The coaching profession is well-equipped to take over from human resources as well as to inherit the field of neuroscience , said psychologist Paul Brown in an exclusive interview with Coaching at Work.
“With the body of knowledge that neuroscience provides, coaching is the natural inheritor of neuroscience, and with it comes huge potential for supplanting HR in organizations,” said Professor Brown, visiting professor organizational neuroscience at London South Bank University UK.
Whilst acknowledging that there are many “profoundly good” HR professionals, Brown lambasted HR for failing to challenge the system and for having no working model of the person- “given its remit, this is nonsensical and ‘mind-less’. HR has been in slow decline into technique with no sense of the individual and they can’t escape it.”
HR hasn´t found a voice to change a system supported by legislation and a structure that “binds them in crazy ways”, said Brown. He said discrimination, essential for fine judgment, has been made into a dirty word and with this, we began to legislate, killing people’s ability to judge and trust their own judgments about diversity without fear.
Brown said although there is a lack of trust in HR, most CEOs don’t know what to do about it and they follow the crowd of so-called best practice.
“HR introduced the very virus it thought it was preventing, not understanding that responsible people, and not risk management processes, defend the organization against depredation. When people are forced to respond to their most basic survival motivation, which is to look after themselves first, the organization will suffer. “
What is needed is a “vital paradigm shift in society” and this “requires instead an entirely different approach to people, based on a good, applied working knowledge of neuroscience.”
In coaching, the relationship is based on trust rather than fear. The limbic system is opened, enabling change in behaviour. There is an interconnecting of brains as the coach relates to their client’s unique history and mind.
“The coach’s job is to see the self that is constructed when the limbic system integrates massive information, especially emotions, and distributes it to the thinking cortex. That self is functioning below the conscious and if the coach is able to make the client conscious of their patterns, they are free to choose,” explained Brown.
If we think our banking system has become detached from the consequences of its actions, it is not the only sector attached to short-term performance gains. As all organizations seek greater operating certainties in a changing world, their employee’s personal experience has grown increasingly confined.
Prof. Brown summed it up, customising Rousseau´s words: “Man everywhere is free, but since the industrial revolution, has never been in stronger chains.”
“We are at an extraordinary point in history. We rely on increasingly spurious information, as the world grows more complex, if we insist on evidence-based data over people’s experience. The more certainty we demand, the crazier the world gets, because certainty does not come from a tick box,” he said.
Seen most clearly in the health system, government departments and the police, short-term targets and massive rule books have undermined the self-reliance of people. Employees have begun to operate out of fear, holding back rather than drawing on the energy that comes from having access to information and the relationships to give that information useful context.
The solution? Rather than viewing human beings as a source of profit – a human resource – CEOs needed help to see a tipping point which Brown believed was waiting to happen at the intersection of developing global markets; the massive information now available through technology, and; the scientific frontier of the human mind.
Brown saw executive coaching is valuable and a wonderful resource for very senior executives who need a confidential sounding board.
The good news is that many organizations already have a coaching culture. Now they must be willing to provide the resources that people really need in order to perform effectively in the interests of their organizations. That includes high levels of trust, in which people are able to make informed decisions based on excellent information.
However, Brown pointed out that relationship and community are the next battleground of political correctness, as it is already disallowed to have normal human interaction with colleagues about matters outside the job. Then there will be coaches who respond and use knowledge about the brain in an attention-grabbing way for technique and practice.
Whatever happens next, as coaches we need no longer rely on an understanding of the mind based second-hand on psychologists’ interpretations. This is coaching’s moment. Neuroscience is both our source of authority and of a new conversation about human resources.