The Science of Coaching
Written by Professor Patricia Riddell and Ian McDonald published in Coaching World
For the past six years, we have been working together to deliver workshops that combine coaching and neuroscience. This collaboration has demonstrated conclusively to us that coaching and neuroscience are good bedfellows and that each discipline has much to offer the other. In this article, we outline some of the ways that we have found these disciplines to add mutual value.
Given that every behavior, emotion and thought we have depends on activity in our brains, it is a tautology to say that any changes coaching brings about will be underpinned by changes in the brain. All effective coaching is “brain based.” An understanding of neuroscience, however, can add to this by indicating why particular techniques are effective and advancing techniques by attuning them to the way that the brain actually works.