Awareness facilitates change. Without awareness, there can be no reflection, intention, or action. It is critical in the sequence of growth.

This article in our series on the neuroscience behind the ICF core competencies focuses on ICF #7, Evokes Awareness. We will overview how Red Zone vs Blue Zone physiological states within both coach and client impact the emergence of new awareness. We will then explore neuroscience concepts such as the brain regions and neurophysiological processes involved in evoking awareness and conclude with practical tips for evoking greater awareness in coaching.

Awareness is an outgrowth of the coach’s active listening. For more on listening, see our article on the neuroscience supporting ICF #6, Listens Actively, where we explore how listening is the precursor to client self-expression. Listening tees up a chain of client awareness, insight, and learning, which is the goal of ICF #7, Evokes Awareness. (Look for our final article in this series, Neuroscience of ICF #8 “Facilitates Client Growth”, for specific neuroscience principles that support client growth.) 

ICF Core Competency #7, Evokes Awareness, is defined as:

Facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques
such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor or analogy

To support client awareness, we can leverage this core concept:

Insight is new neural connections,
formed through integrating the whole brain-body experience

You may notice in this statement that we do not specify whether it is the client’s or the coach’s whole brain-body experience. It is purposefully left open because it is both—this happens individually within coach and client, as well as in the interplay of the coaching relationship. As the coach integrates their own whole brain-body experiences while coaching, it creates space for clients to do the same. As coaches, integrating these experiences is essential to the concept of “Self As Instrument,” where we attune to our own internal landscape to better understand and connect with the client. For more on Self as Instrument, refer to an earlier article in this series, ICF #2, Embodies a Coaching Mindset.

Awareness is deeply affected by the coach’s biological state of Red Zone or Blue Zone.

Coaching in a Red Zone state inhibits client awareness. The coach’s fight-flight biology can spread negative emotional contagion to the client, diminishing cognitive and relational capacities for both coach and client. With the rush of adrenalin and cortisol, ideas narrow toward a fight-flight orientation of immediate survival from perceived threats. Coaching in the Red Zone tends to lean toward “how-to” coaching, hyperfocusing on fixing or eliminating a situation that is perceived through a problem lens.

While the Red Zone can be uncomfortable, it is not to be demonized. The feelings it brings — scared, frustrated, demoralized, stuck, ambivalent, etc.—are data points to be curious about. It can be the brain-body’s way of signaling that something needs to change. In the Red Zone, we can easily default to behaviors that take quick action to avoid pain. Yet when we embrace Red Zone emotions and see them as a step in the continuum of change, we can begin to consider new inputs and upgrade perceptions we have about ourselves, situations, and the world. New perceptions bring new beliefs and behaviors that support greater connection and collaboration with ourselves and others, growing our capacity to navigate uncertainty and complexity.

If the coach is uncomfortable with the client’s discomfort, it can cause the coach to become directive, choosing a course not set by the client or offering advice. There is a tendency to make assumptions or interpretations about the client’s meaning-making, often right when the client is about to open up to accessing new insight. This leads to asking closed questions that can contain predetermined answers by the coach, which diminishes potential for client insight. And, in the Red Zone, the speed of the coaching conversation typically accelerates, leaving little space for silence, reflection or client learning.

Blue Zone biology expands awareness. In this regulated state, the coach experiences and emits a sense of safety, regardless of what the client brings to the conversation —difficult circumstances, uncomfortable emotions, complexity or uncertainty, ambivalence, and more. Blue Zone biology also supports coaches to deepen their client-centered curiosity and attune intuition to respond to even slight shifts in energy or subtle comments that unlock client wisdom.

Coaching in this state explores both the WHAT (the client’s situation), as well as the WHO (exploration of the client’s emotions, beliefs, values, influences, wants, behaviors, etc.). The coach does not rely solely on an analytical or algorithmic approach, which leans on accessing previous experiences and stored knowledge for problem-solving, but also integrates solving through insight, which produces a sudden and easeful emergence of solutions. The coach continues to expand their awareness in order to invite the client to see broader contexts and systems that influence their interpretations of themself and their world. As the invisible becomes visible, clients uncover empowering new insights, perspectives, meaning-making, and ways of being.

