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In this video, CoachReporter Mark Joyella talks to Dr. Srini Pillay, a Harvard neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychiatry, who also teaches brain science to coaches.
Dr. Pillay believes that understanding what happens in the brain–and how the brain resists change–can give coaches tools to overcome that resistance and help clients reach their goals and find sustainable change.
CoachReporter: Using Neuroscience to Coach People to Reaching their Goals from Mark Joyella on Vimeo.
Dr. Pillay and Hendre Coetzee, founder of the 90-Day Turn and author of “The 90-Day Turn System Coaching Program,” are co-presenting a
three-day workshop entitled “The Neuroscience of Change and Transformation: Executive Coaching Tools for Embracing a New Era.”
The workshop (October 1-3 in New York City) will teach participants state-of-the art applications of brain science to organizational change. Details about the workshop can be found here.
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There are 9 Responses so far...
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
Coaching is the process of making people think, so the more understanding one has of what is going on “under the hood” the better you will coach.
One coaches for behavioral change, and breakthrough in coaches frequently lies behind “poking” a belief. Beliefs drive behaviour, beliefs or any other though are an electro-chemical signal on a neural pathway. Physical. Last 10 years understanding of neuroscience shows the brain can physically rewire itself. Coach helps that happen by triggering thinking and tapping the subconscious.
Observation over years in the business:
If a question taps the subconscious deeply and triggers thinking;
The “NLP” practitioner would say “That was a NeuroLinguistic structure”
The hypnotherapist would say “That was a hypnotic question”
The master coach would say “That was a really good question”