In this short coaching lesson, Susan Britton MCC explains that the brain constantly generates predictions about future outcomes, operating as a "prediction machine." She distinguishes two kinds of predictions that influence goal pursuit: external predictions, which estimate the likelihood that a specific action will produce the desired result (e.g., eating a certain number of calories will lead to losing five pounds), and internal predictions, which assess one’s own capacity, willpower, and resilience to actually carry out those actions (e.g., resisting late‑night cookies). For coaches and leaders, she argues that effective goal work requires surfacing and strengthening these internal probability judgments. She recommends asking clients about their strengths, values, and intentions, and helping them align these internal resources with the actions needed to achieve their goals. By tapping into the brain’s predictive processes in a neuroscience‑informed way, coaches can better support people in moving toward the outcomes they desire.
Chapters
If you are a coach or you are a leader using a coach approach and you are working around goals with the people that you are coaching or leading, you'll probably notice that people have a tendency to make predictions about their goals. And it has been said that the brain is a prediction machine. It is just constantly thinking about what is going to happen in the future, and it's making anticipated, educated guesses, and sometimes not so educated guesses about whether or not the behaviors that they're doing are going to move them or not towards the goals that they want. So when it comes to this prediction process, the brain is doing two types of predictions. One is an external prediction, and that has to do with the probability that the desired outcome, that goal that they're after, is going to actually happen after they do certain events. So certain activities or certain actions. For example, if there's a goal of, let's say from a health perspective, if there's a goal of losing 5 pounds, the prediction of if I eat X number of calories, if I burn this number of calories, if I do this type of nutrition, I will achieve my goal. That's going to be an external prediction. There is also an internal prediction that is happening, and that internal is weighing the probability of whether or not the person has the capacity the strength, the tenacity, the resilience to actually do the things that will lead them towards the desired goal. So that's that internal piece. So back to the losing 5 pounds, that will be, do I have the willpower to stay away from the cookies at night? Do I have the willpower to do the amount of exercising that I want to do? So if you're working with people in a coaching capacity, leadership capacity, and you're talking about goals, It's helpful to kind of think about how people are assessing their internal probabilities, how they're assessing their strengths, how they're assessing their ability to follow through on the things that are going to move them towards making that goal, and asking questions about what strengths do you have, what values do you want to live by, what intentions do you want to have that would support you in moving towards that goal, that would support you in doing those types of activities, whether it be going out and exercising more or staying away from the cookies at night or finding alternatives for the things that sometimes might not be the best food choices. So finding ways to tap people's internal probability prediction process in their thinking is really going to be one of the things that as a brain-informed, neuroscience-informed coach or leader that you can do to support people in moving towards the things that they want in life.
