CHAPTER 9
Neuroscience Platform—Cognition
The agents at Roberto’s real estate agency were dissatisfied. One or another complained to him almost daily that they weren’t getting the support they needed, that his portion of commissions was too high, that he simply wasn’t a good manager. Who was behind this unrest, he wondered, and why did they do what they did? They certainly were not being loyal to the firm. He talked to each agent individually, identified the three ringleaders, and fired them. Instead of improving the situation, however, morale and sales deteriorated, other agents quit, and the agency was on the verge of bankruptcy. In desperation, Roberto took the suggestion of a colleague and set up an appointment with a coach.
After introducing coaching and listening to his concerns, the coach surprised Roberto by focusing not on the impending bankruptcy or the misbehavior of the agents but on that all-important question Roberto had asked himself when he became aware of the difficulties: “Who is behind this, and why did they do what they did?”
At the end of a series of sessions that explored this and other questions he typically asked himself, Roberto realized that by asking that question, he had assumed that a person or people were causing the problem. If the problem had to do with his business model or with events outside the agency, he would never identify the cause by asking that question. By asking that initial question, he had gone down a path of prejudging his troubles as being caused by the people who complained about them.
Second, once Roberto realized that he had prejudged the situation without really finding out what was going on, he came to look at the complaints through the eyes of the agents, recognizing that they were simply messengers rather than culprits.
Furthermore, until he began asking “What can I do to make this better?” his thinking was mired in past blame and fault-finding rather than on future solutions. He was limiting his ability to harness expectations and promote change. The solution began with his awareness of why he had behaved as he did.
At the most general level, what we do is move toward what we perceive as rewarding and away from danger. But this movement is mediated by our thinking. As Marilee Adams (2004), has found, our thinking is guided by the questions we ask ourselves. We are constantly trying to decide which is which, interpreting the meaning of what happens to us and what others do and what the effects are. Our minds are busy even when we do not want them to be, as when we are trying to fall asleep but that big meeting tomorrow keeps coming to mind. And when we do fall asleep, our brains still actively dream, even if “we” are not consciously aware. In the process of “flow,” we can be thinking but also not consciously aware of it—more like being “lost” in thought. Most of our thoughts are taken up with social rehearsal or replay or anticipation or regret. And thinking cannot be separated from feeling. Because thinking is so central to all that we do, it is a natural subject of study, but that does not mean it is easy to study.
• Is thinking just having a conversa‘tion with ourselves, inside our heads? If so, do babies who have not learned language think?
• Do some people think better than others?
• Can people who do not think so well learn how to think better?
• How does thinking relate to intelligence?
• Do people who know a lot think better?
• How can we make ourselves think some things and not think other things?
• If we get rid of emotions and only think logically, would that improve our intelligence?
• Why is so much of our thinking memories about what has already done and gone?
• How can we make sure we “remember” to return that phone call tomorrow? How can it be “memory” when it is in the future?
• What does attention have to do with thinking and memory?
• Who is it who is paying attention?
Psychologists and neuroscientists have tried to deal with confusion surrounding the common term “thinking” by calling what they study “cognition.” As we described earlier, the “cognitive revolution” burst out of psychology’s behavioral straitjacket and began to experiment with answers to questions such as the ones just listed. At first, the messy topics of emotions and context were excluded in an attempt to narrow and clarify the definition. But there is no way to totally split off “cold” cognition from “hot” emotions without destroying our ability to function as human beings. And, as psychiatrist Leslie Brothers (2001) points out so cogently, it may be that psychology’s definition of “person” as being separate from the social surround is preventing neuroscience from developing a brain-based language because it is locked into the common equation that mind equals individual brain.
We deal with these topics in the next sections:
• Memory
• Awareness
• Mapping and predicting
• Dilemma model
• Practice guide for coaching with the brain in mind—Make decisions and solve problems
MEMORY
If we could not remember, we could not learn, and we would have to decide anew whether to approach or avoid every experience. Most of what we think of as thinking involves memory in some way. Even remembering to be aware requires a certain type of memory.
Types of Memory
Cognitive psychology divides memory topics into short term and long term (Eysenck & Keane, 2005). Short-term memory, including what we have referred to as working memory, is limited to what we can pay attention to. Depending on how much attention we pay and for how long, items in short-term memory can be “stored” for the long term. This long-term storage is quite vast, although we cannot always access it—we know we know that person’s name or what to call that new plant in the garden, but we just cannot remember.
We are also able to “remember” things without consciously knowing that we do. This is a capacity we have from before birth, as indicated by the research on babies’ preference for music heard while they were in the womb (Levitin, 2006). This is called implicit memory. Throughout our lives, we can react to the present moment as if it were a past event but not know it is the past that we are “bringing into” the present via implicit memory. We remember implicitly without consciously recalling what it is we are remembering, or even being aware that it is a memory we are reacting to rather than what is happening to us in the immediate present. Psychotherapists are particularly interested in this type of memory, but it is important for coaches to understand it, too.
Explicit memory is what we commonly mean when we speak of remembering. The ability to make this kind of memory does not happen for human beings until we are around 2 years old, at about the same time that we learn to speak a language. Based on explicit memory, we know that we know something, even when we cannot remember what it is exactly.
Memory can also be divided into declarative, or knowing what, and procedural, or knowing how. Declarative memory includes the ability to remember episodes in our lives as well as general and semantic knowledge, such as the language we speak, which is not connected with a time or place. Procedural knowledge is body and movement memory—how to ride a bike, to swim, to tie a shoelace, to play an instrument. The fact that stroke or brain damage can leave us unable to recognize a shoelace or declare what it is but still be able to tie (procedurally) a bow when it is placed in our hands is evidence that these maps are stored in different parts of the brain.
