The role of the coach goes beyond helping things to be done
There is no doubt that client expects the truth from the coach because that is precisely the perspective for which the coach has been hired. They are often so close to their own situation, so wrapped up in their own histories and habitual patterns that they are sometimes unable to see the truth accurately. Maybe, this is one of the reasons for seeking out the coaching. They rely on the coach for the acuity that sees through the chaos and fog.
Truth telling doesn’t have to be confrontational, although it may confront. It can be handled with sharpness or softness, but it confronts the usual tacit acceptance of the client’s explanations. Telling the truth refuses to sidestep or overlook. But, pay attention: telling the truth is not a judgmental talking. It is merely stating what has been seen. Withholding the truth serves neither the client nor the coaching relationship. A real relationship is not built on being nice; it is built on being real. When the coach has the courage to tell the truth, the client gets a model for the art of being straight. And in the process, more trust is built between coach and the client.
Through the coaching conversation clients become fully aligned and purposeful with their inner human being. Developing these powerful conversations demands from ourselves, as coaches, the capacity to observer our own patterns, specially the habitual structures of our minds that are consciously or unconsciously in our way of living our highest truth and values.
Understanding how brain works – one of the key aspects to deal with client’s patterns.
Understanding how the brain works and use this knowledge to explore our own brain habits will help us to understand the patterns of our clients and so it will be easier to help then to recognize their own patterns. The brain activities is explained here in a very basic level described mainly to support our understanding the essence of this power tool – Getting the Crux.
Paul Gossen and Marilyn Atkinsin help us using a practical and simple description about the way we think: we are hardwired for three thinking styles.” They are: the Reptilian or Reticular Brain, the Mammalian or Emotional Brain and the Visual or Cerebral Brain.
The Reptilian Brain has developed over millions of years to protect us. It manages our bodies and habits, and takes over in flight- or – fight emergencies. Even though this brain is responsible for reactions that ensure our immediate physical safety, it sometimes is confused by what is an imagined threat or a real danger. We can imagine situations where we reacted and behave in such a way that later we recognize it was an overreaction. So when we reflect back we feel sometimes ashamed or embarrassed. It is important to recognize that in that moment the reptilian brain took over your mind in an unproductive manner. The good news is we can learn how to use our whole brain effectively avoiding this happen again.
The Mammalian Brain is known as Emotional Brain too and it is the source of our communication and emotions. All language takes place in this area. Since mammals lives in groups the communication is crucial for survival. It began its development near the end of the dinosaur age, at least 50 million years ago. It has been working together with the reptilian brain and developed into a smoothly functioning team. Together they link physical awareness with emotional awareness, providing an active memory and present awareness. Our emotional brain brings past learning into the moment of now and does not think of the future or long-term consequences. This brain reviews its memories from the inside looking out. It means, it associates into all memories as if the events were happening again right now! Doing this you “step into a past moment, connect with your feelings and momentarily relive the event as it happened before. This is a key distinction to understand as a transformational communicator: associated memories are experienced as if the memory is really happening again with a strong feeling of the emotion attached to that moment.”
Another two important features of the emotional brain are: it prefers things to remains the same, to keep long term habitual patterns and it thinks in terms of yes or no, right or wrong, this or that and does not see shades of gray. Black is black, white is white and there is nothing in between. It is easy recognized when people are immersed in fear-based thinking. Like the reptilian brain, the emotional one is designed to response immediate urgencies and its priority is the survival of the group, the family or the tribe. So changes needs to guarantee the group is safe. This brain works in a close collaboration for the reticular one. The consequences are that both work to protect the person, physically or emotionally if he or she feels threatened. They tend to keep thing being the same. So they are against changing habits or patterns in spite of the desire expressed through words.
