Quick Video: Using Neuroscience to Coach Clients to Reaching their Goals

This is fascinating – I’m just back from a 3-day workshop by David Burnham in Boston called InterActive Leadership and he talked about brain imaging research that proves different self-talk, telling ourselves different stories, actually lights up different parts of the brain itself.
Certain thought patterns light up the frontal lobe, others engage the area closer to the brain stem.
Change your story, change your brain – literally.

Mark, great interview and informative.

Based on your interview with Dr. Pillay, it seems that all coaching has direct or indirect links to the neurosciences? To what extent, can this be true?

I am not familiar with the work of Dr. Pillay, but my presuppositions would include that Dr. Pillay’s work runs along or add-on to the coaching practices found in NLP, Neurosemantics, Clean Language, and similar neuroscience/brain-based inclinations coaching approaches including covering the cognitive, emotional, semantics, decisional, consciousness, unconsciousness, integral perspectives, psychological domains, and the like.

I would be interested to explore the sciences of ’scanning’ the brain whether physically; or via languaging patterns; or through conscious or unconscious thoughts & actions via non-communicative modes (if these ‘technologies’, already exist?) for the purpose to use in coaching. Are there such ‘technologies’ in existence now?

Billy C H Teoh
Malaysia.

I agree…..narratives are very powerful. I think that the way that we structure our narratives is critical to creating change. That is why I am so excited about the idea of change in coaching and how the brain can mediate that. But change extends beyond narratives, it involves image, emotion, memory and a host of other factors that can affect the ways in which we help people reach their goals.

David Rock and his associates have done some excellent research in this area. They presented their work several years ago at the evidence-based coaching conference in Sydney and they neurologically explained how “rewiring” actually happens physically, not just metaphorically. Just recently, he and Linda Page published a book “Coaching with the brain in mind”…

http://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Brain-Mind-Foundations-Practice/dp/0470405686/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233874630&sr=8-1

Hi Kerryn,

Thanks for watching the video and mentioning the work of David Rock. In fact, just checked in with him this weekend and he’s got two new books, “Your Brain at Work,” and the new textbook you mentioned, “Coaching with the Brain in Mind.”

This is such a fascinating subject, I can’t get enough of it.

Mark

mark

thanks for asking all the right questions. you know kerryn makes a great point in pointing out that the more we know about what is actually happening in the brain, the better off we are in thinking about coaching and its impact on the brain. i would also add that really nailing down those coaching applications is critical to affecting the practice of coaching directly and that we can help people bring their goals to action first by knowing what is going on in the brain for action to occur (or not occur) and then convert this into “easy to use” and “effective” language.

srini

Awesome video, Mark! People tend to assume that coaching is based on psychotherapy, but neuroscience is a far greater influence. I’m with you, I can’t get enough of it!

Thanks, Julia. (for the comment and all the kind RTs on Twitter!)

And watch for more brain science stories to come.

Mark