Coaching has emerged from a synthesis of fields, including training, adult learning, change management consulting, the human potential movement, psychology and systems science. The schools of thought in coaching agree on little except that coaching works and more of it should be done.
This can be a problem when implementing wide-scale coaching programmes. Academically trained executives can have difficulty supporting cultural interventions that don’t have a solid theory base.
Coaching based on an understanding of how the brain works may provide an answer. First, every coaching event is linked to mental activities. A brain-based approach should support all good coaching models and thus bring greater cohesion to the field.
Second, by linking coaching to the brain, we make coaching more tangible, more physical. We live in a materialist world where organisations respect things that can be observed and measured.
Third, there is the impact that using brain science is having. Since I began explaining coaching this way I find senior executives are more interested in coaching, executives are learning to coach faster, and people are becoming better coaches.
While there are many useful neuroscience discoveries we could explore, I will focus here on three ideas central to coaching: why change is hard, how attention changes the brain, and the anatomy of insight.
Why change is hard
Improving our ability to drive workplace change is increasingly important. Most leaders think that people change through information, motivation or threat. Recently neuroscientists have confirmed what many of us know well: change is harder than we think. This points to the need to provide additional resources to drive change successfully, such as coaches.
The first reason change is hard relates to the visceral experience it brings. The brain is constantly on the lookout for potential threats, and uses the same circuitry when perceiving physical and psychological threats. Error detection signals are generated by the orbital cortex (right over the eyeballs, or orbits), which is closely connected to the brain’s fear circuitry in the amygdala. These two areas compete with and direct brain resources away from the prefrontal cortex, which is known to promote and support higher intellectual functions. This pushes us to act more emotionally and impulsively: our animal instincts start to take over.
When our error detection machinery goes into overdrive, we end up with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this case our brain sends a constant, incorrect message that something is wrong, so we keep trying to fix it. Even in people without OCD, just trying to change a routine behaviour sends out strong error messages. These messages are designed to distract our attention; they readily overpower rational thoughts. It takes a strong will to push past such mental activity.
You can think of this error detection machinery as part of our homeostasis response. Homeostasis is the way complex systems automatically push against change to maintain stability. This pushback response is a mechanism that coaches should be aware of: individuals need to feel they have choice at each moment of coaching, an idea I explore further in my book Quiet Leadership.
Another reason why change is hard comes down to how memory works. Our “working memory”, a key part of our conscious mind, requires more energy than a set of deeper structures in the basal ganglia near the brain’s core. The basal ganglia can function very well without conscious thought as long as what we are doing is a routine activity.
Our working memory, based in the prefrontal cortex and used for learning new activities, has limited resources. It fatigues more easily than the basal ganglia, and holds only a limited number of ideas “in mind” at one time. Since our working memory gets overwhelmed easily, any repeated activity gets pushed down into the deeper parts of the brain: we “hardwire” it, freeing up cognitive resources. After a few months of learning to drive we do it “without thinking.”
Consider how most of what we do in the workplace, how we run meetings, even just how we communicate, is well and truly hardwired. Changing anything takes more energy (in the form of attention) than people may want to put in. So change is avoided.
Attention changes the brain
While researching a new book in 2003, I met world-renowned neuro-plasticity expert Jeffrey Schwartz, whose book explained a large swathe of what we do as coaches. Schwartz had helped to cure more than 1,000 OCD patients without drugs or behavioral therapy. Rather than focus on their problems, Schwartz got his patients to create new mental circuits by trying new activities. Just a few minutes of mental activities over some weeks changed the brain enough to see on a brain scan. Schwartz’s breakthrough scientific paper explained the physics of how attention changes the brain. I will provide an abridged version of the ideas here.
Neurons communicate with each other through a type of electrochemical signalling that requires individual ions – sodium, potassium, and calcium – to travel along channels that are, at their narrowest point, roughly a single ion wide.
This means the brain itself is a quantum environment. In quantum mechanics, the question you ask of nature influences the outcome you see. The questions you ask of your brain significantly affect the quality of the connections it makes, and alters the patterns and timings of the connections generated in each fraction of a second. This has shown to be true through studies of neuro-plasticity, where focused attention plays a critical role in creating physical changes in the brain.
The specifics of how focused attention can rewire the brain are provided by a 30-year-old, well-verified law in quantum mechanics called the Quantum Zeno Effect. An example of this effect is where rapid, repeated observation of a molecule will hold the molecule in a stable state. If you pay enough attention to a certain set of brain connections, it keeps this relevant circuitry stable, helping it to become a part of the brain’s hardwiring.
