All the advances of medicine and its willingness to incorporate non-traditional approaches have not solved the problem of compliance. Not the government, public health officials, alternative health practitioners, or licensed medical practitioners know how to overcome resistance to keeping ourselves healthy. Even the threat of death is not enough to motivate many of us to do what we are told we must. Alan Deutschman (2006) says chances are only 1 in 9 that we will make a significant change, even when we are told our life’s at stake, as in Linda’s mother’s case. Deutschman says this is because the three techniques usually relied upon to create change—facts, fear, and force—do not work. He has taken on the mission of replacing these with three approaches that work better: relate, repeat, reframe. Not surprisingly, these are built into the coach approach. They are part of the shift from a top-down control approach to a more systemic understanding of what triggers a person’s own motivation to change.

Beyond being healthy, people want to know how to get better at doing the things they value most. These concerns link with the previous theme of “dynamic stability” in systems theory. Ongoing psychological change can be compared to the metaphor of “flow” as a flexible river between banks of rigidity on one side and chaos on the other. Flow indicates a balance between unyielding sameness experienced as boredom on one hand and constant, overwhelmingly chaotic upheaval on the other.

The two extremes represent the limits of desirable change, of dynamic stability that is part of our emerging definition of mental and physical wellness.

This idea of flow is one that will recur in this and chapters to come. High-performance athletes speak of flow, as an indication of peak performance. Page (2005) suggests that flow is the subjective experience of “expertising.” In all these cases, dynamic stability or flow has to do with changing in ways we desire. Change is not always desirable, as we discover in the case of individual illness or aging or societal and organizational upheaval.

Change is at the heart of coaching. Coaches fall in the category of human change agents or facilitators. In the presence of a coach, change may happen faster or more easily or be more desirable. Knowledge of change can help coaches fulfill this potential. We explore these questions in the sections to come:

Kinesiology is a related field that developed out of medicine and physical education and encompasses human anatomy, physiology, bio-mechanics, exercise physiology, exercise psychology, and the sociology, history, and philosophy of sport. Most of the research that informs sports coaching is generated by these disciplines.

There are hundreds of sports coaching books on the market, with the work of Timothy Gallwey being prominent. Gallwey’s books include The Inner Game of Golf (1981), The Inner Game of Tennis (1987), and The Inner Game of Skiing (1997). They demonstrate the power of coaching more than they teach the novice how to acquire new skills in sports.

Gallwey’s more recent Inner Game of Work (2001) shows how coaching skills can be applied to the occupational world. Gallwey coaches people to be successful by suggesting that they simplify their thinking and believe in themselves. He developed the formula p = P - I, meaning performance equals potential less any interference.

The idea that our minds can interfere to limit our performance is central to sports psychology. Finding the right mental zone when under pressure requires removing mental distractions. The neuroscience behind this principle is that each neuron has a limited capacity for electrical signals (about 2,000 per second) so that the brain can be literally flooded by internally generated signals, making it harder to process external information.

The Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology by Schoenfeld and colleagues (2003) examines the field of sports psychology in some detail and offers excellent resources for coaches of all types.

Three central concepts from sports psychology that are relevant to coaching include:

A brief summary of each concept follows, along with some key findings.

There is substantial research on why and how goal setting works, the right types of goals to set, and how to set them. The Coaching Science Abstracts Web site developed by Brent Rushall (1996) is an excellent resource. He reports research indicating that effective goals are:

The science behind visualization is this: The pathways in the brain that we use to undertake an activity—for example, throwing a basketball into a hoop—are the same pathways used when we merely picture this activity. In both instances, the visual cortex—the part of the brain that sees—is activated. Because use of any circuit strengthens that circuit, rehearsing a performance in the imagination can prepare mental circuits in ways similar to the real performance.

However, effective visualization must be correct, precise, and repeated.

In some ways, coaching a top executive is similar to coaching a top athlete. In The Psychology of Executive Coaching, Bruce Peltier (2001) summarizes the similarities between coaching athletes and coaching executives. Both types of coaches are exhorted to:

We have discussed basic principles of change that hold true at different levels as a part of systems theory. Here we focus on information about barriers to change that create conflict with new initiatives, especially in organizations. We present models that can help coaches facilitate changes that a client desires.

One major reason is the homeostatic tendency of complex systems such as human minds and organizations to balance movement in one direction with compensatory movement in the opposite direction. Other reasons are to be found in discoveries from psychology and from neuroscience.

Bruce Peltier (2001) describes the link between the theory of cognitive dissonance and why individuals resist change. Individuals are comfortable when their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are consistent, and they are uncomfortable when they are in conflict (dissonant). Changing often means admitting that our past behavior was wrong or in some way making a break from the past. Cognitive dissonance suggests that admitting we were wrong triggers anxiety from the inconsistency between past behavior and current beliefs about it. In fact, for some individuals whose core belief is “I must always be right,” it may be more important to be “right” than to be happy or accepted by one’s colleagues.

