The impact and - Jan Brause

1 Jan Brauseimportance of beliefs in coachingThe impact and Beliefs have an impact on our attitude, feelings, perceptions andbehaviour. In this module, Jan Brause examines the factors that can limitour beliefs and shows how performance can be improved by changinginner beliefs. Coach the CoachFacilitating learningCoach the Coach Issue 2 Coach the Coach Fenman Limited 2004 Where do beliefs come fromand how are they formed?Beliefs are ideas or generalisationsthat we make about the world,based on our referenceexperiences. They are part of ourprogramming: the things that wehave accepted from our significantothers, education system, cultureand general events in our are judgements andevaluations that we make aboutourselves and others, and theydetermine our motivation, feelingsand actions.

2 They also determineour success in reticular activating system inthe brain acts as a filter forinformation coming in, and it doesthis in a way that is consistentwith our beliefs and goals. If youhold the belief, based on aparticular experience, that you arehopeless at presentations andthat s just how you are, then yourfilters will be set for all the thingsthat can go wrong with your pre-sentations and you willinevitably deliver one that is lessthan adequate. This then continuesto be a limiting belief, born out ofyour reference experiences, untilthe cycle is broken. Changing beliefs is the initiator forbehaviour change and improvedperformance. The good news forcoaches and clients is that thereare some simple and effective waysto do this.

3 We shall come back tothis later. First, let s take a furtherlook at the impact beliefs have onour voice in the headHave you ever caught yourselfhaving a conversation in your head?Not only do we voice our limitingand false beliefs, but we also oftenhave a voice that is destructive inthe language it uses inside our a coach you can help clients todeal with this too. We have already discussed how it ispossible, when working with theclient, to identify and challengelimiting or false beliefs. It is alsopossible to help the client work ontheir own internal dialogue whenyou are not there to challenge it. A key part of any coaching relation-ship is helping the client to becomeself-sufficient. Without this, thecoach becomes a permanent crutchon which the client for a moment that you aregoing to give a presentation.

4 Afaulty perception of how this mightturn out would result in an internaldialogue that goes something likethis:I might not start it off properly..What if I fluff my words? .. Whatif the words come out all wrongand I lose the flow? .. I always getnervous.. What if I forget the key message and make a fool ofmyself? .. The audience might notlike me.. They might not beinterested in what I have to say..I m not as good as the otherpresenters.. I ll never be able topresent easily.. I m not expertenough in my topic..You will recognise the labelling,generalisations and negativelanguage, and all the possibilitiesthat are being closed off, simply bywhat you are saying to yourself. It seems bizarre, but we do this sortof thing all the time in a wholerange of different we can t always change theexternal situation, we can changeour internal response to now that you are going togive the same presentation.

5 Insteadof sitting there creating a negativerepresentation inside your head,imagine what it would be like if itwent something like this:I have a good introduction and Iknow the content well.. I amclear about the structure and flowof my presentation.. I am feelingreally calm.. The key message isclear and I will deliver it in a timelyfashion.. The audience like meand are interested in what I have tosay.. I am as good as all the otherpresenters and can deliver thecontent easily.. I know my topicwell.. Encouraging clients to recognisetheir negative internal dialogue andhelping them to replace it with apositive internal dialogue is a greatway of helping them to his book Learned Optimism,4Dr Martin Seligman says that changing the destructive things you say to yourself when youexperience the setbacks that lifedeals all of us is the central skill of optimism.

6 Past performance versus future potentialIt is easy to see how our pastexperiences influence our beliefsabout our own performance. I have my own personal example ofthis to a child in school I struggled withmaths and developed the limitingbelief that I was bad at was reinforced through myfeelings about anything to do withmaths. My behaviour served toreinforce my beliefs; I avoided anykind of work where I would haveto add up in my head, and conse-quently failed to create opportuni-ties to improve my ownperformance. Eventually, I cameacross people who were willing tochallenge my thinking. Guess what?My feelings and behaviourschanged. I do my own monthlyaccounting now, so how can I reallybe bad at numbers?This is an example of how pastperformance doesn t have to and,indeed, should not be an indicatorof future a coach, your role is to help theclient recognise that this is the casefor them too.

7 Using the listeningand questioning techniques alreadydescribed will help you to do my view, the impact andimportance of beliefs in coachingcannot be overstated. Anyone whowants to help others improve theirperformance and potential will needto develop and hone their skills forworking in this challenging anddynamic Brauseis a freelance professional coach and development consultant. Her focus is on providing creative and flexible development solutions for performanceimprovement. She has worked with clients in both the public and the private sectors. Jan is a qualified coach, a member of the Association for coaching and anINLPTA-trained master practitioner. Telephone: +44 (0)844 779 1461 E-mail: Website: Carson, Taming your Gremlin, Quill, McDermott and Wendy Jago, The NLP Coach, Piatkus, Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House and Phil Sandahl, Co-active coaching , Davies-Black Publishing, EP Seligman, Learned Optimism, Pocket Books, learning points uBeliefs have an impact on ourattitude, feelings, perceptions can be improved bychanging inner need to consider theimpact of their own beliefs on theircoaching performance and toremain may not be aware of theirlimiting or false beliefs, andsensitive challenging of thesebeliefs is vital to dialogue (self-talk)

8 Is a keyfactor that can limit our beliefs orhelp us to coaches will find themselvesworking with beliefs at some pointin the coaching we believe about somethinghas an effect on how we go aboutachieving it, without our necessarilybeing aware of that. For example, if you get feedbackone day after delivering a presenta-tion that it was not up to the mark,you may tell yourself that you are useless at presentations and feelvery badly about yourself and yourperformance, believing that presen-tations are just not for , you might tellyourself, It s just the view of oneperson, and feel that you did OK but there might be one or two areaswhere you can improve. You mightmake a note to develop these areas,feeling confident that next timeyour presentation will be much better.

9 The coaching process helpsindividuals to notice which of thebeliefs they hold are helpful andwhich are limiting or falsebeliefsThe first step in challenging aclient s limiting or false beliefs is tolisten to them. Whitworth et the following three levelsof listening in their book Co-activeCoaching:3nLevel 1 we hear the words ofthe other person, but the focus ison what it means to 2 the attention isfocused on the other 3 global listening thatpicks up emotion, body languageand the we look into this description, wecan see that level 1 listening wouldbe a matter of imposing our ownbeliefs as a coach on what theclient is saying. As coaches, it isonly by operating at levels 2 and 3that we can help clients to accesstheir limiting and false limiting or false beliefs areexpressed in lots of different are a few:nLabelling stating situations asfacts such as I am clumsy ,rather than as That s a clumsything to do.

10 NGeneralisations such as This always happens to me. nFocusing on negatives atendency to use negative ratherthan positive statements, such as Don t drop it rather than Hold on to it tightly. nClosing off possibilities usingphrases like I can t and Iwould never be able to. This is a sign of what is sometimescalled a victim mentality . It isthe role of the coach to help theclient recognise and change my experience, once you havepicked up on a limiting or falsebelief as a coach, you can challengeit by moving on to the second stepof effective and specificquestioning. Here are some of the questions thatI have found helpful:nWhat stops you?nWhat rules that could bechallenged are you using?nWhat would happen if you did?nWhat would happen if youdidn t?