Saturday, December 25, 2010

Levels of thinking....

As a facilitator and later with coach training, it has been quite a personal journey of experimenting with thinking. I am penning this as a 3rd quartile placement conclusion of the same.

Over the years, as a facilitator and designer of enabling efforts, I have come across and used a large number of "instruments", "frameworks" and so on. Off late, I have come to recognise these as manifestations and not the real thing. Strengths finder is definitely an awesome way maker for success. However, being futuristic, and other strengths are actually manifestations when the individual is cruising in her/her real self. I call this cruise state. MBTI describes the preferences an individual makes under cruise state and these decisions to some level help sustain the cruise state. Traits are manifestations that are enduring.

The flow philosophy addresses the experience. It also in depth, speaks about repeatedly getting into the experience in terms of challenge and competency. Flow is a great goal to have. The fundamental approach is that the flow state is the primary state of a human and that beliefs tend to interfere with the same. The premise of coaching is that the individual is given a safe setting and courage to look at, become aware and recognize the offending line of thinking. At this point, choice kicks in and the empowered smile of an insight is observed.

The Quantum Zeno effect from brain studies says that the "mental act of focusing attention holds in place brain circuits associated with what is being focused on. If you pay enough attention to a certain set of brain connections, it keeps this relevant circuitry stable, open and dynamically alive, enabling it to eventually becoming a part of the brain’s hard wiring."

Getting an individual to cruise state is often the winning effort of withdrawing an individual from extrinsic distractors and focus on the real self descriptor. My next effort is all about compiling a set of such descriptors that describe the very being of the self. Being different for different individuals, the cruise state along with the Quantum Zeno effect, when used during coaching helps the coachee to no end.

Behavioural change after this point is most enduring and permanent.

On a slightly different note, the QZE seems to explain "leave it to the process" when the learning outcomes are defined stand by those who are from the process lab line of thinking.

Now, moving into the area of levels of directed thinking, here are a few:

1. at a peripheral level is behavioural observation - like in a ADC - focus on behaviours exhibited

2. labeling comes next as does slightly deeper level of process observation - invitation, celebration, etc

3. Deeper level of feeling - combined with level 2 above is a great tool for facilitation

4. Deepest level of intuition - explained best by David Rock and my understanding as those continuous consolidated feelings with very low amplitude that can be focussed on when brain chatter is reduced

All this sits on authenticity and fuelling that is spontaniety gated by choice.

So, how does one decide what to use and when? The wonderful gift of "being in the moment" or coaching presence is that platform for the same.

One simple model of enabling is all about "here and now" and using sensing alongwith validation over a conversation with a coachee. This is especially useful for what I call Autonomy coaching to identify and discard limiting beliefs. This sits above using intuition for coaching, allows a conversationalist facilitation of individual enablement and gives the coach the flexibility of tapping intuition as and when required. Wow. (In this model, since validation is used, the effect of preferences of the coach, while definitely have an effect, tend to be minimized according to me - as against using intuitive breakthrough model of enabling.)

Cheers! NS