ICF Core Competency 3: Leveraging the Seeking System in Coaching Agreements | The Academies

Susan Britton here with the Academies and a neurocoaching tip. So the brain actually has what is called a seeking system. It's a core emotional need that every brain is wired with—your brain, my brain, everybody's brain. And there is a neuroscientist and psychobiologist by the name of Jack Panksepp who identified that we have not just this seeking system but a number of emotional affective networks within the brain. So there's seeking is one. There's also a rage system. System, fear system, lust, care, and grief system that are all part of our wiring as human beings. But seeking is this inherent drive within us to explore our environment. And then there's another individual, Mark Solms, a psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, who has said that this seeking system is not just a luxury and something that, you know, we want to go out and find a better job or a nicer home or a better partner of some sort. No, that this seeking system is actually a survival system because it fuels our ability to go and meet just fundamental needs like food and shelter, as well as the complex ones that you probably see when people come to you as a coach. Those complex, more meaningful needs, for example, for work and purpose and relationships and depth of meaning within people's lives. So there are a couple of states that our brain can be in as it relates to the seeking system. We can have an overstimulation of seeking system, and if we're in that overstimulation zone, then it's more of like a fragmented, frantic seeking where we're not doing it necessarily from a purposeful perspective. And then an understimulated state for our seeking system might be something where we're a little apathetic or we're depressed because it feels like we just can't get the things that we want to have. So as you are coaching people in your, your conversations, be aware that there is a biological biological drive and desire for every one of us to want to explore our environment. And sometimes that starts with just that simple nudge of, "Hmm, I'm getting a little bored and I want something new," or maybe it's a sense of disease or dis-ease or frustration that maybe there's something else out there, and that might be the reason that people come to you for coaching. Regardless, there is something that is always going to be going on in our brains that says, "I want to explore my environment. I want to see what out there, and so being able to take advantage of that knowledge can also add to the depth of the agreements that you make with your clients, as well as your ability to hold the vision that they want for their lives about moving towards things that are meaningful.