Researchers have also recognized the difference between retrospective memory, or remembering things from the past, and prospective memory, or remembering to do something or think of something in the future. Setting an alarm to remind ourselves of a phone call we intend to make during a busy day is an example of an external aid to prospective memory.
However, from the perspective of the brain, the basis of all these types of memories is connections between neurons. Indeed, Eysenck and Keane (2005) point out that many of the devastating effects of brain damage likely have to do with decreased ability to integrate or make connections between different parts of the brain that are specialized for specific memory functions. For that reason, rather than focusing on the typical varieties of memory, we look at the general ability of the brain to make connections and then to form maps at different levels of resolution or generality.
Working Memory
The brain tries to automate everything possible. There is a functional reason for this that is not commonly understood: it would not be possible to consciously consider every bit of information that flows into our brains.
We have already pointed out that there is a difference between our working memory, or what we are aware of, and the billions of connections throughout our brain that can be drawn on for automatic reactions—the long-term memory store. David Rock (2009) suggests that working memory is like a stage, one that is quite small. Everything that we wish to pay attention to has to go on that stage. Once a character is “onstage,” it must be lighted with attention or, like an actor with a bit part, it will exit the stage, and we will find ourselves attending to a new actor or scene. Working memory can accommodate just a few items at a time, but backstage, so to speak, outside our awareness, there is an almost unlimited warehouse for long-term storage.
Working memory is used for a number of things:
• Understanding. When we are trying to make sense of a new idea, it comes onto the stage of our working memory. Right now as you are reading this book, you are using your working memory to understand it. If you find yourself just skimming through or dozing off, you are not using much working memory. In order to understand what is on the stage populated by the characters or ideas in this book, you consciously attend to or metaphorically shine a light on what you are interested in understanding. You may be asking “Do these ideas make sense? Are they right for me? Do they match with what else I know? Can I do something with them? What are the connections between them?” Paying enough attention to ask questions like that, whether they are answered or not or whether the idea is simple or complex, takes quite a lot of effort. A flow of energy must be maintained in order to keep the light of attention shining. Our minds regulate the energy that must be put into attention in order for anything to be kept in mind, and this flow can be interrupted easily, meaning our attention will be distracted.
• Decision making. You wake up one day and wonder if you should make that sales call or catch up on paperwork. In order to make that decision, you have to put two “characters” on the stage—sales call and paperwork—and attend to each in order to compare and contrast them. Part of this is visualizing what might happen if you make the call versus complete the report that is due. Decision making doubles the flow of energy required to attend to the variables.
• Memorizing. If someone has just told you a phone number and you have to remember it, you rehearse it over and over, repeating it without stopping to think about anything else. If you are able to do that long enough, and over enough practice sessions, the number will become hardwired. That is, the neural connections will have been strengthened by use so that you will be able to recall the number at a later time. This function of working memory is central to coaching because coaching is about change. Every new activity that we do, every new idea that we think, even every old habit we want to stop doing must have its time in the spotlight of our working memory. Our ability to regulate the flow of energy, to pay attention when we want to and to ignore incoming stimuli that would distract us, is what enables us to establish whatever it is that we know.
• Recalling. Working memory is also needed to bring information out of long-term memory and onto your stage. You need to hold the information you are looking for in mind, to find it in memory. Recalling requires quite a lot of effort to do, especially for old memories.
• Inhibiting. Just as understanding an idea requires putting information onto your stage, sometimes we also need to keep information off the stage—to inhibit attention going to something. This also can require a lot of effort at times.
Limits of Working Memory
If working memory is so important to coaches, we need to understand several important characteristics:
• Limited capacity. The working memory stage is very small. It can fit only a few characters at any one time. Although George Miller helped launch the cognitive revolution with his 1956 article suggesting that we can hold around seven items in working memory, some researchers suggest that at about four items, we need to start utilizing chunking (grouping two actors as “the soldiers” or “the sisters”) or other memory techniques in order to keep them in memory. The common belief is that phone numbers are seven digits because that is the most we can hold in short-term memory. Whether that is true or not, most of us need to write those seven numbers down or keep repeating them to avoid their slipping offstage.
• Easily distracted. Even when there are only one or two actors onstage, there are many comings and goings in this theater. It is tempting to turn the spotlight on the attractive person in the front row or the couple having an argument in the back row or the usher trying to toss someone out of the audience. Our attention shifts not only at that moment, but wherever we shine the spotlight becomes the new stage. We are a fickle audience. We have to put out immense energy to actually keep our focus on our intended stage.
Because we are so easily distracted, the effort of focusing on one thing is similar to physical exertion. Harold Pashler (1997) reported that one’s physical force is significantly decreased by engaging working memory. In other words, our capacity to lift a weight is decreased if, at the same moment, we are also trying to remember something. The effort of paying attention, in a sense, reduces the effort we can put into a physical task, such as running or lifting. This finding supports the emphasis in sports psychology on mental preparation for physical performance.
• Subject to internal and external threats. Not only can the stage of attention get crowded, think of what Daniel Goleman (1995) calls the “amygdala hijack.” If a dangerous-looking character walks onstage, working memory can be overridden by threat responses from the limbic system.
• Easily overwhelmed. Neurons have a limited signaling capacity of some 2,000 signals per second. Although we each have perhaps 100 billion neurons, specific circuits have limitations. Those involved in working memory are vulnerable to being flooded by the intense signals of the error-detection response. Uncertainty, rejection, unfairness, or even just ambiguity can bring on the error response. The noise of error-detection signals drowns out whatever else we are trying to focus on. To use working memory most effectively, we need to have a quiet stage.
