Coaching Global Executives for Better Thinking Patterns

In our view, coaching is all about "surfacing the wisdom" in our clients, and to some extent this is a function of three things:
• recognizing and working with their naturally dominant thinking styles,
• accessing and raising awareness of their mental habits (automatic reactions and stories through which they interpret incoming information) which predispose them to certain behaviors, and
• working with them so that they design and practice new "brain maps" that result in more useful and innovative behavior leading to a positive impact and success

Naturally Dominant Thinking Styles

Each of us has one! Most successful Global Executives appear to have what Katherine Benziger(1) calls a "Frontal Right" thinking style (big picture, visual thinkers, problems solvers who make intuitive leaps and enjoy innovation) with a highly developed Frontal Left (systems overview thinkers who are good at logical steps and design of processes) and Basal Right (good at teamwork, sensing the spiritual and emotional dimensions). Each of these styles involves different approaches, so a coach working with them requires knowledge of how best they can approach organization, team leadership, working across cultures and other aspects of global organizational leadership. Knowing how to help them use the modes together and to nurture their dominant mode can make them very successful and also preserve their health. Using your non-dominant mode takes up 100 times the natural resources that using your dominant mode takes.

Identifying Mental Habits

By careful listening and bare observation when we speak with our clients, we can tell what kind of "stories" they commonly tell themselves. Most of us hold these interpretations of reality as "truths" but in fact they are only our internal representations of incoming information. Some extreme differences can result. For example, one person may see a combined-culture leader as a symbol of hope, representing different rich cultures bringing various new strengths to the table, while others may see the same person as threatening of their own known culture and values. As a result, one person experiences hope and optimism, the other fear. These emotions may translate into a judgement of either the external person or oneself, and this can lead to either an expansion of energy (as in optimism) leading to outgoing behavior or a contraction of energy resulting in isolating behavior and resentment or even rebellion.

The skilled coach knows that there is a choice and this is precisely what one of my clients said to me when I taught him a simple process of observing and intervening on his habitual thoughts:"Hannah, this is the first time I realized that I have a choice about what goes on in my brain! It's so liberating!" This is the seed of behavior change.

New Brain Maps

Whatever we practice, and we are all always practising something as we repeat our thinking patterns and behaviors, creates a pattern of neurons that fire together in our brains. The more these neurons fire together, the easier it is for them to keep doing it. So, when we learn to play a musical instrument or do a sport, our mental and physical practice builds and affects how good we become at it. Recent studies in neuroscience have shown us that, in order to keep this active, we must keep doing it, or something else that we are focussing on will take over the territory. (Interestingly this extends to losing sight or speech; the brain can use the neural "property space" for something else and this is always changing)

The same is true for developing new brain maps in our thinking. When I hear a client say "I can't do that." My response is always "You haven't done it YET!" and this is often enough for them to realize that yes, the story can change. When I ask them a question like "How can that be done differently?" they are not allowed to say "I have no idea," or "I don't know" (because this is practicing "not knowing" and "not bothering to think or listen to what they do know.") They are allowed to be silent, to say "I'll have to think about it, " or just ramble out loud until something interesting comes to mind. I often repeat "What else?" over and over until they have mined the gold in the deep recesses of their minds.

One of my clients, an extremely successful European automotive executive said of our coaching "Hannah made it possible for me to realize things that I didn't know I was thinking!" Now he knows he can do this for himself, and support others in doing it. At the beginning of our engagement he was a newly appointed Executive VP for all of Europe with a background as a plant manager; five months into our coaching relationship, he had been awarded a Global Leadership Award by his company! Not every client is as willing to grow as he was, but in my experience, knowing how to approach the growth process in this way makes it much more likely that they will do so in spite of the (possibly self-limiting) stories they have been telling themselves! I always remember the words of American poet Emily Dickenson about dwelling "in possibility." This is where innovation and scanning all approaches begins.

The latest research on the brain and aging, for example, shows us that, contrary to what was taught even to neuroscientists until the late 1990s, our brains are remarkably "plastic" and capable of learning new things all our lives. I'm fortunate (I think) that I come from a family of centenarians (well, some "die young" in their 90s...) and what stands out when I think of someone like my grandfather, Joseph Arlinda Durham (an innovative Quaker farmer who pass away at 105), is humor, good sense, and an interest in new things. His motto was "never hurry, never worry." He was too busy enjoying life and exploring new ideas and relationships. I remember my aunt telling me that when he received a marriage proposal in his early 100s, he replied not "I'm too old" but "Sorry, you are too young!" He valued his experience, his family, and his lifelong learning. But who knows? If he'd lived a little longer, he might have changed his mind.....

Hannah S Wilder, MA (Harvard),PhD (MIT), Master Certified Coach, Senior Global Executive Coach, Master Team Coach, Head of Faculty, Advantara Global

©Copyright April 3 2010 Hannah S Wilder. Permission to reprint enquires should be addressed to her by using the white Contact link on our website.

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(1) See Katherine Benziger Thriving in Mind, 2006