Susan Britton explains how the brain makes two kinds of predictions: external ones about how others will respond, and internal ones about your own capability. Coaches can ask "What's your best guess about how they might respond?" to tap external predictions, or "What would give you a sense of 'I've got this'?" to access internal confidence.
Susan here with a neuroscience coaching tip from the Academies. So the brain has this constant process going on of predicting what's going to happen. So we are also predicting both internally what's going to happen and externally what's going to happen. And so as a coach, if you can ask questions that address both of those internal and external prediction tendencies that we have, then you're going to be actually kind of understanding better what your client's brain is thinking about. External prediction kinds of questions that you could ask would be things like, "So what's your best guess about how they might respond to that?" or "What's your sense about what would happen if you do that?" And then the internal piece of it has to do more with our self-efficacy. So there's also this prediction happening in our brains that says, "Am I able to pull this off? Can I do this?" Especially if you're talking about a new kind of behavior leadership competency that the client is working with. So asking those internal prediction prediction capability questions is really going to help broaden and deepen the coaching conversation. And that could sound like, so what's your sense about— what would give you a sense of, I've got this? Or you could ask, what would need to change within your thinking to really feel like I've got this, I can handle this? So having that external prediction, internal prediction conversation with a client can really work for the brain as opposed to against it.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