If something is important enough that we want to remember it long term, our best strategy is to automate it (i.e., practice until it becomes hardwired). The process of making a habit, behavior, or idea automatic begins the first time it is put into action, but complex activities require a good deal of practice. Fortunately, simple actions and concepts do not require more than a few repetitions. We learn the path to our room in a hotel quickly, just as we learn how to insert the card key so as to open the door to the room. We say this is fortunate because of the energy and effort that would be required to keep everything we do in working memory. The process involved in hardwiring, called long-term potentiation, generally is under way after doing an activity just three times.
As a result, most of us are not aware of what we are doing. That sounds like an insult, but it is actually an advantage because of the limitations of working memory. A good example has to do with driving a car. Most people who have driven on one side of the road all their lives find the prospect of driving on the other side when visiting a foreign country terrifying. They are surprised by how hard it is because they are no longer used to paying attention to their driving. On the other side of the road, they grip the wheel and pay constant attention for a day or two before new hardwiring begins. That experience illustrates having to become conscious of an activity that we have hardwired but also of the fact that hardwiring can be changed.
Whatever we do over and over in our lives has been hardwired: the way we speak to people, plan our week, work at our computer, and file our papers. Also, the way we think about ourselves, our attitudes, and our behaviors. Our very concept of who we are is formed by the same processes of connecting neurons and automating those connections through practice. Making any of those things conscious again in coaching will result in discomfort for the client, just as driving on the other side of road would do. The client must put greater effort to pay attention during this process.
Linking Memory to Coaching
There are three key ways to improve the capacity of working memory:
1. Visualizing
2. Chunking
3. Ordering
VISUALIZING The brain has roots in a long evolutionary history, so we share commonalities with our ancestors. Those common parts include visual processing, as proto-humans thought and communicated visually for millions of years, before the capacity for language developed. The modern human brain has circuits in its visual cortex that are deeper and richer even than in our auditory cortex. About 1 million fibers carry visual data versus just 30,000 for hearing. We seem to be able to process complex information better using visual cues. To the brain, there is no significant difference between seeing a concept in real life and seeing it in the mind’s eye. That is one reason for the effectiveness of visualization in sports psychology as well as for the extensive use and power of work with metaphors.
When we see a picture in our mind’s eye, such as when we use a metaphor, we create a mental map quickly and with minimal effort. Visual mapping takes a fraction of a second and can be done even when we are distracted. For example, if we are asked to picture an elephant battling a mouse, the scene comes to mind quickly along with the complex concept it represents. Compare this to being asked to process this information: A very large character is in conflict with another character that is hundreds of times smaller. It takes much less effort to “get” the concept in the first instance than the second.
Another reason for the effectiveness of visuo-spatial references is an aspect of the brain’s prediction function. Human beings are meaning making. When we connect an event with what happened before or will happen later, or with another event that is similar or dissimilar, or with people or themes that are related in some way, we are taking part in the self-creative, or autopoietic, nature of the human system. We continually make up stories or narratives and thus notice characters, places, and forces. All of the 3,000 to 7,000 different languages in the world have this in common: They enable people to name and describe the behavior of or what happens to people or objects, places or location, and forces or actions. Filmmakers and novel writers build every story around the framework of who does what to whom and the consequences, emotional journey, or lessons learned. Using visuals helps us tap into the power of what the brain does well naturally.
Earlier in this chapter, we used a visual that David Rock created to understand the concept of working memory: a stage. Having that picture makes it easier to grasp and hold complex relationships in mind than abstract language would allow. Holding a richer map in mind for a longer time enables more connections to be made. Another way of saying this is that when we “see” something, we understand it better. “I see what you are saying” is a common way to indicate that we understand, especially for those of us who have a preference for visual thinking. In coaching, we can create visuals through metaphor, analogy, story, or drawings, such as on a whiteboard or paper.
Using external (outside the brain) visuals such as a whiteboard to summarize a challenge also further frees the working memory from having to keep the whole image in mind while manipulating its parts. As organizer David Allen (2001) puts it, this allows us to have “minds like water.”
CHUNKING Studies have shown that we learn complex routines by chunking them into smaller groups. Early studies in expertise (de Groot, 1965) revealed that experts such as chess masters store maps of chess moves and even whole games by “chunking,” or categorizing, complex information that they access by category name. Chunking enables our working memory to learn, remember, or decide more effectively. Chunking is a useful way to improve our capacity to learn.
Chunking depends on the human mind’s capacity for narrative. We group together by characteristics (all the men), by sequence (what came first, then next, then next), by relationship (all our cousins), by activity (the nurses), by position (the managers), or by any principle or theme our ingenuity can devise (everyone who thinks the animal that best represents them is a wolf).
When we chunk several items we want to remember into a single group, we then have to remember the group. The advantage of chunking is that remembering one item is easier than remembering 3 or 10 or 52. We are more likely to remember that single chunk, though, if it is meaningful to us. In chapter 15, we present the SCARF model developed by David Rock (2008). David has chunked five brain-calming principles of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness by combining the first letters into a meaningful word. This is just one technique that many students, marketers, and computer programmers use routinely.
ORDERING Related to its incessant meaning-making or narrative function, our mind likes to fit information together. Key aspects are ordering, prioritizing, putting things first or last, and showing how things relate to each other. The brain circuitry that allows this is extensive: We hold rich maps of how people connect with each other, their relative status, and what our status is in relation to everyone we know. And that is just one example.
When working memory becomes overwhelmed because of too many choices or too much information at the same time, a common solution is to step back and create order. This might consist of making a list of all the possibilities related to the goal or topic at hand (externalizing the information visually) and then deciding just the next step. At the macro level, Wheatley (1992) suggests this is exactly how a complex organizational system manages change: by getting clear on goals, having good communication, and taking one step at a time. By putting concepts in order, we can see where to start rather than wondering what comes next and “what if . . . ?” We reduce anxiety and the sense of being overwhelmed that comes from the amygdala’s response to uncertainty. As the amygdala is calmed, cognitive functions such as working memory may be energized.
