Sue Green shares her CBC-based model for helping people change self-limiting thinking
Most agree that having a negative mindset has the power to limit performance, wellbeing and potential.
There are, of course, many ways coaches can support people to shift negative, unhelpful ways of thinking. One evidence-based and powerful approach, which many will be familiar with, is the cognitive-behavioural approach.
In this article, I share a model I have developed to help coaches work more easily and effectively with this approach.
Cognitive-behavioural coaching (CBC) is based on the principle that an individual’s thoughts play an important part in shaping their feelings, behaviours and actions. So changing the types of conversation someone has internally is a helpful thing to do when they want to improve how they feel and react in particular situations.
The Myndflex® model and approach
On one level, CBC looks simple and straightforward: helping clients make their thinking more balanced means they might reasonably expect to see positive changes in some of their feelings and behaviours. But what does it actually take to shift someone’s thinking and outlook? How do they do this?
Previously I was introduced to Albert Ellis’s (Ellis, 1957) well-known ABC theory, Aaron Beck’s (Beck, 1967) therapeutic approach and Nick Edgerton’s and Stephen Palmer’s (Edgerton & Palmer, 2005) SPACE model.
These approaches identify important aspects of changing self-limiting thinking and in the hands of skilled practitioners they can be powerful coaching tools. In my own coaching practice, drawing on these, I’ve come up with a CBC approach which I find is highly accessible and user friendly, both for coaches and clients. And so it was that Myndflex® was born.
Whereas some approaches deal mainly with what people need to understand, the focus here is on describing the key steps that people need to take if they want to change their mindsets. Referring back to the cooking analogy, Myndflex® comprises both the ingredients list and the recipe.
There are three key steps in the Myndflex® model: Clarify, Challenge and Change. These are outlined in Figure 1.
Coaching interventions for mindset change
Stepping back from the specifics of the 3Cs Model, developing and using Myndflex® enables us to identify a range of development activities and coach interventions that are helpful for mindset change. Figure 2 details these, with suggested client development focus areas in the middle column and specific coach interventions in the right-hand column.
Each table row relates to a different type of development. The three areas (self-awareness; knowledge & understanding; skills development & practice) are all important for effective mindset change. Together they
provide a useful set of signposts for creating optimal coaching programmes, ie, an effective programme will ideally contain elements that enable an individual to progress in all three areas.
- Sue Green is a coaching & business psychologist. She runs a coaching and consulting practice, Perspectives Psychology, and is the founder of Myndflex®, a new balanced thinking approach. To find out more about Myndflex®, including coach skills workshops, visit www.myndflex.co or email: info@myndflex.co
| 1 Clarify
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2 Challenge
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3 Change
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| The goal of this first step is to clarify the specific (hot) thoughts that are leading someone to have unwanted feelings or reactions
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The goal of the second step, challenge, is to enable someone to objectively assess their thinking
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The goal of the third and final step is to help people replace their unreasonable, unhelpful thoughts with more balanced, enabling ones |
| Clarifying is about bringing people’s focus to the thoughts and beliefs that go through their minds, raising their conscious awareness
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Challenging is about helping people to form an objective view of their thinking, to gain perspectives and to understand if particular thoughts are helping or hindering them
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Changing is about getting people to articulate and use a type of thinking that works better for them
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| As a coach clarifying involves giving people space, time and freedom to notice and verbalise their mental experience
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As a coach challenging involves using carefully targeted questions to test the reasonableness and helpfulness of someone’s thinking
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As a coach changing involves working with people to create and implement a thought plan. It’s also about coaching them to identify and take other actions that will enable goal achievement
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Figure 1: The Myndflex® 3Cs model of mindset change
WHAT THEY SAY
- “Myndflex® is a practical toolkit that provides a structure to support the more challenging coaching scenarios where clients grapple with past negative experiences and self-limiting beliefs. It normalises these experiences and makes it possible to find a practical and positive way forward. As a coach I value the lack of jargon and the way that it fits easily into coaching, enabling me to go on a journey with my clients to co-create options and outcomes that are pragmatic and achievable.”
Julia Duncan is a qualified coach and Fellow (CIPD)
- “I have used Cognitive-based coaching techniques in my coaching practice for many years. I have found Myndflex® to be a well thought-through, practical and easy to use model. It brings useful techniques together in a coherent and businesslike process that appeals to me as a coach. Its simplicity and workplace relevance appeals to my coaching clients.”