Schwartz coined the term “attention density” to describe how much attention we pay over a specific time. Attention density brings the Quantum Zeno effect into play. It explains why getting people to write down their insights helps so much. Thinking about an insight might take half a second; writing it down requires more focused attention and might take 20 times longer.
These ideas also explain how focusing on solutions tends to creates solutions, whereas focusing on problems can deepen those problems.
There is a second part to this. When we focus on our concerns, we may activate the amygdala, which reduces our capacity for rational, high-level thought. Research has shown that problems activate the brain more deeply, and more quickly, than pleasant thoughts. We are quick to focus on problems; however, the resulting brain state is not so conducive to the attention needed for change.
The power of insight
While building coaching programmes in 1998, I studied hundreds of coaching dialogues to find useful patterns. One pattern was the importance of the client having a kind of “insight”. Consider how Gestalt psychology defines insight:
- A sudden, complete shift from pre-solution to solution;
- Performance based on a solution gained by insight is usually smooth and free of errors;
- A solution to a problem gained by insight is retained for a considerable length of time
- A principle gained by insight is easily applied elsewhere.
While coaching is more than merely facilitating insight, insight seemed to be of central importance. When clients had insights, change was far more likely than without them.
In 2004, I secured a small grant to run an fMRI study and got a team of research volunteers together. While reviewing the existing literature, we found a 2004 fMRI study of insight by Mark Jung-Beeman, John Kounios, and others. From this research, and drawing from several other studies, I created a simple model that described the moments before, during and after insight, which I call the Four Faces of Insight(c), or ARIA(c) model: Awareness, Reflection, Illumination and Action.
Awareness of a dilemma
Insights in coaching are sudden answers to complex questions. The insight resolves conflicting ideas that someone has not been able to reconcile as yet, which I call “dilemmas”. Examples of workplace dilemmas could be:
- “I want to know how to inspire my salespeople but they don’t seem to care.”
- “I’d really like to get all my projects finished but am overloaded with emails.”
From a neuroscience perspective, a dilemma means various mental maps are competing for resources. The brain hasn’t worked out how to resolve this conflict by creating a new metamap or by reconfiguring existing maps.
The brain doesn’t like conflicts so we revisit the same issue until it is resolved. It’s like forgetting a person’s name while we are talking to them: it will reappear in one’s mind until resolution.
The first step to facilitating insight is to simplify a complex issue into a simple question. One study found that insight was more likely when complex ideas were reduced to their salient points. Less complex ideas make it easier to move the ideas around.
Reflection
Jung-Beeman and associates reported that just before people solved puzzles with insight, their brains gave off alpha-band waves. Alpha waves correlate with a quiet mind. We shut down input from the senses and focus on internal stimuli. Just before insight, people really are not listening or seeing the outside world as much. You can clearly tell when someone is reflecting on an issue: most people look up, become a little dazed and silent.
To see a situation in a new light, we must stop thinking about it the same way. This allows fresh thoughts to emerge, the way neutral in a car enables gears to change.
Alpha waves are decreased by doing maths calculations or exercises that engage the conscious mind. So during reflection we are not thinking logically, we are tapping into more intelligence than the seven or so pieces of information we can hold in working memory.
Illumination
The illumination phase is the most thoroughly studied part of insight. Illuminations bring a rush of energy and a positive outlook, the result of neurotransmitters like adrenaline and dopamine being released. We get a similar rush solving a crossword, hearing a joke, seeing a twist in a movie or resolving a dilemma for ourselves. They all involve the sudden creation of complex new mental connections.
According to Jung-Beeman, at the moment of insight the brain gives off strong gamma-band waves. These waves are the only frequency found throughout the brain, and are seen when the brain simultaneously processes information across different regions. Gamma-band waves signify the creation of a super-map linking many parts of the brain in new ways. As neuroscientist John Ratey says: “The different pieces of the concept are transported back and forth between the regions that house them until they resonate with each other – sustained at the 40 Hz oscillation.”
The energy created during insight provides a counterbalance to the automatic homeostasis response. After an insight, people seem driven to change; just seconds before they may have felt the opposite. Thus there is a big difference between a client having an idea, and a coach having the idea and trying to convince the client to act. As the fortune cookie says: “Ideas are like children, there are none so wonderful as your own.” Now we know why.
There is an ongoing debate about whether coaching is purely self-directed or can include advice and suggestions. I think the real issue is whether we are helping or hindering the insight response at any moment. Our ideas and input, delivered the right way to mitigate the homeostasis response, can help. However, if you start giving lots of suggestions, people may stop reflecting, and actually start arguing instead.