Dynamic stability of a complex system requires the management of change toward positive ends. For positive change, we must clear up working memory, first, so we have attentional resources for what is important and, second, so we can focus on what is positive in order to recruit the power of expectation.
AWARENESS
Our brains connect past and present experiences into patterns from the moment we can be said to have a brain, even before we are consciously aware of making connections, and even while the very structure of the brain is being built. Steven Rose compares this complex process to “the remaking of the aeroplane in mid flight” (2005, p. 118). Why would we have the capacity to do this? That is, from an evolutionary perspective, what advantage does the automatic ability to create connections bestow on us?
Siegel (2007a) refers to the human brain as “an anticipation machine” (p. 173). Setting aside the use of the word “machine,” this terminology implies an advantage to prediction. If we can use changes in input to predict what is going to happen, we can make adjustments before it happens. Mental maps enable us to add past experience to present perception so as to guide future behavior. As Hawkins (2004) says, “It is the ability to make predictions about the future that is the crux of intelligence” (p. 18). If prediction confers such advantages, no wonder the human brain is so complex, going well beyond the “sense-associate-act” sequence of simple nervous systems. Not only must it associate incoming sensory data and react to it in the here and now, it must connect that with stored remembrances from the past and with imagined scenarios for the future.
As we have discussed, some important maps, such as those that connect incoming sensations with danger, must be activated automatically. Conscious processing is too slow and too limited, so the amygdala is hardwired to stay on guard without our consciously telling it to.
We can induce the effects of hardwiring by practicing something over and over until it becomes automatic, in line with the oft-quoted statement of Donald Hebb that “neurons that fire together wire together.” When two neurons fire simultaneously or in sequence, they associate, or form connections that make it more likely for one to fire when the other does. Practicing until neurons become automatically associated is the secret of mastering any complex skill, from speaking a language, to riding a bike, to masterful coaching.
We rely on practice-induced hardwiring to drive a car at the same time as carrying on a conversation. Practicing activities repeatedly enables us to fill in blanks, to anticipate what should be there even when it is missing or mistaken. For instance, we learn to read words in blocks rather than letter by letter. Therefore, popele raed snetenecs lkie tihs eevn wtih ltetres rerararnegd. Text messaging relies on this capacity. We approximate all the time in situations where information is missing or masked. This tells us that the message being sent has redundancies, or more than one way to get at the meaning, but it also reminds us of our top-down capacity to draw on previous information to construct reality, and not just to rely on what’s actually happening in front of us.
Priming
Even in the short run, we can “prime” our perceptual system by what we pay conscious attention to. If you decide to have children, suddenly you begin to notice mothers with strollers everywhere. You have never “seen” them before. Where did they all come from? The changed output (noticing strollers) is information not about input (there are no more actual babies in the world) but about a change in your perceptual process triggered by your decision to have children. That mental act affects the very firing of neurons in response to visual stimuli.
The other side of this phenomenon is that we do not notice details that are unrelated to our intentions. Students participating in a study by Simons and Chabris (1999) were assigned to count the number of times people in a video passed a basketball back and forth. Fifty percent of the participants were so intent on their assigned task that they did not notice a gorilla-suited accomplice walking through the action, facing the camera, and pounding its chest. Of course, when shown the video clip a second time, after being asked about the gorilla, they noticed it immediately.
Coaches can remind clients to “set” their intentions before a meeting or presentation so they “mind” what they have decided ahead of time would be relevant. Our movement toward what we desire can be enhanced by recruiting our perceptual system to notice desire-related events or information. This recruitment happens when we ask questions that consciously remind ourselves of future intentions. Where’s Waldo? is a series of children’s puzzle books by Martin Handford, who draws specific characters (such as Waldo and a wizard) as tiny characters buried in incredibly complex scenarios. Knowing what Waldo looks like (he wears a red striped hat and glasses, and carries a walking stick) and knowing that the object of the game is to find where he is “hiding,” it is possible to locate him on the page. Children, perhaps because of their less-hardwired expectations, are very good at this game. But even children need to know what they are looking for in a complex world in order to find it reliably.
One of the experiments indicating that neurons fire in anticipation of a stimulus involved monkeys, whose visual systems are very similar to those of humans. Edmond Rolls and his colleagues (Rolls & Deco, 2002) mapped the neurons that became active when monkeys saw a red triangle. For monkeys who had learned to expect a red triangle, he found that those same neurons were activated even before the triangle was presented. As Hawkins puts it, when there is some degree of expectation, the “neurons involved in sensing become active in advance of actually receiving the sensory input” (Hawkins & Blakeslee, 2004, p. 81). The effects of expectation are so strong that we are likely to perceive what we expect even before it has shown up.
Linking Awareness to Coaching
Think of what this means in coaching. If neurons involved in sensing become active in advance of receiving sensory input, looking for what is wrong means we literally see more of what is wrong. This applies to coaches as well as clients. If we coach people about what they are doing wrong, we will see those mistakes, and so will they. Our clients’ threat response may be triggered by our judgmental attitude, and the social nature of our minds and brains will lock us in a mutual downward negative vortex. Coach someone expecting to appreciate their strengths, and you will see many more of those and be able to point them out to clients, who will see them as well. Depending on how coaches manage expectations, either a negative downward vortex or a positive upward spiral is possible. Thus, how we mind can affect how we brain, or what our sensory apparatus is capable of picking up.