Karen Tidswell is a chartered occupational & HCPC registered psychologist, AC accredited master executive coach & ISCP accredited coach
- “What I like about this approach is the chance to unlock difficulties at an early stage: building self-awareness around automatic negative thoughts and the reactions they create is empowering. Once someone has that lightbulb moment around what’s going on their head, they are able to make constructive choices about the way forward. The guidance Myndflex® gives the coach in how to challenge the thinking and lead to change is powerful.”
Joy Palfery is a chartered & HCPC registered occupational psychologist, certified coach, associate fellow (BPS)
Case study
Self-limiting thinking
Below is an abridged extract of a real coaching conversation between an accredited Myndflex® coach (Rob McPherson) and his client, a female in her mid-20s who works for a professional services firm. The coach uses part of the Myndflex® process to raise the client’s awareness around her self-limiting thinking.
The conversation
Coach: So you’ve mentioned that although you’re basically confident in your ability to do a good job, you’re often not confident that senior clients feel confident in you? 1
Client: Yes, I worry that they’ll catch me out with a question that I can’t answer or that I’ll say something stupid. So I find myself withdrawing, deferring to my senior colleagues and not putting my ideas forward, even though I do have useful things
to say
Coach: It’s often useful to look at a specific situation. Can you recall a time when this happened?
Client: Uhm… Actually yes (then outlines recent client meeting)
Coach: OK, I’d like you take yourself back into that situation (and helps her to do this). What are you thinking? 2
Client: I don’t know. I’m not sure (looking uncomfortable and uncertain)
Coach: There’s no need to filter it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just say it. What’s in your mind?
Client: (Pauses, reflects then says) I’m thinking that I need these people to like me. I always feel that everyone has to like me 3
Coach: (Listens, gives time and space to client)
Client: (Pauses, jaw drops and then she says) Wow! (with a laugh) 4
Coach: (Quizzical look, inviting comment)
Client: I’m laughing because that’s so obviously unrealistic. It’s ridiculous and I didn’t realise that this is what I was thinking 5
Coach and client then bring the session to a close, agreeing how to continue the work they’ve started
Notes
1 As is often the case this client has some self-awareness about the issue but not yet at a deep enough level to really help her to understand and change things.
2 There are several different ways to coach using the 3Cs process. Here the coach uses a direct approach.
3 In this case the individual is able to articulate their thoughts relatively easily. Often it takes more process, time and questions to get there.
4 This is clearly a key moment of realisation for the client.
5 The client is now well placed to move on to challenge and change her outlook.
| Development type
|
Useful development focus
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Helpful things coaches can do |
| Self-awareness
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It’s helpful for clients to become aware of the thoughts that are limiting them. As individuals progress it’s also good for them to notice the strategies that work for them and help them feel and react differently, so that they can use them again
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l Coach people through the clarify, challenge and change steps in the Myndflex® process
l Use effective coaching questions to generate new awareness and insights l Work with individuals to develop their self-observation skills (eg, by bringing their attention to repeated patterns of self-limiting speech or behaviour) |
| Knowledge & understanding
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By understanding the role thinking plays in shaping feelings and behaviour, clients become better placed to change how they manage themselves. They also have greater insight into how to help others
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l Educate clients on the CBC fundamentals, focusing on the links between thoughts, feelings and behaviours and that it is possible to change thinking patterns
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| Skills development & practice
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Consistent with other areas of personal and leadership development, clients tend to do better when they approach their mindset change development work as something they will get progressively better at over time, with the benefit of repeated focus and practice
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l Suggest coaching assignments that provide fruitful learning and development opportunities. Guide clients through a coaching process that builds and sustains self-awareness, skills and effective self-management strategies
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Figure 2: Development focus and coach interventions for mindset change
References and further information
- A T Beck, Depression: Causes and Treatment, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967
- N Edgerton & S Palmer, ‘SPACE: A psychological model for use within cognitive behavioural coaching, therapy and stress management’, in The Coaching Psychologist, 2(2), pp25-31, 2005
- A Ellis, ‘Rational psychotherapy and individual psychology’, in Journal of Individual Psychology, 13, pp38-44, 1957
- S Palmer, ‘Rational coaching: A cognitive behavioural approach’, in The Coaching Psychologist, 5(1), June 2009