In 2004, now as Marilee Adams, she integrated her question-based theory of change into a business fable, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work, to illustrate the process she had discovered. Adams noticed that change agents such as coaches, organizational development consultants, human relations professionals, and mediators have been as responsive to her theory of change as psychotherapists.

From a brain perspective, it is not surprising that our inner questions and internal conversations frame and impact how we perceive the world and therefore how we act in that subjective reality. We noted in chapter 3 that our default mental process is to engage in an inner narrative, especially involving posing questions and seeking answers about our social environment. This sets up expectations which, we will learn in chapter 6, orient our senses to notice and process information matching the expectations we set or inner questions we ask. We act on what we notice. Even what we see as a possibility for action is influenced by our mindset or state of mind. Thus, becoming conscious of and changing our self-questioning is a powerful way to take control of changing our behavior.

When our error detection machinery goes into overdrive, we end up with the problem we mentioned earlier: obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Our brain sends a constant, incorrect message that something is wrong, so we keep trying to fix what we think is the source of the problem (out there), but because it is the (internal) message itself that is incorrect, the problem never gets fixed by what we keep doing.

Even for people without OCD, trying to change a routine behavior triggers messages in our brain that something is not right. These messages are designed to demand our attention, and they can readily overpower rational thoughts. But, as we have mentioned, psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz (Schwartz & Begley, 2002) found that even the extremely resistant disorder of OCD could be changed by the application of what he calls “mental force,” one aspect of which is “veto power,” which we will explain in detail in chapter 6.

We are fortunate that practice results in repeated activities being taken on by deeper structures that are more efficient and leave our working memory free to deal with novel happenings. For instance, after just a few months of learning to drive a car, we begin to do it without thinking. Once that happens, changing to drive on the other side of the road requires full conscious attention. It does not feel natural. Many people who swap continents prefer never to have to undergo this experience.

Most of what we do every day is habitual, including how we get out of bed, shower and dress, plan our day, get to work, and deal with challenges. Trying to change any of this takes a lot more energy, in the form of attention, than many people are willing to invest. Just as we prefer not to learn to drive on the other side of the road, we do what we can to avoid change in many situations.

There are more explanations and models for how and why change is challenging. Much of this book is about how to make change easier. The previous points are just some of the reasons that change is harder than is generally understood. We have been led to believe by the behaviorist view that people will change if they are given the right incentives. This may be the case with animals and children in relation to basic behaviors, but when it comes to creating change in high-functioning adults, there is far more resistance and complexity than can be addressed simply through a carrot-or-stick approach. There are physiological forces that resist change. Even folding our arms the other way—with the opposite forearm on top—triggers discomfort that signals us to return to the “right” way of doing things.

These models provide options to support clients through change in any given situation.

All change models have two things in common:

Lewin wrote “Group Decision and Social Change” (1947) after World War II. His theories were applied in the military as well as in education and are often referred to as strategies for brainwashing. He describes a “three-step process of change”:

According to this model, change proceeds in stages, and people will need to complete one stage before moving to the next.

Although Kübler-Ross calls this a “stage theory,” these stages are not linear. Clients can skip over some or stay stuck in one. It is important to recognize that, for some clients, change feels like death. Most coaches and their clients will have experienced this kind of emotional cycle around any major change. Events like a relationship breakup, a large business loss, or a serious illness could bring on any or all of these stages. And, in our experience, the only “mistake” that clients make is assuming that they can avoid this process entirely.

The Kübler-Ross model is useful in a number of ways. Coaches may help clients:

When clients understand that their reactions to change are normal and to be expected, their anxiety and fear are reduced. Although the emotions themselves may continue to be strongly felt, disturbing thoughts about the emotions, such as “I must be going crazy” or “This will never stop,” may be relieved.

In 1994, Prochaska and two colleagues wrote Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward. The authors studied over 1,000 people who had positively and permanently altered their lives without psychotherapy, thus making his model of particular interest to coaches. Here is the model they developed:

These stages are not necessarily linear. A client could start at any of the earlier stages and could move up and down the stages as well.

The model helps clients see their change process from a higher perspective. It also can be seen as an elaboration of Lewin’s three-step model. In understanding this, clients can get some distance from the process of changing their smoking or other behavior, as recommended by David Rock’s “clarity of distance” approach (2006). Or, from a solutions-focused perspective, it is the smoking that is the problem, not the person.

Coaches often feel a responsibility to hold clients accountable for their actions, but clients should not be rushed into changes until they have done sufficient contemplation and preparation. The ability to balance accountability and preparation is the mark of an experienced coach. The model also indicates that a maintenance program may be required to ensure that the change is not just short term.