Our social relationships are also involved in this process. A leader in organizational thinking, Ori Brafman, and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman (Brafman & Brafman, 2008), have documented how a mere suggestion can bias our perception. Before being introduced to someone, we may have overheard the remark, “Oh, yes. He is very charming—too charming, if you know what I mean.” When we meet this person, we may perceive his smile as being false. But what if the overheard remark was about some other person entirely? Because of our unconscious capacity to influence not just what clients look and listen for but what they actually see and hear, our own focus on their strengths and potential can have a powerful effect on what they perceive.
Christopher Peterson (2006) based a “three good things” exercise on similar principles developed by Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology. Before going to bed each night for a week, participants were assigned to notice and write down three things that went well during the day. He found that “counting one’s blessings increases happiness and decreases symptoms of depression” (p. 39), and that this effect lasted for six months of follow-up for those who continued the exercise. We do not know exactly why this happened, but it is likely that the participants’ intention to look for blessings meant they saw more of them. These in turn “primed” or triggered their expectations so that they perceived other positive events more readily during the day and perhaps were more likely to wake up happy the next morning. Peterson reports that several married couples incorporated the exercise into a nightly routine. Presumably, sharing blessings with one’s partner makes it more likely that our positive expectations will be triggered by the person we sleep and wake up with.
Coaches can use the power of awareness to help clients perceive and move toward their intentions. Repetition of this movement can result in hardwiring, or the shift of conscious intention to automatic processing, that enables us to act on information without requiring the limited resources of attention.
MAPPING AND PREDICTING
The human brain makes patterns of connections in our ongoing quest for meaning. We have spoken of these patterns as mental maps. Our ability to create these maps is related to our ability to predict what will happen in the future.
Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the PalmPilot, has been studying the functioning of the neocortex, the outer layer of our more recently evolved brains, in an attempt to build better interfaces between people and machines. In his research, he has taken the concept of maps to another level. These ideas were first released in his book On Intelligence (Hawkins & Blakeslee, 2004). Hawkins thinks of maps formed in the neocortex as being the basis of our intelligence, and lays out a theory for the principles involved in storing them.
Hawkins believes that our intelligence is a function of prediction. Eysenck and Keane (2005) describe a series of experiments like those Rolls and colleagues (2002) did with monkeys. These indicate that, even at the level of neurons, when we have come to expect something, like a red light, the visual receptors typically affected by the flash of light will fire in advance of the light itself turning on. In effect, this means that we map out how we expect everything in life to occur. We are able to process huge amounts of data coming into our brains each second because we are only comparing the data to our predictions and ignoring that which matches what we expect, not interpreting all the data at once. Studies of reading, perception, and cognition provide considerable research support for this idea. Mimicking this principle enables digital video cameras to save storage space by recording only what changes from one scene to the next.
For human beings, when our predictions are confirmed over and over, that sequence of events becomes automatic so that we do not consciously go through the process of thinking, “I just heard someone yell ‘fore’ and I’m on a golf course. That means a ball might be headed my way. That ball might hit me, and that would hurt. Perhaps I should duck.” Instead, we duck immediately, without taking the time to think about what it means. Speed is one good reason for some predictions becoming hardwired so that sensory signals indicating danger trigger our taking protective action immediately, without having to go through the slower process of consciously asking what the signal might mean.
Thus, patterns of connections enable neurons to work together to predict and act seamlessly. This is the mark of an integrated brain. Much of our automatic intelligence is based on processes of prediction, many of them automatic or hardwired.
Error Detection
A key part of our circuitry involves noticing when data do not fit with predicted patterns. We discussed error detection with regard to stress in chapter 5. When an error is detected, whether in our visual, auditory, or any other circuit, an “error” signal is given off. Then, according to Hawkins and Blakeslee (2004), “When the sensory input does arrive, it is compared with what was expected” (p. 81). If we are expecting a red light but the light flashes white, the comparison with the expected red flash is enough to set off the error detection system, and we take notice. In many instances, the mismatch is picked up by a part of the prefrontal cortex called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), just behind the eyes. The OFC is sometimes called the error detector because it lights up if we do not trust someone, if we see something not quite right, or if we sense some ambiguity. When this occurs, our amgydala is also aroused.
Groups of interconnected neurons are constantly gathering information from the environment. They check the incoming information against information that is expected. In that sense, neurons are like prediction machines, constantly looking out for us and asking, “Is this what I was expecting?” Any time a neuronal group “notices” there is a difference between what is expected and what is actually occurring, those neurons suddenly light up like a Christmas tree. That is, they become energized or excited. Jeffrey Schwartz describes this in detail in his book, The Mind and the Brain (Schwartz & Begley, 2002).
At the moment that an “error” is detected, energy is routed to those neuronal groups. For example, imagine sitting quietly looking out a window. Suddenly a quarter of the window goes really dark. Your attention is drawn to the dark patch very quickly, as part of a first reaction called an orientation response. You lean forward for a closer look. Your muscles tighten and your stomach turns. When you realize it is just an awning being rolled down, you relax, but before you knew what that unexpected change was about, you were on intense alert.
Things in our environment that are unexpected or different—anything that is not what is normally expected—gets immediate attention. This is true for sound, smell, taste, touch, visual data, and ideas.
This is one reason to avoid giving advice in coaching. If the advice is unfamiliar to the client, the resulting uncertainty can set off an error-detection response. If the idea is familiar, the client make take the advice as a challenge to his or her status. Not taking this into consideration can mean the client rejects the idea before appraising it, thus putting another barrier in the way of change.
The existence of error-detection circuits explains several phenomena:
• Why we are so problem-focused: It energizes us.
• Why the media always seems to focus on bad news: It gets our attention.
• Why a road accident makes people stop and stare: Unexpected danger demands attention.
• Why people can easily enumerate all the things they do wrong but struggle to list their strengths: We notice difference more easily than confirmation.
