Organize Your Mind for Coaching

Where is your mind right now?

Now you can find it. The graphic above is what you might call a mind locator, or even a GPS for the mind. It’s a two-dimensional map. From right to left travels the level of executive control; i.e., the extent to which your left prefrontal cortex (PFC) is controlling and directing attention. The higher the control, the further to the left you are on the graph. In the middle are somewhat defocused creative brain states. On the right, your mind is wandering about without a leash.

The second dimension goes from thinking (lots of activity in the PFC) to sensory awareness, or experiencing, in the back and lower brain regions. In other words, it’s moving from what is described as “in your head” to “in your body.”

Consider where your mind lands on the map right now. You might be thinking critically about what you’re reading here. Thinking is a left PFC-controlled state.

Your mind might be wandering right now. Maybe this article isn’t engaging enough. Maybe you’ve got something else on your mind that’s hijacking your focus, so you’re not fully present and are only reading a few words in each paragraph.

Maybe you’re in a state of open awareness, where you’re living in your senses. There’s reduced activity in your prefrontal cortex. Your attention is focused on experiencing the light coming through your window, the music piping through your computer’s speakers, the apple that you’re snacking on.

There are numerous brain states—each with its own ideal application in our daily lives. Most of these are used in preparation for and during a coaching session. On the following pages, we highlight 12 brain states (in addition to a 13^th, not-yet-mapped state) that we’re likely to draw on before, during and after a coaching session.

Four strategies can be used in concert to cultivate an organized mind. The first strategy is to use your attention in an intentional way and choose the brain state that’s appropriate for the next task, a key strategy of an organized mind.

A second strategy is to go deep and invest all of your brain’s resources in one brain state only—to dive deep to where the treasures can be found. Beyond intention and depth, a third strategy is agility; i.e., making a quick and complete jump from one state to the next and moving all of your attentional resources instead of leaving part of your attention on the last task or worrying about the next tasks.

The fourth strategy is diversity—making use of the many, diverse brain states outlined here.

Meta-Awareness

The meta-awareness state is unique, although similar to strategic thinking (see page 28). It’s the state also defined as mindfulness, where we dial down the brain activity that is task-oriented or experience-oriented in order to dial up the brain region that is responsible for self-awareness, observation and reflection. It’s a place worth visiting frequently in order to pause and notice yourself in action and to get a strategic perspective on yourself, how the session is going, what you’re feeling, how much time is left and whether you need to adjust anything.

Reasoning/Thinking

As you prepare for a coaching session, you engage your brain’s executive control. Maybe you’re reviewing your notes. You’re making sure that you remember what happened in the last session. You’re looking at your client’s pre-work for the session. You have a tight focus, not a creative, somewhat defocused state. This kind of detailed, executive work stocks up your working memory with important pieces of information to draw on during the session.

Open Awareness

The ICF Core Competencies call on you to be open and present during your coaching sessions. The beginning of the session is the time to move into an open awareness state. You empty out the prefrontal cortex, where consciously directed thinking lives. As a result, your attentional resources are sitting in your senses. You’re here to fully experience, to breathe in and take in the moment. The open awareness state is the equivalent of shifting a car’s transmission into neutral: It’s an effective way to get out of our last brain state by getting into the present and pausing before moving intentionally into the next step of the session.

Narrow Awareness

Now you direct your awareness to the client’s presence, experiencing—rather than thinking about or analyzing—his mood and energy. This is the narrow awareness state where the left PFC gently focuses your senses and experiencing on another person, rather than the whole room and a full sensory experience.

Imagine

In Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity and Innovation in Your Life (Jossey-Bass, 2010), Shelley describes the imagining or envisioning brain state as critical to the creative process. The graphic indicates reduced PFC activity associated with this state, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. The action is in the visual areas at the back of the brain. Imagining the outcome of a coaching session, imagining the outcome of the change process, and visualizing where you and your client might go together are important steps for the human brain to create something new. Helping your client create a collaboration topic, a coaching program or a vision for the session—or even for his life—engages the envisioning brain state.

