effortlessly.
- Self-Reinforcing Energy of Neurochemical Reward System: Achievement (progress, momentum) triggers the release of dopamine and other neurochemicals in the brain, creating a link between success and pleasure. Dopamine, a key neurotransmitter, creates a self-reinforcing energy, as feeling good energizes us to do more of the same. This neurochemical state in the brain-body supports momentum and helps sustain attention on behavioral goals.
Coaching Tips
Consider a two-part sequence to support growth: invite the client to articulate new learning from the session, and explore how the client will apply this learning to strengthen neuroplasticity.
Articulate:
- What new learning about yourself do you want to reinforce?
- What new thinking or feeling has come online about this situation?
Apply:
- How will you experiment with this new learning?
- What would help build muscle memory on this?
- How many times will you need to repeat this to make it comfortable?
- What or who might support you in making this big change?
Understanding the processes in our brains and bodies that support or hinder change empowers us to deepen and expand the way we show up as coaches. Working with the brain, rather than against it, can support more effective, transformational and lasting coaching outcomes. For deeper exploration of the neuroscience behind each of the ICF competencies theacademies.com/neuroscience-and-the-icf-core-competencies.
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