Our filters, values, and beliefs, all patterns or hypotheses for how best to function in the world, are examples of maps. These become a sort of operating manual for our mental processes. We are often not conscious of these maps because they were learned implicitly or practiced so often that their connections are hardwired into the brain. In many cases, it is to our advantage that we follow these maps automatically.
However, we can also create hypotheses, make connections, and form maps that are wrong. Or they may have been useful guides at one point in our lives (say, in childhood or in stressful circumstances) but no longer apply. Thank goodness in this case that hardwiring is not necessarily permanent. Coaching is a way of rewiring what has become automatic. During coaching conversations, we test or challenge a client’s hypotheses. We separate the concrete “facts” from the “interpretations” that are self-created. These conversations can help bring a client’s map to consciousness. Reappraising or reframing may help make that map fit current circumstances more appropriately. Similarly, reprioritizing a set of maps, by asking about how consistent they are with previous commitments or value statements, is a common way of recruiting the motivating effects of cognitive dissonance to assist change.
Connections Are Pleasurable
There is no way to avoid change. Marvin Minsky (1986) claims that the brain is mostly engaged in changing itself, adjusting its internal functioning to meet changing demands. The brain can be thought of as a connection machine, constantly making connections to reflect conclusions about how everything “out there” fits together. If you look under a microscope at the brain of a stillborn child, you would see lots of neurons but very few connections, like a forest that is not very dense. In children of three or four, there are many more connections; in adult brains, there is such a thicket that you can hardly see through it. We spend our whole lives connecting neurons.
Just a little over 10 years ago, the claim would have been that that is all we do: Adults connect only those neurons that we are born with, because the adult brain does not produce new ones. But this conventional wisdom, accepted for years in neuroscience, has been overturned. Science writer Sharon Begley (2007) tells the story of neurogenesis pioneer Elizabeth Gould’s breakthrough research that found new neurons in the hippocampus of adult rats and primates. Following up on this, neuroscientists Fred Gage and colleagues confirmed the appearance of new neurons in the hippocampus of human adults (Eriksson et al., 1998). This discovery strengthened the claim for adult neuroplasticity.
However, it is true that most activity in the brain involves creating connections between existing neurons and pruning these connections. We are born with twice as many neurons as we have by age 10, when we settle down with roughly 100 hundred billion. We say “roughly” because there is no accurate way of counting neurons as yet. Estimates vary from 30 billion to 100 billion in an adult brain.
What is most relevant to coaching is the process of making new connections. There is some indication that the brain “likes” making connections between parts that have not previously been connected. By way of analogy, think of a real estate developer looking at two parallel highways. Linking the two with a new highway opens up a large new area for development. The brain seems to operate in this way, opening up new territories by connecting existing sets of maps (which are themselves connections of neurons) in new ways.
Humor is an example. When we hear a funny joke, the energy behind our laughter comes from making an unexpected connection between maps in the brain. If the joke required connecting to a map that we did not have (as when people from a different background do not “get it”), we would not laugh. If the joke was too obvious or one we have heard before, we do not laugh because we already made the connection in the past. Jokes are funny because they connect existing maps in new and unexpected ways.
Likewise with music. Daniel Levitin (2006) makes the point that we delight in music that connects familiar sounds with rhythms, melodies, or harmonies that are just different enough to surprise us but not so different as to shock us. Musicians “play” between these boundaries.
The energy that arises any time our brain sees things in a different way or connects existing maps along new pathways is a very positive experience. The most popular television series in 2006 worldwide was CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The show is structured around information that at first does not make sense. Familiar characters gather bits of data that do not fit together. False leads heighten the tension. Finally, in the last few minutes, all is resolved and the mystery is solved. This buildup of energy because of a lack of connection and the ultimate release when connections are revealed is a universal approach to storytelling.
Similar feelings accompany solving a puzzle. Arriving at the solution oneself can produce a sense of accomplishment and increased status, but even being told the answer is accompanied by a good feeling. Of course, as the research on happiness shows, the positive rush of energy from a new connection like this is short, a little like eating chocolate. Perhaps that is why some people consider themselves addicted to cross-word puzzles and others will spend days or weeks putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Finding a word or a place for each piece gives a short burst of positive feelings.
These bursts of pleasure may be considered the subjective experience of increasing complexity. In coaching, a connection is often referred to as an insight—a moment of clarity when everything makes sense. A coaching dialogue often consists of multiple insights, which help the client to raise self-awareness, create choices, and engage in actions to achieve their desired outcomes. Coaches help clients improve their maps of the world, and when a set of maps—a giant puzzle about life—suddenly falls into place, it can feel very rewarding. A model for this, David Rock’s “Four Faces of Insight” is presented later in the chapter in Figure 9.1.
Disconnections Irritate
Making new connections is a positive experience, especially when the connection is unexpected and opens up new territory. The other side of this is that maps that do not fit irritate us. That is, disconnections irritate.
Any leftover or unremembered piece of data seems to keep coming up in our thoughts until we resolve the mystery. Having unresolved loops like this is uncomfortable enough to keep us watching that TV show even when we know we should go to bed. This may also be an explanation for the compelling nature of unanswered questions, even questions we are not aware of asking (Adams, 2004).
When we recognize someone in the street but just cannot remember her name, we often find ourselves puzzling over and over until the name “comes to us.” Once we get the answer, we feel a rush of relief and think something like “Thank goodness I don’t have to think about that anymore.” The relief occurs because, without our necessarily being conscious of it, a part of our brain has been using energy in sorting through name maps in order to make the connection with the face we have seen.
This energy drain can occur with anything that matters to us and that does not fit together. In his book on organizing, David Allen (2001) suggests that we are drained by having to keep unresolved “loops” in our head, including “remembering” to do things in the future. He recommends a reliable system for recording these dangling connections and returning to them only at the appropriate time so that our mind is free to “flow like water.” This concept is an essential component of a brain-based approach to coaching.