An effective way of using this model in coaching is to help clients spend time at each step in the process, identifying activities to deepen their experience in each stage.

With an understanding of this change model, coaches can better help their clients complete any change they want to undergo. The process is similar for changing a health-related behavior or developing a new skill or habit.

The transtheoretical model is directly relevant to coaching and deserves the attention of any student or practicing coach.

Bridges makes a distinction between transition and change: Transition is internal, while change is external. Transition is the psychological reorientation that an individual must go through before the external change can take effect. Some examples of external changes include a different policy, practice, or structure that a leader is trying to introduce. Transition takes longer because it requires three separate processes, all of which are emotionally unsettling. These can also be referred to as phases because the process is not linear, and individuals may move back and forth among the phases:

In his book Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes (2004), Bridges outlines this “Checklist of Change”:

Bridges believes that in order for leaders to coach others through a transition, they must be coached first. Leaders must understand the transition phases in order to help their employees through them, and a good coach can help leaders discover their own unique best approaches.

Clients can easily identify with the simplicity of William Bridges’ three-phase model and the emotions associated with each phase. It is especially important to understand the middle phase of fear and uncertainty and that many clients will hold on to their current ways of thinking to avoid the emotions in this stage.

This model has links to the discussion earlier and in subsequent chapters about hardwiring well-practiced habits. The model can be helpful for clients who are trying to change a habit or learn a new skill. It is easy for people to become disheartened and quit as they enter stage 2, so it will be useful for clients to know it is normal to feel worse, not better, after they start attempting a new skill. An easy way to explain this model is with the analogy of learning to drive, a common skill today. Most people are now able to drive a car without thinking about it. When they were first learning (conscious incompetence and conscious competence), they usually felt incompetent and stressed about it.

In the business environment, a number of new skills challenge people, especially new hires and people in new positions.

In other situations, newly minted senior leaders may need to learn to delegate better, or empower others more, or build consensus more effectively. In any of these situations, clients may experience considerable discomfort when they first try a new skill, and it may take some time and focus to get them to the place of unconscious competence. Coaches can help again by naming and normalizing the experiences their clients are going through.

Howell’s model can also be useful in learning to coach, as this requires new habits and skills that we want to be automatic, or unconscious, so we can apply our conscious attention to the needs of the client. For example, self-managing (detaching from the client’s emotions), listening for the client’s positive energy instead of for problems, and learning to let the client do the thinking about their issues are all necessary to our work as coaches, and they all may take time and practice before becoming unconscious competencies.

Kotter’s model is one of the most useful for executing successful change programs, as, unlike other models that focus on the challenges or map the change process, it points to what to do more of. Kotter’s model can be directly applied to goals that a client wants to achieve.

The fifth discipline is systems thinking, which fuses other leadership attributes into a whole that supports business goals. Senge’s ideas about change come out of his systems theory perspective:

Senge encourages managers to think like biologists or ecologists when approaching organizational change, considering the whole system and how that system will evolve over time through interactions with other systems. Because of the complexity of an organizational system, trying to plan every step in detail actually constrains a leader’s capacity to respond to the unexpected. We have already discussed the systems perspective and related concepts of complexity and chaos in chapter 3.

Many versions of this model exist, all of which share the difficulty of representing in two-dimensional space the development over time of ever more complex concepts or knowledge or skills. Figure 5.1 is a simple example. The process cycles clockwise from action to reflection and back, as represented by the arrows. Experience and experimentation transform what is observed and reflected upon, just as observation and reflection transform the concepts and plans for the next action. The arrows the next time around are never at the same point as the last time around. This spiral into increasing complexity is what differentiates expertise building from mere repetition of the same experience. That is why some people can spend many years driving a car and yet not be expert drivers, as compared to those who consciously attend to the experience of driving and utilize what they learn to improve their next actions behind the wheel.

Coaches play an important role for clients, in that they offer the necessary support and structure to deal effectively with change. Understanding the different models discussed in this chapter is important because the issue of change will be part of almost every coaching session. By sharing the models of change with clients, we can help them feel “normalized” and not so alone in their emotional state. The next general principles apply no matter which specific model the coach (or client) may choose:

It is not surprising that nearly every book or article on change begins with the claim that change is inevitable and that individuals or organizations resist change at their own peril. Systems do fail, and change that overwhelms our capacity to maintain some sort of solid footing is usually the culprit. This is certainly the case with our brains. Although human beings display considerable neural resilience in recovering from or working around disease or injury to the brain, this becomes impossible when the traumatic change is too severe.

Mental disorders may be categorized as indicating either too much chaos and changeability (e.g., bipolar disorder) or too much rigidity and lack of change (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder). The space between these two extremes is a healthy state of dynamic stability. In order to build an understanding of how to achieve that state, we turn next to exploring the relationship between changing our minds and changing our brains.