Collaborate

The collaborate brain state is a primary brain state used in a coaching session. It is beautiful: The left and right PFC regions are balanced and integrated. The social brain is fully engaged. Brain activity is high in many regions. Not surprisingly, this is a highly generative state that can lead to shifts in mindset; i.e., “aha” moments and insights that have the potential to elicit small brain changes which add up over many sessions to transform the brain—both mindset and behavior.

Flow

Described by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi as the key to optimal psychological well-being, individual flow states are those moments when we are immersed and enjoying an activity so much that we lose track of time and, without undue effort, execute the activity to the best of our abilities.

We don’t yet have a brain state for relational flow (i.e., a flow state involving two or more people, such as a coach and client). Relational flow is likely a hybrid of the collaborate and flow states, capturing the creative collaboration that occurs in the best coaching sessions.

Embodied Learning

Embodied learning takes place when humans learn by watching, observing and even absorbing others keenly. The middle and back of the brain are activated, and the PFC—the thinking brain—is turned down. This is the main mode of early childhood learning before kids have books and pencils. A coach takes in and absorbs the client’s presence. This state is also used by a client to take in the coach’s presence, including zest and curiosity, which contributes as much or more to the coaching dynamic as what coaches do when it comes to facilitating a rich exploration.

Nonlinear

This nonlinear state is where creativity happens. It’s even more defocused than the flow state. This is where you’re brainstorming, where you’re coming up with crazy ideas one after another. This creative brain state is a valuable contributor to the coaching process, where you get yourself and your client out of “normal” thinking patterns and into a creative, possibility-generating space that’s an amazing source of new perspectives and new ideas.

Strategic 

There are moments in coaching when you need to zoom out from the nitty-gritty to bigger-picture inquiries. This strategic brain state looks almost identical to the meta-awareness state. The same areas are activated, but to slightly different degrees. As noted earlier, this suggests that the meta-awareness state may in fact yield strategic perspectives on one’s self. In a coaching session, you might zoom out by asking: What shifts are you noticing? What patterns are emerging? What are you learning? Is this working for you?

Evaluate

The judging, evaluating, critiquing brain state—with the highest degree of executive control of all of the brain states explored here—is applied with great care in a coaching session. There’s no place in the coaching conversation for judgment of the client. However, this brain state is ideal when the collaboration turns to designing actions. This is where the critical thinking and evaluating brain state is ideal.

Mind-Wandering

The imagining and mind-wandering brain states look very similar. The only difference is that the left PFC, which is somewhat activated in the imagining state, is turned down even lower in the mind-wandering state. In fact, it’s fair to say that imagination is a controlled version of mind wandering directed toward something concrete (e.g., imagining the future). While you and your client may not unleash your mind to wander during a coaching session unless you take an intentional break, perhaps to do some deep breathing, it’s an invaluable brain state to recharge after a coaching session. Many creative ideas emerge spontaneously after deep focus periods, when working memory is richly stocked up with information and emotional energy and the brain is set free of ambition (e.g., when you’re taking a shower, going for a walk or jogging).

Gratitude

Although the neuroscience literature hasn’t yet mapped the brain regions activated in a state of gratitude, we’ve no doubt that a brain state for gratitude exists. This is where coaches want to shift at the end of the coaching session, as we harvest with our clients what we’ve learned and appreciate what went well. Generating gratitude—and modeling this for our clients—is a perfect brain state for a session close as well as a daily intervention for well-being.

Now the coaching session has ended. You were intentional and purposeful in your selection of brain states, taking your client with you to the deepest places of undivided attention. You were agile, shifting fluidly among many brain states throughout the session. And diversity abounded, as you used the brain states we describe here and likely more. Your client was uplifted by your organized mind, and committed to organizing his mind for the next steps in his journey of change.