Linking Mapping to Coaching
Disconnections or mismatches of maps are often what bring people to coaching.
Example: “If I’m Honest with Him, I’ll Lose My Job”
Lois has a high-priority map that could be labeled “integrity and honesty.” As a result, she values honesty in every situation and feels upset when she does not tell the truth. However, she also has a survival map, and that includes warnings about how not to get fired.
She brought this dilemma to coaching: “I know I should tell my boss that his habit of only looking for things to criticize really affects morale in the office. But I’m afraid if I’m honest with him, I’ll lose my job.”
Lois had been going over one map in her mind (“I should tell him”) and then the other (“I’d better keep quiet or I’ll lose my job”), and then back to the first. It is as if these two “parts” of herself had been locked in an argument with each other. Without some way to resolve the impasse, Lois would continue to draw on energy to no avail. She has managed thus far because her boss often is oblivious to what is going on in the office.
The coach suggested the empty chair technique (which we present in chapter 10). Lois realized that she herself was focusing only on what her boss was doing wrong. She came up with a plan to point out every time that he even hinted at an employee’s positive performance, and this resulted in a changed atmosphere in the office. Her boss even became more engaged in the office camaraderie. Lois had made a connection between what she wanted in the office and how she was operating. Coaching provides the opportunity to make new connections more quickly than may be achieved without it.
In using techniques such as the empty chair, it is important to remember that a key element of coaching is inviting people to work toward their positive vision for the future. This leverages their motivation, rather than concluding that addressing the least-feared or smaller weakness (such as the boss’s being disengaged) is a way to move forward. Thus, coaching promotes solutions that have been proven effective but may not be a client’s automatic first approach. Combine this lack of familiarity with a possible threat (such as Lois’s fear of being fired), and it is no wonder that clients resist change.
It is also important to remember that context, especially the relationship within which an invitation to make connections occurs, has a great deal to do with whether a person approaches the experience with curiosity and exploration or whether he or she avoids it. When we feel safe, we humans are explorers, approaching new discoveries with delight. “The fear or alarm response . . . kills curiosity and inhibits exploration and learning. If people are anxious, uncomfortable, or fearful, they do not learn” (Perry, 2006, p. 26). That is, they do not make new connections and create new maps. Knowing how to create the conditions for learning is a key skill for coaches.
The way an individual makes sense of the world is through creating maps. These maps are the key to understanding how an individual learns, makes decisions, and lives day-to-day life. We are continually evolving and creating new maps or making new connections. Coaching is an enabler of these connections. Coaching conversations can help focus a client constructively, challenge existing maps that are not serving the client, and also expedite new connections and reduce disconnections.
DILEMMA MODEL
Many times people “know” what they have to do but face obstacles in doing it. In the examples earlier and throughout this book, we have outlined a number of techniques to help clients focus on successes in the past and reappraise obstacles so they gather the energy to make these changes. But what about the instance where a person just cannot think of what to do?
Example: Nothing Seems to Fall into Place
Melanie cannot decide on her career direction. As an administrator in a small but growing company, she has had to do a bit of everything. Now she has the opportunity to focus on finance or operations or marketing. She likes some parts of each of those potential jobs but not others. She scours the assessments she has completed over the years. She goes over and over the newly minted job descriptions, but nothing seems to fall into place as the best fit. On her next coaching call, she complains of being tired but unable to sleep well. Overall, she is feeling frustrated at not being able to figure out this dilemma.
Here are some other examples of dilemmas:
• You want to exercise more but do not think you have enough time to do that and get through all your e-mails.
• You want to write but do not think you are a good enough writer.
• You need to improve sales in your territory but have no idea how.
• You do not get on with an employee you need to work closely with.
Think of these as puzzles the brain has tried and so far failed to solve. In his book Quiet Leadership, Rock (2006) reveals a model for just these circumstances.
With dilemmas, a part of us wants to achieve something but we perceive that something is in the way. Our brains and minds are doing what they do—processing information, working out what to do next to achieve our goals—then suddenly we hit an impasse. Everything comes to a standstill. This is a situation where consciously and logically working at the same dilemma leads to nothing but frustration. As is so often the case, we try harder at the very techniques that are not working—going over the goal and the obstacle again and again. Frustration or feeling “stuck” is the emotional summary of this mental impasse. What is needed is an insight. This is what Rock and his colleagues have investigated.
After poring over research on insight by others and by his colleagues, Rock himself faced a dilemma: How can all these data be turned into something useful to coaches and to anyone who wants to understand and encourage insight? Rock puzzled and puzzled over this question. Then, while looking out the window of a plane and thinking about nothing in particular, the answer came to him in a flash: Our faces tell the story! “In an instant I pictured how people’s faces changed considerably when they had an insight. I felt strongly that if leaders could recognize which ‘face’ people had on at any time, it might make them more effective at improving thinking” (Rock, 2006, p. 104).
Four Faces of Insight
Figure 9.1 presents Rock’s process for engaging our out-of-consciousness mental resources.
Face 1: Awareness of Dilemma. When we are aware of a dilemma, our physical state shows in a facial expression of concern. This is the outward expression of a frustrated or puzzled or “stuck” state of mind. Try this yourself: Think very hard about something you have not figured out yet. Then look in a mirror. Your brow may be furrowed, your mouth crimped, the muscles around your eyes tight. Your whole body may be tense, your mind may be churning with options, your inner dialogue may be like a shouting match. You are trying and trying to figure it out.
Figure 9.1 Four Faces of Insight First published in Quiet Leadership, ©David Rock, 2006.
