Susan Britton MCC explains that neuroscience for coaches means understanding how the nervous system works through the body, not just the brain. Two things matter: neurochemistry, like dopamine and cortisol signaling whether you're in fight-or-flight or calm; and neurocircuitry, the brain networks that create meaning and shape how you interpret the world.
Define for everybody what neuroscience is. It is understanding the brain-body activity biology that's going on inside. And it's not just in your brain, like your central nervous system goes throughout with nerves going everywhere. And in my— the way we phrase it at the academies when we're teaching coaches is that if we understand two simple things about neuroscience, if you understand the neurochemistry that's happening inside your body, in your client's body, and those would be things like all the dopamine and cortisol, you know, whether we're in what we call the red zone, fight-flight, cortisol's amped up, or the blue zone, parasympathetic nervous system, you've got a little more calm connect, you're alert, but you're able to have that full prefrontal cortex engaged. So if you can have an understanding of the neurochemistry, plus an understanding of the neurocircuitry that's in your brain, which is how you make meaning, how you make sense of things, how you interpret things, how you perceive things. If you can be aware of what is that neurocircuitry doing to the way that I think, feel, and show up, and what is it doing for my client? Those are just two really simple ways of being able to then incorporate those principles into coaching.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
