Success On Your Own Terms Newsletter Volume #51 Spring 2007

The Brain, Coaching, and Leadership: Examining the Connections

I promised I would report back on my trip to Italy and share what I learned at the NeuroLeadership Summit. First, let me say that the summit took place in the gorgeous small mountain town of Asolo. Each morning I looked out from my window to see beautiful Italian gardens and luscious vineyards on the rolling green hills surrounding the hotel. The song of a cuckoo was the first thing I heard upon wakening. Then each day was filled with meeting people from around the world who were interested in the brain, in coaching, in leadership and in making change in the same way that I am. The atmosphere was rich in many ways.

There is much to share from the summit, but in order to keep this issue short enough, I'm going to focus on the work of Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. However I will continue to write about the brain/coaching/leadership connection and the work of other researchers and scientists in later issues.

The Brain
The work and the personality of Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz were quite impacting. Schwartz, the author of "Brain Lock" and "The Mind and the Brain" and one of the summit conveners, is a research psychiatrist specializing in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He developed a highly successful four-step process, "Relabel, Reattribute, Refocus and Revalue" to get his OCD patients to recognize the dysfunctional messages from their brains and replace those messages with healthy messages that move them away from negative patterns of behavior to productive actions.

Schwartz, a brilliant, boisterous scientist, claims the ability to get people to focus and hold their attention - what he calls "attention density" (the quality and quantity of the attention) - is a key to changing behavior because it helps to stabilize the brain at the same time it reshapes it. Schwartz makes a keen distinction between the mind and the brain, claiming if we can use our mind to change our brain, it will be easier for us to act differently.

Schwartz described the brain as operating on quantum physics principles. In very simple terms, according to quantum physics, atoms change by virtue of being observed. A well known aspect of quantum physics to scientists is the "Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE)," which says that when a system is rapidly and repeatedly observed the rate of change slows down. Linking QZE to neuroscience, Schwartz explained that mentally focusing our attention holds in place neuro-circuits related to what we are focusing on. When we focus attention we make new connections in the brain. Over time what we hold stable becomes our hardwiring, physically changing the brain's structure.

Our brains process information in the prefrontal cortex. This is the rational, logical area of the brain - the "working memory" of the brain - that takes in information and makes decisions. It is the "executive function," orchestrating our thoughts and actions and differentiating conflicting concepts. This area, however, has a low capacity, requires a lot of energy, and gets easily distracted. The basal ganglia, located deeper in the brain, receive information from the prefrontal cortex. Information that gets stored in the basal ganglia forms the base of our habits - both good and bad. This area of the brain has much greater capacity, is accessed more unconsciously, and requires less mental energy to access.

What does all this mean? If we practice focusing our attention on particular messages we can create new neural pathways. Over time, the information we focus on (what we think about and learn) will be stored in the basal ganglia. An example often used to explain this phenomenon is learning to drive. When we first learned to drive, we had to think of each action we took to make the car do what we wanted it to. Once we had driven enough times - once we had learned how to drive - that information moved from our working memory into the basal ganglia. We developed the ability to drive automatically and unconsciously, freeing up our working memory not only to think about other things, but also (some might say unfortunately) to multi-task while driving. By focusing our attention, we can alter our brains. If we focus on something beneficial to us, we have the ability to create new productive automatic behaviors because we can store messages about new behaviors in our basal ganglia. Thus we can act more productively while using less mental energy.

Schwartz also pointed out that we can change our responses to our brain's messages. When the brain sends an impulse (message), there is a very brief period of time - half a second - before the impulse turns into an action. Within this brief period Schwartz says we have "veto power" - the ability to say "no" to the impulse and counter the signal. We don't have complete free will, Schwartz says, because we can't control the release of an impulse coming from the primitive emotional centers of the brain, but we can negate the signal or message and replace it with a new message. Schwartz calls this "free won't" - we can decide we won't do something. For example, the amygdala, a primitive area of the brain sends us emotional messages warning us of danger, whether real or perceived. We can't stop the amygdala from sending the message, but we can change how we respond to it. In the same way, if the basal ganglia send an impulse formed from a negative habit, we can change how we respond to it.