Example: Having Trouble Sleeping
Melanie from the last example is keeping herself so focused on the problem of this job versus that job that she is having trouble sleeping. But all this energy is not moving her toward a solution. The coach begins by acknowledging her dilemma and confirming her request to be coached through it. For leaders who are not formally engaged as coaches, this step requires asking for permission to talk about the issue.
Face 2: Reflection. This face looks quite different. It is more relaxed and does not have that intense, staring concentration. Neurolinguistic programming practitioners have noted the signs of inner processing. Have people ever turned their eyes toward you but you know they are not really looking at you? Instead, they are staring out at space or, more precisely, staring into space, as if they are examining some processes going on inside their own heads. In brain terms, this face indicates that a person has, to continue our stage metaphor, dimmed the lights on the stage of attention to the outside world. Doing this allows our unconscious, like the writers backstage, to come up with a next act that may not have been remotely contemplated before. Very often this entails a shift in perspective—an entirely new setting or story line or even a new play.
Example: “How Will You Know . . .”
For Melanie, the coach’s question, “How will you know when you have the ideal job?” sent her immediately into reflection. The coach was wise enough to allow the silence that Melanie needed for inner reflection. Coaches must be particularly aware of this shift when they coach by telephone and cannot see facial expressions. Fortunately, a state of mind is conveyed along many information channels, so vocal signals of a lowered tone, slower rate of speech, and perhaps a deep breath also indicate Face 2 processing.
Face 3: Illumination. This face often depicts what is referred to as the “aha!” moment. From somewhere among all the patterns our minds have created in our brain circuitry, a new connection is made, one that does not appear in our interoffice memos or timelines or project management software. We experience this as coming from nowhere, but of course it has simply been folded away in the wardrobe room or put somewhere backstage that the spotlight of our working memory has not had access to. Our nearly unlimited unconscious storage facility has yielded exactly the answer we have been looking for, but only when, in a sense, we stopped looking or listening so hard and instead allowed ourselves to see and hear more softly.
Example: “I Got It!”
Melanie was silent, but her mind was clearly active. Suddenly she exclaimed, “Of course. I got it! I don’t want to work there at all. Here’s my chance to start my own business!” Her face brightened into a smile and she began talking nonstop. She moved into a state of excitement and even joy, as if she had been plugged into an electric current. In fact, something similar to that had happened in her brain as she released energy from making new connections.
Face 4: Motivation. This face follows immediately upon an “aha!” People can barely sit still. Their eyes are darting around as if searching for the next thing to do. This is the moment for action or commitment to action and setting up accountability checks. It is important to encourage action at this point rather than slowing it down and reconsidering, which risks a return to a dilemma state. The worst thing a coach can do when someone is in the motivation state is to try to halt his or her performance.
Example: What Is the First Step?
Melanie’s coach simply asked, “OK, what is the first step toward this new goal?” The two examined the steps, got the goal clear, and set up a check-in for the following appointment. Melanie hung up from the call and made an appointment with her soon-to-be former boss.
Linking Dilemma Model to Coaching
When we create a new connection, we experience a positive charge of energy. When we cannot find a connection that resolves a dilemma, we feel challenged, our energy is drained, and we keep going over and over it like a loop on an old-fashioned tape recorder. If you pay attention to your stream of thoughts, you may find that you spend much of your mental energy on the same challenges, without making progress, going over the same routes. This is tiring, frustrating—and ideal territory for coaching. In Quiet Leadership (2006), Rock incorporates the Four Faces of Insight into six steps to transform performance at work.
PRACTICE GUIDE FOR COACHING WITH THE BRAIN IN MIND—MAKE DECISIONS AND SOLVE PROBLEMS
The many facets of what we call “thinking” are what make us human. We are able to connect present results with past events and remember that pattern so as to predict the future. This is what enables us to move toward reward and away from danger in the elaborate ways human beings do. To a large extent, why we do what we do depends on our ability to make connections, remember them, form maps, and even become aware of those maps so we can change them.
Mostly, we do what we have done before. We may at one point have made a conscious decision to turn here or there or respond this way or that. This decision created the beginning of a map in our brains which, with repetition, has become hardwired. That is, we repeat the pattern so automatically that we are often unaware of doing it, much less of deciding to. Our ability to operate in this way has tremendous advantages. It means that we do not have to burden our working memory, our limited thinking resources, with deciding anew on every action we are taking. We can walk and talk at the same time.
This hardwiring function is a great advantage—until, for whatever reason, we want to do something different. What if our hardwired responses, the ones we practiced so much that we keep doing them no matter what, keep us doing them no matter what? What if it starts to matter a good deal that we move in new directions, respond differently because of changing circumstances, or explore possibilities we never even imagined? It is at this clash of old patterns with new demands that leaders are challenged and coaches are typically called on.
Coaches already have proven knowledge, skills, and mind-set from the bedrock and pillars that anchor the history of the field. How do we add capacity based on knowledge of the brain to support leaders in meeting these challenges?
Considering the question “Why do we do what we do?” and our thinking processes has deepened our understanding of how to use our powers of prediction, make new connections, and become aware of hardwiring we want to work around. To the guides already presented, we add these:
• Communicate in short, specific sentences that maximize limited working memory.
• Move among thinking levels so as to be able to simplify, chunk, and shift perspective with ease.
• Facilitate my own and others’ insights by
• Creating and inviting a quiet mind.
• Focusing on connections rather than details.
• Allowing insights to emerge without interruption.
• Noticing and attending to insights when they emerge.
• Encouraging the flow to action.
For many years in cognitive studies, thinking was separated from feeling or emotions. Neuroscience has clearly shown that such a separation is useless at best. A systemic integration of thinking and feeling is particularly important if our goals have anything to do with improving our emotional state. The question that guides part IV is “How can we feel better?”
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