The third part is the Visual Brain or The Cerebral Brain, which isunique to primates and gives us the ability to see things that aren’t physically here. We cannot think of the future without using our visual brain. Anything created by humans is created with the visual brain. The visual brain generates the creative and brilliant ideas. This brain is the resource that helps us to overcome the habits of the emotional brain and then make contact with the image of the future we want to create. Its focus is on our future, completing our plans and accomplishing ours goal. The visual brain is only 2 to 2,5 million years old – very young when compared to the others ones. It is responsible for our capacity to build future visioning – running images of possible plans, comparing and discarding scenarios until a plan is selected. This requires amazing visual brainpower. The visual brain thinks in dissociated images, forming pictures of an event as if it was happening to someone else so that the emotional component is lessened. It does not seem as real to us, so we can imagine and consider many approaches and ways to go about making the best choices. The frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex give us the ability to mentally rehearse an activity before you engage in it. It is useful to reinforce that the cerebral cortex is responsible for the development of language systems and in comparison with other capabilities of the brain, language is a very recent development. This means that language shows up as a very limited expression of our brain’s amazing visual power. It provides only a rough shorthand description of what we are thinking and can often be used clumsily in expressing what we deeply think and feel. Our voices are much slower than our brain: we simply cannot communicate fast enough to describe everything happening inside our brain, nor are we consciously aware of everything that is being processed and considered by all three brains at any given point in time.
The negative reptilian
It is very interesting the Gossen’s approach when he points out that in business today, most people are motivated by the negative reptilian brain or fear of negative consequences. He gives us the example of people who produce results in a short period of time after procrastinating too much. For him fear is a great way to get into action and so the stick is necessary to force the things getting done. The problem using this practice to motivate someone is that it leads to the easy way of getting stuck in the negative mammalian brain and to fall into the looping pattern of talking about what will not work.
No stick = no action
Too much stick = no passion
The negative mammalian
As it has been said communication comes from the mammalian brain and it is how we assure our place in the group. Unfortunately, humans present huge challenge on using the communication skill appropriately, even when talking to themselves! Without having a clear contract to produce results creates a room to complaints or gossip. Complaint can be used as a way to avoid personal commitment to solve problems. Gossip is when we talk about someone in a negative way without any interest in supporting them.
Talk – contract = gossip
Both, complaint and gossip is a huge barrier to transformation and result in a dis-engaged position from life and work. It is amazing how we find dis-engaged people who look for coaching process. I really believe that it is one of the reasons people talk too much, loosing themselves in a circle of thoughts and find difficult to get to the crux. It seems the bad habit of running way from their inner essence damages their capacity to listen to themselves and to meet their own choices and feelings, getting the center of an issue.
The solution for this challenge is the power of our visual brain because since it is responsible for making internal pictures of the future it helps us to connect and to re-engage in our life and work. Actually, we are already master at using our visual brain. When we react to fear for example, it is a result for a bad scenario we have built and then we spent time talking about a way to avoid the situation created by our visual brain.
Making pictures of what you don’t want is a great way to stop yourself from achieving your goals.
So this is the reason that some people get stuck on the negative or feel far from finding their own answers. Creating a safe space and stimulate the client to make the picture of what he or she do really want is the essence of coaching and it is done through powerful questions because they have the power to engage the visual brain.
Positive visual
When all three brains are in agreement we will feel aligned because the reptilian brain shows us ways to be physically safe, our emotional brain will keep us emotionally supported and our cerebral cortex will plan our vision. The result is a success.
Coaching process can offers a great space to develop the skill of managing the brain system through a transformational conversation.
Understanding this brain activities will support the use of this power tool called – Getting to the Crux”. People in general have not been taught to develop the conscious mind. Then, they spent a lot of energy talking about the past, experiencing past event as it is the current reality and having difficult to let them go and start focusing in the future.
Coaching Application
Considering all these concepts and asking how can we apply this to the coaching process I would like to invite you to reflect about some questions that could be helpful in order to deal with clients who is attached to the past or to a lot of talking:
Besides, asking some of these questions I would like to suggest an exercise to be offered to clients in order to enhance their capabilities to think deeper about the experience they are talking in order to clarify the center of an issue. Doing this could offer clients to acquire some ability to structure his or her thoughts and in order to figure out their patterns, values, learning style and choices they have made. This process is good path to go straight to a situation I immediately look for a solution based in the future outcomes which is important.
Rosangela R Pedrosa
Brazil, January/ 2014