Through the power of the mind and language, we can communicate with the brain and tell it to tell us to do something different. Schwartz borrows a term from Adam Smith and points out that each of us has an "Impartial Spectator" capable of using this "veto power." It is up to us to strengthen the "Impartial Spectator" to help us focus and act appropriately. By using our minds to focus attention and communicate our "free won't" to our brains, we can change our behaviors and create new productive habits. And, according to Schwartz, we can make these changes more quickly than we have been led to believe.

Coaching and Leadership Implications
One role of a coach is to help the leader develop greater self-awareness. Now we see from a scientific perspective the value of having a coach, who can act as a surrogate "impartial spectator." The coach can help the leader develop her own capacity to become a more astute "impartial spectator" by asking questions that will enable the leader to examine herself on a deeper level, to determine what she wants to focus her attention on, to decide what she should say "no" to, and to frame the messages to send to her brain. The coach can be a support by helping to keep the leader focused, particularly on solutions. Remember whatever we pay focused attention to - positive or negative - gets stored as a habit in the basal ganglia. The coach can assist the leader in making sure her attention is focused on possibilities and solutions rather than on problems. The coach also assists the leader by providing reinforcing techniques for saying "no," and offering the learning space to review what happens when the leader practices these mental skills.

In addition, coaching is about helping a person move into action, and action itself reinforces attention density. Every time an OCD person responds to a dysfunctional signal to wash his hands, it reinforces the desire to wash his hands. As a leader if you practice a leadership skill such as controlling your emotional outbursts and remaining calm and positive during times of crisis, you will reinforce your ability to be calm, and over time it will become easier and easier for you to show up with the presence of a leader.

What's new about this information and relevant for coaching is the scientific evidence. Schwarz' work with OCD patients sheds light on how common coaching techniques work on the brain. Now, both coaches and leaders can refine the way they address the issue of changing behavior. Change is hard because we must be acutely aware of ourselves, recognize incoming brain signals, and respond rapidly and repeatedly to the incoming messages that we want to change. However, if a scientist can change the habits of OCD patients within a number of weeks, high functioning leaders can change old unproductive habits into new behaviors more quickly than was previously thought if they practice enough "attention density."

Another role of the coach is to hold people accountable for changing unwanted behaviors. With this kind of knowledge, I feel more confident in challenging my clients to do what might seem impossible and holding them more accountable for their outcomes. One desired outcome for coaching is that the coach is no longer needed - at least for the support around a particular desired behavioral change.

With a successful outcome, the leader becomes a more astute "impartial observer" of herself, who practices "free won't," sends positive messages to the brain, focuses her attention so that newly created behaviors become stored in her basal ganglia where she has more automatic access to them, and frees up more working memory to handle all the other important issues about which she needs to make decisions.

Coaching Questions

1. How successful are you at being an "impartial observer?" What can you do to be more successful?
2. On what should you focus your attention - what new behaviors would you like to turn into good habits?
3. What do you need to do to have better "attention density?"
4. How successful are you using your "veto power" and practicing "free won't?" What can you do to get better?

Acknowledgments
In writing this newsletter, I not only referred to my notes from the summit, but also used an article written by David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, "The Neuroscience of Leadership," published in summer 2006 issue of Strategy + Business as a guide. See www.strategy-business.com. You can find out more information about Jeffrey Schwartz at www.hope4ocd.com and
www.first-steps.org. And you can find more information about the NeuroLeadership Summit and its presenters and their work at www.neuroleadership.org.

Copyright © 2007 Ginny O'Brien All Rights

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Ginny O'Brien, MS, PCC
Executive and Corporate Coach
Author of Coaching Yourself to Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader and
Success on Our Own Terms: Tales of Extraordinary, Ordinary Business Women
The Columbia Consultancy
28 Columbia Road, Marblehead, MA 01945
T: 781-631-9765; F: 781-639-8296
ginny@columbiaconsult.com; www.columbiaconsult.com