Welcome back.
In this module, we're going to look at the neurology
of coaching and in particular, effective coaching.
As we talked about in the earlier modules,
one of the dimensions of the PEA versus NEA experience is the degree
to which a person is activated in the default mode or task positive network.
Now let's talk about what those two networks are.
My colleague, Tony Jack, here at Case Western Reserve University
has been publishing a series of studies
that are building on what other people have documented,
that there is a network in our brain called the task positive network
that has to do with helping us use working memory, language acquisition,
but also helps us in almost any mathematical
or abstract reasoning task, anything analytic.
It enables us to focus on - on something.
It enables us to solve a problem or even make a decision, if we're evaluating it.
This network has a lot of parts in different parts of the brain;
that's why it's a network.
But the dorsal anterior singular cortex or dorsal attentional network
and a lot of other lateral areas are key parts of it throughout the brain.
What Tony found, in a series of studies,
is what other people have documented since the early OTS
- that the task positive network has very little overlap
with this other major network called the default mode network
and these two networks constitute a lot of the working cognitive processing
that the brain does in most of our encounters - in situations at work and at home.
The default mode network, on the other hand,
with aspects in the right temporal parietal junction, the posterior singular cortex,
the ventral medial prefrontal cortex - these enable us to be open to new ideas.
These enable us to scan the environment.
It's this network that enables us to see and be sensitive to other people,
to do kind of social engagement, to be open to emotions and to be open to moral reasoning.
Not moralizing judgment calls, that's really task positive,
but the issue of is something fair or just.
We see these two networks come out in a lot of ways in our relationships.
But what Tony was showing yet again, but with a much more precise task,
that these two networks suppress each other.
So when we activate the analytic network, we suppress the default mode - and vice versa.
So one of the dilemmas we have in organizations is all too often we go into analysis
and we suppress people's openness to new ideas.
We suppress their - their ability to see other people,
their ability to think about is this the right thing to be doing?
Likewise, we can spend too much time in the default mode network.
I don't think that often happens in most work organizations,
but if you do, you'll start to see patterns that really aren't there.
The interesting challenge we have
is that these two networks are what are technically called anti-correlated.
They really do suppress each other in their activation.
But we need both when we're engaged in work, play, in family life.
So part of the challenge is how can we build a facility
where we cycle back and forth between them?
These are studies that Tony and I and others are doing right now.
But we see these two different networks appearing in many ways in leadership activities.
We see the history of leadership of Taylorism being very mechanical.
The 60s ushered in an era of humanistic approaches,
Theory X versus Theory Y in McGregor's approach
or in Blake and Mouton's scientific management systems -
task management versus relational management.
We see it in transactional styles, leadership styles, versus transformational.
We see it in coaching,
in whether or not people lean towards enacting instrumental coaching.
Let me open this door for you, let me give a call to somebody for you,
versus what is also called relational or more social-emotional coaching,
where through the rapport in our relationship, I'm helping you to think of
and aspire to your dreams, to be open to new ideas.
The coaching for compliance that you've heard us talk about,
really is very often located in the task positive network
and which is why we feel strongly that it doesn't work so often;
because if you're suppressing the default mode network
where people would be open to a new idea,
they're not going to be able to consider some change or learning something new.
We think coaching with compassion as an approach, where you're emphasizing the PEA,
not exclusively, but emphasizing it, has a better likely chance of working
because it uses more of the default mode, but occasionally recruits,
as we say in neuroscience, the task positive network.
Although there may be individual dispositions involved in these things,
we think that a lot of it has to do with repetition and learning,
but there are organizational environments that also push people.
One of the reasons why we find coaching for compliance doesn't work
is it puts people in a more defensive mode.
And as you put them into an analytic mode, that's like doing a data dump,
the old assessment centers or -
a lot of coaching in the old days used to be let's collect the data,
here's your data, what do you see?
Well, people automatically go to the negative, the gaps,
the things that aren't working - and then they get defensive.
They activate the sympathetic nervous system, they start to close down.
And that's part of the problem of focusing on data and analytics,
not the relationship and coaching.
So we decided to put it to a test.
We brought in undergraduates who volunteered to do 30 minutes of PEA coaching.
Tell me about what your life would be like in 10 years if everything were ideal.
Thirty minutes of NEA coaching.
How are you doing in your courses?
Are you doing all the homework?
Are you doing all the assignments?
Not really negative, but guilt-inducing.
The people doing the coaching were in the first study -
Masud Khawaja and Angela Passarelli, both in their mid-thirties.
Neither had taught undergraduates before.
And each one, for each student that came in, each subject,
Masud would do the PEA and Angela the NEA, or vice versa.
And they were randomly assigned as to which condition each person was coaching.
Three to five days later, they came in.
We strapped them into an fMRI and they saw videos of Masud and Angela making positive,
neutral and negative statements about their "life if" case and the future
as a way to simulate them rekindling that conversation.
We then analyzed the brain scans after going through 96
of these different trials in a random sequence.
And what we found was that the positive coaching activated - the PEA coaching -
parts of the default mode network, most notably, the posterior singular cortex.
As you can see, the blue area in the upper left on the leftmost scan
and the orbital frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens on the lower right area,
in blue also.
The NEA coaching activated parts of the yellow - you could see on the left scan
- of the dorsal anterior singular cortex
and it activated part of the medial prefrontal cortex, which interesting enough,
is in the default mode network.
So it wasn't a pure one-for-one correspondence, but it was very close.
We also saw that the PEA coaching activated the lateral visual cortex,
this big area you see here in orange and yellow -
and this is where the brain activates when it is imagining things,
which we thought was precisely what we were trying to get at.
Well, we decided to pursue this a little further,
because Tony and I were beginning to suspect
that the relationship had a lot to do with it.
So we designed a second study in which we decided to go in and do a much larger -
instead of 20 half male/ half female, go up to 50, 51
- and we brought them in for either just the NEA coaching or they wrote a vision
and then had the NEA coaching or they had one PEA then the NEA;
two PEA - NEA; or three PEA - NEA.
We wanted to see whether or not
the number of PEA sessions might affect the neural activations.
Again, we brought them in.
This time it was Hector Martinez and Angela Passarelli
that were doing coaching sessions - again,
randomly sequenced as to which - which sequence.
And then they had the videos, again, of these statements.
So we were keeping that part of the study the same.
And lo and behold, which we were very pleased with,
we replicated almost all of the earlier findings which, in neuroscience,
when you're dealing with relatively small sample size,
is very important for the science part of it.
But fascinatingly, we found a dose-dependent effect,
which was this yellow area in the lower right part of the scan image you're looking at -
is called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex.
It is a key part of the default mode network
and one of the parts of the default mode network
that has been directly associated with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.
So that creates a link between two different parts of the PEA/NEA.
And this was activated when people had two or three PEA sessions, but not just one.
And when they had three, it was even more so.
So we saw a clear dose-dependent effect and interestingly enough,
writing the vision didn't help all that much at all.
So we were very struck with the fact that the difference between the PEA coaching,
what we're calling coaching with compassion,
and the NEA coaching, which often comes out as coaching for compliance,
has a very strong and consistent neural activation associated with it.
And since that's what we're really after when we're trying to help people get open
to new ideas, we felt very assured that we were on the right track physiologically,
in terms of the neural activations.
So we look forward to seeing you in the next module when we continue the journey.