Several neural mechanisms that influence awareness are outlined below.

Awareness engages and disengages a variety of brain regions, and involves a range of neurophysiological processes:

• • The right hemisphere, default mode network, and prefrontal cortex are engaged
  • The visual cortex and left hemisphere become less active
  • Gamma wave activity occurs before and during insight, integrating information from different parts of the brain
  • Neurochemicals are released that promote neuroplasticity; an increase in metacognition supports insight and learning

The process of finding novel solutions that move us forward requires shifting our engagement with our brain and body. As we support clients in shifting from Red Zone to Blue Zone, their capacity to make meaningful connections and open space for growth expands.

Some studies suggest a brief quieting down of activity in the visual cortex (the part of the brain processing sight) just before new awareness emerges. This might indicate a temporary turning inward of attention, reducing external distractions to allow for internal processing.

Insights can be hindered if the left hemisphere is devoting resources to focus on or remember multiple pieces of information simultaneously, which leads to a more rigid, analytical, linear approach. In addition, when the brain isn’t over-taxed with trying to force a solution, more resources become available for making novel associations and connections.

• • Notice your focus: Deepen your awareness around tendencies you have to hyperfocus on one element of the client’s experience (i.e., emotions, logic, beliefs). Stretch yourself to listen for an area of the client’s awareness beyond your norm. What happens for the client when you stretch yourself?

   

 
• Engage both brain and body: Notice what comes up in your body as you listen to the client. At a minimum, you will increase your awareness of your patterns, and you may also find connections/sensations that are worth sharing as observations with the client (e.g., “As you shared that, the image of climbing a mountain came up for me. What does that evoke for you?”). Invite your client to notice what other information or insights could be available to them from their body. 
• “If you were to imagine your gut feeling having a voice about this, what might it say?” [and] “And how about your heart. What does that voice say?”
• “I noticed you laugh as you shared that….what was happening for you?”
• “You’ve mentioned confidence a few times. What would that feel like in your body? Would you like to experiment with embodying that and see what comes up?”

Play with associations: Making novel connections requires allowing our intuition greater voice. Associations can invite new awareness by inviting the client to see what else their brain and body is offering as a potential connection.
“Seems your brain has really been analyzing this, yet without an answer. How do you feel about a different tack, such as playing with some random associations, with no pressure for a right or wrong answer?” [if client agrees]
• “What does this situation remind you of?”
• “Who does this person remind you of?”
• “What’s a good metaphor for what you’re going through?”
• “What else is coming to mind?”

• Expand Connections: Shifting into connection can generate perspectives we cannot grasp otherwise. We can utilize both the connection we have with the client, sharing an observation that expands perspective, or invite them to envision positive connections with self/others.
• Friend:
• “If you were to ask a trusted friend for perspective, what would you imagine they would say about the way you are navigating this?”
• “If you were listening to a friend share all this, what would be coming up for you?”
• Empowered/Future Self:
• “What would your wisest self say to you?”
• “If you imagine your future self—the most empowered and wise version of you several years from now, what story would you tell about how you navigated this?”
• Wise Advisors:
• “Who in your life do you admire for their wisdom?” … “What fresh perspective would they offer you?”
• “Sounds like there are a lot of voices right now. Who gets a seat at the board?”

Effectively evoking awareness for clients starts with the coach. Your ability to hone your “Self as instrument” directly impacts the spaciousness you can bring to sessions and the expanded perspectives you can invite clients into. Rather than letting this stress you into the Red Zone, consider where your strengths currently support expanded awareness and how you can continue to expand. As you engage with clients in the connect-create space of Blue Zone, your clients will be among your greatest teachers, expanding your awareness as you support them in expanding theirs.

Susan Britton, MCC, is Founder/President and Jessica Burdett, PCC, is Director of Coaching Education at The Academies. Since 2001, The Academies has provided coaching education globally, and for nearly 10 years, has been a leader at the intersection of coaching and neuroscience. Curious about “Changing Minds, for Good?” Learn about our ICF Level 1 and Level 2 programs that weave neuroscience findings into accessible, memorable, and transformational coaching skills.