Adding neuroscience coaching to your skillset expands your ability to guide and support clients in what neuropsychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz calls self-directed neuroplasticity. This means tapping into inherent brain patterns, enhancing empathetic listening, and mastering insightful questions for transformative journeys.
Understanding how the brain processes information, creates habits, and forms beliefs can help coachees discover new access routes to their goals and re-direct existing pathways, dampening those that no longer serve them.
Brain-Based Coaching
Brain-based coaching is a structured practice that combines the best of neuroscience, neuropsychology, and behavioral techniques. It uses a unique framework to support individuals and teams to develop their thinking, resulting in heightened focus and performance. It also enables them to overcome negative pathways by forming fresh and productive ones.
Unlike conventional coaching, brain-based coaching is about helping coachees reconnect with their best thinking. It is designed to be self-directed, and the coachee will be encouraged to explore their deepest insights and most powerful beliefs. It also provides a space for them to create new ways of thinking and acting to achieve their goals.
The training is based on the latest scientific research in brain science and how it relates to the world of leadership and business. The program is highly practical and provides attendees with comprehensive tools to improve their ability to generate insights, develop habits, and create lasting change. It also teaches participants how to use neuroscience-based coaching in a business setting.
A key feature of brain-based coaching is its ability to optimize the brain’s natural ability to process information bilaterally. This allows you to make the most of your potential and will help you to become a more effective leader. In addition, brain-based coaching will teach you how to maintain presence and listen actively, a vital aspect of being an effective coach. These skills will help you to build trust and cultivate a strong relationship with your client. They will also allow you to work together effectively with your client and achieve their desired results. The program is an excellent choice for any professional who wants to take their coaching skills to the next level.
Neuroplasticity
The brain is an incredibly flexible organ, with neuroplasticity playing a key role in learning and memory formation. Neuroplasticity allows the brain to rewire pathways, create new connections, and, in some cases, even change the brain’s physical structure. This flexibility enables people to adapt to change and recover from injury.
Neuroplasticity occurs throughout the lifespan and is most prominent in childhood. However, it is not limited to children: everyday behaviors can have measurable effects on the brain’s structure and function at any age. For example, a study that followed taxi drivers who spent time memorizing city streets found that their hippocampus—the area of the brain that processes memories—had grown larger than those who did not drive. The same is true for meditation, yoga, and any other activity that requires sustained attention and practice over time.
This ability to rewire the brain is also important in personal development, as it can help us develop resilience and learn how to manage setbacks and adversity. For example, a person who is not resilient may respond to challenges by feeling overwhelmed and giving up, but practicing mindfulness and taking control of their thoughts can teach them how to reframe difficult situations as opportunities for growth.
While some forms of neuroplasticity can be harmful, such as maladaptive plasticity, many are beneficial and support mental well-being. For instance, some forms of neuroplasticity can help patients recover from strokes by relearning skills stored in damaged areas of the brain. Neuroplasticity can also promote mental health by lowering stress levels and fostering a healthy mindset. It is, therefore, essential to include activities that stimulate neuroplasticity in your daily routine, such as learning a new skill or engaging in regular exercise.
Intuition
Neuroscience-based coaching offers a framework to validate coaching as an effective tool to change the brain. It allows for greater self-insight and helps people form fresh, productive pathways in their brains that override the old non-productive ones. This can help them achieve their goals and lead a more fulfilling life. It also helps them discover new avenues that they can pursue for personal and professional growth.
A neuroscience-based approach to coaching also enables coaches to work with their clients to understand how the brain processes information and makes decisions. This helps them provide a stronger empirical underpinning to their work, which is essential in many cases. For example, understanding the role of the amygdala in the brain can help coaches understand why it is important to not take emotional triggers personally and avoid their negative effects on their coachee’s performance and well-being.
The brain-minded coach can use this knowledge to better support their clients, helping them to make more informed decisions and develop a deeper sense of self-trust. In addition, it helps coaches to recognize the value of intuition in their coaching and create a space for it. Intuition is a crucial component of human memory, and it’s rooted in the same brain regions as emotions and pattern recognition. It’s also mercurial and often occurs outside of conscious reasoning, making it a powerful tool for decision-making.
Intuition can be useful in a variety of situations, such as when choosing a career path or deciding how to spend money. It can also be beneficial in relationships, as it allows individuals to consider their gut feelings, emotions, and subconscious knowledge when making decisions. Intuition can also be a helpful way to resolve conflict in relationships.
Empathy
Adding a scientific dimension to your coaching approach can legitimize your work and help your clients feel safe enough to explore emotions and surface their own challenges. Neuroscience provides a scientific framework for change that can support people to build new, healthy, productive pathways.
Empathy is understanding and sharing another person’s feelings, thoughts, or situation. For example, if your friend is feeling sad after losing a loved one, you can sympathize with them and feel the same sadness they do. Similarly, if your spouse is angry at you, you can empathize with their feelings and understand their point of view.
Researchers have found that coaching with empathy – for example, listening with compassion and caring – helps to activate what is called a positive emotional attractor in the coachee’s brain. This helps to lower activity in the amygdala, which is important for managing negative emotions such as anxiety and fear.
Research shows that a neuroscience-based approach to coaching can support clients to develop positive new neural networks, respond more calmly under stress, and access much more of their creativity. It also helps them to become more resilient, and to develop richer relationships with other people.
A neuroscience-based coaching approach also enables coaches to use the evidence from social neuroscience, positive psychology, and behavior change theory, together with top-end professional coaching principles and practices, to guide their clients to deep levels of exploration, discovery, growth, and sustainable transformation. This is because a high neurological engagement state optimizes clarity of thinking, creativity, problem-solving, engagement, and motivation. It also enables sustainable changes to be made through the power of neuroplasticity.
Learning
Learning is a central aspect of personal development. Learning can help you develop a new skill, change a habit, or learn more about yourself. By making these changes, you can feel more accomplished and happier. You can also develop a better relationship with others. Learning can help you achieve your goals in life and reach your full potential.
Neurocoaching is an evidence-based coaching approach that combines neuroscience discoveries with proven coaching practices and tools. It’s a powerful tool for coaches, leaders, therapists, and wellbeing practitioners to use with their clients. It can help you and your client develop clarity of thinking, creativity, insight, motivation, engagement, and the ability to learn.
It is important to keep in mind that neuroscience is just one part of a broader coaching framework that incorporates positive psychology, self-leadership, and behavior change theory. Using neuroscience in coaching is not just a way to add credibility to your work but can actually improve the quality of your client’s experience of their sessions.
For example, discussing the brain’s innate tendency to re-wire, opening up new access routes, and dampening non-serving pathways has opened a whole new realm of possibility for some of my clients. It gives them a sense of safety and permission to discuss their emotions in ways they previously could not.
For other clients, the scientific underpinning provides more credibility for them to commit to the hard work of changing their habits and behaviors. It can also help them trust that their coach is taking their goals seriously and will deliver tangible, results-based outcomes. This has helped many clients to gain greater trust in the process and energy to engage.