“I just received the following note from one of our Inner Circle members. Below the note is my response.”
Mike,
Thought the first article related to some of the things we have talked about—our thinking process
and brain science.
You can share it with the group if you think it would be helpful.
John
Library of Professional Coaching
Why Transformative Coaching Takes Guts
Posted: 23 Jan 2015 09:33 AM PST
Most trained coaches know how to be supportive, encouraging and nonjudgmental. These approaches are useful but often not enough to create a new awareness. Coaching starts by building trust and rapport, but as the conversation goes deeper you might need to generate a bit of discomfort to create a breakthrough in thinking.
What happens when you challenge someone’s thinking?
In order to define who we are and make sense of the world around us, our brains develop constructs and rules that we strongly protect without much thought. In Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (Ecco, 2011), neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga says we get stuck in our automatic thought-processing and fool ourselves into thinking we are right. When someone asks us why we did something, we immediately come up with an answer even if the response doesn’t make complete sense. We instantly concoct a brilliant reason for procrastinating on a task, for prioritizing reading email over a project deadline or for making life decisions based on how we will feel in the future when, in truth, we can never be sure how the circumstances will impact us emotionally.
To disturb this automatic processing, you reflect holes in your client’s logic and ask questions that reveal the fears, needs and desires keeping the constructs in place. NeuroBusiness Group founder and CEO Srinivasan S. Pillay, M.D. writes that this coaching approach is the only way to stop the automatic processing. Reflection and questions crack the force field that protects your client’s sense of reality, enabling her to explore, examine and change strongly held beliefs and behavior.
The reaction to bringing these things to light will register somewhere between slight discomfort and an emotional outpour. Momentary confusion and abrupt realizations trigger emotional reactions. The truth can hurt or at least surprise you before it sets you free.
Therefore, negative emotions can be a good sign. When your client realizes she has blocked a truth that was in her face the entire time, she may feel mortified, angry or sad. She is finally confronting her rationalizations and seeing her blind spots. For a moment, her brain does not know what to think. As Nessa Victoria Bryce writes in the July/August 2014 issue of Scientific American Mind, this pause in certainty as the brain rushes to reinterpret information is necessary for a clearer and broader understanding of the situation to emerge. In researching how coaching works in the brain for The Discomfort Zone, I found this moment of uncertainty is necessary for behavioral learning to occur. Only with this new awareness will your client willfully commit to behaving in a different way.
Know your WHY
Posted: 23 Jan 2015 07:57 AM PST
Why Know Your WHY?
Knowing Your WHY strengthens corporate culture, employee engagement and deepens connections with ideal clients, customers and investors
Discussions abound on how to fortify employee engagement. Awareness of the critical need to place employees and team members “in the right seats on the bus” has been heightened. Companies strive to create not only external raving fans, but impassioned, raving employees as well. Given recent trends and statistics, it is no surprise that organizations are placing a concerted effort on beefing up engagement.
Gallup states in their most recent State of the Workplace report that 70% of all employees are indifferent or actively disengaged, and that each “actively disengaged” employees costs an employer an average $25,000 per year. SHRM, (Society for Human Resources Management), estimates that bad hires cost up to five times their annual salary. Forbes cites an average annual turnover rate of 33%, with nine out of ten people leaving because of attitude.
Concern with these statistics is well founded. Again according to Gallup, it literally pays, in a big way, to be in the top 25% of “Engaged Companies.” Those that achieve this top quartile realize: 37% less turnover, 48% fewer safety incidents, 41% fewer product defects, 21% higher productivity, and my favorite: 22% higher profitability. Whether a given business or organizational leader is paternal and nurturing, or, conversely, dispassionate and bottom-line oriented, these numbers should be motivation enough. Leaders need to source, bring to their organizations, and institutionalize sure-fire ways to increase engagement.
Recently, I have been introduced to, and have become a huge proponent of, a novel approach to increasing both internal and external engagement. The “Know Your WHY” movement that is making great headway and producing consistently positive results as it spreads across the country and the globe. The secret sauce is that it is based on the way each individual in a business, organization, or team is hardwired.
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Mike’s response
I had mixed emotions about this…
to whom is the judgment left?
and how is the judgment formed, from what perspective?
I do believe that coaches should at times challenge thinking…
however, all this transformational coaching stuff is rare, because people don’t transform, they learn, grow and develop, i’m much more interested in scaffolding that process, instead of transformational work…
mike
