Goldilocks and the Neuroscience of Change

Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2019/2020

Once upon a time, like Goldilocks, I went searching for ways to help myself be the be a better leader. I tried working more and more hours “this is no fun, I’m tired and grouchy all the time.”

I tried telling people what to do, or better still, doing it for them- “that didn’t work either – now they are grouchy and I’m still tired.”

Finally, I found a coach and got to know myself a little better – “Ahhh this is just right” I said happily and gobbled it all up.

An understanding of how the human brain works is essential knowledge for coaches. But how can we gain an understanding of this vast and ever evolving research? Especially for application to the coaching profession. Kingstown College faculty member Rachael Clarke Ph.D. distills the world of neuroscience into easy to understand principles and real-world advice on how to introduce it to your practice.

Coaches are turning to neuroscience to learn more about how we think, how we develop and how we perform. Ive gone back to my neuroscience roots to infuse  my practice with tools and techniques designed with the brain in mind. In this article I share key principles about the brain for facilitating learning and change and how we can build these into our coaching practice.

The brain is a connection machine

The brain creates million of new connections each second. It loves to make connections, its how we makes sense of the world.

If I asked you to think of a banana and what it means to you?  You might  come up with different things- the smell, color, taste. You may recall eating a banana and watching Bananas in Pajamas on TV.  We all have different concepts  for ‘banana’ and they connect when we think of the word.

We make connections to things we already know, it helps us develop our mental maps. It feels good, as chemical neurotransmitters are released (e.g. dopamine or noradrenaline) which drive people to take action. When we are unable to make a connection, when we cant think our way out of a problem, we hit an impasse.  Coaching helps people to resolve this by helping them think differently and create new mental maps.

To help: Often, we focus on what’s we can see – results, behaviours of individuals. Focusing on what is driving this, the thinking and feelings of the person makes it an effective tool for change.

1. Awareness is key. To support your coachee to identify the dilemma, I ask them to phrase the issue in this format: I would really like to _____________but ____________. Putting it into a short sentence, and focusing on the want, reduces the load on the working memory and increases the processing power available for considering the question from a range of angles. Avoid getting lost in the details of the problem and getting overloaded with information, you lose clarity of distance and cant see patterns as easily.
2. Help people make their own connections – What stage are you at in your thinking of this? How clear is your thinking on this? What connections are you making as we talk about this issue?
3. On seeing an aha moment, take a moment to highlight the insight and help deepen the wiring around their new thinking. E.g.how do you think we might move this insight forward? Whats do you thing your next step is based on this insight?

 Up close, no two brains are alike.

Everyone has a unique set of connections for how they think about things.  Your mental maps are different than everyone else’s. How you solve a problem is simply that- how YOU would do it.  Other people are likely to use different mental pathways to get there.

Because no two brains are alike, we all learn better when we find our own answers. Which is why advice giving rarely works. So If we want to improve the quality of others thinking our best option is to help them process ideas better

 To help: Remember the energy of finding an idea yourself generates noradrenaline and dopamine, driving people to want to take action

1. Use questions to make their ideas more clear e.g how long have you been thinking about this? How often do you think about this? When are you most likely to think about this?
2. Focus on finding relationships between concepts- what one word that describes how you are feeling right now? What impact is this having on you physically? What is the insight brewing at the back of your mind?
3. Support them in prioritising their thoughts- on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate x? Scaling things as percentages, ratios and ratings helps the brain rise about the detail and think about their thinking

The brain hardwires everything it can- this drives how we see the world

The brain is constantly changing. New ideas or behaviours use our short term memory (conscious brain)  which is a very limited resource for the brain. The brain prefers to hardwire any behaviours or thought or activity, that can be repeated  into our longer term memory (non-conscious brain) so it can draw from when needed.

The experience of learning a new skill e.g. driving a car, shows the shift from conscious to non-conscious and how something is repeated , even a few times can become part of our hardwiring and something we do automatically. This hard wiring helps to keep our short term working memory free and fresh, allowing us to make new connections.

Our short term memory (also called the Conscious Brain) is where we hold information in mind before processing it. It is where all high level thinking processes happens-  deciding, understanding, memorizing etc and is controlled by a tiny area of the brain, behind the forehead called the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC)) – its energy intensive, has a small capacity and is easily distracted!

Called the Goldilocks of the brain, the PFC functions best when everything is just right.  Research by Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten shows peak performance is achieved when out brains have just the right amount of two chemicals Noradrenaline( the chemical for alertness)  and Dopamine (the chemical of interest). If the balance is not right we are bored or overwhelmed.

Coaching with the brain in mind means working with the limitations of the PFC  in mind. It often involves getting people to move away from autopilot and old habits and into more conscious thought. It takes significant effort and energy from the coachee as the brains preference is to use the option already hardwired.

Its hard to deconstruct old wiring, its easy to create new wiring

We try to change our old wiring all the time. Trying to get rid of habits no longer serving us by focusing on the issue  is often ineffective. We can end up deepening the connection we are trying to break and creating more awareness of problems.Focusing on solutions is a better strategy. It creates energy in our minds and helps the brain stay in a positive state so we get more creative and open up more to ideas.

Keeping Hebbs Law (1949) in mind, Neurons that fire together, wire together. Three keys to helping habits and new wiring to stick are

1. Pay the new habit a lot of If we want to create a new, long lasting connection in our brain, we need to pay it a lot of attention in the form of the quality and quantity of focus. Getting people to put energy in, by having them think about it, write about it, speak about it   all make links to different parts of the brain and help create new maps with more density and more firmly.
2. Repeating the behaviour every time situation X arises, helps the brain build new hardwiring. Implementation intentions are a great way to help us remember to repeat something – If I am in circumstance x, then I should do y, in order to achieve Goal Z
3. Positive feedback is a signal to the brain to do more of something. It reinforces the new wiring the coachee is trying to make so it becomes a hardwired habit. When you give positive feedback when you notice the coachee focusing on solutions, the brain sees this as a reward which helps to further embed the new habit 

Good news! Experience consistently and continuously changes the brain.

In the fairy story, Goldilocks was the villain trespassing into the homes of the three bears. In the original, she gets eaten as a result. There are no bad endings here.

Healthy brains retain the ability to change and adapt and grow new connections over our entire life (called Neuroplasticity). Our role as coaches is to get curious and design experiences that take full advantage of this capacity for change. I hope this article has helped.

References

Arnsten,Amy . NeuroBiology pf Executive Function. Catecholamine Influneces on Prefrontal Cortical Functions. Biological Psychiatry. 2004 Oct. (published online)

Rock, David. Quiet leadership. (New York; Harper Collins, 2006) Brain based -coaching principles identified in this article originate from the NeuroLeadership Institute.

Taylor, Katherine and Marienau, Catherine. Facilitating learning with the adult brain in mind: A conceptual and Practical Guide (Wiley; 2016)