Keeping Your Brain in Mind: How Neuroscience Can Improve Coaching Outcomes

New discoveries in the field of neuroscience are being applied to the ongoing quest to develop improved personal and business skills, and to the coaching methods to impart them.

Breakthroughs in neuroscience in the past couple of decades have been so amazing the United Nations declared the 1990s to be “The Decade of the Brain.” Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists have discovered incredible new information about “neuroplasticity.” Essentially, the term means an ability for new neural pathways to form in response to brain enrichment of some kind. The discovery that at any age a brain can change for the better is probably the most astounding breakthrough in the history of neuroscience, ever.  Changing how we think can actually change our physical brains.

The May 2007 inaugural meeting of the NeuroLeadership Summit, founded by business coach David Rock, brought together business leaders, coaches, and neuroscientists to compare notes and plan ways to support one another. At that meeting, world-famous Neuroscientist Dr. Jeffery Schwartz stated, “I see what coaching is now…it is a way of facilitating self-directed neuroplasticity.”

Coaching has always been an exercise of the mind. With the more recent application of neuroscience breakthroughs, the coaching process has become even more effective at yielding positive results for our clients. Core activities of coaching, such as setting goals, making connections, becoming more aware, seeking breakthroughs, and taking action, parallel what neuroscientists tell us about how the brain operates.

The life or business coach who utilizes a neuroscience-based approach will convey an understanding of how to get the most out of your own mind. With the application of mental discipline, we can all change the way our minds operate at a fundamental level. Coaches who keep the brain in mind typically are familiar with several models of change and collaborate with clients to match model to situation.

Some brain-based coaching practices allow us to examine our own thoughts and emotions as if we were a neutral observer. These self-awareness practices typically lower the practitioner’s brain waves from the Gamma and Beta ranges to the Alpha range (8 to 12 Hz) and even to the lower Theta range (4-7 Hz). Lower brain waves allow us to process more information in a more intuitive and holistic way. This leads us to remain calmer under pressure and present a better response to pressing conditions by creating a considered approach versus a reactionary approach to a given set of circumstances.

Some people compare this observing of self to “mindfulness,” an ancient practice from Asia.  Without the ability to stand outside your experience, without self-awareness, you would have little ability to moderate and direct your actions. You need this capacity to free yourself form the automatic flow of experience, and to choose where to direct your attention. Otherwise, at best, you will spend your energy maintaining the status quo rather than moving yourself to the next level.

According to business coach David Rock, brain-based coaching guides “clients to learn to think in ways that change their capacity to feel, think, and act – and ultimately to shift who they are in the world.”

Coaching practices that guide the client to understand that all success in life or business is a function of their own mind will ultimately create better outcomes for the client. It follows to reason that coaching clients who have increased mental alertness and prolonged attention spans will do better than those who are mentally more sluggish.

Applying a neuroscience-based business coaching model has been shown to improve the position of major corporations in terms of profitability, efficiency and morale. Learning the focus of clear-minded critical thinking and communication for a group will allow them to work with greater synergy as they strive toward the common goal of success. A coach who is knowledgeable of neuroscience-based practices can steer members of an organization onto a path that facilitates clearer thinking and clarity of the common focal point which will be rewarding to any organization, large or small.

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Study: Emotion Rules the Brain's Decisions

The evidence has been piling up throughout history, and now neuroscientists have proved it's true: The brain's wiring emphatically relies on emotion over intellect in decision-making...

"The study is a very nice application of recent knowledge we've acquired about healthy cognition and emotion," says neuroscientist Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles...

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By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

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Brain Functions That Improve with Age

(For the original article, click here)

"Can I still compete?"

It's a question many of us increasingly ask as we reach middle age.

We watch younger colleagues master new computer systems with ease or pull all-nighters with nary a hair out of place and — quite naturally — we're concerned.

Luckily, recent research in brain science suggests that perhaps we should fret less.

Over the past few years, neuroscientists have begun to zero in on the brain's changes in middle age, and what they've found is encouraging. Results of long-term studies show that — contrary to stereotypes — we actually grow smarter in key areas in middle age which, with longer life spans, now stretches from our mid 40s to our mid to late 60s.

In areas as diverse as vocabulary and inductive reasoning, our brains function better than they did in our 20s. As we age, we more easily get the "gist" of arguments. Even our judgment of others improves. Often, we simply "know'' if someone — or some idea — is to be trusted. We also get better at knowing what to ignore and when to hold our tongues.

Not long ago, a mid-level executive told me how he'd recently changed the way he deals with younger colleagues. When gathered to discuss a problem, he keeps his "mouth shut'' and listens. Even though — more often than not — he has a good solution, he waits. He does not speak.

"I find it works best if I let the younger workers talk first, wrestle with the problem in their own way,'' he told me. "Then after a while, I say what I think might work. I'm not sure why, but this seems to work best and to help us all learn and solve the problem better.''

In fact, though he did not realize it, the executive was using the best parts of his calmer and more experienced middle-aged brain to help him manage his situation — and get better results.

It's true that by midlife our brains can show some fraying. Brain processing speed slows down. Faced with new information, we often cannot master it as quickly as our younger peers. And there's little question that our short-term memories suffer. It's easy to panic when you find you can't remember the name of that person you know in the elevator, or even the movie you saw last week.

But it turns out that such skills don't really matter that much. By midlife our brains have developed a whole host of talents that are, in the end, just as well suited to navigating the modern, complex workplace. As we age, we get better at seeing the possible. Younger brains, predictably, are set up to focus on the negative and potential trouble. Older brains, studies show, often reach solutions faster, in part, because they focus on what can be done.

By the time we reach middle age, millions of patterns have been established in our brains, and these connected pathways provide invaluable perspective — even when it's subconscious. For instance, some middle-aged managers I've spoken with talked about how solutions seem to "pop'' into their heads "like magic.''

It doesn't come from magic, of course, but from the very real — and often unappreciated — talents of our middle-aged brains.

Barbara Strauch is a deputy science editor and health and medical science editor at The New York Times and author of The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind (Viking), coming out in April.