Action
When people have just had an insight, their eyes race ahead, ready to take action. However, the intense motivation passes in minutes. If you can get people to take tangible actions while the insight is close at hand, even just to commit to doing something later, this helps ensure new ideas become reality. Action increases attention density.
We have seen that change really is hard, that attention changes the brain, and that insight may be a central to change. These are just a few discoveries that the brain can provide to coaching. There is also the study of the social brain and of our emotions’ responses, mirror neurons, an understanding of how to improve decision-making and many other fields.
Having a physical explanation for coaching is improving my ability to coach and increasing the impact of coach training programmes. It confirms some existing theories, for example illustrating that trust really is essential for coaching. Without it, people literally cannot process signals the way that is required for change. There’s also some surprises: our new understanding of attention points to coaching perhaps being possible without a coach – the effect of coaching may be a function of the attention the coach facilitates, not the coach themselves.
Above all, bringing brain science to coaching is making more people pay closer attention to this important field. And just as attention changes the brain, it can also change whole systems.
Learning points
- Change is hard Changing habits is hard because it brings about fear, requires significant effort and the brain naturally resists wide-scale change, a principle of homeostasis. Coaching is largely about creating new habits. Having the support of a coach increases the likelihood of success by reducing fear, and by keeping people focused where they might have given up.
- Attention changes the brain Focus on solutions, and you start to create them. Focus on problems, and you become more aware of them. Coaches help clients create the most useful new circuits. Coaches also help deepen new circuits: if the client knows their coach will follow up on an action they set, they will pay more attention to the action during the week.
- The brain is intensely social When our brain is at rest, three out of four functions operating in the background relate to our relationships with others. We expend significant mental energy on social issues, in particular on status. Understandings from the field of social neuroscience such as these help explain how we interact.
- Change requires insight Wide-scale change requires creating new circuits in the brain. This usually happens as a moment of insight, a very energetic and pleasurable experience. The energy of insight helps mitigate the fear and resistance to change.
- We can increase the likelihood of achieving insights Insight involves the creation of complex new circuits all at once. It is similar to the “aha” experience of solving a puzzle, but on a larger scale. To bring about insight we need to help the brain stop thinking on the same paths, by quietening the mind, helping the brain simplify issues so they can be seen from other perspectives. Whereas insight is chaotic and unpredictable, the likelihood of insight can be dramatically increased. Through understanding the science and a few techniques, I find I can bring about an insight in coaching dialogues more than half the time, when one is needed.
- Expectations affect what we experience The study of the placebo effect and related fields has shown that expectations change the data that the brain perceives. Set a goal, and we create changes in the brain that allow us to perceive information relating to the goal that we wouldn’t perceive otherwise. The clearer the goal is, the more it will be held in mind and the more goal-related connections we can make.
- Visioning activities create real change When we visualise an activity we activate the same circuits involved in doing the activity. If we put enough attention onto this visualisation, we create new circuits that can be embedded in the brain, changing how information is processed. Without visualising a new way of acting, the brain will revert to existing circuits.
- We have a strong influence on each other Through mirror neurons and other systems, scientists are finding that people’s brains resonate with one another. The strongest emotion that two people feel will tend to be the dominant emotion across both. In addition, believing in other people helps them to believe in themselves.
References
- D Rock Quiet Leadership: Six steps to transforming performance at work Collins (2006)
- J Schwartz and S Begley The Mind and the Brain: neuroplasticity and the power of mental force, Regan Books (2003)
- J Schwartz, H Stapp and M Beauregard Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology : a neurophysical model of mind-brain interaction The Royal Society, London (2005)
- B R Hergenhahn An Introduction to the History of Psychology: Fourth Edition Thomson Learning (2001)
- Stellan Ohlsson, professor of psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago
- M Jung-Beeman et al ‘The Prepared Mind: Neural Activity Prior to Problem Presentation Predicts Subsequent Solution by Sudden Insight’ in Psychological Science, 17(10), October 2006
About the author David Rock is CEO of Results Coaching Systems and has played an instrumental role in founding brain-based approach to coaching. He has research partnerships with several neuroscientists to explain the neural basis of issues such as self-awareness, reflection, insight and accountability. David is the author of two books. He has built coaching programmes that have trained more than 5,000 coaches, including co-founding coaching certificate programmes at New York University. He is a guest lecturer at universities in five countries, and is currently helping several multinationals to roll out wide-scale coaching interventions. davidrock@workplacecoaching.com